Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  “You told me it wasn’t over between us,” Cyrus said. “At the end of that very bridge.”

  “It’s over now,” Terian said. “Unless you want to revive it.”

  “That easy?”

  “It may only have been a few months, but I’ve lived a lifetime of fear since that day,” Terian said. “I have other things to concern myself with now. Much more frightening things than the new Guildmaster of Sanctuary.”

  “You dangle under the nose of the God of Darkness and want to betray him to me?” Cyrus asked. “To what purpose?”

  “To the ultimate purpose,” Terian said. “I want the dark elves to lose this war. I want the Sovereign to leave Saekaj again, for good this time.”

  “And you think I’m the means to that?”

  “You’re the only one who’s beaten him,” Terian said. “If there were anyone else—the King of the Elves, the Council of Twelve—I’d be talking to them. But he’s got them on the run. Reikonos reels under assault from our armies, and even now we make inroads into the east. The elves cower across the Perda, watching the world of man burn. The Riverlands are weeks away from a determining battle. You are the only opposition. The pebble in his boot.”

  “A pebble in the boot is hardly fatal,” Cyrus said.

  “The scorpion in his boot, then,” Terian said. The frustration crashed loose. I’m offering you a gift, fool, and I know you suspect a price. Please don’t ask it, not yet, please … “Do you want my help or not?”

  “What help do you offer?” Cyrus asked, and his shoulders relaxed for the first time.

  It’s a start. At that, Terian felt the first strains of relief. He didn’t smile, because there was surely more to be negotiated, but it was the crack in the wall that he needed, and he knew Cyrus well enough to be certain that now—for the first time in a long while—that there was indeed hope after all.

  28.

  Aisling

  She was bidden to appear and she did, knocking on the door at the top of the tallest stair in Sanctuary. The sound of her knuckles across the fine wood resonated within and without, her mind as numb as the sensation of her skin where it came in hard contact with the door. An ally. I finally have an ally, perhaps.

  “Come in,” came the voice from behind the door, and she heeded it, opening the soundless hinge and stepping as quietly as ever, her boots producing not even a whisper with each move she made. She looked all around her as she walked up a small staircase. As her head cleared the top she was treated to an imposing view; at each of the four compass points was a balcony, with doors swept open wide under dark eaves. White, lacy sheers drifted lightly with the breeze, something so out of step with the occupant of these quarters that it made her hesitate at its mere sight. “So … this is the Guildmaster’s tower.”

  “Obviously the whole central tower is not mine,” Cyrus Davidon said, looking relieved, “only the top floor. Though there does seem to be a rather thick layer of stone between me and my officers.” The warrior in black was in his customary armor, and he wore a look of mighty discomfort. She saw and knew that things were amiss, that trouble was astir. Not now. Not when it’s possible things could start to go right.

  She summoned her best seductive smile and put aside the pangs of worry that were starting to stir within her. “You did it.” And truly, he had, not that it was a grand surprise to anyone but him. Now I sleep with the Guildmaster of Sanctuary—hopefully.

  “I was merely elected,” Cyrus said, holding his gauntlets together tightly enough that she could see the tension born out in his posture, the way he tried to put his strength to some aimless use. No. This is not good.

  “You put yourself forward and allowed the guild to show you how much they love you,” Aisling said. She felt strangely hollow, like she had to go through motions that she’d been through enough times to lose enthusiasm for them.

  “I don’t think that it extends as far as ‘love,’” Cyrus said. “Belief in my leadership, perhaps. A lack of good alternatives, maybe.” He tried to smile, but it failed to last. Oh, no. This is it. Not now. Not yet. “We need to talk.”

  “Do we? Can we do it after?” She let her hands dance around him, but it was a shallow gesture. How many times have I tried to pull him back from this moment? Because of Shrawn. She looked into his stark blue eyes, saw the tentativeness there. If I had met him in another place, in a different way … I might have followed him like the rest of them.

  But instead, I follow the string around my neck.

