The Sanctuary Series: Volume 03 - Champion

by Robert J. Crane

  He led the way through a door to his left, keeping his sword in hand in front of him, ready to block. The glow of the blade allowed him to see slightly better in the dimness. He heard Vara’s soft breathing a step behind him, and heavier breathing following her at a distance, punctuated by an occasional snort that told him that Vaste was in his procession. He walked down a long hallway, weaving around tables placed on the sides of the hall, filled with candles and statuary.

  A noise ahead caught his attention. He swept forward, careful to muffle the sound of his boots by staying on the plush carpeting that ran down the middle of the hall. Another noise came and he crept forward with a single finger pressed to his lips in warning for quiet. The noise came from a door on the left.

  He reached it and found it closed, and heard another sound from within, a creaking noise that caused a chill to run through him as he leaned against the wall and started to move his hand toward the knob. Vara took up position on the other side of the door, a line of others behind her starting with Terian and J’anda and followed by Vaste. Cyrus held up his hand with three fingers extended. Two...one...He opened the door with his shoulder, sword in hand as he charged into the room.

  Cyrus came to a halt as he determined the source of the noise. Behind him Vara stopped before running into his back, but Terian did not, causing her to bump forward into him. The source of the creaking was obvious now. A rope hung from the rafters, looped around the neck of the only assassin in the room, and his body swung in a slow, lazy circle hanging before an altar with a massive statue on it that looked familiar.

  “Cut him down,” Cyrus said, still focused on the dead man. The body was clothed in red robes, a more ornate version of the garb the other assassins had worn. A twang was followed by an arrow streaking through the air and cutting the rope in its flight. With a snap it broke and the body tumbled to the floor.

  “Why would he kill himself?” Terian said.

  Cyrus leaned over the corpse. It was an old elven man under the hood, eyes clouded with near-blindness even before he had died, the warrior realized. His hands were gnarled and the stiffness of death had begun to set in. “He was infirm. Blind, crippled hands, who knows what other kinds of ailments.” Cyrus reached down and closed the old man’s eyes, then felt down to the belt, where he removed a blade from a scabbard. It was a familiar dagger, one with the blade of black and the eight-sided pommel that held the circular snake emblem he had seen from every assassin of the Hand of Fear thus far.

  “You think maybe he was the master?” Andren’s voice punctuated the silence.

  “No,” Cyrus said. “I think he was the last of their order, and that he killed himself to atone for their failure.”

  “Really?” Terian’s voice carried skepticism. “After all these attempts, one relentless assault after another, you think they finally reached the end of their numbers and this guy just gave up?”

  “I’d ask him, but he’s already cold.” Cyrus pushed back to his feet. “I think if you’ve got a secret order and you’re sending initiates to fulfill your mission, you’re running low on people.”

  The dark knight looked around the room. “Yeah. Maybe. But if this guy’s not the master, how do we find out who ordered Curatio and Vara’s deaths? It’s not like Alaric is gonna let me torture anyone else to get the answer.”

  “You won’t need to.” Curatio’s voice came from the doorway behind them. “Alaric sent me to tell you that we’ve swept the rest of the building; there’s no one else here.”

  “So they’re all dead?” Vaste wondered aloud.

  “We should be on our guard for a while,” Cyrus said. “They may have a few more making their way toward Sanctuary, or in hiding, but other than that I think...they’re done.” He looked back to the body of the old man lying on the floor, and he caught sight of an overturned stool that the assassin must have stood on while preparing for his demise. “Without knowing who the master is, I don’t see how we can’t truly put an end to this.”

  “Simple enough,” Curatio said. “The answer resides here—in this room.”

  Terian’s head whirled around. Cyrus kept his turn more reserved, scanning for signs before coming to rest on the statuary of the altar. Vara stepped in front of him, fixated on the same thing he was, and he followed her up the small steps.

  The altar was wooden, with two wide, sturdy legs parallel to each other. It was big enough to support the statue, which looked to weigh a few hundred pounds. From where he hung, and the way he was facing, it was almost as though he was sacrificing himself to...

