Terian’s father did not even turn his head, and the lockjaw spell crawled down Terian’s throat like a hard-scaled snake had slithered into his open mouth. He held onto his axe only by long training, and his other hand came up to his throat out of desperate reflex the moment before the blow landed that drove him out of the window.
Glass shattered around Terian as he pitched out and slammed into the ground three stories below. It was hard rock that greeted him upon landing, and he bounced once before coming back down, his throat still obstructed by the lockjaw curse. He felt for his axe and failed to find it, blood dripping into his vision, obscuring it. When he went to mop it up, one of the small, blunt spikes on his gauntlet stabbed into the wound, drawing a gasp of pain from him.
“You never did belong here,” his father said as he landed a few feet away, filling Terian's ears with that hateful, rasping voice as he dragged Terian to his feet by the collar. He pulled the spiked helm from Terian’s head and it clinked against the ground. “You never should have been a dark knight.” His father ripped off his gauntlet and Terian batted at him ineffectually, still trying to free his throat from the curse that afflicted him.
“Maybe you should have spared your daughter to be heir,” a voice came from behind Terian, and he tilted to look with his eye still clouded. Shrawn. “It seems she would have been a more fitting one than this … disappointment.” Shrawn’s cane clacked against the rock.
Amenon ripped the back plate off Terian, and his chest plate fell off in the process. Terian started to turn to face his father, but a sharp, gauntleted punch landed in his gut and bent him over. “You are not wrong, Dagonath.”
Terian tried to blink the blood out of his eyes, the dark haze over everything stubbornly refusing to yield against his efforts. A sharp blow to his kidney sent Terian to his knees, and when he recovered enough to look up, he saw Sareea there, staring pitilessly down at him. She kicked him in the face and forced his nose into the dirt, where the crack of bone and rush of blood told him she’d broken it.
Where is … Bowe? He brought his head out of the rocky dirt to see Grinnd standing with Bowe and Dahveed behind his father. I suppose … they were never my allies to begin with. He spit a clump of blood into the ground as Sareea grabbed him by the boot and ripped it off of him, followed by the other. When he tried to kick her, she stomped him in the stomach with her own plated foot, driving all the air out of him.
“All your jests and quips,” Shrawn said, watching his humiliation with a certain amount of glee, “and you can’t come up with one now, Terian Lepos? All your schemes, your plans, your cleverness … you really were the best thing to happen to Saekaj Sovar, did you know that?” He leaned over as Sareea stripped the greaves right off of Terian’s legs, leaving him utterly unarmored, his underclothes the only thing between him and the cave night. His father stared down at him pitilessly with dead eyes. “Without you, this place might never have known the Sovereign it deserves.” He smiled. “I cannot thank you enough—though I am about to try.”
He gestured with his cane and the pile of Terian’s armor burst into flame. The fire crackled and burned, hard and intense, the heat forcing Terian’s blood-drenched eyes to close. It felt like someone holding a desert day close to his face, like the burn of his skin after being exposed to unshaded sun for too long. When he opened his eyes, he saw his armor, with all its points and spikes, melting before his eyes. Great rivulets of the steel ran down it as the breastplate lost its shape and the smaller pieces went ahead of it, sloughing into the rock of the front garden like water poured out onto the stone.
When the fire subsided and the remnants steamed, Terian was left staring at that which had protected him from countless slings, swords, arrows and blows, in a pile, steaming, formed to the rock like clay shaped by unskilled hands. My armor …
He was kicked down into the dirt, his face buried in the rocky dust. He caught a glimpse of motion, of his axe in Sareea’s hands, raised up. So this is how it ends, Terian thought, the blood dribbling out of his lips. I should have gone with J’anda. Should have gone with Cyrus. Never should have come back here, because this place is definitely not my h—
“Wait,” Kahlee’s soft voice drifted over them, and he turned his head enough to see her make her way over to him. She stood over him for only a moment before getting on her knees. Not you too, Kahlee …
“He shouldn’t go alone,” Kahlee said, and the last breath of hope fell out of Terian. He’d been prepared for some last insult, a final betrayal, anything but this. She knelt next to him and lay in the dirt beside him, her face opposite his, looking into his eyes. He saw a smile of reassurance there and swallowed the bitter disappointment and guilt, knowing that soon it wouldn’t matter if he held it back. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed herself against him, warm against his skin even through the cloth.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he saw the axe raise out of the corner of his eye. “I’m sorry it ended like this.”
