Crusader: The Sanctuary Series, Volume Four (57 page)

Vara bristled. “I have always cared for my family.”

“And always been exceptionally poor at showing it,” Isabelle said around a mouthful of apple. “Not that I haven’t appreciated the years of scorn through my attempts to cultivate a relationship with you.”

Well, I’m here now, you spotted cow,
Vara thought, but did not say. Instead, she said, “I appreciate your forbearance during my more difficult periods of interaction.”

“That would be your whole life, dear,” Isabelle said gently, “but nevermind that, I suppose. What brings you to me now? Not a sense of familial loneliness, I suspect.”

“The war,” Vara said.

“Of course.” There was a flicker in Isabelle’s eyes, tired, and the smile faded as she held the apple in her hand then gave it a look as though it had lost its appeal. “This war consumes everything, and the attention of all. So what of it? What do you need?”

“News more than anything,” Vara said and let herself take a step closer to Isabelle. “How goes the front here? Is the Sovereign pushing his troops forward?”

Isabelle surveyed her sister with a demeanor almost more stoic than Vara herself could manage. “No. Not at present. Why do you ask?”

Vara considered for just the briefest space of time lying. To say something other than the truth might be preferable to letting Isabelle know, after all. But for Isabelle, it mattered little because—
she always knew anyway
. “We’ve been besieged. They surrounded our walls and threw an army at us—”

“The one that sacked Aloakna,” Isabelle said wisely. All two-hundred-plus years of her sister’s sageness were on display now, and Vara felt more than a rush of irritation. “Yes, that makes sense, revenge for Termina.”

“Thank you for your insightful analysis,” Vara said. “We broke them, of course—”

“Of course,” Isabelle said with the trace of a smile.

“Oh, stop going on about it as though it were some sort of foregone conclusion,” Vara said. “There were some fifty thousand of them, and our number is much reduced of late—”

“Why?” Isabelle asked, and took a walk sideways, eyes facing on a perpendicular line, as though she didn’t even care to look at Vara. “Why are your numbers reduced while your star is on the rise? Even here, the talk is of Sanctuary, and your slaughter of Mortus. Killing a god?” She cocked her head at Vara, and smiled slyly. “No one even thought it was possible, let alone that you would be strong enough to attempt it and crazy enough to try.”

“This is irrelevant,” Vara said, stubborn irritation clawing at her. “Yes, our recruiting numbers were up, until the blockade a week ago, and yes, people had been streaming to us in record number for protection and to join us, but—”

“But Cyrus Davidon left,” Isabelle said, stopping at a fold in the tent and pulling aside the fabric to look out, “taking an army with him, and vanishing over the Endless Bridge with both a strong corps of your best veterans and possibly your heart, should such an object exist.”

There was a quiet in the tent, a silence and chill unadmitted by the opening of the side to the air. “You bitch,” Vara said.

Isabelle let the fabric fold back on itself and fall free of her hands, letting the side of the tent close. “You have a quite the grasp of the human language, sister. There was a time when you were content to swear at me in elvish.”

“I’m expanding my horizons,” Vara said.

“You’re in love with a human,” Isabelle replied. “And you are not even willing to admit it to yourself.”

“This is all off the table for discussion,” Vara said. “Yes, Cyrus Davidon went on a mission to aid one of our guildmates across the Sea of Carmas. Yes, he’s been gone for several months. I need to know if the Sovereign is moving because he—Cyrus, I mean—is in need of aid in Luukessia and we can’t strip anything from Sanctuary’s defense unless we’re certain that the Sovereign’s armies are fully engaged elsewhere—”

“They’re not,” Isabelle said quietly. “This front has been quiet for nigh on a month and not from any stinging defeats we’ve dealt to the dark elves, that I can assure you. Our contacts with the Elven Kingdom—on a daily basis, in case you wonder—indicate no serious offensives along the Perda, either, not at Termina or anywhere else. The Sovereign waits and has removed some of his forces from both of these fronts, reshuffling them elsewhere.” She gave a little shrug. “Perhaps he directs them to the east, toward the Riverlands.” Her face darkened in the shadow of the tent. “But I would suspect not.”

Vara waited, just for a beat, before she asked the question that tore at her. “What do you suspect?”

