The Sanctuary Series: Volume 03 - Champion

by Robert J. Crane

  “Why do I doubt your name is Arbukant?” Cyrus looked around the room, listening for sounds of danger. Hearing none, he glanced back to Vara, who stood, shaking, a few feet behind him. “Are you okay?” She nodded and Cyrus turned back to the elf. “Where is Arbukant?” The elf wore a look of pure malice, lips twisted in rage, eyes wide with fury.

  “He can’t answer with you choking off his airway,” Vara said from behind him, her voice brittle.

  “He can point. Then I’ll think about letting him draw a breath.”

  The elf pointed to a hallway that led back from the entry. Cyrus released his bracer from the elf’s neck and seized his throat with his hand then forced him to the floor. Relying on the strength granted him by his blade, he lashed out with his foot and broke the knob on the front door, causing it to creak and then open slightly.

  “Odellan!” Cyrus called. “Get in here!” He looked back to the man they had thought was Arbukant. Odellan flew through the door, his weapon drawn, Thad and Longwell two steps behind him. “He says Arbukant—the real one—is back there.” He nodded toward the hallway. “See if he’s alive. Be careful—he might have friends.”

  Cyrus gripped the elf’s neck, ready to break it if he heard the slightest sound that indicated battle was coming. I kill him then get Vara outside and make sure she’s safe... His thoughts ran wild until Odellan called back, “He’s dead. Looks like no one else is here.”

  Cyrus loosened his grip on the elf’s neck. “Hand of Fear?”

  The faux Arbukant coughed, then nodded, his remaining hand grasping at the bleeding stump of his right wrist.

  “How many of you do I have to kill before this is over?” Cyrus said, his anger taking hold. “Let’s get to it, because I’m going to win and you’re going to lose, and the sooner you realize that, the sooner you and your comrades can get dead. You can’t have her, and I will kill every last one of you until you stop coming.”

  “We will never stop,” came the man’s low hiss. His eyes were wild, darting from Cyrus to Vara. “When our master commands a death, the death shall be had.” He fixated on Vara. “I will say no more,” the elf continued. “Do as you will; kill me, imprison me, it matters not.”

  Cyrus picked him up by the chest and slammed him into the floorboards, yielding a horrifying crack. “I want the name of your master. If he commands fear then I want to meet him so I can teach him a few things.” He picked the man’s head up and slammed it again. “I can do this all day. I’ll just have one of my people heal you between deaths.”

  “Cyrus,” Odellan’s voice came from over his shoulder. He turned to the Endrenshan to find him shaking his head. “I can’t let you do that. It’s not allowable under elven law.”

  “What?” Cyrus asked. “This?” He slammed the elf’s head down again, this time so hard the man emitted a pitiful cry. “Termina doesn’t favor the punishment of assassins?”

  “We have laws to protect our citizenry,” Odellan said. “I can’t let you torture the man, regardless of what he’s done. He’ll face justice through a trial.”

  “Yes, that seems like a hell of a deterrent,” Cyrus grunted. He looked back down at the elf, and was surprised when a choked laugh made its way out of the man’s lips. “You think this is funny?” Cy punched him in the mouth and blood welled up from between his teeth, ran down his face, and he laughed again. “You think it’s funny to make a woman fear for her life?” Cyrus hit him again, and this time something broke; teeth and maybe more. The elf’s nose gushed blood and his eyes fluttered, brushing close to unconsciousness.

  “Cyrus!” Odellan’s hand landed on his shoulder and the Endrenshan took a knee and whispered in his ear. “I know you wish to hurt this man, but if this continues, duty will compel me to expel you from the Kingdom. Who will protect Vara then?”

  Cyrus squeezed his hand tight, his fist cocked and ready to deliver a killing blow to the assassin. “Fine.” The elf dropped to the ground, bleeding from the face, the floor already slick with blood, shining from the sunlight creeping across the floor into the entry. “Do whatever you want with him.” Cyrus turned to leave and was stopped short by a low, sucking noise. He turned back to the assassin and realized it was laughter; almost drowning in his own blood, the elf was still laughing.

