“That cost us half of what we had left here at Sanctuary,” Longwell said in quiet desperation. “It’s all people have been talking about since. At least half of what we’ve lost since is attributable to that, people saying they should have gone with Tarreau—”
“Yes, it comes as a real shock to me that Malpravus would do something so sneaky and malignant,” Vaste said, nodding soberly. “Oh, wait, no, it actually does not. I was thinking of someone else. Malpravus would do anything to screw us, and planting dissenters in our midst is probably one of the least vicious things he would do.”
Ryin set his accusatory gaze on Cyrus. “You truly have been hiding things from us.”
“Oh, I’m sure you would have found them all out,” Vaste said, mockingly, “you know … in the fullness of time.”
“These are not small things you’ve been holding back,” Longwell said, and Cyrus could see the sense of betrayal in his eyes. “You’ve … You suspect us, don’t you?”
“That’s another strong accusation,” Menlos said, starting to sound a little desperate. He turned his head to Erith. “Are all the Council meetings like this or did you save this for my first time?”
“I can recall only a very few that have gone anything like this,” Erith said.
“I don’t suspect any of you,” Cyrus said, raising his voice and quieting the chamber. “I don’t. I think Goliath is doing what they always do, sowing the seeds of discord. I don’t believe any one of you is working with them. But … that doesn’t mean I don’t have suspicions.” He shifted uneasily in his chair. “We’ve had a problem with Malpravus getting word of happenings in our Council meetings for as long as I can remember. Whether that’s because some of us just talk too loosely outside this chamber or something more sinister, I can’t say.” He looked right at Longwell. “I don’t suspect you.”
“Good,” Longwell said, sounding insulted even so.
“I don’t suspect any of you,” Cyrus said, glancing about, “and if I had some actionable plan, something I could direct our guild toward, I would include you.” He shrugged. “But we’ve got—what was the number? Five hundred and twelve souls left to our army? I don’t know what kind of plan I could orchestrate with that amount of force, and if I did have one …” He sighed. “I’d need you all, that much is certain. You, plus all the force our allies could muster. I’m a General, after all, and while battle is my forte—this sort of battle? It’s not one we can win.” He looked around the table again. “If I knew a way to shift those odds, be assured I would. But that’s not the sort of plan I’m any good at.”
“You are a ‘pointy tip of the sword’ sort of fellow,” Vaste agreed.
“You lack a certain degree of subtlety, it’s true,” Ryin said reluctantly.
“Exactly,” Cyrus said, nodding a little sadly. “If I could craft some grand battle plan that would work, don’t you imagine I’d do it?” He waited for a reply, any reply. “And if anyone sees the way to fight our way out of this, I’m more than willing to listen. But for now, all I’ve got is … well, a secret or two, but they’re tilted toward keeping things from getting worse, or attacks coming without us knowing it.” He tossed the last bit in, secretly hopeful that it would make its way back to Malpravus. If he thinks I’ve got spies of my own, maybe it will give his bony stomach an ulcer or two of the sort he’s been sending my way.
“I just don’t see why you can’t—” Ryin started to ask, face still clouded with suspicion.
He was interrupted by a hammering at the door which stopped all conversation. “Come in,” Cyrus called, wondering who would be the messenger now.
Larana slipped into the chamber, looking as though she’d rather just drift right back out the door. “Sir,” she said, not meeting the eyes of any member of the Council, “we’ve … we’ve had word from Emerald Fields.”
Longwell stood, his chair skidding he got up so fast. “What word?” There was no disguising the bare edge of fear in his words.
“They’ve … had a skirmish with the elves,” Larana said, barely looking up, and there was a stir among the Council, “the messenger … he says that the war has begun.”
42.
The officers of Sanctuary appeared at the portal of Emerald Fields to find themselves surrounded, at least a hundred spears pointed at them. The tips remained pointed at them even when it was clear who they were. “Move!” The order was directed at them in a brusque, unfriendly tone. “Clear the field, please.”
