Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  “That’s not entirely true, is it?” Terian asked, sensing his moment was at hand. He caught a slight nod from Vaste that only encouraged him further. “You know it. You can’t defend this city now, that’s sure; there’s no wall you can put up, no bridge you can guard and let them run against you, match their power against yours in a futile, foolish grind to their death. They are inside, they are everywhere, and wild with the taste of blood and slaughter, these dead.”

  “Because of you,” Cyrus said, and that fury edged closer to the surface.

  “Not only because of me,” Terian said. Don’t be dumb now, Cyrus.

  “They like the taste of blood and slaughter?” Cyrus asked, and he smiled like a psychotic. “I’ll drown them in it.”

  “For once,” Terian said, trying desperately to speak sense to the barely contained madness he sensed in the man before him, “don’t be the fool warrior who thinks with his gonads that I always—falsely, I might add—accused you of being.” He’s desperate, angry … I can’t let this get out of control.

  “It wasn’t that falsely,” Vara said.

  “Use your shrewd mind,” Terian said, “calculate the odds against you in this fight.” Don’t be stupid. Please don’t be stupid.

  Don’t give the Sovereign Arkaria. Not like this.

  “And let my city burn?” Cyrus said, staring off the balcony.

  “You can end this,” Terian said, getting around to it at last. “But you won’t end it here, and not by throwing yourself into a battle you can’t hope to win. If you want to turn this army around, you need to provide them with a reason to walk away so compelling they cannot possibly stay for another moment of pillage.”

  “You magnificent bastard,” Vara said, and she sounded almost respectful.

  “Pretend for once I need you to do my thinking for me,” Cyrus said, turning to look at him, the madness passed. “What would you have me do?”

  “We go to Saekaj,” Terian said, the nerves of the moment rushing in on him. This is my last chance. “You have a dagger matched against a sword. Saekaj is the exposed neck. Open it and watch the sword lose its menace.”

  “You want me to invade your own home,” Cyrus said. “To stomp down your doors, settle your scores—”

  “I want you kill the God of Darkness!” Terian said, months of pent-up emotion escaping in a rush. “I want you—you wielder of that,” he pointed at the warrior’s sword, “I want you to free my damned people—because no one else can. I want you to turn loose your rage and set us all free in one stroke of the sword.”

  “Killing Yartraak will take more than one stroke of a sword,” Curatio said, interjecting at last. Terian spun to look at him, wondering if he faced friend or foe in the healer. The elf’s expression was distinctly neutral.

  “I want you to save my home,” Terian said, trying to put aside any hint of deceit and letting his true feelings spill forth. “I want you to save us, Cyrus Davidon … to save our people. Mine and yours.”

  The warrior looked out over the balcony, across the horizon, and Terian wondered what he saw. Is it just the destruction of a place he has long held dear? Or is it something else? Terian’s eyes flicked down, seeing a spider-knight crawl across a building somewhere far below as screams wafted their way up to him. Does he only see the moment at hand? Because I see the future as I look out across this tableau of horror …

  Saekaj’s future. Sovar’s future. Intertwined in death, crushed under the weight of the mad tyranny of their own god.

  “We go,” Cyrus said, tearing Terian from his reverie. “Mendicant … take us back to Sanctuary, if you please.”

  “And?” Terian waited for the answer, his last hopes reaching out for it like a thirsty man trying to grasp a skin of water before him. “Then?”

  “And then …” Cyrus said, voice low, determined, “we go to Saekaj … into the halls of infinite darkness that Yartraak calls his own—” He turned and looked Terian in the eye, and the dark knight saw the thin veneer of the warrior’s rage, hiding below a veneer of civility only, “—and I stab that godless son of a bitch right in the eye until he’s nothing but a shrunken corpse. Just like the last one we killed.”

