Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Lepos, you and your wife are without child, am I correct?” the Yartraak asked.

  The guardsman named Lepos flushed a deeper shade of blue, almost black. “Yes, master. A child—it is our fondest wish.” He glanced at the baby boy hungrily, though he tried to pretend he was not looking.

  “You will take this child to your wife and raise him as your own,” the Yartraak said, proffering the baby. The guardsman took him up gently and much more naturally than the Yartraak or I had held him, careful not to stir the child. “Your wife will not protest at raising a child that is part-human?”

  “Not at all,” Lepos answered swiftly and sincerely. “We will be grateful for any child. This is a blessing to us. Thank you, m—”

  “I will be keeping careful watch on this child,” the Yartraak told him, watching him out of the corner of his eye. “This child is … dear to me, special, and he and his progeny share my blood.” The Yartraak looked right at me. “I will ensure their future will be bright.”

  “Thank you,” I said with a nod, and we lapsed into a silence as Guardsman Lepos retreated, with his master’s leave to rejoin his fellow guards. I could hear their curiosity in muffled whispers as they, too, examined the child, giving compliments. I felt a great reassurance at seeing how the burly guardsmen treated the child—no longer mine, I thought wistfully—so sweetly, even given the somewhat more surly disposition of those guards I’d met in my time there. It melted some of my worries about leaving the boy with them, knowing that his future was assured, which was far from certain had he remained in my care.

  For my own future was far from certain.

  “What now?” Curatio asked me as I pulled away from the Yartraak, who seemed to be waiting and considering his approach to the new rulers of this land. He was brushing himself off, as though holding the baby had somehow dirtied him, and then he held his head high and made his way over to the Ashea, the Rotan, the Enflaga and the Virixia, speaking his own introduction loudly, as though they did not already know each other. The Mortus followed after him, somewhat more confidently, though there was a distinct waddle in his step. He gave me a slightly irritated glance as he passed, and I sensed that there was some amount of tension unresolved between us. I cared not, for I assumed our dealings were at an end.

  “You have weathered this impossible storm,” Caraleen said, her soft voice laced with worry. Her fingers probed the hard armor of my upper arm, her blue skin darker even than the steel color of my banged-up armor. She looked up at me, her eyes gentle, worried. “I wondered if you would.”

  “Caraleen,” I said slowly, “your father—”

  “I know,” she said simply.

  “Rin,” I said, “he intends to take over your father’s—”

  “Let him,” she said, her face falling. “I have the Vidara’s realm and title now, and I suspect—given what has happened—that Rin will need a domain of his own, one which no one else can access.”

  “That’s … generous,” I said, and saw the hints of regret in her eyes, as her fingers kneaded the material of her robes at her breastbone.

  “This is not what any of us planned,” she said, and in the distance I could hear the Aurous condemning Rin in the loudest, most profane terms possible. The word sabushon was used, repeatedly, and Caraleen blushed when she heard it. “I am sorry about Jena, and for … for everything. For losing your child.” Her mouth twitched, and I could see she knew the twisting, regretful conflict I felt within. “For your exile.” Her eyes met mine. “You will return home now?”

  I opened my mouth to speak. “No,” I said, certain at least of that much.

  “What?” came a strong voice of disbelief from behind me. I turned to see Stepan standing there, a look of utter betrayal cut with rage across his thin face ashen as he strode forward. “I told them,” he said, burning visibly, “that you would return in their hour of need. You are betraying my word!”

  “I am not Ulric Garrick any longer,” I said, swallowing heavily. “The words chosen before my majority are not the ones I would choose now—”

  “Then choose different ones and let us be on with it,” Stepan said, growing angrier by the second. “You belong in Enrant Monge—”

  “No, I don’t,” I said softly. “I am unworthy to rule that land, or any land, or any person.” I gestured to the guards in the distance, where I could still see the man named Lepos cradling the small bundle that was my child. “I have failed this land, failed my sworn duties here, and yet I would go home and rule over a kingdom?” I shook my head. “I see now what my father feared, and it was me, in charge of those lands. I am not fit to rule, and so I will not.”