  “I don’t get it.” Longwell’s voice came from behind Cyrus. “What? The statue was the master?”

  “A representation of him, at least.” Vara’s words came out in breaths, low and hushed.

  The figure carved in stone had eight arms, radiating around him and jutting from his shoulders, back and torso. At the torso his legs split into four muscular supports for an oversized thorax. The head perching at the top of the long neck was beaked, like a bird, but open-mouthed to show fangs, and the statue was detailed enough that there were a hundred or more of them visible. The eyes were dead and lifeless in the stone, but large. It was an alien thing, and the expression was of pure malice.

  “This is ridiculous,” Longwell said, stepping up to the altar. “This? They serve this...this thing?” He shook his head. “I mean...what is it?”

  “Mortus,” Cyrus said. “It’s Mortus.”

  “Mort-what?” Longwell placed a mailed fist on the statue and slid it across derisively. “Is it a creature? A beast? A monster? A ruler? A greengrocer in Reikonos? What?”

  “No,” Curatio said, still quiet. “Not a creature, nor beast, nor ruler, not of these lands, at least not of late. It’s Mortus. And of all the masters they could possibly serve, this is...by far, the worst I can imagine.”

  Longwell threw his arms up in despair, still looking at the healer. For answer, Curatio looked back at the dragoon, stared into his eyes, and spoke in a voice that cracked with terror and dread, so frightening in a normal voice, but one that drove sheer terror into Cyrus’s soul knowing that it came from a being 23,000 years old. “Mortus is a God.

  “The God of Death.”

  Chapter 44

  “I’m afraid,” Longwell’s voice rang across the Council Chamber after they had returned to Sanctuary, “all this talk of gods runs right over me like so much water in a stream. I don’t believe it, I don’t understand it, and I’m surprised any of you, who seem so reasonable in all else, could buy into it.” The dragoon shook his head, his hair wisping as it fell on either cheek. “They’re not real.”

  “Oh, they’re real enough,” Curatio said. The healer wore a traveling cloak still fastened around his neck. They had returned from Traegon and immediately gone to Council. “The gods are real enough to touch you if you should get in their way, real enough to kill you if you should cross them.”

  Longwell snorted. “I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but from an outsider’s perspective, the idea of gods sounds... ridiculous. Forces, beyond our sight, manipulating people? Ludicrous. They tell similar fairytales in my own lands, but only the peasants believe them.”

  “It’s no myth,” Terian said, causing Longwell to roll his eyes. “The Gods of Arkaria are quite real, not some imaginary figment. Many of them have been seen in the last few hundred years, and interfere in the affairs of mortals to this day.”

  Cyrus leaned forward and looked to Longwell, who was still shaking his head. “Weren’t you with us in the Realm of Darkness last year?”

  “Aye, I was. But I didn’t see a god in that place; just a hell of a lot of darkness, and some creatures that—while extraordinary—don’t require a god to exist any more than any of us do.”

  “Putting aside the question of whether deities exist,” Erith broke in, “why would Mortus want Vara and Curatio dead?”

  “He has good cause to want me dead,” Curatio said, his voice ragged. “I have no idea why he would
want Vara to die.”

  “What did you do to piss off the God of Death?” Terian looked at the healer with barely concealed awe.

  Curatio smiled, a wan, sad curve of his lips. “You are aware that the vast majority of the Elven Kingdom worships Vidara?”

  Terian nodded. “I’ve heard that, yes.”

  “I brought her word into the Kingdom.” He paused. “I evangelized for her thoughout Elvendom until she was the widest accepted deity.”

  “Mortus hates Vidara,” Cyrus said. “I haven’t heard you speak out for Vidara since I’ve been here. Do you not believe in her any longer?”

  Curatio shrugged, and it gave the effect of making him seem even more resigned. “I still believe in her in the same way I believe in anything I can see with my own eyes and feel with my own hands. I just don’t worship her as I once did. All my evangelism was after the War of the Gods, 10,000 years ago, when the beliefs were still spreading...” He hesitated. “...among the disbelievers and those who followed the...old ways.”

