Warlord

by Robert J. Crane

  “What, is your mouth suffering injury?” he asked, trailing behind her. “You could have said it first if you felt that way.”

  “And risk you snubbing me? Never.” But she shot him an impish grin, and he could not help but laugh. As they drew closer to the bottom of the stairs, her pace slowed, and he moved to match her. “Do you think …” she hesitated. “Do you think it will last?”

  “Having never really been in what you could call a successful relationship,” Cyrus said, feeling her tentativeness and reaching for her hand. Their gauntlets clinked. “I suppose I don’t know what it takes to ‘make it work.’ But,” he said, forcing a smile through his own hesitancy—it did not take much with her in front of him, “as I said, we’ve been circling each other for five years. By now I think you’ve seen the best and worst of me. We’ve been enemies and friends, and spent a good portion of that time somewhere in between … there’s no mystery between us now, Vara.” He cradled her smaller gauntlet in his own, wishing that neither of them were wearing the obstructive things. “If anyone knows me and could tolerate me, I suspect it would be you, since we’ve been together for a few months now and you haven’t even thrown a heavy object at my head lately—”

  “I’m saving it for a choice occasion,” she said, “some particularly dunderheaded act on your part will see something metal whisked at your skull faster than you can say, ‘Dall diddly lye.’”

  He froze, trying to translate that. “‘Earthwork baby doll’?”

  “Thank Vidara you’re better as a lover than you are at elvish,” she said, taking hold of his hand and dragging him down.

  “I’d really rather you thank me for that than the Goddess … rather laboriously, later, maybe—”

  “Again? Truly?” She gave him a look of exasperation. “Perhaps if we make it through all this day entails, I will consider it.”

  “That’s a ‘no,’ isn’t it?”

  “Woe betide you if I find something heavy and metal right now, Cyrus Davidon. It’s a good thing you’re wearing your helm.” She hesitated. “Does it concern you?”

  “You throwing something at me?” Cyrus asked. “You’ve got some strength, but as you pointed out, I am wearing my helm—”

  “Our second meeting, dolt.”

  “The first worries me more,” Cyrus said, pensive. “Is that strange?”

  “Very strange for a normal person,” she said, biting her lip. “But not for you, warrior mine. You are more comfortable with the things you can fight, and you flounder about with the things that you can’t.”

  “I definitely can’t fight this one,” Cyrus said as they strode off the stairs and into the foyer. The morning sun was casting purple light through the massive stained glass window above the main doors, and Nyad stood waiting for them in the middle of the great seal. The guard was trebled, an enormous circle of uneasy warriors, rangers and all manner of other defenders. He saw Thad standing nearby, watching the whole scene with concern.

  “Sir,” Thad said, addressing Cyrus in the same formal way he had even before he’d been the castellan of Sanctuary or an officer.

  “Thad,” Cyrus said, nodding at the red-armored warrior. He spared a thought for the man going through a divorce. I remember what that’s like, and in spite of what Andren said, it can’t be an easy thing. Still, he’s here, and doing his duty. “As soon as we leave … close the portal to all traffic. We can walk from the one outside the gates when we return. No need to give the titans an easy in; keep it closed until further notice.”

  “Aye, sir,” Thad said, relaxing only an inch. “I’ll see it’s done.”

  Cyrus nodded, then turned his attention to Nyad. He felt Vara drop his hand as she drew herself up to her full height, which was still a head and a half less than his. “Are you ready?” he asked Vara, who still looked stiff in spite of their long, informal conversation on the way down.

  “As ready as I can be for this,” she said, expression as neutral as he could recall seeing it outside of a battlefield. “And you?”

  “If I’m not ready, I will be soon,” Cyrus said, pursing his lips. “Nyad … take us to see your father.”

  23.

