Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Ugh,” Terian said, his head sagging, “I hate that you’re making a good point here. I was so dreaming about placing that bastard’s head on a pike and dipping it in tar so I could keep it around for inspiration on rough days.”

  “It’s not as though I’m enthused about leaving Praelior in the hands of Rhane Ermoc,” Cyrus said, his jaw clenching involuntarily. “In addition to that …” He paused. “That dark knight of yours? Sareea?”

  Terian straightened, his head coming up. “What about her?”

  “She used the return spell to escape me at Idiarna,” Cyrus said, and Terian immediately slumped forward.

  “Goliath, entirely heretic,” Terian said, closing his eyes tightly. “All right. I don’t want to chase them in the jungle swamps, either, now.” He leaned against the carriage wall, taking slow breaths until he seemed to have regained his composure.

  “Has Carrack told you anything?” Vara asked.

  “I haven’t had time to talk to him,” Terian said as the carriage hit another bump. He smiled, but it was forced. “I was waiting for you two, truthfully. For you, I can clear my schedule and make the time.”

  “I feel so honored,” Cyrus said dryly.

  “You damned well ought to,” Terian said, “but honestly, I wouldn’t give this bastard one solitary moment if I didn’t hold out at least some hope that he might be able to tell us something …” Terian paused, and the resolve showed on his face, “… something that might let us still catch Goliath with a sword to the heart.” And they fell into an agreeable silence as the carriage rolled deeper into the tunnels of Saekaj Sovar.

  73.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Carrack said with a soft smile, his eyes already dimmed by his time in the dark elven prison. Once more the common area where the prisoners ate had been cleared by the guards, leaving Cyrus, Vara and Terian alone in the dank, musty air with the human wizard.

  “Huh,” Terian said, staring at him, “that went … a little easier than I expected.”

  “You should know how Malpravus is,” Carrack said, smiling broadly through his rotten teeth. “He understands power. This conversation? You have me wrapped up, trapped—you have all the power. If he were in my position, he would tell you anything you want to know.” Carrack leaned forward. “That’s how he is, see. In order to get what you need, what you want, everything is fair game. No loyalty; just alliances of convenience.”

  “That’s an exceedingly poor way to live,” Vara said, in a tone of barely repressed horror.

  “But it’s good way to rise,” Carrack said, shrugging his thin shoulders. “And that’s what Goliath was always about—climbing.” He looked at Cyrus. “It’s why he always wanted you, you know. Orion told him about your ambition, about how you wanted to move up in the world. He was sure you’d see it his way sooner or later.”

  “I assume the converse is why he hated me, then,” Vara said under her breath.

  “Maybe,” Carrack said. “I don’t know. But you’re right, he hated you.”

  “All right, fine, you want to sing to … what? Save your own skin?” Terian looked right at Carrack. “What do you think you’re going to get out of this? Freedom?”

  “I’d settle for not being flogged,” Carrack said. “Can we can come to an accord on that? Because this is something I’m not keen on. The Confederation, when I went to prison there, I knew I was safe from beatings and floggings. Here … I get the sense if I make things too difficult on you, I’m going to end up regretting it.”

  “You have good instincts,” Terian said. “All right, then. Tell us everything.”

  “Where would you like me to start?” Carrack asked, waving a hand across the table between them.

  “Malpravus’s base in the Bandit Lands,” Cyrus said, before anyone else could say anything.

  Carrack frowned at him. “Okay. It’s called Zanbellish, and it was a city of the ancients. We went there after Reikonos booted us out of their gates. Took months to get there.”

  “Do you know the spell that can carry us to the portal?” Vara asked.

  Carrack looked at her blankly. “I do, but …” He hesitated. “Let me put it this way … I will gladly tell it to you, if he,” Carrack pointed at Terian, “gives me assurances that he’s not going to have me beaten to death if you use it and die. Because you will die if you go there.”

  “The defenses are that strong?” Cyrus asked.

