Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (63 page)

“I didn’t like the sound of this when we started to discuss it,” Longwell said, looking a bit stricken under his helm, “and it’s not improving with time. The grapes are turning to vinegar, not wine.”

“Oh … can you make a grape pie?” Vaste asked, looking over at Quinneria.

“Ryin, take us away,” Cyrus said, turning his gaze back to Vara one last time.

She waited there, her expression as serious as he could ever remember. She was standing, back straight, her hand drifting toward her sword’s hilt in the same manner as his, watching him. She seemed to be trying to hold it all in, to keep it together, chin up, as she watched him. With a blur of wind, she began to disappear in the power of the druid teleportation spell. It whipped hard around him, like the typhoon in Aloakna, and with a rush he was carried away from his friends, his home and his wife, and some small part of him worried, as they did, that he might not see them again.

When the wind of the teleportation spell died down, Cyrus was left with an impression of jungle ruins, swallowed up by time and nature, and of little sign of life save for the greenery that sprouted everywhere. The air was hot and heavy, as though rain were coming soon and the air could no longer contain itself. Sweat started down his back the instant the spell faded around him, and he breathed deeply as he looked around for the inevitable attack.

“This is … quiet,” Ryin said, bumping his back against Cyrus’s as they both stood, waiting, the sound of insects chirping in the distance like some choir in an elven temple.

“I thought I told you to leave,” Cyrus said. “Is there a cessation spell over this place?”

“I don’t know, I haven’t tested,” Ryin said, voice tense. “If you think I’m leaving you here, you weren’t listening to your own speech earlier.”

“Damn you people for being so loyal,” Cyrus said, eyes flicking over a building completely swallowed up by thick jungle vines, trees sprouting out of the strange stones that seemed to make up a road through the ground they stood upon. “I guess if you weren’t, though, you’d be gone like the rest.”

“True enough,” Ryin said tensely, and his voice scratched as he spoke. “Do you see anything?”

Cyrus peered into the city’s jungle landscape; it looked very much as though something had stood here once that had been better built than Reikonos or Santir or Isselhelm; it was almost as though one of the elven cities had been utterly swallowed by the greenery the elves so revered, as if nature and life had been given infinite license to run amok in their carefully built places. Something moved and Cyrus followed it without thought; it was a small animal, and he breathed half a breath out. “I see a squirrel. Which, unless you’re Vaste, is probably not cause for concern.”

“I see grasshoppers skipping through the fields ahead,” Ryin said from behind him, still pressed to his back. “I see fallen buildings hewn out of the same kind of stone as the Citadel in Reikonos, stretching, ruined, as far as my sight reaches.”

Cyrus breathed in through his nose, felt the heaviness of the air, sweat dripping down his face and tickling his unshaven jawline as it streamed past the hairs. “Same.” He gazed into the distance; Ryin was correct, there seemed an infinite number of the box-like dwellings before him, all carved out of stone, all probably as perfectly constructed as the Citadel at one time, he figured. Now, though, rough edges were showing, chips from the sides of the blocks, a weathering effect unseen in the tall tower in Reikonos. Time had done its hard work upon this place in a way that the Citadel had not seen, and the vines that covered everything hinted at a fate that Cyrus did not wish to ponder too deeply. “I don’t hear anything but nature.”

“Nor do I,” Ryin said, “though I find myself wishing we’d brought an elf now.”

Cyrus straightened up and drew Rodanthar. He’d kept his hand from the hilt when they’d teleported, fearing to provoke a reaction from Goliath that might result in Ryin’s death, but now that they’d arrived, the jungle noises and the still air worried him more than when he was certain he was teleporting into the heart of the enemy.

Four large buildings stood grouped around the portal. Cyrus glanced back at the portal itself, expecting to find it similarly covered in vines. It was not, however, and dried branches on the ground around it suggested to him that Goliath had spent a fair amount of time clearing it of vegetation since their arrival. Each of the buildings nearest to them was large; at least as large as the smaller guildhalls in Reikonos, and three or four times the size of the average home in Termina. Cyrus reckoned they were at least three stories tall, but with a wider base. He could see an entry to each of them, stationed roughly on the building where it would have been had any of the powers of the modern day constructed it—centered, and with steps leading up into the dark interiors, no hint of a door remaining.

