Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  “We didn’t know it,” Cyrus said. “At least not for sure. Just because that’s where they were in my day—”

  “Yes, very well,” Shirri said, cutting him off. “Can we …” She bowed her head, studying her lap. “… I hesitate to ask, but …” Here she drew another breath, heavier and tighter. “… Is there anything you can do to help me? To help my mother?”

  She looked to Alaric, and he smiled. “Of course.” Then he turned his head, slowly, to look at Cyrus. “Guildmaster?”

  Cyrus blinked, feeling once again like someone had smacked him in the head with a weapon of some stripe. “Me? This one’s on me?”

  “You are the duly elected Guildmaster,” Alaric said with a slight smile.

  “I don’t think anyone at this table voted for me other than Vaste,” Cyrus said.

  “And I regret it immensely,” Vaste said, a spoon filled with mashed potatoes stopped inches from his lips. “Why, if I’d known it would lead to your eventual deification I would have voted for Vara. Or that leaf-eating idiot.”

  “I voted for you,” Curatio said.

  “You’d have voted for a shrubbery at that point if it’d meant you could cast away the Guild leader medallion and be left in peace to run your Halls of Healing,” Cyrus said.

  “I doubt I’d have found many shrubberies as capable as you,” Curatio said, “at least not since the days before the trees entered their slumber.”

  “Alaric,” Cyrus said, tone approaching beseeching, “… don’t ask me to be in charge. Let me be the general again.” He reached into his collar and swept the chain from around his neck, taking care not to rip his hair out by catching it in the links. “My days as Guildmaster were … fraught. Let me go back to doing what I was best at—”

  “Killing people and destroying shit,” Vaste said.

  “—and you go back to leading us,” Cyrus said, “in all but combat.” He held out the medallion, dangling at the end of its chain.

  Alaric eyed the medallion. “I don’t think—”

  “Oh, come on,” Vaste said, “he’s already a god in this city. Don’t pretend the four of us with any sanity remaining will look to him for leadership before you. We’re mad, but we’re not what I will now call ‘Reikonos mad.’”

  Cyrus smiled faintly. “He has a point.”

  Vara put a hand on Cyrus’s arm. “I would follow you, you know.”

  Cyrus looked deep into the sparkling blue of her eyes. “You have. It led to your death.”

  Vara looked slightly stung. “That was hardly your fault.”

  Cyrus’s smile faded. “It was entirely my fault. I provoked the fights that led us to that moment.”

  “And changed the face of Arkaria forever,” Curatio said, leaning forward, elbows upon the table, fingers upon his face. “Do not diminish yourself or your accomplishments, Cyrus.”

  “I’m not trying to,” Cyrus said, and looked right at Alaric, who stared at him with that one good eye. “I’m not trying to—look, when I make a decision, I will be looking to you for approval when I do it. We all will. You would have remained the Master of Sanctuary if you hadn’t gone under that bridge, hadn’t sacrificed yourself to Bellarum and the others. I’m Guildmaster because you made the brave choice, and accepted the brunt of consequences I called down on you—”

  “You were hardly the only one who struck a blow in that fight,” Alaric said. “And you had the courage to fight it, unlike me. I was prepared to sacrifice one of our brethren to keep a horrific peace. For that, you think I should be leader? Because I failed to dare the status quo, when the status was oppression by those who would think themselves our betters?” He shook his head. “No, Cyrus—you led this guild bravely when I was too afraid to confront the evil that sat upon the throne of this land—”

  “Bullshit,” Cyrus said, medallion trembling as his hand shook. “You didn’t just confront the evil, you threw yourself bodily into their torture chamber and took endured years of pain to spare the rest of us until we could fight them on even footing—”

  “You spat in the eye of evil and I appeased it—” Alaric said.

  “You wisely steered us from a fight we couldn’t win, and I shoved myself and all my friends into its waiting maw—” Cyrus said.

  “I will lead us,” Vaste said, rising, hands spread out in either direction. “I am wise and just, and all I ask is that you bow to me, call me a god, and bring me some pie.” He looked down the table. “Oh, the pie is already covered. Never mind that last one. Bowing and calling me a god shall be sufficient.” And he leaned to grab the pie.

