Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

by Robert J. Crane

  “Nothing’s happening,” Cyrus muttered slowly back to him as they walked, the druid only a step behind him. Ryin still squinted as though he were having difficulty understanding.

  “That’s the problem,” Ryin said. “The tension is as thick as the air. If Goliath had just attacked already, we would know they are here, the problem would be settled, one way or another—”

  “Likely ending in your death.”

  “But it would be settled,” Ryin said patiently.

  “With your death!”

  “And thus I’d be free from worry.” Ryin’s robes trailed against sprouting grass, causing it to rustle beneath him. The druid nearly jumped out of his skin, and when he landed, his soft leather shoes clapped against the stone road. “Gyah! You see what I mean?”

  “And I hear it,” Cyrus said, listening carefully to Ryin’s shout echoing through the jungle, the birds now silent. “As I suspect everyone else in this part of Arkaria just did.”

  They were only some twenty paces from the entry to the building now, the shadows pooling deeply under the arch that led within. Cyrus still could not see inside no matter how he squinted. He cast the Eagle Eye spell upon himself under his breath, but it only served to let him see the darkness closer; there was no substance to it, no shape, just a hallway lacking light from above thanks to the boughs and branches and vines hanging over the building, very much like a tunnel under a mountain.

  “Come on,” Cyrus whispered, and started forward again, just as silently, “and try not to get scared by your own shadow this time.”

  “It’s not my shadow I’m afraid of,” Ryin said, “it’s all the other ones in this place.”

  Cyrus crept closer, and the darkness deepened, the lines of the hallway within the door becoming clearer the closer they got. Cyrus clutched both swords, listening carefully, wondering if he were missing something, Ryin a pace behind him, holding his breath as they drew closer … and closer …

  “There’s nobody in there,” came a voice from behind them.

  Ryin jumped again. “AUGH!” the druid called, shaking under his robes as Cyrus spun to see who had spoken—

  And Cyrus froze himself when he saw, in wonder and surprise, the person standing in the entry to the building across from him.

  Her hair was long and dark, though it looked stringy and unclean. Her skin was dark as though she’d been outside every day of her life, though Cyrus remembered it in exactly that shade even in times where she had not ventured much out of doors. Even from this distance he could see the relief in her green eyes, though he did not immediately recognize her face, the face of a flower girl he had purchased a glowrose from only a few years earlier—

  “Imina,” Cyrus whispered, and he saw the relief sag into her figure as he broke into a run toward her, cutting across the distance between them in mere seconds.

  “Cyrus,” Ryin said, hurrying after him, “exercise caution. You don’t know—”

  “I have the Eagle Eye spell upon me, Ryin,” Cyrus said. “If she were an illusion, I would see it.”

  “Still,” Ryin said, his leather soles slapping hard against the stones as they ran, “caution is never a bad thing to employ; it’s not as though anyone has ever said, ‘I wish I was more heedless in my actions—’”

  “I’ve often thought that,” Cyrus said, “in regards to my pursuit of Vara.” He thundered to a stop a few feet away from Imina where she stood under the canopy, tiny pinpricks of light breaking through between leaves to shine upon her like diamonds on her simple cloth dress. It did not look new but nor did it look old, merely a bit weathered, as though it had seen some considerable use. She wore sandals, and her feet looked rugged, as though from long walking. “Imina …”

  “Cyrus,” Imina said, smiling faintly. “He said you would come.”

  “Are you …?” Cyrus stood back, afraid to come any closer, afraid he would see—a bloodless wound to indicate death, her very nature being controlled by Malpravus, something, anything to indicate the treachery he was coming to expect. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” she said with a breath of relief. “They all left, all of them, and he came to me before they did, told me they would leave me here for you to find.”

  “That’s incredibly generous of them,” Ryin said suspiciously, arriving slightly winded at Cyrus’s side. “And a bit kinder that I would expect from Malpravus.”

  “He treated me decently,” Imina said, looking right at Cyrus. “He seemed very fixed on not upsetting you unduly.”

