Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (33 page)

“Dear gods,” Erith breathed. “That’s … the main passage into both cities. Without it—”

“Yes,” Dahveed said, with a short nod. “Without it … Saekaj and Sovar are cut off from the surface …” With a rueful look, he brought his message to its crashing conclusion. “And with that … we are effectively out of this war before it’s even begun.”

Cyrus looked over the hill toward the entrance to Saekaj Sovar. He and the others, minus Longwell and Mendicant, who had remained in Emerald Fields, had teleported to the Saekaj portal and made their way toward the entry. There was a frenzy of activity, soldiers running to and fro to little point that Cyrus could discern. Dahveed and Bowe walked with the Sanctuary officers, allowing them to pass hostile soldiers and guards, all of whom watched the outsiders suspiciously. Cyrus saw a whole platoon of dark elven women glaring at him as he went past, and he tried not to stare, having never seen dark elven women in warrior armor before, at least not in those numbers.

“Well, this has been a day,” Ryin said, a few paces behind Cyrus and Vara as they stared down at the hill where stood the entry to Saekaj Sovar. On either side of the darkened entry stood guard towers, but the outlines were only barely visible through the dust-clouded air. A billow of dirt had dispersed into the atmosphere outside the entry tunnel, and little was visible beyond it. It hung there, like a pall, an impenetrable shroud that hinted at what waited in the passage below.

“So no one’s coming in or going out in that direction,” Cyrus said quietly. The air was a little colder here than it had been in Emerald Fields. The sky was clouded, and the sun was sinking lower on the horizon.

“And we have no portal accessible below,” Dahveed said. “That’s going to severely limit what we can bring in and take out.”

“I know there are other ways into Saekaj,” Cyrus said, looking at the healer.

“There are,” Dahveed agreed, “but they’re smaller tunnels, not designed for the heavy capacity of the main entrance. So while we’ll be able to move armies out with wizards and druids to some extent … food going in will be a problem. You can’t transport wagon loads of grain with the return spell, after all, and those other tunnels are inadequate to the task of carting things in.”

“So your army isn’t entirely cut off,” Cyrus said, “but your food supply to the civilians is.” He shook his head, staring down at the disaster. Soldiers were rushing in and out of the collapsed tunnel like ants coming out of a hill. “In other words, you’re about to have bigger problems than fighting a war.”

“It entirely fouls our logistics,” Dahveed said, eyeing Cyrus. “We’ll need labor in order to clear the tunnels and to carry down food in long marching chains. Guess where that labor will almost certainly have to come from?”

“Your army,” Cyrus said tightly.

“If we had deeper coffers,” Dahveed said apologetically, “or there wasn’t a hint of war brewing over us, we might hire this task to dwarven miners. Or the goblins, potentially. But with our gold going in other directions, mostly to keep the people fed …”

“I need to talk to Terian,” Cyrus said, feeling a throbbing behind his eyes.

“I can pass a message along,” Dahveed said, straightening up. “As you might imagine, he is somewhat occupied at the moment.”

“Are you going to have to withdraw your forces from Emerald Fields?” Cyrus asked, his voice taking a sour turn.

“I will convey your question,” Dahveed said, nodding, with a bow. “I wouldn’t care to answer for him.” He bowed and stepped closer to Bowe, and both of them disappeared in a return spell, leaving Cyrus with his officers on the overlook below the now-sealed entry.

“Damnation,” Ryin said. “This … this is …”

“It’s not quite damnation,” Vara said, “but we’re drawing nearer, it seems.”

“What do we do now?” Menlos muttered in quiet awe, watching the aftermath of the destruction through heavily lidded eyes. “If the dark elves have to pull out of Emerald Fields … the Luukessians won’t stand a chance against those damned elves.”

“This is a blow,” Ryin agreed, his face slack, numb with shock. “And well calculated, at that.”

Cyrus, for his part, stared down at the hill, at the entry to the city beneath the earth. “Goliath scores another hit,” he whispered, sure that Vara would hear him. He saw her nod subtly, and he knew that something had to be done, and immediately.

The return to the Tower of the Guildmaster was a quiet affair, their twin spells carrying Cyrus and Vara back to the silent sanctuary atop the keep, nary a hint of breeze coming through the open doors to greet them. They had stayed, along with the other officers, until past sundown at the overlook to the entry to Saekaj, but no progress seemed to be made, only an endless cavalcade of soldiers going into the aperture beneath the hill and coming back out again covered in black dirt.

