“We have spent … months tracking down the clues and putting together this expedition,” Cyrus said, clearing his throat in a wet rasp. His hand found its way into the warm mess of liquid by his side. “I can’t just—”
“There are plenty of other warriors,” Thad said, looking at Cyrus from the ground. “And you will not be of much use in any further action today, especially facing the Mler in their underwater environs.”
Cyrus could hear the reason in the warrior’s words. He looked at the faces around him, from Curatio’s—most stern—to Vaste, whose scarred visage looked a little pinched. His eyes fell on Andren, who still looked stricken and said nothing. Then he came to Longwell and Odellan, twin bastions of disapproval and concern. Erith still remained behind them, glowering at him with reproach. There was another figure in the background, a glimmer of blond hair from just over Erith’s shoulder, and he caught sight of an emotionless face, watching him all the while.
“You,” he called out to her, and she slid forward with slow steps, still neutral. “Will you take over for me?”
“Of course,” she replied coolly.
“And you’ll make certain,” he coughed, “that they finish the expedition? Capture the Mlers’—”
“I said I would take over,” she cut him off. “Success of the expedition was implied after that.” There was no frost in the way she said it; it was a simple statement of fact.
“All right,” Curatio said, nodding. “I’ll accompany Cyrus back to Sanctuary, and the rest of you lot—”
“I’ll go with him,” Andren said, stepping up to stand over him. “I’ll take care of it. Your hands are steadier for healing in combat anyhow.”
Curatio raised an eyebrow at the bearded elven healer. “Are you certain?”
“Aye,” Andren said, looking down at Cyrus with a worn and lined appearance. “I’ll take care of him.”
“I could come with you,” Aisling said, and Cyrus looked up at her. She felt oddly distant now, hovering a little out of arm’s length of him, as though she were afraid of his sick.
“No,” Cyrus said. “Stay. Help them finish.”
“All right,” she said after only a moment’s pause, then leaned down to kiss his wet forehead before stepping away again just as quickly.
Cyrus looked at the crowd that had formed around him as Andren knelt next to him. “I’ll cast the return spell,” Andren said. “Just brace close to me.”
“I’m covered in my own expulsions, drenched wet, and nearly naked,” Cyrus said, eyeing Andren. “I remember a time when you wouldn’t cast the return spell on me when I was fully clothed, dry, and smelled considerably better.”
“Disagree on the last point,” Vaste said. “You have a lovely aroma now; stomach bile adds some very pleasant cover to your typical smells of lust and shame.”
“I’m truly growing as a person,” Andren said, kneeling next to Cyrus and slinging an arm around his shoulder.
“Must be all that ale you consume,” Vaste added. “Does wonders for the firmness of your stomach, too.”
“Ready?” Andren asked, ignoring the troll again.
“Sure,” Cyrus said, and tilted his head back again. She waited, looking on, still as expressionless as ever he’d seen her. “Take care of—”
“I will handle it,” she said to him, no trace of anger in her reply, none of the hostility she would once have breathed upon him like dragon’s fire. Vara stepped up, her armor gleaming in the sun’s light, her ponytail wet and dripping on the silver metal breastplate. “You need not worry.”
Cyrus started to say something else but stopped himself. It had been six months since their encounter in the doorway of his quarters—six months of near silence. She stared at him flatly, no emotion. The return spell took hold of him and he felt himself go insubstantial as the light of the sun faded before his eyes, replaced by the thousand sparkles of light as the magic consumed his body.
His last vision of the deck of the ship was Vara, still expressionless, watching him as he faded away.
Chapter 3
Cyrus reappeared in the foyer of Sanctuary, the stone walls fading into view around him. The smell of the wide hearth burning across the room filled his nose. Light streamed in from the circular, stained-glass window above the mighty doors, which were open, sunlight flooding the room.
