Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (19 page)

“That one’s a bit more of an impenetrable trap, I’ll admit,” Terian said, nodding. “However, if Iraid has suggested correctly, and there are divisions, we need to find them and exploit them. The elves are much closer allies with the humans, and probably Iraid, being right on their border, will have insight gained through trade that my spies, through subterfuge, might not.”

“Amarath’s Raiders is as breakable as any other army,” Vara said. “Once we get around to them, I might have a few ideas to halt their enthusiastic approach to us, but—as pointed out by my dear husband—my sister is more recently acquainted with them than I am. She should be able to confirm if my suspicions are still accurate.”

“What are your suspicions?” Aisling asked cautiously. She sounded very conciliatory to Cyrus’s ears, as though she were trying desperately to avoid provoking Vara at all.

“That Amarath’s Raiders have become a cult of personality centered around Archenous Derregnault,” she said, a little frustration bleeding out, but not directed at Aisling.
That’s progress
, Cyrus thought. “When Trayance Parloure ran the Raiders, it was a guild top heavy with leadership, with commanding officers who could think for themselves and who commanded smaller squads, so they could operate independently in a crisis. That way, if, for example, during a fight with the Siren of Fire, she killed the Guildmaster or Expedition Leader, the war party was not utterly incapacitated.” She ran a hand along the side of her hair, drawn up into the ponytail, inadvertently freeing a few golden strands. “If it is as I suspect, and Archenous has remade the guild in his dictatorial image, then all that free thinking will have melted away like ice in summer. Killing him and a few of his closest lieutenants could end the guild as an effective force outright.”

“Tyrants don’t like fellow leaders,” Terian said, rubbing his throat uncomfortably. “They think of them as competition.”

“That is Archenous exactly,” Vara said stiffly. “It is why he took command the way he did, and the reason he wiped all the rest of us out who could think for ourselves. I have heard he can no longer hear so much as a criticism breathed in his direction without flying off the handle at the person who speaks it.” She looked down. “More than a few have died at his hand since the betrayal.”

“All personal concern or grudge aside,” J’anda said quietly, “I find this all hopeful news, even the situation among the humans. Now we merely need find an entry point to their political circles and perhaps we start making headway.”

Cyrus looked right at the enchanter. “I’m glad to hear you say that, because … I think you might be that very entry point.”

J’anda sighed, his very slight frame seeming to swell under the influence of a large breath. “But of course.” He bowed his head in resignation. “I am at your service, as always.”

“I might need you to go to Asaliere with Cattrine,” Cyrus said. “She’s trying to get a meeting with Karrin Waterman, and we’ll need someone to present our case who doesn’t appear to be a current heretic.”

“Hmph,” J’anda said. “I could teach you to make yourself not look like a heretic.”

Cyrus shook his head. “This is a preliminary arrangement to meet, on neutral territory, with the location to be determined and teleportation to be provided by us. I don’t want to chance walking into an ambush in the Confederation.”

“Any territorial governor in the Confederation would have to be nuts to consider taking you up on that offer,” Terian said, his hand dropping from his chin. “You’re basically talking about asking them to trust you enough to have an unfamiliar wizard whisk them away to who knows where without guarantee of safe return.” He shook his head. “Don’t expect any takers.”

“If you’ve got a better idea, I’m listening,” Cyrus said.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Terian said with a smirk. “Cattrine offers a tour to the three governors you’re looking to meet with. They all do some nominal amount of trade with her, so she makes a conference of it, and holds it in the Emerald Fields—”

“Which are our known ally,” Cyrus said, frowning.

“It’s not a perfect plan,” Terian said, “but again, there’s trade between these parties. The threads of war are not tightly wound between Emerald Fields and the Confederation just yet. They’re far too reliant on the Luukessian farms to want to cross that line. If things break to war, the humans are going to come for the Sovereignty, or possibly bypass us and head straight for you while the elves deal with Emerald Fields. Count on it.” He folded his arms in front of him. “Thus, Cattrine has the ability to call that meeting with a just little finagling. She can get this done, she’s already told me.”

“It’s a shame she’s not here to speak for herself,” Vara said, a little acerbically.