“Again everything comes at once,” Cyrus said, speaking into the quiet. He could not hear anything from beyond the balconies. When he walked out to look down at the wall, he saw the fires burning, but remarkably few figures moving about atop the thick grey line that divided them from the plains.

“We are in the midst of a storm, aren’t we?” Vara said, stepping out to stand with him on the balcony. The air was completely still, almost stifling, even out of doors.

“So it seems,” Cyrus said, looking out into the approaching hints of dusk. “Goliath and the elves seem to have moved their pieces forward today. Almost as if they could sense us gaining some small ground of our own.”

“Perhaps they did more than sense us,” she said, wrapping her shining steel gauntlets around the stone railing with a creak. “I know you didn’t want to say it in Council, but it is entirely likely that Terian is right, that they have us well and truly riddled with spies.”

“‘Didn’t want to say it’?” Cyrus let the words drip out like a foul drink. “I don’t even want to think it.” He looked at his wife, feeling like he was beseeching her for something he knew she couldn’t provide. “These people have been with us for years. Have been our
friends
for years. Have fought with us through … through gods. Through the death of a land. Against titans and dragons and everything imaginable.” He bowed his head, staring down at the ground far, far below. “No, I don’t even want to contemplate it. I’ve conceded to the point, and I’ll keep our circle tight for these plans, but I see no path to ferreting out a traitor and thus no reason to dwell on it.”

“Fair enough,” she said, arching her back slightly as she stood next to him. “But if you did see a path to uncovering one … would you be willing to walk it?”

“I don’t know,” Cyrus said. “Ask me when you’ve found that way.”

They stood there in the silence until a knock once more sounded at the door. “Come in,” Vara called, beating Cyrus by seconds. She caught his eyes sadly, and hers flicked to his scabbard, a subtle reminder once more than he was not all that he once was.

The messenger was Calene again, though not nearly as out of breath this time. “We had two missives,” she said, holding up envelopes, “from Emerald Fields, both.”

“Thank you,” Cyrus said, catching the ranger’s curiosity in her bearing, the way she inclined herself as if to watch them open the messages. “You may go, Calene.”

He caught the hint of disappointment from the ranger, but she departed swiftly enough, closing the door behind her without more than a look back. Cyrus watched her, waited until she was surely out of earshot before he turned to his wife, who was already tearing into her envelope. “This is a good example. What if, for instance, the traitor was Calene? Newly appointed to the Council, but she’s been with us since before Luukessia. She followed me all through that godsforsaken land, fought in every battle, saved the lives of her guildmates. What if she turned out to be a traitor?”

Vara glanced up at him from the parchment in her hands. “What if she were?”

“How would we even handle it?” Cyrus asked.

“Execution is the standard answer.” Vara's eyes flew back and forth across her letter.

“Dammit, Vara,” Cyrus said. “We’ve lived with these people. They’ve been our friends.”

“If there is a traitor,” Vara said, “then any friendship has been pretense, and they have lived here only in order to provide information to Goliath in order to make us suffer at an opportune moment. Anyone who does that—and I’m thinking specifically of that dark elven whore you spent the morning with—”

“Knew that was going to come back to haunt me later.”

“—is a deceiver of the worst sort,” Vara said. “At least Aisling has the excuse of a god threatening someone she loved. It’s a motive I can almost understand.” Her expression hardened. “Almost. Anyone indebted to Goliath has no such excuse, and I would behead them myself if I should find them out. I would actually prefer to disembowel them and let them bleed, but my paladin ethics compel me toward a quicker, more merciful end.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Cyrus said, clutching at the envelope in his fingers almost uselessly. “Who wrote to you?”

“Lady Voryn,” Vara said, glancing back up. “She is receptive to meeting, having gotten my letter. I need to go to her now. I think given recent events, she’ll be easily persuaded to back us.”

“Back us in what?” Cyrus asked, throwing his arms wide. “We still don’t have an actual plan for dealing with Danay or removing him. For all the doors he’s opened, Iraid still hasn’t shown us one that leads into the royal palace.”

