Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “No, how are you alive?” Vara asked him crossly. “The blows of gods shatter mortal men into pieces.”

  Cyrus stared at her eyes, then looked to Curatio. “This is true. Mortus broke me as I recall; I was only spared by your timely spell.” He glanced at Vara. “How did you survive?”

  “He never hit me,” she said, with a cocked eyebrow. “Unlike yourself, I move out of the way of killing blows.”

  “How peculiar,” Curatio said, drawing the attention of them both as he knelt next to the throne, his eyes dancing to Cyrus only for a moment. “Is that new chainmail that you wear?”

  “Yeah, it’s—” Cyrus paused midsentence. “How the—?”

  “I am no blacksmith,” Curatio said, staring at the fallen form of the Goddess of Life, mostly hidden behind the throne, “but I do know quartal when I see it.”

  Cyrus’s fingers ran over the smooth links under his gauntleted fingers. “Quartal?”

  “Someone must be fond of you,” Curatio said, “that’s a fortune in the metal.”

  Cyrus felt his lips open slightly, and he caught the questioning look from Vara. He abruptly cleared his throat and came around the throne to lay eyes upon the fallen goddess. “How is she?”

  “Drained,” Curatio said, running his thin fingers through her silver hair. “Though I am at a bit of a loss to explain how exactly this was performed.”

  “Using this,” came a voice from behind the throne. There was the sound of something heavy hitting the floor and rolling, like a rock on stone, the crackle of its surface running toward them. It caught the torchlight as it came to a stop at Curatio’s feet, a ruby the size of a head, gleaming, almost glowing even in the faded light.

  “Slattern,” Vara hissed.

  Cyrus caught sight of Aisling holding her place against the far wall, standing in a doorway, silhouetted against the darkness behind her. “What are you doing here?”

  “Heard the hubbub,” she said, staring at them from a safe distance. Cyrus wondered at the curious way she held her body; not just standoffish but wounded, like she’d had something broken. A thin trickle of dark blue blood ran down the corner of her mouth. “Came running.”

  “Were you already here?” Cyrus asked, finding his way to his feet to stand next to Vara. The darkness hung in the throne room, and he cast a glance to his side to see others easing into the doors slowly, Martaina among them. Her bow was unslung, an arrow already nocked and ready to fire. She moved for a better angle; Aisling was not exposed, standing as she was just inside the doorframe.

  “Does it matter?” Aisling asked, weary. “Take the Red Destiny. See if you can restore some of the souls to her. It might aid her recovery.”

  “Do you think a pretty bauble will make us forget what you’ve done?” Vara bristled.

  “Why would you forget it?” Aisling asked through thin, unsmiling lips. “It’s not like I can.”

  “Why?” Cyrus asked; he started to reconsider, to ask something else, but he realized that it was the only question that mattered.

  “He took someone dear to me,” Aisling said. Her eyes were haunted, still, her catlike motions all gone. The way she stood was like a person broken.

  “And you very nearly took one dear to me,” Vara said.

  Cyrus looked over at her, blinking. “Did you just say …?”

  “Hush.”

  Aisling did not smile, and her answer was bitter. “I could apologize, but I’ll be honest—”

  “For the first time ever?” Vara asked.

  “I didn’t mind beating you for him,” Aisling said. “Of all the things I was told to do, fighting with you over him was the sweetest, because you don’t normally lose.” Her eyes flashed purple in the dark. “How did it feel?”

  “How will it feel when I kill you?” Vara shot back.

  “Like nothing,” Aisling said quietly, and she started to fade into the shadows.

  “Wait,” Cyrus called. “Your … love? Your friend? What happened to them?”

  She half-emerged, face still shrouded in shadow. “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t think you’re just going to walk out of here—” Vara said.

  “Let her go,” Cyrus said.

  “You cannot be serious,” Vara hissed at him. “This is the second person who has attempted to kill you that you have let walk away in the last year. Any more and I will start to suspect that you truly do wish to die—”

  “You killed the one who tried to kill me,” Cyrus said, peeling his eyes from Aisling to look at Vara. “She was no more than the hand of Yartraak, else she’d have finished the job. She certainly had the chance.”

