Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (3 page)

Cyrus tried to hold back his surprise, peering over the crenellations at the group below. “I’m sorry … you’re here to … become part of Sanctuary?”

Zarnn looked around at the walls and the flat lands around him. “This … Sanctuary, yes?” His voice was rumbling as he missed words, struggling to string his thoughts into speech in his non-native language, but he had a hint of innocence to him that Cyrus found unsettling.
He’s no Vaste, that’s for sure.

“I heard that there were trolls at the gates,” came a voice from behind Cyrus, causing him to turn. “I hope you’ve locked the doors and hidden the keys.” Vaste stormed up the steps, his white staff in hand, his deep black robes rippling behind him as he strode across the wall to stand next to Cyrus. He peered down. “Good gods. It’s like a little piece of Gren washed up on our doorstep.”

“How did you hear that there were trolls at the gates?” Menlos asked, his eyes bulging. “I didn’t carry the message past the foyer.”

“Don’t worry, my smelly northern friend,” Vaste said, looking down at the trolls, “the dead carried your words the rest of the way.” Menlos stood frozen for a moment before he looked left, then right, self-consciously, and his nostrils flared quietly as he sniffed himself.

“You there!” Vaste called down. Zarnn looked up at him with a childlike expression on his bearded face. “What are you doing here?”

“They say they’re here to join,” Cyrus said before Zarnn could answer.

“Impossible,” Vaste said, shaking his head. “Everyone knows there are no trolls in Sanctuary.”

“Aren’t … aren’t you a troll?” Menlos asked, more tentative now.

“No,” Vaste said, not bothering to look away from the crenellations and the trolls beneath, “I’m a gnome, keep it straight.”

“Explains why you vex me so,” Vara muttered under her breath, so quietly that Cyrus doubted very much if Vaste even heard her.

“We … here to join Sanctuary,” Zarnn called up in answer somewhere in the midst of the crosstalk.

“Told you,” Cyrus said.

“You tell me a lot of things,” Vaste said, frowning. “I’ll let you in on a little secret—I don’t listen to you most of the time. Maybe if you spoke less, I would. I mean, really, it would require something on the order of three whole minutes per day to catch everything you throw at me verbally, and who has that sort of time?” Without waiting for Cyrus to reply, he angled his head to speak to the trolls below. “Why would you possibly want to join Sanctuary right now? Don’t you realize we don’t like trolls around here?”

A stark silence fell over the wall as everyone seemed to pause to take in everything that was happening. Guards up and down the path along the top stared, watching the exchanges with obvious interest.
Probably the most interesting thing to happen on duty in months
, Cyrus thought.

“You … troll,” Zarnn said, calling back up to them. “You in Sanctuary.”

“I’m not a troll,” Vaste replied neatly, “I’m an elf.”

“Don’t you dare—” Vara started, her ire rising.

“Fine,” Vaste said, not even looking back at her, “I’m a—” He glanced sideways and caught Scuddar standing down the line, arms folded over his robes, “I’m a man of the desert!” Vaste pulled his robes up over the back of his head, yanking the hem a good foot off the ground as he tried to recreate the cloth coif that was a hallmark of the dwellers in the Inculta Desert.

Zarnn stared up at Vaste and a small rumble of conversation made its way through his party. “You troll,” Zarnn finally decided. “You in Sanctuary. We trolls. We want to be in Sanctuary, too.”

“I said there are no trolls in Sanctuary!” Vaste shouted back. “Are you calling me a liar?”

Cyrus stood there dumbly, wondering how this could possibly end, and not sure what to say even absent Vaste’s distraction.
Troll applicants? Here? Now?

Why?

“You liar, yes,” Zarnn said after another moment’s deliberation below with his party.

“Well, then why would you want to join a guild of liars?” Vaste asked, dropping the backs of his robes off the top of his head. “I mean, really. That should settle it for you right there.”

“Because … strength,” Zarnn said without consulting his group. “And gold.”

A prickling of understanding ran over Cyrus. “We, uh … there’s not much gold around here anymore,” he called down to Zarnn. “We don’t tend to run expeditions lately, and we haven’t taken a mercenary contract in a very long time. You’d be better off joining a company if you’re to hire out for coin, or applying to one of the Big Three guilds—Amarath’s Raiders, Endeavor, or Burnt Offerings if you’re looking to adventure for reward.”
Because Sanctuary is presently out of the business of adventure
, he did not say, but he caught Vara looking at him in askance even so.
And there’s not much strength around here anymore, either
.

