Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  When he reached the bottom, Cyrus found himself in a simple room with dirt walls. The elf who had opened the door to them stood waiting, wearing an expression of barely contained enthusiasm. Cyrus looked at him and was looked at in return, the elf dancing back and forth on boots made of some sort of animal skin. “What’s your name?” Cyrus asked him.

  “Partender,” the elf said, and Cyrus stopped himself before asking for a surname only through long practice.

  “My name is—” Cyrus began.

  “I know who you are,” Partender said with barely contained glee, and he pushed a dirty hand forward to be shaken, palm angled slightly upward. “You’re the Guildmaster of Sanctuary.” He took a sharp breath. “You are legend.”

  “I don’t think I’d go that far.” Cyrus regarded Partender’s angled hand carefully for a moment before seizing it gently with his gauntlet. He gave it a shake and noted the lad twisted Cyrus’s hand to match his own angle. Cyrus went along with it, wondering at the slight change.

  “It’s how they do it here,” Curatio said, feet thumping on the ground as he came off the ladder behind Cyrus. “You might want to clear a space for the others.”

  Cyrus moved back as each of his mesmerized guildmates climbed down the ladder in the same dazed fashion that he’d watched them do everything since the spell had fallen over them. He chafed with anger and felt it tug at his lips, threatening to reveal a furious grimace as Vara wordlessly climbed down the ladder to join them, stepping silently off to the side and standing there, immobile and still in a way he had never seen her before.

  He shook his head in disgust as Cora followed them down the ladder, pulling the hatch shut behind them. Cyrus could see that it was made of planks of wood, but that the outside had been covered over in some sort of sewn mesh and decorated with flora to disguise it from even the closest observer. “Can you let them loose yet?” Cyrus asked, chafing at the thought of any of them under the control of another person.

  “I don’t invade their minds,” Cora said, brushing her sleeves off as a small cascade of dirt fell down from the trap door. “I only spin their heart’s desire and keep them dwelling in it—”

  “That’s an invasion of the mind,” Cyrus snapped then calmed himself. “Just … take us where we can be rid of it.”

  “Very well,” Cora said a little roughly, as though she were taking his criticism straight to heart. “This way.” She nodded at Partender and led them past him into a dark passage at the end of the underground room.

  Cyrus followed, heart still full at the sight of Vara struck dumb. He followed along behind her, as though merely keeping in her proximity could somehow help him atone for allowing Cora to abuse her in this way.

  They walked down a long and dark passage of dirt packed tight around them. It smelled earthy, reminding Cyrus of Fertiss, of Enterra, of a cave in Luukessia where he’d found a portal, and of Fortin’s lair up on Rockridge—places he’d walked under the earth and felt it around him. The air turned subtly cooler than it had been out in the jungle, and less heavy with moisture. He did not care for it, though, and was not sorry to see a light ahead.

  They came out in a most enormous cylindrical room at the bottom of a spiraling ramp. It took Cyrus a moment to realize the scale of what he was seeing when he came out of the tunnel. The ramp was carved out of the wood of the tree that they stood within, he realized, and it corkscrewed up inside the tree some several hundred feet, with closed doors all along the spiral.

  “My gods,” Cyrus said, looking up in awe, torchlight blazing, lighting the place as though it were some keep made entirely of wood. “This is Amti?”

  “This is part of Amti,” Cora said with a trace of a smile. “Come along.” She beckoned him forward and he followed, Vara still beside him, as they climbed the ramp up the inside of the massive tree. He wondered at what was behind the doors they passed every hundred feet or so. Living quarters, perhaps? If this was a castle tower, that would be them …

  They climbed nearly to the top of the thing where the interior started to taper, and there one of the doors was already open. Cyrus peered into the dark beyond and saw a passage akin to the one they’d gone through in the ground. He squinted, the magic aiding his eyes fading after a space of hours. He thought he could see wood all around in the passage.

  “This is one of the boughs of this tree,” Cora said with a sense of pride. “And this tree is called ‘Narr’omn.’”

  Cyrus frowned, trying to translate it in his head from elvish. “The hunter’s hearth?”

