Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  Terian slumped against the wall. “Not that recently, no. He told you?”

  “He told me,” Curatio said, nodding. “I have not shared this bit of information with the Council due to his insistence that it remain quiet that you aided him, but he did tell me how you spared him from the Sovereign’s wrath.”

  “Well, what can I say? I’m just saving people left and right lately.”

  “Saving old friends, yes,” Curatio said, watching him through narrowed eyes. “I admit to being curious about your sudden desire to aid people whose loyalties you spurned not that long ago. I stood with you on that beach, after the bridge, and heard you tell Cyrus that it was not over between you. That you had chosen your father’s path after his death.”

  “I chose poorly,” Terian said. “Also, my father’s not dead.”

  Curatio’s eyebrow tilted toward the ceiling. “Indeed?”

  “What was done to him was the same thing done to the rest of those lifeless sods on the battlefield,” Terian said. “The difference being that he’s got the soul drain spell to keep him slightly more … energized? Revived? I don’t know how you’d say it exactly, but I know it gives him will beyond most of those tromping things without a thought to call their own. He quarrels, he argues, he fights, and it’s not out of the sheer bloodthirsty meanness you see in the other dead.” Terian pursed his lips. “If he’s being controlled by them like Malpravus yanks on the other puppets, he’s doing a very good job of hiding it.”

  “You’ll need to tell the Council what you’ve told Vara and Cyrus about these dead,” Curatio said quietly. “That and more.”

  “I’m not talking about my father in front of them—”

  “Not that,” Curatio said quietly. “I doubt it would interest them in the slightest. I mean about the army. About the dead.”

  “Yeah, fine, whatever,” Terian said, shaking his head as he rested it in his hands.

  “Why did you decide to spare Cyrus Davidon at the risk of your own life, Terian?” Curatio’s question was curiously loud now, as though he were trying to get Terian’s attention before he asked it.

  “Because I can’t undo what I’ve done before,” Terian said, glancing up at him. “And because Cyrus Davidon is maybe the only chance that Arkaria has left at surviving.”

  “That’s rather a lot to put on his shoulders.”

  “They’re big shoulders, unlike mine,” Terian said, shrugging for emphasis. “And it’s not a large hope.”

  “Indeed not,” another voice came as the door opened once more. “It’s a fool’s hope, and all the more fitting to come from a fool.”

  Terian blinked, looking up. “Now this is truly a surprise.” It made sense now, why Curatio had asked the question so loudly.

  Vara stood in the entry to the door, Vaste shadowing behind her, hunched over so that his face was just barely visible in the door frame. “It should never surprise you to see me anywhere,” the troll said. “It should merely be another joyous occasion to mark how very fortunate you are to be in the presence of—”

  “Oh, shut up,” Vara said in a breath of utter exasperation, her preferred emotional state.

  “Yes, let us all shut up,” Curatio agreed as Vara stepped into the cell. Vaste followed behind, ducking to avoid bashing his head on the lintel. “I find I cannot often hear myself so much as think over all the ceaseless bantering in this place.”

  “You’d miss us bantering if we were gone,” Vaste said. “Especially me. My banter is so lovely. Someone should inscribe it in a book and sell it all the places where fine wit is appreciated.”

  “I expect that would find a small audience,” Vara said, “or perhaps a very large one, as in the occupants of Gren, in all their ignorance and—”

  “I have immense power of spell casting,” Curatio muttered under his breath, “and yet I constantly feel powerless to affect any change in this place, bereft of the ability to even shut you idiots up—”

  “Can I just point out that for once, I’m not the one derailing the serious conversation?” Terian asked.

  “No,” Vara and Vaste chorused. Curatio merely sighed, theatrically.

  “Do I have to make my little report here?” Terian asked, looking at each of them in turn before settling his eyes on Curatio. “Because that would be preferable to a conversation with that ninnyhammer Ryin Ayend.”

  “At last, something we can all agree on,” said Vaste.

  “I don’t agree with that,” Curatio said. “Ryin is loyal, and he raises excellent points which are seldom refuted—”

  “Or agreed with,” Vara said.

