Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  Cyrus watched it all as the man finished his work and started to lift the weapon, drawing a bead once more …

  With a roll of the eyes, Cyrus slid past him with all the speed that Praelior granted him. Murrice barely turned his head in time to see Cyrus do so, and clicked a small switch on the back of the device as he did so. He tried to bring it around to line up with Cyrus once more, arm moving so slowly …

  “Do you expect me to just sit there and allow you to throw your mechanical thunder at me again unanswered?” Cyrus asked, slipping up next to the man as he brought his arm around. With his left hand Cyrus grasped the man’s extended one, breaking his elbow over Cyrus’s shoulder. With a cry, he dropped the weapon and Cyrus spun, catching it in one hand and then lifting it, pointing it into Murrice’s face. His eyes were wide with surprise. Cyrus frowned at the device, staring at it. “How do you …?” Then he saw the small switch beneath, sandwiched under a small metal loop. “Ah.” And he clicked it with his index finger.

  The weapon roared, thunder echoing once more down the alley as though someone had cast a lightning spell. A cloud of smoke belched forth, and through the luminosity of the weapon’s flash against the cloud it produced, Cyrus saw a spray of blood as the weapon blasted a hole in Murrice’s face.

  “Oh, I like this,” Cyrus said, staring at the weapon as his foe sputtered, staggered back, and fell, clutching at himself. “A pistol …” He ran a finger over the grain of the wood along the sides of the metal tubing. “Do they come in black?”

  He directed this question to Shirri, who was still sandwiched between Vaste and Curatio and looking around much like a scared cat. It took her a moment—during which Cyrus smashed the face of someone running at him from the side—to realize he was speaking to her. When she did, she blinked and said, “It’s—I don’t know? Maybe. They’re forbidden in Reikonos, but—yes, I suppose you can have them in any color you’d like, just paint the wooden part …”

  “Hm.” Cyrus slid the weapon into his belt after trying to use it once more; it failed to function. “I want one in black.” He buried Praelior in some poor soul’s head. They’d had a blade in hand so he felt quite justified in doing so.

  “Well, I’ve had quite enough of this,” Curatio said, his mace dripping blood. “Vara, kindly move aside so that I may—”

  “I can do it myself now, you know,” Vara said, smiling as she lifted a hand. “Watch this, you old heretic—”

  And she cast a spell as five of the toughs charged down at her at once. It surged from her fingertips, and Cyrus knew by the mere casting that it was not just a force blast, her favorite spell, but something else laced through it—

  A hiccuping burst of fire blossomed from her fingers and struck one of the charging men, setting his tunic aflame, pushing him back a few steps—

  And doing absolutely nothing to the other charging thugs, all clad in similar black knee-length leather coats with the white armbands.

  “What the hell?” Vara switched her target to another of the toughs and cast again, sublingually. Another small belch of flame and force sent another back barely a step, setting his arm aflame on the sleeve. With a noise of frustration, she slung Ferocis sideways and cut the others in half as they reached her.

  “Oh, you can do it yourself, can you?” Curatio asked with an unmistakable smile. “Perhaps this old heretic might show a young one a thing or two yet—”

  He raised his hand to the sky, and there came a thundercrack the like of which was much louder than anything Cyrus had heard the pistol make. Blue sparks rained down from the sky, finding their targets around the alley, a fork of lightning for every single one of the people there save for Shirri and the five of them—

  Cyrus watched the nearest foe jump and dance from the application of the lightning to his head, and then it ceased, and the man staggered a step, then raised his head. “What the hell was that?” he asked, stumbling sideways.

  “Oh, gosh, that’s embarrassing,” Vaste said. “It would appear Curatio’s suffering some of performance anxiety that’s keeping him from really unleashing himself. And after his boast to Vara, no less. I’d imagine that’s quite the blow to the pride.” He brought his staff around and floored one of the toughs that was running past him. “How awkward. I’m blushing for you.”

  “This … has never happened to me before,” Curatio said, staring at his hand.

