Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (29 page)

Cyrus was struck to silence. “What happened to him?”

“I killed him,” she said, cold, almost malicious, her violet eyes caught somewhere between shedding a tear and issuing him a warning.

The chill wind ripped through the alley, hard out of the north, the bare breath of winter reaching out of the mountains ripping through the spring day. “Why?” Cyrus asked quietly.

“Because he …” She stared back at him, seemingly stunned, as though … shocked, he realized, that he’d asked the question. “He wasn’t …” She choked off her reply. “Because he … because he had scars of his own, after years spent in dungeons,” she managed to get out at last. “And because unlike you—hopefully—he couldn’t let them heal and move on with his damned life after being wronged.”

“Well, that seems like a cautionary tale,” Cyrus said, pulling his arms tight around him, his armor silent as practically hugged himself, the chain wrapped around his chest rattling, exposed now that his illusion was gone.

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Aisling said, and he saw the faint sparkle of glassy tears in her eyes. “I don’t really care about your part in my … whatever. It’s over now.”

“Then I suppose I’ll let go of your part in my humiliations,” Cyrus said, and the wind whipped between them again.

“Wonderful,” Aisling said, in a voice that implied it was nothing of the sort. “Can we get on with this, then?”

“All right,” Cyrus muttered, trying to visualize the illusion he needed to cast again. “In a hurry to get away from me?”

“I just want to go home,” Aisling said, twisting at the waist, as though repelled by his mere presence.

“It’s getting to the point,” Cyrus said, still trying to summon up the will to cast the spell, “when I begin to wonder what’s going to be left of my home when this is all done.” He took a breath and cast the illusion, opening his eyes to find Aisling returned to her taller, paler, human state.

She adjusted the furs draped over her, as though the illusion could protect her from the bitter wind rolling between them. “It’ll never be the same,” she said. “Speaking from personal experience,” she added a moment later.

“Of course not,” he said, feeling oddly choked as he let her take his hand in hers once more. He consoled himself at the reminder that there was a thick layer of plate gauntlet between his fingers and hers, armor all over his body and hers, but it was the chill wind out of the north that seemed to be the greatest division between them. She led him out of the alley, her patently fake smile just a little less bright than it had been before their argument, and onward toward Isselhelm keep, wolves howling in the distance over the drip of melting snow.

Isselhelm Keep was a squat structure built in the style of the Northlands, all stone, rising out of a brown moat replete with refuse and human waste. Little chunks of ice and garbage lingered in the water, causing Cyrus to shudder lightly as he stared at it as they approached. The keep stood in the center of the sprawling city of Isselhelm, a proper home for the governor of the territory, a fortress that could withstand at least small-scale attack, though Cyrus doubted it would last through a concerted siege that included druids and wizards.

Whoever defended the keep must have had that thought as well, for the walls were patrolled by men with bows, watching the approaches carefully. Any force coming at them with the Falcon’s Essence to lighten their steps would be greeted with enough arrows to give the governor time to decide whether to run or fight.

There were audible howls in the distance. Cyrus listened to the wolves and wondered how far out they were.
Can’t be more than a few miles outside the city walls,
he decided.

Cyrus walked a little closer to Aisling now as they approached the drawbridge, which was extended over the moat. It was a long bridge, consisting of heavy wood and strong chains that stretched back into the keep. As they neared the wooden guard outpost at the end, they were scrutinized by armored Northmen with at least as much suspicion as those who had been stationed around the Isselhelm portal.

“We have a meeting with the governor,” Cyrus said, presenting his letter, his breath misting lightly in the air. Spring had not taken full hold in the north, at least not yet.

The guard before him read the page once, then regarded Cyrus and Aisling with a heavy-lidded glare, as though he could see through their illusions. For all Cyrus knew, he could. “Go on,” the guard said in a rough voice. “Present your letter again at the guardhouse across the bridge. Try anything funny and they’ll riddle you with arrows.”

