“It is, indeed,” my father said. He could have added more; there was certainly no shortage of opportunities for him to get in a jab, but his expression was weary, as though pronouncing this sentence upon me gave him no satisfaction. Which was quite fine, as Stepan obviously derived enough for both of them. “You’ll need to leave immediately.”
“But the ceremony of my majority!” I raised my hand with the parchment in it, brandishing my words before him as though they were anything other than the hollow, stupid boasts of a child so certain he knew everything when he knew nothing at all.
“Regrettable,” my father said, and he sounded as if he truly did regret it, “but it will have to wait until you return. You will depart on the morrow, and take with you the first army, under the command of—”
“This is a plot!” I shouted. I hated him then; hated his passive, pensive way of expressing himself, hated his eyes, so filled with weariness at the sight of me. I was certain that he was filled with a quiet loathing for me, but there was nothing quiet about the hostility I had for him. “You mean to keep me away so that my words get buried in—”
“You should consider while you’re away in the service of this kingdom,” my father said, interrupting me, “exactly what sort of a kingdom you want to rule.”
“I want one that listens and knows its place—”
“At your feet?” There was a quiet disappointment in how he said it. “Perhaps that’s how it will be. But before you bring this kingdom to your feet—and, as it would require, to its knees—I think you should see more of it. You should walk among the people, travel with the army, see the land you will rule.”
“I won’t change my mind,” I said. “I know what I want.”
“Do you?” he asked, blinking, an ocean of hurt that I didn’t recognize at the time threatening to flow from his eyes. “Do you really?”
“Yes,” I said, hissing. “History will remember me for all its days as the greatest King of Luukessia there ever was. I will be legend to our people for generations to come. And you,” I said in disgust, “the only thing they’ll remember you kindly for is being my father, and only then because I can’t afford to have the truth about your weakness infect my legacy.”
My father stared at me, silent, until he nodded at last. “Perhaps that is true. I consider it entirely possible that your legend will long outlive my own, for I am not a king who has pushed great change upon these lands, or presided over the sort of upheaval that would mark me for a place among our most-remembered ancestors. My legacy is in the peace that we’ve seen during my days. Perhaps they won’t remember me at all, except as your father. But I am content with that, knowing that while I lived, our people knew comfort and freedom from the worry of war in a way that our land seldom has.”
With that, my father looked at Stepan. “Would you kindly escort my son into the north with the army, and see him safely back to me again?”
Stepan hesitated only a second. I figured at the time that it was the thought of traveling all that distance at my side that gave him pause, brief as it was. “I will do everything in my power to see him to the reaches of this land and back to your court again, my liege, down to giving my own life in this cause.” He snapped into a quick, low bow, and started down the steps from the throne toward me, determination on his swarthy face. “Come along, then, Lord Ulric. We must prepare for our journey with the army.”
I kept looking up at my father as he stared down at me, oceans of regret etched into the lines of his old face. “You won’t stop me, you know,” I said, balling up the parchment and listening to it crackle in my fist.
“Of course not,” my father said. “No true King of Luukessia would stop simply because of a task set before them. I hope you will complete it in good order and—”
I balled up the parchment and threw it at him as Stepan gasped at my impertinence. It sailed through the air and came down before his feet. He stared down at the rumpled parchment and then looked back up at me. “You intend to leave behind your words?”
“I don’t need them,” I hissed as Stepan laid a hand on my upper arm. I snapped him at the wrist with my other hand, breaking his grasp. “I will remember them—always.” I shot Stepan a fiery look, one that told him I was capable of my own locomotion, and then I turned to leave the throne room of Enrant Monge for the last time.
And even to this day, and after all this time, I have not forgotten those words, nor a moment of the exchange with my father. It was the last time I saw him alive.
3.
Cyrus
The fading of the teleportation spell’s light left Cyrus nearly blind in the infinite dark of the Plains of Perdamun. No stars shown through the ebony blanket of clouds above. There wasn’t so much as a watch fire where Sanctuary normally stood, and the blackness caused something to sink within him like a sudden weight applied to one end of an empty scale.
