Master (Book 5) (16 page)

“Having your actions examined is a part of life,” Verity said. “Expecting no one to ever question you is a very dim view for a leader to take. Especially one who has some fifteen thousand people following him.”

“I’m not a l …” Cyrus caught himself before finishing the statement, and he looked to Verity to find her in the midst of a very small smile, filled with utter self-satisfaction.

“You were about to say you’re not a leader,” she said, still smiling in that self-satisfied way.

“I’m not
the
leader,” Cyrus said. “The guild is not in my charge except in a raid.”

“Hem!” she said, and it sounded like a grunt to his ears. “If you can find another person that Sanctuary looks to in greater number—”

“Curatio,” Cyrus said, not even bothering to let her finish. He steered Windrider along the rutted road, the ground made hard by days of sun and little rain. Dust followed from every step the horses made, and Cyrus’s eyes swept the flat land of the horizon as they headed east.

“In name, he is leader,” Verity said, her lips twisted at the end. “But leadership is more than a title.”

“That’s nice,” Cyrus said.
This is a pointless conversation
.

She held her tongue for almost an hour before speaking again. During that time Cyrus felt oddly at peace with himself.

“You and the shelas’akur,” Verity began, speaking slowly.

Cyrus braced himself, felt his muscles tense. “Yes?”

“You have known each other for some time,” Verity said. Cyrus looked at her, but she did not return his gaze.

“A few years.” He sniffed the air, caught the scent of horse, and the faint smell of the plains air with its mixture of dust and drying fields.

“Only a few?” Verity asked.

“Four years, I think,” Cyrus said. “Of course I was gone for over a year in there.”

Verity took a long moment before she next spoke. “Curious.”

Cyrus thought about snorting, about losing his patience with the wizard and her odd and nosy manner. “What is curious?” he asked instead, being as patient as he could.

“I have seen the two of you exchange more in a look than most can in a life,” Verity said, and her every word came slow like rich cream poured over dried oat cereal. She glanced over at him and her face was open for once, regarding him with clear interest. “I say it is curious because it is close to a phenomenon we elves call ‘covekan.’ It is—”

“I know what covekan is,” Cyrus said quickly.

“Do you?” Verity said. “Do you, truly?”

“I know it takes something along the lines of a century to form that sort of bond,” Cyrus said, letting his eyes fall along the flat horizon, taking in the occasional tree far in the distance. He could see some woods, but they were far off; it was miserable ground for any sort of ambush. “I know it’s a closeness that elves share with each other that a human could never …” He let his words trail off, felt the emotion well within him and suppressed it. “… never experience. Not at that depth.”

“Indeed,” Verity said with a nod. “That is a passable explanation, given by one who has clearly never experienced it himself.” She sat up straighter in the saddle, and Cyrus suddenly felt as though he were being lectured by a teacher in one of the classrooms at the Society of Arms once more. “Being covekan is not as much about time as bond. It is about reactions. It is about communication—not the verbal but the instinctive, the subtextual. Body language and movement, the encapsulation of one person’s thoughts and being able to read them as though they were a volume you picked up off the shelf. No difficulty in understanding them.”

“Well,” Cyrus said, “I don’t quite know what you’re getting at, because it’s abundantly clear to me that I never know exactly what Vara is thinking.”

“That is the curious thing, isn’t it?” Verity said, nodding sagely. “I think it strange because the only time when I see the two of you share such a bond … is when marching into some fight or another.” She nodded again and pursed her lips. “Isn’t that odd?”

“Yes,” Cyrus said and licked his dry lips. “Most odd, indeed.” And it was, he had to concede, as he rode east on his horse, thinking of little else but that for the rest of the day.

It was after sundown when Cyrus heard them approaching. He and Verity had stopped in a small glade a half-day’s ride from the portal at Wardemos. The scent of the trees was in the air, and there was no need for fire in the early autumn night, so they did not build one. Verity conjured them a simple feast of bread and water, and Cyrus ate it quietly while listening to the sounds of the forest in between bites.

“Hear that?” Verity asked him, her grey pointed hat laid aside along with her staff.

“No,” Cyrus said, pausing to listen. After a moment he caught a faint whisper of something in the distance.

