Master (Book 5) (46 page)

Cyrus cocked an eyebrow at him. “Who are we going to meet?”

“You’ll see,” J’anda said.

“Gods,” Cyrus said, “nobody wants to tell me anything, but everyone wants to tell me what to do now.”

“Everyone wants to have your ear,” J’anda said, “to believe they have influence over your actions. There is a difference, and I hope you see it.”

“Right now all I see is short people,” Cyrus said, taking another suspicious glare from a gnomish couple that passed him on the dirt street.

“The thing that always struck me about the Gnomish Dominions,” J’anda said, “is all the little differences between their cities and ours.” His lips pursed in a smile.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?” Cyrus asked.

“A small one, I assure you.”

Cyrus chuckled. “Nyad would be most upset with you for being insensitive about the little people.”

“I feel a tiny pang of regret.”

Cyrus snorted that time.

They followed the path out of the little town, Cyrus marveling at the scale of things. He had been to Huern before, years earlier when he tried to recruit gnomes to Sanctuary. It had struck him as a fairly insular place at the time. The smells were curious; he passed small chimneys belching puffs of smoke no larger than his fist, the faint aroma of bread misting within them. He stuck his face into one and breathed deep, the smoke filling his lungs, the smell of the cooked, ground meal nearly choking him.

“Just because everything is smaller, don’t assume it is any less potent,” J’anda said.

Cyrus kept up with the enchanter, medium strides that left indentations in the dirt road an inch or two deep. He wondered if he might be causing real damage with his mere steps as he saw a small wagon drawn by dogs go rustling by. It bumped in the slight ruts in the dirt.

“Just try not to touch anything,” J’anda said.

They wended their way up a nearby hill. It was a very slight slope, but it carried them high enough that Cyrus could easily see Nyad waiting in the center of the square, a small crowd gathered around her, as though she were a statue for them to admire. “That doesn’t look promising,” Cyrus said.

“She knows the ways of the gnomes,” J’anda said. “I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

They crested the hill, a small green grass field stretching forth below them. Cyrus caught sight of a normal-sized figure waiting below, a heavy cloak and cowl covering them from top of the head to the tip of their toes.

“Son of a—” He whipped his head around. “Did you bring me to a meeting with Malpravus?”

“No,” J’anda said sharply. “Who do you take me for?”

Cyrus continued down the hill with the enchanter, studying the figure as he approached. Clouds swept by overhead, a stiff breeze blowing the stranger’s cloak as they drew closer. Cyrus squinted, wondering why there was a strange elevation about the man’s—he felt sure it was a man—shoulders within the cloak. Still, the figure stood somewhat sideways, providing little but a silhouette for him to go on.

There was a mighty tree, three times Cyrus’s height at least, lingering overhead. As they drew under its boughs, J’anda’s pace slowed. “I need a staff, I think,” the enchanter said. “A walking stick. Something.” His breaths came with a little more labor than they should have given the leisurely pace, Cyrus thought.

“At least you can just teleport back,” the cloaked figure said roughly, voice a low sound, familiar to Cyrus’s ears. “Rather than walk back to town.”

“I know you,” Cyrus said, staring at the cloak. It dawned on him just before the cowl was swept back to reveal navy flesh and dark hair, with spiked pauldrons that stood tall on each shoulder. “You sonofa—”

“I wasn’t exactly expecting a warm greeting from you,” Terian Lepos said, his once-ubiquitous grin strangely absent. “But I hope you can at least put aside your anger for this meeting … because we desperately need to talk.”

“Were you anticipating a blade to the face?” Cyrus asked, his hand hovering on Praelior’s hilt. “I saw you fighting against us in the field at Livlosdald.”

“Have you gone blind?” Terian asked. “Because I sat on my horse during that battle and never cast a spell nor drew my blade. So I find it curious you would have seen me fight against anyone.”

“I know the two of you will need to sort through your warring emotions,” J’anda said, “but I hope you do it swiftly so that I may be granted the grace to have the necessary conversation here before I die of old age.”

“Why do I need to have a meeting with this traitorous filth?” Cyrus asked.

“Because maybe I can help you,” Terian said archly, lips pursed in obvious disapproval.

“Help me … what?” Cyrus asked with a laugh. “Die? I’ll call upon you if ever I want to go slowly and painfully.”