  “I guess I didn’t notice that proclivity in my dealings with him,” Cyrus said, still holding back from her, his suspicions a wedge between them that he did not dare remove. “Why did he leave you behind?”

  “He was done with me,” she said, her thin shoulders shaking very slightly as she shrugged. “He had no further use for me, he said, and rather than march me into harm with his army, he simply left me behind … to convey a message.”

  Cyrus chilled immediately, the hot jungle sun forgotten. “What message?”

  Imina looked at Ryin, and then at him. “He said … that he was sorry you were interrupted the other night. He said that … you will come to see it his way, before the end. That he was not done, that there is more that needs to be finished between you.”

  “Oh, indeed,” Ryin muttered, “there’s a good spilling of blood still demanded betwixt you.”

  “He didn’t want to fight,” Imina said. “He seemed … disappointed that it came to that. He wanted to show you something. ‘The first steps,’ he called them. He wanted to harness some power, wanted you to see it.”

  “Where is he?” Cyrus asked coldly, staring into the distant eyes of his former wife as she stared back at him, just a touch too blankly for his liking. She did not seem as though she were fully here, and he found it worrying. Is it all in my mind? Or is she … different? He watched her carefully, wondering. All these betrayals have left me second-guessing everything.

  Imina’s gaze snapped into place on his, and she shook again, just slightly, as though emotion long held back began to make its way out. “He’s …” She brought her lips together and seemed to try to swallow, but choked slightly. “He’ll … be coming for you, he said. He’ll call out for you when the moment is right.” She looked up, and her eyes glistened at the corners. “He said so.”

  “I just bet he will,” Ryin said softly.

  “When?” Cyrus asked, taking a step closer. Imina watched him, tracking him as he approached, and she shuddered once more, in a way that Cyrus never remembered her doing, not ever before in all the years he’d known her.

  She held out a hand to stay him, backing up just a step, slowly. He stopped, and she lowered her hand, then closed her eyes and nodded before opening them again. “He told me … told me to tell you … soon. That he would call for you very, very soon.”

  87.

  “This is quite the surprise,” Vara said as they all stood once more in the Council Chambers of Sanctuary, light waning as the sun sank in the afternoon sky. “Here I thought Ryin would be back instantly and you later, if at all—and certainly not with a … guest.” She peered at Imina suspiciously, though whether it was born of Imina’s recent proximity to Goliath and Malpravus or something more personal, Cyrus was not entirely certain.

  “Heh.” Aisling chortled slightly under her breath, her lips tightly pushed together and her cheeks rounded as though she were holding in a laugh as she looked sideways at Cattrine. “Heh heh.”

  Cattrine looked back at her, frowning, as Aisling’s eyes darted to Imina and then Vara. “What …? OH.” And the Administrator of the Emerald Fields flushed a deep shade of red.

  “What?” Vara snapped.

  Aisling still made a great show of containing her smile. She nodded at Imina, then Cattrine, then shrugged her own shoulders and nodded at Vara. “It would appear the gang’s all here.”

  “The … what?” Ryin asked with a frown.

  “That’s a pitiful
ly small crowd, Davidon,” Terian said, with a frown of his own. “The greatest warrior in Arkaria should have done better.”

  “What?” Cyrus jerked his head around at Terian. “What the hell are you people on abo—” He realized what they meant as the thought landed on him with the force of an axe to the middle of his head. “Oh. Gods.”

  “I have no idea what we’re talking about,” Ryin said, looking to J’anda for guidance. The enchanter, however, was a particularly dark shade of blue and pretending to look out the window.

  “Oh, I get it now,” Vaste said, cradling his belly in discomfort. He cringed in pain and rubbed his midsection.

  “I don’t,” Scuddar said with a shrug.

  “Well,” Calene said, whispering a little too loudly, “I think we’ve got assembled here before us all the lovers of Cyrus Davidon—”

  “Enough,” Vara said in disgust.

  “Oh, Cyrus,” Quinneria said, putting her hand on her face to cover a blush.