  “Finally, a point on which some of us can agree,” Vaste corrected. “Here’s another, perhaps: the dark elves are going to destroy all of Arkaria, and soon, it would seem.”

  “The dark elves are going to leave Arkaria under the boot of a tyrant,” Terian said. “And his name is Yartraak. Make no mistake about it, he is steering this ship completely. His servants might be at the till, but he’s the one giving the orders behind the scenes.” He licked his lips. “You people who live in the daylight? You’ve never tasted darkness and despair of the sort he’ll bring. Even the corruption of Reikonos’s Council of Twelve is gentility compared to the Sovereign and his rule.”

  “If I can be his jester, I could finally entertain the whole of the world,” Vaste said. “At last, I’d get the recognition I deserve.”

  “You’d get your head separated from your neck in about twelve seconds, I’d wager,” Curatio said.

  Vaste frowned. “You think that little of me?”

  Curatio shrugged. “Eight seconds, then.”

  Impassive, Vaste stared at the healer before replying with a curious satisfaction. “Better.”

  “I think Cyrus is better company at this point,” Vara said, and started for the door.

  “I’ll make sure to tell him you said so after he wakes,” Vaste said. Vara, for her part, slapped him in the belly aggressively enough that he doubled over. “Or perhaps not,” the troll said, slightly winded.

  “Why did you come down here, shelas’akur?” Terian asked, tossing it at her retreating back.

  She whirled on him, and there was no attempt to hide the rage in her eyes. “I thought, given our long association, perhaps I should at least do you the courtesy of looking you in the eye and asking you why you had taken up arms against your own.”

  “Because I was an idiot,” Terian said, not looking away from her fury. She blinked, seeming to back down. “Because I chose the family that never really wanted me over the one that did. Because I reverted to an old loyalty of blood instead of the new loyalty of bond.” He tried to put pleading into his eyes and voice. “Because I chose the wrong damned path, and not just once.”

  “At some point,” Vara said coolly, though her eyes hinted at other things behind them, far less chill than her words, “our choices cement us into place, like a wall built with strong mortar. The things you have done … you have a built a hell of a wall between yourself and Sanctuary, Terian Lepos.”

  “I’m not expecting you to tear it down,” Terian said, pursing his lips. “I know that … as much as I wish it were otherwise, I have no place here any longer. I’m not asking you to trust me as your guildmate any longer.”

  “How fortunate for you,” Vara said, “because that would result in—”

  “I’m not expecting anything other than death,” Terian said, thinking of Kahlee. I hope you managed to do what you said you would, Vincin. “Not for myself. But if you—if we don’t find a way to put a stop to this war before it ends in the Sovereign’s favor?” He glanced at Curatio, who looked strangely impartial given the subject matter. “I won’t be the only one who dies, Vara. You should know, since you nearly watched Yartraak put the claim in on him yourself through his spy—”

  She swept in around his defenses with nary a warning, and when he saw what she planned to do, he did not stop her from seizing him by the throat. “Cyrus Davidon may have said that he was t
hrough with his feud with you, but I have not relinquished any such claim to vengeance on your sorry arse, Terian Lepos. If you think he was the only one you did wrong in your betrayal, you are sadly mistaken.”

  “Let’s not be coy, Vara,” Terian said, breathing only with the aid of his gorget to keep her from crushing his windpipe, “if it had been anyone else, you’d be not nearly as put out with me as you are.”

  “You betrayed Sanctuary, Terian,” she said, voice hard like the steel-encased fingers she pressed against his throat. “Not just Cyrus, but Sanctuary. You killed our General in a foreign land when an army as green as the buds of spring was reliant upon his leadership to carry them through, and you did it at a time when the hordes of death itself were upon your very heels—”

  “Your umbrage is awfully personal,” Terian said. Her grip had not tightened enough to crush his armor, but the metal groaned under the pressure she applied. He kept his arms at his sides.

