Alaric smiled, slowly, sadly. “Very well, then.”
“What do we do?” Vaste asked, looking around, as though expecting the stone walls to close in around them.
“Nothing,” Alaric said, but he had already begun to fade, a mist-like quality about his skin.
There was a light outside the window as the sun began to rise. Cyrus looked at it, and it took him a moment to realize that the sun had faded away, that other light had risen in its place, blotting out the green plains.
“Wait,” Cyrus said, feeling the edge of panic, “what about Windrider?”
Alaric’s smile was genuine, and still visible even as he continued to fade away. “Windrider will be just fine. He has always been a part of Sanctuary; did you not wonder how your horse could be quite so remarkable?”
A soothing relief ran over Cyrus. The light grew outside the window, white and pure, all trace of blue skies gone, all remembrance of the sun swept away with this feeling that seemed to encompass Cyrus entirely. It ran over his skin, a rush against his flesh.
“I’m tingling!” Vaste cried, somewhat distantly. “Everything is tingling and it feels so good!”
It was like a warm day on a calm beach, as if he were waking from a perfect nap, like he’d been riding through the forest and returned to a warm meal, hot and steaming on the table, with a jug of foamy ale that tasted like perfection on his tongue.
It sounded a little like the hooves of horses, rumbling in a long race. Cyrus couldn’t see anything beyond the glow of white that surrounded him, no matter how he searched—
Until—
He saw the flash of yellow against the white background, like golden hay in the distance. It flitted out of his view, and then he caught an impish smile framed by perfect red lips. Blue eyes lit up in front of him, watching him, peering into his soul.
And in the distance, a quiet voice that he’d nearly forgotten asked a question.
“Are you ready to go home now?”
He could see her there, next to him, like they’d just ridden through the gates together. The world was complete; he had nothing more to long for, nothing more to worry about. His armor was gone, and she took his hand in hers, lacing those long fingers through his.
“I’m ready,” Cyrus said, never more sure of anything in his life. She was there, with him, and put her head on his shoulder. He could feel her warm, against him, as though she’d never left. He stared in her eyes, and the temptation to ask the stupid question, “Is it really you?” dissolved under the knowledge that it was, undeniably, her.
She was here.
And he was here with her.
The light grew brighter, just for a moment, and then, in a whisper, he could feel her breath in his ear, see the slow smile as she looked at him, warmly—as though she, too, had been waiting forever for him. He felt her touch, ghostly and light on his cheek, and her voice, so delicate and wonderful, reminding him of long hours spent in bed, of long talks and long walks, sounded in his ears, and spoke the sweet fulfillment of all he had wanted for a year and more. It sounded like …
Hope.
“Welcome home, my love,” she said, and he closed his eyes, and drifted off in the light.
Coda
One Thousand Years Later
Shirri Gadden had landed herself in trouble this time, the sort you couldn’t exactly pull yourself free of without the kind of help that didn’t come cheap. Shirri’s problem was that she was broke, and since help didn’t come cheap, it was a double pox, the sort you got right after you recovered from the last ailment.
She hurried down the street with the cloak over her, trying to ignore the pounding rain coming down. Reikonos wasn’t a pretty town, not unless you were rich and lived in the parts where they had big houses and big gardens. Down here by the factories it was ugly, with black coal smoke belching out of tall brick stacks, dumping ashen residue on everything. She had a small flat near here, and it was impossible to keep it clean with all that vexation dumping down all the time. She’d heard tell from her mother of a time when the skies above Reikonos were blue, but that sounded like a falsity to her. The factories with their black clouds and smokestacks had been around for as long as she could remember.
She skirted past a pub and dodged down an alley. She’d been this way a few times before. It wasn’t real safe to be wandering in this part of town after sundown, but then, there weren’t a lot of parts of Reikonos where it was. Cutthroats would steal a coinpurse from a corpse more gladly than mugging a living victim; less chance they’d get caught if they left their prey dead in an alley rather than let them walk away to scream for the city guard.