  “I hear it happens to many men,” Vaste said, then, his eyes flitted back and forth. “Or so Terian told me. Long ago. In a confession of his many, many failings.”

  Alaric held up a hand to cast a spell, and a cone of force blasted a nearby thug into a wall, where he grunted in pain but stayed on his feet. “My spellcraft appears affected as well. I shouldn’t want to have to rely on a healing spell right now, therefore I suggest we make haste in dispatching these thugs.”

  “Back to my strengths,” Cyrus said, burying his blade in a running man up to the hilt then ripping him sideways. “And then, after the battle—another of my strengths—”

  “Oh, I bet you’ve felt the sting of failure in that department before, Cyrus,” Vaste said.

  “Actually, no,” Vara said. “I was quite surprised, as Archenous failed quite consistently, especially at the end of our time together.”

  “Turning evil probably does terrible things to your drive,” Vaste muttered. “And again, she thwarts my well-aimed jape.”

  “She blocked your staff before it could make contact with me,” Cyrus said with a grin, taking the head off some idiot who held a butcher’s knife. Those that remained all seemed to be carrying weapons now, clubs and daggers and the like. He slit another in half jaggedly as they ran toward him. He only realized after that it was a woman, and shrugged. If she didn’t want to be bisected, she shouldn’t have carried a knife into a fight.

  “Yes, I play my wifely role as protector well,” Vara said, joining him and tearing some poor soul in half from behind. “The flank is now clear.”

  He looked down the alley and Vaste waved at him, surrounded by corpses and groaning men. “Hihi. Your wifely wife protector made a mess, Lord Davidon.”

  “You should clean it up, then,” Cyrus said, slashing another foe down without paying much attention. These fools moved slowly. “Since it seems like you won’t be much good as a healer or a spellcaster.”

  “Lies,” Vaste said, and raised his staff. A small flame belched out from the tip, hardly more than a single stick’s kindling. “Well, shit,” he said as it flickered out. “This is terrible news. It would appear I’ve been afflicted with the same impotence as the rest of you. Damn you, Terian! Damn you for spreading this pox to me! Now I shall have to fall back upon the only other thing I’m good at—being pretty. You, there!” And he strode forward, swiftly, the Staff of Death in his hand aiding his passage like any other godly weapon. He stepped in front of one of the toughs who had come running at Alaric from out of the shadows, and the man stopped short at the seven foot troll’s sudden appearance in front of him. “Cease and desist your attacks in the name of my utter gorgeousness.”

  Jaw dropping, the man panicked and stabbed at Vaste, who, unamused, thwacked his hand with a downward thrust of his staff. Bringing the tip up, he shattered his attacker’s jaw and then brought the weapon around and obliterated his skull. “Fine,” he said as the corpse fell to the ground, lacking anything above the jaw. “You people don’t appreciate beauty. So I guess it’s down to caving heads in, then.”

  Alaric buried his blade into the guts of one of his attackers, and with a spark of magic, the man was hurled bodily from the blade, and flew almost five feet before he landed, thumping roughly. “Damn,” the Ghost said. “Truly, our magic is compromised.”

  “Did you give that spell everything you had?” Cyrus asked.

  Alaric nodded. “Indeed.”

  Cyrus let out a low whistle, clipping a running straggler in the side of the head and knocking him either unconscious or dead; Cyrus did not concern himself with which. “Y
ou brought down the Endless Bridge with your blasts, and that barely threw a runty man a few feet.”

  “Something is very wrong,” Curatio said quietly. “This world … has changed.”

  Cyrus’s hand brushed the pistol in his belt. “Tell me about it. It’s not all pistols and joy, either.” He frowned. “I hope something similar hasn’t happened to sex.”

  “I expect your partner will still launch from your loins at the end with the same explosive fervor as she ever did,” Vaste said dryly.

  “Damned right she will,” Cyrus said.

  “I am right here, and I have my own opinions,” Vara said, “And they are thus: you’re damned right I will.”

  “Why don’t you two just magically combine into one person already?” Vaste grumbled.

