Master (Book 5) (65 page)

“I must,” Vidara said, but she paused at the door, cloak as green as summer leaves flowing behind her. “I need tell you both one thing before I go …” She paused at the door, and he saw her lay a hand upon the frame, the stones that bordered it. Her long fingers traced lines as she stood there, and she was silent for a moment, as though trying to decide what to say. “Be wary,” she said at last and turned to leave.

“Be wary of what?” Vara asked, and once more the goddess halted in her steps, though this time she did not turn far enough to let them see her face.

“Of everything,” Vidara said, and she disappeared with only the slow swish of her green cloak to herald the passing of the Goddess of Life.

It came the close of the first month of spring, some nine days after the Goddess of Life came to Sanctuary, and everywhere her touch was visible in the world, so far as Cyrus could see. The temperate winter in the Plains of Perdamun was broken by a streak of warm days so pleasant and fair that he could scarcely conceive of better weather on the Emerald Coast.

The morning Council meeting was done with the balcony doors fully open, and they had nearly wrapped up their day’s business, the summer air calling them outside, when the doors to the Chamber opened once more, and an old friend entered.

“J’anda,” Cyrus said, the first to see him. “It is … good to see you, my friend.”

The enchanter’s gleam was still in his eyes, though the lines on his face seemed to have become even more pronounced. “It is good to be back among friends,” he said, his cultured voice not hiding that sliver of pleasure that crept into it.

He fielded affections from some, strong handshakes from others, smiles from all. He was settled in his chair with greatest fanfare; the return of a conquering hero could not have been more gleeful or well taken. He seated himself, his blue robe draped over the wooden arms of the chair, the rich stitching at home on a man Cyrus had always thought of as impeccable in all things.

“So,” Vaste said, with—did Cyrus imagine it?—just a little deference, “how did it go?”

“Saekaj Sovar is at peace,” J’anda said, interlacing his wrinkled hands. “But you already suspected, did you not?”

“Suspected,” Curatio said, “but heard no confirmation.”

“What happened down there?” Vara asked.

J’anda’s eyes clouded for a moment, and he did not look at a single one of them, focusing instead on a spot on the table. “War. Death. Chaos. All the things you would have expected, I think.”

“There was a lot of death walking around when last I saw your army,” Vaste said. “Is it … gone?”

“The dead have returned to their rest,” J’anda said simply.

“And … you won?” Cyrus asked carefully.

“We won,” J’anda said with a nod, “if winning is possible when your house turns in upon itself.”

“Who stands atop the house now?” Vara asked, and Cyrus wondered if she knew something he did not.

“Someone who wishes you to have this,” J’anda said, removing a scroll from his sleeve and sliding it toward Cyrus.

This time it was snatched by Curatio, whose fingers knocked Cyrus’s aside as if he were trying to teach a child table manners. The healer opened the scroll and read it, eyes bobbing from side to side. “Well … that is unexpected,” he said when he was finished.

“Was it?” Cyrus asked, a little irritated, shaking his gauntleted fingers. The snap had somehow stung, even through the plate armor.

“Congratulations, Lord Davidon of Perdamun,” Curatio said, handing Cyrus the scroll.

Cyrus took it with outstretched hands and pulled it open lengthwise, eyes running down the parchment as he read. It was as Curatio had said, a declaration from the Dark Elven Sovereignty of their cession of claim to the entirety of the plains. He raced through it to the end and started to read it again, but was stopped by the signature.

Cyrus leaned back in his chair, eyes fixed on the seal below. It looked different than the one he’d seen for the Sovereignty before, and his eyes flew to J’anda, who sat with a waiting smile upon his lips. “Truly?” Cyrus asked.

“Truly,” J’anda said.

“Truly, the rest of us would like to know what is going on,” Vaste said rather loudly.

Cyrus stared at the enchanter, pondering the meaning of the signature, of the parchment, of everything. “Do you suppose …” he asked, carefully taking his gaze to the enchanter’s eyes, which were visible just above where J’anda had steepled his hands, “that this means he and I … are done?”

