Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (2 page)

“And I mean to join them in it.”

“Of course you’re leaving,” Cyrus Davidon said into the silence of the nearly empty foyer of Sanctuary, his quiet voice carrying over the stone and overcoming the quiet crackle of the fire in the long hearth that ran down the entire side of the massive room. It burned like a long line of fire, reminding him of a spell sent forward like a charging knight on horseback, stirring up a straight cloud in its wake. Emotions played through Cyrus in quick succession—the sting of personal insult; the shock of another loss, a pin’s prick in a forest of them, before finally settling into the jaded resignation that seemed to permeate the very walls of the guildhall recently. “Sooner or later …” he said, trying to smile, “… everyone leaves.”

Carisse Sevoux was a young human ranger whom Cyrus recalled from an occasion when she had delivered a message to his quarters. She had dark hair and a tanned face, as rangers tended to, along with a thin, lithe frame that was mostly hidden beneath her green cloak. When he’d seen her before he recalled a youthful face, but now she looked tired, drained of her vigor and vibrancy. There was no spark of light in her eyes when she spoke, not now. “I am … deeply sorry, Lord Davidon.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me,” Cyrus said, trying to salve the nettled sense of pride he felt run through him. It prickled at his skin and itched at his mind. He forced another smile. “I’m still here, after all. It’s you who are choosing to leave, and it’s not as though you bound yourself to Sanctuary’s service for a lifetime.”

“I just need to go home,” Carisse said, glancing away from his gaze. She fiddled with the edges of her cloak, drawing them closer, as if to protect herself from feeling guilty.
That’s all inside, lass, and adjusting your cloak will do nothing to protect you from it
, Cyrus did not say aloud. She hesitated, taking a halting step toward the door. “Well … I suppose this is farewell, then.”

“Yes,” Cyrus said quietly, feeling as though he were perhaps channeling the spirit of the last Guildmaster of Sanctuary. “Fare well in your travels, Carisse Sevoux, and should you ever have call to tread back this way again, you will find our gates open for you.” Faint though it was, the smile that he’d pressed onto his face felt almost physically painful.

“Thank you,” she said, taking his words as gracefully as she probably could and then sweeping away with a flutter of her cloak as hastily as she could within the bounds of good manners.
She might as well be running, though
, thought Cyrus. She certainly seemed to want to, an extra jump to her step as she hurried out the massive door of Sanctuary’s guildhall.

“Was that another departure?” The voice that came from behind him was sharp as the sword that rested on her belt. For once, his wife’s voice did not make Cyrus Davidon smile.

“It was,” Cyrus said, watching the door as Carisse Sevoux slipped out into the grey day. “I’ve lost count of how many that makes it.”

“Thousands,” Vara said, slipping up next to him. She swept her gaze over the mid-afternoon emptiness of the guildhall, her blond hair pulled tight into a golden ponytail, her silver armor losing some of its glister in the low light of the foyer. “Many thousands. And with most of the Luukessians guarding the Emerald Fields—”

“This guildhall is becoming as ghostly as its last master,” Cyrus said, finishing the sentence for his bride.

Vara studied him carefully, her attention now focused wholly upon her husband. Cyrus could feel her piercing gaze, surveying him, working its way through the cracks in his armor and those in his soul, and he only looked at her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to pose her inevitable question. “Did you take this leaving with quiet aplomb, then?” she asked. “With the dignity due your post?”

“Of course,” Cyrus said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“I don’t know,” Vara said quietly, in a tone of voice that told him she very much did know but had chosen not to fight about it. “What did you say?” she asked, moving on.

“The same thing I’ve told so many others,” Cyrus said, turning his head to look at her. Her blue eyes glowed with a quiet intensity. “That if she found herself wanting to come back at some point, our doors would be open—”

“Revolting. You’re too conciliatory.”

“It’s what Alaric would have said.” Cyrus maintained his quiet composure.
This is how Alaric would have explained it, too.

“I heard you say something else,” Vara said, a hint of tension coiling into her frame, visible even under the dully gleaming armor. “Something about … ‘Everyone leaves’?”

Cyrus shrugged even as he reddened. He felt a strange urge to hide, some childlike urge to retreat from the criticism he knew would follow from her. “There is truth in that, no?”

