“You would have outlived me in any case,” J’anda said, but now his smile was tinged with sadness. “Such is the fate of you elder elves.”
Curatio cleared his throat. “Who are you calling elder, exactly?”
Cora glanced over at him. “Did that finally come out, then, oh, ageless healer?”
Curatio looked chastened for a moment. “Indeed. It was quite dramatic in the way it did.”
Cyrus watched the interplay between the two of them and felt a faint aura of suspicion. She knew he was one of the Old Ones? That was a closely guarded secret until just three years ago. Cora’s eyes met his, cool, composed, and he wondered not for the first time what exactly he faced in this elven woman. How many secrets did the founding members of this guild know that even I am not aware of?
And how many did—does—Alaric keep still, wherever he may be?
“I apologize for coming to you in this manner, and at this hour,” Cora said. She dropped her gaze to the table and ran her fingers over the smooth grains of the wood.
“The dinner hour is always a poor time for a meeting,” Vaste agreed. “Second only to the breakfast hour and just behind the lunching one, or on the afternoon occasions when Larana decides to bake fresh fruit pies—”
“Vaste,” Cyrus said, taking up the Guildmaster’s sworn duty to rope the troll back on topic.
“The smell of tart apples, sugar and pastry crust fill the air in the foyer, like magic wafting off the fingers of an expert caster—”
“Vaste,” Curatio said, somewhat more sternly.
“I’m hungry,” the troll said, more than a little plaintively. He sulked for a few seconds then looked to Cora. “Oh, fine, then, proceed. I’ll just sit here, starving. Ignore my stomach’s rumblings.”
“Just as easily as I ignore the rumblings of the rest of you,” Cora said a bit playfully, poking at the troll. “As I was saying … the timing is poor for my approach, and yet necessary. Word of what happened in your protectorate of Emerald Fields has reached our ears in Amti—”
“I’m sorry,” Samwen Longwell said, and Cyrus detected a hint of danger lurking behind the dragoon’s eyes, “but I can’t recall hearing of this ‘Amti’ place that you represent. It’s not on the maps of Arkaria that I’ve studied.”
“Amti is a colony of elves in the southern lands, beyond the Heia Pass,” Odellan said, leaning forward, his winged helm gleaming upon the table and his blond hair in perfect order this day. “They were founded roughly a century ago to exploit some of the resources discovered in the Jungle of Vidara—”
“What sort of resources?” Longwell asked.
“I’d be curious to know that, myself,” Ryin added, casting a look around the table. “Especially as they’re not terribly far from Kortran, and I’d imagine the titans give them some considerable amount of trouble.”
“Considerable is understating it,” Cora said, leaning back in her seat, her cloak spilling open to reveal robes of the deepest blue, more cerulean than her dark cloak. “What resources we harvest are sent back to the Heia Pass in convoys that only made it roughly one out of five times, until recently.”
“Good gods,” J’anda murmured.
“Why keep sending them, then?” Vaste asked.
“Because they have to pay their taxes,” Nyad said, drawing every eye in the room. “They’re a protectorate of the Elven Kingdom. It is required.”
“They don’t sound terribly protected,” Vaste said.
“We’re not,” Cora agreed, looking quite comfortable where she sat. “We live under constant threat. The only reason the titans have not destroyed us utterly is that the town of Amti remains safely hidden.” She drew a sharp breath then let it out in a hiss. “But I do not believe it will remain so for much longer.”
“You have traitors,” Cyrus said, and she snapped around to look at him.
Cora watched him carefully, as though she could read his thoughts. “Know that, do you?”
“The last time I was in Kortran,” Cyrus said, “we caught an elf named Erart there. He claimed to be a prisoner.”
“Good memory, remembering his name like that,” Vaste said. “I confess I’m surprised; as many times as you’ve died and been resurrected, I’m surprised you didn’t lose that trivial bit of knowledge.”
Cyrus felt a sudden tightness in his chest. “It doesn’t seem to be the trivial bits of knowledge that are lost in resurrection.” He shifted his gaze back to Cora. “Have there been others?”