“I could also do it swiftly and painlessly, if you’d like,” Terian offered. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“You cannot believe this man has any aid to give us,” Cyrus said, whirling on J’anda. The wind tugged at the wisps of the enchanter’s greyed hair, the once stark white faded with his aging. “He offers a blade hidden in his sleeve while he proffers a hand.”

“He is placed to assist you,” J’anda said, “in ways you don’t even know. He is also favored of the Sovereign, and has the ear of Malpravus.”

Cyrus turned to look at Terian, focusing his full attention on the dark knight. “And why would he help me?”

“Because on the day Alaric Garaunt died,” Terian said hotly, “you weren’t the only one that was left broken and mourning.”

Cyrus felt a curious flush on his face. “Oh?”

“He may have called us ‘brother,’” Terian said, voice shot through with wistfulness, “but you and I lost a hell of a lot more than a guildmate when that bridge collapsed.”

Cyrus stood there in silence for a long pause, the wind whipping around the three of them, tree rustling in the autumn breeze. “What do you want, Terian?”

Terian’s ire broke, and his face split in a mirthless smile that looked somehow haunted. “The son of a humble warrior leads one of the greatest armies in Arkaria. Oh, how the times do change.”

“And have you changed?” Cyrus asked, still waiting.

“I have changed,” Terian said without a trace of emotion. “But that’s irrelevant. There are forces at work here, bending and shaping the world in ways I don’t care for. There are things I have seen …” the dark knight shuddered, an impressive effect that rattled his armor, “… that make me fear for the future, should I live so long as to see it.”

“You’re in over your head.” Cyrus spoke it aloud as soon as the realization hit him.

Terian’s lips formed a tight smile. “With the very, very wrong people. In so deep, I fear to open my mouth to take a breath, to speak a word. I regularly stand in the presence of a god, take his orders, carry out his wishes. And I do it all with the Guildmaster of Goliath close at hand.”

Cyrus stared at him coolly. “You should choose your friends with greater care.”

Terian’s eyes flashed, but his response came back calm. “I didn’t have that many options to choose from.”

“Sounds like poor decision making,” Cyrus said, not even bothering to hide the slap.

“Perhaps,” Terian allowed, barely a whisper. “But how I got here is completely irrelevant. I can help you.”

“Why?” Cyrus asked with a burst of laughter at the absurdity of it all. “Why now? Why risk your life, which I know is precious to you? And to help me, whom you wanted to kill not so very long ago?”

“Because …” Terian said, and the words spilled forth in a very practiced manner, as though he had repeated them often enough to hear them in his sleep, “‘Redemption is a path you must walk every day.’”

Cyrus just stared at him. “That is possibly the most ludicrously simplistic bit of idiocy I’ve ever had mouthed to me. What addle-brained moron came up with that trite bit of nonsense?”

Terian let a low guffaw. “It was the previous holder of your august office.”

Cyrus felt his skin cool a few degrees. “Alaric.”

“None other,” Terian said. “It was something he repeated to me before the bridge went down.” The dark knight turned his head so that Cyrus saw him in profile. “He coupled it with the reminder that he still believed in me.” Terian looked at Cyrus, dark eyes hidden in the shadows cast by the branches of the tree above, yet Cyrus could see the burning within them nonetheless. “I walked the wrong path. I followed the wrong people. It took a considerable distance for me to come to that conclusion with all certainty, but I am there now.” He stared at Cyrus. “Now I offer you a choice—do you want to help me start walking back, or would you rather just watch me fall?”

Cyrus stared at the dark knight. “You once taught me the lesson of facing down that which you fear, even when you can’t see it. Of fighting past the legends and rumors and bullshit and striking directly at a foe. But when the day came that you considered me your enemy, you did not afford me the courtesy of coming at me straight on. Why should I believe that you’re facing me head on now?”

“Because,” Terian said, and he sounded choked, “you are not my enemy.”

“I killed your father,” Cyrus said.

“Did you?” Terian asked, and there was something ghostly, a lightening of blue shade of his face, as though he had suddenly gone a bit pale. “I could only wish you had killed him.”

Cyrus felt his brow furrow hard at that. “I stabbed him to death and left him to rot on the bridge in Termina, Terian.”