“Davidon?” The voice that greeted him was an old, dry one, filled with sound of age. Cyrus turned his head to see Belkan Stillhet standing just a few feet away, sword in hand. Martaina Proelius was at his side, her brown hair colored by the flecks of light from the stained glass window’s shine. “What the blazes are you doing?” Belkan’s eyebrow twitched. “And where’s your armor?”
“Left it on the boat,” Cyrus said with a watery cough. “I’m sure someone will bring it back to me when they’re done.”
“I’m beginning to see how you’ve gone through three swords in four years,” the old armorer said, his leather armor creaking as he turned to look at the force of guards huddled around him. A hundred of them stood in a rough circle, spears pointed at the center—at him and Andren, splayed upon the great seal carved into the middle of the foyer.
Andren slipped an arm around his chest and helped Cyrus to his feet. “How goes the defense of Sanctuary, Belkan?” Cyrus asked, sniffling. He could feel water run down his nose and onto his lip as he got to his feet.
“Better than it looks like your expedition treated you,” Belkan replied.
Martaina Proelius stared at Cyrus with undisguised disgust. “You smell like you draped yourself in seaweed and sunned yourself in a desert for a week.” She sniffed. “And then vomited all over the place.”
Cyrus gave it a pause before nodding. “Sounds about right.”
There was a sound as loud as a thunderclap from the entry to the Great Hall, and Cyrus turned to see Larana Stillhet standing in the door, staring at him, a pot of stew fallen to her feet. Liquid spilled out, darkening the stone as it spread in a puddle. Her hands were over her mouth as she stared at Cyrus then turned and ran back into the Great Hall, disappearing behind the wall.
Cyrus looked down at himself. “I look that bad, huh?”
“I’ve seen more lively-looking corpses,” Belkan opined.
“Which is no great coincidence, since I was one of those only a few minutes ago,” Cyrus said. “Absent the liveliness.”
“He needs rest,” Andren said, and his voice took on an aura of urgency. “He’s at a high risk of developing a great malady of the chest.”
“I believe Curatio called it lung sickness,” Cyrus said, bringing up a wad of something with a racking cough. “Pneumonia, I think it is?”
Andren shot him a look of irritation. “Whether you know its name or not, it will kill you all the same. You need to be taken to bed, immediately, and we should get one of those ‘natural’ healers in here, the ones that practice without magic, only herbs and such.”
Belkan exchanged a look with Martaina, whose tanned face wore a look of greatest amusement. “By oddest coincidence,” Belkan said, bringing his lined face back around to look at Cyrus, “one of those has already showed up, looking for you.”
“For me?” Cyrus asked, a little dumbstruck. The taste of salt was still strong on his tongue, mingling with the bile.
“Indeed,” Belkan said.
“Why would a natural healer be looking for me?” Cyrus asked, taking up a little of his own weight.
“Because I so missed the sight of you shirtless before me that I could not wait another minute to come rushing to your side,” came an amused voice from the stairs. Cyrus turned to see a woman standing there, dark hair falling around her shoulders, which were bare, as they had been when last he had seen her. The rest of her upper body was fairly covered, which was not how it had been when last his eyes had graced her.
“Arydni, High Priestess of Vidara,” Cyrus said, bowing formally as best he was able to.
“Ary!” Andren cried out.
“It
is good to lay eyes upon you again, Andren,” Arydni said, crossing the stone floor in her sandaled feet, her pure, white robes barely touching the stone floor as she walked, almost gliding, toward them.
“It’s not bad looking upon you again, either,” Andren agreed, letting his word become literal as he stared at the priestess, lowering his gaze to her chest. Cyrus watched as Andren stared at her. “All of y—”
“That’s enough,” Cyrus whispered to Andren, whose arm was still draped around his shoulder, helping him keep steady. “How we can we assist you, m’lady?”
“She used to be my lady, you know,” Andren said under his breath.
“Not now,” Cyrus hissed.
Arydni broke into a gentle laugh. “I expect I could do you the courtesy of helping to look after you for a space of time before imposing upon you with any requests.” She crossed the distance between them with palms upturned, hands at her sides.