“Probably,” she said. “Captives from the caravans we send that are ambushed, desperately seeking to survive in any way they can. Frustrated outcasts searching out favor they will never find from the titans.”
“How have they not betrayed you yet?” Cyrus asked. “Being in Kortran, as prisoners or traitors—it would seem they’d have to give away your secret.”
“No,” she said, looking just a bit proud, though it was mixed with a coyness that Cyrus found strangely compelling. “They can’t.”
“Why’s that?” Longwell asked, sounding thoroughly irritated.
“Because they don’t know exactly where Amti is,” Cora said, matching Longwell’s fire with her own ice. Cyrus watched as the dragoon sat back, seemingly halted in his advance.
“Why have you come to us now?” Cyrus asked. A pop in the fire to his side punctuated his question.
Cora let a poignant silence linger a moment longer than necessary before speaking. “When I left this guild, it was scarcely more than a hundred people on a good day.” She swept her gaze around the Council Chambers once more. “Now I hear you have over twenty thousand at your command.” The number prickled at Cyrus. It would have been more if not for Leaugarden. “Before, Sanctuary was hardly a bulwark against anything, let alone an army capable of rendering the sort of aid that Alaric promised in our purpose when we founded this guild.” She pursed her lips carefully, and glanced at Vara, who remained silent but flushed just slightly enough that Cyrus detected the quiet something that passed between them. “Now you’ve become the fulfillment of that promise, and Alaric is no longer here to see it. A great regret, I am sure.”
“You seek our aid in your cause,” Cyrus said, and she met his eyes with her own, and her meaning was made plain.
“I would seek any aid I could find at this point,” Cora said, unsmiling, “but the rest of Arkaria is painfully thin on help. The King of the Elves would draw a line at the Heia Mountains, the River Perda, and the swamps of the north, and desire to pay attention to none of what goes on beyond those boundaries, even though he supposedly rules us in Amti. She looked pointedly at Nyad, who flushed and turned away from her gaze. “Here I come to a place I left, most reluctantly, with my … pride in hand, as it were.” Her tanned skin showed no embarrassment, but her expression spoke of that reluctance in the tilt of her chin, her inability to look up as she spoke, and the slow way in which her words made their way out. “If you defend the Emerald Fields, then we have a common enemy, you and I.” Now she looked up. “The titans are a relentless foe, and a threat to all who have opposed them. Vengeance is more than a simple word with them; it is a way of life that they embrace with a fervor that Vaste reserves for pie.”
“You just had to poke a spear into that open wound,” Vaste grunted.
“They are consummate warriors and they only grow more deadly and dangerous now that they know magic,” she said.
“How did they learn that?” Curatio asked, placing his elbows upon the table.
“We do not know,” Cora said, and now she looked more serious than ever. “We only know that now our ability to send caravans across the Gradsden Savanna is almost completely compromised. It is a recent development, I can tell you that much.”
“Why don’t we just blame Goliath now and get it over with,” Vaste said. “All in favor?”
“Goliath is not responsible for all the problems in Arkaria,” Vara said with a frown. “Though it certainly feels like it, sometimes.”
“They wer
e trying to consort with the titans a few years ago,” Erith said, speaking up for the first time.
“Yeah,” Cyrus said, frowning, “I remember that. They were killing dragonkin down in the Ashen Wastelands in hopes of earning titan favor.”
“I’m just going to go ahead and pick Goliath in the pool right now,” Vaste said. “I’m putting a hundred gold on them, all right? Who else wants in? I’ll give you odds on weird suggestions.”
“I’ll take forty gold on the dragons,” Mendicant said softly, as though he were trying to both make his bet and respect the meeting at the same time.
“That’s a sucker’s bet,” Andren said, still clean-shaven and with his hair cut short. Cyrus had still not quite adjusted to seeing the elf without his long, mussed hair and bushy, unkempt beard. The healer made no attempt to keep his voice low. “Give me two hundred on heretics from the bandit lands.”