  Carrack nodded, brows lifted up. “Oh, yes. Goliath has more than twenty five thousand troops at our—well, their—command, and they’re always watching the portal, just like all the other armies. Malpravus doesn’t like to leave things to chance.”

  “If I teleported in,” Cyrus said, watching Carrack carefully, “are you saying he’d kill me immediately?”

  Carrack made a hmming noise. “The guards would, but odds are Malpravus would resurrect you to try and persuade you to join him. He’s got a soft spot for you in that necromantic heart of his. I think it has something to do with your mother.”

  Cyrus frowned. “My mother? Wait, did he know who she was all along?”

  “I couldn’t say for sure,” Carrack said, “but probably. He knows more than anyone I’ve ever met, but he doesn’t share it unless he sees the benefit to him in doing so. It’s why he’s so good at what he does. He’ll leave off important information while he’s trying to coax you toward an outcome he desires—”

  “This explains why he is your trusted leader,” Vara said.

  “—and not think a thing of it,” Carrack said. “So, yes, he probably knew your mother was the sorceress, but why would he share it with you? To do so would have exposed you, making you less useful to him if you did see his version of the light.” He chuckled. “And it’s not like your knowing about it has been much of a boon to you. I mean, it’s not as if the knowledge would have set you on the path to heresy and breaking down the class barriers more quickly than you did it anyway.” He shrugged.

  “Why did Malpravus seek out Zanbellish after you were exiled from Reikonos?” Terian asked, inserting himself back in the conversation and rapping his knuckles on the table as he did so. “You could have gone … well, not anywhere, but closer places, at least.”

  “Because he wanted to,” Carrack said, leaning forward. “Haven’t you been listening? Malpravus steers the ship that is Goliath, all right? Other officers are just lackeys. We take his orders because he’s either holding something we want over us or he’s cajoling us forward with promises. That’s it. No one else runs that guild, and whatever his plans, he makes them happen regardless of what it takes.” Carrack settled back in his seat. “It’s why he beats you.”

  “Yes, he’s doing an absolutely marvelous job of that thus far,” Vara said, staring at Carrack through narrowed eyes. “We’ve escaped every ambush he’s set for us, killed several of his officers and deprived him of all his allies—”

  “And he still doesn’t care,” Carrack said. “I mean, I’m sure he’s disappointed that his allies are out of the picture, because, again, you know how he feels about power, but … it doesn’t matter. He’ll come back.” Carrack shuddered slightly, either from the cold or something else. “He always comes back.”

  “What did he want in Zanbellish?” Cyrus asked. “He had to want something specific, or else he would have stopped long before—”

  “Secrets of the ancients,” Carrack said, putting his hands palms up, their backs flat on the table. “That’s what he was looking for. He had us scour the ruins for old books, for runes hidden behind vines, anything that came from the days when the city was a city and not a bunch of rock covered over in moss.” Carrack licked his lips. “He did the same thing in Gren when we went up there for an expedition, too, walking around, having slaves tear vines off some of the old artifacts.” He shook his head. “I know he found something, both in Zanbellish and in Gren. But I don’t know what he found there.”

  “Where else did he look?” Vara asked.

 
“He didn’t take me everywhere, you have to understand,” Carrack said with a sly smile. “But …”

  “But what?” Terian asked. “And keep in mind as you answer that I feel a beating coming on.”

  “Calm down,” Carrack said, holding up his hands. “I’m going to tell you.” He smiled again. “I was in charge of the wizards and the druids, so as it happened, anytime he asked to go somewhere, I was able to circle back around afterward and ask the individuals who teleported him about the destination. Only two others were ones where he seemed to be looking for signs of the ancients.” He held up his hand and started ticking off points. “Reikonos—specifically the tunnels below it, where the portal to the higher realms is. He also visited the arena and the Citadel.”

  “Both constructed by the ancients,” Cyrus said, frowning. “Where was the other place he went?”

  “Aloakna,” Carrack said, this time a little more smug. “But when I tell you this next piece … you’ve got to understand … this one’s huge. I’m going to need a little special consideration in exchange for it.”