  “Supporting the opposing god would be reason enough to make you an enemy, I suppose,” Vaste said. “But again, we come back to the other questions—why Vara and why the other old ones?”

  “Vara is a symbol in the Kingdom, yes?” J’anda looked around the table. “Perhaps it was an attempt to destabilize the elves?”

  “Arydni, the High Priestess of Vidara, told me that Vara was a gift from the Goddess of Life; the only hope since the curse began,” Cyrus said. “If Mortus and Vidara are bitter enemies, locked in perpetual struggle over mortals, then would that make one of the battlegrounds the Elven Kingdom?”

  Alaric cleared his throat. “The biggest, actually. The original elves were near-immortal. Can you imagine any greater affront to the God of Death?”

  “Six thousand years? I imagine he might be offended by a lifespan of such length,” J’anda said.

  “Indeed,” Alaric continued, “the God of Death has long hungered for more souls from the elves than he receives. In addition, his tools are not limited to death, but also the means of fear.”

  “Hand of Fear,” Cyrus murmured. “What greater is there to fear than death?”

  “Quite a bit.” The Ghost placed a hand on the top of his helm, which was resting on the table. “That said, there is something that might cast this entire situation in a different light.”

  “And that is?” Terian spoke after Alaric had paused for a moment.

  “Since none of you but the elves among us have had cause to know of this curse that afflicts their people, you would not have had cause to ask yourself from whence this curse came.” Alaric’s face had resumed its harder resolve; his eye was a gleaming gray.

  “I thought of it for a while last night,” Vaste said, clicking his staff against the ground. “But I assumed that if anyone knew for certain who had done it, we’d have been told.”

  “No one knows.” Vara’s voice was scratchy, a choked whisper, as though she were straining to speak. “It has been the greatest mystery of the last millenium, and the secret in general precluded too much idle searching for the answer outside the Kingdom.”

  “Cursing every male in the Kingdom with infertility?” Erith broke her silence. “What sort of spellcaster could even muster such a spell? Even if there was such a thing, who could cast it?”

  “No one person,” Nyad said. “My father’s counselors suspected an army of dark elven wizards, traveling throughout the Kingdom, over the course of a hundred years—”

  “No,” Alaric said. “Not the dark elves. It was Mortus.”

  “You sound certain.” Vaste eyed the Ghost.

  Alaric’s demeanor left no room for doubt. “I am.”

  “Told you himself, did he?” Terian quipped.

  “No,” Alaric said. “He did not. Yet I know that he did it.”

  “What kind of spell could even do that?” Longwell looked at Alaric. “I don’t buy into this idea of gods—he’d have to be using the same magic as everyone else, so what kind of spell does such a thing?”

  Alaric laughed, but it was hollow and mirthless. “He does not use the same magic as anyone else. The gods have powers of their own, things beyond the knowledge of mortals, and this is one of them.”

  Cyrus stared straight ahead. “Beyond the knowledge of mortals...but are they beyond the use of mortals?” His eyes flicked up to catch Alaric’s gaze, and the Ghost did not look away quickly enough. “Could a mortal use a spell that the gods use, like we would use one of their weapons?”

  Alaric hesitated and looked to Curatio, who for once remained cooler in his disposition than Alaric. The healer looked to the Guildmaster, and in a resigned voice, almost devoid of any emotion but a hint of accusation, said, “You didn’t tell me it was him.”

  Alaric looked to Curatio and something passed between them, something so subtle Cyrus could not quite interpret it. “I was sworn.”

  Curatio nodded, his jaw jutted out, as though he were chewing on the inside of his lip, and turned back to Cyrus. “Yes, but with some qualifications. Some mortals could use some magics that that gods wield, but only the most powerful spellcasters, and the spells would drain them, being somewhat more energy intensive than a simple healing spell, for example.”

  “Heresy,” Ryin Ayend said in a low, hissing voice.

  “If a cure to the curse existed and we found it in the Realm of Death, could you use it?” Cyrus stared down Curatio. “You, who have the ability to burn through more magical energy than any mortal.”