  “We cannot,” Cyrus said, coming to his feet with surprising urgency.

  She followed, placing fingers on his chin, moving to kiss him. “It can wait.”

  He leaned in for a half-second before that stony resolve snapped down on him again. “No.”

  This is it. She opened her eyes slowly, let them flutter, like she’d just awoken from a deep sleep. In a way, she felt she had, like the dream of playing things out for a little more time was about to end. “What?”

  “I cannot do this any longer,” Cyrus said.

  “A tired refrain. You’ll feel differently after. You always do.” This is a man who’s not going to respond to manipulation forever, though to hear Shrawn tell it, every man is susceptible to that forever.

  “I don’t want to feel differently,” he said, shaking loose of her grasp. “I don’t want to keep using you to soothe my aches while imagining you’re someone else.” He turned away from her. “You and I have done this dance for far too long, and I have been a fool and a weakling letting myself think that this could be more than it is. I use you selfishly, and it has to stop.”

  “It doesn’t have to stop unless I want it to stop,” she said. In a way, this would be a relief. To have it over. To be done with this part of the charade … even knowing what it might entail. “And I don’t wish it to,” she lied.

  “You hold out hope for something that will never happen,” Cyrus said. “My feelings for you are gratitude—for what you’ve done for me, for saving my life, for the guidance you’ve provided, and the thousand times you’ve been a balm. But no more than that.”

  “You don’t know that it couldn’t be more,” she said. She played the role, dredged up a sense of wounded pride that she draped over the complicated feelings of fear and relief that were flooding her, and which she was redirecting into the pit as quickly as she could. Someday, that abyss will overflow, and gods help whoever is standing nearest me when it happens. “You haven’t given it time—”

  “You’ve given it a year,” Cyrus said. “Nothing has happened. In spite of the muddling of things, in spite of the desires of the flesh, the call of my heart has not changed since the day I first took my relief in you. I respect you, I find great comfort in your kindness—that much has changed. But I do not love you, Aisling.”

  Of course you don’t.

  You love Vara.

  “I wish I could,” he went on. “But I do not.”

  “You do not know what you are saying.” Except that you do, and haven’t had the balls to say it until now, either because of the job I’ve done on you or because of your own foolishness.

  “I know what I am saying,” Cyrus said, hovering away from her. “It must be over.”

  “It can’t be over,” she said. But it is.

  She talked to him further, listened to emotional words flow from him and posited her responses based on what she was supposed to do, on how she knew she was supposed to act, and when the moment came, she left, and in exactly the way she knew she needed to, but her thoughts were miles away, in a cavern in the dark, in the dwelling place of her race and where she now needed to return, desperately.

  It is over.

  Finally.

  And now I have to figure out the next move … because the time for action is coming.

  29.

  Terian

  Being in this place is surreal, Terian thought as he stared around the room. It was a study on the very top floor of the House of Ehrest, with a hearth crackling q
uietly to one side of the room and a massive desk in the center. He stared at the man who sat behind it, half-expecting it to be his father. But it’s not. Vincin Ehrest is not really all that much like my father, which is surprising for a man who’s risen so high in the Shuffle.

  “You have a pinched look upon your face, Terian,” Vincin Ehrest said, watching Terian carefully.

  “I have a lifetime of unpleasant memories from this place,” Terian said, shuffling away from the two chairs that faced his father-in-law’s desk. His boot scuffed the wood floor, a not-so-silent reminder of the opulence of the manors of Saekaj. “The fact that they don’t gut the manors and start over again with each move of the Shuffle … Does it ever feel to you like you’re living in someone else’s house?”

  “You forget: I’ve lived in this house before,” Vincin said, his hair long and tucked back over his shoulder in a braided queue, looking like a gentleman of Saekaj. “I have my own memories of this place.”

  “I suppose,” Terian said, looking up at the space above the hearth, where a portrait of Kahlee hung. He remembered a different picture there; that of his sister. Ameli.