“That the vek’tag herds in Saekaj that have supplied the meat that has filled the bellies of the dark elven army are running thin enough that they may not be viable if the herds continue to be killed at this aggressive pace,” Isabelle said, without a trace of care, “and that the mushrooms and roots and other crops that grow in the gardens of those caves are insufficient to feed the war machine that the Sovereign is grinding out at present. That the supply lines run thin and he has turned an eye toward an easy, almost-undefended prize to remedy that problem—and its name is the Plains of Perdamun.” She didn’t smile, exactly, but gave her sister an almost-cringe, as though the knowledge caused her pain. “It is the opinion of the Confederation’s government—and the Elven Kingdom’s as well—that the Sovereign is moving troops into place to take the southern plains, to destroy anything that stands between him and the rich crop lands that could feed his empire and his armies, as we move now closer to the harvest.”

“And Sanctuary is what stands between him and that resource?” Vara let the air hiss out of her, not really surprised but neither pleased.

“The fact that he can claim revenge for the action in Termina will be no small bonus,” Isabelle said, “and there are countless dark knights in his army who had allegiance to Mortus, which might motivate them in some measure.”

Vara tried to think through the swirl of new information filling her mind. “I have not nearly enough available—Sanctuary has not nearly enough available to counter this threat to the Plains. But you—” She took a step toward her sister. “If you and the Human Confederation attacked now, struck back at the Sovereignty’s army here, it would force them to—”

“A good stratagem,” Isabelle cut her off. “A worthy idea. Were I in charge, I would pursue that strategy, though not just to try and help my sister but to deny the Sovereignty something they need to continue the war.” She drew up short. “However, I am not in charge of the war effort. Indeed, I am not even consulted. My guild remains at the mercy of the Council of Twelve, though,” she drew a short smile, “thanks to other events, that power wanes by the day.”

Vara felt the air go out of her, all her energy in one giant exhalation. “You tell me the Sovereign is marshalling his forces, pulling them away from the fronts he has pressed since the beginning. Well, they do not go north and they do not go west, nor do they appear to be heading east. My guild is south, is all that remains in the south. What am I to do, Isabelle? They hold the majority of the Plains already, uncontested because we lack the power to project our forces north to drive them back, and because no other army exists that could or would do so. I sit in the middle of the territory that he wants, this Sovereign, this gutless bastard who sits on the throne in Saekaj,” she watched Isabelle’s eye lashes bat a little at that, “and you tell me he’s coming, and what am I to do?”

“I have seen your guildhall,” Isabelle said carefully and took a step toward Vara, holding herself just slightly out of arm’s reach. “With some ingenuity, with some effort, I believe you could hold out against any magic and any army that the Sovereign might throw at you. Especially with the numbers you describe, you could hold it indefinitely with supplies of conjured bread and water—”

“And we’ll have nothing to help Cyrus with, and he’ll die across the sea fighting some unholy scourge that will devour his stubborn arse whole and choke on it!” Vara felt the words come rushing out. “Of course it will end up gagging on such a large and ridiculously stupid morsel, but he’ll be dead nonetheless.” She felt it expelled, the hot flush it brought to her cheeks to have said it, and when Isabelle pulled out a chair and slid it invitingly toward her she sat down on it, heavily, and leaned her elbow on the table. Isabelle took the seat next to her, sitting almost knee to knee with her, the incense in the tent reaching an almost overpowering level, even though it had changed not at all since she arrived.

“So we come to the truth at last,” Isabelle’s steady blue eyes flashed at Vara; they were cooler than her own, more reflective of Isabelle’s deliberative personality. “You worry about the safety of your guild, but you worry more about the fate of your—”

“Do not say it.” Vara felt her hands come to her face automatically, as though she could hide her shame by covering her cheeks and closing her eyes. “I don’t need to hear it aloud. Again.”

“You fear for him.” The words were calm and yet infuriating, as though they contained a slap to the face buried within. “You’re afraid he’ll—”

“Die, yes,” Vara said, and the effusive heat came back, “that he’ll die in that foreign land, that he’ll be ripped apart by these creatures they sent word about, these things that were unleashed from the Realm of Death. I’m afraid that he’ll stay in the fight long past the time when reason should tell him to bow out, because he feels guilty about letting them loose. Because of—oh, dammit!—because of me. Because he saved me, and because I sent him over there, practically drove him over there.” She felt the burning of the words in her mouth. “Well damn it, damn them, damn him, and damn me, too.” She looked up and caught only the faintest glint of amusement in Isabelle’s face. “I don’t wish to discuss this any further.”