“I believe that’s your army,” she said. Her hair was long and light brown like dark straw and just as brittle looking.

“As you’re a member of Sanctuary, it would be your army as well,” Cyrus said, taking another piece of the soft bread out of the middle of the loaf. The yeasty flavor was blander than the fresh offerings made by Larana in the Sanctuary ovens, but it was hardly the worst thing he’d eaten. By comparison to some of the conjured breads other wizards had made, Verity’s was considerably better in his opinion, and he told her so.

“Age and experience,” she replied crisply, but with a hint—he thought—of pride.

The approach of the horses took some time, and in that interval Cyrus waited silently with Verity, chewing his bread with as little noise as possible. He suspected it would not take long, and he was not disappointed.

“There you are.” Martaina’s voice came from out of the shrubs to his right, and Cyrus turned his head in mild surprise. All the noise had come from the opposite direction.

“You really are quite a wonder, aren’t you?” Cyrus said, lounging on his bedroll.

“Nice of you to finally take notice,” Martaina said, striding into the campsite. Verity acknowledged her with a tip of the hat. Martaina nodded her head quickly to the wizard with—if Cyrus was not mistaken—just a hint of unease.

“I’ve always noticed,” Cyrus said with a shrug as he moved. His armor groaned as he shifted his weight. “I just so rarely say anything because I assume you’ve heard it all before.”

“A compliment withheld is like meat stored away for later; it sours before you get any use out of it,” Verity said sagely.

“Much like over-opinionated wizards, in my experience,” Cyrus said dryly.

“We’ve found signs of an ambush,” Martaina said, cutting off any further repartee. Cyrus sat upright in his bedroll, all his levity gone. “A few miles east, off a side road.”

“Any signs of life?” Cyrus asked, watching her attentively.

“No,” Martaina said, shaking her head, her hair carefully bound in a long ponytail behind her, “but neither is there sign of death.”

“And the perpetrator?” Cyrus asked, trying to study her face. It gave away little.

“I decline to say,” Martaina replied, and Cyrus could see she was holding something back by the tentative way she answered. “You should see for yourself.”

“Let’s go,” Cyrus said, dragging himself to standing and quickly rolling up his bedroll. He pushed the bread into his mouth before he did so, biting on the heel of it to keep it from dropping as he began to roll up the soft cloth.

They saddled up and were ready to ride in minutes, Verity grumbling all the way about the disruption to her supper. They headed east into the crisp night air, no breeze but the one that came in their wake to stir the leaves of the trees. The sky was black without a hint of a moon, and Cyrus followed Martaina closely, a spell that Verity had cast upon him the only thing that allowed him to see.

Only the hint of flat plains was visible to him as he rode on, clouds above shrouding the stars but for small points of light here and there. He was surrounded by nearly a hundred men and women of the army; the rest waited somewhere ahead. A tingle ran over him as he cinched his traveling cloak tighter around him.
Shouldn’t have left this with Windrider when I went into the Realm of Life.

“You’re shivering,” Verity said from next to him.

“Still recovering from my icicle experience earlier today,” Cyrus replied.

“Icicle experience?” Martaina said, looking back at him as she spoke. “I thought you were going to the Realm of Life? You know, lush green fields and forests teeming with happy squirrels.”

“According to Vaste,” Cyrus said, “the squirrels are just not that happy anymore. And the realm has taken a chill.” He tugged at the cloak, making sure it was still tight around him. “Quite a chill.”

They rode for nearly an hour before Cyrus saw torches burning in the distance. They came upon a host, a portion of the search party holding fast at a muddy crossroad. A faded path went north and disappeared out of Cyrus’s sight.

“This way,” Martaina said, and they rode north, the horses’ hoofbeats against the wet ground still echoing in the night.

There was less of an interval this time, and soon enough they entered a moonlit glade, a small wood where the road bent its way through thick old oaks and maples that had grown for centuries on the soils of the northern plains. Martaina held up a hand to stay them as they drew closer to countless torches, the remainder of the army.

“Do you know what we’ll find here?” Martaina asked, turning back to look at him, her green cloak and brown hair both almost black with the lack of light. Her eyes were moving in the darkness, but he could scarcely see them, and they looked like pools of shadow.