“That doesn’t bode well,” Vaste said quietly as Cyrus started to stalk off into the darkness. He struck out south by memory, breaking into a run without conscious thought. “And now he’s charging blindly right into probable death.”
An Eagle Eye spell flared bright in Cyrus’s eyes, lighting the empty plains before him, casting each blade of the tall grass in sudden clarity. They moved with an eastern wind, and Cyrus thought he smelled something like death carried upon it, as though the smell of the scourge were filtering over the sea of Carmas and across the intervening lands, all the way to him.
He ran, feeling the air surge into his helm with each heavy step. He had not the presence of mind to consider casting the Falcon’s Essence to ease his passage. Instead he ran heedlessly over the uneven ground, thundering toward the dark spot in the plains ahead, which even his spell-enhanced eyes could not penetrate. He stared into the night as though the towers of Sanctuary would ease out of the darkness, like an old friend stepping out of the shadows.
“No,” Cyrus said, a dull, gnawing pain rising within him. He felt a Falcon’s Essence spell swirl over him unasked, and stepped into the air, rising with each charging footfall. He was a hundred feet up within seconds, and then he stopped, his pace slowing with each faltering stride until he came to a halt, looking down at the empty plain.
“Good gods,” Vaste said, coming up next to him and staring numbly. “It’s …”
Cyrus stared down at the place where Sanctuary had stood. There was no sign of walls, nor towers, nor stone nor graveyard. None of the things that had made it home remained; all that was left to show it had ever been there was a gaping hole in the earth that extended for what looked like a mile. It was nothing more than a pit, like a crater Cyrus had once seen where a rock had fallen out of the sky, driving the earth to retreat upon itself from the impact. He peered into it, as though there might be some remainder hidden in its darkness; she was in there, maybe, trapped at the bottom, waiting to climb out—
“She’s not in there, Cyrus,” Quinneria said quietly from behind him. “There is nothing in that crater, not even—”
Cyrus cut her off. “You were wrong, Vaste,” he said, looking away from the canyon carved into the middle of the grassy plain. The troll’s head swung around to look at him. “There are no good gods.”
“What?” Vaste asked, sounding very much like he was a fair distance off. “Oh. The … it’s just a phrase,” he said, almost apologetically.
Cyrus stared down at the darkness below them, searching in spite of his mother’s words. He broke into a run again, down this time, surging toward the lip of the crater. She could be down there; they didn’t know. They’d been with him these last hours, hiding in Reikonos while this—this—was happening here—
“Cyrus,” came a soft voice out of the darkness near the edge. Cyrus snapped his head around and saw a flash of white hair as Aisling emerged from beneath a mat of earth, like woven grass pressed flat over her. She sheathed her dagger as she stood, and reached down to grab her grassy hiding place, rolling it up carefully and placing it over her shoulder
before she rose.
Cyrus ignored her, coming to the edge of the hole in the earth and stopping there, staring down into the massive hole. He peered at the rock that had been exposed by the destruction. There was no hint of the walls that had stood here; it was as though a giant hand had simply scooped Sanctuary and everything near it out of the earth. From there, he could almost imagine it being hurled into the sky, landing … where? Cyrus wondered.
“Aisling,” Quinneria said, acknowledging the dark elf as they all came together behind Cyrus. “Have you been here long?”
“A few hours,” she said, softer than Cyrus’s mother. “We were sent to watch, to see who returned.”
“‘We’?” Vaste asked, sounding less pointed about it than he might have normally. All the good humor had left the troll; that much was obvious to Cyrus even in his diminished state.
“J’anda and I,” Aisling said. “But J’anda left when we saw you.”
“Left to go where?” Quinneria asked.
“Saekaj Sovar,” Aisling said, “of course. We were sent here by—”
“Terian,” Cyrus said, not turning back to look at any of them. He was still scanning the darkness below, pondering running down into it, even though he could clearly see every corner of the crater from here. Except for a very slight lip over there, in the distance, at the far side … He raised a hand and murmured something under his breath. A ball of fire the size of a melon burst out of his gauntlet and shot across the sky like a rainbow after a storm, and it hit on the far side of the crater, shedding light on the shadowed nook to reveal—
Nothing. There was nothing there but rock and dirt.