  “You...should have killed me...” His eyes fluttered once more and he fixated on Vara, his misshapen mouth contorted in a twisted, now toothless smile. “Your death is coming,” he said, spitting blood between every syllable, “because he who is most fearsome has commanded it and so you will die.

  “You—and the old one as well.”

  Chapter 23

  Cyrus rode through the streets of Termina, having left the assassin in the hands of Odellan and his troops. Vara was sandwiched between him and Thad, with Longwell and Andren riding in front of them and Martaina behind with Isabelle. The silence was thick and the atmosphere almost as cold as the chill emitted by Vara. “You should not have brutalized him.” Vara’s words came flat, unemotional, and broke the silence with all the impact of the crack of a whip.

  “Perhaps not,” Cyrus said. For the past few minutes he had stewed in the memory of what he’d done and felt a hint of remorse—mainly because his efforts had yielded nothing. They were on the Entaras’iliarad, the road that stretched between the Chancel of Life and the center bridge that led back to Santir, and the crowds were enormous, filling the streets with elves wrapped up against the elements. He looked back at Vara again, his cloak draped over the simple cloth dress that was all that stood between her and the icy wind howling through the streets.

  “Perhaps not?” Isabelle said. “I think you permanently damaged his face.”

  Cyrus grunted. “He’s not the first. What do you think he meant by saying they would kill Vara and the old one?”

  “Maybe he was talking about you,” Andren said. “You’re looking a bit worn around the edges of late, you know.”

  Cyrus fired off a rude gesture. “Is your wine-sodden brain capable of grasping that we have a serious threat?”

  “Wine-sodden?” Andren said, offended. “I’ll have you know I prefer ale.”

  “Old ones are a legend,” Martaina said from the back. “Supposedly immortal, they were the first elves.”

  “So they’re going to kill some immortal elf?” Cyrus pondered, talking almost to himself.

  “Yes, except that the old ones,” Isabelle said, “if they ever existed, are gone. We elves have a lifespan of six thousand years. That may seem long to a human, but I assure you, it’s not infinite.”

  “Is it possible that they still exist?” Longwell asked. “I mean, would they look different? Or could it be that someone wouldn’t know that they’re immortal?”

  “Yes,” Isabelle said with measured skepticism. “I suppose it’s possible in the sense that anything is possible; you could get hit by a dead griffon falling out of the sky right now—but it’s not likely.”

  “In other words, you think the legend is bullshit,” Cyrus summed up. With a start, he looked back to the Endeavor officer, who wore her customary smile of amusement. “Sorry, I forgot you’re not one of my people; I wouldn’t have sworn.”

  “I am familiar with the term, though most of the time I hear it in whispered breaths behind my back rather than to my face.” She smiled. “But to your point, most elves would think the legend is ‘bullshit’ as you so eloquently put it; we live in our communities, and over the millenia we see our friends and neighbors age. Though you might think me still young-looking by human standards, elves can judge my age very close to the mark. It is subtle but noticeable among our own. I would think that someone who lived forever would be discovered after a few decades; perhaps a century.”

  Thad whistled. “That’s a long time to us humans.”

  “But not to elves,” Vara said. “Most elves live in the same communities all of their lives. Termina is unique in that it has attracted enormous population growth by becoming a thriving trade city; most elven cities are
dying because people do not leave them except by death, and they do not relocate within them to other neighborhoods because of the rigid caste system. It creates a community wherein you know your neighbors and build a relationship with them from birth until death. Even here, to a lesser extent, it happens.”

  “So if I was an old one and I wanted to hide out, it wouldn’t be practical to do so in the Elven Kingdom anywhere but Termina?” Cyrus chewed his lip as Vara shook her head. He thought for a moment. “Maybe Arbukant was an old one?”

  “Yes,” Vara said, “and maybe he was a dark elf in disguise. There are no old ones. It’s myth and legend.”

  “Yeah,” Cyrus muttered under his breath, “and there’s no way goblins could be raiding convoys in the Plains of Perdamun.”

