The Sanctuary: Warlord Part 31

"My Sovereign antic.i.p.ated you would say exactly that," the woman said, appearing once more at his side, her motions quicker than Cyrus had seen even from Alaric when he turned to mist and disappeared. But there was no mist with her, merely the appearance that one moment she was in one place, and the next, another. Almost as though she moves with the aid of a G.o.dly weapon ... but who the h.e.l.l ...? That voice is ... Something is m.u.f.fling it. "He bade me tell you that as of this morning, we have some ten thousand troops stationed as relief for our allies in the Emerald Fields, antic.i.p.ating that perhaps you might perhaps think striking down that settlement before committing an act of war on Sanctuary might be a sound defensive move."

She flashed again behind him, appearing at the other side, blade poking into his ornate raiment and tearing it just slightly. He flinched visibly. "We have an agreement with Administrator Tiernan, who is rather fond of Sanctuary and this one," the woman waved faintly at Cyrus, "for some reason. The portal will remain open to us, allowing us to deliver our troops directly onto your sh.o.r.es." There was a hint of malice as she spoke. "How do you reckon a war will go with dark elves and the Army of Sanctuary able to march straight to your capital, furious at the loss of their General? How will it go with your own people once word spreads that you killed the shelas'akur?"

Danay's face was pure fury, suffused anger threatening to boil out. "It will not bring them back."

"It won't bring you back, either," she said, slapping him lightly on the cheek with the flat edge of the blade and making him flinch. "Cyrus, Vara, Mendicant ... be dears and approach the king, will you?" She turned her voice toward the archers in the balcony. "Loose a single arrow and your king will sit headless upon this throne as the dark elves and the largest guild in Arkaria march across your land with the shelas'akur at their head." Her voice echoed, deep and dramatic, and ... d.a.m.ned familiar. "Choose your path-kill your king, kill Cyrus Davidon, kill the shelas'akur ... and watch the heirs in waiting fight over the throne." She dropped her voice conversationally. "How many are there again, below Nyad? Some five hundred, I believe? I hope there's no acrimony between them, no division. Surely they'd line up behind one of their own and not divide into segments, along with your whole kingdom-your legacy." She sounded amused.

Cyrus had taken the woman's instruction and was advancing slowly. The steward who had led them into the throne room moved aside, hurrying to flatten himself against the nearest wall, well out of the way.

Cyrus peered at the cowled figure as he reached the steps to the ma.s.sive throne. The pale blue hand beckoned him forward, and he rose on the steps, one at a time, drawing fearful breaths of perfume-clouded air, Vara and Mendicant only a step behind him.

He saw the crimson dripping down Danay's front and staining his royal rainbow attire. It was not a small wound that the dark elven amba.s.sador had inflicted, and the first hints of worry were fighting to appear on Danay's face even now. He kept his hands clutched on his throne, but his knuckles were white with the effort.

"Thank you," Cyrus said to the dark elven figure behind the throne. "For ... this."

"I owed you one," she said, nervousness fighting through the distorted sound of her voice. "But I suggest we leave quickly, before some of the archers above grow weary of holding their bows nocked."

"Wise sentiment from the ..." Vara was frowning, "... whoever you are."

"Your daughter died bravely," Cyrus said, staring right into King Danay's face. "She fought to the end to try and bring all the help she could to your kingdom, and her death was tragedy of the highest order ... and exactly the sort we face in battle and war."

"She should not have been with you," Danay said gravely, the fury returned beneath his worry.

"That's an argument you should have had with her," Cyrus said, nodding once at the figure behind the throne. "Not me. Though I didn't hear you complaining when her being with us resulted in Termina being defended by Sanctuary, or the Heia Pa.s.s getting our efforts." Cyrus's face went grave. "Our a.s.sistance to you ends now. Sanctuary's aid is to the Emerald Fields, and if you ever so much as make a feint at them with an army, you will have me-and Sanctuary-"

"And me," Vara said harshly.

"And the Sovereign of Saekaj and Sovar," the lady in the cloak said.

