Ghosts of Sanctuary

by Robert J. Crane

  “Do you remember this sword?” Hiressam asked, holding it up. It was ornate, with a curved edge and a very fine hilt with a couple jewels in it.

  “I can’t say that I do, though it looks very well made,” Cyrus said, cringing. The pain was seeping in now.

  “It was handed to me by the Gatekeeper of Purgatory,” Hiressam said, “on our first time through. On subsequent visits, I gained these rings,” and he flashed his fingers, “and my armor,” running blade up and down his body. “None of them is nearly as impressive as a godly weapon, to be sure—but they do speed me up.” The elf smiled. “Make me stronger. So while this Gaull had an advantage, it was not as unfair as he probably thought.”

  “It was unfair enough that he downed two people with godly weapons and took only a scarring blow to the vanity in exchange,” Vara said, leaning against another support beam. “If I hadn’t possessed the ability to go ethereal …”

  “You’d be headless,” Cyrus said, drawing a ragged breath as the adrenaline of the battle fled and he was left with a weak, hollow feeling. “And I’d be a widower. Again.”

  “I’m sure the ladies of Reikonos would love that,” Vara said, lifting her fingers and letting the glow of white light fill the air. She cringed as it died out. “That did … so very little.”

  “It staunched the bleeding,” Cyrus said, looking at her wound beneath her arm. “Keep in mind the effect of phantom pain; it probably did more than you feel.”

  “What has happened here?” Alaric’s voice cut through the quiet hum of the mill as he appeared in a gust of black smoke. Gone were the screams of the slaves in their pits, replaced instead with little but the faint clank of some machine working without its masters.

  “It’s a long story,” Cyrus said.

  “Some arse killed Zarnn after we left Arkaria,” Vara said. “He is now a well-practiced swordsman in the employ of the Machine, and he nearly killed us both,” she indicated herself and Cyrus, “and would surely have done so if not for every trick in our respective bags and the perfectly timed intervention of Hiressam.”

  “Okay, it’s not that long a story,” Cyrus conceded. “But it’s filled with drama. That son of a bitch Gaull admitted to killing Zarnn and slaughtering the last of the trolls—”

  “Perhaps not quite the last,” Alaric said quietly. “But nonetheless, this Gaull sounds like quite the villain, to admit such wrongs freely.”

  “Why would someone with that amount of skill and power come to work for the Machine?” Vara asked, pushing off the beam and grimacing as she did so. A fresh drip of blood ran down her side. “Why not carve out his own fiefdom? I mean, he nearly bested the two of us and ended up with scarcely any damage to show for it.”

  “I came at him too hard, too furiously,” Cyrus said, unwilling to try standing on his own just yet. “He was too canny for me by half. I played right into his hand.”

  “Hothead,” Vara said.

  “You should talk.”

  “Neither of you should be talking at the moment,” Alaric said, raising his own hand as the glow of healing light came over it. Cyrus felt some of the pain subside, and noticed that Vara, too, looked relieved. “Where did this man go?”

  “He fled out the front of the mill,” Cyrus said. “Or the back, perhaps; I didn’t catch his direction after he leapt behind that machinery.”

  Alaric’s lips puckered with concern. “We should leave, then—provided our business here is concluded?”

  “Wait,” Vara said. “We haven’t searched the offices for Shirri’s mother.”

  Alaric shook his head. “I swept the rooms upstairs before I appeared to you. They are thoroughly empty.”

  Cyrus looked to Hiressam. “You got all the slaves out?”

  Hiressam’s eyes flicked down. “All but the ones he killed.”

  Alaric’s expression turned stony. “This Gaull … he killed slaves?”

  “Out of pure spite,” Cyrus said. “Or to taunt me, perhaps.”

  “Heinous,” Alaric pronounced and motioned at them to go. “Let us go. We should see if we can track this Gaull down.” His face hardened further. “I cannot countenance leaving a rabid dog to prowl the streets, after all. For any else who are harmed in his path …” The Ghost shook his head, and there was a kind of fury mingled with sadness and resolve in his eyes. “I would see his end come before any more are harmed.”

