Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Which begs the question,” Terian said, frowning, “where are they? I mean, we’ve been here before, and the stairs end at the main Council Chambers, the ones where they deal with public debate and inquiry, and I doubt they’re all just sitting there, waiting to render judgment on us as we enter.”

  “There are other floors above that,” Mendicant said, sniffing as he hurried along, low to the ground, on all fours. “The staircase stops, but resumes behind the council desks and goes to the upper floors where the Council of Twelve keeps their quarters and private meeting rooms.”

  “Well, that’s fascinating,” Terian said. “What’s more fascinating is—how do you know that?”

  “It was in the same book that contained the spell for the portal,” Mendicant said.

  Terian frowned. “What book was this? A Visitors’ Guide to the Secrets of the Citadel?”

  “I doubt it,” Mendicant said, shaking his head. “It was very old, with hand-drawn maps. And the council chambers don’t look anything like what we saw when last we were here with Lord Soulmender.”

  It was Cyrus’s turn to frown. “You were here with me. I was leading that expedition.”

  “Ego,” Vara whispered.

  “But without Curatio, we wouldn’t have been there at all,” Terian said darkly. He huffed slightly as they passed another room, which Cyrus checked and found empty. “Gods, this tower is maddeningly huge. What a shame the Guildmaster of Requiem didn’t just let it get destroyed when the ancients fell; maybe the Council of Twelve would have built something with fewer stairs.”

  “And likely something less vulnerable to our current attack,” Kahlee said, very sweetly.

  “An excellent point,” Vara said. “Clearly, this woman has all the reason in your marriage.”

  “I hear that’s a common thing among the married,” Kahlee replied.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” Vara said.

  “Why don’t you just marry each other, then?” Terian said with a roll of his eyes. “Then you could both be ‘reasonable’ together and cease inflicting it on the rest of us.”

  They passed the next few floors in silence. Gradually, Cyrus became aware of a sound behind them not unlike the snorting of a pig. He turned around and looked back, catching Vaste with his hands on his knees. When he saw Cyrus looking at him, he said, “It was Zarnn.”

  “Not Zarnn!” Zarnn called from a little ways back. He was taking the stairs in stride. “Zarnn run around lawn every day, climb many stairs, not huffing and puffing over this.”

  “Oh, fine, it’s me,” Vaste said, standing back up straight. “I do stairs every day, too, it’s just I don’t have to do them in quite this hurry most of the time. Clearly I need to have assassinations in mind when I climb back up to the officers’ quarters after dinner, so I can run up them instead of just leisurely making my way up.”

  “Don’t get lazy on us now, Vaste,” Cyrus said, “we’ve only got about ten floors to go.” He poked his head into the next room on his left and saw display cases lining the walls, and a long empty one in the middle of the room.

  “Hey, is that where—” Terian began.

  Cyrus looked out the wide window built into the stairwell to his right, big enough that someone small could squeeze through. “I believe it is. Kind of surprised they’ve kept it as it is. I mean, Amnis was stolen … what? Six years ago now?”

  “It’s not as if they have any other godly weapons to put in its place,” J’anda said, huffing along, his staff shedding purple light faintly in the hallway.

  “We didn’t think the dark elves had any other godly weapons, either,” Cyrus said, staring at the enchanter’s weapon, “but then you showed up with that one.”

  “Yes, but it’s hardly as well known as Amnis, Ventus, Torris, Terrenus, Letum or Ferocis, is it?” the enchanter asked with his usual enigmatic smile. “No one even knows what it is, in fact, save for a very few. And that is its strength, to walk unknown.” He sighed, moving quickly up the stairs without complaint. “In fact, its aid is the only reason I can even join you on these endeavors anymore. Without it, I’m afraid I would be reduced to walking a few feet and needing a break, like Vaste.”

  “Oh, rub it in, why don’t you?” the troll wheezed from behind them. “Apparently I need a godly weapon, too.”

  They climbed the next few floors in silence, reaching the main Council Chamber to find it empty, though they could see that the old wooden furniture that had been destroyed when last they’d been here had been replaced with new, carved very finely in the elven style.