J’anda took a breath at this, long and slow, and then he looked Cyrus directly in the eye. “I think he is done.”

Cyrus looked back at the parchment and smiled, something full, something deep, like business had concluded greatly to his satisfaction. Like some weight had lifted from him, some validation come down from on high to affirm the moment on the beach when he’d spared the sword and let Terian Lepos wander off into the woods alone. “Good.” He gave the parchment a nod, then smiled and looked up at the Council assembled around him. “Now we both are.”

They had celebrated J’anda’s welcome return with a feast prepared by Larana. Fatted calves, fresh vegetables, strawberries—all these had graced the table, and the wine had flowed from casks. Far below his balcony, Cyrus could hear the celebration still going on. The curtain wall that separated Sanctuary from the plains was lit by watch fires and torches, and he could see the men moving about on their lonely watches, music swirling out into the night from the open doors to the foyer.

Cyrus watched from above, alone, listening to the notes grow discordant at a distance. He had heard the melodies played fresh when he had stood upon the stair, watching at the distance he felt between himself and the members of the guild. He was the watcher, the silent observer—like Alaric had been—the encourager that walked the walls in the night watches, patting each soldier on the back and breathing kindnesses, but never the host at the center of the party, never the man in the middle of the ring of acclaim.

He stood under a lit, full moon, and regarded it as it regarded him, bone-white glow shedding soft upon the dark land.

I am alone.

I am the leader.

He smiled ruefully.
But I repeat myself.

The sound of his door opening came as a surprise beneath the soft rush of the lace in the breeze. He’d thought it a curious choice when he’d seen it in Alaric’s quarters; now he wondered if it hadn’t been someone else who’d chosen it, and Alaric had merely left it there … after.

“Hello?” Cyrus spoke into the dark. The torches’ soft glow lit the floor, and the smell of dinner still hung heavy upon the night air. He saw movement behind the lace, ready to grasp his sword out of little more than habit, and then he saw the face of his visitor. “You.”

“Me,” Vara said simply, brushing through the white curtain, the cloth streaming between her fingertips as the wind caught it, pulling it playfully away.

“Shouldn’t you be at the celebration?” Cyrus asked.

She arched the eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you?”

He swept a hand toward the balcony. “Clearly I have much to do here.”

“Clearly.” She walked past him and stood at the balcony’s edge, leaning upon the stone rail and looking out.

He felt a strange compulsion to explain himself. “Alaric didn’t … partake of events for very long, you know.”

She did not look at him. “There were many things that Alaric did not do. Such as go after the gods.” She delivered it with a little levity to ease the sting. “You are your own man.”

Cyrus felt a little laugh escape. “I’m still following him. I’m following a dead man.” He laughed again. “And everyone else is following me.”

“I can think of worse examples,” she said.

“So,” he said after an appropriate pause, “what brings you to the top of the tower?”

“I’m still quite irate that you stole these quarters from me in that election,” she said with a straight face as the moonlight leeched the gold from her hair. “I think I might have to demand you cede them and go sleep on your ruddy plains that everyone seems to have given you.”

He laughed unexpectedly, and it felt good. “I think I may be bound to this tower now.” He felt the laughter disappear without a trace. “I find it ironic that they call me the Master of Sanctuary; for the truth is that leadership, as Alaric did it, makes you as much a slave to your followers.”

“He did emphasize that,” she said. “But is that so bad? To serve a good people, to help them achieve … whatever it is they want for themselves?”

“No,” Cyrus said and looked out with her into the night. “That is not so bad.”

“What do you want, Cyrus Davidon?” she asked, quietly.

He felt a great stirring within, as though this might be the most important question he had been asked yet. “I … don’t know.” He caught the glimmer of surprise. “Are you asking me as Guildmaster, as a warrior, as a—”

“As a man,” she said, looking at him from the railing. Her hair was aglow, soft white, the torches bathing her in warmth on one side and the cold light of the moon sapping her color on the other side.