  “I had a reason for calling you up here, General,” Vincin said, wooden chair squeaking beneath him as he pivoted on the springs.

  “You don’t have to call me that,” Terian said absently, slowly finding his way back into the seat.

  “It helps remind me that my son-in-law is so ascendant at the moment,” Vincin said. There was mirth there, even without a trace of a smile. He tapped his finger on the desk, and Terian felt unspoken words. Quick to ascend, quick to descend. He knows perhaps better than most how close I am to the blade.

  “What did you want to talk about?” Terian asked, easing himself into the padded chair. His armor jutted, spikes in inconvenient places, and he always exercised care around furniture, especially that which wasn’t his.

  “The future,” Vincin said. “The future of Saekaj—and Sovar.”

  “Sovar doesn’t seem to have much of a future at the moment,” Terian said, watching the older man carefully. “They’re about one good step from rebellion at any given moment, and you know how the Sovereign feels about that.”

  “I know well how the Sovereign feels about it,” Ehrest said stiffly, “being in consultation with him about the matter on a regular basis. Do you know what the Sovereign intends, though?”

  Terian tapped a gauntleted finger against the arm of the chair. “I’m more focused on the campaigns in the Riverlands and against Reikonos at the moment. We’re closing in on Deriviereville even now—”

  “Do you know what he intends?” Vincin asked again, and there was no denying the seriousness of the man’s look.

  “If the lower chamber rebels?” Terian asked with a shrug of his shoulders. Everyone suspects, naturally. The trick is to make it look like it doesn’t matter. “Probably to burn it to the ground with all the fury of Enflaga on a bad day.” He tried to smile carelessly, but felt it fade when he saw Ehrest’s look.

  “That is exactly what he intends,” Vincin said, without a trace of amusement. “Do you know the composition of the lower chamber at the moment? After three solid years of a losing war? It’s nearing eighty percent female. The only men left are the ones in the guard, or for heavy labor, or who are infirm or yet to come of age—”

  Terian held up a hand. “I have no control over—”

  “You and I spoke of this once before,” Vincin said. “Of how a storm was coming—”

  “We’ve been in a storm for a long time,” Terian said. A howling one, full of raw bitterness worthy of Tempestus, God of Storms. “I don’t see how anything has changed.”

  “One cannot fight against the wind and rain forever, Terian,” Vincin said. “The women of Sovar, and whatever men remain—they’re furious. They’re starving. Their children are starving.”

  “This is not a conversation we should have in your house—” Terian started.

  “Guturan Enlas is not here at the moment,” Vincin said, waving him off. “And this is the moment we have for such a discussion. Food stores are down to nearly nothing.” He picked up a piece of parchment from the desk and waved it between them. “The Great Sea is nearly finished. We’re sending out our mushrooms to feed this dead army your friend Malpravus is raising. The last reasonable source of sustenance and we’re stripping it bare to … what? March on the human capital? As if they’re not starving themselves at this point—”

  “I don’t know what you want from me—”

  “I want you to get your head out of your arse,” Vincin Ehrest cut him off, voice hushed. “We have a bare guard here on Saekaj right now, you know this, yes? You’re effectively the General of the Armies, with your head still attached for the time being, which is a rare gift that your predecessors no longer possess.”

  “I am aware of many things,” Terian said coolly. Where is he going with this?

  There was a click at the door behind them, the heavy stone moving as the handle turned. Terian felt a trickle of panic at the thought of someone listening to what they’d been discussing. The door began to swing inward and he sighed, inaudibly, in relief at the flash of the white dress that appeared from behind the opening.

  “Hushed voices,” Kahlee said, closing the door behind her, “harsh in their disagreement. Not something I expected from my father and husband in one of their rare meetings.” She strode over to the desk and stood at the seat next to Terian’s, looking at each of them in turn with something approaching amusement. “I couldn’t find Guturan Enlas anywhere, and the rest of the servants seemed to be away.” A light sparkled in her eyes. “Are you discussing treason again?”

