Authors: Robert J. Crane
He looked south, past the massive city walls, and saw an army there, still filing into gates like maggots bursting from the dead bodies that comprised it. Somewhere beyond his sight was an end to that army, but he could not imagine it in any of the endless fields that he knew rested beyond the gates of Reikonos. The end was far beyond, far to the south … somewhere in a cave, beneath the cool earth, where darkness made its home.
The decision was made, and his heart nearly screamed for joy at it. He looked to his right and saw Vara there, cool with certainty. Her hand was upon his arm, as though she had intended to restrain him somehow from Terian. It moved even as he watched, pulled back, with a final pat of … reassurance? She pulled it back and drew herself to her full height. Her eyes were certain, too, and mirrored his own.
“We go,” Cyrus said at last. “Mendicant … take us back to Sanctuary, if you please.”
“And?” Terian’s voice cracked. “Then?”
Cyrus felt the sweet chill of his fury, so righteous in his anger, so delicious it masked the fear perfectly, felt it raise the bumps on his flesh. “And then … we go to Saekaj … into the halls of infinite darkness that Yartraak calls his own—” He looked Terian right in the face,”—and I stab that godless son of a bitch right in the eye until he’s nothing but a shrunken corpse.” Cyrus’s words crashed from him like a righteous fury, burning the air with vengeful certainty. “Just like the last one we killed.”
“I need Fortin with us on this,” Cyrus said, already issuing orders before the spell energy had dissipated to fully reveal the Sanctuary foyer. “Use whatever chain of teleportation you must to get him here.” He caught an acknowledgment muttered from Mendicant before the goblin skittered off between the towering legs of those around him to disappear into the crowd. Cyrus took in the waiting throng with a glance, still swelled to full from his address just an hour earlier, spearmen standing encircled around the great seal. They seemed to relax as he and his small force appeared.
“What news, General?” Longwell shouted from the balcony above. The torches crackled on the walls, and the hearth roared over the sound of the silence in the cavernous room. Longwell held his lance tight, at attention, like a tower hanging over the room.
Like the Citadel
, Cyrus thought, oddly.
“Reikonos is fallen,” Cyrus said, trying to keep his voice and face from betraying his emotion. “The walls are overrun, the armies are in the city.”
“Do we … retreat?” The voice came quiet and scared from somewhere in the crowd. It was followed by an uneasy silence that told Cyrus everything he needed to know about where his guild was standing. The fear was palpable, the sense of inevitability that came from watching the foundations of your world crumble around you.
“You’re asking if we should run?” Cyrus spoke to no one in particular, to everyone he could see. He jutted his jaw, gave it consideration. “It is a reasonable question, to be pondered by reasonable men. When the world is fully arrayed against you, why should you go out and greet it with sword and spell, knowing that you will almost certainly be struck down?” He took the whole room in with an easy sweep of his gaze. “Why fight? Why fight when you feel you cannot win? When the fear of what you are facing is so swelling as to cripple you? As if it could grab you by the face and shake you until your heart quails at the thought of opposition. They’re reasonable feelings, for reasonable men. Retreat? Aye, most would.”
He looked forth, upon his waiting audience, gaze sweeping over countless eyes spellbound and hanging upon him. “BUT WE ARE NOT MOST,” Cyrus said, raising his voice to the rafters. “For whatever reason you joined this guild—gold, power, strength—you are here now. You are one of us, now. And I am here to tell you that our purpose is not simple enrichment, that our strength is not gathered in days of glory to be rattled like a saber to impress those around us. Sanctuary is no mere army for hire to the highest bidder so that our vaults may overflow and our purses may clink when we walk. We were meant to be more; a bulwark against the forces of darkness that threaten to swallow the land—”
“Darkness, like Yartraak, see?” Vaste muttered under his breath. “So clever.”
“Hush,” Vara said.
“I know the fear that you feel,” Cyrus said, “looking at the overwhelming odds mounted against us. They have an army of the dead. They have raised some of our own against us. I take this as insult, and I hope you do as well. Fear them? A reasonable man would—”
“But not a woman,” Vara muttered.
“Now you hush,” Vaste replied.
“—but this is not a place for reason,” Cyrus said.
“Also true,” Vaste said.
