Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

by Robert J. Crane

  Coulton shook again. “No, it can still work! You can still do it! The people will follow us, the governors! But you have to get rid of the Council—”

  “How am I supposed to kill Urides if I don’t know where he is and he knows it’s coming?” Cyrus asked, dropping his voice low.

  “I—that I don’t know,” Coulton said. “He—he—he lives in the Citadel—”

  Cyrus froze. “What did you say?”

  “He and the Council, they live in the Citadel now,” Coulton said, voice cracking. “I’m sorry. You’re right, there’s no getting to him there, you’d need an army, and—”

  Cyrus slackened his grip on Coulton. “If I kill him, you’ll call back your troops from the army and remove the Southern Reaches from the Confederation?”

  “I want to,” Coulton said, nodding with excess enthusiasm. “I do. But—but—”

  Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “But what?”

  Coulton almost staggered back into the flaming tower door, which was now filled with flames, the heat causing Cyrus to sweat. “He’s going to kill Frost. He’s sent Amarath’s Raiders to Isselhelm to do it, to make sure that he puts an end to this little rebellion before—”

  “J’anda!” Cyrus shouted, glancing back over his shoulder. “Grab that wizard carcass and get it back to Sanctuary!” He snapped his eyes toward Vaste. “Take Longwell and go. Assemble everyone you can when you get there—sound the alarum.” He yanked Reynard Coulton toward him. “Come on, you.” He cast a look back through the gates; over the drawbridge he could see the Army of Goliath marching toward him, only a minute away now. He tossed a blast of flame at the wooden wall on either side of the gates and then turned back to Coulton, who seemed to be gasping for breath.

  “Wh—what—where—?” Coulton stammered.

  “I’m getting your stupid arse to safety,” Cyrus said, pulling the governor toward him as the roof of the burning tower began to collapse behind him, filling the air with a terrible sound of crashing timbers. He cast the return spell and watched the keep of Idiarna disappear as it dragged him and the governor of the Southern Reaches away from Goliath’s impending reinforcements.

  59.

  When he appeared back in the Tower of the Guildmaster, Cyrus immediately began dragging the governor toward the stairs.

  “You’re back,” Vara called from behind him on the balcony, her voice sounding slightly muffled by the whip of a wind outside. “And you’ve brought—”

  “Come with me!” Cyrus hurled over his shoulder at her, sweating beneath his underclothes as he pulled Coulton along with him, practically dragging the man down the stairs, the governor’s feet barely keeping up.

  “What happened—” Vara barely had time to get out before Cyrus pulled open the door, clutched the hilt of Rodanthar and broke into a run, lifting Reynard Coulton behind him so as to avoid dragging the man to death in his haste.

  Cyrus hurried down the stairs as J’anda burst out of the officer quarters with Carrack’s blackened corpse heaved over his own thin shoulder, his staff keeping the body from falling off. “You look strong,” Cyrus observed as he pulled Coulton past the enchanter.

  “Strength seems required at the moment,” J’anda said tensely as he fell in behind Cyrus and they moved down the stairs.

  “Wait!” Vaste called from the landing behind them.

  “What the bloody hell is going on?” Vara called from somewhere behind the troll.

  “That husband of yours is in a tizzy again,” Vaste said. “Apparently Pretnam Urides has sent Amarath’s Raiders to kill Governor Frost of the Northlands.”

  “Damn!” Vara shouted, voice echoing down the stone staircase.

  “Exactly,” Longwell said from somewhere up the stairs as Cyrus burst out onto the enclosed space outside the Council Chambers, trying his best to plunge forward and ignore the conversation taking place behind him. “We’re about to land quite heavily in the shite, I reckon.”

  “We might be able to stop it if you lot would just hurry up,” Cyrus shouted over his shoulder, paying no heed to Coulton’s pained look; it appeared that Cyrus had dislocated the governor’s elbow, but Coulton was merely cringing, not saying anything.

  Cyrus hurried down the stairs from the Council Chamber and into the wide-open space as the tower stairs circled the central shaft to the foyer far, far below. “Hang on, governor,” he said lightly as he stepped off into the abyss before Coulton could protest.

