“I’ve been … underground for the last few months,” I said, taking his hand. He shook mine firmly, and I detected that the warmth of his welcome was not matched by the others, at least not so quickly. “I apologize for not coming sooner, but events have spiraled out of control once more.” I paused, but the response was a skeptical silence. I could see a hardened resolve in the faces of the men, a reluctance to immediately buy what I was saying this time given that, to my eyes, they’d ended up in roughly the same position as they’d been in when last we’d encountered one another, before the slave revolt. The only thing that had changed was their quarters.
“What’s happened?” Varren asked, earnestness written on his face. “Another slave revolt?”
“No,” I said, and saw a sliver of the skepticism dissolve. “I’m afraid it’s worse than that. Those who have opposed slaveholding have crossed lines that no one would have believed they would cross. Their belief about the wrongness of this practice has reached a point where they’ve given themselves license to be right while all others are wrong, and mark as enemy anyone who has ever disagreed with them. They go beyond simple righteousness and have begun destroying all that they once revered.”
“They are destroying cities,” Jena said, “draining less worthy lives to lengthen their own.”
“Wh–who?” Varren asked, his grip on my forearm failing. “Who’s doing this?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” I said. “One of the faction members opposed to slavery, I can’t say which. But whoever it is, their next target is likely here, and whoever is caught out in the open is going to die from their assault.”
“What do you expect us to do about it?” came a rugged voice from somewhere in the crowd. I looked out and saw a man there, his features clean and shaven, and for a moment I thought I recognized him as the one who’d pounded my face in the wagon on our way to Sennshann for the first time. After a second look I wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t expect you to do anything about it,” I said. “I’ve asked of you something already, and you answered, and while I did my best to fulfill the vow I made, clearly I failed.” I heard a mumble of agreement run through the crowd. “I have nothing left to promise, either. My patron has been slain by these foes. Others have suggested I run and hide elsewhere, but … if I were to go, I would be leaving behind untold numbers of our people here, without shelter against this storm of madness that comes.”
I took a long breath. “You followed me out of Luukessia without choice, bound by the army and listening to your true leaders, true generals, rather than the spoiled princeling that I was. In the Coliseum, when we began, there was no faith among any of us. We were every man out for himself, and there was no hope of working together, of winning, because there was no hope … at all.”
I extended my finger and pointed to Curatio. “But we beat back the Butcher—”
“Careful,” Curatio said with measured annoyance.
“—and saved our lives from that wretched blood sport,” I went on. “Then, when the head of this empire called, we came to his aid. It bought us nothing. You followed me then on the idea that you would gain, that you would be free, and while you may have been free in name, on parchment and in ink … clearly that was as far as it went.”
I shook my head as a mutter ran through them. “I have no more freedom to promise you. If you want to leave, you may walk out that door right now.” I pointed behind me. “You will find yourself in a city nearly empty, the people cowering for fear of what is to come. Slaves are being herded away from their masters, and to my ears this might sound like an unvarnished good, if I did not have hints of what was following behind.”
I looked through the crowd, tried to meet their eyes. “Death is coming. Coming for as many of these people as it can swallow. We are poison to the Protanians; they would not listen to my counsel nor heed my advice in this hour, but the slaves that are held in this city … prisoner here … they would take help, were it offered. And I mean to offer it.
“If any of you wish to join me, I am striking out to save as many slaves as I can,” I said. “I will fight their guards, break their shackles, and take them with me to a place where we can protect them when the worst comes. I will hold vigil through the night, keep them safe against this coming calamity. If any of you wish to run, to take your chances, do so. I wish you all the good fortune. But if you are willing to pick up sword and help me defend against the blue men who brought us here against our will, that bent us to their service, that pulled from us our decency, our mercy, and now seem determined to wrest the last thing from us they have not yet taken … join me.” I almost whispered it. “Join me … and we will fight for our lives.”
I waited, and the silence of seconds dragged on into infinity. There was scarcely a breath taken, not a word spoken, until Varren finally broke the silence.