  The royal palace of Pharesia was a grand thing both inside and out, and full of the greenery of life that the elves seemed to love with all their hearts. Privately, Cyrus wondered how many gardeners and how much gold it took to maintain the glorious and beautiful heart of the elven kingdom, for it certainly did not look the way Reikonos did, with all its function over form, and its mismatched architecture. It did not even have a royal palace the way Pharesia did, and he could not think of a single building that the humans built anywhere in the entire Confederation that matched the grandeur, scale and expense of the larger buildings that the elves constructed. I suppose they’re built to endure for thousands of years, by people who fully plan to inhabit them most of that while.

  “Do you find this table to your liking, Lord Davidon?” the man way down at the head of the table asked. He seemed to be roughly a mile off. They were sitting in a dining room that should have been bitterly cold, given its immensity and the time of year, but in fact it was warm enough for plant life to be growing all around him. It was something like a conservatory, save for the mammoth table at the center of the room. Greenery abounded, even in the centerpieces of the table, which prevented him from looking directly at Vara. She sat immediately opposite him, delicately eating with the thinnest fork he’d ever seen.

  “I’m afraid I can’t hear you as well as I might care to, your Grace,” Cyrus called to King Danay I, the monarch of the entire Elven Kingdom. He was seated roughly a hundred feet away, at the far end of the table. A host of bowls and plates filled with every sort of meat and dishes beyond Cyrus’s imagination covered at least ten feet of the table in front of him. Cyrus, for his part, had a similar grouping of dishes in front of him, far more weighted toward meats and cheeses than the green vegetables that he could barely see in front of Vara across the table. Her feast seemed to blend in with the centerpiece, and he dismissed it with only a thought of disgust. “My human ears might not be up to the task of having a conversation in this place.”

  The King muttered something down the table which Cyrus did not hear, but it drew a scandalized look from Vara. When he looked at her questioningly, she merely blushed and said, “It is not worthy of repeating.”

  “Tell me later?” he asked, genuinely curious.

  “I said we might as well yell,” Danay said, as Cyrus squinted to look at the man, “for doubtless any conversation you wish to have will devolve into that sooner or later anyway.”

  Cyrus looked at Vara. “That wasn’t so bad.”

  “I also used several elven terms to disparage your parentage,” Danay admitted, lowering his voice only slightly. From this distance, Cyrus could not even see his face. “Rather casually, I might add.”

  “I’d be more offended by that if I knew the terms, perhaps,” Cyrus said, “or if I knew my parents better. Though I’m a bit surprised you’d take aim at my father in such a way, given his service to the Elven Kingdom.”

  Danay chewed loudly on something before answering. “The Hero of Dismal Swamp?” He swallowed loudly. “Who said I insulted your father?”

  “I have a hard time getting upset about you insulting my mother given that you didn’t know her even half as well as I did,” Cyrus said, trying to keep a tight rein on his patience. He couldn’t see Danay’s reaction to that, but he caught a flash of something from Vara. “Can we merely talk about the south? No degenerative argument intended, I assure you.”

  “And yet I suspect we will have one nonetheless,” King Danay said, “for you are already quite clear on my position in this matter.”

  “Then you know what I’ve come here to ask,” Cyrus said, staring down the table at him.

  “I know you’ve met with an envoy from Amti, yes,” King Danay said, picking up a goblet. “I would caution you, Lord Davidon, not only does every single one of my count
erparts in every power and principality know this simple fact, they also are likely aware that you have traveled to Amti and that you are mulling action in the south. Which I would advise you against.”

  “And that means a lot, coming from a man who just admitted he’s spying on my guild,” Cyrus said tightly. Who just admitted he has spies in my guild.

  “I admit it,” King Danay said, taking a swig. “And why would I not? Only a fool would have such an army as yours bordering him without taking into consideration that your allegiances may change. You are, after all, not one of my lords on tight rein, but an independent one—”

  “Granted that by you—”

  “—and by others,” Danay finished sharply. “Had I known you would come by those permissions so swiftly after I gave you our claim, I might have hesitated to give it over to you. But no matter now, you are the Lord of Perdamun. You answer to no one and are watched by everyone. And so I know that you consider action in the south. I say again: don’t be a fool. It is not a land for those of our stature. Let the titans and the dragons have it.”

