Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  He led me over to the desk, spinning the chair with a squeak, as though it were somehow detached, floating above the floor. I peered over at it, trying to figure out what he’d just done. The top of the chair seemed to be mounted to a bottom by a central peg that allowed it to swivel. My mouth fell open as I stared; I had not seen anything like that before, a chair that could spin without moving its legs.

  “Sit, sit,” he said, pointing me to one of the more traditional seats on the other side of his desk. I sat, sinking into the padding and reflecting that cushioned chairs was an idea whose time needed to come, and swiftly, to Luukessia. My father’s throne was a hard and uncomfortable thing, exacting a torturous price upon me on the rare and brief occasions I’d sat in it.

  “Well,” Chavoron said after I’d settled in, once I’d had a chance to appreciate the padding, his smile telling me he knew the answer he was going to get before even asking the question, “what do you think of my home?”

  “It’s … astounding,” I said, answering honestly. “This is like something out of dreams.”

  He smiled magnanimously, and his desk squeaked as he slid out a drawer. He rifled around in it, hand out of sight, and came up with a medallion of beautiful brass, Protanian lettering scrawled in a spiral out from its center. It had a chain fixed at the top of the circle. Chavoron placed it around his neck and let it rest there, the strangest adornment I’d ever seen and the only occasion thus far in our association that I’d seen him wear any sort of jewelry.

  “What … is that?” I asked, fixed and curious about the medallion.

  “This?” he pointed at the writing. “It is … a long story. Another time, perhaps.” He shifted his attention away, sweeping his gaze toward the corner with the smithing supplies, and then he leapt to his feet. “I must show you this, though.” And he was moving again, threatening to leave me behind once more, invigorated in a way I’d never seen him in Sennshann.

  I followed him hurriedly, cutting a corner next to an ornate wooden chest and rattling it as I hit it with my knee. I swore, loudly, in my native tongue, and Chavoron paused to look back, halting his progress and coming back to me as I clutched at my wounded knee.

  “Heal yourself,” he said, ribbing me as though I were a fool, and I cleared my mind enough to remember the incantation for the healing spell. The pain in my leg subsided, and I glanced down to look at what I’d hit and, like so many other things in this place, found myself fascinated.

  I’d clipped a wooden, rectangular chest with a fitted lid. It wasn’t hinged like the chests we had in Luukessia, nor was it the bare and barely smoothed wood, function over form, that one might have expected to see in Enrant Monge. No, this was beautifully carved, with sides that were as carefully sanded as if they’d been chiseled from marble, and with more Protanian letters carved into the sides. The lid was ajar, slightly off-angle for how it was supposed to sit when closed, and a gap appeared at two of the corners. I peered inside; a glowing white light shone out at me, as though someone had contained a sun inside. It gleamed at me, shining, sparkling, and I felt suddenly very warm, curiously so, and a bit like I had the last time I’d been in bed with Jena.

  “Ahem,” Chavoron said, and he gently pushed the lid closed. It made a clunking noise as it slid back into place. “Careful,” he said when I looked up at him, that warm feeling fading away.

  “What …” I looked back down at the wooden object. I longed to open it up again, to stare into that light and feel it caress my face. “What was that?”

  “It is an ark,” Chavoron said simply, almost playfully.

  “But … what was inside it?” I stared at the wooden sides, as though they might open and reveal that light and warmth once more.

  “Hope,” Chavoron said, his fingers playing with the medallion, tracing the lettering on its surface.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Of course not,” Chavoron said, leading me away once more. “You’re a child of privilege who spent most of his life spoiled and bored. What need did you have of hope? Your destiny was assured. Come over here,” he said, urging me to follow him once more.

  I followed him to the smithing supplies, so different from the ones I’d seen smiths in Luukessia use, and yet similar enough that I recognized them for what they were. He had a table laid out with a few things, most of them appearing to have been abandoned projects.

