Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

by Robert J. Crane

  “The way you say it,” Cyrus spoke quietly into the wind of the savanna, “he wouldn’t hesitate to make war if he were in my position now.”

  “You didn’t start the war,” she said, “and neither would he. But he would finish it.” Her eyes glinted. “However he had to. Sanctuary … it was everything to him. Anyone threatening Sanctuary—they’d get the vengeance, not the friendship.”

  “Thank you,” Cyrus said, looking down at her. She nodded once. “For … all of this.”

  She curtsied, a peculiar sight in her dull robes. “I am at your service, m’lord.” And she smiled ever so faintly through the streaked dirt on her face.

  21.

  “That was longer than ten minutes,” Vara said as Cyrus reappeared in the light of his return spell, the Tower of the Guildmaster forming around him. Her tone was somewhere between worried and playful; Cyrus couldn’t quite tell which it leaned toward.

  “Well, she didn’t try and kill me,” he said, taking a deep breath of the still air within the shut tower before moving toward the wooden dummy and beginning to remove his armor.

  “Always an excellent sign,” Vara said with a nod. She moved to stand next to him and pulled her gauntlet off. “What did you talk about?”

  “I asked her about my mother,” Cyrus said, and watched Vara’s frown deepen, “and she offered some insight on how Alaric might have handled our current situation.”

  “I shudder to think what perspective she might have gained from within the bounds of the kitchens,” Vara said, removing her other glove, a sheen of perspiration obvious on her palms. “I trust her recommendation was not something along the lines of ‘Burn them all to death within the confines of a good stew pot’?”

  “It was not,” Cyrus said, frowning at his wife. “She suggested, having grown up in Sanctuary, that Alaric might in fact have been a less kindly figure than I recalled him being. That behind his moralizing, his purpose, was a man who wouldn’t hesitate to strike viciously at anyone who came after those he cared about.”

  “There is truth to that,” Vara conceded, though she sounded reluctant. “Though he certainly preached the moral high road, I myself saw him do occasionally terrible, wrathful things when our members were threatened. Such is the life of a knight of any sort, I suppose, any protector.”

  “Yeah.” Cyrus kicked off his boots one by one, cloth foot covers pressing against the hard stone floor. “Still … that apparent divide between what Alaric preached and what he did … I can’t decide whether to find it troubling and ignore it as an area where his grasp fell short of his reach or admire and emulate it as necessary measures in the situation we find ourselves trapped in.”

  “It troubles me as well,” Vara said, “but I find myself less divided about this than you are.” Her eyes flashed. “Archenous wronged me terribly, and I parted ways with him quite content to never so much as look in his direction again. But now his goal brings him back my way again, and I find myself regretting not having taken the very un-paladin-like step of removing his head years ago so he would never have been able to ambush you in that market.” Her mouth twisted in anger. “He has revived our hostility, not me, and the same goes for Danay, Urides, and Goliath. This is not petty vengeance, and these are not virtuous men. So long as we direct our attacks against them, no matter how subtly or surreptitiously, I find myself morally untroubled.”

  “I don’t argue with any of that,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “It’s always the consequences, though.” She looked at him curiously. “Killing Mortus, for example. He was a cruel, ruthless, horrible creature,” he took a breath. “And yet, the events that sprang from killing the God of Death led to Luukessia, to the Scourge. And although killing Yartraak brought Terian to the throne, it could just as easily have brought someone terrible. I worry what could happen if we charge headlong into killing Urides or Danay.” He made a clicking noise with his tongue. “We may not pay that piper alone. The Kingdom, the Confederation … we don’t know how things would go in those places, even if we did manage to orchestrate the removal of our enemies. We don’t know what it will cost in terms of alliances.”

  “That’s a fair concern,” Vara said, unstrapping her breastplate. With it gone, Cyrus could see the clinging cloth shirt she wore beneath, tightly hugging her curves. “And something I think we should discuss in great detail before settling on a final plan. If putting ourselves in alliance with Iraid and the others he named somehow ties us into darker action …” She sighed. “Well, I don’t want to cross certain lines any more than you do. Assassinating kings and oligarchs of dubious character is all well and good, but …”

  “But if it leads to the deaths of countless more innocents in a civil war,” Cyrus finished as she nodded, “or puts one of those powers under the heel of some governor who wants to be dictator … I start to have a problem with it.”