  There was a rush of relief in Terian’s mind, tempered with something else, as the spells began to run across him and whisk them back to Sanctuary. It was the dim realization that in spite of all he had hoped for, the man he had turned to in order to free his people had darkness of his own lurking beneath those blue eyes, something Terian had only caught glimpses of before.

  At some point, Cyrus, he thought, trying to grimly focus on the task at hand and failing, we’re going to have to deal with the darker forces that are trying to sway you, that have free reign of your mind in the face of the horrors you’ve seen. And I only hope that the day we need grapple with them is not today, because we have other work to do first.

  46.

  Aisling

  “So this is where you’re hiding yourself from Shrawn these days,” came the quiet voice out of the corner. Aisling’s muscles tensed all at once, the near-silence of the room in the mids of Sovar that she was squatting in broken by an utterly unexpected voice. She spun to find him there, in what should have been an unsurprising moment, but it was, nonetheless, worth a start.

  “Genn,” she said, staring him down. He was standing sedately with his hands behind his back, looking around the rocky room as though there might be someone hiding in the corner. He’d caught her sitting on the unpadded seat carved into the rock, pondering her next course of action. She’d been fully ensconced in thought, unprepared for company, especially of the sort that appeared without so much as a knock.

  “I love what you’ve done with the place,” Genn said, sweeping his hand around to encompass the small room. “Which is to say, nothing. Very clever, not leaving a trail for Shrawn to follow.”

  “I need to be out of his sight for a time,” Aisling said. “So I can—”

  “Can hopefully avoid the tragic death of Norenn when he realizes that he’s no longer got a hold over you.” Genn’s eyes lit in the dark, shining in the light of the single candle with a gleam that seemed brighter than what the lone flame should provide. “Yes, I got that.”

  “What are you doing here?” Aisling asked, coming to her feet.

  “Well, I came to warn you that your moment is about to arrive,” Genn said, taking an exaggerated step. The man was nothing if not excessively showy, his smooth voice and dry delivery a strange contradiction, as though he were unserious about anything and unconcerned by all that was before him. “Your chance to rescue your friend is at hand.”

  “Why?” Aisling asked, viewing him with no small amount of suspicion.

  “Because that’s what allies do,” Genn said with a smirk. “Help each other out, see.”

  “No, I got that,” Aisling said. “But why are you my ally?”

  “Well, surely I must be sympathetic to at least some of your aims,” Genn said with that same insincere smirk. “Have you guessed which?”

  She stared at him. “Freeing my … friend?”

  “That’s part of it,” Genn agreed, nodding. “Let me just spell it out. I want you back in control of your own destiny. I want you to throw off the yoke of Dagonath Shrawn.”

  She stared at him. “On that much we’re agreed.”

  “We’re agreed on more than you know,” Genn said, though now the smile grew tight. “Shrawn is in Saekaj at the moment, but you should not try to find him.”

  “I thought you said you wanted my destiny back in my own hands,” Aisling said.

  “Going after Shrawn right now guarantees nothing but your death,” Genn said. “He’s hidden, surrounded by more danger than you can safely sneak past. No point in confronting him until you both have to and you’re ready.”

  “And I’m not ready,” Aisling said. “Is what you’re saying.”

  “Dagonath Shrawn is a powerful wizard,” Genn said, hints of concern peeking through behind his eyes, “in a
ddition to being the most powerful mortal in all of Saekaj and Sovar. Challenging him on his home ground without a plan to deal with both his magic and allies is simply suicide. Remove his influence from you, get that dagger away from your throat by taking back Norenn, and then you can start worrying about the rest.”

  She blinked at him, pursing her lips. “Do you know where Norenn is?”

  Genn smiled. “It just so happens I do … but,” he said, and she detected the first hint of canniness from him, some hidden intent in his bearing, “I have one other task for you to perform, one other soul to liberate as you do this thing …”

  She listened as he told her what to do and felt both a thrill of satisfaction that she’d guessed his identity early on … and a nearly all-consuming fear at what he asked of her now.

  47.