  “You’d pass up on the riches of Amti that easily?” Cyrus asked. “Relinquish the quartal mines without a fight?”

  “I have no fight to give,” King Danay said, now steepling his hands in front of him. “You know the state of my kingdom. I cannot afford to lose soldiers, and I would lose them beyond numbering if I took my army on a march through the Gradsden Savanna to engage that particular enemy.”

  “Did you know they’ve learned magic?” Vara asked quietly.

  “Word had reached my ears of that, shelas’akur, yes,” Danay said, turning his attention to her. “And before you ask, I do not know the origin of their new skill, and in truth, I don’t care. The goblin is out of the cave, as it were, and we are left to deal with the reality of things—the titans are a nearly unstoppable enemy with magic on their side, and I don’t wish to fight them.”

  “You may not have a choice,” Cyrus said darkly. “If they come for the pass—”

  “Even now,” Danay said, cutting him off, “our engineers are burying tons of Dragon’s Breath at several strategic points throughout the Heia Pass. If they come north through that route, they will find themselves buried under rock and stone, and a threat to no one.”

  “They have magic,” Cyrus said. “They don’t need to come north through the pass. What’s your plan to deal with a thousand titans teleporting into the fields outside Pharesia, or smashing through the gates of Elintany?”

  King Danay paused for a moment. “We are … considering this problem.”

  “Well, consider this,” Cyrus said, leaning forward and thumping a gauntlet on the table, rattling the fine silverware and china. “It’ll be easier to deal with them with the help of allies—allies like Sanctuary, and possibly others.”

  “You come straight out of one war that nearly destroyed our world,” Danay said, so quietly Cyrus struggled to hear him even in the stark silence of the green-tinged dining hall, “and are so eager to plunge right into another. Truly, I do not wonder that you were the favored of Bellarum.”

  “I don’t want this war,” Cyrus said hotly, “but your people are standing in harm’s way, and presently—as far as I know—Amti has the only pure-blood elven children other than her,” he pointed at Vara, “born in two centuries. Are you aware of this?”

  Danay did not stir but his answer came swiftly. “I am.”

  “And you don’t care?” Cyrus looked at him in disbelief. “She’s not the last born anymore. Amti could hold the future of your kingdom.”

  “It would take weaker ears than mine not to have heard the sentiments of Amti’s citizens regarding my rule,” Danay said stiffly. “And it would take perhaps a stronger man than me to ignore that in the face of all other considerations—the foe we face, the distance away they are, the danger of war with the titans so soon after the destruction of our fight with the dark elves … I believe it would take nearly human ears to have missed all that.”

  You royal prick, Cyrus thought. “It wouldn’t take human ears,” he said instead, “just a frozen heart.”

  “I think we have reached our end,” King Danay said, and a steward stepped up to slide his chair out. The King was clad in his rainbow garb, so bright and beautiful that when last Cyrus had seen it up close, he’d wondered how many years and how many master seamstresses it had taken to craft it. “I bid you better luck in your next meeting, Cyrus Davidon.” With a polite nod and a bow, he turned toward Vara. “Shelas’akur. I wish you both … whatever measure of happiness you might find together.” And he stiffly walked out of the dining hall.

  “The hell?” Cyrus asked, turning to Vara. “Was he being a jackass because he genuinely can’t help, or was there an undercurrent of tension because I’m sleeping with his nation’s last hope?”

  “I wouldn’t care to wager on which was the winning factor in this decision,” Vara said, placing her napkin in a balled-up wad on her plate. “But I daresay the decision was made before word of our request for an audience was received.” Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps long, long before.”

  24.

  “This place brings back bad memories,” Cyrus said as he stood with Vara in the darkened hall. The mighty wooden throne that had once rested in the Sovereign’s chamber was gone, replaced by a dual throne that stood in the middle of the room and looked, to Cyrus’s eyes, slightly more approachable than the monstrosity that Yartraak had sat upon. It certainly looked less luxuriant, though now it was as empty as Yartraak’s had been when last Cyrus had been here.

