Master (Book 5)

by Robert J. Crane

  “But he will follow my path,” the companion swept quickly back to that point. “And as Cyrus goes, so goes the Army of Sanctuary.” The armored figured paused, his back turned to Alaric. The satisfaction brimmed out of him. “My army.”

  “You will try to turn him your way,” Alaric said, causing the helm with the red eyes to swivel his way, “and you will fail. You will throw manipulative tricks at him and he will resist. Try as you may, he will not bend to become your flawless servant, not yours, Mathurin—”

  “Do not call me—!”

  “Bellarum, then,” Alaric said, and the red eyes glowed nearly to burst with flame. “He is not yours.”

  Bellarum—Alaric hated to think of him that way—strolled back to the table of implements. They were all of them sharp, at least on this tray. “Use all of them today, Boreagann. Twice.” Bellarum turned to leave, but before he did, he leaned in close to Alaric’s ear, and Alaric could smell the breath of the God of War. “You can’t save him, Ghost of Sanctuary. That’s what you call yourself now, isn’t it? It’s what you are; invisible to the world, unable to grasp or affect it.” There was nothing but malice in the words. “You can’t save him, you can’t sway him from here. He is mine.” Bellarum straightened up, looking down with those red eyes, those merciless eyes. “My servant.”

  “He is his own man,” Alaric said back, in a voice that scratched its way out of a dry throat.

  The God of War hesitated, and Alaric could see the desire to strike warring with the need to not stoop to such things; his haughtiness won out and Bellarum strolled from the room, armor clanking in time with his steps as surely as if he were still a raw soldier.

  Boreagann started his work shortly thereafter. Alaric imagined Bellarum—he still hated that name—lurking outside the door, waiting to hear screams. He kept them to himself for what felt like hours, years, maybe centuries. Every time the pain would rise, he pictured them in his head, the vision he had seen of them in the tower.

  She is with him … Vara is with him … they are together … she will save him now … now that I cannot …

  When he finally broke for the day, the screams tearing through the chamber of Alaric’s torture, it was the knowledge that this last thing would remain secret that allowed him to go on.

  But this was the very last thing. The secret he kept to himself. The one thing that Bellarum did not know.

  The thing he could not take away.

  The screams came in a torrent, flowing like a river past his ears. It was another day of torment for Alaric Garaunt.

  The Ghost of Sanctuary.

  NOW

  Epilogue

  Cyrus stirred from his place by the window. The diary was heavy in his hand, the weight of all of Vara’s words pulling him down. The fire still crackled, the torches still burned, but the odd warmth that Cyrus felt was unrelated to the flames.

  “What are you going to do?” Vaste asked, and Cyrus turned to look at him.

  “I might read for a bit,” Cyrus said, thumbing through the journal. “If that’s all right?”

  Vaste made an impassive face, a gesture that indicated he gave little care. He had a journal of his own—Alaric’s—and seemed to be making steady progress. Cyrus turned back to Vara’s clean, swooping letters and paused on a passage that he knew came in the wake of their dive to the Mler temple, where he had drowned in the dark water, alone …

  I watched him, dead, flopping about without a hint of life as they pulled his corpse from the water, and I felt things. Annoying things. Emotional things. I had seen him die before, of course, but it bothered me on such a level to watch him dragged up from the depths below, thrown upon the deck of that infernal ship, waterlogged and near-naked. I was forced to stand back, to watch as they ministered to him in all the terrible ways it took to bring him back to life.

  I stood and I watched. And my eyes caught the thief’s.

  The horror was not quite it should be, in my estimation. I knew how I felt, of course, and not being his intimate—whatever—my concern should have been different from hers, yes?

  I am completely convinced that I felt it on a much deeper level than she did. Of course, I did not show this to anyone. But neither did she; her appearance was like that of someone stricken, someone who has watched something unfortunate. Part of me wanted to cross the empty space between us, slap her cheek so the salt air burned it, and tell her to feel something—anything.