Shirri heard the footsteps before she saw who was making them. It was a like a constabulary bell ringing, clanging from one of the towers all around the city. She turned her head and saw them—
Oh, Davidon, she saw them.
She took to running, knowing damned well they’d catch her. They looked tall, she was short, and there wasn’t a chance in a dragon’s mouth she’d get away from them, not in this knot of alleys. She knew them, knew them well enough to know that anyone with half a wit would have someone posted ahead, just past the empty lot on the high street.
Still, death came for those who stood still, so Shirri broke into a run. If they were honest criminals, they might write her off as a bad job, say forget about it and go drag away some drunk staggering out of Minndee’s bar on the street over—
They didn’t write her off.
They started after her at a run, hoots and catcalls filling the alley. She knew what a calm criminal sounded like, the sort that might have put the fear of Davidon in her and been off about their business. These weren’t that type. These were the other.
The ones who enjoyed hurting people.
“Oh, no,” she whispered to herself, cutting around the corner. She could see the vacant green space up ahead, across the empty street. A glance skyward proved that the clouds of smoke had covered the sky this night, and there was not even a sliver of moon to guide her. The street torches burned, making her wonder if she could somehow disappear past that lot, maybe—
One of them burst out of a side alley laughing only five feet behind her, and she knew her time was nearly up. Shirri screamed, knowing even as she did that no one would hear her, no one would help her—not in this town. Not the guards. Not the citizenry. No one.
Not in this town. Not in Reikonos. Everybody always said it:
There was no hope left in Reikonos.
The man behind her snatched her cloak just as she made it to the cobblestone street, the gaslights above her sending off their warm glow. She stumbled, twisting her ankle as she fell. She landed hard on the stones, her elbow cracking and a gasp of pain forcing its way out of her lips. She curled up instinctively, cradling the elbow, the ankle radiating pain of its own down her foot.
“Lookee what we got here, lads and ladies,” said the burly man who’d chased her down. There were others emerging from the shadows now, their grins the first thing she saw, teeth shining in the gaslight. “Shirri … this is why you shouldn’t run when you know you owe.”
“I don’t have it,” Shirri said through gritted teeth. The pain in her elbow was impossibly bad. She could feel the rough hints that a bone had broken there, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it except lie here and hope they left her alive when they were done with whatever they intended to do. She had ideas, and every single one of them terrified her.
“Well, then that makes you kind of useless, don’t it?” Burly asked. He was just a rough from the streets, he didn’t even work for himself. It somehow made it worse that the man who was going to kill her wasn’t the man who really even wanted to kill her.
“Let’s take her to the wall and toss her over,” a woman with a weasely voice said, not even disguising the thrill at the thought. “Watch her spend her last moments trying to decide whether to drown or get ripped apart.”
“That’s always a fun one,” Burly agreed.
“Costs, though, paying off a guard to let you. Doing the job here, though …” He grinned. “That’s free.”
“Please, no,” Shirri said. The pain had faded under the panic, the certain knowledge of what was coming. She couldn’t see any way out of it, no hope of rescue. They had her surrounded, they had the numbers. She had no way out, and the desperation clawed at her like a cat sealed in a sack and tossed in the moat. In her case, it manifested in the most curious way, a plea that she said, under her breath, like a ritual turned to a shield, in just the way her mother had taught her, long ago:
“I invoke thee who hear my plea,
I request thy aid,
For those who are soon to die.”
“You think that’ll help you?” Burly asked, sounding vaguely amused. “I don’t think you realize—”
A sound like thunder following a lightning strike rattled the nearby windows, shaking the ground beneath Shirri. She watched the toughs take a step back, uncertainly, rocked by the strange sound. There was a flash, and she looked around, trying to see where it had come from, but there was no telling, really; it almost seemed like it had come out of the building with the sharp spires and the tower that stretched up behind—
Wait. Had that been there a moment ago? Shirri’s head swam with the pain, and then the sound of a door opening in the distance echoed across the street.