“Having all of us meeting together every time is a dangerous game,” Aisling said, “regardless of how careful we are. Too many eyes are watching the people in this room; it’s helpful to vary the lineup of this shadow council so that we can at least try to keep Malpravus and the others from guessing at who might be conspiring against them.”

“He already knows we’re up to something,” Cyrus said, feeling that tight sensation inside once more. “He alluded to ‘meetings’ when he sent his dead to our doorstep last night.”

“He sees to the motives of people more clearly than most anyone I have ever met,” J’anda said quietly.

“All he cares about is power, though,” Terian added. “That’s his weakness. I don’t think he can conceive of people acting for reasons outside their self-interest when it doesn’t align with his beliefs. Honor, decency, loyalty—these are the things we can blindside him with.”

“Meanwhile, he can blindside us with treachery,” Vaste said. “Well, that and a hundred and seventy five thousand swords, spears, axes and spells.” He paused as if to think it over. “I know which one I would bet on right now.”

“Well, let’s get to whittling that number down,” Terian said, looking at the parchment in Cyrus’s hand. “I’ll start sending messages through Bowe and Cattrine.”

Cyrus held the parchment a moment longer than he had to before thrusting it into Terian’s waiting hands. “Be careful with this.”

“As though it were my own life in my hands,” he said, nodding once at Cyrus. His smile drew down, a wistful look taking shape under his long nose. “Because really, if you bunch of mummers get taken out … it won’t be that long before they come for me.”

The note from Isabelle came back the fastest, a few days later, a simple missive on a small scrap of parchment that provided Cyrus and Vara a time and place, and was written in her own hand. It said, simply:

Mountains of Nartanis Portal—Tonight at the fall of evening

Cyrus and Vara settled in to wait, spending a quiet day lost in thought, neither speaking much. The air was thick with tension that Cyrus had no words, no weapon, to cut through.

When the hour came at last, Cyrus and Vara descended to the foyer. The last of the dinner crowd was waning, and Cyrus realized for the first time that he had not eaten today. His stomach rumbled slightly as they walked across the circle of the great stone seal, casting looks around for a druid or wizard.

“Shall we ask Larana?” Vara asked quietly, her eyes following two of the new trolls as they wandered toward the lounge, large flagons clutched in their hands.

“We may have to,” Cyrus said, looking around. Once again, warriors and rangers were the only members in sight.
I wonder how many spellcasters we have left?
We need a count on that, not just total members.
Motion close to the ground caught his eye. “Mendicant!” he called, and the goblin moved swiftly toward him. “I need a teleport spell.”

The goblin stared at him. “I could teach you, you know. Then you’d never have to ask again. Though,” he lowered his voice, “it is a lot of dull memorization and subtle changes in syllables for the last part of the spell. Most wizards end up sending themselves to the wrong locations for the first year or two. Personally, I have ended up in Fertiss instead of at the Pharesia portal more than a dozen times—”

“Not the sort of mistake I can afford to make right now,” Cyrus said dryly. “Can you take us to the Mountains of Nartanis?”

“Certainly,” the goblin said with a nod as a small group of Sanctuary adventurers wandered past, watching Cyrus and Vara with undisguised curiosity. “Mountains of Nartanis it is.” He held up a hand and it twinkled with green light all about his claws. The foyer’s high stone walls, enormous stained glass window and crackling hearth vanished, only to be replaced by a mountainous wasteland, hills of black dirt and rocky terrain. Across the red sky in the distance swooped the shadow of a small drake, dragonkin the size of a vulture.

“Here you are,” Mendicant said, bowing.

Cyrus cast a quick look around, ducking his head around the portal to make sure they were alone. There was no one in sight. “All right, Mendicant, thank you.” He glanced back at the goblin. “You can go. We’ll use return when we’re ready to come back.”

Mendicant hesitated. “Are you sure? I can wait.”

Vara gave Cyrus a careful look before composing her own response. “Yes, thank you, Mendicant,” she said, “but we have some private business out here if you don’t mind.”

“Very well,” the goblin said, shrugging lightly. “If ever you need me, you know where to find me.” And he faded in the light of a return spell.

Cyrus stared at Vara in the empty space between them. “How many people do you suppose heard where we were going?”