His wife looked at him so sharply that he flinched as if she’d thrust at a blade at him. “That’s a very dim view of the world.”

“It’s a dim day,” Cyrus said, nodding to the enormous circular stained-glass window over the main doors that was barely lit with the sky’s light. “And it rings true.”

“Your helm will also ring true when I clap my gauntleted hand upon it,” she said, pursing her lips in disapproval, “yet I doubt you have any more desire to hear that than I do to see my husband spew forth such forlorn, self-pitying twaddle.” Her voice lowered and softened, run through with a gentleness that he did not often hear from her in a public setting. “You’re better than this.”

“I know,” he said, looking away from her again. “You’re right. All these—these many leavings—they bring out the worst in me.” He ran a metal-encased hand over his cleanly shaven cheek, scratching his face with his gauntlet finger. “I can’t help but remember in times like this that my father left, my mother left …” He pressed his lips together hard. “… Alaric … Andren …”

“Most of them died,” Vara whispered, her hand touching his shoulder so gently that her gauntlet made no sound against his pauldrons. “It wasn’t as though they simply walked out a door and left you behind.”

In the silence of the foyer, Cyrus stared at the open door, nothing but grey visible in the sky beyond. “I know I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “But on days like today, I can’t help but feel that way. The idea that … whether they want to or not, everyone leaves. One way or another.”

“I won’t leave you,” she said, now brushing her own fingers across his face, careful not to pinch him between the armor’s joints.

He turned his head to look at her pale face, hints of gold that had slipped out of her long ponytail drifting into her eyes. “No?”

“No,” she said, and a mischievous light came to her eyes, “I mean to torment you for years and years to come, dear husband. It’s chief among the reasons I married you—”

Her mischief was contagious, and a genuine smile blossomed on his own face in response. He was about to make a clever reply, but he was interrupted by the squeak of the door as it opened fully. Vara turned, and they both stared at the shadowed figure that stood in the entry, three smaller, four-legged shapes standing up to hip-high on their master. Cyrus could hear them panting across the room as they stood there silhouetted against the iron clouds in the background behind them.

The Northman’s leather armor squeaked as he stepped another foot into the foyer. “Lord Davidon,” Menlos Irontooth said tensely, “you’re needed at the wall, Guildmaster.”

“What is it, Menlos?” Cyrus asked. Vara had detached herself from him at the first sign of company and was now standing just behind him, her shoulder almost brushing his.

“Trolls, sir,” Menlos replied. Even though Menlos was cast in silhouette by the light that flooded in behind him, Cyrus could tell the Northman’s expression was grim. “There are trolls at the gates.”

“Did I just see Carisse leave?” Menlos asked as he led the way across the grounds. The mighty stone wall that encircled Sanctuary stood out in the distance, the giant gates closed to visitors or guests.
They’ve been like that for an awfully long time now
, Cyrus thought, staring at them as he and Vara followed the Northman to the wall.
Not at all like they were when I first came here, thrown wide and welcoming to all comers …

“Yes,” Cyrus said, looking across the lawn for the ranger. Brown dirt had taken over where lush grass had once ruled the grounds, and it felt very much like a symbol of Sanctuary’s decline. “She decided she wanted to seek her fortunes elsewhere. Or perhaps she was just tired of associating with us.”

Menlos grunted. “These people leaving, they lack the basic loyalty of a dog.” He reached down to scratch one of his wolves behind the ears. It panted appreciatively. Menlos’s armor continued to squeak as he walked, his short blade rattling in its scabbard. He had an earthy aroma to him that Cyrus could smell even some ten feet back, and the wolves had an even stronger scent even to them, although their fur was clean and luminous as though they’d been recently bathed.

“Why are there trolls at our gates?” Vara asked as they all stumped along the brown dirt path. The wall was only a hundred feet away now. “And how many are there?”

“Perhaps ten? Twelve?” Menlos said, shrugging, his armor making a noise as he did so, the boiled leather not as heavily worn as it might have been. Cyrus recalled vaguely that the hairy Northman had received it in the Trials of Purgatory some years back. It looked strong and near flawless, well taken care of and probably heartier than many of the weaker metals others wore for protection. “It was tough to tell, they were all bunched together.”