“It is no imposition to have you ask anything of us,” Cyrus said.
“Still and all,” Arydni said, now only feet away from Cyrus, “your guild has hosted me these last days, and to earn my keep would be a welcome task.”
Cyrus exchanged a look with Andren, who nodded, his shaggy, frizzed hair and beard looking particularly wild now that they had dried. “You might not want to get too close to me right now,” Cyrus said, glancing back at the priestess. “I don’t smell all that wonderful, I’ve been told.” He cast a look over his shoulder at Martaina, who shrugged and gave him a look in return that told him, Obviously.
“I am a Keeper of Life,” Arydni said, sliding next to him on the side opposite Andren and placing his arm over her shoulder. He felt only the lightest touch from her. “Let us get you settled so that I may examine you. All else can wait.”
“Are you certain?” Cyrus asked, looking down at her. “I don’t know too many people who would travel all the way here from Pharesia for a problem that wasn’t important.”
“Oh, be assured,” she said, looking up at him, face lit with a tiredness he had not seen in her, not even in the days after the fall of Termina, “what I come to you with is neither trifling nor some matter I will simply forget or fail to bring up out of politeness—when the moment arrives for us to discuss it.” She ran a hand across his shoulder; her touch was as smooth and soft as velvet. “But for now, let us tend to your malady.”
With slow, halting steps, she and Andren helped him up the stairs to his quarters. Cyrus felt every one of them, his body resisting him out of fatigue, his pace slowed by frequent coughing fits. Still, in the countless floors between the foyer and his quarters near the top of the center tower, Arydni never once looked at him, keeping her silence the entire way.
Chapter 4
“Do you have any lef’tres grass on hand?” Arydni asked after they had gotten Cyrus to his quarters. She bustled about while Andren stood near the hearth, fidgeting and watching her hover over Cyrus. “Also, I need honey and a basin of clean water.”
“There’s running water in there,” Cyrus gestured to the door at the far end of his quarters. “I keep a basin in there as well.”
“Andren, would you be a dear and fetch that for me?” Arydni looked over her shoulder at him. “And then light a fire in the hearth.”
“Ah, yeah, easily done.” Andren snapped his fingers at the hearth. It promptly caught on fire, filling the air with a lovely aroma of light wood smoke, though there was no haze from it. He ducked into the bath and emerged a few moments later with a tin basin a little larger than a dinner plate. A cloth was hanging from the side.
“Wait,” Cyrus said, and was halted by a cough. “I can bathe myself. There’s a tub in the bath.”
“You need rest,” Arydni said, taking the proffered cloth from Andren and soaking it, then wringing it out in the basin. The sound of splashing water reminded Cyrus faintly of the ocean when he was on the deck of the ship. Before, on the way to the temple’s site, he had found the sound peaceful. Now it simply made him ill. “I will cleanse you, then you will lie down for a time.” She looked over at Andren. “Lef’tres grass? And honey?”
“Ah,” Andren said, thinking it over, “Curatio keeps some of both on hand in the Halls of Healing, I believe.”
“I need it,” Arydni said, running the wet rag over Cyrus’s matted chest hair, cleansing the residue of the salt water sick off him. He sat on the edge of his bed, the discomfort from being bathed by a woman he scarcely knew – who was married to my friend, no less – keeping him frozen in place.
“Right then,” Andren said after a moment’s hesitation, “I suppose I’ll uh … go and get that, then.” Cyrus met the healer’s gaze and caught his reluctance. “I’ll … be back in just a sparrow’s flight, that’s all.” Andren smiled weakly. “Before you even know I’m gone.”
“Go on, then,” Arydni said, not looking back at him. “Hurry.”
Andren stepped sideways toward the door and then backed out of it, as though afraid to take his eyes off of the two of them. He didn’t shut the door, leaving it partially open as his footsteps faded down the corridor toward the stairs. Cyrus could hear them echoing faintly over the sound of Arydni squeezing water out of the rag and into the basin.