  “AIEEEEEEEEEE!” Coulton screamed as they whizzed down the center of the tower, the foyer some innumerable stories below racing closer and closer.

  “This is why you should never trifle with Sanctuary,” Cyrus said quite calmly as he watched the stone floor rising up to greet him. He cast Falcon’s Essence under his breath, and it took hold less than one story from the end of the shaft, like a gentle landing upon pillows as their momentum abruptly halted and Cyrus began to run, angling down toward the entry into the foyer. “We’re quite mad.”

  He tugged the governor into the foyer, which was nearly empty, and bellowed, “ALARUM!” at the top of his lungs. Somewhere, in the distance, a bell began to ring, and his call was taken up by another, and then he heard shouts in the distance mirroring his own. “ALARUM!” he called again. Faces began to appear from within the lounge, and Larana emerged from the Great Hall, staring up at him where he hovered some feet above the ground, casting aside the rag in her hands and hurrying to stand near him.

  J’anda came behind him, walking on air, the body still draped over his shoulder like a strange and hideous vestment. “Have I mentioned lately that I do enjoy the benefits of heresy? If only there was some way to mingle them with the more civilized days when we could trade with the entirety of Arkaria, I think I would be quite content.”

  “Wine cellar getting a bit thin?” Cyrus asked as Vaste screamed gleefully before stepping out of the spiraling stairwell.

  “We are down to the saddest of choices,” J’anda said. “Last night I was drinking gnomish wine.”

  Cyrus watched Vara emerge from the stairwell behind Vaste, her “landing” a little more ungainly than the troll’s or Longwell’s, who had emerged a second before her. She seemed to bob in the air, as though she’d forgotten exactly how the Falcon’s Essence spell worked. “How was it?” Cyrus asked J’anda without thinking.

  “Very small bottles,” J’anda said sadly. “I think I opened five before I filled a single glass.”

  “What the bloody hell do you intend here?” Vara asked as others started to emerge from the staircase. “Surely you don’t mean to—”

  “I do,” Cyrus said, cutting her off abruptly. “J’anda,” he snapped his gaze to her. “I need you to cast the resurrection spell on this corpse and then take it to Terian. Keep the cessation spell over Carrack all the while—hell, don’t even heal him, let him wallow in pain, dying over and over if need be—”

  “If he dies over and over,” J’anda said with a thin smile, “he might forget some of the things you will want to ask him about later.”

  “Damn,” Cyrus muttered.

  “I will ensure he makes it safely to Terian,” J’anda said with a nod. “I presume you mean for this man to be imprisoned in the Depths for the time being?”

  “Well, we can’t keep him here,” Cyrus said. “Tell Terian what’s happening. See if he can spare any forces for—”

  “I will tell him,” J’anda said with a nod, and then disappeared in the light of a teleportation spell, the green glow so bright that Cyrus had to blink away.

  “Mendicant,” Cyrus said, nodding at the goblin, who emerged from the staircase with Erith at his side, floating like the rest of the officers who had taken the shortcut down, “I need you to go to Emerald Fields. Tell the Luukessians—”

  “Let me do that,” Vaste said, cutting him off. The troll’s color was almost back to normal. “I know what to say. And I’ve been practicing my teleport spells, I think I’ve got this one down.” He frowned, casting his eyes skyward. “Or,
wait—is that the one that leads to Verklomrade …?” He shrugged. “Only one way to find out.” He, too, cast a spell, and disappeared in the light of a wizard teleportation spell.

  The foyer was steadily flooding with people. Menlos and his wolves had arrived now, come in from the outside, along with Calene Raverle, her bow slung over her shoulder. Fortin, too, came in through the doors, towering, Zarnn just behind him along with the rest of the troll applicants. The one with the beard stared hard at Cyrus, but Cyrus ignored him. “Anything in sight at the wall?” he asked Calene, who shook her head quickly. “What about from the tower?” He looked to Vara, who shook her head. “Then we’ve got at least a day before anything beyond the horizon makes it here.”

  “A day to what?” Ryin Ayend asked, emerging from the stairs, ducking his head to avoid hitting the lintel as he floated over ten feet above the ground.