  “The hunter’s home would be closer to accurate,” Curatio said, sweeping his robes close around him as he stared into the passage. “Have you added more since last I was here?”

  “We have four now,” Cora said, smiling. “We added ‘Blayy’strodd’ and ‘Tierreed.’”

  Cyrus tried again to make those words make sense in his head. “The water … uh, bucket? And the grower’s basket?”

  “Not quite, but near enough,” Curatio said with a smile that felt condescending. His skin looked sallow in the torchlight, very different from how he looked under Sanctuary’s torches. “The last is called … Fann’otte, yes?” He looked at Cyrus. “The mining tower, if you will.”

  “Save me the trouble of attempting to improve my elvish,” Cyrus said with a shrug. He looked at Vara again. “Now can we …?”

  “Oh,” Cora said and snapped her fingers. “Certainly.”

  Vara lurched only slightly, as though her footing had suddenly gone uneven, although she hadn’t taken so much as a step. Cyrus moved to catch her and grasped her elbow as she recovered her balance. She looked up at him, nearly doubled over, and blinked a few times as her cool blue eyes looked into his. “Oh. There you are.”

  “Here I am,” Cyrus said, concern causing his lips to press closer together than they might normally have. “How do you feel?”

  “Quite well,” Vara said with a smile, “thanks to you.” She blinked and looked at their surroundings, a hint of confusion blossoming on her sculpted features. “Wait … where are we?”

  “Amti,” Cyrus said as he relinquished her elbow.

  She pulled upright again, and her brows knitted together. “How did …?” She cast her eyes about until they settled on Cora. “You …” she said, sounding more than a little irritated.

  “I had to mesmerize you,” Cora said neutrally. “It is a requirement.”

  “You could have asked,” Vara said, sounding more than a little put out.

  “What happened?” Martaina said, brushing brown hair out of her eyes with a calloused hand. She peered through her fingers. “That was a mesmerization spell?” Her voice sounded far away, encrusted in sleep like eyes after a long rest. “I wouldn’t mind going back in for another round of that.”

  “That was the strangest thing,” Mendicant said, quietly, dropping a hand to his chest and scratching his claws against his scales, muffled slightly by his robes. “I was … I felt so …”

  “Happy, yes,” Vara said, not sounding remotely in the realm of that particular emotion. “That’s the trick of the spell, isn’t it?”

  “You don’t seem quite as … drowsy as we are,” Martaina said, looking at Cyrus and then Curatio in turn.

  “Her spell didn’t work on me,” Cyrus said tautly.

  Vara wheeled on him and he saw the fury in her eyes. She looked ready to say something, danger flashing, but it disappeared almost as abruptly, receding like thunderclouds rolling away under the skies above the plains.

  “We’re going to talk about this later, aren’t we?” Cyrus asked, feeling the tension tighten up his insides.

  Vara blew air noiselessly between her lips. “Did you ask her to stop it on my behalf?”

  “Many times,” Cyrus said.

  “He was most concerned for you,” Cora affirmed.

  “But not for us?” Martaina asked, more than a little sour.

  “For all of you,” Cyrus said, looking at her then Mendicant. “I considered
telling her to go to the Realm of Fire, but …”

  “But your natural tendency to lead us into madness won out, of course,” Martaina said with her lips in a thin line.

  “It always does,” Vara agreed, though she did not seem nearly so angry as she had been a moment before. She sighed and shook her head. “I refuse to let my rather pleasant daydream become a source of irritation.” She clamped a hand on Cyrus’s vambrace right on his upper arm. “Come along then, you, and let’s be about this business we came here for.”

  Cyrus did not protest, and they followed Cora along the darkened corridor. Cyrus let Vara guide him, though he suspected she was not clamping hold of him because she had any idea he could no longer see. This is her way of reasserting her control over a situation after losing it for a time. She tugged on his arm a little harder than was probably necessary, but it only hurt a little, so he accepted it with grace as the price for what he’d done—or failed to do.

  They came to a point in the hollow bough where a ladder led upward and Cyrus climbed with the others. He passed out into warm, sticky air for a few seconds before the ladder was once again swallowed by a tree branch. All he could see outside was darkness, but for the brief moments he was climbing outside, he could hear the sway of branches, the shifting and rustling of leaves, and the sounds of a jungle at night.