  “Agreed,” she said. “None of that.” She slipped into his arms, the sweat of the day pungent in his nose. He pulled off the chain mail that wrapped his body and let it drop to the floor next to the long mystical ball and chain he’d draped around himself. She kissed him softly upon the lips and then looked into his eyes. “But if we can destroy Amarath’s Raiders at the end of this, my conscience will not be troubled.”

  “I know you hate to ask for help,” Cyrus said, curling her up in his arms, “but I think we both know someone who has more recent familiarity with the Big Three, including Amarath’s Raiders, and who would probably be willing to help.”

  Vara slumped in his arms, her head thumping against his chest. “Urk. As though Iraid’s request was not vexing enough.”

  Cyrus smiled faintly. “Would it really be so bad asking Isabelle for help? I mean, she’s your sister, after all.”

  Vara took a deep breath and sighed, her warm breath sighing through his undershirt and tickling his chest hairs beneath. “No. And yes.”

  “Both?”

  “She will help, surely,” Vara said, moving her head around to lean the opposite direction on his chest as they stood there, her body soft against him. “But you know I don’t like asking for help, and suddenly I am forced to seek out much of it, and from many quarters.”

  “Apparently I’m not the only one with pride,” Cyrus said with a light smile.

  “Ego and pride are not exactly the same thing,” Vara said sharply. She paused a moment then said, considerably more softly, “But they are not so different, either. You and I are well matched for many reasons, and this is one of them, I think.” She looked up at him, her eyes weary. The low winter sun had already faded beneath the windows outside the western balcony and the room was growing dark. “Shall we go to bed?” She ran a hand lightly over his chest playfully.

  Cyrus suppressed a smile. “So long as you promise to start asking for that help on the morrow—”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, pressing herself tightly against him. He could feel the lingering hesitation in her grip, though, the desire not to let go, and as she looked up to kiss him once more, he happily let himself forget all that was weighing on him, at least for the night, in the comfort of his wife’s arms.

  22.

  Cyrus was awakened by a pounding at the door in the middle of the night, the urgent hammering enough to snap him out of a dreamlike state. He sat up as Vara did the same beside him, her hand upon her sword, already drawn from its scabbard. He was slower to react, fumbling for his blade and calling out, “Yes? Who is it?”

  “It’s Calene,” came a soft voice from outside. “We’ve got trouble at the wall, best hurry down.” The sound of retreating footsteps echoed in Cyrus’s ears as the ranger left without further explanation.

  Cyrus met Vara’s gaze for only a second before they both slipped naked out of their bed and dressed in silence, hurrying to make ready for whatever was waiting below.

  Cyrus took longer to finish. The process of wrapping the chain and spiked ball carefully around himself so that the ball did not hit him in any unarmored places took some c
onsiderable care and left Vara sighing with impatience at the top of the staircase down to the door, clearly eager to descend.

  When he was finally ready, they rushed down the stairs. Vara easily outpaced him, aided by the mystical nature of the enchantments on her armor. Cyrus clung to the grip of the morning star with his left hand and increased his speed enough so as not to be left completely behind by her. Their metal-booted feet clanged, the sound echoing through the central tower’s immense staircase as they hurried down.

  “We should learn Falcon’s Essence,” Vara said, under her breath. “Perhaps Larana could teach us. It would make descents quite a bit easier; all we would need to do would be to open the balcony and run.”

  “I’ll put that on my list,” Cyrus said tautly. “Though I admit, learning illusions is one of my priorities at the moment, now that I’ve got a good start on wizarding spells from Mendicant.”

  “I find ‘return’ to be quite a boon, personally,” Vara said. “I had long wondered why paladins and dark knights were the only spellcasters who did not receive the use of that particular gem of the craft.”