“Not now,” Cyrus said under his breath then let his voice return to its previous sweeping volume. “Reason tells us to run in the face of fear. Reason would tell you to withdraw from the battle. But reason is not needed here, not now. Courage! Courage is what we cry for. Courage will bring you to the front of the battle lines, will see you against the monsters, the dead and the God of Darkness himself, and see you back safely! Do not fear that which stands before you. Do not run in the face of your enemies. They are not unstoppable, no matter what they may have you think.” Cyrus drew his sword, whirled it in a tight circle once, and held it aloft so that the soft blue glow shone upon the assembled army. “I once looked in the face of a man who was an enemy and I said we accepted none but the brave to roam within these halls. I call upon that bravery in every one of you now. I call upon you to look within, to dive deep into yourselves and find your courage. Courage to stand against the insurmountable. To go into the darkness without fear, because your fellows are with you. We are none of us alone, and as we descend into the darkness of Saekaj Sovar—” He caught the ripple of surprise at that announcement, “—we will be there for each other. We will strike into the black heart of our enemy, and we will kill Yartraak—and end this war.”
A stunned silence had swept the room throughout the entirety of his speech, and Cyrus felt himself swallow heavily, hoping it was not visible under his gorget. He waited, surveying the eyes, not quite sure what he saw within them—
“LET’S KILL THE RUDDY BASTARD!” Andren cried, and his shout was swept up in a chorus of approbation so loud that Cyrus felt as though he might be deafened. Armor rattled, swords were held aloft and shaken, and the cry of fury among the members of Sanctuary was such that Cyrus could scarcely believe it.
“Looks like they’re willing to follow you into blackest death,” Vara said into his ear.
“What about you?” Cyrus asked, not taking his eyes off the cheering crowd. “Will you follow me into darkness?”
“If you can find a way to get us there,” Vara said smoothly, prickling a thought in Cyrus’s mind.
“Dammit,” Cyrus said. “Their portal is bound to be guarded.” He searched for Curatio and found him standing beside Terian, only a few feet behind him. “I don’t suppose you have a secret path into Saekaj?”
Curatio smiled. “Well, actually …”
They appeared in a small flash, a group of only ten. The room was barely large enough for that, a confined space that reminded Cyrus of the sort of closet in which one might store brooms, but slightly larger. Cyrus’s eyes did not adjust but to show him dark walls, stone-like in origin; finally his eyes brightened through the aid of magic so that he could see the grey stonework that surrounded him from floor to ceiling.
Cyrus looked over his shoulder, trying to find a portal. He glanced down, looking at the floor then to Curatio, who stood at his right. “It’s in the ceiling,” Curatio said with a smile. Cyrus looked up and saw wooden beams stretching off in either direction; if there was a portal up there, it was wider and taller than the room, and they had to have been right in the middle of it so as not to see a single trace of its stone, runed border.
“How do you know about this?” Vaste asked.
“I have lived a very long time,” Curatio said, a little mysteriously. “Long enough to have been acquainted with someone who dated Marei, Goddess of Night, before her death.”
“And they just happened to give you the spell to teleport to this portal?” Vaste sounded a little suspicious.
“Indeed,” Curatio said. “It was a sad thing when she died; I doubt Yartraak even knows that someone else can come to this portal other than him.”
“Wait, what?” This came from Terian. “Ohhhh … this is how he returns to the palace.”
“Yes,” Curatio said. “With this here, he can keep his soul bound in his realm, able to use the return spell at any point.”
Cyrus felt a slight shiver. “The gods use the same magic as you do?”
“Most people use a very basic version of the magic the gods use,” Curatio said, sounding like he was breathing more than a word of caution. “You would do well to remember that; it is not as though even the fiercest wizard in Arkaria could step into easy battle with the likes of someone such as Yartraak and win. He would overwhelm you with both physical strength and his magic.”
“Don’t fight him alone,” Cyrus said, “got it.”
“I will need to bring in the army a few at a time,” Curatio said. “I would advise staying as close to this room as possible; wandering about the palace would be exceedingly foolish.”
“You could teach someone else the spell,” Cyrus said. “Couldn’t you?”