  Aisling watched him from the shadows. “Do you expect me to thank you?”

  “I’d say you’ve shown me your gratitude over the last year in every way I could possibly handle,” Cyrus said with a twist of the knife. She did not flinch from his words. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  She disappeared into the darkness and the door shut behind her. She said something, but he did not catch it.

  “Damned right,” Vara muttered, drawing his eyes to her.

  “What did she say?” Cyrus asked, frowning.

  “I need to get the Goddess of Life back to her realm,” Curatio said from behind them. He had her clutched in strong arms; she was small, thin, waif-like. Like Aisling, Cyrus thought, wishing he could drive the thought out a moment after it came to him.

  “Can you do that yourself?” Cyrus asked, staring at the healer behind the darkened throne. It sat empty, but it still stole his attention, making him look it over once before his eyes returned to Curatio.

  “Of course,” Curatio said.

  “It’s a little hostile in there, wouldn’t you say?” Vaste called from his place at the far end of the room. “Angry squirrels and whatnot.”

  “With the death of he who I suspect caused the curse,” Curatio said, hefting the goddess in his arms, adjusting as though she were more than the light weight she appeared to be, “I do not think that will be a problem any longer. She draws strength from her realm, and her reappearance will help put it back into order.” He stared at Cyrus. “The question is … what do you mean to do?”

  Cyrus stared at him and narrowed his eyes. Did he hear my conversation with Terian all the way in here? “One last thing,” he said, “on our way out.” He let his hand drift to Praelior. “One last task left unfinished that we could do to … make Arkaria a better place.”

  Curatio nodded once, the hint of a smile at his lips enough of a sign that Cyrus was certain he knew. “Good luck,” the healer said, and disappeared in the twinkle of spell light.

  “Where’s the army?” Cyrus asked, not wasting a moment.

  Odellan slipped out of the shadows near the door. “We have roughly one thousand with us, Guildmaster. The rest are waiting in the main hall at Sanctuary, ready to be deployed anywhere we can teleport them.” The elven officer stood, stiff, as though waiting for an order. “What are your intentions, Lord Davidon?”

  Cyrus settled his jaw then turned to look at Vara, who stood beside him still. Still. He smiled, though faintly; she did not return the smile, but neither did she look away. “I think,” Cyrus said, looking at the hole in the doors and seeing the wall and gates beyond, “that Saekaj Sovar needs a lesson in civilization.”

  There was a silence, broken by Vaste. “And how do you plan to teach them this lesson, oh mighty Warlord?” His words dripped with sarcasm.

  “By depriving them of something that they desperately need ripped from their vile, clawing grasp,” Cyrus said with a grin. Now he a caught a hint of a smile on Vara’s lips as well—but only a hint. “Prepare to march; we’ll be taking a route through Saekaj and out to the surface, where we’ll kill the guards to their portal and bring in the rest of our army.”

  “And then?” Vaste asked, waiting. “Sack the city? Slaughter their livestock? Grab the Sovereign’s corpse and parade it through town with a pike up his ass?”

  C
yrus paused. “Maybe that last part, on our way out.” It’ll probably keep them from giving us much trouble.

  “That’s civilized,” Vara snorted.

  Cyrus ignored her. “But, no … that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to bring our army in … and free every slave in this godsdamned land by sheer force of arms.” He stared into the assemblage before him and imagined his eyes glowing the way Vara’s had, a righteous fury as he laid it out before him. “We finish the job, we end slavery in Arkaria for good, and we do it here, on this very night.” He gave a single nod and started them on a forward march, dodging his way out of the wreckage of the throne room of Saekaj with Vara at his side.

  “Good speech,” she said as they crossed out of the front doors, the army following close—but not too close—behind. “Magic aside, we’ll make a crusader out of you yet.”