“Well, I would have been with you anyway, but since there’s no escaping this mess without help …” He shrugged, and looked around. “We’re in, right, boys?”
“I’m in,” said another man, bald and ragged, nodding furiously.
“I’m with ye,” said another, a hulking Sylorean.
“In—”
“I’m in.”
“Of course I am—”
“Til the end.”
The chorus was quiet, filled with resolve, and not what I expected. “Thank you,” I said, and I rested my hand on the hilt of Aterum as I pondered the next move. “Now we should—”
“Excuse me,” came Stepan’s voice, interrupting my thought. He was standing at the door, and I tensed, wondering if perhaps I was about to receive the challenge I’d been expecting from the men. His next words came as a surprise. “There are weapons and armor out here. Enough to make our task … easier, I think.” He smiled thinly, and I could tell that while he was along for this adventure, he was not as fully committed as the others.
“We should prepare ourselves,” I said, nodding at him. I caught a nod from Curatio as well, as he contemplated what he’d just seen—and presumably went against everything he’d expected. “Because I expect we have many battles to go before we will see the end of this fight—which we will fight in the name of the house whose name we’ve taken.” I surveyed them all. “We fight in the name of the House of Garaunt …” My fingers tensed on my blade, and I remembered the word Chavoron had given in our language, “In the name of Requiem.”
83.
Cyrus
The Mountains of Nartanis hung in the distance, the shadows of evening growing long around Cyrus and his party as the winds of Ryin’s teleport spell gusted away. Ash stirred, blown across the ground in front of him as he started forward, boots leaving pockmarks in the soft ground with every step.
The sun was behind the mountains, twilight rising. He heard the others fall in behind him, and his eyes flitted about as he walked. He could see hints of disturbance in the earth, signs of a battle that a year’s worth of blowing ash had nearly buried.
This was where we fought off the ambush from Archenous and Amarath’s Raiders, Cyrus thought. She and I, with Isabelle. There was a great trench that had filled in on the sides, sign of a force blast spell that had carved its way through the earth. A sigh worked free of his lips. We fought the impossible here, too, she and I.
“I don’t mean to interrupt what I’m sure are deep thoughts,” Ryin said, gathering his robes around him as he hurried up to walk next to Cyrus, “but I have a question for you.”
Cyrus gave a glance back. Mendicant, Vaste, Scuddar and Longwell were trailing in their wake, talking amongst themselves. Probably speculating on why we’re here. “Is it about why I’ve brought you to this place?”
“No,” Ryin said, “that I assume you will reveal at the most dramatic possible moment.” A quicksilver smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “If there’s a constant in Arkaria, it’s that Cyrus Davidon has a sense of theatrical timing in his revelations. No, I wanted to ask you something else.” He lowered his voice,
presumably so the others couldn’t hear. “Ahm … Vara … what Bellarum has done bringing her back …”
Cyrus felt his face freeze, but his steps continued with only a slight falter. “What about it?” he asked, his voice lower than usual even to his ears.
“It is … an atrocity,” Ryin said, and Cyrus sensed he was choosing his words carefully. “Tearing her out of the grave in order to manipulate you, push you in the direction he wants you to go …” He swallowed heavily. “Were it me … with even a ghost of the person I loved hanging like a specter just out of reach … I don’t feel I would be as resolute as you are.” He pushed the wide sleeves of his robes together, joining his hands beneath them as he walked, keeping pace with Cyrus by making his steps long.
“Have you ever lost anyone like that?” Cyrus asked. “I mean, in the days before Sanctuary?” He felt sure he knew the answer.
“I lost almost my entire family,” Ryin said softly. “In my youth.” He stared at the far horizon, the sun glaring orange beneath the peaks of the mountains. “I was not as young as you were when you ended up in the Society,” he said quickly. “I was nearly a man, and had been in training with the Circle of Thorns for many years when a pox ran through our village. My father, mother, one of my younger sisters … all gone.” He blinked and looked down at the dust ahead. “It happened very quickly. There was no hint it was coming in their letters, just a … a notice one day from the neighbors delivered to me by the head of League, and I was off to their house to, well, to bury them and decide what to do next.”