The axe came down as the light of a return spell twinkled in his blood-clouded vision, and his wife—that sneaky little minx—carried him away with magic he’d never even known she had.
58.
Aisling
Aisling had never felt so uncomfortable as she did when Norenn brought her into the place where the insurrection was headquartered. She could not even recall feeling so out of place in Shrawn’s dungeons, nor on any of the occasions when she suborned her will to do the things to Cyrus Davidon that Shrawn had ordered her do. It boggled her very imagination that such a place as this, a headquarters of insurrection, could have survived long in Dagonath Shrawn’s Sovar, so obviously under a paranoid nose, watched by all. These thoughts, though, she kept to herself, especially as she was introduced to Vracken Coeltes.
“A pleasure to meet you,” he said, without a trace of recognition as he nodded his head to her. There was no reason for him to recognize her, of course; she’d hit him from behind and rendered him unconscious without him ever laying eyes upon her. He took in Norenn with a similar look, a fiery charisma she’d seen come from the stage. “And you, as well. A political prisoner, eh?”
“She just rescued me from Shrawn’s dungeon,” Norenn said, leaning hard on the stone wall of the building two blocks off the square. There was a buzz of energy that had followed them after the rallying, something that had lingered and trailed back to this place. The roar of the crowd was still in the air, still obvious even now, waiting as they took a brief rest before the next speeches.
“Did you indeed?” Coeltes asked, looking at her evenly through careful eyes.
“It’s so good to see you again, Norenn.” Strong arms grabbed him around the biceps, causing Aisling to swing her attention around to see who had approached so unexpectedly. “And out of Shrawn’s grasp, no less.”
She blinked at the sight of him in his fine silks, looking not nearly as worse for the wear as when she’d seem him last, with a spear through his heart. “Xemlinan Eres,” Aisling whispered.
“Aisling Nightwind,” he said, meeting her gaze with his own. There was something going there, something behind the eyes that hinted at depths of knowledge while his tone was all enthusiasm coupled with playfulness, like a young man who’d just received every gift he could ever have imagined. “I’m pleased to see you outside Dagonath Shrawn’s clutching fingers. I trust you’re well?”
“Better than ever,” Aisling said, not feeling it one bit. She took Norenn’s arm and pulled him to the side, finding a quiet corner of the room as Xem and Coeltes chatted personably with two others, watching her with him out of the corner of their eyes. “What are we doing here, Norenn?”
“We’re here to join the fight, of course,” Norenn said, standing a little straighter than he had earlier. She wondered if he was simply regaining his strength or if it was false hope given by the locale that was galvanizing him to action. “Can you imagine it, Ais? After all those years, after all we’ve seen, all the dirty spiders like Shrawn … S
aekaj is about to get its due.”
She glanced at Xem, who caught her gaze and smiled knowingly—at least to his mind, probably. “Norenn … we’ve been their prisoners for four years.” She made her voice plaintive. “But we’re free now. They may have taken these years from us, but they need not have the rest. Let’s just leave, please.”
“I will not leave,” Norenn said, pulling back from her, his face darkening. “How can you have gone through … what we’ve gone through … I can’t even imagine, on your end, the things you’ve had to do to survive … how can you possibly want to leave Shrawn alive after all that?” He looked wounded, hurt. “How can you let him win?”