  Curatio did not speak for a long moment, nor did he break from Cyrus’s gaze. “Yes. I likely could.”

  “Assuming such a thing existed,” Ryin Ayend said, his eyes aflame with shock, “what you speak of is heresy, and reason enough for the Leagues to hunt you across Arkaria to the end of your days.”

  “Which would be quite the merry chase,” Curatio said. “I daresay I’d just outrun them until they died, then go on living my life.”

  “Even if you did such a thing, how would this help you and Vara?” Ayend looked from the healer to the shelas’akur. “Mortus sent assassins after you; stealing a spell to heal your people after he cursed them is hardly going to endear you further.”

  “Since he already means to kill us,” Vara said, her response icy, “I don’t see how things could get worse if we further offend him.”

  “Perhaps they wouldn’t for you,” Ryin said with a hint of exasperation, “but they would for us—as in Sanctuary. We have enemies enough without adding the God of Death to our list.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Terian said. “I’m always willing to take on new candidates if they’re worthy, and I think the God of Death would be a pleasant enough challenge.” Terian looked down the table, his long nose seeming to point at Cyrus. “What are you proposing?”

  “Nothing that radical.” Cyrus balled his fists inside their metal shells. “We’ve been on expeditions to Mortus’s domain in the past, while he’s absent. I say we do so again, only this time with the specific purpose of finding something that would help us break the curse inflicted on the elves.” He looked at Vara with a sidelong glance and saw her watching him. “If we save the elven people from this calamity, perhaps it will give the God of Death something else to focus on.”

  “I still have no idea why this so-called God of Death would cast a curse on the elves like this,” Longwell said, shaking his head as if he could make the whole situation disappear. “And I’ve yet to hear any genuine, empirical evidence that convinces me that he is real, so if you want to raid his realm looking for something that doesn’t exist, why not? What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “We could be caught by Mortus and smashed to a juicy pulp,” Vaste said.

  “If we find and use some forbidden magic of the gods, we can be declared heretics and become the enemies of everyone in Arkaria from now to the end of our days.” Ryin Ayend had his hand over his eyes as though massaging a headache away, but his words were clear.

  “I�
�ll take the dishonor of heresy upon myself,” Curatio said. “None of you need fear it, since none of you could use the spell anyway. But I doubt we’d find a cure; what we need is the curse itself, because with it I have a starting point for deriving a cure.”

  “Branching off from accepted, League-taught magics,” Ryin Ayend said. “That’s more heresy. Will it ever cease?”

  “Your Leagues have a great many rules,” Longwell said with a shake of the head. “I say we have nothing to fear in this Realm of Death and if the rewards are anything like what we found in Darkness’s Realm, it will be worth it.”

  “Other than being mashed by a god,” Vaste said, “I’m inclined to agree. We’ve fought through the Realm of Death before. If we can do what every guild before us that’s assaulted a god’s realm has done and find a time that Mortus won’t be home, I vote we do it.”

  Nyad spoke with a gasp. “Yes.” The wizard looked haunted.

  Curatio smiled. “I see no reason why not; the God of Death has never before troubled himself when these things have happened to him in the past.”

  One by one, around the table was a slow series of nods of assent. “This is madness,” Ryin Ayend said with a heavy sigh, “but as I see no more direct harm coming to us than we are already in line for, I vote ‘aye’.”

  Vara was in a daze, but blinked out of it when her turn came to speak. “I do not know if this will help Curatio and I or not, but should we find the spell, and should he be able to cure the curse, it will help my people.” She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “And that is all I have left to care about.”

  Alaric tore his gaze from her. “I would echo the sentiments of others in my words of caution. Gods are not to be trifled with. Were we to achieve this, it might distract the God of Death from our friends; but that is mere hope. He is not known for being a forgiving sort, nor of a mind to relinquish a goal once set. While the Hand of Fear may be destroyed, he has other servants who will take up the fight and follow his commands.” With sorrow he looked to Vara. “I do not know that this will end your torment, but I will give everything in me to attempt to make it so.”