Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  “Fare well, Stepan,” Alaric said, and he faded, turning to mist, and the mist receded into nothingness, leaving Cyrus alone with the Gatekeeper, in a room marked by dark and steel.

  The silence held for only a moment before Stepan spoke, his voice choked with emotion that seemed as foreign on the usually smug Gatekeeper as armor on a snake. “I will return you now to your manor in Termina.”

  “What the hell was he talking about?” Cyrus asked.

  The Gatekeeper’s hands glowed as he cast a spell. “I haven’t the vaguest idea, nor the faintest care. My part in this is done,” and the spell took hold, dragging them out of the grim chamber, and Cyrus was sure that Stepan fully believed that. And mine, too, Cyrus thought, appears to drawing to a close of its own as well …

  125.

  Cyrus

  “My Lord Davidon?” Greenan’s voice was high and worried as Cyrus found himself standing before the study window in the manor in Termina, where a moment earlier he’d been in the torture chamber beyond the Trials of Purgatory. He took a sharp breath and could smell the hearth burning behind him, and when he turned he found Greenan standing there, blinking at him. “Were you … there all along, my lord?”

  Cyrus looked down. The medallion he’d shown Alaric was hanging out from beneath his armor, the chain tangled in his untidy hair. He could see the swirl of ancient writing upon it, and frowned, taking it in hand. He couldn’t read ancient, but he remembered Alaric’s instructions. “No, I wasn’t,” he said at last, remembering that Greenan had asked a question.

  “I’m sorry?” Greenan asked, sounding slightly confused. “I must have just missed you when I came looking—”

  “I wasn’t here,” Cyrus said, staring down at the medallion. The window was dark to outside, night having fallen in his absence. Cyrus blinked, letting his finger trace the spiral of writing from the edge of the medallion inward. “Is my horse ready?”

  “I just finished tending to—”

  “Can he be saddled?” Cyrus asked, looking up.

  “Of course,” Greenan said, snapping to attention, his confusion showing in a series of blinks and stuttering. “I—I can—right now, if you’d like—”

  “I’d like,” Cyrus said, glancing past Greenan at the desk at the far end of the study. There was parchment there, and an inkwell. “Go do that, and I’ll have something for you before I leave.”

  “May I inquire as to where you’re going?” Greenan asked as Cyrus strode forward, still cradling the medallion. “I mean, you just got here—”

  “I’m going home,” Cyrus said, feeling the faintest stirrings of hope resonating within him as he picked up a quill and scratched the words, “Dear Vaste,” on a piece of parchment. “I’m going home at last … for the last time …”

  126.

  Cyrus

  The book had been easy to find, even in the library in Termina. He had taken the tome without argument, the elves in charge of the old stacks unwilling to argue with the either man who killed the gods or the husband of the beloved Shelas’akur. Cyrus did not care which prompted their cooperation, he was merely grateful for it, as it allowed him to ride east over the Grand Span within an hour of returning to the city from the Realm of Purgatory, out through to Santir, where he secured passage with a wizard who took him south, to the nearest open portal and left him there, with his purse only a few silvers lighter for the service.

  He rode south hard, resting only when he felt Windrider should have to bear no more. He stopped and slept for a time, and when he broke for rest, he always spent at least a little time reading The Traveler’s Hope. He found the Plea of the Dying almost immediately, but the rest of the book was of mild interest as well. It described a most curious phenomenon—people near death, crying out and receiving help of one sort or another. Desperation given hope, Cyrus reckoned, but he scarcely skimmed the pages in the thick tome, eager as he was to get back on the road.

  On the third day of his ride, he crested a hill and saw the crater from great distance. He urged Windrider forward, the end nearly in sight. The horse kept on at a gallop, hooves stamping furiously at a run over the uneven plains roads, their care plainly neglected in the last year of disuse.

  The autumn wind whipped at his cloak as he reached the last mile. We’re close to the end now, he thought, as the wind whipped through his hair beneath his helm, his cowl and cloak billowing behind him.