  “I solemnly promise I will not decapitate you as a traitorous enemy of every sentient being in Arkaria if you tell us,” Terian said. “If you don’t, well, I hope your future plans don’t require a head, because I’m feeling a little itch to do an overhand swing with my axe.”

  “I’ll start with the enticement, then,” Carrack said, his smugness fading, “and maybe once you see the value, you’ll come around.”

  “My axe will come around, yes,” Terian said. “In a downward arc, and then plop! Around will come your head, as it falls to the ground, freed from the constraints of your neck.”

  “He went to Aloakna when it fell,” Carrack said, eyeing Terian with obvious nervousness.

  “When it was sacked, you mean,” Vara said. “Four years ago.”

  Carrack shook his head, looking smug once more. “It wasn’t sacked.”

  “Bullshit,” Vara said. “Everyone in that city died, the buildings were pulled down stone by stone—”

  “Oh, the people died,” Carrack said, “but there was no sack.”

  Terian stared at him blankly. “What are you talking about? The dark elven army marched on Aloakna, and they did their—well, their thing, that they did, under Yartraak—”

  “Except they didn’t,” Carrack said, sitting back.

  “I don’t think I believe you,” Cyrus said.

  “You don’t have to,” Carrack said, “but …” His eyes gleamed. “Aloakna is still standing. If you wanted to, you could go and see it for yourself. The city is still there. It’s the people that are gone.”

  “How the hell did that happen?” Terian asked, shaking his head. “When the dark elven army hits something—and I know for a damned fact they were there—”

  “As do I,” Vara said stiffly, “for immediately thereafter they came and laid siege to Sanctuary.”

  “—it gets sacked,” Terian said, removing Alaric’s old helm and putting it on the table. “It doesn’t get gently … not burned or whatever you’re suggesting. The dark elven armies under the last Sovereign were not merciful to their enemies. They wrecked—”

  “And yet Aloakna still stands,” Carrack said, arching his eyebrows in amusement. “Do you wish to know how?”

  “Very much so,” Cyrus said, holding up a hand to quiet Terian and Vara as they started to speak.

  “Well, as it happens, I can tell you what I know—” Carrack began.

  “And in exchange, you will live and get no beatings,” Terian said. Carrack looked at him, disgusted. “I’m willing to add in a single apple, slightly bruised,” Terian said, then waited a second. “Fine. No bruises, but that’s my final offer.”

  “I’ll take it,” Carrack said, sounding greatly put out, “but mostly for the lack of beatings.”

  “All right, so spill,” Cyrus said. “Was it Malpravus that destroyed … err … killed … the people of Aloakna? Since he was there?”

  “No,” Carrack said, shaking his head. “He didn’t do it. The wizard who took him said it was something else. He didn’t see it all that clearly, but he said it was something … big. Grey skin hiding under a cloak the size of a tent. We’re talking taller than a troll—”

  “Yartraak,” Terian said, slamming his hand against the table. “Yartraak did it.”

  Carrack shrugged. “If you say so. I never saw him and neither did my wizard.”

  “But that doesn’t explain what Malpravus was doing there,” Vara said, pondering it. “Unless he was there to look at the city after it was over.”

  “I don’t know,” Carrack said, now leaning back and looking exhausted, as though he’d depleted all his energy along with everything he’d told them. “I just know that the wizard who saw it said he watched the whole damned thing … and that Malpravus was practically drooling when it was over with.”

  74.

  “Cyrus, where the hell are you going?” Terian asked, struggling to keep up with him as they strode down the narrow, dark corridor that led out of the Depths. A guard in full armor slammed himself against the wall with a fearful noise in order to avoid Cyrus as he barreled through.

  “I’m getting out from underneath this cessation field and then I’m going to Aloakna,” Cyrus said, taking a breath of the dank air of the underground.

  “You’ll need a wizard or druid for that, you know,” Vara said, calling after from a few steps behind Terian.

