Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Is that an accusation?” Cyrus stared right back. “Because I think you know trouble doesn’t wait for you to show up, Vaste. It pretty much does as it wishes.”

  “And I’m sure you had nothing to do with it.”

  “I had everything to do with it,” Cyrus said. “We killed Lexirea, Levembre, and Nessalima, then assaulted the Realms of Winter and Storms to kill Aurous and Tempestus, and once that was all over with, we found Rotan, Virixia, Enflaga and Ashea waiting in ambush at the portal and killed two of them. Now there are, what, three major gods left? Some other minor ones, perhaps, hiding in the shadows? I can’t recall the lesser pantheon at this point, but they’d be wise to hide behind Bellarum’s skirt.”

  “You really did it, didn’t you?” Vaste murmured, almost low enough for it to be lost in the crowd noise.

  “I wasn’t left with much choice,” Cyrus said defiantly. “Lexirea, Levembre, and Nessalima attacked Pharesia, and I’d have been damned if I was going to stand by and let them raze the city to the ground, Vaste.”

  “You had a choice,” Vaste said quietly. “You could have—”

  “What?” Cyrus asked, waiting for the attack. “Stand idly by and hope they stopped there?”

  “No,” Vaste said, “we’re talking about what you could have done, not what most men could and would have. You … you could have used the opportunity to throw yourself against the gates of the Realm of War.” He lowered his voice. “But you didn’t. You did the right thing. And … I’m sorry I missed it. If you’ll have me, I won’t leave again until this is finished.”

  Cyrus felt a strange sense of relief. “Of course we’ll have you, are you mad?” He lowered his eyes to stare at the well-trammeled ground in the dusty square. “But you might not want to come. We lost Fortin, Martaina … Grinnd …”

  “I don’t expect that’ll be the last we lose,” Vaste said quietly. “Not by a wide margin, I’m afraid.” He looked up. “But not afraid enough to stop me from coming with you.” He looked over Cyrus’s shoulder at Quinneria. “I am pleased to see you again, Sorceress.”

  “And you as well, Vaste,” Quinneria said. “Which I am sure you know, coming from me, is a very strange sentiment.”

  “Oh, yes, hah hah,” Vaste said, “because you killed some trolls a bunch of years ago, very funny.”

  “Where have you been?” Quinneria asked.

  Vaste’s expression softened, his mouth opening slightly to reveal his large lower canines almost all the way to the gums. “I … you’ll see, but … later.” He looked over the crowd. “What … what do we do now?”

  “Help as we can,” Cyrus said, looking at the weary masses around them, some seemingly bereft of all hope, and a few settled on the ground, faces buried from the light. “Lick our wounds. Mourn and rest. And soon … we’ll need to make ready again.”

  “There might be a couple of things I can do to help with that, when the time comes,” Vaste said, already conjuring bread, the spell-light gleaming in his hands.

  “I certainly hope so,” Cyrus said, wondering if he should bother making bread of his own or simply leave it in the hands of those more competent than him. Then he looked at the throng, and started to cast the spell again, for there were so many in need. “Because we’re going to need all the help we can get.”

  50.

  Alaric

  The day I first visited Chavoron’s home was a day I will forever remember as one of the most significant of my life.

  Though I didn’t know it at the time, obviously.

  It was a thing long planned, and it coincided with one of the Tempestus’s—the minister who held in check the natural storms—allowed rainfalls upon Sennshann, the balcony doors drawn carefully to and latched against the hammering rains. I stood and watched in amazement, having almost forgotten the sound of the tapping fall of water upon glass and stone. I could smell it, even inside, that scent of rain evaporating, of renewing the world around me, and noted how it muted the noise of the city.

  I stared out into the pouring sky as I waited, part of me wanting to step out into the storm so that I could feel it on my skin, soaking my tunic all the way through with that damp, renewing wetness.

