Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  The oily smell of the throne room was pronounced, a thick, penetrating scent that wrestled its way up his nasal passages as he tried to meet the Sovereign’s gaze fearlessly. “I present myself to you, Lord Yartraak,” J’anda said. Coeltes lurked in the darkness next to the tall throne, the staff of the Guildmaster curiously absent. He’d seen Coeltes stalking along behind him while he was escorted through the streets as well, probably hoping that J’anda would attempt an escape that could result in his death.

  “You do indeed,” the Sovereign said, his voice high. J’anda maintained a respectful distance. Let Coeltes stay close enough to crawl up the Sovereign’s arse. “I have received your message, and made preparations accordingly.”

  J’anda concealed his urge to smile as Coeltes’s smugly satisfied expression dissolved into a flurry of blinks, his lips drawing into a straight line. Will he dare ask? How assured are you of your place in the Sovereign’s order, Vracken?

  Coeltes seemed to be at war with himself for a very long moment, but ultimately he said nothing. J’anda buried his disappointment. Pity. It would have been fun to watch you question the Sovereign.

  “You come before me claiming to be a changed man, J’anda Aimant,” Yartraak said, his sharply pointed claws scratching against the arms of his throne. “You are … prepared to prove this change?”

  The bile threatened to surge forth again, but J’anda controlled it barely. “I am changed, your grace. It has been a century since I left this place, since I committed my crime. Since I wandered from the path you set forth. Truly, I did not know what I was doing, what I was thinking, when I committed my initial affront. Perhaps it was the … impetuousness of youth, misguided …” He had prepared these words, yet still found them utterly distasteful in every way, and almost as damaging to his nerves as giving voice to the phrase “deviant” had been even when he was safely within the walls of Sanctuary. “I have returned, as I told you, to save the life of Zieran Lacielle, who stands accused of treachery for communicating with me.” He bowed his head. “I can claim the association only for what it is.” He glanced at Coeltes, who was staring at him with undisguised loathing. “She is my lover.”

  Coeltes looked choked, standing small against the leg of the mighty throne of Saekaj. Was he expecting this? No, surely not, by his reaction. What was he expecting, then? “He could be lying,” Coeltes said, but it came out almost a sputter.

  “Yes,” the Sovereign said, still stroking his chin. “You are prepared to convince us, then?”

  J’anda bowed, lightly, and smiled even more so. “I am, of course, prepared to bow to your will. Anything to prove my sincerity to you, my Sovereign.” He saw Coeltes once again twitch with unrestrained rage. “If I may only speak with Zieran beforehand …?”

  “There are cessation spells about the entire palace at this moment,” Yartraak said darkly. “You will not escape me again as you did when last you stood before this throne to answer for crimes.”

  “I have no more desire to run,” J’anda said, shaking his head. “This is a time for proving myself to you.” He kept the outrage, the horror, the disgust, buried behind the mask of a smile he wore as his illusion for today. There was no magic involved, of course, just thorough preparation and a hard realization that this was the only road.

  “Bring her in,” the Sovereign’s voice echoed through the throne room. The doors opened at the end of the passage, the squeak of hinges and the rattle of metal knobs echoing down the long chamber. J’anda turned his head to look at saw her there, walking under her own power.

  Zieran Lacielle was of an age with him, and though she had not suffered the rapid decline he’d experienced in Luukessia, she still looked unnaturally drawn and tired. The Depths have a way of doing that to a body. She had a slight drag in her gait, as though she’d been injured in the leg at some point and had not had it healed, or healed properly, at least. Her black hair was carefully coiffed, which was not something he’d anticipated. She also wore a full-length dress that looked as though a member of the Sovereign’s own harem had surrendered it. He truly did take time to prepare her rather than simply have her dragged up from the Depths in rags, worn and bloodied.

  Her eyes alighted with his and he saw pain reflected there, almost a resignation, and he knew her mind. She thinks I’m doomed to die. Were I in her place, perhaps I would think the same; after all, it is not many who return unharmed from the Sovereign’s death mark.