  “That’s kind of the point of—” Cyrus started to say, but was halted by someone hitting him from behind. He turned to find a small man standing there with a club. “Truly?” he asked, and the man cast the club down, raising his hands in obvious surrender. “Get the hell out of here,” Cyrus said, pointing toward the mouth of the alley in the distance, “and if you come back, I will feed you your own entrails and nothing else for days at a time as you drown in the juices of your own colon.”

  “I don’t know about you,” Vaste stage-whispered to Vara, “but I’m definitely turned on and ready for him now.”

  “Indeed,” Vara said, “I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for tearing off his armor piece by piece, and thrusting his—”

  “Okay, you win,” Vaste said, “I didn’t realize I was placing my head in that dragon’s mouth. I thought talk of entrails would cool your passions. Clearly, I was wrong. You’re just as barbaric as him, the thought of battle making you moist.”

  “Don’t say that word,” Vara said. “Especially in relation to me or any part of me, or you’ll find your guts moist from a wound.”

  “I would have believed you absolutely capable of that in the days when you knew I could heal myself. Now—I doubt it.”

  “Do you doubt it enough to stake your life upon it?”

  “Maybe … Moist.”

  Vara threw a hand around and a hiccuping force blast combined with flame caught Vaste’s robes right at his belly. He took a step back from the spell force, then hastily beat at the small fire that flared on his plump, rounded stomach. “These were new robes! I got them from a tailor in Termina! Spent a fortune on them, too—”

  “They have blood on them,” Vara said mildly, taking the legs from beneath a running man with a slash. He hit the ground, skidded, and started to half-crawl, half-walk away, hurrying toward the mouth of the alley.

  “And fire, now,” Vaste said, beating out the last of the flames. “Why do you hate me?”

  “Because you said the word ‘moist.’”

  “It’s a perfectly fine word!”

  “Not when used to describe me, you grotesque.”

  “Your sense of humor has gone as flaccid as your magic.”

  “And yours,” Vara shot back.

  “Yes, and it’s as ruined as my robes,” Vaste said, staring at the scorched cloth. “I bet they don’t make them like this anymore, since this world has clearly gone all to hell. Did you see the runes stitched into the cloth? They’re enchanted, see, to give me more magical ability to refresh my—”

  “Doubt that’ll do you much good now,” Vara said. “What with the flaccidity and all.”

  Vaste’s brow turned down in a scowl. “I wish much flaccidity for you in the coming minutes. A thousand years of pent-up frustration on the part of your dark-clad avenger, bottled up and unable to be spent? That’d be ironic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I would if I were convinced a troll knew what the word irony even meant.”

  “So much hate,” Vaste said, throwing down his robes again in frustration. “May you be as moist and frustrated as I am burnt and irritable right now.”

  “Well, we’ve won the battle,” Curatio said. “And in good time, too.”

  “Indeed,” Alaric said. “It seems our friends have not lost their desire for a fight, though, now putting down their weapons turning wits upon each other like blades.”

  “In fairness,” Cyrus said, “we’ve turned upon ourselves for a good fight for—well, a thousand years, now, because no one else can provide the challenge of wit we need.” He gave Praelior a good swing and blood flew off it, spattering the ground in a long line.

  “We weren’t exactly fighting all that time, though,” Vaste said. “I mean, I felt mostly at peace with you people in the ether. Bored, admittedly, because some of you don’t have a great deal of conversational depth outside of the strategies of great battles and proper disembowelment of your foes—”

  “I’ll have you know that I’m perpetually learning and curiously seeking out new things all the time,” Cyrus said. “Why, look at this nifty new acquisition.” He lifted the pistol.

  “Right, well,” Vaste said. “It would seem we’ve won the battle. What ne—”

  A rumble filled the air overhead and something soared far over them, lights burning within it. Wood-hulled, it was massive, reminding Cyrus of the great sailing ships at the old docks in Reikonos, but flying overhead across the skies with a surprising grace, like some enormous, magical bird. It moved over them swiftly, so swiftly that Cyrus wasn’t entirely sure what he saw until a moment later, when it had flown beyond the rooftops on either side. It rattled the windows around them with its passage, and almost sent Cyrus to his knees in fear of something coming down on him.

