“You gonna let it go now?” Erith asked, somewhat somber for once.
“I want the light,” Terian said, sniffing in the high mountain air. “I’ve seen the darkness. I’ve seen what it does—to Saekaj, to Sovar. The darkness isn’t just the failure of light to penetrate the caves down there—it’s everything in that place. It’s hiding who you are so the Sovereign and his servants won’t drag you out for having a doubt, a fear, a disloyal thought. It’s being afraid to stand in truth, having to bow to those who want nothing good for you, only what’s good for them. Alaric was the light for me. He believed in rule, in law, in principle, in things that you could see, that were like a lighthouse on the promontory when you lost your damned way.” His voice cracked. “The Sovereign was will over all, force over those who disagreed, obedience over truth, and damn anyone who disagrees to pain and torment. The only ones that thrived in the light were the ones he allowed to step in it, and they were all arrayed around him at the center. Alaric was never like that. I know who I want to be now, and it’s not my father. And I know who I hate, and it’s not Cyrus.”
“Funny thing for a dark knight to say.” Kahlee broke her silence but barely, with a voice he had to strain to hear.
“Maybe I’ll be a new kind of dark knight,” Terian said, mopping at his eyes again. “I mean, I’m already in a position where I’m going to have to fight my battles without the aid of a weapon or an army.” He glanced at Brevis. “Except you and them over there. Which is worrying.”
“Which?” Erith asked, hauling herself to her feet, bobbing in a breeze. “Us or them?”
“I’m amazed anyone is following me at all, at least on this fool’s errand,” Terian said and started forward again, feet on what felt like solid ground, even though he knew they were anything but. This is a strange position to be in—as though I finally know the path, and the path is truly insane.
Erith fell in beside him on one side, Kahlee on the other. “Where is this we’re going, again?” Erith asked, huffing slightly less now.
Terian took a deep, cold breath and felt like he’d stuffed his face into the snow on the peak below before breathing it in. To the most insane place I could possibly imagine showing my face, that’s where. But he did not say what he thought, instead keeping it as simple as the name of a town he’d never thought he would see again. “Aurastra.” His mouth was dry from all his talking, and his lips smacked together as he said it again reverently, almost in a whisper. “It’s called Aurastra.”
68.
Terian
He could see the village below, and every fiber of his being called out for him to leave, to turn back, to ask Aina to cast the spell of teleportation and take them far, far away. His muscles were tense beneath his armor, and he could still feel the puffiness around his eyes from the telling of the story earlier. He sighed, the thin air requiring him to take another breath. He stood in a copse of pine trees with his party, staring at a village that still bore the scars of burned roofs and a graveyard visible with more makeshift headstones than he could easily count.
“What the hell happened here?” Brevis asked, surveying the place, his knobby features even more furrowed than usual.
“It was a massacre,” Terian said, growing strangely accustomed to the sick feeling that permeated his belly. I expect I’ll be feeling this way quite a bit, given both what I’m up against and what I have at hand. “The Sovereign sent my father and I here with a team to seal a mine. We encountered … trouble.”
“And destroyed everything?” Erith asked, her mouth slightly agape.
“I didn’t,” Terian said, “but I might as well have. I don’t even know how many people died here. Men, women and children.”
“And you brought us here why, exactly?” The healer’s voice was higher than it had been a question earlier.
“The Sovereign wanted the mine sealed for some reason,” Terian said, gaze catching on the blackened ruin of a house, only a few timbers remaining to jut out of the earth, snow piled within. “There was a portal down there.”
“So you’ve brought us here to investigate that portal,” Erith said, as though she were trying to piece it all together, “because … you have no other idea what to do.”
“That … is accurate,” Terian said, and felt the breath leave him. “I have nothing else. And I knew this was insane. Truly. I mean, if we walk through that village, they’re going to attack us, and we’re going to have to flee, because I’m not doing to those people what was done before. I just won’t.” He sighed again. “But I needed to see. And like you said … I have nothing left to do.”
“I always did enjoy the smell of desperation on a man,” Erith said, and he could not tell whether she was joking or not. “Lead on.”
He looked sideways at Brevis, who shrugged. “We’re here. Might as well look at your mine. Not as though I’ve got anywhere else to be. Mercenary contracts for our band are a bit sparse at the moment.”
“Reikonos got sacked,” Terian said, “I would imagine that’s somewhat dampened their enthusiasm for hiring mercenaries, being without much in the way of a government in the moment.”
“It’s a problem,” Brevis agreed, “and one I hope they surmount soon.”
“Yes,” Terian said, hoping the sarcasm would pass his ally—one of the few I actually have at this point—by, “it’s a real shame that city getting sacked affected your business.” And he pushed forward through the trees, the fact that his feet were off the ground the only thing keeping him from making untold racket as he went.
The wind whipped through the valley as Terian tried to skirt the edge of the village. He estimated that half the number of houses stood here that had been here before. Who would want to settle in this place after what happened?