“Cyrus, surely you must see there’s nothing left here,” Vaste said.
“What happened to …” Aisling lowered her voice, as if by doing it he couldn’t hear her, “… Vara?”
“Killed by Bellarum,” Quinneria said.
“She’s not …” Cyrus said, but stopped himself. Cold tingling fingers of night air ran across his skin beneath his armor and made him shudder. “She … can’t be …”
“Damn,” Aisling said.
They stood there in silence as Cyrus’s thoughts ratcheted slowly over, turning like a wagon wheel on a rough road. He’d seen it happen, hadn’t he? Saw Bellarum … saw the killing strike …
And now there was nothing left of Sanctuary but a hole in the ground where the gods themselves had dug it out of the earth, as though somehow it profaned the very ground to leave the wreckage behind.
His sorrow felt like a drowning cup, one destined to be poured down his throat until he would lose his breath to it. It rushed over him, reminding him of the time he’d died in the depths of the Torrid Sea. It was a cold and sickening sort of seawater in his belly, and then it was replaced in a hot instant by something darker, something born of fire and fury.
“I’m going to kill Bellarum,” Cyrus said, and his words were like the kindled ashes of an old fire, stirring to new and sudden life. He felt the thought take root like flames in dry underbrush, the sorrow somewhere beneath, soaked into the ground and dried out instantly by the thought of Bellarum bleeding at Cyrus’s hand. “Like Mortus, like Yartraak. I’m going to kill him and gut him and festoon all Arkaria with his entrails—”
“That’s lovely,” Aisling said.
“That’s mad, I think you mean,” Vaste said.
“I don’t even care,” Cyrus said in a low hiss. “I will tear up the plates of his armor, rip him apart like a pack of wild dogs verging on starvation, peel the flesh off his bones strip by strip, feed his meat to angry animals and—”
“Well, I was hungry until now,” Aisling said.
“I wasn’t,” Vaste said, “and this isn’t helping.”
“Cyrus, you can’t,” Quinneria said, and now she stepped out of the darkness, Philos clutched in her hand.
“I can,” Cyrus said, looking at his mother with that rage burning hot inside, any thought of caution a distant memory. He gave less than a damn what happened now so long as it came with Bellarum suffering agonizing pain. “I will.”
“With what army?” Vaste waved a hand at the crater in front of him. “I mean, even if this place was still standing … with what army? Because the Sanctuary one was more or less gone even before this atrocity—”
“He’s got anger enough he’d do it himself right now,” Aisling said. “Though I doubt he’s able, just by himself.”
“We’re back to madness again, then,” Vaste said.
“I told you before,” Cyrus said, “I don’t care—”
“And I told you before,” Vaste said, letting out a thunderous shout that roared over the plains, “I care about you continuing to live!” He clutched his spear-staff in front of him. “You want to kill yourself by running stupidly at Bellarum’s extended sword? Fine. But first, you will have to deal with me, thumping you on the head until you recover some modicum of reason. It may take several days of thumping you to get it through your skull, but by the gods, I am willing—”
Cyrus batted Vaste’s spear-staff aside and thrust a hand up, snaking his fingers around the troll’s throat and whipping him around until his sandaled feet stood on the edge of the crater’s precipice. Vaste stood there, his eyes wide, arms pinwheeling slightly as he labored for balance, his weapon dropped at the sudden manhandling.
Cyrus bared his teeth at the troll. “Don’t … say … their names!”
“The … gods?” Vaste asked, easing a look over his shoulder and then pressing his lips together as he closed his eyes.
“Yes,” Cyrus said simply.