“I …” Cyrus stumbled in his words. “I am a Guildmaster, though.
The
Guildmaster. It, uh, governs everything I do …”

She stared at him, and her lips moved, just slightly, before she spoke. They looked red even in the moonlight. “You are my Guildmaster, and I owe you my loyalty. I am yours to command.” Her eyes swept down, then back up, and the blue gave him a glimmer of something—hope. “But I don’t just want you to be my Guildmaster.”

Cyrus felt his mouth go dry. “A life spent in chains is no life at all.”

Vara frowned at him, but it did little to sully her beautiful face. “Kinky. Did the dark elven slattern teach you that?”

“You’re the one who said, ‘Love will find a slave,’ if I’m not mistaken.” He chuckled and she matched him. It was perhaps the warmest moment in recent memory he could recall of her.

“Some ties are worth the binding, I think,” she said. “Some chains worth the wearing.”

She leaned in and kissed him, her soft lips upon his, and it took him back to a moment on a street in Termina when the world had seemed so glorious and bright. He pressed back upon her lips with his own, felt her hand on his face, smooth fingers running down his jaw and the taste of her tongue upon his own.

They broke, and he looked at her, smitten, awestruck. She smiled. “You aren’t alone.”

He took only a moment to lean back in and kiss her again, more fully this time. It was rich and delicious and something long, long desired. Somewhere in the midst of it, as he rested a hand on those golden locks and she entwined her fingers in his dark hair, he came to believe her—to believe that truly, he might indeed not be alone.

Alaric Garaunt was alone. Truly, desperately, completely alone. The silence persisted for days upon end, then it would be broken by the maddening tap of something slowly trying to steal his sanity. He tried to ignore it, of course, but that never worked for more than a few hours at a time. It would continue, unceasing, unremitting, unrelenting, until finally he would exhibit the first signs of strain. He would talk to himself, in a normal tone at first, then with increasing violence. Had his hands been free, he would have gesticulated wildly, making points to himself. His hands were not free, however, and so he was forced to imagine that he was making his gestures. It was a difficult thing to cope with for a man who had been able to make himself insubstantial at a mere thought to suddenly find himself anchored to the same place, month after month, year after year, with little company but the silence when it was silent, the maddening noise when it attempted to drive him mad, and …

… and the appearance of the others, when he was meant to suffer.

On a usual day of torment it was only Boreagann that would appear. Blunt of face, slow of wit, but skilled in the arts of dealing pain. He could draw the blood so skillfully that the wounds would close in such a way as to yield the maximum suffering before they healed. He smelled of rotten fish, wore a helm that looked like it had been carved from the arse end of a particularly shaggy bear, and when he breathed his foul breath, Alaric felt that the bear’s arse metaphor worked all too well once again.

Today, though, Boreagann was not alone. He had company, company of the usual sort. Of course. Because today could not be a day of silence, a day of the maddening noise or a day of simple torment.

No, today was a day for taunting. And those were the worst of all.

“Greetings, gentleman,” Alaric said from his place upon the cold, metal table. He was naked, and if he had felt exposed when he had first arrived here, over a year ago, it had not improved in the intervening time.

“Alaric,” came the booming voice of Boreagann’s companion. Alaric did not even care to think of him by name anymore. His helm was a thing of crafted lines and anger given armored form. The rest of his plate was much the same, hiding almost every part of him beneath it, giving little or nothing away of its wearer. The booming voice did this as well; it was at once jovial, but threatening, good-natured but heavy in its cruelty. Vile anger was a sweet sauce to this fellow, Alaric knew by long experience. “It is a good day, is it not?”

“Having not been outside,” Alaric said, level of tone and forcing a pleasant smile upon his lips, “I would not care to speculate. But, being as you are the warden and I am the prisoner, I will simply have to take your word for it.”

The companion slowed a step, taking in Alaric’s sunny disposition. It gave him pause, Alaric knew, and that made him feel something warm deep inside, in a hidden place where even Boreagann could not carve it out of him with all the implements he regularly employed. “I have to admit, you are in a far better mood after a year here than I had anticipated,” the companion said, booming again. “I had thought you would break.”

“I have never broken before,” Alaric said with a half shrug. “I see no reason to start now.”