There was movement on the road through town, though little enough. It was quiet and the day was drawing to a close. The sun was low in the sky, orange highlights against white clouds as it shone just behind a nearby peak. The thick-knotted trees around the village gave the area a dim look, shadowing the approach to where he knew the mine lay. That’s to our advantage, he thought, plotting out their course. This should be simple; we can go invisible for a moment, cross the road, and once we’re in the pines, we’ll be able to get to the mine and away from the populace without them being the wiser to our approach.
“Why are you hiding like that?” Brevis asked, voice cutting through the still quiet of the night as Terian held himself against the solid log wall of the side of the building.
Terian whirled on the gnome, who stood just behind him at face level. Terian barely restrained his fury, holding a finger up to his mouth. “Shhhh,” he whispered, but knew it was too late.
The sound of movement in the cabin at his side was clear. Feet hammered on the floor at the sound of the motion outside and the door at the front of the building was thrown open as Terian peeked out, his heart already falling in his chest. Another door opened at the rear, cementing that sensation of everything dropping around him.
No. Not like this.
“Prepare to get us out of here,” he hissed at Aina, who stared at him blankly as though she’d not heard him. Footsteps against the snow crunched around the sides of the building, the sound of people approaching. “Are you listening?” he asked, voice rising. “We need to—”
He spun as the first of the villagers came around the corner with an axe in hand. It was raised by a young man with a thin red beard, not even enough there to braid. Terian caught the fury in the dwarf’s eyes, saw the rage flash there in a second, the commitment to action—
And watched the axe drop a second later as the fury was replaced by … recognition.
“It’s you,” the dwarf said dully, letting his weapon fall, the blade dropping into the snow. “It’s … it’s really you!” He looked Terian up and down. “Your armor—it’s—it’s different, but I’d recognize that nose, that face anywhere. It’s him!” he called out into the night. “He’s back! He came back!”
> “He doesn’t look like he hates you at all,” Brevis said as doors began to open all over the village of Aurastra. The residents flooded out, and the call was taken up—“He’s back!” Terian watched it all unfold, feeling a strange kinship with a woman he’d once met who viewed everyone who approached her with a preparation to flinch, as though the whole world meant to hit her given half an opportunity.
In short order, Terian found himself surrounded by dwarves and even one human woman, who looked upon him without fear, and listened as they spoke to him, calm, quiet and full of a reverence—a relief—he never could have expected, not in this place or any other he had known.
69.
Aisling
The Sovar barracks fell without a fight, the guards dispersing as soon as the mob appeared, running, screaming, their purpose plain. She saw helms discarded and men throwing armor aside as quickly as they could pull it off, hoping to appease the beast snaking its way through the streets toward them. She would have told them not to bother had she not been firmly in the belly of it, but there was no hearing her, not in its midst as she was. Instead, she watched as the guards were beaten mercilessly and then held aloft, limp as cloth dolls, their features not even recognizable as faces.
The seizing of the armory’s weapons was an undramatic thing, quick and ugly, with squabbling and fights among the writhing mass that flooded into the barracks. She watched it all without comment, saw someone die in the internecine quarrel, but no one else seemed to care and so she didn’t either. In her own mind she was screaming once more at the edge of the abyss, but she let her stricter nature shove those feelings down as always.
There was no leading this thing she was a part of, but Norenn was trying, standing at the front of the mass always, with Xem and Coeltes beside him. She watched him with that detached, sick feeling continuing to grow inside of her. The chaos that Terrgenden had predicted and wished for was certainly being made manifest, though she did not have any idea how to feel about that, other than concerned.
As it turned out, concern was plenty enough to be getting along with, at least from where she sat in the middle of it all. She did not dare to put her cowl up, to try and be a stranger in the midst of this mob, for fear of where that might lead. Instead she stood in their midst and mimicked what she saw around her—expressions of anger on thin faces, spittle-shot rage flying from her lips along with chanted imprecations. Hate, that was what she saw, injustice turned round against those who had purveyed it, though she suspected that the counterbalance was not going to result in any justice of its own.
“To Saekaj!” the call carried back to her. She missed it coming from Norenn, though she saw his lips move, and when it reached her on the voices of others, she knew that it was what he’d said, what Xem and Coeltes had said, what all of them meant.
As for her, she was sure that it meant something else entirely. It means death to everyone above, she figured, but she struggled with the emotions she buried, and kept summoning up a rage to display, even though she had a hard time feeling any of it any longer.
70.
Terian
“You saved our lives,” the young dwarf said, standing at the head of more of his own people than Terian could number. Half as many as there should have been, he figured. “That man that was with you—the shadow knight—he ordered deaths, we heard it. We huddled,” he said, wisps of his beard like little red clouds trailing out of his cheeks, “afraid, because so many of our men had already been killed.”
“We thought we were all dead, for sure,” the human woman said. Terian locked eyes with her for only a moment, and then flinched away. “When you burst into the house, with me and the children—”
“We thought we were dead,” the young dwarf said, and Terian had to look up. There were mutters of assent, and he found himself blinking hard. “All of us, dead. Our whole town, dead.”
“You saved us,” the woman said. “Spared our lives from certain end by blade and fire.”
“I came here first, though,” Terian said hoarsely. “With them.”