She buried her true reply within, as per usual. Shrawn always wins. “Because we don’t owe these people anything, and staying here means going straight into his teeth again after we’ve just pried ourselves free of his jaws. This is insanity, to go forward again. We should leave. The Sovereign is dead; Shrawn is going to take his little kingdom here, and he’s going to pit it against itself while trying to stomp down on Sovar.” She tried to run a hand down his front, to soothe him as she would a babe. “This is the worst place in Arkaria to be at the moment.”
“This is my home,” he said stiffly. “But I suppose yours is a chamber higher.”
She stiffened. “You don’t see me running back to Saekaj, do you?”
“I just see you running,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Of all the things you’ve become in our time apart, I didn’t suppose ‘coward’ would be one of them.”
She pretended it stung her, but in truth it was of little practical consequence. Norenn had never been much of a fighter, and neither had she before Shrawn and Sanctuary had made her one. “I’ve seen battles beyond counting, Norenn. Too many. More dead than you can imagine. And I fear I’m about to watch the worst of them yet.” She leaned toward him, whispering. “These people are more or less defenseless, and Shrawn has armies at his command. Weapons. Trained troops. We have starving people and anger, a poor combination against a wizard with the fury of fire at his disposal.”
“We have passion,” Norenn said, and his eyes flickered with the righteousness of his cause, sending another tremor of worry through her, “we have justice at our backs! We are the wronged, and we have been held down for so long—the fury of our rightness is true and resonant in our souls.” He looked around him. “With people like these on our side, how can we lose?”
Under armored feet and ten thousand spears, she did not say. Instead, she smiled weakly. “I only worry for you,” she said, knowing that this battle was lost. She turned her head enough to catch a glimpse of Genn in the corner, walking through the headquarters as though he belonged here with the others. In truth, she knew, he did. He caught her eye and smiled, but not reassuringly. “I can’t blame you for wanting to fight for your home.” Her voice cracked, as she intended. “My home is with you, and I would not see it destroyed. Not after all this.”
“It will be fine,” he said, taking her into his arms. She found no reassurance there, either, strangely numb after gaining at least half of what she thought she’d worked for these last years. “We have the numbers. We are the righteous. We will win.”
“Of course,” she said, mopping strained tears onto his rags. She produced them while thinking of the oddest of things—Sanctuary’s defeat of Mortus, and the fear that had come hard with that battle and the chaos in the realm that followed it. It was one of the clearest occasions when her true emotion ran close to the surface, so close she could not hide it in the moment. Now it comes back to me as needed, as I hide myself and my intent from the man I’ve worked to free all this time.
Norenn pulled back, looking her in the eyes with his own, warm and caring in spite of the argument—or perhaps because of it. “It will be all right,” he told her again, and pulled away from her, making his way on wobbling legs back to Xem and Coeltes, wearing a smile of wolfish delight.
Now I am not even myself with the man I sacrificed everything to save, she thought dimly as she watched him go. Now I hide even when I could be me, could tell him how I truly feel because … how do I truly feel? And why?
Who am I?
“Worry not,” came Genn’s whisper in her ear as he slipped past her, unnoticed, just another dark elf in the headquarters of the insurrection, speaking so low that his voice was lost in the chaos being planned around them, “I like the new you.” And he disappeared while she stood there staring at the man she had given up everything to save—and the one she could no longer even bear to be herself with.
59.
J’anda
The summons came for the Gathering of Coercers’ Guildmaster, and J’anda took it because no one else would, not even Zieran, the cold footsteps of the messenger still ringing across the entry as he ran to depart, more missives in hand.
J’anda had read it, had looked around, waiting for someone else to take the initiative, to ask about its contents, and when no one did, he felt the same flash of surprise as when Alaric had informed him that he was an officer of Sanctuary by fiat rather than vote. You are in charge because no one else wants to be. Same old story.