“You said one of your younger sisters died,” Cyrus said. “Was there another?”
“Indeed,” he said with a swift nod. “She was in a League as well at the time, training with the Commonwealth of Arcanists. She now works for a transport company moving freight through teleportation spells at a high price. She lives in Fertiss now, managed to escape the Confederation at the start of the war with the dark elves and never came back.” He shrugged. “It hardly matters where a wizard hangs her hat, after all, since she can get anywhere she needs in short order and her job entails traveling mostly between portals at any rate.” He turned solemn, looking at the purpling sky. “It was to her house that I ran when Sanctuary fell.”
“Those you lost,” Cyrus said, trudging along. “If the chance had come up, if you had an opportunity to see them again, even in a … a blank and unknowing form, where they couldn’t recall your name, your face, the … the touch of your hand …” Cyrus’s voice strained, “you would still consider throwing all you stood for in order to—what? Have that, that shell …” Revulsion washed through him like the waters of the sea running over the deck of Tempestus’s ship, “… to have that back?”
“Yes,” Ryin said without hesitation. “I don’t know that I would take it, but … I would consider it at least.”
“Well, I’ve considered it,” Cyrus said, thinking once more about the blond locks in sunlight, of the image of her riding through the gates of Sanctuary, and he felt a sharp seizure in his chest, as though his breath had hung there. “And my conclusion is that … whatever Bellarum has brought back … she would loathe him, if she knew what he’d done with her. To her.” His voice hardened. “She would hate him, and hate me for gambling on his good graces and mercy in hopes of—of holding to a fragment of her at the cost of my honor, my decency, my …” He swallowed hard. “Of everything she saw change in me that she wanted changed.”
“I understand,” Ryin said softly. He did not look at Cyrus. “I might feel the same were I in your—” He broke off as his gaze swept the horizon, and the fading light broke over their destination. “What—what in the absolute hell …?”
Cyrus might have beamed had he not just dragged his emotions through the dark place in which he had spent so much time of late. He tried to cast it off, to seize on what lay ahead instead, to blow on the embers of the excitement that he had felt when they’d started on this journey. Every step carried him forward, some of it against his will, old memories pulled along with him and unearthed …
Just as the den of Ashan’agar, ahead of them and now in sight, had been unearthed.
“You—you—you madman!” Vaste called, hurrying up behind him to look over the hole in the ground where rock and boulder had once collapsed into the earth. “What have you done?”
“I paid dwarven miners a small fortune to excavate the Den of Ashan’agar,” Cyrus said, a little smugly.
It was all laid out before them, the place where the Dragonlord had burst forth from the ground to claim his kingdom. When last Cyrus had seen it, it was a sunken indentation, like a pit, rock and debris all fallen in. It had seemed an impossible task, removing all that rubble in order to unearth that which lay beneath, and yet …
“Here we are,” Cyrus said in a whisper and steered them toward the largest tent in the small encampment, where he knew Keearyn would be waiting.
“My Lord Davidon!” Keearyn said as Cyrus approached. The dwarf had been resting on a camp chair near a fire that had been out of sight of them on the approach. His kinsmen were behind him, also ringed around the flames, and they all scrambled to their feet as he strode up. Some of them saluted, some held themselves stiffly, and one nearly knocked himself over when he swung a hand up to his forehead.
Cyrus cringed at the sight of the dwarf who almost flattened himself, then shifted his gaze back to Keearyn. “I heard you finished the job.”
“I did indeed,” Keearyn said with a nod. “Just a few days past, M’lord. I tried to get word to you, but—”
“I’m hard to get ahold of these days,” Cyrus said. “Where are the, uh …?”