“Sorry,” Vaste said. “Old habit. Might not be the easiest thing to cure, but—”
“They killed her, Vaste,” Cyrus said, and he took a stumbling step back from the edge, letting go of the troll’s neck. “They did it together. Bellarum and …” Cyrus’s legs folded beneath him as the cold reality of his mother’s warning came rushing in on him, putting out the fires of revenge. “… And whoever else. They killed her, and they destroyed Sanctuary and …” His greaves thumped into the dirt as the shock ran through his whole body. “I don’t even know who else survived.” He stared at the ruined ground. “If anyone else survived.”
“Some did,” came a voice out of the darkness. Terian Lepos came striding out to stand in front of Cyrus, and for a moment, when he saw the armor of Alaric Garaunt, Cyrus felt a flash of hope that died when he remembered that the armor no longer belonged to the Ghost of Sanctuary. “Some of them, like J’anda,” Terian went on, “came to Saekaj. Some went to Emerald Fields.”
“Terian,” Vaste said, nodding at the dark elf. “J’anda.”
“Vaste,” Terian said, nodding his head at her, then to Quinneria. “M’lady.” The Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar stared down at Cyrus for a long moment before greeting him. “I’m sorry, Cyrus.”
“Me too,” Cyrus said, not taking his eyes off the trampled grass before the crater’s edge.
“We should get out of here,” Terian said. “This place … it’s not safe.”
“You think Bellarum is going to take time out of his busy day of reveling in war and destruction to come back here?” Cyrus asked with dark amusement.
“Yes,” Terian said. “I’m fairly certain he will, and I’d rather not be here when he does.”
“Why?” Cyrus asked, a cool breeze running through his armor, chilling his skin.
“Because of you, Cyrus,” Quinneria said. “Because he didn’t get to kill you.”
“Sorry to disappoint him,” Cyrus said.
“He’s got a death wish, doesn’t he?” Terian asked, sounding strangely muted.
“It seems like it’s his only intention at the moment, yes,” Vaste said.
“The Guildmaster and General of Sanctuary driven to end his life by running headlong into the God of War?” Aisling snorted. “That’ll go well.”
“I’m not the Guildmaster of Sanctuary anymore,” Cyrus said. “I’m the General of nothing. Guildmaster of nothing.
” There was a feral savagery in the way he spat the words. He was torn free of all mooring, anything holding him to this life, and free to go wherever he chose—even to certain death.
“Cyrus,” Quinneria said, coming closer to his ear, whispering. “Listen to me now, for I have been where you sit. When your father died, I went through everything you are feeling right now. I know your rage, for it was the same anger I felt when Rusyl was killed. I knew the desire to bleed my life’s blood in vengeance, not caring so long as it watered the graves of my foes. But take heed, listen to my words: killing Bellarum is not as easy as massacring an army of trolls.”
“Eep,” Vaste said.
“I can offer you counsel,” Quinneria said softly. “I can help you bring him low. I want to. I want to help you see his end—but not your own. Don’t be overtaken by hot vengeance. Don’t let it burn you to ashes with nothing to show for it. If you want to beat the God of War, all the gods—you need to use your cold reason. Be the General again, and together we’ll formulate a plan to do what you’ve done to all your foes.”
“Dare I ask, rhetorically, what you mean when you say, ‘what he’s done to all his foes’?” Vaste asked.
“She means how he’s brought them to their knees,” Aisling said. “The Dragonlord, the goblins—”
“Yes, I was there, I don’t think we need to sing his victories in glorious song,” Vaste said. “And while I am well aware of the two gods already on that list, this is … I mean … I saw with my own eyes … Ashea of Water, Enflaga of Fire, Nessalima, Tempestus, Aurous—and almost all the others, too, they were here when Bellarum destroyed Sanctuary. They were involved, and that means—”
“Bellarum has united the pantheon, yes,” Quinneria said. “United them against Cyrus and Sanctuary, at least.”
“There is no Sanctuary,” Cyrus said, but no one paid him any heed.
“How do you go against that many gods at once?” Terian asked, sounding as though he were musing it over.
“How did you go against the Human Confederation, the Elven Kingdom, Goliath—” Quinneria began.
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