  “What?” Cyrus threw up his hands. “This is—a—I mean—how is this my f—you know what, we have bigger problems to worry about right now.” His cheeks burned hot with embarrassment, and he tried to turn himself toward righteous indignation. “Malpravus is apparently of a mind to call me out, and soon, according to Imina.”

  “It’s what he said.” Imina looked a little flustered herself, though she was looking between Aisling, Cattrine and Vara in turn with a fair amount of dark suspicion of her own. “Also, I would rather not be here at all, if I may make it plain—”

  “You’re free to return to Reikonos if you’d like,” Cyrus said.

  “And what guarantee do I have that your enemies won’t come after me again?” Imina said, her own cheeks reddening as she turned to face him down. He’d seen her like this before many times, especially at the end of their marriage. At least she seems to be coming back to herself now, he thought.

  “Well, there are quite a few less of them now,” Mendicant said, “at least versus when they last attempted it.”

  “That is true,” Calene agreed, “we’ve been quite efficiently wiping them out as we go. If this keeps up, maybe we’ll see Goliath’s end here soon enough.”

  “One can hope,” Terian said.

  “Would you like us to keep her under guard?” Scuddar asked Cyrus, his quiet voice cutting over all else with a certain solemnity that Cyrus would not have found out of place in a temple.

  “She can go if she wants,” Cyrus said, “or she can stay.” He looked right at Imina. “Up to you.”

  “I don’t know where Malpravus means to have his clash with you,” Imina said quietly, staring straight into his eyes with a coldness that he did not remember even in the worst of their fights, “but I want to be as far away from it as possible when it happens.”

  “Sister,” Vaste announced, “you aren’t the only one.”

  “Well, she has sense,” Vara said.

  “Don’t we all?” Cattrine asked with a cocked eyebrow.

  “You do,” Vara said.

  “Which means I don’t, apparently,” Aisling said with another roll of the eyes.

  “I reserve my opinion on you for the time being,” Vara said, somewhat grudgingly.

  Aisling hesitated for a moment, as though trying to comb through the statement for something other than its surface meaning. “Thank you … I think?”

  “You’re welcome, possibly,” Vara said, plunging straight ahead. “What is the likelihood that Malpravus will choose Reikonos for his final battle with—”

  “I don’t think he means to have a battle,” Cyrus said, shedding a gauntlet and flexing his fingers, feeling the slick sweat on his palm. “He wants me to be there when he does something to—to take the steps into this new power.”

  “Awww,” Vaste said, “he’s looking for the friend he’s never had but always wanted, and it’s you.”

  “Yeah, you can’t have me all to yourself anymore,” Cyrus said.

  “I was always sharing you with that blond interloper anyway,” Vaste huffed. “I don’t even know what you see in her, my arse is so much more supple than hers.”

  “It’s really not,” Cyrus said as Vara blushed a blood red, and then turned to Quinneria, whose eyes were narrowed and who was shaking her head. “If Malpravus was going to … I don’t know, ascend to your level … where would he go?”

  Quinneria held up her hands. “He’ll need magical energy.”

  “Well, that seems to come automatically,” Ryin said.

  “Not in the amount he’ll need it,” Quinneria said. “You recapture or regenerate a certain amount through rest and time and normal eating and drinking, but that’s enough to cast some spells. The type he needed to even throw out what he unleashed in the Tower …” She pointed to the ceiling. “That requires more. And there are places in Arkaria where the magics pool, and where one can regenerate that energy more quickly. Seams of power, I came to call them.”

  “Great,” Vaste said, “so where’s the ‘seam of power’ Malpravus will choose?”

  “I don’t know,” Quinneria said with a shake of the head. “There are so very many, all with varying strengths—”

  “Where’s the most powerful one?” Cyrus asked.

  “The upper realms,” Quinneria answered. “But those are guarded by deities who would take a rather angry exception to him trying to access them—”

  “How about the Realm of Death?” Vara asked. “That one seems perfectly suited to him, especially since Malpravus excels at controlling the departed.”

  Quinneria shook her head. “There’s not one there, as such.”

  “You seem certain,” J’anda said suspiciously.

