“Why are you in the Gathering of Coercers even now?” Shrawn asked, stepping to his side and not looking at him, staring at the far end of the chamber.
“I am waiting for Coeltes’s return, of course.”
“You are a skilled enchanter,” Shrawn said, “and a charming fellow. You could surely have followed the trail that Coeltes left behind, like a ranger after a wounded animal. If you’d been of a mind to hound him, you would have found his lair by now, settled your business, and returned to your beloved Sanctuary, I think.” At this, Shrawn tilted his head to look at J’anda. “Your loyalty is still to them, and we both know it. Something else holds you in place, something that had you sitting a vigil at the Gathering all night. Loyalty of a different kind, not simple revenge. You care for this place, or your students, at least. The months you have spent here have not been coldly focused on only one thing; you have bonded, you have cared.”
“So what if I have?” J’anda asked, shrugging. “You intend to use that as a lever to force me to fight for you?”
“I force you to do nothing,” Shrawn said with a shrug of his own. “If you mean to leave, do so with my blessing as the Sovereign. Indeed, I owe you and your friends much for coming to this place and doing what you have done. Go, and come again if you’d like, after the so-called revolution. We will endure in Saekaj, I can assure you.” His face went expressionless. “But it will not be an easy fight, especially with Coeltes at the fore of the enemy. I will need to counter him, and for that, I will require enchanters of my own.”
J’anda felt the cold slide of a single droplet of sweat down the hair at his temple. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would prefer not to,” Shrawn said. “They are the future of the Gathering, after all, and need time to grow into maturity and their full strength. But without them, I face the old head of the Gathering against my soldiers, ill-prepared for his spellcraft. I will need your students, there is no way around that.” He angled his head, and there was almost a quality of mournfulness. “It is a waste, but it is the only option I have against a powerful enchanter, for we have so few of our own with the other armies now under other control.”
J’anda caught the hint in Shrawn’s voice, but declined to pursue it to its conclusion. “And if I help you?”
“Then I will help you,” Shrawn said, smiling now, though faintly. “I assure you that I will do everything in my power to steer Vracken Coeltes into your path so that you may deal with him however you choose. If you wish to capture and torture him, I will provide whatever assistance you nee—”
“Thank you,” J’anda said, cutting him off. He paused, a thought coming to the fore. “And my … past problems with the Sovereign?”
Shrawn looked him over with amusement. “It seems unlikely to be of great issue in your current condition, but rest assured I give little care about your proclivities. I care only for stopping this insurrection and turning it back on the unrestful. To save lives, as it were.”
He’s a liar, J’anda thought. A murderer. He’s been responsible for more death than anyone I know, other than the Sovereign and Malpravus. “You will have my help,” J’anda said, ignoring all his other thoughts and taking the hand proffered to him by the man who now ruled Saekaj.
60.
Terian
The light was low in the place where the spell took them, almost reminding Terian of the darkened building where Malpravus had carried him after the return to Arkaria. The floor under his naked back was wood, and it squeaked as he moved, pain lancing down his sides. He bent a knee, drawing it closer to him so that he could look at it, swollen already, and dabbed at his nose, coming away with thick, blue blood. “That’s going to leave some scarring.”
“You look terrible,” Kahlee said, sitting up and producing another squeak from the wooden floor.
“Thank you, wife,” he said, trying to sit up himself and failing after a surge of pain from a broken rib. “I should have transferred my torment to Shrawn before I left, but I was too busy choking on a lockjaw curse.” He rubbed at his throat; the curse had mostly passed. “Speaking of magic … I didn’t know you were …”
“Mmm,” Kahlee said, getting to her feet, leaving her cloak to puddle on the floor next to him, an invitation to cover himself in it, he thought. “It was my father’s doing.” She turned to look down at him. “What do you get for the rebellious daughter who has it all and wants none of it?”