  “Larana,” Cyrus said, looking right at the druid who was standing beneath him, gazing up at him with her deep green eyes, awaiting but a word, “I need you to go to Asaliere, straight to the keep and tell Governor Karrin Waterman that Pretnam Urides has sent Amarath’s Raiders to Isselhelm to kill Governor Frost. Tell her I want a word, and if she refuses, grab her bodily and drag her here. When you’re done with that, feel free to join us in Isselhelm, where I’ll be using my new sword to carve my way through our enemies.” The timid druid nodded with a sly smile and disappeared in a rush of wind as her teleportation spell pulled her away.

  “What the hell are you planning here, Cyrus?” Vara asked carefully. “What is going on?”

  “Pretnam Urides discovered that Allyn Frost was plotting against him.” Cyrus dragged Coulton around and soothed his cringing with a healing spell cast sublingually. “He figured out we were going after Coulton here, so he sent Goliath to ambush us. That plan came to a bad end, as did Orion.” He pulled Coulton to stand at his shoulder. “We’re going to go to Isselhelm and face the army Amarath’s Raiders has sent, and if possible, we’re going to save Governor Frost. If that’s not possible, we’re going to give Amarath’s Raiders a beating so hard that they’ll be lucky if they can maintain their guild’s cohesion afterward. And if nothing else,” he said, with a furious gleam in his eye as he looked around the room and saw quiet awe and silent determination creep into the eyes of those assembled, “we’re going to remind all of Arkaria why they once feared the march of the Army of Sanctuary.”

  60.

  “This is madness, you realize,” Vara said as they appeared in the muddy roads of Isselhelm. The corpses of the guards for the portal lay slaughtered before them, screams in the distance echoing in the air here beneath the mountains. Cyrus turned his head north and saw the great dome of the hill for which the city was named looming in the distance behind the keep. “You mean to take our expeditionary force of less than five hundred against an army that numbers somewhere over five thousand.”

  “I do,” Cyrus said, striking out for the keep at a run. He did not dodge into any alleyways as he had last time, instead running along the main roads and listening to the sound of the footfalls behind him, Sanctuary’s army appearing within seconds of his own arrival. “And I mean to win.”

  “You always mean to, every time,” Vara said, hurrying to keep up at his side. “But that doesn’t always mean you can.”

  “Oh, but this time I can,” Cyrus said and drew Rodanthar. It gleamed even in the shadow of the building they ran beneath, eclipsing the sun.

  Vara did a double take, her face puckering as though the smell of the horses that permeated the dirty streets was affecting her. “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s my father’s sword,” Cyrus said, smiling.

  “I bloody well know what it is,” she said as they jogged through the streets and into a square that was deserted except for a half dozen bodies of townfolk and guards, some of them clearly slaughtered with their backs turned. “I was standing right next to you at the damned painting when you saw it. What I want to know is where you got it.”

  “It was in my scabbard when I went to draw my sword in the ambush,” Cyrus said, adjusting his belt self-consciously. He frowned. “Wait … that’s why I kept fiddling with my belt—the weight was wrong.”

  “You don’t even notice when someone swaps your sword out for something far better,” she said, shaking her head in amazement. “For an occasionally brilliant man, you do act rather daft sometimes.”

  “Too true,” Longwell called.

  “I hear that,” Erith agreed from behind them.

  Cyrus followed the road, every wooden door in the town shut tight, faces peering from behind windows, clearly scared by what they had seen come through their town. He turned his attention ahead, through the streets, the timber houses battened up for invasion. They streamed past in a blur as he ran toward the square ahead, smaller than the last one they had passed through, ignoring the corpses strewn in the roadway. Not one of them belonged to an Amarath’s Raiders warrior; they were all townfolk, including the occasional woman, and only a few had been struck down from the front.

  This is what we face, Cyrus thought. This is what we’ve always faced. Enemies who would employ callous cruelty, who don’t worry as I worry about right and wrong, who care only for the destruction of anyone in their way. He glanced at Vara and saw the set of her jaw, the furious determination as her blue eyes swept the death and destruction around them. The smell of death was in the air, foul and disgusting, and that same determination slammed into Cyrus in a hard hit, and he clenched Rodanthar even tighter in his hand as he moderated his pace so as not to leave his army behind.