“Of course you did,” Terian said, his expression wavering. “But it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“You spent the better part of a year following behind me as a friend until you found occasion to betray and kill me,” Cyrus said. “But now it’s … bygones? Water under the—”

“Fallen bridge, yes,” Terian said, his face still curiously absent some emotion and dotted with the specter of another. “Deep water under a fallen bridge, I’d say.”

“You told me it wasn’t over between us,” Cyrus said. “At the end of that very bridge.”

“It’s over now,” Terian said, simply and definitively. “Unless you want to revive it.”

Cyrus waited, trying to discern any hint of deceit. “That easy?”

“It may only have been a few months, but I’ve lived a lifetime of fear since that day,” Terian said. “I have other things to concern myself with now. Much more frightening things than the new Guildmaster of Sanctuary.”

“You dangle under the nose of the God of Darkness and want to betray him to me?” Cyrus asked. “To what purpose?”

“To the ultimate purpose,” Terian said without hesitation. “I want the dark elves to lose this war. I want the Sovereign to leave Saekaj again, for good this time.”

Cyrus watched him. “And you think I’m the means to that?”

“You’re the only one who’s beaten him,” Terian said, and at this Cyrus caught a hint of displeasure. “If there were anyone else—the King of the Elves, the Council of Twelve—I’d be talking to them. But he’s got them on the run. Reikonos reels under assault from our armies, and even now we make inroads into the east. The Elves cower across the Perda, watching the world of man burn. The Riverlands are weeks away from a determining battle.” Terian raised his arms. “You are the only opposition. The pebble in his boot.”

“A pebble in the boot is hardly fatal,” Cyrus said.

“The scorpion in his boot, then,” Terian said, and his facade broke. “Do you want my help or not?”

“What help do you offer?” Cyrus asked.

Terian lapsed into a sullen silence. “For now, there is little I can tell you.”

Cyrus laughed. “I thought you were sitting at the right hand of the Sovereign.”

Terian did not look amused. “I know much. But I can tell you little, for the same reason as J’anda.” He gestured at the enchanter with a flip of the arm. “If you suddenly were to make your decisions in possession of tightly guarded information, my head would swiftly be separated from my body, and I would be of no more use to you.”

“You’re of little enough use right now that I’d scarcely notice the difference,” Cyrus quipped. “Except as the aforementioned suicide aid.”

“Give me time,” Terian said, and his words carried a hint of pleading. “There are things happening now that will become widespread enough knowledge soon. I’ll be able to tell you everything once that happens, without fear of reprisal.”

“Or you could just … surrender yourself to my custody,” Cyrus said with a shrug. “Give yourself up, return with me to Sanctuary. Then you could rat your guts out as loud as you wanted, squeal your secrets.”

“And you would protect me?” Terian asked with a smile.

“Sure,” Cyrus said. “You’d be safe enough in the dungeon.”

“The dungeon,” Terian said with a slow nod of acknowledgment and a faint smile to match. “Of course.”

“That’s more for my safety, I’ll admit,” Cyrus said. “But if you want to help—”

“It is not only my life at risk,” Terian said. “There are others, people I care about, who I would not put in the way of harm.”

Cyrus looked at J’anda. “And you? Do you share the secrets of which he speaks?”

“I do,” the enchanter said with a nod. “And I keep them for the same reason—to prevent harm from falling on Terian’s loved ones.”

Cyrus felt a cool scorn blossom within. “I find it hard to believe you have anyone who loves you left at home.”

“So do I,” Terian whispered, “but apparently I do. Their lives matter to me.”

“Then why not root for the Sovereign to win this war?” Cyrus asked. “Surely they’ll be fine if he does—”

“No one will be fine if he wins,” Terian said, hard as quartal. “Arkaria will drown in bones.”

“You can’t tell me anything that can help,” Cyrus said. “I have to trust you until such time as you feel open to telling me what you say I need to know.” He shook his head slowly. “Of all the truly stupid things I have done and been accused of, this vies for top prize.”

“I can tell you one thing,” Terian said, glancing at J’anda. “There is a spy very close to you. We think they’re on the Council.”

Cyrus looked from the dark knight to J’anda, who nodded. “A spy that is not me,” J’anda said. “Obviously, I am a spy.”

Cyrus felt his expression sour. “Obviously.”

“The Sovereign knows much of the inner workings of Sanctuary,” Terian said. “More than he should simply from J’anda’s reports.”