"-to contend with," Cyrus finished. "We can find more soldiers." He drew himself up to his full height, and the difference between him and the sitting monarch was imposing. "Can you?"

"Get out of here, d.a.m.n you," Danay said after a moment of silence. "You'll have your peace."

"Your pragmatism is appreciated," Cyrus said. He let his hand drop to Praelior as he signaled to Mendicant. The world slowed immediately, the trickle of blood down the king's neck down to individual beads rolling slowly over pale skin, the almost imperceptible twitch at the corner of his mouth obvious to Cyrus now.

A teleportation orb sprang into existence before Cyrus, the easy transit back to his point of soul binding, but as he started to reach for it, he looked up at the dark elven amba.s.sador. Where before her form had been shaded and dark, as though she were under some cloud, now she was as obvious to his eyes as any of the countless other times he had looked upon her.

"What. The. h.e.l.l?" Cyrus asked, staring at her in undisguised awe.

He could now see her white hair beneath the cowl as if someone shone a light into the darkness, could see her face, proud and unabashed even though she was hiding under means of darkness that he could not define other than- He saw the dagger, clearly, and saw the glow from the weapon. It was a faint one but clear to him, now that Praelior was in his hand, one G.o.dly weapon shedding light on another.

"I told you that I owe you," Aisling Nightwind said, and then she reached out for the orb in front of her. But she said it with a hint of sadness, and even though her motion was telegraphed to give them plenty of time, Cyrus still had to scramble to take hold of his...o...b..before she grasped hers-but not until he'd seen the flashes behind him from Vara and Mendicant. "Take care, Cyrus," she said and took hold of the spell magic that whisked her away.

Cyrus clutched at the magical orb and let it sweep him along as well, dragging him through s.p.a.ce, and back to the Tower of the Guildmaster, unsure if he was more disturbed by the King who had threatened him with death and war ... or the former lover and a.s.sa.s.sin who had just spared him from both.

The funeral for Andren, Odellan, Nyad, Thad and the six rangers was less like a funeral than any Cyrus could ever recall seeing-with the exception of the ones that he had been forced to preside over of late. Without benefit of bodies, there was no need for graves. There was some talk about digging them anyway, but of late the cemetery in the back corner of the Sanctuary wall had grown full, and so a new tradition had begun after the siege two years prior, based on some of the customs of the human Northlands.

The entire guild stood, after a long procession, upon the banks of the River Perda south of Sanctuary. There was silence in the air, the skies were grey as was fitting for the early onset of autumn in the Plains of Perdamun, and Cyrus stood at the fore in his black armor as they set adrift ten small wooden boats upon the river, pushing them out and letting the current catch them, tugging them inexorably toward the mouth of the river at its entry to the Bay of Lost Souls.

The silence was an immovable thing; Cyrus stood basking in it in the absence of the rays of the sun. His officers were a step behind, but he did not look to them for comfort, not even to Vara, who was only a half-pace behind him. I am the leader. I must bear this burden in silence. I am the example. I cannot appear to be lost, no matter how much so I may feel.

And so he held his head high, watching the first flaming arrow strike the lead boat, the one prepared for Thad with his original red armor painted up freshly, lying within the wooden beams like a body. The tinder around it caught quickly, and the flames leapt high as the fire arrows landed upon the second boat, then the third in line, until all ten were properly burning, pyres making their way down the river.

The boats drifted aflame, giving light to the grey day but not nearly enough heat to reach them on the banks. Cyrus wanted to feel the fire, to hear its crackle on flesh. Did they feel it? he wondered, numb, but not from the cold. Did it burn and course over them, consume them while they yet lived, breathing in the flame, letting it incinerate them outside and in?

He pictured it blackening flesh, watching Andren disappear under the inferno, imagined it slow rather than so quick it almost defied notice; as if he could have turned his head and never even known that his oldest friend had pa.s.sed from this world.

Cyrus turned his head slightly to see Martaina standing stonefaced, bow in hand, a lit torch next to her, performing her duty-her last duty-to both husband and lover, her thoughts shrouded behind a black veil that apparently did nothing to impair her aim.