  “You took an oath of loyalty as a member, as an officer.” She looked at him under the line of her helm, the nosepiece flipped up so he could see her cheeks reddening as she grew more furious. “You were the Elder of Sanctuary for a time, for the gods’ sakes. Your oaths are held unfulfilled, your word meaningless as that of a stall-keeper in Oortrais—”

  “Again with the gnome hate,” Vaste said. “What did those little bastards ever do to you?”

  “Not nearly as much as this big bastard has,” she said, cocking her head, not breaking off from looking at Terian. “You want us to trust you now. Now that you need our help.”

  “All Arkaria needs your help, Vara,” Terian said. “All. I’m the smallest piece of it.”

  “We should hand you back to the Sovereign you so hate and let him have his way with you,” Vara said.

  “And while that would be exquisitely painful,” Terian said, “you’d still be left with him on your doorstep in about six months.”

  Rather than diffuse her anger, this seemed to increase it. “Is that so?”

  “That is so,” Terian said, the pressure increasing on his gorget. The metal squealed, threatening to buckle, and pressed into his flesh. “Probably the only thing I managed to get across to him in my time as a General? Focus your attention on one offensive at a time. He’ll deal with the humans first, and then he’ll be right back here at Sanctuary. Unless you—”

  She jammed the metal of the gorget back as she pulled forward on his breastplate, creating a hard levering action against Terian’s neck. She’s going to rip my head off, he realized as his eyes felt as if they were popping from their sockets from the pressure. She’s not going to listen at this point; I’m scr—

  “Let him go,” the soft voice of reason filled the room. The pressure on Terian’s neck decreased and he took a surging breath, coughing against the pain in his throat. He gulped hungrily against the loss of precious air, afraid to even exhale for fear the next breath might not arrive. The spots in his vision began to clear, and he played back what he thought he’d heard as he looked up to see both Vara and Curatio staring at Vaste with some surprise.

  “Truly?” Vara asked the troll, her skepticism undisguised. “You cannot possibly believe—”

  “That he’s being sincere?” Vaste asked. There was a weariness about the troll that seemed not solely caused by the slump required of his massive frame to fit in the dungeon room. “Let’s just assume for a moment that he’s not, that he’s lying to save his own neck, that he saved Cyrus’s life because—oh, honestly, I can’t even contrive of a reason why he would—”

  “To gain our favor, of course,” Vara said, as though it were obvious. Curatio, strangely, remained silent, his lips pursed in an even line.

  “To what purpose?” Vaste asked, shrugging as much as the room would allow. “Now he’s here, in the dungeon, but let’s assume he wasn’t. Let’s assume we were utter fools and let him resume his place as Elder of the Council. What does that get him?”

  “Free ranging of our halls,” Vara said, “where he could perpetrate whatever mischief he was of a mind to—”

  “What mischief could he perform?” Vaste asked. “When the day comes that the Sovereign sets his eye on Sanctuary, do you have any doubt he’s going to crush us in the palm of his hand? They laid siege to us with an army of a hundred thousand and nearly smashed us to pieces. When he comes again, it will be with an army of a million or more, mostly dead, and they’ll be prepared to blow our gates to pieces straightaway. They’ll surround the other portals or shut them down, and we won’t get a cavalry charge at their backs to save us. No, they’ll encircle us like a jungle snake wrapping ’round its prey and burst through our walls, into our home, and they’ll kill us all, just as they nearly did last time.” Vaste pointed a long nail at Terian. “What could he do to aid them? Open our portal to them? Poison us all at dinner? Spy? Tell the Sovereign all of our secrets, like how Curatio reads his own journals until all hours of the night and that your unmentionables are pink and lacy?”

  Vara flushed. “My unmentionables are not—”

  “There is nothing he can do that will matter,” Vaste said in a suddenly commanding voice. “Without his intervention, Cyrus would have died and this war of ours would have been cut a little bit shorter. Not by much, I might add. If it stays on its current track, we will all of us be dead or exiled from Arkaria by the end of next year.” He drew his arms sideways. “This is the truth. His part in this is irrelevant.”

  “You accept freely as fact the grim reality he would have us believe,” Vara said.

  “It’s going to happen,” Terian choked out over racking coughs.

  “Says you,” she snapped back.