“Lessons in heresy, apparently,” Terian said, trying to adjust his nose and drawing a grunt after pain shot up into his skull at the attempt. “Oh, gods. I haven’t been beaten like this since …” He blinked, and the image of his father ripping him out of his armor came fresh to his mind, a wound that stung all the more for his surprise at the care he felt for it. “Ever, actually.”
A door opened behind him, casting bright illumination into the darkened room, scorching his one open, unbloodied eye. “Well, there was that time that the Siren of Fire ripped your head off,” came a familiar voice from beyond as the light flooded in.
Terian’s eye adjusted quickly and he felt the breath of a healing spell tickle over his flesh. “Curatio?” He blinked and looked around the room, which was a simple wooden quarters, a building unlike anything he’d seen on the Sanctuary grounds. “Where am I?” Another figure stepped into shadow behind the healer, this one feminine, long hair hanging around her shoulders, her outline obvious in that she wore pants and not a dress. “Vara?” Terian asked, squinting at her in the blinding daylight.
“Not exactly,” the woman replied, almost laughing in her amusement.
It only took him a moment more to remember where he’d heard that voice before. “Baroness Cattrine.” He looked past her and saw a dusty street. “I’m in the Emerald Fields, the new settlement.”
“I’m sure you wondered where my father hid me,” Kahlee said, picking up her cloak from the ground and draping it over Terian. “Now you know. The last place anyone would think to look for a scioness of a dark elven family.”
“In the Elven Kingdom,” Terian nodded, getting to his feet, his wounds healed save for a little residual pain. He wrapped the cloak tight around his shoulders. “What are you doing here, though, Curatio? Don’t you have a goddess to heal, or something?”
“My work in that area is done,” Curatio said, with a twinge of regret. “No, I have other matters to attend to, I think. Obligations that require my attention elsewhere, such as here.”
“I almost feel as though you were waiting for me,” he said, looking at the healer. He shifted his gaze to the Baroness. “Both of you, maybe.”
“They weren’t,” Kahlee said softly, drawing his attention back to her. She ran a hand over his shoulder and it tingled, bereft of the protection of his armor. Even with the kindness of her touch, he felt the loss of the armor very acutely now, and the sharp strike of inner pain was such that he couldn’t keep from blanching, just a little. She did not pull away, and her face had a pain of its own. “They were waiting for my father … and if he hasn’t shown up by now …” The worry caused her cheeks to sag, her eyes to fall in despair, and suddenly the worry of his armor was lost to Terian, “… then he is mostly likely dead.”
61.
Terian
“What were the last words that Alaric said to you?” Curatio asked, a bolt out of the blue, breaking the silence of a dour moment. “To you, personally, not to the expedition on the bridge.”
Terian needed to think for only a second. “‘I believe in you’ … and that redemption is a path we must walk every day.”
Curatio pursed his lips at this. “Indeed.” He nodded his head as if it settled a matter. “Very well, then.”
“‘Very well, then’ what?” Terian asked, more than a little perplexed.
“You have problems,” Curatio pronounced.
“Tell me about it,” Terian said dryly, “I’m exiled from my homeland and practically naked in the middle of a town of people who are probably still carrying a grudge for
what I did to their hero, Cyrus.”
“Those are minor and easily dealt with,” Curatio said, waving off his concerns. “Well, at least the second and third.”
“May I suggest we deal with the nakedness first?” Cattrine asked, cringing. “For I have no desire to see it—no offense.”
“None taken,” Terian said, pulling the cloak tighter around him.
“Perhaps some,” Kahlee interjected, draping herself on his arm.
“Only a little taken, then,” Terian amended. “What are my problems, Curatio?”
“Come along,” the healer said, and began to walk away, prompting Terian to follow, Kahlee at his side. Cattrine waited for them to pass by her, entering the wide, dirt avenue of the town, Terian’s bare feet finding every coarse and troublesome pebble along the way.
“Ouch,” Terian muttered under his breath. “Curatio, where are we going?”
“Do you have anywhere else to be?” Curatio asked, not turning back. He did not await an answer. “No? Then what does it matter?”