  J’anda

  The slums of Reikonos were aflame before him, and J’anda watched from the roof of the barn where he hid with five dozen others, all his energies focused on maintaining the illusion that the barn was also on fire, his dark elven features no longer hidden from the humans who shook in fear all around him.

  “Who are you?” one of them asked, a man who looked as though he were ready to soil himself.

  “My name is J’anda Aimant,” he said, threading an illusion into the mind of a passing patrol of the undead on their way to tear apart the nearby markets as he snared a human child from their sight and directed the little boy toward the barn with a spell of charming. “I am a member of Sanctuary.” He pulled his mind out of the illusion long enough to look his questioner in the eyes. “I am here to help.”

  He ignored the murmur of conversation that his admission spawned as the door opened and the little boy he’d saved wandered in out of the streets, quickly seized hold of by one of his other “guests,” an older woman far beyond her childbearing years. She soothed the boy, and J’anda helped idly, devoting only a small amount of his attention to them, enough to keep the calm in the old barn as he put all his other efforts on what was going on outside, reaching his spells out as best he could, and trying to save as many of them as he could from the death that worked in the streets all around.

  48.

  Terian

  The onslaught of dark elves down the tunnels of the Sovereign’s palace was almost too great to count, almost too many to believe. He must have an entire division of guards in here, Terian thought as he drove his axe into the skull of a still-living dark elf. And they’re all live ones, too! Women and mere teenagers, it’s just about all he has left, I suppose.

  “Where the hell is Cyrus?” Martaina Proelius asked, arrows flying from her bow down the stony corridor, each striking unerringly into the gaps of the armor of the palace guard, bringing them low.

  Terian focused only on the task at hand, knowing what the answer had to be. A rumbling shout of fury came from the other end of the corridor as Fortin, the rock giant, smashed his way through an advancing patrol of the guard with little in the way of mercy to hold him back. More and more of the Sanctuary army was being delivered into the Grand Palace’s dark and twisting corridors by the minute, far outpacing the arrival of dark elven reinforcements.

  “I don’t know,” Menlos Irontooth shouted, turning loose his wolves on a bevy of dark elves that entered out of a room mid-way down the hall, only a few doors down from where Terian had seen Cyrus disappear. “But he’s missing a hell of a fight!” The Northman paused. “Lady Vara, too.”

  Terian simply swung his axe, trying to pretend he was not even here. They’re not the ones missing a hell of a fight, he thought, the bare darkness shattered by the sound of axe and sword, spell and shield. I just hope they survive the fight they’re in … because if we don’t hold back these reinforcements, the likelihood that they’ll win against him is … impossible.

  49.

  J’anda

  He was running out of dead to turn back; the slums were completely consumed, the fires burning out of control in a circle around the place where he’d made his stand. He could see through the eyes of others, through the eyes of the last of the humans, whom he guided into the barn now, a young lady that he’d managed to slip away from four undead soldiers before they tore her to pieces in a frenzy. She’d climbed to the top of a roof at his command, let him see the flames climbing skyward, and when coupled with the spells he’d drifted about, looking for minds to snare, he knew that there was an empty zone stretching in a few hundred yards around the slums that he deemed clear.

  J’anda let the spells he’d sent around the barn disperse, feeling assured that they were safe for now. He remembered that last vision from the young woman’s mind, though, of the rest of the city consumed in violence and flames, and it made him sick in the heart, in the stomach. As the last person he saved joined the crowd thronged around him, J’anda stood and looked them over with a bone-deep weariness born of exerting all his magic once more. “I’m afraid I have to leave for a time,” he told them, staring into the frightened faces before him. “Stay here until it is over.”

  “What … what if they come looking for us?” a young man asked, no more than fifteen. His face was dirty, the smudges of smoke looking like he worked furnaces all day for his wage, though J’anda knew he did not.