  “That’s us,” Terian deadpanned. “You know how it is. If we can’t discuss it eight to ten times a day, we’ll never get that lovely execution we’ve all been aiming for. Because it’s really not a good execution unless you drag your entire family into your unspeakable crimes without them even knowing a stitch about your evil, insurrectionist plans—”

  “Oh, good,” Kahlee said, smoothing her dress as she sat down, “I was worried you were discussing something prosaic, like troop movements, rather than the necessary matter of getting rid of the Sovereign.”

  Terian froze. The mere suggestion carries the death penalty and she knows it. A glance from her to the stricken look on her father’s face suggested to him that Vincin was thinking much the same. “Kahlee … we’re not—”

  “You should be,” Kahlee said, head up straight and looking him straight in the eye. “You should be talking about it everywhere you think you can reasonably get away with it. You should be planning the overthrow of the Sovereign any way you can, every waking hour of the day.”

  “That’s a tall order,” Terian said, switching back to looking at his father-in-law, “and also—obviously—fatal were it to be overheard.”

  “A tall order but not an impossible one,” Kahlee said, looking to her father. “What?” She smiled. “I know the minds of both of you. Let me be the bridge here—Terian,” she said, looking to her husband, “my father has long despised the Sovereign and his system.” She glanced at her father, eyes burning. “Father, Terian knows his life is short in his present role, and he has no love for Yartraak.”

  “Please do not say his name here.” Vincin Ehrest’s look of discomfiture almost caused him to shrink back in his suit.

  “If you mean to be rid of him, you should not fear to say his name aloud.” Kahlee’s grim amusement oozed out with every word. “And you should be thinking about how to kill him, because that’s the only true way to be rid of him.”

  Terian bowed his head and watched Vincin cover his face with a hand, the consternation falling thick on both of them. “One does not simply … Killing gods is not exactly a cave cress harvest, with a simple plucking and the task is done.”

  “But you know a man who has killed a god,” Kahlee said.

  “A man who hates me,” Terian said, looking sidelong at her. She can’t possibly
know …

  “A man you met just yesterday,” Kahlee said with a certain amount of triumph. “You and your friend from Sanctuary.”

  Terian’s blood ran cold. If she means to betray me, I’m already dead. He flashed his eyes toward Vincin, who was now sitting up in his seat once more, looking on with interest. “You met with Cyrus Davidon?” Vincin asked, clearly trying to smoke out the truth of the matter for himself.

  “I did,” Terian admitted, feeling as though he had to drag the truth out of himself. He took it out and tossed it on the desk between them, let it sit there like an offer, waiting to see if it were accepted.

  Vincin leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Would he help us?”

  “Not immediately, I don’t think,” Terian said, shaking his head. “He’ll need to see a straight line drawn between serving our need and serving his own.”

  “What does he want?” Vincin asked, eyes narrowed in question. “He’s now the Guildmaster of Sanctuary, is he not? What does a man like that want?”

  “Other than an elven paladin to call his own?” Terian threw out, rhetorically. “He wants to see his people protected. He wants to save Arkaria.”

  “Removing Yartraak from rulership of Saekaj and Sovar would be a very big step in that direction,” Vincin said.

  “But not terribly obvious nor tangible,” Terian said, shaking his head. “He’s laboring under the command of a father figure now dead who abhorred violence.” Oh, the irony of me saying that, Terian thought with a rueful smile that he kept to himself. “Cyrus Davidon will need to see a direct, clear, obvious danger to Arkaria or to something of personal import to him in order to make him desperate enough to trust me in a mission like this.”

  “He comes from Reikonos, does he not?” Vincin stroked his white chin hair. “Our armies are close to squeezing that city unto death. Surely that would motivate him.”

  “Maybe,” Terian said with a shrug. He caught Kahlee’s eye. “I don’t know. In any case, it’s not as though he can just walk into the throne room and kill the Sovereign. We would have to smuggle him in, with an army as his support—”