Cyrus stared into the shadowy interior of the nearest building and reached back to tap Ryin on the arm. The druid jumped at the touch and spun to face the same direction as Cyrus. “Should we go inside?” Ryin asked.

“Well, we could stand out here all day and wait for the Goliath guards to come collect us,” Cyrus said, “but frankly, I expected that would have happened by now, and since it hasn’t, I’m starting to think that we should poke around, see if anyone’s still here.”

“What possible reason could they have to abandon it?” Ryin said, sweat streaming down his own forehead. He wiped at it with his sleeve, darkening the material with moisture. “They have an army significantly larger than our own. Even if they suspected we were coming with everything—dark elves and Luukessians—all they would need do is either shut off the portal or gather around it with spears and plunge them into invaders as they appeared, the way everyone else does.”

“Malpravus seldom does exactly what’s expected of him,” Cyrus said, starting slowly toward the open door. He rustled the grass with a boot as he brushed over a crack that was splitting wide with green rushes. “I suspect he’s not about to start just because he’s chasing immortality; he’s not got it yet, after all.”

“Still,” Ryin said, “it doesn’t make much sense to leave his base behind … unless he needed his army for something else.”

That caused a cold prick of fear to run up Cyrus’s back. “There’s nowhere he could deploy an army of twenty thousand that he’d be able to have much effect. As you said, everyone’s guarding their portals.”

“Well, that’s a relief, then,” Ryin said with heavy irony. “Clearly they can do absolutely no harm, anywhere.”

“If only that were so,” Cyrus said, his boots softly tapping upon the stone with each footfall. He drew Praelior as well, just to be safe, and the world slowed to a crawl around him. More than the effect of each sword by itself, holding both the blades seemed to compound their abilities. A cricket’s chirp dragged over seconds, and he jerked forward in a swift motion, leaving Ryin behind, following at a crawl.

“Good gods,” Ryin said, every word proceeding slowly from his mouth, barely understandable as language. “You’re so—”

“I know,” Cyrus said, walking back to him with easy steps.
I probably look like I’m dashing around in a blur, worse than Ermoc did when he had Praelior alone, or like Terian does with Noctus.

They walked together, Cyrus carefully controlling his pace, under a sweltering sun that filtered in from the green canopy above, branches reaching out between the trees that had sprouted in this place. They touched and had grown together, forming a network of branches and vines that seemed bound close to keep out the sun in places. Cyrus observed a shadowed space between two buildings, the boughs and other bindings between them so thick that the alley looked to be in deepest darkness.

Cyrus kept his ears prepared for something, anything, but over the sound of the insects and their own footsteps, he heard nothing but the occasional chirp of birds in the distance.

“This is unnerving,” Ryin said under his breath. “I am becoming unnerved.”

“Nothing’s happening,” Cyrus muttered slowly back to him as they walked, the druid only a step behind him. Ryin still squinted as though he were having difficulty understanding.

“That’s the problem,” Ryin said. “The tension is as thick as the air. If Goliath had just attacked already, we would know they are here, the problem would be settled, one way or another—”

“Likely ending in your death.”

“But it would be settled,” Ryin said patiently.

“With your death!”

“And thus I’d be free from worry.” Ryin’s robes trailed against sprouting grass, causing it to rustle beneath him. The druid nearly jumped out of his skin, and when he landed, his soft leather shoes clapped against the stone road. “Gyah! You see what I mean?”

“And I hear it,” Cyrus said, listening carefully to Ryin’s shout echoing through the jungle, the birds now silent. “As I suspect everyone else in this part of Arkaria just did.”

They were only some twenty paces from the entry to the building now, the shadows pooling deeply under the arch that led within. Cyrus still could not see inside no matter how he squinted. He cast the Eagle Eye spell upon himself under his breath, but it only served to let him see the darkness closer; there was no substance to it, no shape, just a hallway lacking light from above thanks to the boughs and branches and vines hanging over the building, very much like a tunnel under a mountain.

“Come on,” Cyrus whispered, and started forward again, just as silently, “and try not to get scared by your own shadow this time.”

