Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (40 page)

“And the trolls are even applying to your guild now,” Terian said with that same smirk. “That never would have happened, trolls being civilized enough to walk upright and stop scratching themselves in inappropriate places or fornicating with goats—”

“Oh, damn you,” Vaste said mildly. “I should have known that crack about your people would come back to bite me in my delicious ass.”

“The point is, Cyrus,” Terian said, “for all your bellyaching about the horrors inflicted, you’ve done some good as well.”

“Our people have never been in better condition,” Kahlee agreed.

“The elves do seem to be in a rather better state now that Danay is dead,” Vara said. “We have our own council now rather than one man meting out whatever whim he decides. And you have long railed against the injustices of the Council of Twelve. It sounds from your meeting with Governor Frost as though other people in the Confederation have their own grievances to pursue against both Urides and the running of that entire nation.”

“So …” J’anda said, smiling lightly, “… cease this fruitless worrying over consequences out of your control and do what is right—kill the leader of your country.”

Cyrus gave J’anda an arched eyebrow. “When you put it like that, you make me want to do the opposite.”

“This is the correct course,” Longwell said with a nod. “For Sanctuary and for the Confederation, it sounds like.” He gave them all a swift look. “I know it’s going to sound odd, coming from me, this being my first meeting of this, err …”

“Shadow council,” Vaste said. “I think that’s really the best name for it.”

“Well, anyway with it being my first meeting of the shadow council,” Longwell said, “but … we’re now in a tough position with no conventional way out, not with everything against us like it is. I’m just glad you’re ready to make some difficult choices, ready to do whatever it takes to get those of us still here, who’ve been here all along … out the other side.”

“Well, we’re damned sure going to try,” Cyrus said with a reluctant nod. “And at least it’s looking a little better now than it did a few days ago. Still …” He shook his head. “We have so much left before us, and our enemies are just lurking out there, waiting to do who knows what in pursuit of destroying us.” He touched his forehead with the metal fingers of his gauntlet. “Something is coming. They’ll throw something at us soon.” Cyrus tightened his face into a mask. “We just have to hope we can knock the legs out from under them before they can unleash whatever they’ve got planned to destroy us.”

When the news of the elven desertion of the Leagues cause reached the ears of Sanctuary’s members, there seemed to be a brief resurgence of hope, but Cyrus noted that it faded as quickly as the morning dew did in the early summer days. He found himself walking in empty halls, but the whispers he heard did not quite carry the desperate fear that they had before, even if they did not ring with confidence the way he might have wanted them to.

Day after day, as he waited for the appointed hour of his meeting with Reynard Coulton, Cyrus found himself creeping around empty halls and through the nearly deserted towers of Sanctuary in a way he could not ever recall doing before. The air was warm, the atmosphere thick and humid, and he found the breeze at the top of the Tower of the Guildmaster insufficient to the task of dispersing it.

And so he walked the halls like the Ghost of old. He looked for nothing in particular, simply trying to make himself seen to those who remained, greeting all that he saw with a smile and a kind word. In return he received much of the same, though perhaps a shade more tentative than he desired from some, and he knew in his heart that these were the ones wondering if they’d made a poor decision to stay.

“It’s an inescapable sort of doubt,” Longwell said one day as they both sat in the Council Chambers. There had been no meeting scheduled for quite some time, but both of them had found themselves outside the door and stepped in to talk. “I’ll confess to having felt it myself while you were keeping me out of the shadow council.” He inclined his head. “If there was a way to make what we’re doing known, it’d help.” He held up a hand to stay Cyrus’s reply. “I know there’s not, not after Tarreau’s betrayal, but … I don’t know how else to spread hope around here, other than what you’ve been doing with walking and talking and greeting.”

“It’s a persistent problem,” Cyrus said, nodding. “When we were growing like mad, we didn’t have to work to spread hope or optimism. People would walk in the front door and feel it, like it was a warm rain being poured down on the place. We were sending expeditions to distant places, we were bringing back treasure from faraway lands, filling the coffers and their pockets with gold. Our army was always on the move, always doing something, even if it was just endless rounds of the Trials of Purgatory. People had new armor, new weapons, solid reminders of what we were doing for them.” He sighed. “What do they have now? Most of them haven’t been outside these walls in nearly five months. The grass out there is more trampled than it was after the dark elven invaders burst in during the siege. People are walking themselves mad under the same skies, itching for something more than dull guard duty staring out at empty plains, wondering when the armies are going to start marching in on us.”