He’d departed immediately, vowing to return and mostly meaning it, having them bar the guildhall door as he left, just in case. The trainees were quiet, fearful, their worry as obvious on their faces as a smear of jam on buttered bread. He left them with a smile of reassurance and heard the heavy wood bar thunk into place behind the stone doors as he left, walking through the surprisingly quiet streets of Saekaj with nothing but an envelope in his hand.
He was stopped twelve times from the guildhall to the front gates of the palace—on nearly every street and in the quiet market. The guards were out in force, and they all bore the gauntlet identifying them as House Shrawn rather than Saekaj militia. J’anda supposed it was going to be the new insignia, and he found he did not care. The streets were packed with them, the soldiers crowding the area in clusters and clumps, watching him with suspicious eyes. He saw not one other civilian anywhere during his journey, and by the time he reached the Grand Palace of Saekaj, he was well and truly tired of presenting the crumpled letter that he carried unwanted in his hand.
When he was ushered into the throne room, he realized with some surprise that the corpse of the old Sovereign had already been moved out of the street. He hadn’t even realized it as he walked by, so great was his irritation with the constant supervision of the soldiers.
The throne room looked the same as when he’d last seen it a few hours earlier, though it was more guarded now than it had been when Yartraak had sat the throne. There were men hammering and chopping at the old throne, tearing it down with axe and hatchet, the front legs already brought low, the high back sloped at a forty-five degree angle forward, like a horse down on its front legs. And so passes the days of Yartraak, the Sovereign of Saekaj, the only of his name.
“J’anda Aimant,” Dagonath Shrawn said, announcing the enchanter himself from his place in a padded seat placed in the middle of the long carpet that stretched the length of the room. “So you are the Guildmaster of the Gathering of Coercers now?” He nodded, once, inclining his head slightly to the side as if it were obvious. “As it should be.”
J’anda glanced behind him at the destroyed doors through which he’d just entered, and saw the hole in the wall where Cyrus Davidon had been flung not a day earlier. “I see you are in the process of redecorating?”
“I suspect some carpentry will have to be done,” Shrawn said, getting to his feet, staff clutched in his hand. “I confess a slight degree of surprise in seeing you here; I did not expect Coeltes, of course, but I assumed Lacielle would take up the mantle of leadership after his flight.”
J’anda cocked an eyebrow at him. “His flight? So you know that he has left us?”
“The rat leaving the ship before sinking, I am afraid,” Shrawn said, watching him carefully. “Do you know where he has gone?”
J’anda did some careful watching of his ow
n. “If I did, I can assure you I would be after him swiftly, looking to settle some business left open between us. Do you know where he is?”
Shrawn laughed, a deep, resonant sound that hurt J’anda’s ears as it bounced off the walls of the throne room. “I had heard that the two of you had a long and unpleasant rivalry that required resolution.” He tapped the cane against the carpet, producing a muffled thump. “I do, in fact, know where he is. And I would tell you, save for the fact that he is presently deeply mired in trying to inflame the masses of Sovar into insurrection.”
That is an answer in and of itself. “And yet you just told me.”
“I have told you only that he is in Sovar,” Shrawn said, waving away the statement as though it were a bothersome pest humming about his head. “Should you go after him now, you will find yourself in the midst of an angry mob looking for citizens of Saekaj to turn inside out and eat alive. You are truly a wondrous enchanter, but I wonder at your ability to survive in the face of such breathtaking odds.”
J’anda smiled. “They are better than even, I would say.”
“Well, let me have my say, then,” Shrawn said, smiling, “and see if it fits your purposes better than an even chance.” He stepped toward J’anda cradling the cane but not actually using it to walk. “Sovar is preparing to rise, the years of resentment bubbling to the surface as surely as water boiling on a fire. The angriest elements will come to the fore, will spur them into action, into internecine war. There will be blood. There will be ‘revolution,’ as they call it. And they will come surging up through the tunnels into our own, intent on spreading death and killing everyone whom they perceived has wronged them.”
J’anda watched him, keeping his face straight. “I sense you have a plan to stop this. But why should I care?”
Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Page 29