Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness

by Robert J. Crane

  “And then, I shall be redeemed wholly and totally,” Terian said with no small amount of sarcasm, “and shall never, ever sin again.”

  “When one has erred as badly as you have,” Curatio said, glancing at Kahlee, “the road to return becomes somewhat rockier as you attempt to come back.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Terian said, moving around in his armor. “All right. Fine. So, I need a plan.” He gave it a moment’s thought. “I’m not coming up with any ways to defeat two armies and a furious insurrection.”

  “Why don’t you start,” Curatio said, sounding a little impatient, “by pondering how you can make yourself stronger. Because before you defeat an army, you will need one, and even before that, you should convince yourself that you possess the ability to lead one of your own. As it stands, I doubt you have the confidence to do much more than quake in your new greaves should you find one at your back right now.”

  “Nice,” Terian said, pursing his lips. But he’s right. Even Dahveed and Grinnd didn’t back me when my father and Shrawn started to tear me apart. Only Kahlee did. He turned to look at his wife. “What do you think I should do, my dear?”

  “I think you should consider carefully all that you know about Arkaria,” Kahlee said, chewing on her own lip, “all the places where you might find some aid, and swiftly.”

  “Woo,” Terian said without enthusiasm. “I doubt I’d be very welcome in Reikonos at present. The Elven Kingdom would have no use for me. Nor would any of the other powers.” He glanced around Cattrine’s office. “Frankly, I’m amazed that I’m even welcome here.”

  “Well, that’s more down to me,” Kahlee said, “and Father.” She frowned. “Surely there must be somewhere that your travels have carried you where you could find aid. Some hamlet or village where they would remember your name fondly.”

  Terian felt the prickle of memory nearly forgotten, shame creeping up his cheeks with navy heat. “Maybe one place, sort of. But I don’t know what I’d find there other than …” His voice trailed off. “It’s a faint possibility. Extremely faint. Pale as death, on the threshold of—”

  “You will need a wizard or a druid, I trust?” Curatio asked, strangely cool.

  “I will indeed,” Terian nodded. “But this is … I mean, it’s a long shot. This may be absolutely nothing, and I mean nothing. It could be less than nothing.”

  “It’s all you have,” Kahlee said quietly. “Best to pursue every thread to its end. Perhaps it will lead you to another.”

  “Yeah,” Terian said with a nod, pursing his lips, as a rueful sort of dispirit fell over him. “I guess so.” He looked up at Curatio. “All right, I better get started. Did you have a wizard in mind, or are you taking me yourself?”

  Curatio kept his face shrouded in a strange aura of mystery. “I’m afraid I can’t, but there are a small band of mercenaries available for hire that have made their way into town. I’m certain we can engage their services to aid you in this.”

  “Mercenaries,” Terian said with a slow nod of disappointment. “Great. I can’t pay them, but … great.” I truly am at the bottom. I would say there is nowhere to go but up, but this quest I am about to undertake is likely a very great waste of time.

  “I think their leader might be willing to pass on coin from you, in any case,” Curatio said, with the hint of a smile. Terian felt a certain amount of discomfort at the healer’s amusement.

  “Nobody does anything for free, Curatio,” Terian said. “And definitely not when it comes to helping an outcast like me.”

  “I believe he thinks he owes you a favor,” Curatio said, his smile broadening, “and as you well know … you can use any help you can get at this point…”

  66.

  J’anda

  It was hardly the first council of war he had attended, nor even the first in the throne room of the Grand Palace, but it was certainly the most surreal. J’anda stood in a semi-circle with the others around him, feeling quite out of place next to Dahveed Thalless, standing for the Healers’ Union in his white robes. Grinnd Urnocht stood for the Society of Arms in his massive armor, with his mighty swords tucked into his belt. Bowe Sturrt seemed to represent the druids while Amenon Lepos stood in his place for the Legion of Darkness.