  “J’anda,” she said, stopping a few feet from him, head held high. She had the cheekbones of nobility, which he knew she was. She stopped short of calling him friend, or acknowledging him in any way but formally, as though somehow it would spare him association with her, the prisoner. If she were thinking, she would want to spare herself association with me, the traitor.

  But Zieran was never that sort of person. He turned his head, ever so slightly, to look at Vracken Coeltes.

  “Zieran Lacielle,” the Sovereign said, voice booming out over the room, “you stand accused of consorting with a known traitor, an exile.” J’anda watched her for reaction; there was none. Zieran was as staid as he’d ever seen her. “J’anda Aimant has returned to me to make amends for his personal betrayals, and I have accepted his restitution. Conditionally.”

  That tipped Zieran’s head slightly to the side, and her eyes found his furtively. What have you done? he could read there.

  He smiled at her, faintly. “I’ve told the Sovereign about us. About how we’ve maintained our affections over the years, and how we—”

  “That’s enough,” Coeltes said, cutting him off. The Guildmaster’s voice lashed at him with anger, and J’anda knew he was wise to the game being played. The Sovereign would not care if I spoke my alibi straight to her, but Coeltes is cannier … or perhaps simply cares more about the outcome of this particular lie than the Sovereign does.

  J’anda darted his eyes back to Zieran and saw the surprise there, concealed under the weariness, the fatigue. There was only one logical lie that could get him out of his particular predicament, after all, and it didn’t take him spelling it out for her to make the easy leap. “My heart dances to see you again, my love,” Zieran said, with all the restraint one would expect from a lady of Saekaj.

  “My lips profess their sadness at the prolonged absence of yours,” J’anda said, trying to sound overly poetic. Sentiment should stir a reaction faster than anything else, if memory serves …

  “I tire of this,” the Sovereign said. “J’anda Aimant, you will take your lover and prove yourself a changed man.” He waved his clawed hand.

  “As you would have it, my Sovereign,” J’anda said, and bowed his head. He looked to Zieran and offered his arm. This was the moment, the tentative moment that he knew he would come to in this desperate gambit. He kept from swallowing hard. Now both our lives are on the line, and truly this time; there will be no trip to the Depths should we fail this task. It will be death, here and now, for both of us—me for my lies, and Zieran for outliving her perceived usefulness. He could see Coeltes out of the corner of his eye, stirring with interest. The guildmaster wore a very slight smile, knowing that their fates hung in the balance of Zieran’s response.

  “It has been so long, my love,” Zieran said, taking his arm. A smile that looked sincere only up to the lines of her eyes was perched on her lips. He could see the concern there—and knew it was not only for her own life, but for what he was being asked to do—what he was being forced to do. And she as well, truly, for we are in this together, tragically. “I would gladly show you my happiness at seeing you here again, safe and whole.”

  “Then let us do so,” J’anda said, feeling a strange sense of relief coupled with a welling of sorrow within. He placed his other hand upon the one she threaded over his upper arm and started to walk her out of the throne room, his stomach protesting at that which his mind knew was coming. He held his breath, trying to surrender to the inevitability of what needed to happen in the following minutes.

 
; I need merely do this one thing—this one, agonizingly difficult thing … and the Sovereign will be assured of my … change. His brow furrowed even as her hand remained draped on his arm. And then … then it will be time to start planning the next move, once Cyrus and the rest return from their mission in Gren.

  Then it will be time to find a way to point Sanctuary at the true menace of Saekaj, and start working to kill this tyrant.

  27.

  Terian

  Terian stood under a tall tree, with twisted boughs, and watched from under the hood of his dark cloak as Cyrus Davidon approached with J’anda at his side. He and the enchanter had been planning this moment for weeks, trying to find the right time to attempt to win the warrior over to their cause. It had taken a fortnight before things had seemed to align properly, and word of the election of Cyrus to Sanctuary Guildmaster had reached Terian’s ears only this morning, after J’anda had already set out to collect Cyrus for the meeting. This had better work.