Cyrus moved, and Vara, Longwell, Vaste, Ryin, Menlos, and Mendicant followed behind him, through a narrow gap in the wall of Luukessian men standing guard over the portal. The faces of their former guildmates were set in grim lines, and the stink of sweat and tension was in the air. Cyrus marched his way down a well-worn path toward town, the guards at the portal already seeming to have forgotten about them.
“I think we can safely say something drastic has happened here,” Vara intoned, low and quiet. “I have never seen the guard this tense, especially considering they knew who we were.”
“This is the easiest avenue for a sneak attack,” Longwell said, the dragoon walking stiffly, carrying his lance upright at arms. “They’re right to be worried and on their guard. The portal is our greatest lane of trade, and we can’t afford to close it under anything less than the direst threat.”
Cyrus saw the town of Emerald Fields ahead in the distance, brimming with activity, bustling on the streets lined with wooden buildings. The clean lines and newly constructed dwellings gave the entire area a very different feel even from Termina. Emerald Fields is not a part of the Elven Kingdom, Cyrus thought, not at all. They’re no more a part of Danay’s ancient and traditional land than I am.
Cyrus plunged ahead with his party toward the center of town, keeping his eyes sharply peeled for familiar faces. “We need to get to Cattrine’s office, see if she’s even there.”
“What do you imagine we’ll be able to do?” Vara asked softly, walking beside him, their motion kicking up dust on the dirty roads.
“Not a thing,” Cyrus said, keeping his eyes fixed on the town ahead, “but we need to hear what’s happened directly from her—and then we need to figure out what’s next.”
They walked through the turbulent streets, people yelling, running about. Still, it was hardly a panic, and nothing compared to the night over a year before when they’d turned out to defend this place against the titans rampaging through its streets while the citizens fled before them in fear. This was a near-calm by comparison, the occasional loud yells balanced by anxious whispering among the denizens, as though death had come to pay them a visit and some were fearless while others were merely stunned.
Cyrus made his way through the streets as carefully as he could; most of the citizens moved when they saw him, the crowds parting so that he could push his way through. He passed countless settlement buildings before he finally caught sight of Cattrine ahead, speaking with a knot of soldiers who wore the steel armor of the Luukessian dragoons. She had a drawn look on her face and was paying very close attention to what they were telling her.
Cyrus stopped, suddenly, lingering just down the street from where she stood. He made a small motion, taking a slow walk across her field of view. She acknowledged him with a flick of her eyes, shading herself with a hand from the sun-drenched day, and gave him a subtle nod toward her office. Cyrus returned the gesture and walked down the side of one of the wooden buildings to the base of a staircase that ran up to a second floor. He started to climb, his officers following behind him.
They waited in the Administrator’s office in strained silence for ten minutes, then fifteen, then half an hour. The quiet nearly defied belief in Cyrus’s view; Ryin and Longwell were, after all, present, but both waited in the stewed silence, clearly unwilling to retread their earlier quarrel in the Council. Instead they all stood, simply waiting, until the door creaked open and Cattrine Tiernan made her way inside, her eyes alight with an indignation that the usually placid Ad
ministrator displayed only rarely.
“Well, they’ve gone and done it,” she said without preamble. “A group of elves from the detachment that’s been prowling our northern border crossed over last night and got into a scrape with our cavalrymen. Naturally, our enemy was unprepared, and our alarm rang out quickly, so the elves were run down inside fifteen minutes, all thirty of them.”
“You didn’t lose any people, then?” Cyrus asked.
“Not a one,” Cattrine said with a tight smile. “But I think we all know that this is not the end, but a beginning. Danay will claim we’ve entered a state of insurrection, and he’ll have to answer our fire with his own. And so it will begin.”
“How long do you reckon?” Ryin asked, crestfallen.