  “You are different now,” Stepan said, “you—”

  “I am different,” I said. “The Ulric Garrick that left would not have hesitated to take the throne, sure of his readiness even though he would have been death to so many in our lands. Alaric Garaunt is who I am, and I fear that those tendencies of Ulric would come back to the surface, that my failings are only buried, not gone, and that great power would give them a chance to unearth themselves. I will not take the crown, I will not sit on the throne, I will not rule a land or make its people subject to me. I am done, and I will not subject any to the folly of my governance.”

  Stepan boiled, but said nothing more to me. His face red, he turned on his heel, and stalked off to the place where the Ashea and the other new rulers stood. He broke ahead of the Mortus and knelt before them, speaking so loudly I could hear him from where I stood a distance away.

  “My name is Stepan Thomason,” he said, “and I wish to swear fealty to rulers true and strong. If you wish it, my sword is yours.”

  I could see the Rotan nod, the Enflaga smile, but it was the Ashea who spoke, loudly enough that her voice carried. “And how is it you would serve us, Stepan Thomason?”

  Stepan hesitated only a moment before his reply. “However you wish. Take me into your service, and I’ll wield a sword, enforce your laws—I’ll be your bloody hand if you’d like.”

  I heard a mutter of agreement between the four of them, and the Ashea said. “Rise, Stepan Thomason. I’m certain we can find a place for you in our service.”

  “I suppose I had better go and bend the knee,” Caraleen said, watching quietly. She looked to me and said, “Goodbye, Alaric Garaunt. Take great care, wherever the road takes you.” And she kissed me on the cheek and started toward her new overlords, the green robes of her new station as the Vidara flapping behind her in the strong wind of the wasteland that had been Sennshann.

  Curatio watched her go, and I saw the regret tear at him, for she had spurned him without saying a word. He choked back whatever he was feeling, but when he spoke, it was in a husky voice that told me much lingered under the surface of his mind. “Where … shall we go now?”

  “You mean to follow me still?” I asked, looking at him in mild surprise.

  “I have nowhere else to go,” he said, distress settling behind the aching resentment as he regained control of himself.

  My mind worked, clinking along. There was one final thing I needed to do before I could decide what to do next. “I have need of you for at least one last duty,” I said, and he nodded. It only took a few moments for me to explain what I required of him, and then we were off, leaving the ruins of the Protanian Empire—and the new rulers of the land of Arkaria—behind us.

  107.

  Cyrus

  It was nothing more or less than a simple vial, the length of Cyrus’s finger, clear glass and filled to the top of the cylinder with a dark, viscous liquid. It looked black as ink, and when Cyrus swirled the vial, as he often found himself doing in his daily consideration of it, it left oily traces on the clear glass. On the occasions when he got so far as to pull the stopper, it left a bitter smell in his nose, like old roots shredded by a sharp blade and mixed into water.

  He’d gotten this particular vial at the same time he’d purchased the black lace at the apothecary before the storming of the Realm
of War, and had kept it, with great care, in the months since. It had been months since the great battle, months in which he had dwelled listlessly in the old barn in Reikonos. The days passed slowly, like time was a great phial full of liquid trying to run out, and the stopper had gotten stuck in the neck, allowing only a slow seepage. He marked the passing of every day with a pitiful routine, adhering to the basic needs of filling his belly and the basic practices of keeping his strength, the latter something he had done without fail since his earliest days in the Society.

  He haunted the streets of Reikonos, barely noticed save for as a tall shadow, always clad in a heavy cloak. Winter had set in and it kept him under cloth cover, though his armor filled it. He kept the cowl up in order to mask his face, forgoing his helm in favor of maintaining anonymity. He received a great many stares for his height and girth, but went out mostly at night and tried to pass for one of the city’s growing population of trolls. With his armor’s bulk as his aid, it seemed to work.