  It is anyone’s guess whether I really wanted to do that to her … or to myself.

  He blinked. The signs had been there, hadn’t they? All along? He’d missed them, every one. Aisling had seemed so … interested. He felt the ache of his bones now, but remembered the hot blood and how it had called to him. He turned his eyes down and found another passage, this one about hot blood of a different kind.

  I do so try to avoid a catfight where possible. At least the sort that do not involve swords.

  This one most certainly did not involve a sword, though only because my restraint was so great as to keep myself from bringing it into the proceedings. I had plenty of cause. Justification, really. If the dark elven harlot had lost her head to my blade, I am assured that few would have wept. Or been surprised.

  But he might weep, and that keeps her head firmly attached to her shoulders.

  For now.

  It was an innocuous start to a conversation; I was meandering about the grounds, which is something I do from time to time. She saw me, doing some meandering herself, presumably, or else she came actively seeking me.

  I would actually lay my odds on the latter, at least in this instance.

  For you see, her verbal tirade came in the morning hours after I left her and the object of her intentions—good or ill, I have yet to determine—in the Waking Woods, in the dark, ghouls still about. Not exactly in near proximity, but they were certainly still there, and with the noise that those two make while rutting, it was not a stretch of my imagination to think they might be devoured by the boney weaklings.

  Well, perhaps I was more hoping for that, at least in her case.

  “You’re a bitter, jealous shrew.” That was her opening. Sun shining down from above, brisk breeze out of the west rustling my hair, dark elven whore spitting rage in my face.

  “And a fine morning to you as well,” I said.

  “You just can’t let him go, can you?” She folded her arms over that leather armor, which she had probably worn during sex on so many occasions as to completely beat the squeaky sounds out of it when she moved.

  “If you’re referring to last night,” I said archly, “I tried to discourage him from coming with me—”

  “Maybe you’re too old for him,” she said a little haughtily, trying to assure me of my inferior place in the equation. As the last born of the elves, it would take more than a blue-skinned trollop to convince me of any such thing. “I’m twenty-five, after all.”

  “And you are a dark elf,” I said, establishing the facts. “I am thirty-two, and an actual elf, which makes me practically a fetus next to you.”

  “Maybe that’s it, then.” She seemed to take little interest in my insult, but I suspected she was trying entirely too hard. “He’s looking for a mature woman, someone more confident in herself.”

  I refrained from slapping myself upon the forehead then stopped myself from giving her a similar treatment. I was not so successful in holding off my glare of ice. “Your maturity astounds me. Why, I stand astounded in this very moment.”

  She headed off at a brisk pace at that. I presumed it was that she could not find a way to land that ever-elusive insult that would crack my facade.

  If only she’d known the truth.

  Cyrus paused, regarding the neatly written break; the passage that followed was a simple continuation of the same day’s entry.

  I entered the foyer after my encounter with the slattern, milling about in a somewhat confused state. It was not long, of course, before Erith—this woman is a monumental pain in my a
rse on every occasion—approached, begging my help for some task. I accompanied her against my better judgment, and it was there that I was introduced to Administrator Cattrine Tiernan.

  I could think of a few things to say about her. Goddess knows I’d heard enough about her before ’ere I laid my eyes upon her face. I would have been prepared to hate the woman.

  But I could not.

  She was graceful in her introduction where I was not. I thought at first this was simply her high-born manners, but she wore pants, not a dress, which was an immediate mark in her favor. And then we went into the meeting, and she turned out to be intelligent and self-sacrificing, honest about what her community needed and grateful for the help we had provided.

  I know, I know. If this sounds like uncharacteristic gushing, I freely admit to it. But she was kind, and she was decent, and she asked me to escort her to the door, to her waiting wizard. I expected something of the sort that Aisling regularly threw my way, those looks when passed, the under-the-breath comments of someone who felt a need to compete for something I wasn’t even fighting for at this point. He’s yours, fool. Take him with some grace.