  “I guess we know what the Council of Twelve did with those millions of gold pieces we gave back to them after the war,” Vaste said, staring at the new wooden furnishings, the rails and seats throughout the room beautifully carved, visible under the faint glow of the tower’s stones.

  “Honestly, that was probably only a million of it,” Vara said, giving it a quick glance. “Elven craftsmen are so proficient that it doesn’t take them nearly as long as you’d think to do something of this sort.”

  “Mendicant, where is this—” Cyrus began, but the goblin scampered ahead, through the rail that separated the Council of Twelve’s long wooden desk from the gallery where the spectators sat. He rushed past and suddenly Cyrus saw a door hidden against the wall that he had not noticed before. It was paneled in the same style as the wooden backing, though more obvious now, somehow, since he was looking for it. The goblin pushed on it and it opened without a sound.

  “And here we go,” Cyrus said, charging through first. What he found on the other side was more of the same: a narrower staircase than the first, threading around the back of the council room in a tight spiral to the top of the dome that crowned the Citadel.

  A full orbit later he found another of the ubiquitous doors that led to the interior of the Citadel. This one did not open into one large room but rather a small area centered around double doors that were presently open. Beyond he could see a long table with twelve chairs headed by a large one at the end, twin hearths on either side of the room.

  Vara frowned as she looked in but shook it off as they continued to climb up the stairs another floor. This time the door opened into a long hallway that looked vaguely familiar. Cyrus paused at its entry and counted the doors before him; there were eleven, with the last being directly ahead and five others on each side.

  “This is …” Vaste muttered quietly, peering down the hall. “Does this …”

  “This looks like the officer quarters at Sanctuary,” Terian said, staring in, his brow furrowed. “And the floor below … it was like …”

  “The Council Chambers,” Vara said, frowning.

  “This will be the Council of Twelve’s living space, then,” Cyrus said. His eyes followed the staircase. “And if the pattern holds, then—”

  “Then someone totally copied someone else here,” Vaste said.

  “It would explain why a book in our, uh, library,” he glanced down at Mendicant, “has the layout for the Citadel in its pages, I suppose.”

  “I never noticed the similarities in design on the maps,” Mendicant said, staring down the hall, “but truly, seeing it like this … the resemblance is remarkable.”

  “Well, we find it an efficient enough layout, don’t we?” Vara asked, shaking her head. “Shall we split and do this, or strike first at the council members and then go on to the top floor?”

  “Split,” Cyrus said, his voice croaking slightly. “Four to five people per door. Kick them down when—”

  “Wait,” Mendicant said, and his hand glowed orange. “The doors will all be unlocked now.”

  “Well, that’s a handy spell,” Vara said, frowning down at him. “Can you use that anywhere?”

  He shook his head sadly. “Only upon buildings constructed by the ancients. They made their designs with magic and—”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Cyrus said, nodding to Terian. “You want Urides or the chaff?”

  “I’ll supervise
down here, make sure it gets done right,” Terian said, his axe in hand. “You take Urides; you’ve got more personal business to settle with him, I suspect.”

  “True enough,” Cyrus said, and started up the stairs. Vara followed him immediately, and he beckoned for J’anda and Vaste. “Also—”

  “I’m coming with you,” Larana said, plunging ahead, scooting around Vaste and J’anda and ensconcing herself in the middle of their party before Cyrus could protest. She kept climbing, and he was forced to hurry to keep ahead of her.

  “Thirty seconds,” Cyrus hissed back down the stairs, trusting that one of the elves who had come with them would make the necessary announcement to the war party.

  “I don’t think we’re going to have thirty seconds,” Vara said, and her eyes widened as she heard a thump below as someone opened a door loudly. “I think we’re going to need to do this immediately.”

  Shouts and cries echoed through the stairs and Cyrus pounded his way up the last few steps to a door set squarely in the middle of the staircase. He reached for the handle and it opened with a turn. He plunged inside and found himself in a narrow stairway, exactly like the one in the Tower of the Guildmaster.