  Whether Dagonath Shrawn was speaking merely for himself as Sovereign or also to represent the Commonwealth of Arcanists, J’anda could not decide. The division of the new army down league lines had confused him at first until he realized that Shrawn had no practical military experience and most of his fighting force was mere guardsmen.

  “The current threat comes from below,” Shrawn said, “though we expect Malpravus of Goliath will be battering his way through the great gates of the surface within days.”

  J’anda blinked and watched Amenon Lepos sputter out his response first. “The gates?” the dark knight asked. “Is there no one defending them?”

  “We have little left in the way of defense,” Shrawn said. “The Sovereign, in his wisdom, sent all but the guards off to war, and even many of them, in fact. He had troops in Sovar, of course, but their loyalty at this moment is hardly assured. I have placed loyal guards in the tunnels below the Depths, and at the Front Gate of Sovar to block any movement out of the lower chamber, but they are not numerous enough to withstand assault, and so their orders are to withdraw immediately upon contact with a serious offense.”

  “You need spell casters in place down there,” Amenon said, recovering his voice. “Something to stem a tide of hard resistance, to take the starch out of them and make the weakest run scared.”

  “I agree,” Shrawn said, and J’anda caught a strange sense of victory from the wizard pass between them. Where is Terian, I wonder? “But there are few wizards, and I suspect we have lost an equivalent amount to what remain to Sovar. I believe the same goes for all our spell casters, save for the enchanters.” He smiled at Terian. “Only one enchanter appears to have left to go to Sovar.”

  “I should point out,” Grinnd said quietly, “that the ones who left were doubtless from Sovar to begin with. It isn’t as though they’ve defected, merely gone home in the absence of clear order here.”

  “The result is the same,” Shrawn said dismissively. “Perhaps they will stay in their homes, out of the fight, or perhaps they will join their brethren when the moment comes. My spies assure me that the rage is building in Uru’kasienn Square even now. They have torn a purported assassin apart, hung pieces of him from the buildings nearby. They are working into a frenzy that will galvanize them to action when the minds that steer them will it. Our course is but to oppose it, and swiftly, so that we may be on about the business of dealing with the assault from without undistracted by this other matter.”

  “What would you have us do?” J’anda asked.

  “Prepare your people for the fight,” Shrawn said, thumping his cane as he walked in a circle around them all. “Warn them of what they are up against—the end of their very lives. For none shall escape this mob, should they break through our lines. And they will be swiftly followed by Malpravus and his guildmates—and I suspect, the remainder of the Sovereign’s soul rubies, ready to claim all of the dead of Saekaj and Sovar into the service of Goliath.”

  67.

  Terian

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” Terian said, shaking his head. He stifled a sigh, his thousandth of the last few hours, as his party swept over the low peak of a mountain under the influence of Falcon’s Essence, their feet poised magically off the ground.

  “I admit,” Brevis Venenum said, his crumpled gnomish face the epitome of everything Terian despised about his life at the moment, “I was surprised when Curatio inquired about us lending you a hand in your efforts as well. But it’s a pleasant surprise all around, I’d say. Always nice to be given a chance to do a good turn to a friend, isn’t it?”

  The wind blew past his face, not quite at a howl. Terian drew the cloak around his new armor tighter, trying not to let it in. Not having a helm is making thi
s a hell of a lot colder than it should be. “I have to admit, I’m surprised your sense of gratitude is that strong toward me.”

  “How could it not?” Brevis said, surprisingly cheerful. “You gave me a chance to say things to that scheming bastard Orion that I never would have had opportunity to, otherwise! Alaric wouldn’t hear it, and look what happened. He was wrong!” Brevis jabbed a tiny finger at Terian, the gnome looking bizarre framed against the breathtaking vista of mountain peaks all around them, a tiny little crumpled figure in layers of cloak and cape, wrapped up almost like a baby.