  It has to.

  The enchanter seemed to be struggling with the walk from the gnomish town nearby, his aged body flagging with each step. “I need a staff, I think,” J’anda said as he drew closer to the tree where Terian waited for them both. He’d planned this conversation in his head a dozen times, a hundred, and yet he still had no idea how it would flow. “A walking stick. Something.”

  “At least you can just teleport back,” Terian said. “Rather than walk back to town.” Cyrus was watching him, fixed on him, and the look on the warrior—the Guildmaster of Sanctuary’s—face was one of mild confusion, the sort he always wore when he was puzzling something out. Please use your reason, Cyrus. Don’t make this into a battlefield. Not now. We have so little time …

  “I know you,” Cyrus said, as Terian drew back his cowl around his shoulders. “You sonofa—”

  “I wasn’t exactly expecting a warm greeting from you,” Terian said, feeling perhaps more tentative than he had at any juncture in his entire life. “But I hope you can at least put aside your anger for this meeting … because we desperately need to talk.”

  “Were you anticipating a blade to the face?” Cyrus’s hand waited an inch from his sword. “I saw you fighting against us in the field at Livlosdald.”

  “Have you gone blind?” Terian asked. “Because I sat on my horse during that battle and never cast a spell nor drew my blade. So I find it curious you would have seen me fight against anyone.”

  “I know the two of you will need to sort through your warring emotions,” J’anda said, “but I hope you do it swiftly so that I may be granted the grace to have the necessary conversation here before I die of old age.”

  “Why do I need to have a meeting with this traitorous filth?” Cyrus asked.

  Predictable. At least I have something to offer. “Because maybe I can help you,” Terian said.

  “Help me … what?” Cyrus laughed. “Die? I’ll call upon you if ever I want to go slowly and painfully.”

  Also predictable, Terian thought with a sigh. “I could also do it swiftly and painlessly, if you’d like,” he said, falling back into the old pattern without any effort at all. Oh, Cyrus. I wish I could tell you how wrong I was, but the likelihood you’d believe me? Less than zero. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

  “You cannot believe this man has any aid to give us,” Cyrus said, turning to face J’anda. The wind picked up, twirling the trail of Terian’s cloak. “He offers a blade hidden in his sleeve while he proffers a hand.”

  “He is placed to assist you,” J’anda said, “in ways you don’t even know. He is also favored of the Sovereign and has the ear of Malpravus.”

  Cyrus’s blue eyes locked on Terian, narrowed with righteous suspicion. “And why would he help me?”

  “Because on the day Alaric Garaunt died,” Terian said, letting his emotions rush out in a way he never did outside of his bedroom, with Kahlee, “you weren’t the only one that was left broken and mourning.” Better I show him the truth of me rather than try to bluff past with false reserve. I am so close to the blade now, so near to the last cut … one more defeat and the Sovereign’s patience with me and all mine may just be ended.

  “Oh?” Cyrus asked, his cheeks turning pink.

  “He may have called us ‘brother,’” Terian said, “but you and I lost a hell of a lot more than a guildmate when that bridge collapsed.”

  “What do you want, Terian?” Cyrus asked after a moment, his curiosity clearly at war with his suspicion.

  Terian grinned to keep from bursting into a wracking sob. “The son of a humble warrior leads one of the greatest armies in Arkaria. Oh, how the times do change.” It should have been me. Once upon a time, it was supposed to be—before I threw it all away for pride.

  “And have you changed?” Cyrus asked.

  “I have changed,” Terian said, working hard to keep his pain bottled within. “But that’s irrelevant. There are forces at work here, bending and shaping the world in ways I don’t care for. There are things I have seen …” Terian shuddered, unable to control his revulsion at the thought of the dead armies working their way into the Riverlands, into a circle around Reikonos, even now, “… that make me fear for the future, should I live so long as to see it.”

