Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7)

Heretic

The Sanctuary Series, Volume Seven

Robert J. Crane

copyright © 2015 Revelen Press

All Rights Reserved.

1st Edition

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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“There is no hope left,” Cyrus said into the silence of the Council archive, mist starting to seep in as the day began to fade around them. They had sat in silence for some time, he and Vaste, since they had returned to the top of the tower. Clouds were darkening the sky and a thick fog was creeping in over the Plains of Perdamun.

“Ugh,” Vaste said, sticking out his tongue as he placed his scarred face in his mighty green troll hands, which were at least twice the size of a human’s. “I’m finding it really difficult to be around you right now.”

“So leave,” Cyrus said, looking out the window at the darkening plains. Shadows played across the hilly terrain, and he surveyed them with blank eyes. A dragon could have emerged from the mist blowing fire and roaring fury, and he wouldn’t have much cared.
Though it seems unlikely Ehrgraz would let a dragon come this far north
, he thought idly.

The troll raised his head up, peering between two fingers with a yellow-onyx eye. “Why? So you can drive your sword through your own face over and over in peace?”

Cyrus lifted a hand and a dash of flame burst out, lighting the room brighter than the fire in the hearth. The shadows clinging to the sandy-colored stone walls faded instantly. “I think I can do it a little more efficiently than that.”

“Well, I’m not leaving,” Vaste said, standing up. He snatched at the leather-bound journal beside him with his wide fingers. Seizing it and stalking over to Cyrus, he shoved the book in his face. Up close, Cyrus could see the subtly pebbled texture of the leather. It smelled of secrets, rich and alluring, the parchment wafting with an unmistakable aroma. Even the ink smelled familiar, sweet, but Cyrus yanked his nose away as though it were something vile. “Read this,” Vaste said.

Cyrus turned away purposefully, looking out the window, back to the shadows, fog and darkness shrouding the Plains of Perdamun. Nightmares lurked out there, but they held no fear for him any longer. “I don’t want to,” he said.

“Read it!” Vaste said, more insistently. He thrust the book out at Cyrus again.

Cyrus glanced back at the troll, trying to keep his expression impassive. Vaste’s eyes were wild, his lips gently parted, his arm shaking just slightly as he held the book toward Cyrus.
A worthy try, my old friend, but you won’t sway me from this course.
“I already have.”

“Read it or I’m going to strip my clothes off and dance naked in front of you right now,” Vaste said, “and I expect once you see the beauteous curves of my arse, it’ll snap you right out of that funk you’re in.” He gyrated his torso in a suggestive manner that caused Cyrus to take a step back and clank into the wall, his backplate thumping against the edge of the window sill.

“You’re the worst company,” Cyrus said, snatching the volume out of his hand in resignation after a moment’s consideration.
He’ll likely do it.
“Do you want me to pick a random passage or do you have a specific—”

“Here,” Vaste said, ripping the diary open and thumbing through until he reached a specific page. “This,” he said with satisfaction, thrusting the journal back into Cyrus’s hands. “Now read, or you get the green arse.”

“This isn’t why I wrote to you—”

“Read.”

Cyrus turned his eyes toward the page and started to read the flowing script.

In spite of all that has happened in the wake of the battle in the Jungle of Vidara, in spite of all we lost, today might, in fact, have been the happiest day of my life.

Cyrus tore his eyes away from the page and looked up into the smug face of the troll standing above him. “You think reading
this
is going to make me want to kill myself less?”

“Just read the damned thing, Davidon, or I’m pulling off this robe and you’re going to see what a real troll looks like down—”

Cyrus threw up a hand in surrender and buried his nose in the book, picking up where he left off. There were occasional smudges on the parchment where the ink had gotten wet as the passage had been written. He noted them as he went, trying not to add his own contribution to the pages. As he turned to the next page, the parchment made a rich crackling sound like faint thunder on a stormy night.

It was a gorgeous summer day, and we conducted the entire event on the lawn. From start to finish, from sunup to sundown, it was our day, and it was a day of celebration. Not grief, not mourning, not quiet introspection, but our day to celebrate ourselves, to celebrate our love, so labored and long in the making …

Perhaps to say that it was “long in the making” is an inappropriate way to describe love, but … well, it’s true, and fortunately so, in more ways than one.

I did not wear a traditional dress, and my groom did not wear any sort of suit of the kind you might find on a gentleman of Termina, both of us preferring our armor to other finery. It was what we were wearing when we met, it was what we were wearing throughout our relationship—and why change a thing that works, even on a day like this one?

Still, I walked down the aisle with flowers in my hands, my sister trailing behind me in place of my mother, and Cyrus stood there at the front, smiling but for the moment when he looked back to see Vaste at his shoulder rather than Andren. We ignored these moments where the loss, the sadness that had so filled our lives threatened to intrude on our special event, ignored it all and made this our day. Our happiest day.

Our wedding day.

Cyrus threw the book hard against the wall. He felt a smoldering within, a dark, crippling sensation of something growing within him—rage, resentment, fury. Common feelings, especially of late.

“Well, at least now you’re feeling something other than maudlin self-pity,” Vaste said, looking up at him from where he had retreated across the archive, sitting with Alaric’s journal clutched in his hands. “That’s an improvement, probably.”

“There is no improvement,” Cyrus snapped. “There is no getting better. Do you not understand?”

“Cyrus,” Vaste said, “there is always—”

“NO THERE BLOODY WELL IS NOT, VASTE!” Cyrus shouted into the archive, his voice rattling off the walls and echoing out the window onto the plains far below. “That’s what it means when you have no hope … that it will never,
ever
get better …” He waved a hand out the window. “Not for Arkaria.

“Not for me.”

His throat burned, the pain rolling down it as his face grew hot. “And not for her,” he said wistfully, “because she’s gone … and she’ll never come back.” He looked up at the silent troll. “The real irony, of course, is that she feared to be with me because she thought that once I died, she wouldn’t be able to bear living without me for thousands and thousands of years.” He listened to the silence in the archive. Vaste sat motionless next to the hearth, his skin yellow in the fire’s glow. “And yet it’s I who lost her first.
I
who suffered the cruelest of losses.” He sighed, and all the life flowed out of him with the breath. “I who can’t imagine living the next thirty or forty or—if fate be so cruel—sixty or seventy years of my pitiful little life-span without her.”

He walked to the window and stared out into the rising mist. “So … to go back to your earlier question … no, I don’t mean to rebuild Sanctuary.” He looked at the stones that framed the window and put a hand on one, his gauntlet scratching lightly against the rough block. “This is their place, our place, where we grew the bonds of fellowship, the place where so … so very many of our friends lived and died, Vaste.” His voice grew faint. “I won’t insult their memory by pouring new life into it.” He turned around and saw the troll watching him with that rarest of emotions, the one Vaste almost never displayed—sadness. “This place … is the closest they have to a grave. It’s their tomb. Their mausoleum.