  He rode up to the crater’s edge and dismounted, stroking Windrider’s ear as he did so, whispering, “You’re the best horse a man could ask for.” Windrider whinnied at him, as though he understood, a hint of mournfulness in the sound.

  Cyrus didn’t spare a glance for the monument to his left, too afraid to look at it for fear of what it might do to him. No time for that now. He ignored it for fear of the pain that the last name would cause, but instead felt a pang of longing.

  This is where I was supposed to be.

  Regret.

  I shouldn’t have left.

  And finally, and perhaps strangest of all, came the faintest hint of fear.

  It’s almost over.

  Cyrus swallowed hard, as though he could simply toss out the adverse emotions like unwanted baggage. He paced his way back to the horse and removed The Traveler’s Hope from the saddlebag, pulling the silken string from between the pages he had marked. The Plea of the Dying was spelled out before him, and he knelt at the edge of the crater, holding the book. With his other hand, he forced his gauntleted hand beneath his breastplate and grasped the medallion, metal clinking on metal as closed his eyes and spoke.

  “I invoke thee who hear my plea,

  I request thy aid,

  For those who are soon to die.”

  For I am about to die, he did not say, though the feeling was settled upon him like a warm, familiar cloak.

  He closed the book with a satisfying thump, listening to the sound echo over the empty plains. A moment of silence reigned in this place of the dead. Then a flash blazed before him like summer lightning, then another, as though a storm had broken in the heart of the deep and empty crater. Cyrus watched it blaze with white light, crackling forth like the blast he’d shot into the gullet of the eel. The thunder came at last, a crack that shook the earth beneath his feet, and Cyrus opened his eyes as he caught himself on the ground with his right hand.

  Something was there.

  Something … that shouldn’t have been.

  Mist had crawled in on the clear day, like a cloud blowing low over a mountaintop. It blotted out any hint of the sun that might have been lingering behind clouds, coalescing like a living thing in the crater. It filled the gap in the earth, solidifying, ground appearing where none had been before, and as it started to clear, Cyrus saw … the impossible.

  A wall loomed just before him, tall, imposing, enough of a defense to repel an invasion.

  Beyond that lay fallow ground and dead grass, brown as though the life had been leeched from it, enormous footprints left in the upturned dirt, leaving it a bed of mud.

  And finally, beyond that …

  Cyrus took in a sharp breath, looking in under the gate. The keep was as he remembered it except for a tall, a dark hole like a black, gaping maw where the stained glass window had been above the double doors. The towers were there at each corner, and the last, the center one, rose up into the air hundreds of feet. The lines were as familiar to him as the curves of his wife’s body, and he felt a little tingle turn into a chill as he stood there, rooted to the spot, as the last of the mist coalesced and it became as solid as life—vivid and real enough to reach out and touch.

  He did not say anything, for there was nothing to say. It was as though an old friend had rejoined him on a field of battle after being long thought fallen. Of all the things destroyed, of all those lost, this one thing had been returned unto him.

  And for the first time in a very long time, Cyrus Davidon smiled—real and genuine, not grim or forced—for he had returned to Sanctuary at last.

&n
bsp; NOW

  127.

  Cyrus

  Alaric Garaunt stood before them in the archive, his sword Aterum drawn and in his hand, the blade shining in the torch and fire light. The knight himself wore a mournful look. The blade’s edge gleamed, sharp and deadly, as Cyrus let his eyes play over it. There was a kind of hope in that, too, the instrument of death that waited just there, and Cyrus readied himself, closed his eyes and waited for it to fall.

  There was a gentle clink of metal on stone, and Cyrus opened his eyes to find Alaric kneeling before him, Aterum extended hilt-first, the blade cradled in the old knight’s hands.

  “What … what are you doing?” Cyrus asked, staring down at him. Out of the corner of his eye, Cyrus could see Vaste watching with a raised eyebrow.

  “I am pledging my sword to you,” Alaric said, looking up at him with that one eye, beseeching. “As a knight to the master of Sanctuary … I follow you now.”