  “You’re in over your head.” Cyrus said, and he almost sounded gleeful about it. And why shouldn’t he be? He may have said we were done, but I declared myself his enemy still on that shore. I wouldn’t be sorry to see someone out to kill me get it in the back of the neck, either.

  Terian forced a smile. “With the very, very wrong people. In so deep, I fear to open my mouth to take a breath, to speak a word. I regularly stand in the presence of a god, take his orders, carry out his wishes. And I do it all with the Guildmaster of Goliath close at hand.”

  “You should choose your friends with greater care,” Cyrus said, but the glee was gone.

  I need a chiding from you like I need an axe across my skull. “I didn’t have that many options to choose from.”

  “Sounds like poor decision making,” Cyrus said.

  This is not going the way I’d hoped. “Perhaps. But how I got here is completely irrelevant. I can help you.” Just believe me, Cyrus. Just for one last time. He kept his eyes on the warrior’s, afraid to look away, afraid that he’d hint at the deception he had in mind, afraid to speak the words that were written on his heart.

  I need you to kill the God of Darkness, Cyrus Davidon. Because not another damned soul in Arkaria can.

  “Why?” Cyrus laughed as he asked the question. “Why now? Why risk your life, which I know is precious to you? And to help me, whom you wanted to kill not so very long ago?”

  “Because …” Terian said, drifting straight back into a thought that ran through his mind over and over every single day, “‘Redemption is a path you must walk every day.’”

  “That is possibly the most ludicrously simplistic bit of idiocy I’ve ever had mouthed to me,” Cyrus said. “What addle-brained moron came up with that trite bit of nonsense?”

  Terian could not contain his amusement, and it stumbled out of his mouth in a low chuckle. “It was the previous holder of your august office.”

  “Alaric,” Cyrus said.

  Now I have your attention, don’t I? Terian thought. He was to you what he was to me, and now you’ll lionize him more in death than you even respected him in life. Time and regret couple to make us esteem him even higher now that he’s gone than we did when he was there to offer us his guidance in life.

  And oh, how I wish I had his guidance right now.

  “None other. It was something he repeated to me before the bridge went down,” Terian said. “He coupled it with the reminder that he still believed in me. I walked the wrong path. I followed the wrong people. It took a considerable distance for me to come to that conclusion with all certainty, but I am there now.” He poured it all out, or almost, hoping it would be accepted by the forbidding warrior standing skeptically before him. “Now I offer you a cho
ice—do you want to help me start walking back, or would you rather just watch me fall?”

  Cyrus stared at him, implacable. Please don’t turn your back on me, Cyrus. Not now. “You once taught me the lesson of facing down that which you fear, even when you can’t see it. Of fighting past the legends and rumors and bullshit and striking directly at a foe. But when the day came that you considered me your enemy, you did not afford me the courtesy of coming at me straight on. Why should I believe that you’re facing me head on now?”

  Oh, gods, not this, you fool. Do you even know who I report to now? Sandwiched between the most terrible necromancer in Arkaria and the living embodiment of darkness? Cyrus, you’re not even a threat to me; you won’t point a blade at me unless I come at you. Look at you there, hand still inches from your sword. If the Sovereign were in your boots, I’d be flayed alive already. Terian kept his voice level only through immense effort. “Because you are not my enemy.”

  “I killed your father.”

  If only. “Did you?” Terian asked. “I could only wish you had killed him.” That you’d finished the job, that you’d made his corpse irretrievable, that he was gone forever and not dogging my steps presently.

  “I stabbed him to death and left him to rot on the bridge in Termina, Terian,” Cyrus said.

  “Of course you did,” Terian said. Can’t let that particular secret slip just yet. That one could cost me my life if it came out. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “You spent the better part of a year following behind me as a friend until you found occasion to betray and kill me,” Cyrus said. “But now it’s … bygones? Water under the—”

  “Fallen bridge, yes,” Terian said. “Deep water under a fallen bridge, I’d say.”