  “Curious,” Vaste said as Cyrus ran up the stairs into a room with balconies at each of the four compass points, a small outgrowth at the top of the immense Citadel, barely a wart upon its apex.

  There was a bed in roughly the same spot as in his own quarters, and someone was emerging from it, clad in a robe, a staff in hand. Pretnam Urides did not look like himself without his wire-framed spectacles, although there was a curious spot on either side of his nose where they normally rested.

  The walls glowed blue and the hearth blazed, and the head of the Council of Twelve stood looking at them furiously, leaning on his staff, his own eyes afire like the hearth. “How did you get in here?”

  “We invaded your city and destroyed your army,” Cyrus replied with a smug smile.

  “I doubt that very much,” Urides said with contempt, and his nostrils flared as he took a deep breath. “But if it’s so, I’m sorry to tell you: your journey here has been fruitless.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Cyrus said, smirking. He listened for just a moment, heard the screaming below. “We’re killing your council even now, and you—well, you’re just standing here …”

  Urides did not smile; in fact his lips turned even farther downward. “You don’t think I’m defenseless against heretics, do you?” And he extended his staff so quickly that Cyrus doubted he could have countered it even with Rodanthar. From its tip came a burst of pure wizard flame, aimed right at Vaste, and from his other hand, druid lightning raced toward Cyrus without so much as a word spoken or a second of warning.

  68.

  Cyrus caught the lightning on Rodanthar unintentionally; it arced toward his blade and hit the metal, crackling against the surface and dispersing harmlessly as Urides looked on, the lightning flashing back in his eyes.

  The fire Urides cast, however, shot toward Vaste like dragon flame, the helpless troll staring openmouthed at it—

  A blast of water like a torrential flood met it, fountaining from Larana’s hand and dissolving into a burst of steam that billowed around them like smoke. Cyrus saw another glow from her and the sound ceased, both water and fire. “Cessation spell is up!” she shouted, louder than he’d ever heard her speak.

  “I should have done that first,” Cyrus muttered as the last of the lightning crackled away to silence on Rodanthar. “Who knew that the head of the Commonwealth of Arcanists was also secretly a heretic?”

  “My faith in the Leagues is at an all-time low, I think,” Vaste shouted through the hissing steam, “and I’m including in this the fact that they booted me from training for being a troll.”

  “Their hypocrisy does suddenly seem rather blatant,” J’anda said, inching toward Cyrus, his staff before him, the purple glow lighting the steam that obscured their view. “It seems very ‘It is for me, not thee’ of them. Very superi—”

  The clash of metal upon metal drew Cyrus’s attention, and he saw J’anda holding up his staff as Urides slammed his own down upon it with tooth-rattling strength. “It is not for you,” Urides hissed, much like the steam, “for you are trash. Worthless—”

  “You didn’t feel that way about us when we were saving your Confederation from the dark elves,” Cyrus said, moving to attack him. Urides took a few steps back and vanished into the cloud.

  “I didn’t say ‘useless,’” Urides called from somewhere within the cloud. “You certainly had your uses. I said worthless, for you have lost any value you once had.”

  “Stick close together,” Cyrus said in a low voice and watched Vaste and Larana draw nearer, Vara circling around behind them to take the left flank opposite him. J’anda moved to the middle, clutching his staff before him, clearly ready to use it to physically attack Urides. “When we see him, we swarm.”

  “How like a pack of wolves you have become,” Urides called. “Seeking any vulnerability in larger, stronger prey.”

  “You were the one trying to make us prey,” Cyrus said.

  “You will find no easy prey here,” Urides said smugly, almost gloating, from within the white cloud that engulfed the quarters. “I can practically hear your co-conspirators dying below.”

  “You’re awfully confident for a man who’s outnumbered five to one,” Cyrus said, peering into the shadowy mist around them. The voice of Urides was echoing off the walls, and it was impossible to tell where he was. The humidity of the steam flowed into Cyrus with every breath, hot and burning, filling his chest with muted fire, the air thick like that of a place in the Northlands he had once been where they poured cold water over rocks warmed by fire, or a valley he’d visited there that smoked from the earth itself.