“No, I imagine you wouldn’t.” Isabelle averted her eyes for a moment and looked to the bowl of apples. “It hasn’t been easy, has it? With Father and Mother gone?”

“I rarely went home,” Vara said. “I barely notice, with all the things going on—”

“Oh?”

“Don’t be irritating.” Vara let the words come out seething. “I shouldn’t say I don’t notice. I might phrase it differently. There are many distractions, especially of late. When I think of them, I feel—” Vara rolled her eyes at her own weakness. “Guilty. I feel guilty for not paying homage to their memory. For not weeping in a corner. For feeling more distressed about the departure of some lunkhead warrior who will die in a mere century versus the loss of …” A warm gasp came loose then. “They lived for thousands of years, and to come to such an abrupt—especially for mother—untimely, unexpected—”

“She fought for Termina,” Isabelle said quietly. “She fought for you.”

“She died for me,” Vara said, meeting her sister’s gaze. “It’s becoming a pattern, people dying for me, killing for me, and consequences I don’t care for spinning out of these actions. I should like it to end.”

“There is only one end,” Isabelle said, “and that has some rather definite consequences of its own that I don’t think you’d care for, either. Those dead are passed, and only one of these people remains to be saved, and that is Cyrus Davidon.”

“I can’t save Cyrus Davidon,” Vara said, and then felt her teeth grit themselves, her jaw tensing. “I can’t send anyone to help Cyrus, not with the Sovereign making his move all around Sanctuary. If it is as you say it is,” she shook her head. “My course is clear. I must defend Sanctuary. It is the higher duty to which I owe my allegiance. More than venturing overseas on some fool’s errand to throw myself into another war.” She straightened up in her chair and heard the creak of her armor plating as she did so. “I have enough war to cope with here in Arkaria.”

“And if he dies?” Isabelle asked, and her fingers delicately touched the candle that rested on the table, letting the hot wax fall across her finger.

“Then he dies,” Vara said, and ignored the screaming voice deep within, the one that wanted to throw her body to the ground and rail against it being so. “It will happen sooner or later anyway, there is little I can do to prevent that.”

“You haven’t asked my opinion,” Isabelle said, rubbing a little wax between her thumb and forefinger, “but my prerogative now as head of the family is that I will give it, and it is thus—”

“Oh, good,” Vara said under her breath.

“You should go to Luukessia. You will regret it if something happens to him and you are not there. It will haunt you all the rest of your days. You may not want to admit that your heart goes with the man, but it does, and I know you well enough to say with certainty that this torment will not end, not for you, not truly, if the worst comes to pass. It will only fade in time, perhaps, and become the ghost of a memory, rather than the full-blooded, all-consuming horror that it presently is, asserting itself all over your will.”

“Your opinion is noted,” Vara said, and stood, controlling herself enough not to knock over the chair with her ascent. “But I’m afraid that I cannot do what you suggest.”

“Which is the greater fear?” Isabelle asked, and rose to stand as well. “That Sanctuary will fall to defeat and destruction by the dark elves? That Arkaria will fall under the heel of the great menace whose tendrils even now stretch out of the blackness of the caves of Saekaj Sovar and are entangling the rest of the world? Or that you, Vara, not only the last but the stubbornest of all the elves ever born, will lose someone that you value most in a place that you may never even laid eyes on?”

Vara did not speak, giving both ideas a moment to weigh in her mind, like heavy stones on scales, tipping the balance one way or another.
Cyrus or duty, duty or Cyrus?
She thought of her mother, and there was reassurance there, in the last words that she had said before she died, when they had talked. “I am elf, and my life is long, my sorrows great. I will hold to my duty because that will see me through all other pain. When all else falters, fails and fades away, my duty will not. I am paladin, the white knight. My life is a crusade, and my sworn duty is all that matters.” She felt her hilt for reassurance, and watched Isabelle’s eyes follow the motion of her hands. “I’m not going to draw a sword on you, it’s merely an action for emphasis.”