  Once off the ladder, he was led forward again to another glowing pinprick of light in the distance. It grew before his eyes until he could see another hollowed tree ahead. Soon enough they emerged onto another carved spiral, leaving Cyrus to wonder how long it had taken to achieve this particular marvel of carpentry.

  “Welcome to Blayy’strodd,” Cora said quietly as she gestured for them to ascend the spiral ramp. The air was even wetter in here, and had a pungent yet somehow clean odor to it that wafted up from somewhere far below. He looked over the side of the spiral and caught the shine of a reflection down in the center of the cylindrical space.

  “The wellspring,” Vara said, causing Cyrus to frown again. “What?” she asked.

  “I, uh … didn’t quite translate that the same as you did.”

  “Of course not,” Vara said, scoffing as she followed Cora. “I’ve been speaking the human tongue my whole life. When did you start learning elvish?”

  “Around the time he realized his heart’s desire was to get you out of your armor,” Martaina muttered under her breath.

  Vara turned and, rather than the anger he expected to see, there was mischief instead in her eyes, and a smile that curved her lips most curiously. “I like to think I’m worth at least learning another language for. Why, I’m practically a cultural ambassador for my people.”

  “That’s a title I’ve never heard ascribed to you,” Mendicant said without irony. “Though I don’t think the others are quite as kind …”

  “This way,” Cora said, leading them up two loops of the spiral. Cyrus strained, his legs protesting against the hard climb after the long day’s journey. He suspected it would not be long until the morning sun made its first appearance, and his body was weary. “Not much farther now,” she said.

  They stopped outside a door that was carved into the wood, just like all the others. Cora did not bother to knock, instead pushing through; there was no handle. The door swung loosely, mounted to its frame by the most curious metal. It gleamed in the light in a very familiar way, but he was left with no time to study it further, as Curatio harrumphed and Cyrus was forced to move into the room to clear the way for the others.

  He found himself in what was plainly a council chamber of some sort. It was very much like Sanctuary’s to his eyes, though it was all wood instead of stone, and lacked any hearth. It did, however, have a few torches on wall sconces, already burning. At its center was a small table with only four seats. Three of them were already occupied.

  “Cyrus Davidon,” Cora said, stepping in to make introductions, “this is our council—”

  “Got that,” Cyrus said, looking at the elves in the chairs.

  They were very distinct individuals, and he took them in with a glance. Two of them were women, one short and hearty, looking at him through weathered eyes and skin, exhibiting what Cyrus knew the Elves called ‘The Turn,’ when the first hints of age began to show on their faces. Her hair was faint grey, and she wore pants and a tunic that looked like they’d been dirty more than they’d been clean. “Fredaula,” she said when she caught Cyrus looking at her, nodding her head even as she regarded him with skeptically indifferent eyes. “Of Fann’otte.”

  He turned to look at the next in line. She was certainly younger, with hair the color of dark hay, but far, far more wavy. She wore a smile that looked faint but not forced, and her clothing was also tunic and pants with muddied boots. “Mirasa,” she said with a nod of her own. “Of Tierreed.”

  Cyrus’s eyes fell to the man. He wore a cloak that was green and strangely familiar. His hair was dark and speckled with grey, though his face showed no sign of age as yet. His fingers were covered in dark dirt, and one of his hands hovered next to a bow that leaned against the table. He reminds me of—

  Cyrus turned to make a remark to Martaina of his observation, but he found her with her mouth agape, hanging open stunned in a way he’d never seen her before. “So … you know this one, then?”

  “His name is Gareth,” Martaina said, not taking her eyes off the man, who was watching her in return with something approaching a wistful smile, “and he, like me, was of the last of the Iliarad’ouran woodsmen.”

  15.

  “It is good to see you again, Martaina,” Gareth said with a muted smile. Cyrus tried to decide if the man was merely suffering from a severely dampened personality, or if he was trying to keep himself staid in the name of being professional. Or he could just be a damned elf, Cyrus thought. He glanced at Vara, who raised an eyebrow at him.

  “It is good to see you, too,” Martaina said, apparently adopting the understated approach for her own.