  “You would be struck by lightning and I would have to resurrect you,” Chavoron said from behind me, bustling about as he packed a bag for our trip. I thought it beyond curious that he was taking things with him, but it seemed he had mostly filled the bag with his books, which I had noted as I passed on my way to the windows to stare out at the rain. Did he not have books at his estate, wherever it was? “Which I have no time for, today, so please kindly stay inside.”

  “I wasn’t planning to …” I let my voice trail off as I saw Chavoron smile. He tended to do that, from time to time, offer a very dry goad, as though he needed to amuse himself in order to pass the moments when his mind was engaged in dull matters. “When are we leaving?”

  He looked up at me, cinching his bag closed. It had straps upon it so that it could be borne on the shoulders, and a leather noose that closed it at the top like a sack. It was one of the stranger things I’d seen in the Protanian Empire, and very unlike the bags that Luukessians carried to war. “Right now, if you find yourself able to pull your nose away from the rainy day outside.”

  “Are we taking a carriage?” I asked, already planning ahead in case I had to run through the downpour.

  “No,” Chavoron said with a faint smile. “And where we are going, it is not raining.”

  “Is that so?” I asked, puzzling slightly. “Then it’s a magical journey?”

  “It is,” Chavoron said, hefting his bag on one shoulder. It looked heavy and he grimaced before casting a spell on it, some version of Falcon’s Essence, I would guess, that lightened the load and allowed him to carry it easily. “Step closer, please.” I trudged across the tower toward him, suddenly cautious. He gave me a careful look, sizing me up. “Have you traveled by teleportation before?”

  “When I first came to Sennshann,” I said. “In the back of the wagon, we came from some place that had a red sunset—”

  “The Mortus’s realm,” he said, nodding.

  “There was … a construction scaffolding there,” I said. “Like they were building a tower there of the kind you see here—”

  “It’s not like these towers at all,” Chavoron said with obvious distaste. I sensed there was perhaps more that he was not saying.

  “Where was that?” I asked, and he stared at me quizzically. “The Mortus’s realm? North of here?”

  Chavoron let out a light laugh. “I can see why you would think that, since you were taken from the north of your land and know that we are directly west of your kingdom, but … no. The Mortus’s realm is exactly that—a realm of its own, not connected to our own save by the bridge that is our magic.”

  “I …” I squinted at him, trying to make sense of what he’d just said, for there was a pittance of understanding in my mind. “I don’t … don’t see …”

  “Come with me,” Chavoron said, and beckoned me forward. I stepped closer, and he closed his eyes for a brief moment as his fingers began to glow a brilliant green. I watched the power of the spell grow as the intensity of the light flared, and then it burst like a shattered glass, twinkles of light blinding me as it spread.

  I felt a twisting, jerking sensation, painless but strange, and suddenly my feet, weightless and without feeling, pressed against the ground once more. I stumbled as the light faded, leaving spots in my vision.

  The walls of the tower were gone, replaced by a bright blue sky and a glowing yellow sun overhead. I was in fields of green as bright as the spell that carried us here. They swept toward an unbroken horizon, save for just ahead of us, where a dirt path cut through the fields up to the gates of a short wall. Behind it, I could see a mammoth building, towers jutting up at each of the four corners and the tallest rising out of the middle of it. Immense wooden double doors visible through the gates stood tantalizingly open, as though inviting me
to come inside.

  “This …” Chavoron said, “… is my sanctuary.”

  I looked around the green, sprawling fields and blue skies, and saw behind me an ovoid of stone with Protanian words inscribed upon its edges. When I looked back upon Chavoron’s home in the near distance, he was already walking toward it, as though drawn, inescapably, to those open doors.

  “Where are we?” I asked, hurrying after him, my tunic catching a pleasant, warm breeze. The sun kissed my skin, and I felt the chill that had settled as I stared out at the rain in Sennshann fade as though it had never existed.

  “I told you,” he said, not looking back, his attention utterly consumed by getting to his destination, “my sanctuary.” He stopped his walk, looking over the fields the way I had just done, and I heard him take a deep breath. “This place … so far removed from the tower and all its problems. When I stand in these fields, when I look out from the top of that tower,” he pointed up to the central stone tower that rose out of the main structure, “I can feel my pulse slow. The worries of my day, of my work … I can leave them all behind me in the city in a way that I couldn’t if I made this place my home. This is my refuge.” And he started forward again.