  Cyrus was struck with a feeling like he was filled to the top of the gullet with Dragon’s Breath, about to explode. “How—how do you expect that’s going to bring me peace, Alaric? Why would you assume that your sword sworn to me is what I want?” He looked down, but the old knight was still, betraying nothing. “You don’t understand … at all.”

  “I understand more than you think,” Alaric said quietly. “I have understood more than I have told you, all along. And if you will wait—just a short while, I think I will complete this telling in a way that will either give you the hope to go on …” he swallowed heavily, a pause of heralding the significance of his meaning, “or else I will … aid you in passing from this life.”

  “Alaric—” Vaste said, alarmed.

  Alaric held up a hand to stay him. “Just wait, Vaste.”

  “Fine,” Cyrus said numbly. “But I read your tale, Alaric. I read it all. From the day you left Luukessia to—well, to the day that you parted with Curatio while leaving our ancestors to the mercies of the gods … I read it all, the confession by your own hand.”

  “Almost all,” Alaric said, “for there were a few things I feared to set in ink.”

  “Oh, mercies,” Vaste said, and it sounded like a curse.

  Cyrus let out a rueful chuckle. “In your journal you confessed to being craven, a murderer, to lusting for power … it took the entire idea of who you were and what you stood for that I held in my head and almost completely destroyed it. I can’t wait to hear the parts you held back.” He looked down into the knight’s eye. “Though, honestly … after reading all that … I feel like I didn’t know you at all.”

  “You didn’t,” Alaric said simply, rising from his knee and sliding Aterum back into his scabbard with a sharp sound of quartal on the steel lip that ringed the top. “You knew the legend, not the man who was reflected in that diary. You knew the me I became, not me as I was—fortunately, for I was a spiteful child in those days, filled with rage and intemperance.”

  “Also, apparently lust,” Vaste said. “Because the maidens of Enrant Monge? It sounded like there were many.”

  Alaric did not bother to hide his look of chagrin. “More than I would care to admit to.”

  “All right, if you want to conclude this tale,” Cyrus said, “fine.” He pulled Praelior from its scabbard, the sword singing as it was freed from its bounds. “Why give me the hilt for this? Why aid me in Bellarum’s quest to put together Drettanden’s sword again? I thought you didn’t want me going after gods, but you practically put in my hand a weapon to kill them. Why do that, Alaric?”

  “An excellent question,” Alaric said. “I did because there was a god moving you, steering you, Cyrus. In my cowardice, I may have left humanity to its fate, but … that doesn’t mean I wanted you to march into yours unarmed, or holding a steel blade. You seemed destined to make choices that would lead you toward a destiny that was not of my choosing, nor entirely of yours. To send you into it without Praelior …” He shook his head. “No, I couldn’t do that. Your mother would never have allowed it, either, watching over you as she was.” He paused, suddenly introspective. “And besides, to bind you to my path, holding back for fear of the gods I watched rise because I lacked the power and will to fight them … that would be worse than letting Bellarum try to push you down his.”

  “Did you know what would happen if I challenged the gods?” Cyrus asked quietly. “That everything would go—”

  “Mad? I suspected,” Alaric said. “I tried to take the early punishment on myself, obviously, by slaying Mortus with my own hand—”

  “Why not just give me Rodanthar?” Cyrus asked, watching the knight with accusing eyes. “Simpler than putting me through—”

  “Giving you Rodanthar would have been like lighting a beacon telling everyone to look closer at Sanctuary,” Alaric said. “It was your mother’s sword, and I claimed it was not on her when I ‘killed’ her. To have it suddenly appear in your hand … it was something Quinneria and I discussed but ultimately passed on for fear it would provoke them to look close enough to reveal her among us. They did not know, surprisingly. Her ruse held, even as she assisted Curatio and I through the Trials.” He looked grim. “I take it she is—”

  “Also dead, yes,” Cyrus said flatly. “For real, this time, I assume, unless this is all just some grand scheme you’ve concocted to once more take the piss out of me—”

  “Before this gets uncivil, I have a question,” Vaste said, interrupting before Cyrus could follow the path of anger too far down. “You’re wearing your armor.”

  Alaric stared back at the troll, blinking his lone eye. “Yes?”