“You’re becoming alarmingly Alaric-like,” Terian said, taking in his surroundings. “And I assumed that came with the post of Guildmaster.”
“I was the acting Guildmaster for some time,” Curatio said, wearing a very slight smile. “It does not take long, I assure you.”
Ahead was a square, and he could hear the laughter of children as they darted around a statue. He watched, catching a hint of something peculiar in their movement, the way they leapt to avoid the thing. That’s not a statue, he realized as the enormous stone thing ham-fistedly made a high swipe at one of the children. It went wide above them and came slow, and was followed by another peal of laughter from the children. Fortin.
As they entered the square, the rock giant swung his head around and caught sight of them. Pausing immediately from his game, he turned and carefully stepped clear of the children, leaving them behind in a matter of a second and a half, thundering across the square.
“Oh, look,” Terian said, watching the rock giant approach with growing unease, “one of the people who is carrying a grudge against me.”
“I imagine you meet them everywhere you go,” Cattrine offered.
“It’s becoming a real problem,” Terian agreed as the rock giant skidded to a stop, Curatio stepping out of his way to allow the enormous creature passage.
“Give me one reason,” Fortin rumbled, stooping to look into Terian’s eyes with his own enormous red ones, “I should not tear you limb from treacherous limb, now that your business with Sanctuary is concluded.”
“You were waving at J’anda, then?” Terian asked, staring back at him, calm as though he’d just wandered into the same game as the children had been playing with the rock giant. He sensed the tension grow in the air and watched Fortin begin to raise a hand, and formulated an answer. “Because I’m pretty.” Fortin paused, and Terian could almost see the question mark pop into the air above the creature. “You don’t kill pretty things,” Terian explained casually, “because if you do, eventually you’ll be left with nothing but ugly things to look at.”
“Hold, Fortin,” Curatio said, causing the rock giant to look at the healer. “Terian is not our enemy.”
“Perhaps not yours,” Fortin rumbled, and looked at him with red eyes, cheerfully murderous, “but I feel certain that the General might feel at least some residual annoyance at the betrayal he suffered from this one.”
“He called me ‘brother’ in the palace,” Terian said, shrugging.
“But you tried to kill him,” Fortin said.
“What, you never had a brother you tried to kill?” Terian asked, playing a desperate gambit and throwing more than a little flipness in at the same time.
The rock giant looked at him, and the sound of rock grinding against rock came out of his jaws as he appeared to consider this. “That … is not a social nicety among your kind, though, I was told.”
“I’m not nice,” Terian said, “or social.”
“Mmmm,” Fortin rumbled and finally nodded. “Proceed, dark knight.” The thick ridge of rock that ran across Fortin’s eyes moved into something akin to a crooked line. “Where is your armor?”
“Lost it in a fire,” Terian said, taking up the walk to follow Curatio once more.
“Unfortunate,” Fortin called after them. “You should get more. You would be a soft target in that cloth.”
“I’m a soft target anyway, right now,” Terian said, shrugging, Kahlee still walking beside him. And there’s not much I can do about it, unfortunately.
62.
Terian
They made their way into a wooden building with a hearth that crackled aflame, the heavy smell of wood smoke keeping the light winter cold at bay. Terian wrapped the cloak tighter around his shoulders as Cattrine Tiernan ushered them in and had them sit on old furniture, a plush couch that looked as though it had been rescued from an elven living room set aflame. It bore scorch marks on either arm, and the Baroness shrugged when Terian looked from it to her, frowning.
“Do you want to know your problems, Terian?” Curatio asked, settling next to the fireplace, standing next to the heavy wooden mantel that was nailed into the wall so artlessly Terian could see the nails sticking out of it. What kind of idiot carpenter built this place? The answer came to him suddenly. No carpenter at all, probably. Skilled tradesmen are likely lacking in this town, after all.
“Sure, might as well lay them at my complete lack of a doorstep,” Terian said as the Baroness disappeared back down the stairs to the outside, shutting the door behind her as she went. “Or my borrowed one, perhaps?”
“First,” Curatio said, “what do you mean to do?”