“Not long at all,” Cattrine said, any trace of humor vanishing as the lines of her face went slack. “I’m sure they’ve already heard in Pharesia. He’ll be marshaling his forces in minutes. Terian just sent me a notice saying that he was preparing to send us more dark elven soldiers.” She smiled tightly, humorlessly. “This is how it begins, you see. They’ll tie us up and—”
The door slammed open, and in came a breathless Dahveed Thalless, the healer’s white robes trailing behind him, the druid Bowe in his wake, his long queue of hair whipping behind him. “We have a problem,” Dahveed said, his blue skin particularly flushed, as though the heat were getting to him.
“Other than war?” Cattrine asked.
“No, it is still war,” Dahveed said, trying to recapture himself as he stood, panting slightly. Bowe’s eyes were even more narrowed than usual as he stood behind the healer. Cyrus watched the druid. He seems … angry? “We were preparing a troop movement out of Sovar in reaction to this attack when something … happened,” Dahveed said, an interplay of emotions rioting across his face. One moment he seemed angry, the next, weary, until he finally settled somewhere between them. “Someone … brought a shipment of Dragon’s Breath into the main tunnel into Saekaj and Sovar … and somewhere, about a hundred feet from the surface … they lit it.”
“Dear gods,” Erith breathed. “That’s … the main passage into both cities. Without it—”
“Yes,” Dahveed said, with a short nod. “Without it … Saekaj and Sovar are cut off from the surface …” With a rueful look, he brought his message to its crashing conclusion. “And with that … we are effectively out of this war before it’s even begun.”
43.
Cyrus looked over the hill toward the entrance to Saekaj Sovar. He and the others, minus Longwell and Mendicant, who had remained in Emerald Fields, had teleported to the Saekaj portal and made their way toward the entry. There was a frenzy of activity, soldiers running to and fro to little point that Cyrus could discern. Dahveed and Bowe walked with the Sanctuary officers, allowing them to pass hostile soldiers and guards, all of whom watched the outsiders suspiciously. Cyrus saw a whole platoon of dark elven women glaring at him as he went past, and he tried not to stare, having never seen dark elven women in warrior armor before, at least not in those numbers.
“Well, this has been a day,” Ryin said, a few paces behind Cyrus and Vara as they stared down at the hill where stood the entry to Saekaj Sovar. On either side of the darkened entry stood guard towers, but the outlines were only barely visible through the dust-clouded air. A billow of dirt had dispersed into the atmosphere outside the entry tunnel, and little was visible beyond it. It hung there, like a pall, an impenetrable shroud that hinted at what waited in the passage below.
“So no one’s coming in or going out in that direction,” Cyrus said quietly. The air was a little colder here than it had been in Emerald Fields. The sky was clouded, and the sun was sinking lower on the horizon.
“And we have no portal accessible below,” Dahveed said. “That’s going to severely limit what we can bring in and take out.”
“I know there are other ways into Saekaj,” Cyrus said, looking at the healer.
“There are,” Dahveed agreed, “but they’re smaller tunnels, not designed for the heavy capacity of the main entrance. So while we’ll be able to move armies out with wizards and druids to some extent … food going in will be a problem. You can’t transport wagon loads of grain with the return spell, after all, and those other tunnels are inadequate to the task of carting things in.”
“So your army isn’t entirely cut off,” Cyrus said, “but your food supply to the civilians is.” He shook his head, staring down at the disaster. Soldiers were rushing in and out of the collapsed tunnel like ants coming out of a hill. “In other words, you’re about to have bigger problems than fighting a war.”
“It entirely fouls our logistics,” Dahveed said, eyeing Cyrus. “We’ll need labor in order to clear the tunnels and to carry down food in long marching chains. Guess where that labor will almost certainly have to come from?”
“Your army,” Cyrus said tightly.
“If we had deeper coffers,” Dahveed said apologetically, “or there wasn’t a hint of war brewing over us, we might hire this task to dwarven miners. Or the goblins, potentially. But with our gold going in other directions, mostly to keep the people fed …”
“I need to talk to Terian,” Cyrus said, feeling a throbbing behind his eyes.
“I can pass a message along,” Dahveed said, straightening up. “As you might imagine, he is somewhat occupied at the moment.”