  In this manner he escaped scrutiny, drifting down the snowy streets of Reikonos unseen, in the shadows, watching but scarcely being watched, seeing but rarely seen and never, to his knowledge, recognized. He did his business, the business of buying food enough for sustenance in the wee hours of the morning, avoiding the warm kiss of the sun. He never felt warm, even in front of a glowing hearth; why bother to wake in the daylight and walk among the living when he was clearly closer to the dead?

  Night seeped through the cracks in the barn’s wooden planks, and he knew as he considered the vial, swirling its contents, that it was likely time for his daily sortie into the markets. It was after sundown, no threads of the sun’s rays creeping in from outside, though that was hardly conclusive; it was dark in the slums of Reikonos most of the day. He could feel the time, though, his body like a clock that gave him a certain sense of when it was in the day.

  He swirled the contents of the vial one last time, wishing he had the courage to simply pull the stopper and make it his meal for the day. Cyrus had been unable to find the valor to do this one simple thing, the only thing he thought left to him to do after burying his mother, and the lack of completion of this basic task was slowly maddening him. He spent many a night cursing his lack of resolve, wondering how he could have faced gods and dragons and armies yet not the prospect of pulling a simple cork stopper and drinking the contents of a glass vial.

  “It would be over,” he whispered, as he often did, trying to find the combination of encouragement and scolding that would compel him to remove the stopper and upend the vial betwixt his lips. He had yet to find them, and he knew, somehow, he would not find them this eve, either. Disgust was already congealing in his mind like melted tallow removed from flame, and he was resolved to go find another, heartier meal instead, and administer his daily mental flogging for his cowardice in this matter.

  He set down the vial on the table by his bunk, the glass clinking against the rough grain of the wood, rolling until it found a crack in the old furniture and settled there, trapped between the edges. Cyrus already had his armor on and his cloak about him; he had suspected after so many days of this ritual that this night was unlikely to be the one where he completed it, and had dressed himself accordingly. It would not be so bad to die in his armor, in any case. Better than dying naked abed, alone.

  Cyrus gathered his cloak about him and left, locking the door to the old barn behind him, his mind tingling with the sense that once again, he’d left something undone. It was a strange feeling, a nagging one at the back of his head that there was some task unaccomplished after a long sequence of them done, a sensation that woke him in the night from dark, dreamless sleep or stirred him as he was about to fall into sleep, a feeling that he needed to do something, something that awaited his hand.

  Yet try as he might, he could not drink the damned vial.

  He passed through cold and wintry streets, his cloak trailing behind him. The torches burned, shedding their orange light and sweet, oily smell all about. Cyrus glanced into the sky and frowned; it was a deep purple and not the deepest black he’d expected. It was the wane of winter, he supposed, and the days were starting to grow longer now that the solstice was months past. He blamed his miscalculation on that, and on leaving the barn earlier than he normally did. It was no major obstacle, though, this fading twilight. The shadows outside the slums would still be long, and his cowl was more than up to the task of shielding him from the sight of the townsfolk, who were unaware that he was lingering in their midst in any case.

  Cyrus had heard his name spoken as he’d gone about his time in Reikonos. No hushed whispers, either, it was invoked in loudest voices and peculiar boasts: “I knew Cyrus Davidon,” he’d heard a man toting a lumberman’s axe say, and he stared at the man for only a moment before knowing he’d never met the fellow before. “He was as tall as the chimney of that house over there, trolls cowered in his shadow.” The man pointed to a stone home nearby, his companions hanging on to his every word, while Cyrus merely stared at a chimney far, far above his own head.

  That had been one of the less personal boasts he’d caught, far easier to shake off than the cheek-reddening brag of a washerwoman he’d overheard one night saying she’d been pleasured by Cyrus Davidon after catching his attention at a tavern. “He was tall in more ways than one,” she said to the breathless laughter of her cohorts, “and a livelier fellow abed you’ve never known.” He caught a glimpse of the gleam in her eye as he flushed and turned away, damnably sure he’d never made her acquaintance in his life.