“Such hospitality,” Cyrus remarked, drawing a sharp look of rebuke from Aisling, exactly the sort of thing that Vara would have done were she here. He lingered on that thought but a moment before deciding that it was not the sort of comparison that would win him any favor from either party. He started across the drawbridge, decoupling his hand from Aisling’s. “No need to maintain that illusion any longer,” he said.

“Indeed,” she said, a little coldly.

The drawbridge shook beneath them, just slightly but enough that Cyrus wondered at how much it would move when a fully laden cart crossed it. “This is awkward,” he said just before they reached the arch of the keep’s gate. The teeth at the bottom of the portcullis were visible where it had been withdrawn, and guards were lurking in the shadows under the arch that entered the bailey. “You and I being here, I mean.”

“I should say so,” Aisling said as they reached the next set of guards and Cyrus presented his letter of introduction. They stayed still and silent until they’d gotten the go-ahead from the guards and were pointed toward the keep across the bailey courtyard. There, they were met with another round of guard inspection as Cyrus stared up at the keep’s central tower.

It was almost a castle in and of itself. It extended up behind the walls and moat surrounding it, a blunt, squat tower that had either been designed as a concession to the fact that a good Falcon’s Essence spell could place invaders on any roof, no matter how high, or because building a taller tower would have cost more money than the governor who built it had at the time. It looked like it had been around for at least a hundred years, the mortar falling out here and there between the stones.

The whole bailey stank of hay and horses and worse, and Cyrus presented his letter for the fourth time and once more waited in silence until finally the guard opened the door to the tower and beckoned him forward with Aisling, leaving his post in order to escort them inside.

Cyrus stepped into the waiting dark, Aisling just behind him, and let his eyes adjust. There was a fire burning in a nearby hearth, and he realized he’d stepped into a small version of Sanctuary’s foyer, with much less space, much less natural light, and a single narrow staircase that hugged the wall, disappearing into the next floor.

“This way,” the guard said, metal boots clinking as he led them up the staircase. He wore metal gauntlets and a breastplate, but leather beneath that and very, very thin chainmail. It was the mark of an elite guard who did not possess actual elite equipment.
With Praelior in hand, I could carve through a hundred like him in the space of minutes
, Cyrus thought.
But now
… He let the thought die out, not wanting to pursue it.

They followed the spiraling staircase for quite some distance. It seemed to encircle the tower in much the same space-efficient way as the stairs in the Citadel in Reikonos, leaving the center of the tower open for rooms. They passed several, including a kitchen, a very large dining room, and what appeared to be a large war room with a map table. Cyrus tried to see what he could in that room, but he glimpsed the table for only a minute before someone just inside shut the door, foiling his attempt to look further.

Cyrus realized it when they reached the top of the tower because he had been counting the floors they passed and knew that there couldn’t possibly be any more between him and the roof. Here they were led into a large circular chamber with a desk, the only natural light coming from a small window behind it. The desk was gargantuan and looked to be of elven make, with its careful and intricate designs. It was at least as long as Cyrus on its widest side and was covered with depictions of armies of Northmen in their furs and leather battling against the dark elves. There was no sign of a dwarven army anywhere on it, though Cyrus supposed the north had not been at war with the dwarves in hundreds of years.

“You look different than I expected,” the man behind desk said, long hair flowing out from under the thick fur cap that covered the top of his head. If he was indeed balding, as Cattrine had said, his hat was hiding it well. The grey, however, was impossible to hide, and to Cyrus it almost seemed like an extension of the wolf fur that Governor Allyn Frost’s hat was made of. His cloak was made of the same fur, and though his raiment was much finer than that of the people Cyrus had seen walking the street, it felt very much like variations on the same theme. Cloth was impractical here; furs were the fashion. “You look like us,” Frost said, considering them carefully from under a wrinkled brow. “I don’t like it.”

“My apologies,” Cyrus said, bowing to the governor of the Northlands, “I assumed you’d like it even less if everyone in Isselhelm knew you were taking a meeting with a heretic.”