  “Perhaps we could settle this issue of leadership later,” Vara said, clearing her throat uncomfortably. “It seems likely, after all, that if we were to go and fight this Machine on behalf of recovering Shirri’s mother, we would probably defer to Cyrus’s strategic and tactical guidance, at least in the short term.”

  Alaric was quick to reply. “It is true; I have never been a general, and never led anything more than the smallest of armies. My knowledge in these areas is considerably less than yours, brother. I bow to you in this.”

  “Just don’t think passing the medallion on who leads the fight absolves you of this discussion later,” Cyrus said, reluctantly pulling the chain back. With a hesitant glance at the circular pattern of runes upon its surface, he placed it back over his head and slid it beneath his breastplate.

  “I am certain it will be a stimulating discussion,” Alaric said with a smile.

  Shirri seemed to stir to life again, her face resting up her hand, elbow on the table. “Sorry, I, uh … fell asleep there during all that … macho posturing or whatever you were doing.”

  “They were deferring to each other endlessly,” Vaste said, mouth full of pie. Shirri watched him eat, a look of disgust creeping over her face. “It was quite sad to watch, like two old men arguing over who enters a door first. Just go, you old jackasses, before one of you keels over dead from age.”

  “Says the thousand year-old troll,” Vara muttered.

  “I do have one question,” Cyrus said, looking at Shirri. He felt a certain swell of confidence, knowing that the rest of them had marked him to be their leader, at least in the fight. This one thing I can do, he thought. “What … does this Machine want from you so badly that they would kidnap your mother?”

  Shirri froze, hesitating. “I … can’t say,” she finally coughed out, her words almost inaudible.

  A moment of silence hung over the table before Vaste piped up. “Oh, a secret,” he said, hand filled once more with a gluttonous helping of pie, poised to cram it into his mouth. “You’ll fit right in around here,” he said, smiling, as he shoved it in.

  12.

  “Our first objective should be to find and assault the nearest stronghold of this Machine,” Cyrus said as they strode down the steps of Sanctuary and into the waning night. Light was showing somewhere beyond the high walls, hints of the sun on the rise in the distance. He looked in the direction where the sky was brightest and decided that must be east.

  “How will we find it?” Vara asked as Alaric raised the bar on the gate and then opened it for them. Cyrus passed through first, into the empty alley, all trace of last night’s massacre now faded away.

  Cyrus stared in either direction. Lamps glowed at either end of the alley but the light was fading in the dying of night. “I don’t know. We could ask—”

  “Someone who knows,” Curatio said, looking pointedly at Shirri, who stood right in their midst. Cyrus turned to look at her, and the others followed until all five were focused on her.

  Shirri looked uncomfortable at all the attention upon her. “Well … yes, I know where their nearest office is. It’s not exactly a secret.”

  “Interesting,” Alaric said. “I should think it would be, given that this organization dabbles in so many hideous fields of endeavor. I would think that being open about their locations would invite retribution.”

  Shirri just blinked at him. “Nobody would
dare.”

  Cyrus cracked a smile. “Doing what no one else would dare do is something of a specialty of ours.”

  Shirri’s breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she muttered, “I’ve cast my lot with dead people. Dead, and they don’t even know it yet.”

  “Oh, I think we know we’re dead,” Vaste said, “haven’t you seen this idiot’s monuments?” He chucked a thumb at Cyrus. “They don’t build those to the living, sweetheart.” He paused. “Unless this Lord Protector fellow is still alive.”

  Shirri frowned. “Of course he’s still alive. The nearest, er, office for the Machine is this way.” She pointed to their left. “Six blocks away.”

  “You lead,” Cyrus said, nodding to her, and with a hint of reluctance, Shirri started in that direction.

  “I know the two of you are really trying to push leadership onto anyone else,” Vaste said, “but you could have turned to one of us who has been around a while rather than delegating to the lady who summoned us out of the peaceful ether into a horrific hellscape filled with statues of the man in black armor and groupies who probably worship him and wish they could bury their heads in his lap like some elven icon with terrible hair and worse judgment.”