It sounded like hope.
“Is someone there? Help me!” Shirri shouted before Burly reached down and grabbed her, stuffing a hand in her mouth. He tasted like whiskey distilled in an old, dirty barrel.
“You hush up there,” Burly said, peering into the dark. Something was moving out there, Shirri could see it. There was a sound, too, like …
Footsteps?
“Whoever you are,” Burly said, motioning for his comrades to close in, “I’d suggest just walking on this lovely evening—if you wish it to remain a lovely evening and not a bloodbath.”
“I’ve always enjoyed a good bloodbath,” came a woman’s voice from the darkness, sharp and playful and proper. She stepped out of a shadow and Shirri saw her, clad in silver armor from head to toe, blond hair bound tight above her head in a flowing ponytail. She looked straight at Shirri with something akin to amusement, then shifted her fierce attention to Burly. She had the pointed ears of a pure elf, and Shirri blinked in surprise at that.
“Well, it’s going to be your blood, darling elfy, so I doubt you’ll enjoy this one,” Burly said, chuckling under his breath. “Look at this getup, thinks she’s a brave lady knight.”
“She’s a lady of the elven kingdom, actually,” came another voice, this one from a man with platinum hair. He looked calm and composed, but wore a smile, and in his hand was a mace with a metal ball that he rolled in a circle with his wrist. He wore immaculate white robes that didn’t look as though they had a speck of ash on them.
“Ain’t no elven kingdom,” one of the toughs said. “Who you supposed to be?”
“A bunch of minstrels out for a walk, clearly,” came another voice, this one jovial and lighthearted—and completely out of place. The speaker stepped into the gaslight and Shirri gasped, as did a few of the others. He was tall, taller than any person had a right to be, and with skin as green as the ocean by the docks. He almost looked like … but he couldn’t be. “Would you like us to sing you a tune? Because that’ll cost you.”
“Oh, we’re going to make you do the singing, greenie,” Burly said, putting a dagger to the side of Shirri’s face. She felt the point of the blade at her cheek. “Compliments of the house.”
“I don’t think this gentleman has good intentions,” came the voice of another man, older, and when he stepped out, Shirri frowned. He was wearing armor, too, grey and battered. He wore a sword on his belt and kept his hand upon the hilt, and spoke from behind a helm that looked like a bucket.
“You may be dressed funny, but you’re not quite as dumb as you look,” Burly said. “Now … last chance. I’m feeling generous. Go back to the carnival you all came from and we’ll call this just another fanciful night in Reikonos. No harm done to any party, but—”
“Harm is about to be done.” A dark shadow slipped out of the inky black night, and Shirri’s eyes rolled off it. She heard the voice of a man, deep and resonant, and when she finally saw him, she realized he, too, was covered in armor from head to toe. This armor was different than the others, though—
It was entirely black, and he wore two swords at his waist.
Shirri felt her breath catch in her throat, staring at him—at HIM—him, dressed like HIM—
One of the toughs let out a laugh, but it was shrill and high and unconvincing. “Look at this fartwat! Thinks he’s Cyrus bloody Davidon, he does!” He laughed again, but it died as he looked at his fellow criminals, and a dull, painful silence settled in instead.
“That’s right,” the man in black said, and as he stepped forward, his hands fell to his swords. Through the bottom of the helm, Shirri could see a ghostly smile. Then the swords erupted from their scabbards and were in his hands faster than Shirri could draw a breath, and suddenly—
Suddenly, she wasn’t afraid anymore.
“It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s really … him.”
“Not a bloody chance,” Burly whispered back, awestruck. “It—no—he doesn’t even—”
“My name is Cyrus Davidon,” the man said, and she felt it—she knew—he spoke true. He held the blades up, and they looked like every illustration she’d seen in every book on him she’d ever read. There was a sound of leather boots slapping against an alley floor, and then another, and another, as the criminals started to run.