“I wouldn’t care for that, no,” Frost said, drawing to his feet, smoothing out his fur cloak and vest. “But …”

With a snap of his fingers, the room around Frost seemed to spring into motion. Guards poured forth from a door hidden in an armoire, the clank of their plate armor and squeak of their leather filling the room. A spell drifted through, stripping Cyrus and Aisling of their illusions. Aisling reached for her blade even as a host of bows were drawn behind them; Cyrus could hear the twine straining and knew that Aisling, at least, would be dead if they were loosed.

Armed and armored guards swarmed around them, filling the space between Frost’s desk and Cyrus and Aisling, swords drawn, pointed right at the guests in his keep. A wizard filled the air with the sound of mumbled chanting as he cast the cessation spell, as clearly part of the plan as the freshly polished swords in their faces.

“… Then again,” Allyn Frost said, a broad grin on his wolfish face, “perhaps it’s not as a big a problem for me as you might think.”

Allyn Frost stared across his desk at Cyrus, a smile of triumph pasted across his face, which was pale under his wolf fur hat, white like a man who’d been through a long winter. “All right,” Frost said, and motioned to his troops. “Take their weapons, and then you can go.”

“We can go?” Cyrus asked sourly as guards stepped up and made to grab for his sword.

“You stay,” Frost said with great glee, “we haven’t had our meeting yet.”

One of the guards started to put a hand on Cyrus’s sword, and he began to jerk his hand toward his chain, but Aisling slapped it away. “Don’t,” she said, her eyes afire, meeting his. She withdrew her dagger from her sheath and handed it, hilt-first, to the nearest guard. “That would be rude,” she said, her eyes twinkling just slightly. She blinked and looked down, and Cyrus saw her weapon in the guard’s hand—

Except it wasn’t her weapon. It didn’t look anything at all like her godly dagger, in fact. It was ornate, certainly, but when she’d held it in her hand, it didn’t cause her to fade out of sight in the slightest.

Cyrus found something reassuring about that and held utterly still as the guards confiscated his new sword and unwrapped the mystical chain from around his chest.
At least I’ve still got my armor
, he thought, trying not to show his anger as the guards began to filter out of the room.

“I want you to remember who’s in charge here,” Frost said, still standing behind his desk, the complement of guards down to only a half dozen, two bowmen still drawn on Cyrus, one on Aisling, and the other guards with their swords out, watching for the slightest sign of intransigence. The wizard still lingered in the corner, his low murmuring a reassurance that a return spell wouldn’t save Aisling before she was run through. For his own part, Cyrus felt fairly confident he could pummel all six men plus the wizard and kill Frost before any of them could land a killing blow on him, but he didn’t feel the need to share that, nor the fact that he’d learned the resurrection spell. “I find many a problem comes in negotiations when one party fails to realize how much at the mercy of the other they are,” Frost went on. “You’re a heretic,” he said with a look of superiority, “I’m the Governor of the Northlands. You’re an outcast; I’m practically a king. At my word, you’d be turned over for execution. At your word …” he chuckled, “well … I think we know nothing would happen.”

Cyrus glanced at Aisling. Beneath her cool, seeming indifference, he felt as if he could pick up on what she was saying with just a look, as if somehow all the time they’d spent together, even though it had all been a lie, had given him an insight to her thoughts.
Do nothing
, she was saying.
Let him have his sense of power, see where it leads.

Or perhaps he was just imagining it.

“Nothing would happen,” Cyrus said, and he caught an almost imperceptible nod from Aisling of approval.

Frost’s grin grew even broader. “Damned right. You’re at the lowest rung now, Davidon.”

“So why does the governor of the Northlands want to meet with a man on the lowest rung?” Cyrus asked, folding his arms in front of him. Perhaps it might have looked to the guards like he was just putting up a defense, but he wanted his arms closer to action, in place where he could throw them quickly behind him while the rangers were discovering that their arrows didn’t do a damned thing against his armor. “Seems like a man in your position could have conversations with any number of more … useful? … partners. More powerful ones, at least.”

“Aye,” Frost said, nodding. “I could. But you know … they are lacking something critical that only you possess.” His canines poked slightly out of his lips, and Cyrus could see yellowing upon the teeth. “Do you know what that is?”