  “I believe him,” Curatio said, pushing his lips to one side pensively. “There is no other army in Arkaria that will stand against what the Sovereign has assembled. It is simply too much.”

  “What gain do we get out of keeping him alive, then?” Vara asked. “Why should we not strike him down now?”

  “You, of all people, taking the vengeful road?” Terian asked.

  “You, of all people,” she said coolly, turning her head to look him in the eye with those glacially blue eyes, “should know that I once found that path more preferable than any other.”

  Terian felt his face tighten. “I’m sorry, Vara.”

  She cocked her head again. “For what?”

  “For not doing what I counseled you to do when first you came here,” Terian said and meant it. “For not walking the path I steered you on.”

  “You were only a puppet there, in any case,” she said. “We all know that however your mouth might have made the words, Alaric was the voice behind them.”

  “It wasn’t just Alaric,” Terian said. “You think I never wanted revenge for anything before? I came to Sanctuary a seething mess of resentments, furious and wishing vengeance for a crime I can hardly name. He had me walk you down a path he walked me down first, and it’s to my shame that I stepped off it with Cyrus.”

  “Yes, Alaric has counseled us all through many moments of ill temper,” Curatio said, showing more than a little ill temper of his own, “but this leaves us with a conundrum. There seems to be an inevitability to the Sovereign’s conquest of Arkaria. We are like the frog in the hot pot as the heat of the water rises around us.”

  “And now I’m hungry,” Vaste said.

  “I see nowhere to hop,” Vara said. “Do you?”

  “The lid is firmly on at the moment,” Curatio said, “save for if we were to retreat.”

  “That’s a bit of a shit metaphor, then,” Vaste said. “Because the whole point of the lid being on is that the frog can’t escape—”

  “We are of Sanctuary, dolt,” Vara said, “and retreat is not in our nature.”

  “Maybe not in yours,” Vaste said, “but I have no problem show the enemy my hindparts in a fight—”

  “That would be cowardly even for him,” Vara said, whipping her other hand around to indicate Terian.

  “Hey,” Te
rian said, “you’re the one who ordered the retreat at Leaugarden—”

  “And here we go, dissolving into rancor again,” Curatio said, quietly cutting them all off. “Can we not come to a decision? Can we not leave aside the past for just a few minutes while contemplating the future?”

  “Well, no,” Vaste said, “because the past was the carriage that brought us here, after all, to this point in the ride. And like a bunch of drunken passengers, we’re not really that happy with the destination at this point, because we’re busy vomiting up our bad decisions and—”

  “Your point is well taken, if somewhat ineptly expressed.” Vara rolled her eyes as she spoke. “There are rivers of bad blood between us and Terian at this point—”

  “I thought it was a wall built of—”

  “Shut it, troll,” Vara said. “I cannot imagine what use he would be to us at this point, nor that we could trust a word that comes out of his mouth.”

  “I trust him,” Vaste said, and the room went silent save for Terian’s heavy breathing as Vara and Curatio looked at him. “I see the line between where he was and where he is now clearly; I hear the voices of the dead sing his praises and curse his actions, and I know the specter of the evil that he fears to even whisper.” Vaste leaned closer to Terian, looked into his eyes with those onyx and yellow monstrosities, and Terian saw mercy there. “Death is only a step behind this man, and he’s not afraid of it for himself. He knows he’s already half in its mouth, that it knows and craves the taste of him. He’s afraid for others, not himself. Including us, I might add.”

  “Bullshit,” Vara said.

  “It’s true,” Terian said. “Though I know you won’t believe me.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I might,” Curatio said, staring at him, trying to penetrate his mind with a gaze. “I see a regret in him, a contrition I can’t recall seeing but twice before—once when he first came to these gates, and again when he returned to us.”

  “I imagine if I were about to be killed, I would feel somewhat contrite as well,” Vara said, voice thick with loathing.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Terian said, drawing her gaze back to him, “because you have nothing to be sorry for in the conduct of your life.” Well, maybe that one thing … but he dared not mention it for fear of setting her off. “My regrets are mountains that I carry upon my shoulders.”