  These encounters and more rolled their way through Cyrus’s head as he watched the scurrying clutches of people making their way through the streets of Reikonos post sunset. He had expected fewer crowds than he was seeing, but there was nothing for it. The dull pangs in his belly reminded him that he needed to eat, and he had little desire to subject his palate to the rat and horsemeat so commonplace in the slums. He intended to go to the real markets, to the stands there where he could trade coin—which he had enough of still to live twenty lives as a wealthy man—for something that would give him sustenance without nauseating him.

  He approached the square, trailing through the well-trodden snow paths with care, avoiding the horse dung that was almost as ubiquitous as the footprints. Chamberpot tossings were also in abundance, but the smell little bothered him. Reikonos as a whole smelled like a chamberpot, and he was long since used to that.

  The square was bustling, far more than it should have been, given the hour and the season. Cyrus scowled; he found himself responding often to displeasing stimuli with a frown or irritation. Things that would have never so much as raised a hint of annoyance before now irked him beyond belief. Seeing more people in a place such as this, when it was supposed to be peaceful, the occupants of the city settling down for the night, provoked such irritation from him now, and he resolved to pass through the square swiftly and avoid them all.

  That resolution lasted until he heard the upraised voice, strangely familiar, shouting instruction down upon a mass of people huddled before the great fountain in the center of the square.

  “This is to be an expedition for gold and great glory!” the voice shouted. It was female, and haughty, and he halted as he heard it, like a screeching in his ears. “There is, in a wood just a day’s march from the village of Taymor, an imp with a treasure hoard of gold and jewels the like of which you could scarcely imagine. It shines in the light of day, drawing in weary travelers for this beast’s fierce appetite, and once they are in its boundary, it strikes and brings them low, adding whatever they have on them to its treasure!”

  Cyrus turned slowly and looked to the speaker. She was an elf, and her breastplate was covered in gemstones that sparkled in the fading twilight. He stared at her face and knew it was her—Angelique, he recalled her name—the same damned elf who had led him into the disastrous depths of Ashan’agar’s den some eight years earlier.

  Cyrus’s feet moved him, unbidden, to the back of the
crowd. His hand fell, automatically, to Praelior’s hilt, though he kept the other off Ferocis. His gaze burned at the unsuspecting elf as she continued to speak. She was alight, flushed with enthusiasm as she went on, describing gold and fortune and treasure that would surely be theirs, and he listened, and the words turned to poison in his ears.

  The crowd before him was a motley assemblage. Two men who looked like farmers, lacking any armor at all, or weapons save for clubs that they carried, were nodding intently along with the elf’s speech. Cyrus felt himself pulled forward, staying his hand only through careful control, as she went on and on. He was almost to the front of the crowd when she said something of particular note:

  “… and my expeditions to find treasure are always a success. Why, the great Cyrus Davidon even got his start when I took him into the depths of Ashan’agar’s Den to face the dragon. You know how that legendary battle turned out, of course—”

  Cyrus pushed aside the last of the people in front of him and emerged just below Angelique, where she stood on the lip of the fountain, addressing the crowd. She barely had time to register him looming there before he swept her leg from beneath her with a hard cuff to the thigh, and she lost her balance, toppling over into the fountain with a splash, breaking the thin layer of ice that had crusted over it.

  “Aye,” Cyrus said, pulling back his cowl, “Cyrus Davidon did get his start on one of your expeditions.” He looked back at the crowd with a hard glare, and heard breath being caught in half a hundred throats, surprise settling a silence upon the assemblage. “And you damned near got me killed through your incompetence, Angelique.”

  Angelique sputtered and spluttered as she rose out of the fountain, dripping, armor gushing water, blinking furiously. “Who do you think you—”