  “You are exactly what I expected,” Cattrine Tiernan said as we made our way down the long hallway toward the foyer. “Tall, beautiful, full of grace and composure—”

  “Aren’t you a honey-tongued one?” I replied.

  “You’re everything everyone described,” she said, looking me over once more. Then she lowered her voice. “It should have been you.”

  I froze, and it took me a few moments to remember that I was supposed to be walking with her. I caught up and forewent any attempt to claim I did not know what she was talking about. “It is just as well,” I said instead.

  “No,” she said, “it is not.” She halted me there and looked me in the eyes, and I could tell that whatever she was about to say, it was going to be one of those things I am usually quite uncomfortable with—a ‘just us girls’ comment. “I don’t know what her angle is, but I know what yours was, and I know what mine was.”

  “And what was our … ‘angle’?” I wanted to hear her spell it out. Perhaps I didn’t quite believe I was hearing someone be quite so blunt about it.

  “We actually cared for him,” she said, and I saw that cleverness that I had admired. “Don’t you tell me you can’t see it? The way she looks at him? The ways she tries just a little too hard? Like she’s not quite sure how to get what she wants, so she overshoots the mark by a mile or two—”

  “I have noticed that, yes,” I said. “But there’s precious little I can do—”

  “There’s precious little any of us can do,” she said softly. “He’s made his choices. And I’m fine with it, really. I am. But whatever lingering feeling I have … I think it’s mainly regret that I know he didn’t at least pick someone else who genuinely cares for him.”

  With that, she started off again. I did not quite manage to speak the thought which was on my mind: I agree completely.

  Cyrus ran a hand over his face, blinking through a fatigue that had settled deep on him. He imagined the two of them standing together, talking, Cattrine and Vara. It gave him more than a moment’s discomfort.

  We battled trolls, dark elves, watched a bombardment that was nearly the stuff of miracles fall upon our field of battle like some magic so grandiose I cannot conceive of a spell caster who could unleash it, and then we got a glimpse of Terian—yes, that Terian—staring at us from across the battlefield on the side of our foes.

  And then, after all that, I went to deliver a private word of congratulations to our triumphant General, victor of the battle at Livlosdald, and found him in his tent bedding his dark elven … pick an unflattering term to describe her, as I’m running out.

  It is not as though I am naïve about these sorts of things. I am fully aware that Cyrus Davidon is a man who is possessed of all the appetites that a man is possessed of. But knowing it and once again having it driven home—this time in the form of his dark elf’s caterwauling, matched with his own shouts of lust—are two quite different things.

  I thought about tossing some cutting remark toward the tent as I passed, but I decided not to give her the satisfaction. How could I trust a man such as this, so weak and so prone to driving himself toward … her … to run this guild?

  I wandered off into the night, seeking my solace. It is simply better that I be left alone.

  The tingle ran over Cyrus’s flesh as he imagined the moment, pictured her outside in the dark, staring at the tent, listening to the sounds. He made a shudder as he pictured that moment with their roles reversed. Revulsion washed over him, profound and heavy, and he hurried on to the next passage.

  I felt bad for him in the swamp. He tried to explain his dark elven dalliance, tried to blame it on—goddess, everything. The dark of night, the unthinking mind, the blood flowing to the wrong portion of his anatomy—well, that last part appeared obvious on the night in question—but it didn’t take away from the fact that I felt bad for him.

  He stood next to the grave of his father and realized there was nothing left. How heady a feeling. I am a bit familiar with it, since there is now a marker outside Termina that bears my mother’s name. It is one of countless names on said marker, but it is there. I found it once, on a recent visit. It stands there and declares to the world that Chirenya was lost in the defense of the city. Right there next to the soldiers. It’s a monument. It stands in place of her, because she is no longer here to stand.