  “Please, come sit,” Cora said, beckoning them forth. The other members of the Amti council stood, making room at the table. Gareth hurried to the side and began to move roughly carved wooden chairs to sit at the table, his cloak—exactly like Martaina’s in shade and stitching—sweeping behind him silently.

  Cyrus started to assist them in moving chairs when Cora caught his arm with her own, a delicate hand landing on his gauntlet. “Please,” she said, meeting his eyes with hers, and he could see … pain inside them. She guided him to a chair and motioned for him to sit. Gareth slid another next to his and Vara seated herself, her armor clanking against the wood. Cyrus followed her example and the table rearranged itself as everyone sat around it save for Scuddar and Mendicant, both of whom refused chairs of their own, remaining standing behind Cyrus on either side. Martaina, for her part, sat heavily in her own chair, and though her face was staid, he knew by her action that encountering Gareth had affected her in some way.

  “So here we are,” Vara said, placing her gauntlets on the surface of the table. There was no artisan feel to it, simply a look of utility that Cyrus felt probably encapsulated the difference between Amti and the Kingdom as a whole—no time for fancy things; they’re too busy trying to carve out a living and survive.

  “We thank you for coming,” Cora said, placing her hands on her lap, prim and proper now. “And for enduring what you had to in order to keep our secret.”

  “Well, some of us apparently don’t have to keep it,” Vara said, giving Cyrus a sidelong look.

  “Yes, I’m headed to Kortran right after this to tell them all about it,” Cyrus said. “Scuddar and I will have a race to betray the location first, I’m sure. ‘It’s the eight-hundred-and-fifty-sixth tall tree on your left.’ That’ll clue those enormous idiots right in.”

  Cora smiled. “Forgive us for being so cautious. Our threat is great, and we are small in number.”

  “How many of you are there?” Vara asked.

  “A little less than a thousand,” Ga
reth said, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. He glanced at Martaina, found her looking at him, and both of them looked away abruptly. Looks like this is an uncomfortable meeting for both of them. I wonder if it’ll spill out onto the rest of us?

  “You have grown a little, then,” Curatio said, sweeping his head around the council chamber as though there were something new to see other than marginally polished wood surfaces and grains.

  “Yes,” Cora said quietly. “A little.”

  “Do people still come here from Pharesia, then?” Martaina asked, suddenly upright in her seat.

  “No,” Cora said. “That road is closed, and has been for years. No one is fool enough to leave the safety of the Kingdom north of the mountains and venture here. They would find it ill to their liking, in any case—there is a silence here, for the most part, especially in the watches of the night, a desperate urge to keep our voices quiet at all hours for fear of discovery. We have little food, only what we can grow ourselves in Tierreed or have hunted for us by those in Narr’omn, especially now that our caravans have halted travel entirely. We have no spices but those we can grow, no outside pleasures or goods save for what can be brought in by a small group like ours, and nothing but fear to inhabit our days.” She looked tired at the end of the pronouncement, her auburn hair hanging limp after the day’s travel in the heavy heat. “We need help. We need the yolk of the titans off our back, or we will starve into nothingness.”

  “I want to help you,” Cyrus said, letting his first reaction lead. “But I want to help everyone, so this is not exactly a new phenomenon with me.”

  Cora gave him a smile, but it looked as hollow as the tree in which they sat. “As the Guildmaster of Sanctuary, I would expect no less from you.” She cast a look sideways at Fredaula, who remained inscrutable. “From where does your reticence spring, seeing as—to the point of your guildmate back at your council—you are already at war with the titans?”

  “My reticence springs from the fact that we’ve been at war in one form or another for years,” Cyrus said, and he kept the weight of it out of his voice as he talked, even though it felt like tons upon his shoulders. “We’ve been blockaded inside our guildhall, seen an entire land overrun with death, faced down two different gods, and been in more battles than most people have even heard of. And we’ve lost … people. People dear to us.” Cyrus interlaced his fingers, the black gauntlets squealing as the metal crossed. “Perhaps we are at war again, and I’m a fool not to want to immediately leap in and begin planning a campaign against the largest, most dangerous enemies we’ve faced—”