“Are you going to have to withdraw your forces from Emerald Fields?” Cyrus asked, his voice taking a sour turn.
“I will convey your question,” Dahveed said, nodding, with a bow. “I wouldn’t care to answer for him.” He bowed and stepped closer to Bowe, and both of them disappeared in a return spell, leaving Cyrus with his officers on the overlook below the now-sealed entry.
“Damnation,” Ryin said. “This … this is …”
“It’s not quite damnation,” Vara said, “but we’re drawing nearer, it seems.”
“What do we do now?” Menlos muttered in quiet awe, watching the aftermath of the destruction through heavily lidded eyes. “If the dark elves have to pull out of Emerald Fields … the Luukessians won’t stand a chance against those damned elves.”
“This is a blow,” Ryin agreed, his face slack, numb with shock. “And well calculated, at that.”
Cyrus, for his part, stared down at the hill, at the entry to the city beneath the earth. “Goliath scores another hit,” he whispered, sure that Vara would hear him. He saw her nod subtly, and he knew that something had to be done, and immediately.
44.
The return to the Tower of the Guildmaster was a quiet affair, their twin spells carrying Cyrus and Vara back to the silent sanctuary atop the keep, nary a hint of breeze coming through the open doors to greet them. They had stayed, along with the other officers, until past sundown at the overlook to the entry to Saekaj, but no progress seemed to be made, only an endless cavalcade of soldiers going into the aperture beneath the hill and coming back out again covered in black dirt.
“Again everything comes at once,” Cyrus said, speaking into the quiet. He could not hear anything from beyond the balconies. When he walked out to look down at the wall, he saw the fires burning, but remarkably few figures moving about atop the thick grey line that divided them from the plains.
“We are in the midst of a storm, aren’t we?” Vara said, stepping out to stand with him on the balcony. The air was completely still, almost stifling, even out of doors.
“So it seems,” Cyrus said, looking out into the approaching hints of dusk. “Goliath and the elves seem to have moved their pieces forward today. Almost as if they could sense us gaining some small ground of our own.”
“Perhaps they did more than sense us,” she said, wrapping her shining steel gauntlets around the stone railing with a creak. “I know you didn’t want to say it in Council, but it is entirely likely that Terian is right, that they have us well and truly riddled with spies.”
“‘Didn’t want to say it’?” Cyrus let the words drip out like
a foul drink. “I don’t even want to think it.” He looked at his wife, feeling like he was beseeching her for something he knew she couldn’t provide. “These people have been with us for years. Have been our friends for years. Have fought with us through … through gods. Through the death of a land. Against titans and dragons and everything imaginable.” He bowed his head, staring down at the ground far, far below. “No, I don’t even want to contemplate it. I’ve conceded to the point, and I’ll keep our circle tight for these plans, but I see no path to ferreting out a traitor and thus no reason to dwell on it.”
“Fair enough,” she said, arching her back slightly as she stood next to him. “But if you did see a path to uncovering one … would you be willing to walk it?”
“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “Ask me when you’ve found that way.”
They stood there in the silence until a knock once more sounded at the door. “Come in,” Vara called, beating Cyrus by seconds. She caught his eyes sadly, and hers flicked to his scabbard, a subtle reminder once more than he was not all that he once was.
The messenger was Calene again, though not nearly as out of breath this time. “We had two missives,” she said, holding up envelopes, “from Emerald Fields, both.”
“Thank you,” Cyrus said, catching the ranger’s curiosity in her bearing, the way she inclined herself as if to watch them open the messages. “You may go, Calene.”
He caught the hint of disappointment from the ranger, but she departed swiftly enough, closing the door behind her without more than a look back. Cyrus watched her, waited until she was surely out of earshot before he turned to his wife, who was already tearing into her envelope. “This is a good example. What if, for instance, the traitor was Calene? Newly appointed to the Council, but she’s been with us since before Luukessia. She followed me all through that godsforsaken land, fought in every battle, saved the lives of her guildmates. What if she turned out to be a traitor?”
Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Page 26