  “They won’t,” J’anda said. “They believe this entire section of the city to be in flames. They’ll be looking for their entertainments elsewhere.” He stretched, listening to his old bones crack. “Stay quiet. Hide here. You will be safe.”

  He glanced once more around the room. There were over a hundred people here in this little space, crammed in from end to end of the barn that had been turned into a barracks. “It will be all right. I promise.” And he lit the return spell that would carry him back to Saekaj—and, perhaps, some end to this madness … for there is no end to be found here in Reikonos.

  50.

  Terian

  The sound of a rock giant bursting through the wall into the foyer was enough to keep Terian scrambling after him, trying to stay safe in the shade of the massive, craggy-skinned beast. Keep trying to overwhelm him, you tin-plated idiots. See how well that works. Pieces of corpses lay strewn in the rock giant’s wake, and Terian tried to avoid looking at the parts that seemed to have been chewed through by unstoppable jaws. Not a fit end for anyone, really. The rumbling sound of the rock giant speaking to someone ahead made its way back to him through the dust.

  Cyrus, he realized, recognizing the voice that came back in reply, though he missed the answer itself.

  He’s alive.

  “Cyrus,” Terian said as he stepped out of the rock-giant sized hole in the wall. He found the Sanctuary Guildmaster standing there with Vara at his side, blood trickling out of his nose. “Did you do it?”

  “It’s done,” Cyrus said, catching a hell of a look from the elven paladin at his side. “Well, she did it. But it’s still done.”

  Relief washed over Terian, almost a year’s worth of nightmares, of planning, of scenarios wrought in blood and torment finally let loose of their hold over him. “Good. You should go.”

  “Go?” Cyrus blinked at him. “Go where?”

  “Home,” Terian said, moving toward the throne room doors, laid open and broken behind the warrior.

  “How do you intend to get the dark elven army out of Reikonos?” Cyrus asked. For a man who just killed a god, he doesn’t exactly seem relieved. Certainly not as relieved as I am, but then, his home is still under the hammer.

  “I can’t yet,” Terian said, making his posture as docile and yielding as possible. “You killed the Sovereign, but he has servants that do his work for him. I can’t control the army until I’ve dealt with them.”

  “We can deal with them together, then,” Vara said, and he saw the trap waiting there behind her suspicious eyes.

  “You could,” Terian said. “You could run through Saekaj, destroying every great house in turn, killing every soldier, inspiring fear and making them flee before you.”

  “Sounds like
fun,” Fortin rumbled.

  “But,” Terian said, “afterward there will be little or nothing left, and no one to command the army to return from Reikonos.”

  “I had better hear a plan take flight out of your lips swiftly,” Cyrus said. “I came here and did your damned bidding—”

  “And you did it beautifully,” Terian said. “But the rest of this? It’s not your fight. This battle is mine, now.”

  “I want your word, Terian,” Cyrus said. His temper was clearly rising, his eyes narrowed. “That you will fix this. That you will deliver what you promised.”

  “I will do it or die trying,” Terian said, meaning every single word of it.

  “You will need help, I think,” J’anda said, appearing out of the shadows. Terian almost did a double take at the enchanter. How long has it been since I saw him? He looks even more worn, if that’s possible.

  “Aye,” Terian said. “We will.”

  “Do I even need to say it?” Cyrus asked. The wariness was settled over him like a spare set of armor.

  “If I don’t get those troops out of Reikonos,” Terian said, “you won’t need to come looking for me. Believe me on that.” Now all I have to do is go through Malpravus and Shrawn and whoever else to get it done. Piece of cake. Piece of rock cake, maybe, that I have to eat entirely.

  “Because there will be nothing left of you?” Vara asked. She didn’t sound sorry to hear it.

  “There are still powerful people invested in keeping Saekaj and Sovar under control,” J’anda said, stepping in to answer for him. “They will already be moving to exert that control now that he is dead. Fortunately,” he said with a smile, “I have set a few wheels in motion myself.” He glanced over at Terian. “Which we should now attend to.”