  “It would make armies too mobile,” Cyrus said, and when she looked at him in surprise, he elaborated. “Think about it—the ability for troops to move themselves swiftly from one point to another? It makes them less reliant on other spellcasters. Troops could defend two separate places almost at once. The power of an army would grow exponentially.”

  “Only if they had countless knights rather than the handful produced each year from each of the two Leagues that is responsible for them,” she murmured, but he sensed her thoughts running away with her. “It also assumes that every member of said army could use spells,” she went on after a moment’s thought. “Clearly this is not so. Even now, even knowing the words to the spells, our warriors and rangers, with the apparent exception of you, with your mother’s magical blood, still cannot cast a spell.”

  “True enough,” Cyrus said as they reached the bottom of the stairs and hurried across the foyer and out the doors. The starry night above them shone like a shimmering black tapestry made of silk and punctured with tiny holes, a torch shining behind it. They climbed the stairs at the wall nearest the gate, where a knot of troops was gathered, staring over the parapets.

  Scuddar and Calene waited for them, along with Menlos and a dozen other guards, all of them alternating nervous looks over the wall and then back down it, seemingly afraid to take their eyes off the perimeter for fear of breach.

  “What is it?” Cyrus asked before he reached the edge. He strode forward before the answer came, the wall’s guardians stunned into silence as he reached the nearest crenellations and looked out, Vara in the next gap to his. Cyrus stuck his head out carefully, as though an arrow might come launching at him. It didn’t, and in the faint moonlight he saw but a single figure standing before the gate, a shadow in the dark of knight. “Another messenger?” he asked.

  “Of a sort,” Scuddar said in a low voice. “Light, please.”

  Guards above the gate extended torches out of the crenellations and the light shone down on the messenger. Cyrus made a small gasp of disgust as the orange fire lit rotted features, exposed bone, and glazed, white eyes in the dark figure.

  “Gods, it’s a wendigo,” Cyrus said.

  “No,” Scuddar said, shaking his cowled head. “It is a corpse.”

  Cyrus frowned and stuck his head out of the crenellations again. He peered down at the thing standing expectantly before the gate. It was a corpse, he realized, a dead body of some sort, putrefied enough that the smell wafted up at him. “I’m not used to seeing the dead walk of late, I suppose,” Cyrus muttered. “But you’re right. That’s …”

  “Necromancy,” Vara said with a disgust of her own.

  “It’s a gift, really,” came Malpravus’s voice, high and hissing, from the corpse’s mouth. Its white eyes glowed now as it looked up at Cyrus. “You of all people, dear boy, should know the value of a good display of power.”

  “Your power doesn’t impress me, Malpravus,” Cyrus called down to the vessel waiting below. That thing is a mere conduit for him to annoy us, just a means for him to reach out and extend the sound of his voice to our ears. “It never has and it never will.”

  “I hear there are dead,” Vaste’s voice said from behind Cyrus, the sound of his footsteps echoing on the topmost steps. He thumped his way over to Cyrus’s right and leaned out of the crenellations. “Well, shit. That thing’s dead all right.”

  “It’s Malpravus,” Cyrus said.

  “If only,” Vaste said with longing. “I’d exorcise his bony arse right now and this thing would be all over except for the crying. Well, the crying and Amarath’s Raiders, the Elven Kingdom, and the Human Confederation.”

  “Plus all his assorted and annoying lieutenants,” Vara added.

  “Maybe they’re all secretly dead puppets,” Vaste said.

  “No one is dead in my armies,” Malpravus’s voice rose from the decomposing corpse. “Your friend Terian—he made sure that those forces of mine did not survive the war. A tragic waste, of course, but so it goes. Now I have new armies at my disposal, new allies—but you know all that.” The corpse lifted a hand, and clutched within it was another lock of dark hair, shining from the moon above. “I have many means at my disposal. Many … threads … to pull.”

  “What did you do with Imina?” Cyrus asked, a cold chill unrelated to the winter’s night shivering down his back.