“I believe he still has a little bit of a torch for you,” Cyrus said after the footsteps had faded.
“I believe he has a burning lust,” Arydni said, looking at him sideways, “and little else in the way of feeling for me at this point.”
Cyrus coughed. “So …”
Arydni did not say anything for a moment, moving the rag in a rhythmic pattern up and down his chest. Cyrus could feel the rough cloth against his skin, scrubbing some of the smell off of him. “How have you been since last we met?”
“I’ve been … busy,” Cyrus said.
“Oh?” She did not look up. “Doing what? Tell me all your news.”
Cyrus chewed his lower lip for a fraction of a second. “Are we really going to do this?” Her eyes met his, and he saw the knowing look within them. “This talk of small things, ignoring the large ones?”
“For just a bit longer, yes, I think,” Arydni whispered.
Cyrus nodded after a brief pause. “After we parted ways last time in Pharesia, I helped kill the God of Death. Then I fought in a war over the Endless Bridge in Luukessia—ever heard of it?” He waited until she nodded to proceed. “I witnessed that entire land die in the maw of a beast of my own creation—the souls of Mortus’s dead, loosed from a portal in the northern reaches of that place. Only by the sacrifice of his life was my Guildmaster, Alaric Garaunt, able to stop them.” Cyrus felt his face cast into a stiff mask, free of expression. “We never even found his body. It was lost to the sea. In the half year since then, I’ve been helping to build a new home for the Luukessian refugees in the Emerald Fields and trying to build my guild’s fortunes.”
“These are not small things.” Arydni dabbed the cloth upon his chin. “But I had heard rumors of much of this. You have my deepest sympathies for the loss of your Guildmaster. I shall say a prayer in his name to the Life Giver this very eve.”
“Thank you,” Cyrus said, resisting the temptation to add anything sarcastic. He sniffed the fresh smell of the water, gradually cleansing the salt from his flesh. “And you? How goes life in the land of the elves in the interval since last we met?”
“It goes as it has for roughly an age,” Arydni said. “We are at war with the dark elves, and little is happening. Termina is free once more,” she said with a slight smile, “thanks to your efforts in bleeding the dark elves dry in the defense. The King’s army stares across the River Perda at the unrelenting faces of the dark elven scourge—”
“I wouldn’t use that word to describe them, exactly,” Cyrus said.
Arydni’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? Well, their army, then. We continue to engage in the least-fought war in our history, at least since the last of the dark elves was expelled from Termina over the bridges.”
“As it should be,” Cyrus said,
feeling a quaver in his voice that he hoped was related to the drainage running down his throat. “Your people are in no condition to mount a major offensive against the Sovereignty.”
“Someone should,” she said, watching him carefully.
Cyrus watched her in return, carefully studying her face. It was still youthful; he would have guessed late thirties in human years, and her full lips did not move in the slightest. “You heard about it, didn’t you?”
“So it’s true?” Arydni asked.
“Depends on what you heard,” Cyrus said. He felt the cool touch of the rag, this time upon his shoulder.
“A rumor reached my ear that Sanctuary accepted a mercenary contract,” Arydni said, looking up at him with careful consideration. “From the Human Confederation.”
Cyrus tried not to blink and look away. “It is true, after a fashion.”
“You’ve become a paid army,” she said.
“It’s not like that,” Cyrus said, and he felt his face redden and not from where the sun had kissed his flesh on the boat ride. “We accepted an offer from Pretnam Urides and the Council of Twelve for a one-time action against the dark elves, and fought to free Prehorta from the enemy garrison that had been left there.”
“You had never done this before,” Arydni said softly. “Sanctuary, I mean.”
“No,” Cyrus said with a shake of the head. “But the pay was exceptional for little risk to our people. And we are already enthusiastic enemies of the dark elves.” He glanced toward the window, which was shut. “Perhaps you saw some hints of their siege here only six months ago? Admittedly, the southwest tower is reconstructed and we’ve patched the holes in the outer curtain wall, but the scarring from what they did is still there, I think.”
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