“No,” Hoygraf said, and Cyrus saw a dagger in his hand, saw Hoygraf catch his arm and rip the gauntlet off, throwing it away. Cyrus watched as Hoygraf lifted the exposed arm and stabbed the dagger through Cyrus’s wrist. The sharp pain was there, in the background, but Cyrus barely felt it. “Did you think I would simply let you have my wife, wreck my keep, leave me to die and merely forget about you? Let it pass?”
J’anda. Mendicant. Odellan. Longwell. I need … help. The names ran through his mind one by one as though by thought he could appeal to them directly to come to him. Weariness settled upon him like a heavy blanket, dulling the pain.
“I know your western magic,” Hoygraf said, and twirled the dagger in his fingers. “If I leave you here, as you are, they’ll find you. They’ll bring you back to life.” Hoygraf’s lips pursed and he shook his head. “I can’t have that. I need everyone-everyone-to know that you don’t trifle with me, not this way. And I’ll make sure … that you won’t come back.”
Alaric … Cyrus’s thoughts were drifting now. Was Alaric even around?
The knife flashed in front of Cyrus’s eyes, and then he felt a sharp pain in his neck, the blade’s edge against his flesh, sawing down.
“They’ll have a hard time reviving you, I’d wager,” he heard the Baron’s voice say, “without a head.”
The last thought through Cyrus’s mind before the flash was uncontrolled, unanswerable, and unexpected.
Vara …
Chapter 43
Vara
The Council Chambers seemed to briefly twist around her, the torches a blur of light in her peripheral vision as she honed in on the druid’s face as he spoke, a dull, tanned mass of flat nose and pale lips that she wanted to hit with the palm of her hand as she would slap an overripe melon to get it to crack open. Instead she pressed her armored fingers into the table and pushed, hearing a splintering sound that caused her to draw back her hand self-consciously. She looked up and saw Vaste staring at her with his pointy-toothed grin, and she gave him venom in return.
“… so, of course, he’s keeping the army in Luukessia and marching them north, to meet and battle the scourge as it continues to come south,” Ryin Ayend finished with a nod of his head, perched atop that implausibly thin neck.
“Oh, of course,” Vara said, letting sarcasm drip from every syllable. “Because the problems of another continent are so much larger than the enemies storming down our own gates.”
Ryin’s jaw worked open and then shut, a quick motion that caused his lips to purse. “Of course we didn’t know over there what you were experiencing here, else we might have come back a bit quicker. However-”
“This scourge,” Alaric said, interrupting. “You have mentioned the danger they pose, but you did not speak to the origin of these creatures.”
Ayend’s face went ashen. “Ah, yes. Well, you see, that’s the other part of the problem and the reason Cyrus sent me back. He wants you to send reinforcements-”
“Then he’s just as daft as ever he’s been,” Vara said, and she felt the twitch and contraction of the muscles at the corners of her eyes. “Unsurprising, given that he’s been operating out of contact for so long, but the idea that the war here would just run a pleasing and gentle course is ridiculous, and a supposed ‘master strategist’ such as Cyrus Davidon should damned well have known that the Sovereign of Saekaj wouldn’t be sitting idly by while he grew fat in his black armor, feasting beyond the eastern sea.”
“You don’t understand,” Ayend said with a shake of the head. “He’s not just fighting the good fight for the sake of it over there-”
“Because he’s never gotten involved in an ill-advised fight before?” Vara said, cutting across Ayend’s words.
“To your advantage, I believe, not his,” Ryin said.
“Yay, verbal fisticuffs,” Vaste said, “I have so missed the arguments in these chambers over the last months.”
“I haven’t,” Alaric said, dark circles under his eyes now that his helm was removed. “Vara, if you might, please allow our esteemed brother Ryin to finish his train of thought without interruption … About the origin of this scourge …?”
“Ah,” Ryin said, all contrition. “That is the sticky part, as I said.”
“Something on the order of five times now you’ve said it was a sticky part,” Vara said, her fingers now on her face and ready to dig into the skin in lieu of anything else to squeeze her frustration out on. “Some of us grow weary of being sticky-”
“Not I,” Vaste said. “I could do with more of it. Though not with any of you.”
“Perhaps you might cut to the point of it and be done,” Vara continued, ignoring the interruption, “so that those of us who have other things to do-say, seeing to the defense of Sanctuary-could get back to that.”
“Would you allow me,” Ryin said, irritation infusing his tone, “sixty uninterrupted seconds without the extreme pleasure,” he put emphasis on pleasure, as though it were the foulest curse, “of your sweet and indulgent voice, and I might complete a full sentence and thus end the story I am trying to tell.” His jaw worked as though he were chewing something heavy. “J’anda read the minds of these creatures and saw their monstrous origin, and then Cyrus and Aisling confirmed their creation by seeing-”
“What a wondrous pairing, those two,” Vara said, and her hand dropped from her face to the table again, where she dug her fingers into the edge once more.
Ryin ignored her. “-seeing how they were created. There is a portal, and it leads to Mortus’s chambers. The creatures are the souls turned loose after the God of Death’s-well, his death,” Ayend said, after struggling with the phrase. “They are the legacy of what we released when we killed Mortus.” A heavy silence covered the room before Ryin began to speak again. “Cyrus says he will stay until the end to defeat them to, ah …” Ayend pursed his lips, “… atone for his part in their release.”
Vara’s eyes met Alaric’s, which were cool indifference, but she caught a glint in them that she ignored. “Well,” she said, suppressing the internal desire to scream, “isn’t that … noble … of him.”
“He’s quite the honorable chap,” Ayend said coolly.
“Interesting to hear you speak so favorably of him,” Vaste said with amusement, “seeing as you’ve always been his harshest critic.”
“I’m everyone’s harshest critic,” Ryin said, sitting up straight in his chair, “because I don’t believe in letting ideas pass unless they’ve some virtue and until they’ve been considered carefully. Perhaps we made a mistake in killing Mortus, perhaps we erred in defending Termina for the evacuation, perhaps not on one or both counts; either way, there are plainly consequences that need to be dealt with by someone, both here and abroad. Whatever our prior decisions, we are stuck with the fallout from them now, and I see Cyrus trying as best he can to cope with his part. Luukessia is at war, these things are numerous, the land is fragmented and the coming war will likely be disastrous. Cyrus could use additional forces to drive these things back and finish them in order to have Curatio destroy the portal.”
There was a long pause, and Alaric stared at Ryin from his place at the head of the table, the grey skies highlighted out the small windows behind him to the balcony. It might have been Vara’s imagination, but the sky seemed to dim further as Alaric wrapped a hand around his mouth as if trying to suppress any sound that might escape. “No,” he said at last. “His cause is, of course, just, and worthy, but the army we broke is not the last of what we will see of the dark elves. We cannot move to assist our comrades in Luukessia unless we know for fact that the dark elves have moved all their armies against other objectives.” He bowed his head. “I do not see us coming into an abundance of news in that regard, not anytime soon, not more than idle rumors.”