“It’s bloody impossible,” Burly said, retreating back, dragging Shirri with him. His grasp at her neck was loosened, fading, along with his hope. “He can’t be—he’s—he’s a bloody myth! And—and even if—if—he’s been gone a thousand years—”
Shirri looked at the five of them, in the darkness, as they closed together—the woman, the green man, the elf, the knight and finally, the man in black. He stood there by gaslight, holding aloft his swords. “I was gone,” he agreed. “For a while. And now …” And the smile became a grin as he seemed to shiver in the gaslight, as though a cloud of smoke from a nearby factory covered him over for just a moment, and then drifted on.
Shirri felt the warmth run through her as Burly’s last hope flagged, and his arm slithered off her throat, fear taking him as he ran off into the night, fleeing from the specter that stood before her, a ghost that seemed to have drifted right out of the mists of history and solidified right there, in front of her, before her very eyes.
The man in black smiled, a ghost that had come out of the night, out of the darkness—to save her. And he spoke, as she stood there, witnessing it at last—the thing the people had all talked about, hoped for, wished for, for as long as Shirri could remember …
His return.
“… And now I’m back.”
Return to the World of Sanctuary in
A HAVEN IN ASH
Ashes of Luukessia Trilogy, Volume One
Coming Early 2017!
AND
Cyrus Davidon Will Return in
GHOSTS OF SANCTUARY
The Revenants Series, Volume One
Coming in 2018!
Afterword
What do I even say, now that it’s all over?
Oh, right. Forgot. I just teased that the story of Cyrus Davidon is continuing on the last couple pages there, didn’t I? Well, take heart. The Sanctuary Series is over, and if you were of a mind to, you could close this book (or turn off your e-reader, in most of your cases) and feel as though the story has reached an end of some sort. For it has. Every major question I laid out in the early books of the series should be answered now, more or less. (Except for a really, really big detail from the end of Fated in Darkness. I didn't forget. I promise.) I didn’t dig into all the trifling details of every moment of their lives or anything, but you’ve got the gi
st. Now you know the secret of Sanctuary (surprise! If you go back and reread, I guarantee you’ll start to see the hints of what was coming even in the pages of the Prologue of Defender) and lots of other secrets if you’ve been paying attention. I took care to try to layer in surprises that would only be reinforced upon further rereading, so if you’re disposed to do so, enjoy.
As for what’s to come? Well, quite a bit. If you read the last page with the teaser, you’ll see there’s a trilogy called Ashes of Luukessia, upcoming, which I hope to complete in 2017 (yes, the road Alaric traveled in Mortus’s realm is probably paved with good intentions, but I’m intending to do it nonetheless—we’ll see if reality allows for my ambitious vision to come to fruition) allowing me to start work on the sequel series, titled The Revenants Series, in 2018. Let me tell you a little about each of these projects.
The Ashes of Luukessia trilogy will begin roughly fifty years after the end of the Sanctuary series (I think—I haven’t started writing it yet because I’ve got a little bit—okay, I understated it—a LOT—on my plate right now). We pick up in the last living village in Luukessia, which should raise your eyebrows slightly since there shouldn’t be anyone still living in Luukessia at all. But there are. A whole village, in eastern Syloreas, just sitting there, with new heroes and a story waiting to be told. So that’s coming in 2017, which will hopefully see the release of all three volumes by the end of that year. Of course, the book you’re holding in your hands was supposed to be out in June 2016 and I’m writing this in August, so … that plan may change. We’ll see. I feel I should warn you, while an old friend from Sanctuary will show up and play a prominent role in that one, it will not be Cyrus, Vara, Alaric, Curatio or Vaste. I know that means many of you will probably just write it off, and that makes me sad, but it’s okay. For those of you who want to see other corners of the world of Sanctuary, I promise I will once again do my best to deliver what I hope to be a gripping tale in the spirit of the Sanctuary series. And if I fall short, well, I promise to try and at least insert a few jokes on the level of squirrels and chipmunks attacking some poor bastard’s nuts.
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