  “I don’t care for the wait,” Vara said, looking about nervously. There were guards at the back of the room, barring their exit. Curatio had teleported Cyrus and Vara directly into the Grand Palace of Saekaj, and then left them to be escorted to the throne room while the healer had remained behind in what looked to Cyrus like little more than a broom closet. A broom closet guarded by half a hundred dark elves with spears and swords, he thought. At least Terian learns that much from his predecessor’s errors.

  “I heard you had a meeting with the King of the Elves before you came here,” Terian’s voice rang out from somewhere in the dark behind the throne. Cyrus squinted to see him, but without the benefit of any sort of spell to increase his visual acuity, he failed to discern so much as a shadow. “I assume it went badly?”

  “Fair assumption,” Cyrus answered into the darkness. “King Danay has some trepidation after the war with your people.” He looked at Vara, whose features were barely visible even next to him. Damnable eyes. Why did humans get the worst eyes in Arkaria? Vara turned to look at him and he was treated with a blast of her blue irises. Like those. Those are beautiful.

  “I know how he feels,” Terian said from somewhere in the darkness, though Cyrus could tell by the sound of boots on wood that he was approaching. “I’ve felt much the same, drawing a circle around myself and placing all the people I care about within it. All else? I would have been content to watch burn, so long as those I counted most dear were protected.”

  “Is that so?” Cyrus asked, feeling a tinge of sourness on his tongue and in his mind. “You still feel that way, do you?”

  “Less and less,” Terian said, still invisible in shadow. “But it was how I was in Sanctuary, obviously. How I was as you knew me.”

  “Until you found a mystical berry tonic that cleansed the selfish asshole out of your soul?” Cyrus asked, losing all patience with the Sovereign of Saekaj and his hiding in the dark.

  Terian’s laugh echoed in the hall, and he stepped into the light, causing Cyrus to only stifle a gasp by long experience at hiding his emotions. “Something like that,” Terian said, making a flourish of his hand that encompassed his entire armor from head to toe. The smile was visible in a way it wouldn’t have been had Terian been wearing the armor Cyrus had always known him to wear. But this …

  Cyrus swallowed heavily, as though he could compel the incredible wash of feelings attacking him to leave him alone simp
ly by hoping for them to. “That’s a new look for you.”

  “We can’t all pull off wearing black all the time,” Terian said, stepping further into the light. Cyrus stared at him, wondering if an illusion would drop, if his vision would clear, if somehow, some way, he would change his shape back into the old Terian, and not this one …

  … this one who was clad in the armor of Alaric Garaunt from helm to boot.

  “I wondered where that helm went,” Cyrus said, tasting something acrid in his mouth. “Curatio told me not to worry about it.”

  “You should have asked your lover,” Terian said, looking at Vara, his eyes glinting through the thin slits of the helm. “She was the one who gave it to me.”

  Cyrus slowly turned his head to look at her and found her waiting with an offhand shrug. “He needed it to complete the ensemble,” she said simply. “And he was about to be somewhat embroiled in a battle for the fate of his city at the time.”

  Cyrus looked back at the Sovereign of Saekaj Sovar and noticed at last the axe slung across his back. “Is that …?”

  Terian drew it slowly, hefting it in his hand and swinging it once before reversing his grip and offering Cyrus the long heft. “Noctus, the Battle Axe of Darkness.”

  Cyrus narrowed his eyes unconsciously. “… So now you have a godly weapon, too?”

  “Is that a hint of jealousy I hear?” Terian almost sounded like he was crowing.

  “More like worry,” Cyrus said, “since your last weapon did end up causing me some minor harm, and it wasn’t quite so powerful as the current one.”

  Terian took another step forward, offering him the long handle of the axe. “I meant it when I said it was over on my end, Cyrus. When I got your message inquiring about help, I sent a reply offering this meeting as quickly as I could. My desire to put the past behind us is sincere.”

  “Put your axe away,” Cyrus said, dismissing him with a wave of the hand. Terian spun it in his grip and did exactly as asked in the flash of a second, causing Cyrus a moment’s alarm. “Is that … what I look like when I’m wielding Praelior?”