“It’s not
my
shadow I’m afraid of,” Ryin said, “it’s all the other ones in this place.”

Cyrus crept closer, and the darkness deepened, the lines of the hallway within the door becoming clearer the closer they got. Cyrus clutched both swords, listening carefully, wondering if he were missing something, Ryin a pace behind him, holding his breath as they drew closer … and closer …

“There’s nobody in there,” came a voice from behind them.

Ryin jumped again. “AUGH!” the druid called, shaking under his robes as Cyrus spun to see who had spoken—

And Cyrus froze himself when he saw, in wonder and surprise, the person standing in the entry to the building across from him.

Her hair was long and dark, though it looked stringy and unclean. Her skin was dark as though she’d been outside every day of her life, though Cyrus remembered it in exactly that shade even in times where she had not ventured much out of doors. Even from this distance he could see the relief in her green eyes, though he did not immediately recognize her face, the face of a flower girl he had purchased a glowrose from only a few years earlier—

“Imina,” Cyrus whispered, and he saw the relief sag into her figure as he broke into a run toward her, cutting across the distance between them in mere seconds.

“Cyrus,” Ryin said, hurrying after him, “exercise caution. You don’t know—”

“I have the Eagle Eye spell upon me, Ryin,” Cyrus said. “If she were an illusion, I would see it.”

“Still,” Ryin said, his leather soles slapping hard against the stones as they ran, “caution is never a bad thing to employ; it’s not as though anyone has ever said, ‘I wish I was more heedless in my actions—’”

“I’ve often thought that,” Cyrus said, “in regards to my pursuit of Vara.” He thundered to a stop a few feet away from Imina where she stood under the canopy, tiny pinpricks of light breaking through between leaves to shine upon her like diamonds on her simple cloth dress. It did not look new but nor did it look old, merely a bit weathered, as though it had seen some considerable use. She wore sandals, and her feet looked rugged, as though from long walking. “Imina …”

“Cyrus,” Imina said, smiling faintly. “He said you would come.”

“Are you …?” Cyrus stood back, afraid to come any closer, afraid he would see—a bloodless wound to indicate death, her very nature being controlled by Malpravus, something, anything to indicate the treachery he was coming to expect. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said with a breath of relief. “They all left, all of them, and he came to me before they did, told me they would leave me here for you to find.”

“That’s incredibly generous of them,” Ryin said suspiciously, arriving slightly winded at Cyrus’s side. “And a bit kinder that I would expect from Malpravus.”

“He treated me decently,” Imina said, looking right at Cyrus. “He seemed very fixed on not upsetting you unduly.”

“I guess I didn’t notice that proclivity in my dealings with him,” Cyrus said, still holding back from her, his suspicions a wedge between them that he did not dare remove. “Why did he leave you behind?”

“He was done with me,” she said, her thin shoulders shaking very slightly as she shrugged. “He had no further use for me, he said, and rather than march me into harm with his army, he simply left me behind … to convey a message.”

Cyrus chilled immediately, the hot jungle sun forgotten. “What message?”

Imina looked at Ryin, and then at him. “He said … that he was sorry you were interrupted the other night. He said that … you will come to see it his way, before the end. That he was not done, that there is more that needs to be finished between you.”

“Oh, indeed,” Ryin muttered, “there’s a good spilling of blood still demanded betwixt you.”

“He didn’t want to fight,” Imina said. “He seemed … disappointed that it came to that. He wanted to show you something. ‘The first steps,’ he called them. He wanted to harness some power, wanted you to see it.”

“Where is he?” Cyrus asked coldly, staring into the distant eyes of his former wife as she stared back at him, just a touch too blankly for his liking. She did not seem as though she were fully here, and he found it worrying.
Is it all in my mind? Or is she … different?
He watched her carefully, wondering.
All these betrayals have left me second-guessing everything.

Imina’s gaze snapped into place on his, and she shook again, just slightly, as though emotion long held back began to make its way out. “He’s …” She brought her lips together and seemed to try to swallow, but choked slightly. “He’ll … be coming for you, he said. He’ll call out for you when the moment is right.” She looked up, and her eyes glistened at the corners. “He said so.”