  “She is safe,” Malpravus replied, and Cyrus could all but hear the smile in his voice. “For now. Much like yourself, though, her position grows more precarious by the day.”

  “He’s going to offer you a very bad deal,” Vaste said in a whisper. “Whatever you do, don’t be stupid and accept it. You know the value of his word is less than that of a letter from Terian to Pretnam Urides.”

  “I agree with the troll,” Vara said, “Malpravus is a liar. If you gave yourself up in hopes of saving Imina, you would find yourself beside her in death.”

  Cyrus took a slow breath, and the truth sank in with the chill. “I know.”

  “Come out, Cyrus,” Malpravus’s voice called. “I will offer you the same opportunity that Pretnam Urides did, with an additional benefit—your former wife will be returned, safe and sound, minus only a few locks of hair.”

  “It seems to me that doesn’t settle your problem, Malpravus,” Cyrus called down to the corpse, which shuffled forward a step. “Because it’s not just me that the Leagues want now. It’s at least the entire Sanctuary Council, and you haven’t asked for them.”

  “I remain unconcerned with the chaff,” Malpravus said. “I wish to harvest the wheat.”

  “Oh, that’s charming,” Vaste sniffed. “I’ll have you know I’m at least twice the wheat of this man.”

  “Come now,” Malpravus said. “You must know how desperately fenced in you are. No matter how many meetings you take trying to stir up allies, you will find yourself in the same pen, like an animal, the reins growing ever tighter, until the slaughter comes. At least now you can meet it at the hour of your choosing rather than wonder and worry for all the rest of your days.”

  “Maybe you should be the one to worry, Malpravus,” Cyrus said calmly.

  “Dear boy,” Malpravus said, the corpse gaping at him with a deathly grin, “I have denuded you of almost all your forces. My good friend Mathyas Tarreau took half your remaining number only last night. You have nine hundred and thirty-two remaining members of your guild in Sanctuary. Your friends the Luukessians are rightly guarding their own lands from reprisal by the elf king. Your friend the Sovereign finds himself in the same predicament, though I do not think he realizes how much his own realm would suffer from the armies of Reikonos marching upon his borders. And you and your pitiful remnant sit here, stewing in your own fear. It is like a rot, a putrefaction. With every month that passes, you will see more of the soft flesh peeled off until all that is left is the bone.” The corpse extended a ro
tted hand, nothing but ivory knuckles remaining of the limb. “And I think you know … rotted flesh and exposed bone is my servant, not yours. Sanctuary will die, and I will own its corpse.”

  The chills prickled up and down Cyrus’s neck. “I don’t think so,” he said, filled with defiance. “Vaste?”

  “You’re not the only one who exercises control over death, you prick,” Vaste said and extended a hand. With a flash of white, the corpse glowed, and then tumbled to the ground in pieces, the power of the necromancer expelled from it.

  Into the quiet night, Cyrus pushed back from the wall, his teeth gritted and bared, his cold fury turned hot.

  “Are you all right?” Vara asked, seeing him as she brought her head back inside as well.

  “He looks well, actually,” Vaste said, flexing the massive hand he’d just cast the spell with. “Better than I’ve seen him in some time. More … certain.” The troll’s eyes flashed with extra meaning.

  “I am certain,” Cyrus said, feeling as though his very spine had been reforged of quartal. There is no doubt now.

  We must destroy them.

  “Think it over, dear boy,” came a voice from over the wall, drawing Cyrus and the others to look back out. Vara gasped as she stuck her head out the teeth of the wall.

  The plains were dotted with corpses. A dozen, two dozen, more—stood, spread evenly across the ground before the walls, wide gaps between them. Their heads were tilted at odd angles, their shuffling steps making a soft noise through the grass.

  “There must be … hundreds of them,” Vara said quietly.

  “Consider my offer,” the corpses said in unison, Malpravus’s high voice echoing with mirth in a perverse chorus. “Before it becomes … too late.” A soft cackle crowed over the plains outside the walls of Sanctuary, causing that tingle down Cyrus’s back to reverberate even stronger.