  “But … where is it?” I asked, falling into line with him.

  “Where almost no one can find me,” Chavoron said with a smile, and he lapsed into silence as we walked toward the open gates.

  I trailed in his wake and could almost feel the sense of calm that settled over him. He was a ponderous man, thinking constantly, slow to move and act, but here he seemed different. There was a crispness to his walk, a liveliness to his step that suggested he had shed some weight off his shoulders simply in coming here. His eyes were clear and taking it all in, from the verdant grasses springing up to the horizon and above to the cerulean skies, unmarred by a single cloud.

  I could feel the sense of peace in this place like it was tangible, something I couldn’t recall feeling even in Enrant Monge. As we strode under the gates, the sun disappeared above us for a moment and I looked up, afraid it might disappear forever. When it came back as we stepped under the stone works, I felt a sense of relief that I couldn’t explain logically but still knew in my heart had reason.

  “You will find almost everything you need here,” Chavoron said with a glowing pride. “I built this place myself.”

  “You—how?” I asked, taking in the sweeping scope of the architecture. Not even counting the towers, which stretched hundreds of feet into the air, the main building was tall and vast, and looked to be at least several floors high. There was a stained-glass window above the mighty doors that shone with many colors, all sparkling in the day’s light.

  “With magic of course,” Chavoron said, that sense of peaceful satisfaction permeating him. “Not unlike what the Mortus has done with his new arms, I simply used magic to … transform, to change some of what already existed into something new, into what I needed it to be to create this place.” He took it all in as though seeing it for the first time, appraising it. “You see, the basics you’ve learned—spells, accessed through word and mental discipline—that is but the first stage of magic, which all our people can use. But those of us in the cabinet … we have long pioneered other avenues of magic, creating and doing things beyond the conventional spellcraft. Some of our people do the same, but they lack the … the strength. Whether it is the practice, the desire, the will … I don’t know. They lack something, and so only a few push farther.”

  “And … those people are the ones that have ended up in your cabinet?” I asked. “By … coincidence?”

  Chavoron frowned at me, but in an amused way. “Certainly not. They are pre-eminent; is it not natural that they would be selected to rule?”

  I tried to reconcile what he was saying with all I’d seen thus far. He’d certainly not hesitated to let me know that he thought heredity alone was a silly reason for me to rule—though he hadn’t come out and said it that way. I hadn’t asked myself yet how it was that all those cabinet members had ascended to their places if not through inheritance. It wasn’t as though Jena had ever suggested she was in line to become the Yartraak when her father passed from the position for whatever reason.

  “Then they are the best at magic?” I asked.

  “Indeed,” Chavoron said. “Though you have not met the foremost among them yet, the governors.”

  “Governors of … what?” I asked.

  “There are places,” Chavoron said, “beyond the world you see. Realms. Like Mortus’s domain, like this place—” he waved a hand at his sanctuary.

  “This is … not in the world?” I struggled with this idea; I was so far from home, but I understood the idea that if I simply walked east from Sennshann, I would reach the sea that bordered the western coast of Luukessia, and that somewhere, over that land, lay Enrant Monge.

  The idea of some disconnected world … it made no sense to my mind.

  “No, we are quite out of the world at the moment,” Chavoron said with a faint smile. “Come with me, I will show you.” And he beckoned me inside.

  I followed him into a sweeping hall with a massive staircase up one side that led to a balcony. Hearths burned and crackled to my right, all the way to a spiraling staircase that led up the central tower. To my left I saw a lounging area with another crackling fireplace and more different types of chairs than ever I’d seen before. Food lay out on tables, casks sat there opened, the heady smell of mead, wine, and beer wafting to me as I stood in the entry door.