“No,” Vara said, finishing her letter and folding it crisply in half before stuffing it carefully back into the envelope it arrived in, “but he has set up the chain for afterward. Do you realize that we now have the ability to determine the course of the Elven Kingdom should it fall to discord after Danay’s death?”

“What about the current heir?” Cyrus asked. “Nyad’s older … whatever.”

“With myself still installed as Lady of Nalikh’akur and all else we have allied with us,” Vara said, her cold blue eyes piercing in the approaching eve, “we might be able to disqualify the heir. Even if we can’t, the sheer amount of chaos we’ll be introducing, coupled with the sudden insurrection in Emerald Fields—it will put a squeeze upon the incoming monarch.” She smiled thinly. “If Cattrine is right and Amti can be persuaded to throw in with the uprising, I daresay the Kingdom will experience a very sudden shift in priorities—away from us, and away from waging a war in Emerald Fields. They’ll need a conciliator in charge, and quickly. Whoever takes the throne will have to sue for peace among their suddenly warring constituencies or face the break-up of their empire.”

“Wonderful,” Cyrus said. “Now we just have to find a way to kill Danay, and we can watch the Kingdom dissolve. Too bad he’s protected by guards every single hour of the day and hidden away in a fortress of a palace.” He pursed his lips as he clutched the envelope thinly in his fingers.

“What?” Vara asked.

“I had a thought …” Cyrus said and then his eyes fell to the envelope. “I haven’t even read this yet. Any other day lately, getting a letter would be cause for hurried opening.”

Vara sighed. “Well, don’t let something as insignificant as having a thought keep you from taking heed of a message sent directly to you.” She paused, as if waiting for something. “Well, what is it?”

“My thought or the letter?” Cyrus asked, breaking the wax seal.

“Either,” Vara said impatiently.

Cyrus stared down at the words on the page, and skipped directly to the signature. “Well, the letter … is from Morianza Yemer, Odellan’s father …” He looked right at her, feeling a strange clawing in his belly. “And he wants to meet with me. Immediately. Tonight, if possible.”

Cyrus appeared in the darkness of a portal outside Javeritem, in the far north of the Elven Kingdom. He was clad in the disguise of an envoy of the King, concentrating on the illusion upon him and Windrider and trying to make them as close to real as he could manage. Larana had teleported him here and now stood at Windrider’s side, upon the ground, seemingly waiting for something.

“You can go,” Cyrus said to her, not really sure what was on her mind and equally uncertain whether he wanted to know it. “Thank you.”

His words apparently decided her on her course, for she did not vanish in the light of a return spell but spoke instead, softly but clear. “You’re taking a meeting with Morianza Yemer.”

He stared down at her in muted surprise before he gathered his words to reply. “You … that’s supposed to be a secret. How did you know?”

She looked out into the darkness around the portal and put a hand aloft. Nessalima’s Light flowed from her fingers, casting the ground around them in a soft white. She pointed her hand up and the light drifted into the air as if caught by an upward wind, wafting above them. When it had risen to a height some twenty feet up, she muttered another spell under her breath and opened her eyes, looking around.

“What are you doing?” Cyrus asked, glancing around.

“Making certain no one is lying in wait,” she said, casting her gaze around in a slow circle. “Making sure no one is invisible, in ambush, seeking an opportunity to strike you down.”

He peered down at the druid, her tangled hair a rat’s nest that barely allowed her tanned face to peek out from beneath it. “How did you know where I was going, Larana?”

“Yemer’s estate is the only thing of interest within a hundred miles of the Javeritem portal,” Larana answered quietly. “What if he blames you for the death of his son under your command?”

“Then I guess I’ll have a fight on my hands,” Cyrus said, smiling though he did not much feel like it.

“I should go with you,” she said, quietly but firmly.

“You should get back to Sanctuary,” Cyrus said. “You don’t even have a horse.”

“I can walk,” she said, and with quiet whisper, she floated into the air on a Falcon’s Essence spell. “I can run if need be. I can follow behind you. I won’t be any trouble.”

“Any trouble I expect to run into won’t be from you,” Cyrus said, starting to move Windrider into a canter. The horse did not move, steadfastly ignoring his command for the first time, ever. He looked down at Windrider, who whickered and ignored Cyrus’s attempt to spur him into motion. “Not you, too?”