  “So …” Vaste said, eyes narrowed in concentration, “… does that mean that somewhere in Saekaj right now, Terian is shivering, wondering why he’s suddenly naked?”

  A laugh almost escaped Cyrus’s lips unbidden, but came out instead in the form of a dull cough. “That’s … a good question.”

  “Terian is still fully clothed, wherever he is,” Alaric said with the trace of a smile. “As far as I know. This armor …” He put out his hands, and his clothing faded into a blur of fog, then rematerialized as a simple grey tunic. Cyrus stared at him; the Ghost looked most peculiar out of his armor. “… Is not actually armor. Terian has the real object, but I can … recreate it, as it were, with little difficulty.” The mists swirled around him once more, and a moment later he was clad in the armor again, the helm returned to the crook of his elbow.

  “That’s good news,” Vaste said. “I was worried that Terian was stuck in a cold cave somewhere, his genitals unconscionably contracted due to the enduring chill of that infernal place. I feel better now.” He nodded. “So.” He looked at Cyrus, then to Alaric. “When you first showed up … you promised hope.”

  Alaric looked at the troll, and then to Cyrus. “But of course. There is always hope.”

  “I don’t think I believe that,” Cyrus said.

  Alaric did not blink, staring at him with the grey eye. “If that is so … why have you been seeking the ark?” He glanced at Vaste. “You have been seeking it, haven’t you?”

  “I sought it,” Cyrus said. “Briefly. And I didn’t find it, obviously, because you had it all along.” He shook his head. “I looked. Asked after it. Even had people search the Realm of War, where we’d heard it was from Vidara—nothing.”

  “No,” Alaric said. “Because it was not in the Realm of War, and has not been for ten thousand years.”

  “Yes, we read that in your super-confessional diary,” Vaste said, leaning in.

  “Why did you take it?” Cyrus asked, feeling a surge of bitterness. “Knowing what you knew about what Mathurin—Bellarum—was going to go through? Why take it from him?”

  Alaric shifted uncomfortably. “I asked myself that very question in the days after I realized what he had become. I wondered if perhaps I should have left it for him.” He stared into the distance pensively. “Maybe if I’d left him … hope … things would have turned out differently.”

  “You think he wou
ld have been less of a bastard?” Vaste asked. “Because my guess is he would have figured out how to pierce the veil and leech the God of Good, too, if it was possible. But the question you didn’t answer …” The troll’s teeth jutted forward in anticipation, “is where the hell is the damned ark?”

  Alaric smiled. “Tell me something … have you never wondered why I am the Ghost of Sanctuary?”

  “No, I’ve never wondered that,” Vaste said, deadpan. “You can disappear into the mist at will—”

  “Form armor and clothing out of thin air,” Cyrus said.

  “Probably spy on us in the bathroom,” Vaste said. “Which, I don’t blame you for, by the way. I’d want to look at me naked, too.”

  “And it doesn’t make you curious at the provenance of the magic I employ?” Alaric was still smiling maddeningly, as he so often had since first Cyrus had met him.

  “Fine,” Cyrus said, weary of it all. “What sort of magic is it, then? Heretic? Ancient, I assume?”

  “No,” Alaric said, and his smile faded. “Far beyond ancient, actually.” He licked his lips, and Cyrus noted that they appeared cracked and broken, doubtless another effect of the years of torture. “The magic I use as the Ghost … is the magic of the ark.”

  128.

  Alaric

  I stood on the dusty, barren steppes in the southeast of Arkaria, the glow of Curatio’s teleportation spell fading in my sight, and I stared at the wooden object at my feet, its lid sealed tight against the gusting sands blowing up from the Inculta desert to the southeast.

  The ark.

  Taking it had been the last command given me by Chavoron before he died … and it was a command I followed. Curatio used the spell words I gave him to carry me to Chavoron’s home the moment we left the Citadel. I climbed the infinite steps to the top of the tower, into the guts of his workshop, racing to it for fear that Rin would be along any moment to claim his new redoubt. I needed to get to the ark before he did, this much I knew, a quivering feeling in my stomach as my guide.