  31.

  Shirri

  “Why are you here with me?” Shirri asked Curatio as they stood upon the street corner outside the mill gates. She’d felt drawn to move closer once the scream had come and Alaric had left in his cloud of mist. She had thought that he’d run inside, but to her surprise, he’d remained by her side, keeping a careful watch on the gate, mace hanging by his side, spikes not deployed. “Shouldn’t you have gone in with him?”

  “He is plenty enough assistance for any who need it, all on his own,” Curatio said with a tight smile. She looked behind him to the factory across the street, workers still coming and going on some sort of a break as though nothing at all were happening over here. She caught a few curious looks from them, faces smudged with black and clothing even dirtier, but no one came over. They lingered close to the gates of their own factory, as if an invisible tether kept them there. “I believed keeping watch on you in case of trouble might be more useful.”

  “You need not worry on my account,” Shirri said, looking once more toward the gate. “I can take care of myself.”

  “On the contrary,” Curatio said, polite but unsmiling. “You have already needed our help twice this day.” He looked up. “If you count last night as part of this day, and I do.”

  “I didn’t need your help,” she said simply. “But … it was …” She searched for the word.

  “Helpful?”

  She rolled her eyes a little. “Indeed. It was helpful. It was true, there was little I could do against all of those who came after me … especially the second, bigger group…” She shook her head. “But I could have made good my escape from them, provided they didn’t kill me. It only felt hopeless. Looking back, there were avenues of escape available to me. I panicked.”

  “Ah, so now you find hope,” Curatio said, and this time, he did smile. “A curious thing your hope appears to be, so very ephemeral. It comes and goes like Alaric.”

  Shirri let out a breath of impatience. “I don’t have hope, all right? I have plans. There is a difference.”

  “Indeed,” Curatio said. “Plans can be waylaid. Hope, though? It never leaves you unless you surrender it.”

  “That’s very … trite,” Shirri said. “In fact, it’s almost—”

  “What the hell is this?” A guttural voice came from behind them, causing Shirri to wheel.

  Machine thugs were always dressed the same and came in crews, matched like eggs in a basket. Six of them were striding up the street now, in their black coats with the white armbands, a patrol that was probably usually laughing and gawking as they moved to strip citizens of their valuables, to practice the thuggery that made them hardly distinguishable from a street gang. That was a hallmark of the Machine’s thugs versus the regular sort; Machine thugs happily operated, without fear, in daylight. All other criminals feared the Machine enough to keep their activities out of sight.

  Their attention was on the mill, but it shifted almost as soon as Shirri turned. Smoke was billowing out the windows now, and Shirri hadn’t even noticed it happening. She turned back to look at the thugs, who’d focused on her—her and Curatio, and were heading toward them with intent.

  “We should—” she started to say.

  “Stand right here and greet what’s coming without fear,” Curatio said, stepping in front of her, his long white robes swishing as he moved. His mace was behind his back, one hand clamping the wrist of the other to steady it. Without the weapon, he might have looked like a monk in a meditative pose. Perhaps that was even what the thugs would think, a man in white robes stepping up to greet them fearlessly. Som
e elven priest naively walking into their waiting arms.

  “What’s going on here?” the accent of the leader was distinct, not even from the street—he had come from the gutter, Shirri guessed. He had that rough sound to him, and his face was bent in such a way that she knew he’d been in many fights. “We got an elven priest and some little slip of a thing outside a burning mill that’s under our protection.”

  “And I’m sure you are fierce protectors, indeed,” Curatio said. “Why, surely small women and tiny children are intimidated by you every day.”

  That one sent a ripple through the thugs—and Shirri’s stomach. They were egotistical bullies at the best of times, and provoking them didn’t seem like a wise path.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” the leader asked, stopping a few feet from Curatio. She could practically see him drawing courage from the pistol in his belt and the friends he had watching his back.