“This way, this way,” Keearyn said, beckoning forward as he shot off into the grand tent, then paused to hold the flap wide behind him, seeming like he might tear himself in two in his excitement to show Cyrus what he’d done.
Cyrus paused, glancing over at the crater, the immense hole in the earth. Scaffolding led down into the pit, a slow spiraling circle that disappeared at the opposite rim of the crater. I stand before so many craters these days, it seems—as though I leave nothing but devastation behind me where I tread. He straightened, standing on his tiptoes for a moment to peer at the hole in the earth. Somewhere down there, I saw her for the first time, in the darkness. He felt a delicate spear push into his heart, and he let his heels fall, shaking his head and hurrying onward to the waiting tent and the dwarf within.
Cyrus took up the flap, nodding for the others to follow him. Vaste was glowing already; he knew what was coming. From the look in his eyes, Scuddar seemed to understand as well, but Mendicant and Longwell seemed greatly perplexed. Ryin, for his part, seemed carefully neutral.
“Here they are, here they are!” Keearyn squealed as Cyrus came into the tent. A wooden table sat in the center of the canvas structure, and it was filled with shining metal weapons.
“Mother of Air,” Ryin whispered.
Mendicant strained, unable to see the table’s top from where he stood. “What … what is it?”
“A bounty,” Scuddar said knowingly.
“Master of nothing? I think not. I’m going to call you the master of secrets,” Vaste said, a hint of admiration in the admonishment.
“I … I don’t think I understand,” Longwell said, his face twisted in confusion and his lance still held close at his side.
“Then allow me to explain it to you,” Cyrus said, stepping carefully over to the table.
“Dramatically, of course,” Vaste said. “Because you must have been working on this a very long time—”
“A year or so?” Cyrus tried to remember when he’d commissioned this task.
“—and you wouldn’t want to waste a single drop of surprise,” the troll finished.
“I will … leave you to this,” Keearyn said, bowing his way out of the tent as Cyrus stared at the table, deciding which one to pick first. It was not a difficult choice.
“Get over here, you massive lump,” Cyrus said to Vaste
, picking up a staff from the table, ebony wood and tall enough even for a troll to handle. He held it up between them. Vaste sidled over, looking at it as though it were going to turn into a snake at any moment and strike him. “Get rid of that stupid spear-staff, will you?” Cyrus tossed the new staff to him lightly, and Vaste caught it, one-handed. He gave it a long look, and then let his white wood spear-staff fall to the earth without even a glance. “I give you …” Cyrus said, smiling.
“Drama,” Vaste muttered.
“… Letum,” Cyrus said, not slowing in the least, “The Staff of Death.”
“Don’t think this makes up for all the years you forgot my birthday,” Vaste said, unable to tear his eyes off the black staff. He hesitated, twirling it in a wide circle. It churned the air, creating a breeze that billowed the fabric of the tent. “But it’s a damned good start.” He backed away, admiring his new weapon as if taking his eyes off it might let it disappear.
“Scuddar,” Cyrus said, and the desert man came forward calmly. Cyrus picked up the next weapon from the table and held it in his hand. Time seemed to slow around him, as it did when Praelior was in his grasp. It was shaped similarly to Scuddar’s present sword, but it had a jeweled hilt and the broad blade carried a yellow tinge of magic. “I give you … Ventus, the Scimitar of Air.” He held out the weapon and Scuddar took it in his dark hand, testing the weight, swinging it to the side experimentally.
“This is a princely gift,” Scuddar said, the cadence of his words careful, slow enough that he only appeared to be speaking slightly faster than normal.
“It seemed appropriate for its new bearer,” Cyrus said with a smile as Scuddar stepped back. “Ryin?”
Ryin took a step forward, looking struck dumb, as though he felt so utterly out of place as to be in the wrong land entirely. “I …”
“Shhhh,” Cyrus said and picked up the staff. It glowed as though its tip were aflame, but when Cyrus touched it, there was no heat. He regarded it carefully then slapped it down in the druid’s hand. “Torris … the Scepter of Fire.”
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