“It’s a shame we can’t take them somewhere,” Longwell said, thinking it over.

“We could,” Cyrus said, shrugging. “Now that the crisis in the Kingdom is over, we could ask some of the Luukessians to come back, give our people a chance to spend some time in Emerald Fields.”

“We could,” Longwell agreed, clutching his lance. “Why don’t we?”

Cyrus felt a strange tightness in his chest. “I don’t know. Something in me resists that call, even though I know they’d come and I know Cattrine would be willing. Something about loyalties, about theirs being in their new home.”

“They’ve got loyalty to you as well,” Longwell assured him.

“I know,” Cyrus said quickly, dismissing it with a nod. “I know. Perhaps I just don’t want to trap anyone else in here with us. And drawing down our own numbers would be … well, idiocy is the word that comes closest to mind, with less than five hundred defenders remaining …”

“I think we should—” Longwell began, but the door to the Council Chambers clicked open as someone tugged on the handle, causing him to freeze, clutching his lance as he turned to look behind him.

“Oh,” Ryin Ayend said as he entered, closing the door quietly as he stepped inside, “it’s you.”

“It’s us,” Cyrus said, nodding at the druid, the sunlight streaming in from the balcony windows behind him. “Just … stopped in to have a chat.”

“Did you?” Ryin surveyed the two of them with a raised eyebrow. “How fortuitous.”

“Well, we passed outside, he on his way up and me on the way down,” Longwell said, frowning at the druid as Ryin wandered toward his seat. “Not sure you can call that ‘fortuitous.’”

“Oh, I would call it fortuitous,” Ryin said, smiling strangely. “Do you know what else I would call fortuitous?”

“No, but I get the distinct impression you won’t be leaving me in the dark for long,” Cyrus said with undisguised irony.

“That the Elven Kingdom just reversed its position on hunting us to the death,” Ryin said. “Interesting that so very many of the parties involved were our own people, our allies, or the goddess we saved from torture at the hands of Yartraak.” His mouth twisted. “Perhaps ‘fortuitous’ doesn’t quite cover it, after all.”

“You’re right,” Cyrus said with a nod, “that’s really more like ‘blindingly amazing.’” He paused, watching the druid’s stony stare. “‘Blessedly fortunate’? ‘Astoundingly’—”

“You did this,” Ryin said, watching him through nearly closed eyes. “You orchestrated it, didn’t you?”

“Nudging our friends and allies to help us remove a knife to our belly?” Cyrus asked. “I would have been a fool not to call in a few markers once the opportunity was presented, wouldn’t I?”

“This was not an opportunity merely ‘presented,’” Ryin said, leaning forward on his elbow. “The King of the Elves had to die for it to happen.”

“I hope you’re not accusing me of killing him,” Cyrus said. “Because exploiting the situation is one thing—”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Ryin said, leaning back, “because I don’t know what you’ve been doing. I only know that you’ve been up to something—”

“Which I believe you’ve now seen some evidence of, in the form of the elves backing the hell away from us—”

“Ryin,” Longwell said softly, “you and I had conversations about our worries—”

“We had conversations as outsiders,” Ryin said, waving him off, “but it would seem you’re no longer an outsider, Lord Longwell of Emerald Fields. It looks as though you’re in the thick of things.”

“Are you mad because of how things turned out or are you mad because you weren’t involved?” Cyrus asked.

“I’m disappointed I wasn’t consulted,” Ryin said, staring right at Cyrus, “I’m angry that I’m apparently considered too much a risk to be trusted, when I’ve put my very life on the line and joined you in heresy. And I’m bitterly upset that I don’t know how far you’ve gone to achieve the results you have.” He leaned forward. “You may have deflected my inquiry about Danay’s death, but consider this—I don’t know what you’ve been up to. If you’re insulted at me making the thinnest accusation in your direction, realize it’s because I’m not sure what you’re playing at anymore, nor how deep your considerations are running, only that things have turned out very—I’ll just say it again—fortuitously for Sanctuary in this.” He straightened up in his seat. “Anything you’d care to share?”