“Eighty gold says Pretnam Urides is involved somehow,” Erith offered.
“Now we’re talking,” Vaste said, nodding. “I’ll give you two-to-one on that.”
“My money’s on the dark elves,” Odellan said.
“Put some coins where your mouth is, then, nobleman,” Andren sniped.
“Fifty gold, then,” Odellan said with a nod. “What odds can I get on that?”
“What the hells?” Cyrus asked, frown creasing his brow. “Is this a Council meeting or a betting pool?”
“Can’t it be both?” Andren asked innocently.
“You are all idiots,” Vara said with utter annoyance. She then lowered her voice slightly. “Also, I’ll place fifty gold on the gnomes being responsible in some fashion.”
“Dammit, Vara,” Cyrus said, slapping his head with a gauntleted hand. “Curatio?” He looked to the healer for some sort of support.
“Yes,” Curatio said, nodding sagely. “Perhaps a different time might be more opportune for these sort of activities—though I would like to register my bet of three hundred gold on dwarven mercenaries right now, before it’s gone—”
“Clearly, this meeting needs to be adjourned so that all of you can get out of my sight,” Cyrus said, avoiding the gaze of Cora, whose amusement it was impossible to mistake even out of the corner of his eye. “And make your wagers. But before we do that, I would suggest,” he let that word have all the emphasis, “that perhaps it might be wise, given Cora’s history with our guild, to send a small, exploratory expedition to the southern lands in order to assess the situation in Amti.” He glanced at her for only a moment. “If that would be acceptable?”
“Our leaders would love to plead their case to you directly,” Cora said. “And we would welcome the opportunity to show you the state of things. I can guarantee safe passage to an even half-dozen of you. Any more than that and it becomes rather … complicated.”
Cyrus narrowed his eyes, trying to suss out the meaning of that one. “All in favor?” he asked.
“Aye,” came the chorus.
Cyrus paused, frowning, and looked to Ryin. “No ‘nay’?”
Ryin looked weary. “I’ve just spent a week teleporting materials to Emerald Fields and trying to apply my very modest skills at carpentry to reconstructing one of their dining halls. I’m afraid I don’t have it in me to make a contrarian argument to your request to send a mere expedition of six people into the south.” He pursed his lips. “While I don’t doubt your ability to make trouble with even so modest a number … I was there the night you were killed by Talikartin, and I heard every word he said, voice booming across the square.” Ryin leaned forward. “In case it is not apparent to all, there is no need to worry about you starting some war in the south; the titans have made plain, in my opinion, that they are at war with us … and now we need only fear what form their next reprisal will take, for it seems certain that fall it eventually will.” The druid’s voice went hollow and quiet as his reply drew to a surprisingly dire close. “And better to know more about them for when that day comes … than less.”
12.
Cyrus had forgotten the heat of the Gradsden Savanna in the intervening years since last he had been here. As soon as they appeared at the portal, he began to sweat in earnest. Within five minutes, his underclothes were drenched in sweat, beads running down his head even as tall grass brushed his armor and helm as they walked, a distracting noise that had him perpetually alert for threats.
“I don’t remember the grass being this tall when I last I passed this way,” Vara said, at his side. She was quite right; the savanna grasses now reached a foot above Cyrus’s head, a strange spectacle to him.
“Time was,” Cora said, leading the way through the thick grass, “we would simply use the druid spell Falcon’s Essence and make our way to the cover of the Jungle of Vidara, secure in the knowledge that the titans would not be able to catch us under its influence. Now,” she said ruefully, “we cannot go high enough to avoid their spellcraft, nor outrun them once their cessation spells strip the enchantment before they fall upon us.”
“A dramatic change,” Curatio said, his white cowl covering the top of his head. Sweat marks were already showing where his hair was transferring its moisture onto the cloth. “I imagine it came as something of a rude surprise.”
“We have no wizards,” Cora said, “and only two druids, which makes teleporting convoys impossible unless we were able to find some brave soul mercenary enough to undertake the trip and bind themselves within our town.” She pursed her lips and looked back to the course ahead, sparing only a glance at Mendicant, who trailed slightly behind her on his short legs, almost walking on all fours, his wizard’s robe cut to avoid dragging his hem.