  “Quite,” she replied. “There is in the Realm of Darkness, though, so that would be a possibility, albeit slight.”

  “Mortus and Yartraak aren’t the only dead gods,” Terian said. “At least according to Alaric and Curatio. Could he want to access one belonging to one of the dead ones? The ones that died in the war ten thousand years ago?”

  “He couldn’t,” Quinneria said with another shake of the head. “Those are claimed by the remaining gods. I suspect Yartraak’s will be taken by another deity in the next year or so—”

  “Yartraak drained Aloakna,” Mendicant said, speaking aloud as he thought, “taking the mortal souls for himself … and you say these other gods sit on … seats of power—”

  “She said ‘seams,’” Ryin said, a little haughtily, “get it right.”

  “They really are ‘seats’ of power to the gods,” Quinneria said kindly, looking right at Mendicant. “And you have a good thought there, but of little practical application to our current discussion, I’m afraid. The point is, Malpravus will be going for lower-hanging fruit, and there are many spots on Arkaria far easier to access. He won’t want to fight a god before he does what he means to …” She lowered her voice. “He would do that after.”

  “My stomach is rumbling even more angrily after that little piece of news,” Vaste said. “So … care to start naming these, uh, seams for us?”

  Quinneria sighed, narrowing her eyes as she thought aloud. “Reikonos sits on one—”

  “Oh, hell,” Imina muttered.

  “—as does Zanbellish, though he’s likely drained that for a time …” She continued to frown as she spoke, “The Temple of Death in the Bandit Lands—”

  Cyrus and Vaste snapped their heads around to share a look. “How do you know about that?” Cyrus asked, coming back around to look at Quinneria.

  She smiled. “Who do you think trapped the Avatar of the God of Death away in that seal in the first place?”

  “Uhm …” Vaste said, “You?”

  “Well, it was Alaric and I together,” Quinneria said with a nod, “but yes.”

  Terian slapped his hand hard against his belt, rattling the axe that ran along his back. “What about the temple northeast of here in the Waking Woods?”

  Quinneria straightened. “Certainly that is one. Many time
s, they built temples or chancels on these seams, because—”

  “Gods, it’s empty, isn’t it?” Cyrus asked, cutting her off, staring at Terian as the Sovereign of Saekaj stared back at him, mouth slightly agape. “I mean, other than the ghouls that surround it—”

  “The ghouls,” Quinneria said, “are there because of that seam. It is the magic that infuses the carcasses; it is their origin.”

  “That’s one place in a wide, vast land,” Aisling said, shaking her head. “Why, of all Arkaria, would Malpravus choose that one location—”

  She stopped as the atmosphere in the room changed; the light outside the windows was fading, but something about it had shifted like a cloud blocking the sun. Cyrus stood with his back to the balcony, but he could tell the change as it rolled across the shafts of light that were stretching across the table and the floor, shining in from the outside. The light had changed, was corrupted, and he saw it turn red as blood as it rolled slowly across the floor and the room began to darken.

  “What the hell?” Terian muttered as they all turned to look out the windows to either side of the balcony doors.

  Cyrus did not wait for the darkness to spread further; he broke into a run and from beside him Vara did the same. He went for the balcony and reached it first, one hand on Rodanthar. He threw them open into the afternoon sun and saw—

  The sun was red as a butcher’s floor; the sky was darkening in its grip, the shades of blue that had hung there replaced by a crimson, turning the plains an awful shade of purple to replace the verdant green of summer.

  “What is that?” Cattrine asked as they all filtered out onto the balcony, watching the sky darken as the shining of the sun was muted further with every passing second.

  “The beginning,” Quinneria said, and her tone was mournful in a way that Cyrus found deeply, deeply disquieting.

  A rumbling ran over the clear plains, like thunder without a cloud in the sky, and when it reached them, Cyrus heard a voice, plain and very familiar:

  Cyrus … come to me … Malpravus said, his words rattling the stones in the wall above them, the whole tower shaking. Pieces of debris fell from the ruin of the roof at its top, raining down on them from above. Come to the temple, the voice said, … Come and see …