  “Also, a horse,” Terian said. When Cyrus paused to look back, he explained, “Aloakna’s portal is on the far outskirts of the city. You’ll regret it if you walk.”

  “What do you think you’re going to find there?” Vara asked, staring past Terian at him.

  “A big sign saying, ‘Malpravus was definitely interested in this ancient rune that my tiny warrior brain can’t even interpret,’” Terian said, catching up to him.

  “You realize that this could be a trap?” Vara said, keeping up with Terian. “That Carrack could be baiting you to go to Aloakna alone, knowing that Malpravus and his ilk are waiting?”

  “Good point,” Terian said and stopped, calling back to the guard behind him. “You! If you hear that I died in an expedition to Aloakna, you make sure and beat that prisoner Carrack every single day and tell him I ordered it. Understand?”

  “Yes sir!” reverberated down the hall in accented dark elven.

  The Sovereign walked toward Cyrus again. “Well, I’ve covered that possibility.”

  Vara looked at him pityingly. “You’ve covered it in case we die. You didn’t really address what to do in order to allow us to live through an ambush at Aloakna.”

  “Pfft, that’s easy,” Terian said, shaking his head. “We just bring an army.”

  “And if they have the portal under guard?” Vara asked, not blinking away from him.

  “I have no answer for that,” Terian said. “Are we going or not?”

  “Yes,” Cyrus said.

  “No,” Vara said.

  “Well, I’m foolishly on the side of ‘yes,’ and here’s why,” Terian said. “Because the likelihood that Malpravus and company are setting up a permanent ambush on the off chance that Carrack would get captured—”

  “It could have been given to any of the Goliath members in the Idiarna ambush,” Vara said.

  “—well, whatever, it’s still a very intensive thing to set up, manpower-wise,” Terian said, frowning. “They’d need at least a few hundred, probably closer to a thousand, just to be sure, and they’d need to keep them there for … well, at least two weeks now.” He shook his head. “I don’t buy it.”

  “But you buy the possibility that Yartraak annihilated the dark elven populace of Aloakna with … a spell or something, rather than it being sacked by the dark elven army?” Vara asked.

  Cyrus frowned. “When the dark elves came for Sanctuary after Aloakna, did you have any warning?”

  “No,” she said with a frown of her own, “but then we were hardly expecting an army
to come marching in on us from the east—”

  “Did you see smoke?” Cyrus asked, and Vara froze. “Like Santir? Like Termina—”

  “No,” Vara said, and her voice caught. “But we might not have, would we?”

  “You would have,” Terian said. “Provided the days were reasonably clear, provided you could see to the east. You should have seen a big pillar of black smoke in the sky. You should have known without doubt.”

  “No,” Vara said, shaking her head. “The sky was clear when the dark elves came the first time. It … it had been for days.”

  “You sound certain,” Terian said.

  Vara looked right at Cyrus. “It was a time of great duress, but I remember it well. But it still does not answer what you expect to find in a ruined city?”

  “I expect to find not a ruined city,” Cyrus said, “if Carrack didn’t lie.”

  “And if it is not ruined?” Vara asked. “What does that tell us? That a god used a spell to destroy his people? That he involved himself in the affairs of mortals? As though we don’t already know that happened with Yartraak.”

  “I don’t know,” Cyrus said, shaking his head. “But I need to see it. I need to see Aloakna, and maybe once I’ve seen it—I can get some idea of what Malpravus was after.”

  “Better bring someone who can read the runes of ancients,” Terian said. “Also, a horse. I’m serious. It’s a walk, and if no one’s been cleaning the streets—”

  “Fine,” Cyrus said. “I’ll get a horse. A horse and someone who can read ancient runes.” He looked at Terian and nodded. “We’ll meet you there in one hour.”

  “Fair enough,” Terian said with a hint of a smile. “Don’t be mad if I show up first with some friends, just to be sure the town is safe. It is nominally in my territory, after all.”

  “I won’t be mad as long as you don’t get yourself killed,” Cyrus said, turning to stalk back off down the tunnel toward the prison’s exit.