  He smiled as they crossed the bridge and entered the city unopposed. Guards quailed before them, faces hidden behind windows, nervous eyes nearly afraid to look at them. Cyrus marched through Saekaj with Vara at his side, unopposed, as they threaded their way into an open tunnel road, on a path for the surface. And the army followed behind them, unstoppable, felling the few enemies that made it past the paladin and the warrior who led them out of the darkness.

  Chapter 81

  “A lot of people have said over the years that they’re going to free the slaves,” Andren said as he walked beside Cyrus through the streets of Reikonos, “but no one’s really done much about it until the Lord of Perdamun.” The elf held up a hand in the air, and brought the other up to smack it down with a loud clap. “Then you go and order your army to knock over Gren, and four months later you force Saekaj to give up every one of their slaves at the point of the sword.” He shrugged expansively. “There’s talk, and then there’s you. Worlds apart. You just do it, don’t you?”

  Cyrus let his cloak part in the middle. The spring air was swirling through the streets, matched by the construction efforts that were in progress. Roofs were being re-thatched on stone houses that were black with the scorching kiss of fire brought to them in the sack. People still walked with a hesitancy, as though something were going to leap out with them. It was not the same city, this Cyrus knew. It was more guarded, more afraid—but there were survivors. “I wish I could have ‘done it’ here when it came to saving the city.” He frowned. “That didn’t sound right.”

  “City’s still here,” Andren said. They threaded their way down an avenue that was all too familiar, the sun far, far overhead and barely visible in the gulch-like valley of the slums. “Battered, sure. A little beaten. But you made your deal, and the dark elves pulled out only a day or two after we finished our job in Saekaj.” He shrugged again. “I don’t think Pretnam Friggin’ Urides was responsible for that, do you?”

  “No,” Cyrus said. “I think Terian Friggin’ Lepos was.”

  “Guess you won’t know unless someone finally comes out of Saekaj to tell the tale,” Andren said. Not a word had been heard from Saekaj in the outside world since Sanctuary had ravaged the surface farms and gone into the slave quarters under the earth and freed everyone within them. Cyrus could still see the scared faces of the whip-wielding guards, running for their lives with the Army of Sanctuary coming at them in overwhelming numbers.

  “Since it’s been two months and we’ve heard nary a word,” Cyrus said, “I don’t imagine that silence will end anytime soon, do you?”

  “Suits me fine,” Andren said. He was still clean-shaven, a fact which amazed Cyrus to no end. He seemed different, but Cyrus saw little need to comment upon it for fear it would push him away. “I can do without the dark elves for quite some time, if you know what I mean.” He laughed. “You probably can, too, right?” His laugh stopped. “How’s your back?”

  “Only hurts when it rains,” Cyrus said as they came around the final corner. There was construction everywhere, buildings going up, buildings being repaired. The shanties that had dominated the slums had been burned, and the smell of ash was thick in the air along with that of fresh pine lumber dragged from the forests of the Northlands.

  “Why did you let her go?” Andren asked. “Every single one of us would have gladly gutted her for you.”

  He blinked in surprise at the vehemence of the healer’s pronouncement. “Even you?”

  “Especially me,” Andren said and Cyrus saw a pinprick of red anger in his eyes, something he did not usually see from the elf unless he had both drink and provocation. “But she feeds you a sad story, and you just let her walk away.”

  Cyrus paused, looking in the direction of their destination. In truth, I don’t want to go on; this cannot end well. “Let us presume … just for a moment … that it was not as she said. That she stabbed me and failed, that she was with me for no purpose but that she served the Sovereign.” He fiddled with his cloak, the thought of it producing its own sort of discomfort. He felt a bit sick but held it back. “Then she spent years trying to and eventually succeeding in sleeping with someone that she had no interest in. The only way she held my confidence was by sex, and every time I started to slip from her grasp, she was forced to go back to this same well in an effort to reclaim me.”

  “Yeah,” Andren said, nodding, “and we should have killed her for it.”

  “She had to sleep with me for over a year,” Cyrus said, and he felt a swell of pity, “even though she didn’t want to, because her master bade her do it. He exercised his power over her to get her to use her body against her will.” He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t have her killed for that; he did far worse to her by using her in such a way, and I feel ill that I was complicit in such an act.”