  “Let us call it unlikely,” Isabelle said. “But assume he was—why would the Hand of Fear care if he was a thousand or ten thousand years old?”

  “I don’t know anything about what they want—other than Vara dead.” Cy nodded toward the paladin, who shrugged her shoulders in a worn and noncommital way. “We don’t know who they serve, what their agenda is once these assassinations are completed—or why they’ve been wiping out former members of your King’s Court.” He nodded at Vara again. “Or a potential one.”

  They lapsed into silence as they turned from the square onto a thoroughfare. Cyrus steered through the crowds, keeping watch for pedestrians. At one point, a small child darted into the street in front of him and he steered his horse out of the way at the last moment. He looked down at the little one—a boy, no older than five—and watched as his mother darted after him, thanking Cyrus with a stream of effusive words and begging his pardon a thousand times. Cyrus watched them retreat, and noticed the curve of the lad’s ear; another half-elf.

  “Be on with it, woman,” Vara snapped at the mother elf. “If you keep apologizing to this lout, he’ll get a swelled ego.”

  Cyrus looked back at the paladin, her cheeks red from the burn of the wind. “You don’t even have an ounce of gratitude to me for saving your life back there, do you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “As usual, you look for praise for doing what is expected. I almost wish you hadn’t; then I wouldn’t have to go through the motions of puffing you up into a bloated and gelatinous mass.”

  They rode down Vara’s street and dismounted. The illusion remained intact, the facades switched for the two houses. The front door flew open as they approached and Vaste stuck his head out. “Hihi.”

  “Hihi yourself, you grotesque,” Vara said. “Get back indoors before someone becomes suspicious.”

  “I will, after I’ve stripped naked and done a dance in the middle of the street,” Vaste said. “I thought you might like to know—your father is awake and he’s been asking for you ladies.”

  Cyrus turned to Vara. Her face was frozen, eyes squeezed tight from where she had just hurled an insult at the troll. She shivered in the breeze, and after a moment’s wait she was in motion, running toward the door. Vaste ducked back inside in time to avoid being shoulder-checked by the much shorter elf.

  “So she does have some emotion other than anger,” Andren said. “Who knew?”

  Isabelle laughed. “She does. Not much, but she does.” With a nod to the members of Sanctuary around her, she proceeded toward the door, much slower and with more dignity than Vara had.

  Cyrus watched the two of them go and turned around. “Be vigilant. We have no idea what will come next.”

  “I’m going to go out on a limb and guess...pineapples,” Andren said.

  “Pineapples?” Longwell’s accent was even more obvious in his confusion. “What do pineapples have to do with anything?”

  “Oh, they don’t,” Andren said. “I’m just sick of saying ‘assassins’.”

  Cyrus shook his head and entered the house in time to see Vaste sitting back down at the table in the corner, the same warriors from Endeavor seated around him.

  “This time will be different,” the dwarf told him as Cyrus headed past them to the cellar stairs.

  “Sure it will,” Vaste agreed. “After all, you can only lose so many times in a row, right?”

  He shut the door, making his way between the houses then up to the second floor of Vara’s home and found himself hesitating at the landing. It’s a family reunion, he thought. I’ll wait for her down here, keep watch in case someone comes upstairs. He walked toward the sitting area and realized, not for the first time, that he hadn’t slept since arriving in the city.

  He positioned himself in a chair, his back to the broken windows, and felt his head rest against the padding. Just need to close my eyes for a few minutes, he thought. Or maybe an hour.

  The fatigue from the battles of previous days and the ever-present pain from the wound in his shoulder finally caught up with him, settling over him like a blanket, and soon enough he was in a deep sleep.

  Chapter 24

  “I think you’ve ruined my chair.”

  The words jolted Cyrus awake. He blinked his eyes and realized that he was cold, terribly cold, his cloak missing. He was seated, and his neck had a cramp from the position he’d adopted while sleeping. Bleary, he looked up to see the stern face of Chirenya leaning over him, examining the fabric of the chair next to his shoulder. “Your armor seems to be rubbing off,” she said in annoyance. “Are you really so ridiculous that you took the time and effort to paint it black?”