Curatio sighed. “Unfortunately, not easily. The way that magic is taught in these days in order to avoid the blocks that we call heresy is quite appalling to someone like myself who was around when the fundamentals of magic were discovered and expanded upon.” He pursed his lips in the dark. “Or, as I have heard others say … ‘Kids these days.’” He smiled, and vanished in the twinkling of light from his return spell.
“We need to clear the room,” Cyrus said, and there was a sound before him of a door squeaking open. He looked ahead and saw Odellan peeking out through the ever-so-slight light that came through the crack. After a moment he opened it wider, enough for them to pass through into a hallway.
Cyrus stepped out, long walls stretching in two directions. They stood at a right angle, a turn of the hall; it stretched before them and to their right, curving off into another turn some hundred feet ahead. There were other doors before the turn of the hall, and Cyrus found himself wondering where they led.
“This is lovely,” Vaste said, “so dark and homey. Like living in a cave. Oh, right. It is a cave. Forgot that.”
“This is actually quite a bit more opulent than most of our peoples’ living conditions,” Terian said, and Cyrus noted Erith standing beside him, shuddering slightly. “The Sovereign’s palace is an impressive bit of construction, tunneled into the back wall of Saekaj, which is where the favored and wealthy live.”
“It all looks constructed,” Cyrus said, glancing at the walls. They were carved just the same as any castle he’d ever been in; the only difference was the utter lack of sunlight.
“It’s meant to,” Terian said.
“Should we not be worried about guards?” Vara asked.
“Well, we’re standing in the middle of the most heavily guarded place in Saekaj, so … probably?” Terian said with a smile.
“You don’t seem afraid,” Vaste noted, “or terribly aware of exactly where we are.”
“The Grand Palace of Saekaj is a sprawling place,” Terian said. “Think … twisty dungeon. It’s deeper than anyone knows. I’m told even the butlers are assigned specific sections that they aren’t to deviate from, because they may get lost or stumble somewhere that they’re not supposed to be.” The dim light would have completely shrouded him if not for the spell that granted Cyrus his sight. “I have no idea exactly where we are.”
The door behind them opened and a few more figures were disgorged. The ground shook with the steps of one of them.
“Fortin,” Cyrus said.
“Lord Davidon,” Fortin said. “It is agreeable to see you walking once more.”
“Been walking for a while,” Cyrus said.
“It is the fighting that matters,” Fortin rumbled. “To see a great warlord humbled by such dark treachery as was perpetrated by Ice-thing …”
“Her name was Aisling,” Cyrus said.
“Her name means ‘Traitorous Whore,’ as far as I’m concerned,” Vara said.
“I find myself curious about the origin of your human names,” Fortin said, voice rumbling quietly. “I had heard your people name their offspring meaningless collections of syllables they deem pleasing to the ears.”
“Hey,” Cyrus said, “not all of our names are meaningless.” He saw a flash of green eyes from behind the rock giant’s leg, a tangle of dark hair, and pursed his lips as he realized Larana stood in the shadow of Fortin.
On the second wave, Curatio? Why not bring a newborn gnome at the same time?
“Oh?” The rock giant stared back at him. “What does ‘Cyrus’ mean?”
“It has an archaic meaning,” Cyrus said with half a smile, pulling his attention to the red eyes, “‘Kicker of Rock Giant Arse.’”
Fortin let a low, rumbling laugh that elicited a frown from Vara at the noise. “We should try to keep quiet,” she said.
Cyrus saw motion behind the rock giant as another flash heralded the arrival of another wave of their forces. A cloak moved swiftly out of the room, rustling as it approached him. He caught a flash of long dark hair, whipping with the fast pace set by the person beneath it. “Martaina,” he said. “Good to see you.”
“I wish I could say the same.” He felt her fingers upon his wrist as she slapped something into his hand.
“What the …?” He lifted it, squinting his eyes at what she’d handed him. “What is this?”
“I figured you’d forgotten,” she said with a glint in her eyes. “It’s the treasure of the Mler. You may recall you died to find it.”
He had a sudden remembrance of drowning in the dark, the feeling of the water flooding his lungs and crushing in on him, of his consciousness being swallowed by the blackness of unbeing. “I’d quite forgotten it; the dying was still ever present, I’m afraid.” He stared at it then searched for a pouch on his belt, tucking it within the soft leather and closing the flap. “Good thinking. You’re like my right hand, Martaina.”