Cyrus watched the druid carefully, looking right into his eyes.
Is this man a traitor? Will he take anything I tell him and go whisper it right to the ears of Malpravus?

How would I even know until it was too late?

“There’s nothing I can think of at the moment,” Cyrus said softly.

“Of course not,” Ryin said, almost sadly, as he stood up, smoothing his robes as he did so. “In the first few months after the Jungle, after your spell, it struck as me as strange that so many would choose to forsake our bonds of fellowship and choose to flee.” He looked right at Cyrus. “Now it does not, for while we have been granted some small victory in recent days, and you are clearly involved, I cannot trust that you will be looking out for me in all this. I imagine it’s a common feeling, that hopelessness.” He crossed past the empty hearth, his robes swirling behind him.

“Ryin,” Cyrus said, and the druid stopped at the door. “Trust cuts both ways, like any blade. You tell me now that you don’t trust I’m working in your best interest, but I would tell you in return that I don’t know that I can trust anyone in this guild’s loyalty when our secrets keep getting spilled to Goliath and our other enemies.”

“And I imagine that is why we will lose everything—both our fellows and the coming battles,” Ryin said, his voice hoarse, as he opened the door and quietly left, leaving it ajar, his quiet footsteps scuffing on the stairs as he walked away.

Cyrus’s walks of the following days found less hopelessness than he imagined and also found Ryin still haunting the halls of Sanctuary, though he subtly avoided Cyrus when he saw him coming. Cyrus, for his part, took some relief in knowing that the druid had not chosen to flee into the night following their conversation, but neither did it engender in him a desire to seek Ryin out to reassure him.

What would I even say?
Cyrus wondered for the thousandth time following their argument.
He’s right, of course. It’s not because of Terian’s warnings that I find myself so untrusting. This is a choice I’ve made, to believe that revealing these secret plans could result in disaster, in Pretnam Urides, Archenous Derregnault and Malpravus being able to counter what we do next. I have more confidence in their ability to subvert my own guild than in my ability to form trusting relationships here in these very halls.

Then again, we have lost over ten thousand members in the last year, so … perhaps my concern is justified.

This day’s walk had carried Cyrus down all the way to the foyer. The halls and stairwells of the towers had grown stale to him, and he sought the open spaces out of doors, longing for a glimpse of the shrouded sky, blue peeking from beneath white-grey clouds that glowed with the warm summer sun.

The foyer was nearly empty, only a few souls lingering in the lounge, having a quiet discussion. Cyrus glanced into the Great Hall and saw Larana between the tables, watching him as he crossed the great seal. He raised a hand to wave at her, and she gave him a more restrained wave in return. He continued his path to the door and out rather than interrupt her or risk an uncomfortable conversation that he did not wish to have.

The sun was hot on his black armor, and as he stopped on the stairs, he took a breath of the air. It smelled of dirt and moisture, as it had rained the day before. A few brown puddles were visible, dispersed over the upturned, trodden ground in the paths near the wall. The unceasing patrols had destroyed the once verdant lawn and left the place looking much like the streets of Santir. It was hardly as disheartening as their loss of numbers, but it served as a reminder of just how much they were losing, both in numbers and in general change.
It’s a constant reminder of the people we once considered family beating a path away from our door.

Trying to put this particular unpleasant change out of his mind, Cyrus headed left, toward the archery range along the side of Sanctuary, and there found fifty rangers turned out in their green cloaks, taking their practice with a bow, Calene Raverle at their head, shouting orders in a high commanding voice. She took no note of him as he passed, nor did any of her charges, and Cyrus was once more left with the impression that he was a ghost in this place.
Fitting
, he thought.
I follow in Alaric’s footsteps—at least in some regards
.

He made his way around the smooth side of Sanctuary, following along in the shadows of the immense structure. He detoured around the southwest tower where it jutted out, stretching into the sky, and laid eyes upon the garden in the distance, still a lush and verdant contrast to the paths before the steps.