  I followed Chavoron ahead, toward the spiraling staircase that led up the tower. To my left, through double doors, I passed a dining area. It was small in scale, with one long table. There was food spread here—succulent boar on a spit, the legs of chickens with a little blackening on the skin, dishes of sprouts and greenery dressed with sauces—enough for a feast, and not another person in sight to eat it.

  I started to comment on all this, my stomach growling as I realized I was hungry, but Chavoron simply said, “Come along,” and we ascended.

  We climbed to the top of the tower, passing empty floors, quiet spaces that left me wondering why this place was so grand and yet so deserted. But I stifled my questions and followed Chavoron, hoping that my answers would come in time.

  There were so many windows that the sunlight found us easily, warming me during the climb. At last we reached the top room of the tower, and he opened the door with a slow squeak. Here I could smell something like oil in metallic hinges, but sweeter.

  I don’t know what I expected at the top of the tower, but it certainly wasn’t what I found.

  Chavoron stepped into a room so sprawling I knew something magical had happened somewhere along the way. Where there should have been a tower room akin to his space back in Sennshann, instead was an expansive, palatial pavilion. It was circular, with columns holding up a roof inlaid with gold. It was at least five times the size of the tower at the Citadel, and the sight of it took my breath away.

  There were fountains that sprayed gently, carefully cultivated trees and bushes, brightly colored, mouth-watering fruits hanging from branches, and more tables spilling over with food. And at the center of it all, in a bathing pool, I saw woman with dark blue skin swimming nude as the sound of water tinkled in the air.

  “Caraleen,” Chavoron called to the woman, and I felt a flash of embarrassment for looking, “we’re here.”

  Caraleen turned in the pool, her hair slicked back and wet, a smile obvious on her face. “Hello, Father,” she called, and then, looking to me, with—I thought—a little more warmth, “Alaric.”

  “Caraleen,” I said, strangely abashed. Something I had noted from my interactions with the Protanians was that they had no shame associated with nudity, unlike my people. It made sleeping in the corner of Chavoron’s quarters uncomfortable.

  “I am going to show Alaric a few things,” he said, leading me past the pool toward a small structure that seemed like a stone building in the middle of the f
ar end of the room. “Have you eaten yet?”

  “No,” she said, treading water. It looked … deep. And, if my eyes were not terribly deceived, a little chilly. “I’ll wait for you.”

  “Very good.” Chavoron held the door open for me, something he did often, and so different from what I would have expected for a man of his rank. Servants leapt to open the door for my father; Chavoron hurried to open the door for others. “Come along,” he said with a smile, and we stepped into a darkened room.

  If I hadn’t been prepared for the expansive tower room, what I found in the small building when the torches lit around me was even more bizarre. It wasn’t just that the room was far, far too big for the little building; it was also warmer inside than it had been in the sunlit, garden-esque tower room we’d just left.

  Along with the torches that lit as if by magic, braziers also flared up in the four corners of the room. Here I found myself in a space that was cluttered with … things, as though it was an archive and a storage room and study, all wrapped into one.

  At the far end of the room was a desk backed with bookshelves. I could see windowed doors beyond, with sun shining from behind curtains that remained closed. Chavoron made a gesture with his hand and they swept back, sunlight abetting the torchlight in giving me a full accounting of what waited within this place.

  There was something like a blacksmith’s bellows in one corner of the room, a burbling waterfall that came right out of the wall in another, spreading out into a shallow pond that covered about thirty feet—yet tiny in relation to the rest of the room and nearly lost in its own corner. There were also bookshelves, far, far more than the ones I had seen below, and filled to capacity with more volumes than I could count in a lifetime. Somehow I suspected Chavoron knew every book on every shelf.

  “This is my little retreat,” Chavoron said, leading me around some of the clutter. I saw tables piled with manuscripts that had been scrawled upon, maps of something that looked like ovoids with strange shapes written upon their surfaces, names scrawled upon each in the Protanian script. “Here I do my research, my thinking, my … tinkering.” He gestured toward the corner with the smithing materials, and I noticed other equipment there that defied any explanations I might have conjured for their purpose.