Zarnn seemed unsure of what to say to that, and Cyrus watched him turn back to his party, and they spoke together for a moment before Zarnn turned back. “We looking for … home.”

“Gren is that way—” Vaste started.

“Vaste,” Cyrus said, putting his hand on the troll’s arm, pulling it down from where he’d been pointing to the northwest. “We don’t … we don’t turn away people who are looking for—”

“If we’re smart, we damned sure do,” Vaste said, his eyes hard.

“Weren’t you the one who once told me I didn’t know anything about trolls?” Cyrus asked.

“And you still don’t, which is why I’m turning them away for you.”

“I’m with Vaste,” Menlos said, arms still folded before him. “Send ’em back to the swamps. Better not to invite this kind of trouble into our walls.”

“Stop making me rethink my hard line,” Vaste said, eye twitching in annoyance.

“Turning them away isn’t what Alaric would have done,” Vara said quietly, her voice soft and regretful.

Vaste shot Cyrus a scathing look. “Don’t you have some insecure reply to that?”

“She’s right,” Cyrus said. “This isn’t … Sanctuary is supposed to be a haven for those seeking a path.”

“Whoa, no,” Menlos shook his head. “We’re not talking about gnomes or goblins that can’t find work in Reikonos. We’re talking trolls here. Trolls. Slavers. Kidnappers. Twice the size of a normal person, and four times the threat of a strong warrior.”

“Which makes them something on the order of fifty-two strong warriors we’d be taking on as applicants,” Cyrus said, looking down at the thirteen of them waiting. “When was the last time we had fifty-two of anyone apply to us in a single day? Or even thirteen?”

“Oh, I hear the seeds of my defeat planted in your words, and they sound like … nuts,” Vaste said, taking a ragged breath. “As in, ‘You’ve gone—’”

“I caught the implication,” Cyrus said. “Though I would have thought you’d say I’d gone soft, perhaps.”

“And risk your rather brazen wife tossing out some suggestive witticism about your insatiable manliness my way? No. No. I’d rather insult your sanity, it’s safer.”

Vara gave the healer a look half as mischievous as the one she’d favored Cyrus with before Menlos had interrupted them in the foyer. “If you’d like—”

“Open the gates, then,” Vaste said, coming back from the edge of the wall, sounding utterly resigned, as though he’d lost a fight and received a hard shellacking in the bargain. “Mark this moment in your mind, though, if they go treacherous or dangerous or merely lecherous with the local farm animals—I warned you and you ignored it.”

“Those poor animals,” Menlos said in a low whisper then whistled, drawing his wolves to him immediately.

“Come on,” Cyrus said, already heading for the stairs. “Let’s go meet our new applicants.”

He descended the stairs under the cloudy skies, the faint glow of daylight making its way through patches of the clouds above like lamps shining through mist. Vara fell in beside him. “You were right,” she said softly. “This is the proper course for Sanctuary. This is who we are.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” Cyrus said. “I forget a lot of things, but this … I couldn’t forget this.”

His boots hit the soft earth as the squeal of the gate hinges and chain of the portcullis being drawn open reached his ears. He stood in the middle of the dirt pathway, watching as the trolls made their way inside the walls and the wizard on the horse followed at a distance. He barely made it inside before the gates began to squeak shut again, pushed closed by the warriors manning them.

The trolls strolled into the open grass-and-dirt space behind the wall, looking around in amazement at the distance to the guildhall. It was not a small area, the space between the walls and the keep; there was plenty of room for a small town to take root between them, and Cyrus had often considered that very idea.
At least I considered it back when the guild was growing, when we were ascendant. I haven’t had to think about that possibility in … quite some time.

“Welcome to Sanctuary,” Cyrus said to Zarnn as he and his party came to a halt in front of Cyrus. Green faces looked down at him from a few feet above, the towering trolls putting his height to shame. “We’ll need to ask you some questions and have you put down your names on our parchment as we begin the process of having you apply to Sanctuary.”

“All right,” Zarnn said, nodding once after gauging the response of his fellows behind him. “Good.”

Cyrus and Vara exchanged a look. “Good,” Cyrus repeated, unsure what else to say.