  “Indeed,” Terian said, choosing to take the very high road rather than engaging with Brevis on that particular disagreement. Alaric may have be wrong about Orion, seeing as he was scheming with the Dragonlord at the time, but he wasn’t wrong to tell you to get the hell out, you cancer of a person … He blinked and looked to either side of him, watching his small party walk on air above the mountainous terrain. Gertan and Aina were Brevis’s companions, but fortunately they were nearly silent compared to the chatty gnome. Kahlee caught her husband’s eye, only a few steps behind him, walking alongside the last member of their party. And another perpetual pain in my ass.

  “I think we should slow down,” the final member of the party huffed. She was clearly winded, even more so than the gnome, though she was taller by quite a bit. Her pale blue skin was closer to the cerulean shade of the sky than the darker navy of Kahlee’s, and she looked like she was about to drop right down the side of the mountain. “Yes. We should slow down,” she huffed, decidedly. “Sit. Everybody sit. Now.”

  “You’re so accursedly bossy, Erith,” Terian said, trying not to roll his eyes at the only healer he had with him. Curatio, why couldn’t you have just come with me instead of vaguely protesting you had things to do? As though being Elder of the largest independent guild in Arkaria takes time or something …

  “I prefer to think of it as ‘commanding,’” Erith said.

  “And a Sovarian prefers to think of his mother as something other than a whore.”

  “I don’t care for your inference there,” Erith said, propping back on her haunches in mid-air. She floated as though there were a bench under her, keeping her from dropping out of the sky and rolling down the peak below. That would be a sight to see, Terian thought, unable to control a grin at the thought. She looked at him with suspicion. “Or the way you’re leering at me.”

  “Sorry,” Terian said, stifling the laugh that threatened to bubble up. “Just … something came to mind.”

  Erith glanced at Brevis, who was hiking along without them, clearly oblivious to the break the healer had called, his two compatriots behind him. “I hope it was a thought of that damned gnome skiing down the mountain on his face.”

  “Close.” Terian kept his expression carefully guarded. “Very close.”

  “Hm,” Erith said and looked at Kahlee. “What’s your part in all this, Lady Lepos? Please tell me you’re not just the loyal puppy dog that follows her husband around in all his mad efforts.”

  Kahlee’s face flashed amusement. “Is that not what a lady of Saekaj is supposed to do?”

  Erith gave her a look with no small amount of suspicion. “Yet you’re aware enough of it to say so with irony.” She smiled at Terian. “Oh, I like her.”

  “She’s my counterpoint in that regard,” Terian said, and then looked at his wife. “The lazy healer does raise an excellent point, though.”

  Kahlee stared back at him coolly. “What? That it seems peculiar that I, of all people, would not play the doting and supportive wife role well?”

  “So you admit it’s a role?” Terian asked, smiling slyly.

  “I admit nothing,” Kahlee said, shaking her mop of blue hair and mussing it as she pushed it back over her shoulders.

  “I’m liking her even more,” Erith said.

  “Great,” Terian said, not taking his attention off Kahlee, “join us in a veredajh later.”

  “Ewwww! And…no.”

  “What are you playing at, Kahlee?” Terian asked, keeping careful eye on his wife, who did not react to his question. “Is this some … guilt for your father? Some desire to follow in the path he started on?”

  “Perhaps I simply see the best chance for Saekaj and Sovar along the road you walk,” she said, but put no more emotion into the reply than she might have a query about the price of apples in Pharesia. “Has anyone asked you why you’ve walked the mad path that you have, zagging where most would have thought you’d zig?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s seen most of the mad path I’ve walked,” Terian said. “They’ve just noticed the erratic moves.”

  “And now she raises an excellent point, making me like her even more,” Erith said, “though not enough to do what you suggested earlier. Why are you doing this, Terian? This looks like suicide.”

  “This specific mission?” Terian asked, shrugging. “It’s not suicide. It’s very low risk, in fact, visiting where we’re going.”

  “Not that,” Kahlee said, taking up station next to Erith. “Why are you doing all of this? You keep talking about redemption as though it’s something you stumbled into.”

  “No,” Terian said, “it’s something I was led to.”