  His father’s grave was empty stones, fallen to time and weather. Then he faced me—after he’d caught me following behind them—and tried to explain away his mistakes. Unfortunately for him, they’ve left a rather large monument in my mind, and it is not an empty one. It is filled with the sounds I have collected in my memory on various nights over the last months. A catalog of all his so-called “mistakes.”

  And there are so many.

  Then we came to Gren, and he laid his fury upon them on the main street. They were duly impressed. I can’t say I wasn’t impressed, either. This was Cyrus Davidon in the heart of the battle. He runs on a fairly even keel, always thinking, pondering, considering. I wonder sometimes what goes on behind those eyes, especially during battle.

  But then, every now and again, he lets loose of the leash, and I find myself wishing I didn’t know what goes on back there.

  What he did on the main street was … understandable. Dramatic. He puffed himself up and scared them all off. Sent the trolls running.

  What he did in the slave market, though …

  Well, that’s another something.

  They sent for me, for reasons I could not fathom at first. I was at the other end of town, tying up my own loose ends, supervising the freeing of more dirty, ragged slaves than I could rightly count, and then Nyad appears—have I told you that her choice of a last name drives me absolutely goblin-shit mad? It does. But that’s a story for another time. She appears, wild, clearly having fatigued herself with a sprint across the splattered waste that is troll town, outhouse to the balance of a race with the largest bowels in Arkaria, and she pants something about me needing to follow her.

  I protest. She ignores it and reiterates her demand I accompany her. I tell her in a moment, cool irritation with her infantile spewing of breathless emotion and she splatters out the words, “CYRUS IS GOING TO KILL THEM ALL!” as though it were an unusual thing, the man in the black armor dealing death.

  And yes, before you ask, I sprinted across town faster than the elven princess could keep up. Apparently she used the important word, the one that would get me moving, somewhere in there. I maintain that it was ‘kill,’ but an impartial observer may come up with another, more likely candidate.

  I brushed past Larana, staring at Cyrus in mute helplessness, to get close enough to him to speak. “Cyrus … don’t,” I said, imploring him. I have seen him vengeful before; his career puts him in a position to lose friends at a rate a blacksmith or farmer or waterman is unlik
ely to know. “You are better than simple vengeance.” I almost felt the voice of Alaric urging me as I said it, repeating back what the Ghost of Sanctuary had told me in the days I desired to strike down Archenous Derregnault, the bastard.

  I watched him pull back from the abyss, watched it unfold before my very eyes. I watched him calmly bury what was left of Cass Ward, putting his frustration into every thrust of the shovel.

  And I felt bad for him. Truly, I did. In that moment, I felt a sense of being alone more acutely than I ever have, and it bothered me most because … I felt it solely because I knew he was experiencing the exact same thing.

  Wistful. He imagined the look on her face as she wrote about Gren, imagined her detailing her fears about being alone, about losing control to the vengeful. He remembered her as she had been in Enterra, when she’d seen his mercy. The look on her face had been … he blinked a tear away.

  I didn’t know how badly he was hurt until he agreed to go to the back of the lines. That was when I suspected, but truly, I had no idea even still. Then he staggered forward in his foolish charge, and I watched him go, unable to stop or support him. I tried to use logic to keep myself back as others followed him. I was still … if not bitter over the Guildmaster election, at least twinged with annoyance. It was not exactly a shocking result, but it stung nonetheless, all protestations and pledges of loyalty to the contrary. I am a sharp blade, and I cut wherever I go. Cyrus is a … I don’t know. Perhaps he’s a loaf of sweetbread, desired by all, and something I wish to eat when—

  Never mind.

  He went into the heart of the battle, bleeding from the wound that infernal bitch opened in his back. I have known many women—they comprise probably half the people I know—and yet I had always seemed to associate backstabbing with men up until that day. No more.

  Even seeing her as treacherous, I could not fully imagine that she could devastate him so. Manipulate him for her own gain? Certainly. Enrich her own purse through him in exchange for the relief of his needs? A tale as old as time itself. Curatio could probably tell it.