“So not exactly an invading force, then,” Vara said, sounding slightly mollified.

“Invading force?” Menlos’s eyebrow cocked, and he let out a mild guffaw. “No, not according to them.”

“And here I was worried for a moment that they were here about that expedition we staged into Gren a couple years back,” Cyrus said as they reached the staircase and started to ascend the wall. Menlos’s leather boots made noise as he began his climb; Cyrus let Vara go ahead of him, and her metal boots clanked against the stone as she followed the Northman up. “Thought maybe revenge was on their minds.”

“Hard to tell what’s really on their minds,” Menlos said, looking suspicious. “But as for their declared purpose … well, you need to hear it for yourself.”

They reached the top of the wall and found the guard that was always on watch along the length of the barrier that ringed Sanctuary somewhat spare.
We used to have more people to man this wall
, Cyrus thought mournfully, looking in either direction along the length of the stone bulwark that guarded the guildhall from assaults across the long, green Plains of Perdamun that stretched out before him to the horizon.
But then, we used to have more people to do just about everything …

Scuddar In’shara was waiting, wearing scarlet robes and with the scarf he wore around his head pulled down to his chin to reveal that he had shorn his coal-black beard. He showed not a trace of humor as he looked at Cyrus, merely nodding to acknowledge his Guildmaster’s arrival. A bare second later, he bowed almost imperceptibly to Vara. “M’lord,” he said. “M’lady.”

“Castellan,” Cyrus said, acknowledging Scuddar by his title. “I hear we have visitors.”

“More than a few,” Scuddar said in his rich baritone. He led them to the crenellations in the wall, and they peered between the teeth and down some thirty feet to the torn ground outside the gate where a party of green-skinned, wide-bodied trolls waited patiently, their breathing so loud that Cyrus could hear it even at this distance. Beyond them, standing off a ways, was a green-cloaked elven wizard who watched the knot of trolls with wide, worried eyes from atop a brown and white horse.

“Hail,” Cyrus called down to them, dropping his hand to rest on the hilt of his sword, Praelior, hanging on the right side of his belt. A surge of strength from the weapon’s enchantments ran through him, filling him with the confidence that Carisse Sevoux’s departure had stolen away.

Each of the waiting trolls looked to be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten feet tall, taller even than him. They all glanced up at the sound of his voice, and he counted thirteen faces staring up at him, some with black facial hair growing out of their chins and jawlines, others without a hint of it to obscure their complexions, which ranged from bright green to a sickly yellow that reminded Cyrus of a rancid lemon.

Several of the faces wore suspicious expressions, but Cyrus picked out the leader of the group quickly enough, standing at the fore draped in old, rusty, iron armor that exposed the flesh around the troll’s smallish breastplate. Dark green nipples were visible on either side of the breastplate, which was strapped rather tightly around his figure. It looked like something a smaller-framed dark elf might wear, but it had been repurposed to protect this troll’s heart. He also wore pants stitched together from goats’ skins and had ten brass earrings the size of Cyrus’s hands sticking out of each ear. His lower teeth protruded from his underbite. “Hellllo,” the troll leader drawled, looking up.

“Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” Cyrus asked, looking down at the curious assemblage before the gates.

The troll leader cocked his head, puzzling at what Cyrus had said. After a moment he grunted, seeming to get it. “I am Zarnn.” He turned slowly to wave a hand at the motley collection of trolls behind him. “These my … fellow travelers.”

“Where are you traveling?” Cyrus asked, sparing a glance for the elven wizard who was still ahorse, standing off nervously from the trolls, apparently hoping he could avoid any association with them.

“To here,” Zarnn said slowly, as though it were obvious.

“All right,” Cyrus said, trading a look with Vara. She rolled her eyes. He turned back to shout down at Zarnn once more. “Now that you’re here … what do you intend to do?”

Zarnn paused as though to think about it. “Join Sanctuary,” he decided, and there was much head-nodding behind him among the other trolls.

“The bloody hell you say.” Menlos Irontooth did not bother to keep his voice down. “They’re here to join? Like we don’t have enough problems as it is …”