  “No,” he said, his voice sounding far away as he tried to orient himself to his surroundings. “It was my father’s, but it’s the metal, not paint, because it’s yet to scrape off and it’s been hit quite a few times.”

  “Then what are you rubbing off on my chair?”

  “Blood, probably,” he said, hand finding his face and trying to rub the cobwebs away. He looked around the room, still wrecked from the battle the night before. He took it all in and looked back to Chirenya. “I kinda think this chair is the least of your decorating problems.”

  “Cheeky,” she said, her eyes narrowing.

  “Where’s Vara?” he asked, now irritated.

  “Still upstairs, with her father,” Chirenya said, straightening up. “They haven’t seen each other in nearly a year, you know.”

  “I can’t imagine why.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, ox?”

  “What is it with you and oxen? Did you have an affinity for romancing farm animals in your day?” Cyrus countered. “Is there a particular reason you don’t like me, or do I just fall under your blanket contempt for humans?”

  She glared at him. “You wish to have this conversation now, do you?”

  “Why not?” he said. “I doubt I’ll get back to sleep anyway.”

  “I have no problem with your people,” she replied. “In my experience, humans are decent enough.”

  “Then what have I done to offend you? Is it that I guard your daughter? You’d rather her go wandering alone with these assassins after her?”

  A sigh of deep disapproval came from the elf. “Don’t be ridiculous. While I’m not pleased about the situation she’s in, I don’t mind that she’s got a loyal bodyguard—no matter how ox-like he may be.”

  “Then what is it?” His words came out suffused with exasperation. “I realize you’re a mean old hag to everyone, but you seem to have a particular disdain for me.”

  “Perhaps it’s not for you,” Chirenya said. “Perhaps it’s more for your type.”

  “My type? Warriors?”

  “That’s a start. ‘Adventurers’ would better encompass it,” she said with a haughty sniff. “I know who you are. I’ve met your kind before; the sort that thinks they’re a hotshot, noble and ambitious, with plans to conquer the whole world in order to better your pocketbook. You travel Arkaria and use your considerable martial abilities to steal from unsuspecting dragons, goblins and gods. Oh, yes, you are noble indeed.”

  “What?” He blinked in outrage. “I’ve stolen from evil gods, yes, like for example the God of Deat
h, the God of Darkness—you know, bad guys, in that they’ve been responsible for actual atrocities. I’ve stolen from the goblins, who, when they were the Goblin Imperium, not only fit the criteria of ‘evil’ but pretty much defined it, since a great many of their treasures came from convoys they’d destroyed and stolen from over the years. And don’t get me started on the dragons I stole from,” he said with a shake of his head. “They were plotting to bring about the destruction of the entire mortal world.”

  “Oh, yes, always a justification for everything. I’m sure in your mind you think you defend the less fortunate.”

  “I do,” he said with annoyance. “I did save the world from the Dragonlord, after all. And I helped overthrow a nasty, oppressive regime that was choking its people and raiding convoys.”

  “And there was no benefit in it for you?” She looked at him triumphant as his face fell. “I thought so. My daughter and I have gone round and round about her choice of profession, and I doubt you’ll say much to sway me. In fact, likely as not, it’s her profession that has got her in this trouble.”

  “You don’t know that,” Cyrus shot back. “It could be because she’s the shelas’akur. And you can’t possibly hate me for being a warrior in her guild; I joined Sanctuary long after your daughter and have had no sway over her decision to remain with us or to be an adventurer.”

  “Fine,” she snapped. “My issue with you is as follows—while I’m certain you make a fine plaything, Vara requires a husband. An elven husband.”

  Cyrus leaned back in the chair and emitted a short, sharp bark of a laugh. “I’m. Not. Having. Sex. With your daughter,” he said with exaggerated emphasis. “She’s made it quite clear that nothing will happen between us.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s what she said,” Chirenya replied with a slow nod.

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Cyrus shook his head in exhaustion.