  There was, however, one object in the middle that appeared to be finished.

  It was a sword, made of a metal that gleamed darkly under the combined torch and daylight, with a curve like a fat man’s belly near the tip of the blade. It swept down toward the guard, where a spiraling metalwork gave it some flair before fading to the wooden grip, with hints of black leather wrapping the base.

  “Do you like it?” he asked. “I forged it myself from some of the Yartaak’s finest ore, sculpted and hammered it into perfect shape with magic and time, given power by enchantments I worked into the metal, some ideas I played with on how it could … aid its user.” He demurred, his pride fading for a moment. “I feel some shame in making it, of course, given that we Protanians do not believe in taking up arms against one another, but laboring to produce an exquisite weapon and then combining them with your own magic is something of a fad among our elite at the moment.” He blushed, skin going darker, as though the very suggestion he would follow the passions of the crowd was anathema to him. “We pour our lives into these things. I have always been an aficionado of history, and this … this is an object of art for me, not a weapon to be used.” There was a glimmer of something in his eyes—regret, I thought—that suggested he did not fully believe that.

  I stared at it, once more admiring another treasured possession of Chavoron’s and wishing it were mine. “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  “Pick it up,” he said, “try it out.”

  I did. The balance was astounding; Chavoron seeming to slow before me. The sword swung lighter, easier and yet stronger than any sword I’d held in Luukessia or Sennshann. It was effortless, smooth. I suspected it would part flesh from bone as easily as it cut through the air.

  I placed it back upon the table with regret, wishing I could strap it to my belt when I returned to Luukessia, and—secretly, of course—harboring the thought that if possible, I would. “It’s very impressive,” I said. “Does it have a name?”

  Chavoron smiled. “All great swords have names, don’t they? This one is no exception.” He looked down on it with pride. “In your language we would call it ‘The Saber of the Righteous.’” He looked up at me. “But it mine, it’s so much simpler.

  “It is called Rodanthar.”

  51.

  Cyrus

  “I need to talk to you … about hope.”

  Cyrus felt a smile tickle at the corner of his mouth at the sound of the desert man’s smooth voice washing over him. He was standing above the chaos of the day, on a rooftop looking down on the settling crowds in the square. Things were calmer now, order restored, the people below less frenzied now with their full bellies, but still Cyrus watched. Nowhere else to go … and naturally this happens. “Of course you do, Scuddar,” he said, not looking over his shoulder.

  Sundown was coming, Cyrus could feel it. The air was heavy and hot, the sound of the fountain in the square urging him to come down and bathe himself in it, as so many others were presently. Its normally clear coloring had long ago turned brown from the day’s washings. Instead Cyrus conjured water in a skin to his hand and pulled his helm off, dumping it onto his head. When he finished, the water trickling down his whiskered cheeks, he turned to the desert man, still wrapped up in his robes and said, “What about it?”

  Scuddar shimmied to the edge of the roof, lacking a Falcon’s Essence spell of his own. Cyrus looked around, trying to figure out how the desert man had gotten to the top of the building, and finally assumed that he had simply scaled the wall. Scuddar sat next to him, his feet dangling over the edge. Cyrus stared at his hard leather bo
ots for a moment, dusty as though he’d come right out of the Inculta desert just now, and waited for Scuddar to speak.

  When he did, it came in his deep, rich voice. “I sense that you have lost hope.”

  Cyrus couldn’t keep back the mirthless chuckle. “Yes. Yes, I think I have, you’re right.”

  “It is a natural thing,” Scuddar began, and Cyrus listened, because the desert man so rarely sought his ear or his counsel, and even more rarely still offered advice. Everyone else, I’m sick of hearing from. But Scuddar … well … I’ll humor him for a few minutes before I politely shut him down, since I’ve heard all this before. “…in moments of loss. Losing hope is easy when we lose our loved ones—we need do nothing, it simply goes with them.”