  Vara’s brow puckered. “My judgment is excellent. And my hair is just fine.”

  “If it was that great, you wouldn’t wear it in a ponytail all the time,” Vaste said.

  “I need it out of my eyes when I fight, you fool.”

  “I can vouch for the fact that it’s quite lovely when down,” Cyrus said. “Very full of body, lustrous, really—”

  “I’m sure it looks wonderful all piled beneath her on the bed as you labor atop her,” Vaste said.

  “It looks just as wonderful when it hangs loose as she labors atop me,” Cyrus said with a wicked smile.

  “This is the most bizarre thing I have ever done,” Shirri muttered ahead of them, “and the strangest people I have ever met. Why have I cast my lot with them again?”

  “Desperation, my dear,” Curatio called to her. “It leads you curious places.”

  “No shit,” Shirri muttered, almost under her breath.

  “I, for one, am curious why the ruler of this city would tolerate such activity,” Alaric said, as they came out upon the main street at the alley’s end. Cyrus’s gaze swept in either direction. The city certainly looked … different.

  Gone was the hodge podge of wooden shanties and stone houses with thatched roofs. Replacing them were houses of clay and brick with tiled rooftops. There was a more uniform look to the city now; not cleaner, but more orderly in a way that Cyrus could only think of as “modern.” As though the nicest, best-built buildings of the Reikonos of old had become the decrepit places of this city, and a new breed of superior structure had sprung up in their place.

  “The Lord Protector?” Shirri asked, leading them to the right down a cobblestone street lit by lamps that glowed orange. “He never comes down out of his tower anymore. They say …” She hesitated, looking around, as though someone might overhear them. “… Never mind.”

  “I’m very interested in what this ephemeral ‘they’ have to say,” Vaste said. Cyrus looked at him to see that he had his cowl over his head and was walking hunched over. When he caught Cyrus looking, he shrugged. “Don’t want to be too much of a spectacle.”

  “You’re not any smaller when you hunch over,” Cyrus said. “You look like two people huddling under one cloak. Maybe even four; two piled upon the tops of two others’ shoulders.”

  “As though you’re all small of frame,” Vaste shot back. He straightened himself, looking uncomfortable. “I was stooping further before, but after that pie I’m afraid I might leave a mess on these pretty streets should I bend too far. If it was old Reikonos, I wouldn’t hesitate, because all I’d soil would be mud. But here, I’m afraid I’d ruin their cobblestones and then strong guards would appear and present with a bill for damages, which I’d feel compelled to hand to Curatio to pay.” When everyone just stared at him, he said, “Because he’s lived so long, doubtless he has money.”

  “You have a mansion in Termina, fool,” Vara said, “and an income stipend for life.”

  “Yes, but the man who gave that to me is dead thanks to some utter arse chopping his head off and burning his body,” Vaste pointed out. “Also, my natural life-span was supposed to cease some nine hundred years ago, so I’m not counting on them having kept it for me.”

  “You may be pleasantly surprised, then,” Vara said. “Elven law specifies that such decrees are to last an elven life span—though I suppose whoever is now in charge of the kingdom—or whatever it is—might have changed it in our absence.”

  “There is no elven kingdom,” Shirri said, frowning over her shoulder.

  “Tell me of the elves,” Vara said, picking up her pace to come alongside Shirri, who looked as if she were readying herself to take a sudden leap away from the elven paladin in her shining armor. “Where are they?”

  Shirri blinked a few times. “Pharesia, of course, and Amti. And some are here, some in Termina, and Emerald Fields—”

  “Hey, Emerald Fields and Amti are still around,” Cyrus said. “Good for them.”

  Shirri looked at him strangely, then turned her attention back to Vara. “But mostly Pharesia and Amti.”

  “Of course,” Vara said, smiling slightly.

  Shirri looked a little discomfited. “You’re one of the whole elves, then?” She eyed Vara’s ears.