“No, not good at all,” Vaste said under his breath. “It’s only good until the shrieking, and the terror, and the murdering—”

“Vaste will show you into the hall and start asking you some questions.” Cyrus smirked, sure that a look of horror was spreading across the healer’s face. “If you’ll follow him …”

Cyrus stepped aside and the trolls sauntered forward toward Vaste, whose head was hung in obvious disappointment.

“Right,” Vaste said, bringing his eyes up. “First thing I’m going to tell you about Sanctuary is that trolls get worked like dogs here, having to do all the unpleasant tasks. Also, there are no goats, so if that’s going to be a problem, best just leave now.” He waited a second, and when there was no response from his audience, he let out a small sigh and started toward the doors to the keep. “Fine. Follow me.”

“This isn’t a mistake, is it?” Cyrus asked Vara as they watched the trolls following the smaller Vaste away. There was some grunting among them, and Cyrus saw Vaste look toward the heavens, as though expecting a lightning bolt to streak down and kill him. “Is Vaste right?”

“Probably not,” Vara answered after a brief pause. “But …”

Cyrus waited for her to finish. She did not. “But what?”

“But the alternative is to trust no one, ever,” she said, seemingly stirred back to life by his words. “To hang tight to bonds of old friendship but never make new ones. To grow old, truly, and to watch those around you diminish with you, until you age out of life alone.” She glanced at him quickly and then looked away again. “I’m going to help Vaste get them situated.”

“I’ll—” Cyrus started, but he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. The elven wizard who had come in with the trolls was now standing only feet away from him, leading his horse with one hand, the other outthrust, an envelope of yellowed parchment extended to Cyrus. “I’ll be along in a …” He took it from the wizard and spared only a glance to see Vara already wending her way toward the doors, not looking back at him for a response or anything else. “Who are you?” he asked the wizard.

“Messenger, sir,” the wizard said primly, casting a baleful glance at the last of the trolls, now receding behind the gargantuan doors of the entry. “I brought this for you from Reikonos. It is a matter of great urgency, I was assured.”

Cyrus looked at the envelope, crinkled in his hand.
Cyrus Davidon
was written across its front in a familiar hand. He caught the wax seal on an edge of his lobstered gauntlet and ripped it open, pulling out the missive within. The page crackled as he unfolded it, a flowery scent filling his nostrils as though set loose from the paper.

Cyrus,

I need to speak with you immediately. I would not write to you were it not a matter of the greatest urgency, and something only you can aid me with.

Imina

Cyrus blinked at the words then read them again. His eyes fell out of focus and then refocused on the messenger, whose lineless face watched him for reaction. “Who gave this to you?”

“A young woman, human,” the elf said, adjusting the vestments that identified him as a wizard. “She found me in Reikonos Square and bade me come here and deliver it, and to await your reply.”

“Describe her for me,” Cyrus said. His lips felt suddenly quite dry, as did the rest of his mouth.

The elf’s lips became a thin, annoyed line. “She was tall, for a woman, dark hair, skin the color of an ashfruit … she had a green jeweled ring upon her finger.”

That’s Imina
, Cyrus thought, and a little bead of moisture trailed across his head under his helm. “And she wanted my reply?”

“Indeed,” the elf said impatiently.

“Can you take me to her right now?” Cyrus asked, casting a look back at the guildhall. The doors were closing. “And bring me back once my business is concluded?”

“For a fee,” the wizard said. “Naturally.”

“Take me to her,” Cyrus said, reaching into his coin purse and coming out with two pieces of gold. He pressed them into the waiting palm of the wizard, who looked at them impassively for just a moment before pocketing the generous payment. He smiled thinly at Cyrus and then closed his eyes, murmuring an incantation under his breath. With a splash of light, the magic burst all around Cyrus, instantly transporting him from under the grey skies of the plains to another place he had once called home.

Reikonos Square bustled in spite of the snow in the streets, the new year only a few days away. The winter solstice would follow, the days growing short, and here it was not clouds that dimmed the skies but the setting sun. Cold, crisp air burned at Cyrus’s cheeks and made him regret not returning to the Tower of the Guildmaster for a cloak before embarking on this journey. He let out a slow breath and it misted before him, the filthy scents of the human capital filling his nasal passages and the cold air burning them as he drank in the smells of the city.