“Are you playing a game of riddles with me, woman?” Cyrus asked. “How would I know what we’re going to find? You told me you’d found a site of an ambush and little else.”

“You didn’t ask for anything else,” Martaina said, her eyes still in shadow.

“I assumed we’d find some suggestion of who might be responsible,” Cyrus said with a hint of impatience.

“What made you think that?” Martaina asked. Her face did not move from its stony facade.

“Your expressive personality,” Cyrus said, and dismounted. “Show me what you would have me see.”

She shook her head from the back of her horse. “What I would have you see is so obvious that even your eyes could not fail to miss it here in the dark.” She nodded her head. “Go and look for yourself.”

Cyrus let out a muttered sound of irritation and did as he was bidden. He felt the ground give with each step. It was not quite mud, but nor was it dry, packed soil. It had seen rain enough to be loose, and sun enough not to be sodden. He squinted his eyes and looked at the road. There were ruts from the passage of wagons visible to his eyes, a thousand dimples where feet or hooves had trod, small enough he could place a hand within them if he knelt down to do so. Sprinkled throughout, though, were larger craters.

Cyrus frowned, his brow drawing down as he took a step forward. Here was another crater, and another, large enough to swallow his own footprints whole with some room to spare. He looked down, staring into the dark, sunken impression, trying to see what mystery he could untangle from a place where something—someone—had stepped.

He knelt, furrowing his brow as he studied it. The spell upon his eyes helped illuminate the indentation as he grew closer to the ground. It was large indeed, larger than his foot, larger than a horse hoof. It was elongated, not like the pad of an animal but more like the heel-to-toe arrangement of a being that walked upright. Like a dark elf.

“This is too large to be a dark elf’s footprint,” Cyrus muttered to himself.

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he heard Erith say in the darkness. “Honestly. Go blaming my kind for everything …”

Cyrus leaned closer, and the shadows receded from the bottom of the small crater. There were obvious details now—a massive heel, the forward pads of a foot and individual toes, each punctuated by—

“Claws,” Cyrus said, staring into the footprint before him. “They have claws.”

“Well, you’re not the world’s worst tracker,” Martaina said, still on horseback, “but I wouldn’t want you searching after me if I’d been taken.” He glanced up at her and she looked back at him. “So, they have claws. Claws and great, mighty feet. What conclusion would you draw from that?”

Cyrus stood, the joints of his armor scraping against each other, making a little cry in the night. He looked east, feeling the burning in his blood that raged against the cool night air.
Somewhere out there
, he thought.
Out of the swamps and—

“Well?” Martaina asked, breaking his thought cleanly off. “Out with it. What do you think?”

“You know what I think,” Cyrus said, in a voice so low that he knew only her being an elf would allow her to hear. “You know damned well what we’re dealing with. What … got them.

“Trolls.”

“Troll … slavers?” J’anda’s polite, cultured voice was only lightly salted with disbelief.
No
, Cyrus thought,
not disbelief. More like skepticism
. “Trolls slavers have not operated in the Human Confederations since—”

“Since the war,” Cyrus said. The Council Chambers were roaring with fire once more, the hearths burning and giving off a pleasant warmth and sweet smell. Cyrus cracked his knuckles loudly. Next to him, Erith hissed at him in irritation. He ran his tongue along his teeth and tasted the last residue of the conjured bread he’d finished hours ago. He was famished but had had no time to stop in the kitchens on his way to the Council.

“What makes you automatically jump to the conclusion they’re slavers?” Vaste said, and Cyrus could hear a note of outrage. “Why, they could have been some fine, upstanding citizens, merely out to help passing humans with—” He stopped and sighed. “All right, yes, they were almost certainly slavers. Sad that they’re at work in the Confederation again, as I thought that the last war had taken it right out of them. Apparently the gnomish and dwarven acquisitions they’ve been picking up secondhand from the dark elves are not enough to satiate their grotesque appetites for labor.”

“I’m afraid I’m not terribly familiar with this matter of slavery to which you’re all referring,” Longwell said, his head tilted slightly to the side and one eye narrowed almost to the point of closing. He peered around the table. “Surely you don’t mean to suggest that these trolls are—”