  “Why, I am a revenant returned to life, my dear man,” Curatio said. “Come back to this place to haunt your very nightmares.”

  That one took a minute to land. The leader’s face screwed up, eyes narrowing, lips puckering as he tried to take make sense of the words but failed. “Whatchoo say—?”

  He didn’t get a chance to finish, because Curatio brought the mace around and winged him on the side of the head before Shirri even got a chance to think through what might happen next. The leader’s eyes fluttered as it struck, and though it didn’t utterly cave in his skull, the mighty crack made her cringe.

  Curatio did not take that as a stopping point, however; he was not moving nearly as fast as the Cyrus or Vara impersonators, or even Alaric, but he certainly had alacrity on his side. He moved smoothly to the next nearest of the thugs, punching his mace forward and landing the ball in the man’s nose.

  Blood exploded out like someone had smashed a rotten piece of fruit. The thug keeled over, out, and the man in white moved on as the others began to scramble into action.

  Curatio’s mace swung high, then low. It battered another thug unconscious, catching him in the temple and leaving a bloody spot behind when he ducked and moved past a dagger to slam it home in another’s belly. The “OOF!” was loud enough that she suspected it could be heard blocks away, and the recipient of the blow fell to his knees, clutching his midsection and wheezing to try and get a breath in his body.

  “This is the problem with consigning your will to a gang,” Curatio said, taking the legs from beneath another with a sweep of his feet. The man thudded to his back loudly. “You make subservient your own thoughts, your initiative, and when someone goes and knocks over the brains of your operation with the first strike, you’re left without thoughts of your own. A dangerous thing, letting others do your thinking for you—” He threw the mace back at one of the last two toughs, both of whom were only steps from Shirri but a few more from Curatio, who had worked to his left as he’d made his way through them. The mace sailed into the face of one of the last two, crushing his nose and probably many other things, though Shirri missed the rest because the man crashed to the ground as the mace went sideways, coming to rest out of anyone’s reach. “Though not as dangerous as me,” Curatio said with a smile.

  “You won’t get away with this,” the last thug said, ripping his pistol from his belt and bringing it up. Curatio was already sprinting forward, trying to cut the distance between them, but the last thug was surprisingly clear-eyed; he had a bead on the elf and was thumbing back his hammer, finger coiled on the trigger. Shirri watched it unfolding, and her mind calculated how it would go.

  He’d fire before Curatio could reach him. The bullet would hit the elf, and he’d go down. There would be no dodging it, no avoiding it. The thug was squinting, one eye closed, preparing his aim as he clicked the hammer back—

  Shirri drew a sharp breath and exhaled words that she hadn’t said in … years.

  A bellowing sound of thunder cracked over the street and lightning lanced from her hands, a bolt pure and furious and true. The last thug jerked as it hit him, his thumb contracting and straightening before he could finish cocking the hammer of the pistol. He stood there, frozen in time for just a moment before Curatio paused, inches from him as the forks of lightning finished dispersing themselves—

  The thug fell over dead, his face a rictus of horror, his eyes bulging out.

  Curatio gave her a look, very slight smile showing itself as someone pounded around the corner of gates; it was Alaric, with the others—the new elf, Hiressam, with the Cyrus and Vara imitators only steps behind him. The last two, in particular, looked quite bloody; though she saw no sign of obvious nor gaping wounds upon them, they did move a little slower than they had previously.

  “What happened here?” Alaric asked, taking in the fallen Machine thugs with a glance.

  “Something very interesting indeed,” Curatio said, stooping to pick up his mace. “It seems there is more to our new friend Shirri than meets the eye.” And he smiled, sending little chills down Shirri’s arms, her back—everywhere, really. “Much, much more.”

  32.

  Vaste

  “You’re probably wondering why I’ve knocked upon your door,” Vaste said, trying to recover after his insipidly stupid opening. (Hihi? Who even said that, other than him?)

  The beautiful troll woman regarded him with mingled curiosity, her lower fangs protruding over her lips as she stared at him intently. There seemed to be intelligence there, didn’t there? Was he imagining it? Would his fantasy be ruined as soon as she opened her mouth and muttered, “Ungh? Grunnnt”?