  “I do not find your odds compelling,” Urides said, and he swept in from the side in a blur of speed, his staff smashing against Vara’s helm, knocking it aside and drawing blood, sending her sprawling before he faded back into the mist, his staff twirling before him.

  “What was it you were saying about godly weapons earlier?” J’anda muttered, stepping out to take Vara’s place. Cyrus looked at her wide-eyed, but frozen in place, knowing that to step out of his position was to invite attack against this flank. Urides will sweep through Larana and Vaste on this side the moment I’m out of the way; the cessation spell will drop and he’ll blast us with fire before we can even figure out where he’s coming from …

  J’anda nudged Vara with the end of his staff and she stirred, moaning, blood trickling down from the side of her head and soiling her golden hair. “She’ll be all right.”

  “She’ll die,” Urides said in a taunting voice. “You all will perish, one by one.”

  Cyrus’s eyes darted around the mist. Cries and screaming were still audible below, echoing from the stairs. They must all be heretics, and likely good fighters as well. I suppose it would have been too much to hope for that this would be an easy matter of assassination—as though there’s ever an easy kill. Should we all make it out of this okay, I think I’ll be grateful that they put up a fight. It’ll make it easier for me to square with myself about coming to kill these people in their beds.

  Urides dashed out of the steam and struck, slapping the end of his staff against J’anda’s hand. The enchanter gasped in pain as Cyrus darted forward to join the attack, but Urides was too quick; he brought the other end of the staff around in a blur and J’anda could not counter it. The staff struck him in the head, a hard whack in the temple that sprayed a line of blood that spattered Cyrus’s breastplate as he charged after Urides.

  I have to take him now—I can’t let him slip away. Vaste and Larana are easy prey for him in this, without the benefit of a godly weapon. He charged after the leader of the Council of Twelve, who grinned at him through the white mist, fading into shadow, looking less and less clear with every step backward, even as Cyrus plunged ahead.

  “Do you know
what they called this staff?” Urides asked, smiling with satisfaction as Cyrus charged at him, Rodanthar held in front of him. “Philos, the Burden of Knowledge. Care to guess who held it first?”

  Cyrus struck out at Urides with a high overhand strike. He can’t be that good of a fighter. He’s an old man, and I’m bound to be quicker—

  Urides lashed Cyrus across the knuckles as he stepped out of the way of his attack. The blow rattled Cyrus’s gauntlet, even through the padding, but Cyrus retained his hold as Urides stepped away. “If you guessed Eruditia,” Urides went on, lecturing like some teacher at the Society of Arms, “you would have it right. You, being a fool, though, probably guessed wrong.”

  “I heard you were a General once upon a time,” Cyrus said, pulling Rodanthar back into a defensive guard even as he pursued Urides into the fog. “That you led men in battle.”

  “Oh, yes,” Urides said, eyeing him through the mist between them. “In fact, I commanded your father, did you know that? I know that sword well.”

  “I did know that,” Cyrus said as Urides sidestepped, bringing them back around as Cyrus chased after him. “I heard you were the one responsible for the near-defeat at Dismal Swamp, in fact.”

  “Dismal Swamp was a victory,” Urides grinned, “thanks to your father’s noble sacrifice. Why, if he hadn’t killed that troll shaman, it might have lost us everything. Shame he had to die there, but it was a price well paid. Even better when it drew out your mother, in her rage and grief, to lead our forces to victory with her at their head. Two Davidons won us that war, and now, years later, another spared us from full wrath of Yartraak. Why, your family has been indispensable so far—or at least, your weapons have.” His eyes flashed. “I’d thank you, but obviously trying to behead us now rather cancels out past good deeds.”

  “Our service to the Confederation never seemed to carry much weight with you before,” Cyrus said, slashing down. Urides blocked him, sending his sword off to the side as the leader of the Council of Twelve stepped sideways again, his staff clutched before him. “It certainly didn’t stop you from declaring two of us heretics.”