With quiet solemnity, a voice in the audience reached up with a chorus of song in a tongue Cyrus did not quite understand, something that vaguely bordered his knowledge of the human language, but was rooted in some dialect with words that eclipsed his knowing. With a start, he recognized the honey-smooth voice as that of Menlos Irontooth, singing in the manner of his people when they performed this very ceremony.

Other voices took up the song, until Cyrus realized that Vara was adding her own, low and harmonious, and he realized that he had never even known she could sing.

The grey clouds rolled over the afternoon sky as the song broke the silence, repeated twice more, more voices joining in on each chorus as the simplicity of the words washed over the crowd of mourners like a river running over its banks. Cyrus had contemplated a speech, had delivered these sorts of eulogies before, the last only a week or so earlier. Something needed to be said, but he had only a few thoughts on his mind as the chorus closed its song and silence reigned over the river once more, the pyres drifted nearly out of sight by this point.

"We could tell tales all afternoon of these ten brave souls," Cyrus said, his voice strong and clear and ringing. "And I expect we will-later, in the warmth of the fire, ales in hand, toasting them and their sacrifice until the small hours of the morning. We are a company that goes to battle, that goes to war, but that loses few. This a fact we are immensely proud of, but when we do suffer that loss, it is all the more keenly painful for its rarity, in the same way that gold is precious for its scarcity.

"These people were friends, brothers, sisters, lovers, husbands, wives-they were many things to the many of us," Cyrus continued, turning to face the crowd, letting his eyes dance over the officers one by one. Someone was missing, he thought, but he did not stop to consider who; with all the recent loss, he might simply have miscounted. "We knew who they were, their names, their dreams, their ambitions, their secrets," he lowered his voice. "They lived among us, they were us, warriors, rangers, wizard, healer. Members, officers-all of Sanctuary, and true.

"Their loss is a blow," he went on, hearing a sob choked off in the back of the crowd, and his eyes settled on Terian, who stood near the front, solemn, with some of his own procession in attendance behind him. His eyes were downcast, his armor drawing stares from the members of Sanctuary around him. "To lose any of our number is painful; to lose so many so quickly is ... almost unthinkable."

Cyrus drew a breath and let it out. "I could spend the whole day telling you all I know of our dear lost, and not even ripple the surface of that particular pond. That leaves off all that I did not know, for many of our dead I would have been have been hard-pressed to name were I to run into them in the halls. I consider that a tragedy, for I know their names now, and have heard many stories about each of them, enough to convince me that we are greatly poorer for their pa.s.sing. They were our guildmates, and they were exemplars of courage, which is the tie that binds our membership. We take none but the brave," Cyrus went on, "and they were brave, and true, and stood their ground to the last, every one of them." His eyes flitted over Cora, who stood off to one side with Gareth and Mirasa as well as one of their druids flanking her, paying their condolences. I wonder how they heard?

"They fought and died for their brethren here," Cyrus said, trying to thread his speech to a close, "as I expect any of you would. For that is the strength of Sanctuary-we are no mean mercenary company that merely goes where the gold compels us; we are called to higher purpose," he felt an ashen sensation within just saying it, as though their attack on the dragons put the lie to the thought, "and they fought for that purpose, giving everything they had to the cause." He straightened. "Speaking only for myself ... we all die at some point in our walk through this world, and I can only hope, when my day comes, that it should be to such high purpose as fighting to end such a war as we are in-as it did for these brave souls."

The applause was light, polite, and then grew stronger. But even as it raged while emotions poured out of those before him, there was another thought that was stirred by what he had just said, about all of them dying eventually, and he realized at last which officer was absent from the funeral rites.

Curatio.

The applause faded away, and the crowd began to disperse, some twenty thousand plus mourners and guests, filing silently across the green and rustling plains, back toward the keep of Sanctuary on the northern horizon.

"That was well said." Vara walked alongside him at the rear of the formation, the slow, disorganized march back to Sanctuary holding none of the urgency or discipline of the army at war.