  But she didn’t say that. Instead, with perfect fluidity and grace to her speech, she said: “I did wonder.”

  “Oh!” Vaste tried to contain himself, but failed. “You … you used a two syllable word.”

  She stared at him, then her eyes narrowed further. “I frequently do, when the situation calls for it.”

  “‘Fre-quent-ly,’ that’s three syllables,” Vaste put his hand on his chest. “Be still my heart. ‘Si-tu-a-tion’ is four—”

  “Who are you, and why are you at my door, critiquing my word choices?” she asked.

  “Gods, ‘critiquing.’ That’s—”

  “Who are you?” she asked, voice rising.

  “I’m sorry!” he said, throwing up his hands. “My name is Vaste—”

  “Who?”

  “Damn you, Cyrus Davidon, for hogging all the glory,” Vaste said. “As you might notice, I am a troll.”

  “I’m hardly stupid, thank you,” she said, frowning all the deeper. “It would be hard to miss.”

  “Hah! Yes, indeed, it would be difficult to miss.” Vaste drew himself up to his full height, aware of the blood pounding through his veins. He was flushed, he was sure of it, but he was equally sure he didn’t care. There was a beautiful troll woman in front of him! “Ahm … I have just returned from a, uh … long trip away … and … I was wondering … are you the only one of your kind here …? Because … I’m not seeing many of my own sort around Reikonos … at all.” He finished, trying to keep from verbally hemorrhaging his enthusiasm all over her.

  She stared at him, and then seemed to loosen up just a little. “I’m the only one of my …” She looked him up and down. “… our … sort here, yes.”

  “And what a wonderful specimen of our sort you are,” Vaste said, nodding furiously as he looked her up and down. “Do you mind if I ask what your name is? Where you came from? What sort of—”

  “Hold your horses,” she said, the cloud of suspicion returning. “One thing at a time, will you?”

  “Right, right,” Vaste said, still feeling like he was speaking so rapidly that his words might have been an out-of-control carriage, the horses gone wild and dragging it any which way they cared to. “One thing at a time. Indeed. I am Vaste. And you are …?”

  A pause. “Birissa,” she finally allowed. “My name is Birissa.”

  “And where do you come from, Birissa?” He couldn’t control the question; it simp
ly shot out.

  Now her eyes narrowed more deeply. “Hang on,” she said. “From whence do you come?”

  “That’s a … fair question,” Vaste said, thinking very, very quickly about how to answer it. None of the ones that came blazing through in such rapid succession seemed to be sensible. “I come … from very far away,” he finally settled on. “Very, incredibly far away.”

  She settled back on her heels and crossed her arms in front of her. “If you can’t do better than that, I’m not sure I care to tell you where I come from.”

  “That’s perfectly fine,” he said, still gushing, in spite of his best efforts to plug it. “I can’t think of anything less important right now than knowing where you’re from. What’s important is where you’re going and how I can be of assistance, and indeed, of great help … in, uh … changing the course of your, uhm …”

  And here he came to a loss for words. Nothing he was thinking was sensible, he was not so far gone as to be blind to that. How did one say, ‘I want to marry you and have your babies!’ to a total stranger, after all, following thirty seconds of conversation? And not have it come out utterly desperate and ridiculous?

  She was looking at him as though he were an idiot, and he couldn’t blame her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just … been a very long time since I’ve seen a fellow troll. I suppose … I gave up hope, especially when I arrived here. I thought … all our kind had been wiped out.” He put his head down. “Perhaps you know what I mean … what a truly wretched feeling it is … to feel like you’re alone in the world.”

  Her stare was piercing, but after a moment it lost some of its intensity, replaced by a flicker of warmth and perhaps … longing? “I do know something of that,” she said, letting her arms fall to her side. They brushed the long cloak she wore, not dissimilar to his, stirring it back to reveal something that made him blink. Twice.