  “When we come upon them,” Cyrus called back, trusting his words to reach his army, “give them no quarter. If you see a spellcaster, strike them down first, without mercy, for they will show us none. Burn the life out of them with great relish and smile while you do it, knowing that your actions are not only a boon for Sanctuary but to all Arkaria, for we face none but the lowest, and we will treat them accordingly.”

  He reached the last square and turned north, Isselhelm’s keep visible ahead. Its drawbridge was up, warning apparently having reached the keep before the army of Amarath’s Raiders did. Cyrus could see arrows flying above the stone walls, and an army below and all around, swarming through the air with Falcon’s Essence on some quarter to half of their number. Some of the defensive arrows were landing, and bodies were falling to their knees, held aloft by spellcraft; others took lethal hits and dropped from the sky like felled birds on a hunt. Flame and ice spells were being hurled and the battlements and the drawbridge appeared to be aflame.

  “This is a mess,” Vara opined as they paused for a beat before continuing their run north. She was already breathless, though whether it was from the anticipation of the fight to come or from the run, Cyrus did not know.

  “Let’s make it messier,” Cyrus said, and surged forward again, the footsteps of his army behind him, loud in his ears as he returned, once more, to war.

  61.

  The Army of Sanctuary slammed into the back ranks of Amarath’s Raiders without warning. The sounds of battle were simply too loud for the Amarath’s Raiders lines to hear their approach, for Cyrus had kept his army quiet until they were upon them, and he tore apart some eighteen men in armor himself before the screams and shouts began to trickle through the Raiders in earnest.

  Cyrus did not care. He looked for familiar faces but saw none, the enemy army pressed against the moat, their druids casting Falcon’s Essence at the edge, sending forth their forces to besiege the battlements of the keep. Arrows were still flying from beyond the crenellations of Isselhelm’s defenses, but they seemed to be at a vastly reduced rate, and he suspected it was because there were too many of the Raiders upon the walls now.

  “We appear to have lost the element of surprise,” Vara called, her blade carving a dark elf’s head from his body. “I think this means we should feel free to apprise them that they face true heretics, with all that entails.”

&nb
sp; “I couldn’t agree more,” Cyrus said, slipping back a step and raising his hand. Down from him, he saw Vara do the same, a smile on her lips, a streak of blood on her white cheek.

  In tandem, they released a fearsome volley, the force blast spell blooming from their gauntlets, plowing a clear path for thirty meters on either side of them. Armored men were flung bodily through the air as if a battering ram had swept through, knocking them back into the moat by the hundreds and leaving a clear path to the keep. The sound of splashes reminded Cyrus of a long-ago raid upon the Temple of the Mler off the Emerald Coast; the sound of Amarath’s Raiders plunging into the foul moat made him think of his own army jumping off the boat that had carried them into the Torrid Sea.

  Except my warriors stripped their armor off first so that they didn’t drown, he thought, watching the foaming of the vile waters as panic set in upon those still conscious. He and Vara had just hurled at least two hundred warriors into the water, and he suspected less than twenty would manage to crawl out again. He spun right and fired off a blast of flame into the armored corps of Amarath’s Raiders that stood there, blanketing them in fearsome fire in a twenty-foot swath. He dodged away, moving toward the edge of the moat, throwing a less magic-intensive ice spell at the water. It struck and frosted over the surface of the moat, trapping some dozen men within its frosty clutches and more than a hundred more helplessly beneath it.

  “Gods, Cyrus!” Erith screamed from behind him. “You just doomed them to drown!”

  “I had more or less already done that when I threw them in in the first place,” Cyrus said, separating the head of a large human warrior from his armored body. “I just finished the job, that’s all.”

  Longwell’s lance plunged into the guts of a warrior, ripping through the surcoat that covered him and tearing it off as he twirled the lance in the man’s guts. “No mercy, right?” He spun it free and jabbed it into a charging warrior’s face. “This is a policy I can get behind; treating our enemies as they are, knowing they wouldn't give us a single kindness were our positions reversed.”