“And would they have come without you?” the young man asked.
How can they be this forgiving? Terian wondered, not daring to look them in the eye. Though the true villain in this is Shrawn, for ordering us exposed to those people—and Xem, for doing the deed. He blinked again. Plenty of villains to go around, not surprisingly.
“Aye, they would have come without him,” Kahlee said. “The Sovereign himself ordered your village’s mine shut. Once someone had seen, survivors were absolutely forbidden.” She spun on Terian. “You saved these people, by your hand.”
“I …” Terian froze, that choking feeling at his throat again. “Kahlee … so many of them died …”
“We were dead,” the young dwarf said again, “and you saved us. Would any dark elf have done it other than you, dark knight?”
“I’m not a …” Terian blinked hard, again. Seeing the evidence of his past dredged up was a fresh burn in his chest, as though someone had kindled the memory of what he’d done to Ameli, forcing him to relive it by every moment, to savor every jagged emotion it brought with it. “I look around this place, and all I wish … is that I could have done things differently.”
“Why have you returned to us?” the human woman asked, moving through the crowd to the front. She came to stand by the wispy-bearded dwarf and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Terian said, looking at them for the first time. “I came to see the cave. The Sovereign … he’s dead. The people in Saekaj and Sovar—they’re in turmoil. I came here because I’m … searching for something.”
“What are you looking for?” the young dwarf asked, his eyes drawn.
“A way through the portal we sealed off,” Terian said, sighing. “A fool’s hope? I don’t know.”
The young dwarf looked to the woman next to him before answering. “The way is sealed. It was blasted shut.”
“I know,” Terian said, resignation falling over him, “I just needed to try anyway.”
“Can you smell the desperation?” Erith asked, sniffing. “Smells like pine.”
“The only way down there,” the dwarf said, “is air vents tunneled to keep the miners breathing while we mounted rescue in the event of a cave-in. They’re small. Too small for you, that’s certain. And the way the tunnel was blasted closed, if you try and dig through, it collapses. We tried.” He blushed a little under that wispy beard.
“Fool’s hope lost,” Terian said, nodding, embarrassed. “I understand … and thank you. We’ll leave you be—”
“Well, that’s hardly the end,” the dwarf said. “Like I said, we have the emergency shafts, and they’re tunneled by the children of the village.” He puffed out his chest. “I dug one of them myself when I was a lad a few years younger.”
Terian stared down at him. “Uhh … well … I mean, I’m not the biggest man you’ll ever meet, certainly, but I’m not as small as you probably were when you squeezed down that …”
“No, you’re not,” the dwarf said and turned his eyes to Brevis, who was watching the whole exchange with disinterest, through squinted eyes beneath a thick brow, “but if you perhaps had someone who was small, who could cast the return spell …”
71.
Terian
Brevis protested, he squealed, he had a small fit and a large one, but ultimately he allowed a rope to be tied about his waist so that he could be lowered into a dark shaft in the mountain that had been covered over with old boards. Once removed they had a smell about them, something like Saekaj and Sovar, actually, and Terian found himself leaning in to take a deeper sniff while they waited for Brevis to do his work.
He fussed all the way down, then fussed all the way back up, squalling like a tiny storm, echoing up the long, dark rock tunnel that was plenty wide enough for him to fit inside with room to spare.
“Smells terrible in there!” Brevis said as they pulled him out. “Like dust uncleaned for a thousand
years, like goblins nested in it.”
“I don’t care if they moved out of Enterra and claimed it for their very own,” Terian quipped as the gnome came out of the earth, face covered in a thick layer of brown grime, “so long as you cast your binding spell down there.”
“Yes, yes,” Brevis said as they sat him back on the pitch on the side of the mountain. It was a narrow space, hidden behind a patch of bushes, a hundred and fifty feet up the slope of the mountain. Terian could see the village below when he stood, chimneys smoking quietly in the night, lights burning in the windows.
“Aina, did you bind here?” Terian asked, glancing at the druid. She stared at him blankly, and he turned to Erith instead. “Did you?”
“Done,” Erith said, shrugging. “I’d prefer to have kept my return point at Sanctuary, but … what are you going to do?”
“What I’ve asked, thankfully,” Terian said, picking Brevis up off the ground and cradling him beneath an arm. “Come on,” he gestured to Erith, who blanched and closed her eyes. He held out an arm in invitation. “Let’s go.”
“I’m still not interested in your veredajh offer, no matter how desperate you smell,” she said, letting him pull her close. “Brevis, quickly, please.”
Terian glanced at Kahlee, who watched the entire exchange with some trace of amusement, her blue hair framed against the dark rock of the mountain face behind her. She disappeared in a swirl of light as Brevis’s return spell carried Terian to the bottom of the shaft below and dirt crunched beneath his feet.
“Gods, it’s dark,” Erith mumbled. “Like home.”
“I will never come visit you,” Brevis said. Terian handed the gnome to Erith, who accepted him as though she were taking hold of a baby who’d soiled itself. She murmured a few words and the light of her return spell carried them away, back to the surface.
Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Page 33