  Andren’s cheeks crinkled in disgust. “You thought you were with someone who wanted you.”

  “But she didn’t, did she?” Cyrus asked. “And I was fool enough to buy her act. Egotistical enough, I suppose.” He shrugged. “She should hardly be penalized for that, no matter how … used I feel.” And he did feel used; he woke in the night with a sense of disgust, and showered under a stream of chill water for hours, imagining he could still smell her upon his skin.

  “Come on,” Andren said, a pity in his eyes that went unspoken.

  “Yeah, okay,” Cyrus said and followed behind the elf.

  “You gonna be all right?” Andren asked as he fell into step beside Cyrus again. A blustery wind, the last gasp of winter, whipped through Cyrus’s cloak.

  “Eventually,” Cyrus said.

  “You know, there are other women. Plenty who wouldn’t mind—”

  “I am fully aware,” Cyrus said, unblinking. Plenty of … choices.

  But there’s only one I want.

  They came out from behind a lumber wagon, filled to the overflowing with long boards, its axles strained under the load. “Well, I’ll be,” Andren said aloud.

  Cyrus looked in more than a little wonderment himself. The old barn stood before them, untouched; a weathered, run-down thing, the chains across its door intact. It had been their home once, long ago, and though the mark of fire was evident on every building around it, it remained completely unharmed, standing proud in its place on the street.

  “Probably not worth burning,” Andren said.

  “Maybe,” Cyrus said, unconvinced. The healer moved toward it with key in hand, ready to open the doors. Or maybe it’s just a survivor …

  … like us.

  Chapter 82

  Two days after Cyrus returned from Reikonos, Vaste sat upon the front steps like a discarded bag of refuse upon a slope, the wide part of his middle threatening to pour out of his robes, his head looking up into the sky like it was going to fall on him at any time. Cyrus stared at the troll; he’d been apprised of the healer’s unusual behavior by whisper and worry from guildmates. So odd was the troll’s state that he’d thought about having Curatio talk to him, but something prickled him about it. It’s not the sort of thing a friend leaves to others, he decided.

  “Oh, hi,” Vaste said, not even roll
ing over to look at him. “Come to deal with the blatantly obvious troll that’s lying strewn across your front steps?”

  Cyrus thought about doing his usual poke, sending the troll’s repartee right back at him, but something gave him pause. “I’m here to talk to my friend, Vaste, who appears … not himself.”

  That forced the mammoth green head to turn toward him, neck braced against the stone step. Sanctuary’s shadow loomed over them, the front doors cracked just a hint at Cyrus’s back, doubtless to allow any number of curious listeners to hear their conversation. “I am not myself,” Vaste agreed. “But I’m not anyone else, either.”

  Cyrus arched an eyebrow. “So … who are you?”

  “Oh, don’t be an obtuse shit,” Vaste said. “I am who I’m always been, I’m just suffering a bit of an identity crisis.”

  Cyrus eased down next to him, lowering himself to sit on the step next to Vaste’s head. The troll watched him with bright yellow eyes, looking just a bit like he might snap and attack. “My question still stands. You’re still Vaste, but what do you think of yourself?” He paused. “Is this because of Gren?”

  “No, it’s because the damned sky is blue,” Vaste said, staring upward. “Of course it’s because of Gren. But it’s not just because of Gren, if you catch my meaning.”

  “I couldn’t have a more difficult time catching your meaning if it were a greased goat,” Cyrus said.

  Vaste glared at him. “Oh, yes, add your humor to the situation. That’s sure to help.”

  Irony. Cyrus picked his words carefully. “So … what else is it besides Gren?”

  “Do you know what it’s like to not know your place in the world?” Vaste asked.

  “I know something of it, yes,” Cyrus said.

  “Please don’t give me a ‘Poor me, I was all alone in a city of my people and hated by everyone around me’ story,” Vaste said, “because I suspect you and I could match each other tale for tale.”