"It was very spontaneous, so I'm surprised it came out at all," Cyrus said, his armor feeling as though it were weighing him down. He nodded sharply ahead as he caught sight of a familiar helm in the procession. "I need to talk to Terian-"

"Well, go, then," Vara said, "I'll catch up."

Cyrus frowned. "I need to talk to Cora, too."

Now it was her turn to frown. "Why? You think she'll have some news of the t.i.tan movements?"

He stopped straight away. "I forgot to tell you, didn't I?" He grimaced. "Can you catch her?"

"Perhaps if you were to tell me for what purpose," she said, looking mildly annoyed.

"I'm sorry, I will," Cyrus said, nodding at Cora's receding back in the distance. "Maybe we should stop her first, since I suspect Terian will take an audience with me anytime ..." He started forward again, using his aggressively long stride to try and catch the elf, who was already fading into the crowd. "Cora!"

She heard him and turned in a casual manner that reminded him that nothing was amiss in her mind; it wasn't as if she could have known that he had "found her out." It wasn't as though living next to me in the past was a crime. Though she might have mentioned it.

Cora held position politely and waited for him to catch up. She must have caught some signal of his mood, however, for she inclined her head with a wary eyebrow c.o.c.ked as he approached. "h.e.l.lo, Cyrus," she said.

"h.e.l.lo, neighbor," Cyrus said dryly, and watched her eyebrow rise a little further. "I didn't realize until recently how far back our acquaintance stretched."

"And why should you?" Cora asked calmly as Vara caught up to them. "You were, after all, but a child when Belkan came to take you from my house to deliver you to the Society of Arms."

"What. The. Ruddy. h.e.l.l," Vara said, more than a little taken aback. She leveled her gaze on Cyrus. "This you forgot to mention to me?"

"We had a whole conversation right after I found out, on the bridge, that ended with Curatio dumping water on us, and Ehrgraz showing up to start us into this whole shrine attack," Cyrus said, waving her off. "We've been so busy, I guess I just forgot-"

"Yes, well," Vara said, slightly above a simmer, "when next we're intimate-some fifty years from now, I hasten to add-I might 'forget' to take my ventra'maq, and then you, you spoony warrior, will be left with an offspring at roughly the same time you will have an utterly valid excuse to be forgetting important things."

"By 'spoony,' do you mean 'delicious'?" Cyrus asked. "Because I can agree with-"

"As amusing as it is to watch you 'all grown up' without acting the part," Cora said politely, "perhaps you might save the spat for later." Her eyes honed in on Cyrus, but he could feel Vara's wrath bubbling next to him. It's not as though she weren't already provided ample cause to be irritable, what with the events in the elven throne room and-uh, who rescued us. That had not been a particularly enjoyable revelation afterward, when Cyrus had told her who had been beneath the cowl, though it had perhaps improved his p.r.o.nunciation of elvish curses, hearing them all strung together and repeated so loudly. "You act as though my knowing you as a child has any bearing on my knowing you now," Cora said. "You were obviously not the Guildmaster of Sanctuary when last we made our acquaintance. Despite your childish protestations of fierce warriordom at the time-you would have been of little use in the situation we now find ourselves in."

"It has some bearing," Cyrus said sharply. "You knew my parents."

"Many did," Cora said without expression. "Shall we track them all down and you can have a good row in front of them as well?" She eyed Vara. "I expect this one could stay angry long enough to pull it off."

"Cora, you old sow," Vara said. "This is the sort of thing you might have mentioned."

"I might have," Cora said, almost indifferently, "but I felt to do so might be to try to invoke old loyalties that young Cyrus here does not even have memory of." She smiled faintly. "You did not even recall me, after all."

"I was six," Cyrus said. "And probably somewhat traumatized given all that I'd been through with losing my father and mother so close together-"

"Your mother and father did not die that close together," Cora said with a shrug. "Your mother was around for some time after Rusyl's death. Surely you remember her stories, her tales ... she was quite the teller of them," she said with a faint smile. "She had a way with words, a talent I see might have bred true in you."

"I remember stories," Cyrus said, looking a little furiously at her, "but mostly of the trolls and how horrible they were."

"She was a bit irate with them," Cora said with a stunning amount of subtlety. "You might see some cause for why."