  “True enough,” Cyrus agreed, swinging his own dark boots a little impatiently off the edge of the roof.

  “But there is always hope,” Scuddar said sagely.

  “From the ark, right?” Cyrus asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Scuddar said.

  Cyrus paused, letting that thought hang in the air. “When you told me that story on the shores of Luukessia … as we were on the last retreat …” He stared out over the milling crowd and saw people—men and women and children—sleeping in the middle of the hubbub. No homes, lost family members. Nowhere else to go …

  No Sanctuary.

  “Yes?” Scuddar prompted him.

  “I, uh … I felt chills, actually,” Cyrus said, remembering. “I was at a point when hope was hard to scrape together given all that we’d seen … all that had happened.”

  “But you found it,” Scuddar said, “on the bridge.”

  “I did.” Cyrus nodded along. “And we lost Alaric, but … we stopped the Scourge.”

  “You lived on,” Scuddar said. “You found better days.”

  So that’s where he’s going with this … “Indeed I did,” Cyrus said quietly.

  “That is the basis of hope,” Scuddar said. “That however bad things have gotten, they will not rest in the bottom of that chasm of desperation forever.”

  “I know where you’re going with this,” Cyrus said, shaking his head, “and no. No, they’re not going to get better again, Scuddar.”

  “They could,” the desert man said, “if you would allow them to.”

  Cyrus opened his mouth to say something in anger, but held it back. “Perhaps,” he said instead. “We have a lot to accomplish right now, you know.”

  “Without doubt,” Scuddar said. “But if you do not face this battle with hope … with a belief in something beyond its end … you will lose this fight.”

  Cyrus scraped his thumb along the side of index finger, the mail screeching at the friction he put upon the metal. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

  “We cannot,” Scuddar said. “For more than your vengeance and your life rest on your actions in these coming days.” The desert man stood, and his red robes whipped past Cyrus as the wind kicked up around them. “Remember that when you think of abandoning hope … for it is not only for yourself that you should keep it.”

  “I wish … it was as easy as … finding that ark that you talked about,” Cyrus said. “I don’t know how it works, whether you … take a breath of the dust within or dive into the damned thing … whatever the case, I wish it was that easy, finding this hope you’re talking about.” He looked up at Scuddar and saw that the man’s balaclava was down, his face on full display, a rare thing indeed. “I will try, for the sake of the others. But I don’t know that you’re right, that it will matter.” He looked ahead again, at the square and all it contained. “We have so much to do. This fight … and everything leading up to it … it’s a battle, a war. I’m a warrior. Some would say the best in Arkaria.” He paused, wishing he could hear Vara scoff at his boast. “This is what I’ve trained for almost all my life. I will keep my mind on the task at hand, and we’ll finish off Bellarum and the last of the gods just the same as we killed the rest of the pantheon.” He smiled with thin malice. “They’ll die just like the rest.”

  “The truth you learned on that bridge,” Scuddar said, “in that fight, it is one that is easily lost when one loses hope. A man will fight harder for what he believes in than anything else.”

  “I believe in protecting these people,” Cyrus said. “I would have given my life for them last night in any of those fights.” He felt a twinge in his chest when he thought of Martaina and Fortin, and even, to a lesser extent, Grinnd. “I have something worth fighting for. Them.” He pointed at the crowd, then slowly brought his finger around to Scuddar. “And all of you. The ones who are left with me.”

  “But without hope—”

  “I have hope,” Cyrus said, staring up at him. “Hope for all of you. Hope for your futures, and a belief …” he swallowed hard, “… that things will get better in this land if we can just cast off the yoke of these gods. Once they’re gone … maybe the rest of you can find some peace, some happiness.”

  “And you keep none of that for yourself?”

  “That’s not a question I can answer right now,” Cyrus said after a moment of thought. “It would be quite enough for me to see the rest of you survive this fight … to see you all prosper and live out the rest of your lives in peace.”