“Well,” Terian said, smiling brightly and without any actual enthusiasm, “when we last we saw each other, I meant to crush the Sovereign’s allies and cast them out of Saekaj so that I could give my people a reasonable chance at something like the freedom the humans and elves and dwarves and goblins and gnomes—pretty much everyone but my people—have enjoyed, without a tyrant sitting on them. Since then, though, I’ve been beaten, betrayed, and nearly executed, so …”
“So he’s free of obligation at the moment,” Kahlee answered helpfully. “What did you have in mind, Curatio?”
“I have very little in mind, in point of fact,” Curatio said. “Tiny seeds of ideas, really.”
“Well, my damned idea tree got ripped out of the ground and turned into firewood,” Terian said, “so I guess I’m open to hearing from you, since at the moment my course of action runs to ‘procure clothing’ and not much farther.”
“Your problems are three-fold,” Curatio said neatly, like a lecturing teacher at the Legion of Darkness. “The first is that Dagonath Shrawn has asserted himself over Saekaj with the mailed fist of a tyrant stepping into the role of Sovereign.”
“Yay,” Terian said, “it’s like the good old days—or like yesterday, I suppose, but without all the religious iconography.”
“The second problem,” Curatio said, “is that there is a long-brewing revolution taking root in Sovar, one that will doubtless expand into violence and come to blows with Shrawn’s forces above. Their intentions are surely to take their vengeance with fire and rage.”
“Fun,” Terian said. “I’m sure when they’re done with tearing Saekaj into shreds and burning all the nobles, the mob will calmly set up a peaceful government, ruled by the people, that’ll feed everyone and ensure tranquility in both caverns.”
“And the final problem,” Curatio said, “and perhaps most distressing—Malpravus has seized control of the armies of the dead and is moving them toward Saekaj and Sovar at the moment, along with Goliath and the remainder of the dark elven forces.”
Terian felt his stomach drop at the news. “Well, that’s a new one to me.”
Curatio raised an eyebrow at him. “I doubt his intention is to, as you put it, set up peaceful rule by council, either. He is another who desires to make Saekaj his personal power base,
to become the new Sovereign. Thus you are faced with three distinct threats, with three separate visions of the dark elven peoples’ future, and the possibility that any two of the three may in fact combine forces to deal with the third—or you, should you enter the fray.”
“Me?” Terian laughed, a sharp bark. “Curatio, I don’t even have a weapon or armor. To go up against Shrawn or Malpravus’s army, or the mob that is Sovar’s survivors is a type of suicide I don’t regularly contemplate.”
“And yet you want to walk the path of redemption, do you not?” Curatio eyed him.
Oh, he’s getting a kick out of this little twist, isn’t he? “Does the path to redemption lead right into the jaws of death?” Terian stared right back at the healer.
“It led us to Mortus, did it not?”
Point for point. “Cyrus Davidon led us to Mortus,” Terian said.
“At some point,” Curatio said, looking a little tired, “you should put aside this obsession you have with Cyrus.”
“I don’t hold a grudge anymore, okay?” Terian ran a hand across his hair, catching his fingers in the blood matted there. “That’s over with.”
“I do not speak of your foolish desire to kill him, which I am thankful has passed,” Curatio said evenly, “I am talking about this perpetual sense that somehow Alaric favored him over you because of who he was or who you are.”
Terian glanced at Kahlee and saw a cloud of emotion on her face that she was keeping back. He laughed, mirthless. “Alaric favored Cyrus. I don’t think I’m imagining it. He set him up as successor.”
“Oh, yes, he gave him the keys to the kingdom,” Curatio said dryly. “Or the pendant, at least. But that came after a long race, filled many choices that each of you made that led you in different directions. There were others in that race as well, ones you did not take notice of because you were too focused on your perceived rivalry.”
“I didn’t see him as a rival,” Terian said, casting his eyes down. “Not until I’d lost. He was like—like the older, better brother that I knew I never had a chance against. At least, not after I left.”
Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Page 30