Cyrus looked at the last two members of their small party. Martaina Proelius was one of them, her green cloak drifting behind her in a very similar manner to the way Cora’s did, though Martaina’s seemed even quieter as it trailed in her wake. Martaina’s eyes darted about, as though they could pierce the thick curtain of green grasses that fenced them in on all sides.
Their last party member kept his quiet, as per usual. Scuddar In’shara was a man of the Inculta desert folk who had been passing through the foyer as Cyrus assembled his team. Scuddar had been with Sanctuary for some five years now. He was a warrior without armor, a scimitar as his weapon, but his strange style of fighting was indisputably effective. Able to keep his cool in situations where Cyrus had seen others falter, Scuddar had proven himself more than capable in any number of actions, including holding the line of retreat across the Endless Bridge from Luukessia.
Scuddar was also a man of terribly few words, which Cyrus found much to his liking, especially at the moment. It was the same reason he’d chosen Mendicant over Nyad when the time had come to pick a wizard to accompany them.
“Everything seems so bloody dire,” Vara mused aloud. “The timing is peculiar as well, just as the north seems to have gotten its shite together.”
“Outside of the sudden magical concerns, this threat of the titans has been a long time coming,” Cora said, fingers brushing their way through fat blades of grass that looked like they would not have been out of place in a swamp, though these were considerably larger. “They have hounded us since first our colonial forces came in contact with their patrols here on the savanna. Were it not for the dragons as a constant threat to the titans’ south, I imagine they would have made destroying us their greatest priority by now.”
“Probably why they haven’t come north in great numbers, either,” Cyrus said, grunting as he stepped over a rut that Vara leapt with a loping grace that he felt certain he lacked without having a hand on Praelior. “Pull enough of their army off their southern borders and they’re vulnerable to that threat.” He ran his tongue over his teeth and found the taste of his breakfast still lingering there—eggs and bread fresh from Sanctuary’s ovens. “The dragons are not to be dismissed out of hand, I’ve heard.”
“Indeed they are not,” Cora said, curiously muted about the subject. “We don’t see them north of Kortran very mu
ch, unfortunately. The titans have bows the length of their entire bodies, taken from the trees of the jungle and the mountains, strung with a twine so powerful it could hold up a hundred elves, and nocked with arrows the size of our northern trees.” She grew hushed as she spoke. “I have seen them issue a hail of them into the air, once, when I was spying within Kortran. They brought down a lesser dragon, piercing its scales as though they were hunting a simple bird.”
“You’ve been in Kortran?” Cyrus asked, drawing a smile out of Cora.
“Many times,” she said. “It used to be easy for the magically endowed to slip beneath the noses of the titans. Now I would not risk it, given their capacity for seeing through invisibility spells and all manner of illusions. Truly, this boon of magic for them has been nothing less than a curse for the rest of us.”
“Hmm,” Cyrus grunted.
“Have you thought of trying to strike up an alliance with the dragons?” Mendicant asked. Cyrus glanced down at the goblin, who looked at Cora earnestly while he waited for an answer. Cyrus suspected he knew what was coming, having a vague recollection of asking the question himself once upon a time.
“Dragons do not treat with us lesser beings,” Cora said, “let alone consider us as worthy enough to be allies. Theirs is a strange mind, a slithering sort of reason that makes conversation difficult, even among those of their kind that speak our languages.”
“I’ve spoken with one before,” Cyrus said, trudging along. The ground was growing stickier, a hint of wet dew sliding down to slick the dirt.
“I heard about your experience with Ashan’agar,” Cora said. “We all did. I confess, I am surprised that you were able to bring him down.”
Cyrus shrugged. “I took one of his eyes at our first meeting, and the second one when next we encountered one another. As I was on his back at the time, it was fairly easy to steer him into a collision with the ground that he could not survive.” He looked to his side and noticed Vara holding her breath almost imperceptibly.
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