She had a worried look. “The few that were walking past. Perhaps a handful more in the lounge. The question is, how many could they tell, and is any one of them a spy for Malpravus?”

“Mendicant could be a spy for Malpravus for all we know,” Cyrus said, drawing a deep breath through his nose. The air here was a little thinner and smelled of sulfur from some of the lightly erupting magma geysers in the distance. Cyrus stared straight ahead. The dark, ashen soil was pitted with innumerable footprints, most of them wending off toward the goblin city under the mountain, Enterra. A few headed in other directions, however, seemingly randomly, and Cyrus fixed his gaze ahead, toward a path he’d walked more than once …

“Someone’s coming,” Vara said as a light flickered on the portal, a spell casting green energy that illuminated the darkening grounds. Night was almost upon them.

Cyrus waited the second before the spell dispersed with bated breath. A blond elf with a commanding presence, draped in white robes, stood there along with a wizard of dark elven origin in her shadow.

“You may go,” Isabelle said—a little imperiously, Cyrus thought—and the dark elf vanished in a return spell of her own, leaving the three of them standing in the silence of the mountains, the sun sinking below the peaks on the western horizon. “Well,” Vara’s sister said. “Here I am. You call and I appear. What can this humble officer of Endeavor do to be of service to the most wanted people in the land?”

“You didn’t tell her in the message?” Cyrus asked, frowning at Vara.

“I did not,” Vara said, a little impatiently, “possibly because I felt that exposing our plans in an easily intercepted letter would be dangerous to both her and us.”

“Dangerous?” Isabelle’s smooth nose wrinkled. “I realize you’re heretics, but surely you can’t think anyone is coming after you? No one would be fool enough to risk it.”

“Oh, but they are coming after us, sister mine,” Vara said. “Goliath, Amarath’s Raiders, the Confederation and the Kingdom all.”

“The Kingdom at least would not be fool enough to come for
you
,” Isabelle scoffed.

“Danay tried to kill her a year ago,” Cyrus said.

Isabelle’s eyes widened. “If that is the case,” she said, sounding stricken, “then you are right, and as they say—all bets are off. I wish I had known this before I came.”

“Because you wouldn’t have come?” Vara asked.

“Oh, I still would have,” Isabelle said, eyeing the empty ground surrounding them as the darkness continued to creep in around them, “but I might have been more careful in my discussions about those plans.”

“You weren’t careful about mentioning where you were going?” Vara asked, her voice rising with every word.

“I was not careful, no,” Isabelle said, creeping ever closer to the two of them, suddenly wary of their surroundings, “and now that you have mentioned Amarath’s Raiders, I am especially concerned as several of our officers have recently been poached away to join them, leaving us in something of a delicate position regarding our security. Spies are a concern …”

“Dammit,” Cyrus said, beckoning Isabelle closer. “We need to—” Cyrus started to say, but spell-light lit the portal once more as a flurry of teleportation spells began to crackle into existence around them.

With a flash, they were surrounded, the crackle of magical energy dispersing to show the faces of dozens of members of Amarath’s Raiders, their distinctive livery of a horse’s head stitched onto their surcoats and cloaks, their boots crunching on the ash-covered ground. A quick survey told Cyrus there were at least thirty, mixed between warriors, rangers and spellcasters.

And standing at their fore was Archenous Derregnault, with his scarred face barely visible in the day’s fading light. His sword was already in hand, as were those of his guildmates, and he met Cyrus’s eyes for only a second before tilting them toward Vara as his lips twisted in a grin of triumph.

“Dammit!” Cyrus shouted as he grabbed the handle of the chain entwined around him and felt the small burst of speed and strength it gave him. He ripped his blade free of its scabbard to find himself facing thirty more members of the Raiders and countless arrows beyond that. A quick try at the return spell told him what he had already known—the Raiders had wizards who were casting cessation upon the field of battle. It was a good maneuver, one Cyrus himself would have insisted on had he been in Derregnault’s position.

“Vara, we need to—” he started, but already his wife was in motion. Her sword was free of its scabbard and she was bellowing a cry loud enough to be heard on every peak around them. She came at Archenous Derregnault with a fury, and he barely got his sword up in time to block her, his face showing surprise even in the dark. “Dammit, Vara!”