  “Then it seems to me,” Scuddar said, raising the balaclava back to cloak the bottom of his face, his dark beard disappearing in the rich cloth, “you have a reason to fight, and a reason to die. But you lack a reason to live … and that will cost you in your darkest moments of battle. It may cost you everything. A future you don’t even know you could have.”

  Cyrus felt a sense of tightness in his throat. Not nausea, but a bile of worry, of sorrow. “I don’t need a future right now,” he said, drawing to his feet. “I need to live in the present—in these moments, these days—and to finish the task at hand. Perhaps you’re right, and once it’s all over I’ll find that future you hope for me.”

  “Perhaps,” Scuddar said, turning to walk away, across the rooftop, “and perhaps not.”

  Cyrus watched him go, and a final thought occurred. Perhaps not, indeed.

  Because, really, once this is all over … and the people are safe … then my task is done.

  And then … why would it matter if Cyrus Davidon still lived?

  52.

  Alaric

  For dinner that evening, we walked down to the base of the tower, and Chavoron invited me into the dining hall, full of grand splendor like the rest of his sanctuary. The room was long and narrow, and the ceiling was filled with arching buttresses of the sort I’d seen only in sketches of a proposed temple of ancestors that some mad architect had tried to convince my father to build. Hearths glowed along either side of the room, and the table was heavy with food, still fresh as if it had been made minutes ago, a spread that would have put the grandest feast at Enrant Monge to shame.

  Still somewhat full from our earlier luncheon on the top floor of the tower, I scooted myself in at the table, Caraleen across from me and Chavoron taking his place at the end. Chavoron looked as pleased as I’d ever seen him, his chest swelling, as though he were proud just to be here with the two of us. I looked around, but there were no servants in sight, no slaves, and when he started to reach for the platters to fill his own, I realized that truly, we were alone here in this place, the three of us.

  “Do you like our home, Alaric?” Caraleen asked me, smiling quietly as she started to scoop greens upon her plate with a pair of steel tongs.

  “I find it magnificent in every way,” I said honestly, using a knife to cut a thick slice of smoked beef from a rib. I popped a little morsel in my mouth as I shaved it, the meat so tender it fell apart in contact with the blade. It was succulent, moist, and whatever combination of spices had been used, I found it so delicious that I closed my eyes to savor it better. “Every way.”

  Chavoron chuckled at the end of the table, barely audible over the clatter of plates as he moved things around. When I opened my eyes I found the
platters hovering, moving along slowly down the table. Caraleen stopped one by taking it out of the air and helping herself to what she wanted from it. I watched her and then did the same, taking a roasted chicken leg for my own crowded plate.

  “When first we came here,” Caraleen said, splitting her attention between me and the foods she was capturing as they floated by, “I wasn’t sure how I would like living in the isolation. But everything is a simple spell away, and so I suppose I found it even more comfortable and pleasant than I’d anticipated.”

  “I was worried about you,” Chavoron said, settling in with his knife and fork, working on a piece of what looked like pork sausage, slicing it neatly. “Such a city flower, I feared you would be lost and alone in this place. But you found your interests, your garden,” he nodded at the wall behind him, “and of course you’re in Sennshann almost every day anyway.”

  “It is very convenient,” she said, smiling as she took a bite of lettuce. She chewed daintily, and her small throat worked with the effort of swallowing even so insignificant a morsel. “And the peace … I only find myself occasionally missing the hum of Sennshann, and then, even in the middle of the night, I simply go. Those emergency journeys are growing less and less necessary as time goes by, though.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked, chewing another bite of delicious chicken seasoned with a wonderful salt that made my tongue cry out for more. A ham drifted by with a shining glaze upon it and pieces of some yellow fruit pinned to its sides, and I caught an intoxicating whiff of honey from it.

  “Several years,” Caraleen said, and here her smile faltered a bit. “When did you discover this realm, father?”