"I d.a.m.ned well know why she hated the trolls," Cyrus said, voice booming loud enough that some in the ranks of the funeral procession turned back to look, dark figures on near-colorless plains. Vaste, in particular, frowned at Cyrus, his head well above the crowd. "You say you didn't want to mention this old acquaintance because you were asking for a favor, fine. Why not mention it after you knew we were going to help you?"

"We haven't had that many conversations since then," Cora said, "and it's not the sort of thing one merely brings up-'Oh, by the by, did you know that you used to come and play at my house when you were a child?' You were a lot shorter then, and somewhat homely. I was worried for you, but fortunately it seems you've done all right in spite of it," she said, nodding at Vara.

"Hey!" Cyrus said.

"There is nothing to say," Cora said, spreading her arms wide. "Do you wish to reminisce about things you cannot even recall? By all means, come to Amti some time when this is over and I will regale you with all the tales I have." Her face grew still and somehow long. "But for now ... the t.i.tans swirl about the Gradsden Savanna in great number, edging into the Jungle of Vidara and chopping more of it down every single day to feed their war machine." She paused and chewed her bottom lip. "Forgive me for not being interested in discussing the days of old when the days of now so consume my thoughts with worry."

Cyrus took a breath and shared a look with Vara, whose rage had plainly mellowed. "Fine," Cyrus said, still viewing her with some suspicion. "I'm going to take you up on that."

Cora kept her face almost impa.s.sive-almost, but not quite. The faintest of smiles played on her lips even though it was obvious in its fakery. "I look forward to it," she said, but that subtle flicker in her expression put the lie to it before she bowed to Cyrus and then walked away.

"Terian," Cyrus said, greeting the Sovereign of Saekaj Sovar at the gate where the dark elf waited, his own entourage-the healer, Dahveed, the druid, Bowe and that enormous warrior, Grinnd-standing off from him about twenty paces. The warrior and healer smiled politely at pa.s.sersby, but the druid sat with legs crossed, hands up, meditating, a cushion of three feet of air between his backside and the ground.

"Cyrus," Terian said grimly. "Vara."

"Thank you for coming," Cyrus said. "Your presence in this hour is ... much appreciated." He looked around, but other than Terian's three servants, all the others from the funeral had already pa.s.sed through the Sanctuary gates.

"Well, I did know all the officers that died," Terian said. "So I appreciate you allowing me to come and pay my respects."

"I think I speak for both of us," Vara said, "albeit rather surprisedly ... but you are welcome at any time."

"Perhaps not in the middle of the night," Cyrus corrected, "unless it's an emergency."

"Davidon, you aren't getting me out of my comfortable bed in the middle of the night unless it's an emergency," Terian said. "Besides, I have messengers for the minor stuff now, like, 'Vaste needs a swat upside the head, it's been too long.'"

"A persistent problem," Cyrus agreed.

"Have you heard from Ehrgraz yet?" Terian asked, a little tentatively given his position as leader of a nation.

"No," Cyrus said, frowning. "I a.s.sumed that was a good thing, though, given ..." He let his voice drift off. "Do you know something I don't?"

"Not really," Terian said, but there was hesitation in his voice. "I introduced Bowe over there to my sources in the Ashen Wastelands." He nodded at the druid, hovering placidly. "He's been trying to check in daily, but ... nothing."

"That could be good, right?" Cyrus asked, looking from Vara to Terian. "The dragons are cloistered up, debating the course of revenge?"

"Maybe," Terian said, more than a little skeptically. "I would have thought Ehrgraz would have come to you by now, though, or at least sent some word. He has his spies and sources, after all ..." Terian lowered his head. "Silence ... not generally good from one dragon. When you're getting it from all of them, and all their lesser kin ..." He blew air out of pale blue lips. "It's worrying, let's put it that way."

"Well, he wouldn't be the first ally to abandon us of late," Cyrus said a little acidly.

Terian looked pained. "I heard about Danay. I didn't think he'd do that, honestly, but ..."

"But it was a possibility in your mind?" Vara asked.