  “My name is Vara Davidon,” Vara said, giving her an intense gaze. “Do you know of me?”

  Shirri looked taken aback, then met her look with a touch of defiance. “I know of Vara Davidon. Everyone knows of Vara Davidon. But you are n—”

  “I am Vara Davidon,” Vara said, stopping her with an outstretched hand. “My people live for some six thousand years and I have been gone but a thousand. I left this land when I was thirty-four. Do you know this truth of my peoples’ lifespan?”

  “Yes,” Shirri said. “Of course.”

  “Then you doubt I am who I say I am,” Vara said, eyes narrowing further, hand still placed to obstruct Shirri’s forward motion. “You doubt my husband, too, then—and my friends.”

  Shirri looked around at them each, slowly. “I … don’t know your friends.”

  “But you have no one else to turn to,” Vara said, “so although you don’t trust we are who we say we are, you are still stuck asking us for aid.”

  Shirri looked down. “I … have no one else. And …” She looked up, and that glint of desperation was in her eye. “And there is no one else who would spit in the eye of the Machine the way you have.”

  “I think you mean ‘gouge out the eye of the Machine the way we have,’” Vaste said, stepping up. “We killed some thirty of their people. I assume based on your other statements that no one else in this city would so much as touch one of them, yet we killed thirty, and could have killed more.”

  “You did,” Shirri said, with great reluctance. She stared at her feet once more.

  “We have done something that no one else is capable of or would dare to,” Vara’s voice was strong and confident. “Why do you doubt we are who we say we are?”

  Shirri’s gaze flicked up to her. “Because you’re clearly crazy, taking on the Machine.”

  “You’re taking on the Machine as well,” Vara said, her own eyes narrowing at Shirri. “You could have sought them out, made peace with them—given them whatever mysterious thing it is they want from you. But instead you’ve run, then watched strangers fight them on your behalf, and now are leading us into their den. A more suspicious person might suspect a trap.”

  “I’m not trapping you,” Shirri said, taking a step back. “I’m …” Her voice trailed off. “Using you, I guess.”

  “Someone’s finally found a use for Vaste,” Cyrus said, breaking into a smile.

  “I have many uses,” Vaste said. “For example, Vara has me stand next to you so that you may bask in the reflect
ion of mine and my arse’s glory.”

  “You also make an excellent pie disposal,” Curatio pointed out.

  Shirri looked at each of them. “I just told you all I’m using you.”

  Alaric cleared his throat and smiled benignly. “Yes.”

  Shirri blinked. “And … you don’t have … anything to say about that?”

  “You desire our help,” Alaric said, “and we have offered to render it.” His smile remained. “Thus, we have consented to work for your purposes, for we find the rescue of your mother from the clutches of these—these—”

  “Fiends,” Vara said.

  “Gangsters,” Cyrus said.

  “Syphilitic turdwagons,” Curatio said, drawing everyone’s attention to him. “It was better than whatever Vaste was going to say.”

  “Damn you, healer,” Vaste said. “It was better than what I was cooking up.”

  “We find no fault in you for wishing assistance,” Alaric said, stepping up next to Vara and looking at her—ever so gently—until she turned her hard gaze away from Shirri. “All find themselves overmatched, overwhelmed at some point in life. And with the foes you are up against, it seems that aid is needed from a source more willing to clash with such …”

  “Worm-infested anuses!” Vaste shouted, and when Curatio looked at him, “Beat that, you old elf!”

  “I don’t think I care to try,” Curatio said.

  “You require force, and we are here,” Alaric said, “willing to help. So—we put ourselves at your disposal.”

  “But you … could get hurt,” Shirri said. “These people … the ones who work for the Machine … they’re not all street thugs like the ones you encountered in that alley. Thousands work for them, across all walks of life in this city. They have their fingers in everything—”

  “Have they had their fingers in my pie?” Vaste asked. “Because I cannot abide that.”

  “They have had their worm-infested anuses in your pie,” Vara said.

  “Those bastards,” Vaste said. “Vengeance will be ours for this atrocity.”