  Silence fell a moment later, and they were all left staring at the black and clouded sky.

  “What in the hell,” Curatio asked, the city of Reikonos falling into silence as they stood in the alley, surrounded by blood and dead bodies, “was that?”

  3.

  “Was that …” Cyrus just stared up at the now black sky, clouds hemming in the heavens. “Was that a ship? In the air?”

  The wooden thing that had passed over them in such a roar was gone, leaving behind only dark skies, a faint glow from the streets at either end of the alley giving them some small illumination. Cyrus sniffed; the stink of this city was upon him, and he frowned as he looked up, wishing that thing—whatever it was—would come back.

  “It very much looked like a ship,” Vara said. “Like one I saw in a drydock in Termina once while it was being constructed. But … flying. As though thrown by a titan.”

  “Very curious,” Curatio said. “A flying ship.”

  “It’s an airship,” Shirri said, emerging from their midst now that the danger had passed. She regarded them warily, as though they might attack her now that all their other foes had been beaten or fled. “Only about a hundred of them a day come to Reikonos, so it’s totally understandable that you wouldn’t have heard of them … I guess.” Every word was laced with sarcasm.

  “Well, we have been gone rather a long while,” Cyrus said, throwing a little sarcasm back at her. This exhibition of ingratitude did not much impress him. “Perhaps you could understand our lack of understanding when it comes to things we might have missed.”

  “Sure,” she said stiffly, and started to back away. “Well. I … appreciate the help.” She thumped a heel into a body and cringed, her little nose curling. “I’m sure this won’t cost me … horribly … when the Machine finally does get ahold of me.”

  “What machine are you talking about?” Vaste asked. “Is it like a smith’s bellows? Sending hot air up your skirt? Because I would imagine that could hurt.”

  “Or like one of these?” Cyrus brandished the pistol. “But bigger?” His brows knitted together. “Do they make these bigger? Because, I mean—bigger is always better.”

  “Which is why I am superior to you in every way,” Vaste said, then got elbowed in the belly by Vara. “Most ways.” She raised the elbow again. “Some ways, then—entirely related to intelligence and suppleness of arse,” he amended, eyeing her waiting elbow.

  “Yeah, they make bigg
er pistols,” Shirri said, still backing away. “Listen … ah … I should go. You all have quite the mess to clean up, after all.” She eyed the bodies splayed about the alley uncomfortably.

  “We can protect you,” Alaric said, taking a step toward her that was matched by her taking one away from him. “If you come with us—”

  Shirri let out a small, desperate laugh. “Can you get me out of Reikonos? Because that’s the only way to protect me from the Machine. You may think you did me a favor dispensing with all these wastrels, but the Machine … has so many more available to them. This is a fraction of a fraction. They’ll be back to eat me whole soon enough.”

  “Then you should remain with us,” Alaric said, gesturing to Sanctuary, which now stood in the shadows. Cyrus glanced up at the building with all its spires, smaller than ever before and sandwiched uncomfortably between two other buildings. “We offer a haven for lost souls, those in need of aid.”

  “Look, I was just desperate when I called out—” Shirri started to say.

  “And you look much less desperate now,” Vaste said. “Trying to run away from five strangers who saved your life in an alleyway. Why, you’re positively glowing with self-reliance. It shines through just past the feeling of disdain for us that you wear like a second cloak.”

  “I don’t disdain you—”

  “And why would you, when we’re so pretty?” Vaste asked. “And helpful. And just left scads and scads of your enemies dead at your feet. Speaking of, watch out for that one, he’s leaving quite the puddle.” He pointed past her.

  Shirri followed his warning and scooted sideways around the indicated corpse. “Thanks … uh, for everything … but …”

  “She’s going to make another excuse,” Curatio said. “I would like to place my gold on, ‘I can handle this myself.’”