  “Terian,” Erith said, gawking at him, “I’ve heard the stories. You were led to an altar where you murdered your sister at your father’s command. You were Elder of Sanctuary and took off like you’d been exiled when that thing—” she waved at Brevis, receding further into the distance, “—got into a verbal bout you sanctioned that lost half the guild at the time. Then you came back but decided that when your father died at the hands of Cyrus, you should avenge him in the most horrible and secretive way possible.” She shrugged. “Yes. Mad path, agreed. But it seems like you’ve made all these decisions and then … how do I put this? Scrambled from bad one to the next bad one?” She filled her words with a great abundance of humor, but the edge persisted beneath that. “When someone goes to the Great Hall looking for dinner, their motivations are clear—they’re hungry. When I watch an argument, I can see when someone gets angry at the verbal lashings they take. It’s as obvious as the nose on your face, no offense.” She kept her eye on him, now suspicious in a different way. “Curatio asked me to come along on this because he said you were trying to do right by Saekaj Sovar. But I’ve got a serious question about you, Terian, because I have no idea what the hell you’re all about or where this sudden surprising virtuousness will even last.”

  Terian looked to Kahlee, who still seemed indifferent to the whole matter. “Do you see it?”

  Kahlee stirred as she answered, as though she were waking from a deep slumber. “A little more than she, but not to the extent I would like to.”

  He nodded slightly. “If I tell you, if I draw the map—will you tell me what’s causing you to follow?”

  “Perhaps,” she said.

  He pondered that for a second. “That’s a better deal than I’ll get anywhere else, I suppose. All right. I killed my sister, you got that right. I did it because my father ordered me to, even though I knew it was wrong. Seventeen years of absolute faith was shattered to tiny pieces, like shards of glass in my soul.” He paused, thinking about it, pursing his lips as he did. “Have you ever had a moment when everything you knew about who you were was ripped away?” He looked around. The only response was silence.

  “When Alaric found me, I was one of the first to come along after the founding of Sanctuary. I was so cut up inside … some of the others were, too, don’t get me wrong—” He stopped, shaking his head. “When Alaric called that place Sanctuary, I wanted to shake my head and laugh. A sanctuary for what? Losers?” He laughed, but it was bitter and caught in his throat. “Far from civilization, we hid. I was the heir apparent, I thought. Then Cyrus came … and he changed everything.”

  “Oh, wow,” Erith said, dry as overcooked chicken. “I should have known it’d come to this. Did he take everything from you?”

  “N
o.” Terian shook his head slowly. “But for a long time I thought he had. Because when I came back, everything was different. But I believed in Alaric, so I swallowed my worries and tried to feel like I was at home. See, when I was standing at that altar, with my sister pleading for her life …” He ran the back of his hand across his eyes. “That memory never got easier to bear. My father said it would. Said that sacrifice was the price of greatness.” He sniffed. “They call it a soul sacrifice, but I felt like I was the one who lost my soul.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with Sanctuary?” Erith asked, clearing her throat. “With losing your damned mind over and over?”

  “If my father’s instructions for the first seventeen years of my life were broken glass,” Terian said, “then Cyrus Davidon was the last bit of push I needed for them to cut me up inside. Because when I heard he killed my father, it was like he became the perfect scapegoat for everything I hated about myself. He was the catalyst that grew the guild, the man that took the accolades and the comfort away, the one that Alaric bestowed favor on. And when he killed my father, it was like all that glass just went right to the heart.

  “But Cyrus wasn’t responsible,” Terian said. “I was responsible. He moved forward and I held back.” He held up his hand, wiped his face, and stared at the wet droplets running their way down it. “I blamed him when I should have blamed myself. Hated him when I should have hated my father. Stared at his light and worried that my darkness was too great. If redemption is a path we walk every day, I tried to walk it in darkness half the time, traveling at night, being true to the teachings I held dear as a child, even though they were broken glass in my bleeding fingers. I never let it go, no matter how much damage it did.”