Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (52 page)

“You were the one trying to make us prey,” Cyrus said.

“You will find no easy prey here,” Urides said smugly, almost gloating, from within the white cloud that engulfed the quarters. “I can practically hear your co-conspirators dying below.”

“You’re awfully confident for a man who’s outnumbered five to one,” Cyrus said, peering into the shadowy mist around them. The voice of Urides was echoing off the walls, and it was impossible to tell where he was. The humidity of the steam flowed into Cyrus with every breath, hot and burning, filling his chest with muted fire, the air thick like that of a place in the Northlands he had once been where they poured cold water over rocks warmed by fire, or a valley he’d visited there that smoked from the earth itself.

“I do not find your odds compelling,” Urides said, and he swept in from the side in a blur of speed, his staff smashing against Vara’s helm, knocking it aside and drawing blood, sending her sprawling before he faded back into the mist, his staff twirling before him.

“What was it you were saying about godly weapons earlier?” J’anda muttered, stepping out to take Vara’s place. Cyrus looked at her wide-eyed, but frozen in place, knowing that to step out of his position was to invite attack against this flank.
Urides will sweep through Larana and Vaste on this side the moment I’m out of the way; the cessation spell will drop and he’ll blast us with fire before we can even figure out where he’s coming from …

J’anda nudged Vara with the end of his staff and she stirred, moaning, blood trickling down from the side of her head and soiling her golden hair. “She’ll be all right.”

“She’ll die,” Urides said in a taunting voice. “You all will perish, one by one.”

Cyrus’s eyes darted around the mist. Cries and screaming were still audible below, echoing from the stairs.
They must all be heretics, and likely good fighters as well.
I suppose it would have been too much to hope for that this would be an easy matter of assassination—as though there’s ever an easy kill. Should we all make it out of this okay, I think I’ll be grateful that they put up a fight. It’ll make it easier for me to square with myself about coming to kill these people in their beds.

Urides dashed out of the steam and struck, slapping the end of his staff against J’anda’s hand. The enchanter gasped in pain as Cyrus darted forward to join the attack, but Urides was too quick; he brought the other end of the staff around in a blur and J’anda could not counter it. The staff struck him in the head, a hard whack in the temple that sprayed a line of blood that spattered Cyrus’s breastplate as he charged after Urides.

I have to take him now—I can’t let him slip away.
Vaste and Larana are easy prey for him in this, without the benefit of a godly weapon.
He charged after the leader of the Council of Twelve, who grinned at him through the white mist, fading into shadow, looking less and less clear with every step backward, even as Cyrus plunged ahead.

“Do you know what they called this staff?” Urides asked, smiling with satisfaction as Cyrus charged at him, Rodanthar held in front of him. “Philos, the Burden of Knowledge. Care to guess who held it first?”

Cyrus struck out at Urides with a high overhand strike.
He can’t be that good of a fighter. He’s an old man, and I’m bound to be quicker—

Urides lashed Cyrus across the knuckles as he stepped out of the way of his attack. The blow rattled Cyrus’s gauntlet, even through the padding, but Cyrus retained his hold as Urides stepped away. “If you guessed Eruditia,” Urides went on, lecturing like some teacher at the Society of Arms, “you would have it right. You, being a fool, though, probably guessed wrong.”

“I heard you were a General once upon a time,” Cyrus said, pulling Rodanthar back into a defensive guard even as he pursued Urides into the fog. “That you led men in battle.”

“Oh, yes,” Urides said, eyeing him through the mist between them. “In fact, I commanded your father, did you know that? I know that sword well.”

“I did know that,” Cyrus said as Urides sidestepped, bringing them back around as Cyrus chased after him. “I heard you were the one responsible for the near-defeat at Dismal Swamp, in fact.”

“Dismal Swamp was a victory,” Urides grinned, “thanks to your father’s noble sacrifice. Why, if he hadn’t killed that troll shaman, it might have lost us everything. Shame he had to die there, but it was a price well paid. Even better when it drew out your mother, in her rage and grief, to lead our forces to victory with her at their head. Two Davidons won us that war, and now, years later, another spared us from full wrath of Yartraak. Why, your family has been indispensable so far—or at least, your weapons have.” His eyes flashed. “I’d thank you, but obviously trying to behead us now rather cancels out past good deeds.”

“Our service to the Confederation never seemed to carry much weight with you before,” Cyrus said, slashing down. Urides blocked him, sending his sword off to the side as the leader of the Council of Twelve stepped sideways again, his staff clutched before him. “It certainly didn’t stop you from declaring two of us heretics.”

“But you are a heretic,” Urides said with a gleam in his eyes. “Just as your mother was before you. Heretics and heroes—it’s a fine line.”

“You’re a heretic,” Cyrus said, slashing at him but missing entirely as Urides stepped back once more, as quickly as Cyrus could advance.

“I am not, in fact,” Urides said with a cackle. “Do you know what makes you a heretic?” His smile broadened. “The fact that I say so. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Then I guess when I kill you, I will be a heretic no longer,” Cyrus muttered.

“You can’t kill me, fool,” Urides said with a laugh. “You can’t even lay a hand on me with everything you have. You will fail, you will die, and then your little bride—the last hope of the idiot elves—will follow, and so will your friends, for you have no idea what you face with me.” He grinned maliciously. “You’ve been practicing these magics for a year; I’ve been practicing them for a lifetime. A very long lifetime, in fact. I have forgotten more about single combat than even you know, Davidon.”

“Then why haven’t I ever seen you fight?” Cyrus slipped forward, dodging around a chest, and came at Urides with a leading strike, a stabbing lunge pointed right at the old man’s heart. It struck true, crashing into the man’s ribs—

And stopped cleanly, shock reverberating back up the hilt to Cyrus as Urides grunted, his smile widening as he locked eyes with Cyrus.

“Because only a true fool like you would announce to everyone that he had a godly weapon,” Urides said, and brought the end of Philos around so quickly that Cyrus did not see it coming until it had knocked the helm cleanly off his head. There was a flash behind his eyes, and pain at his left eyebrow, shocking and agonizing, and Cyrus hit his knees without realizing he had even lost his feet. The sound of his greaves rattling as his knees impacted the ground was a dim in his ears, barely audible over the rushing of blood.

“And because no one who ever challenged me has lived to tell it, Cyrus Davidon,” Pretnam Urides said, looking down at him as he raised high his staff. “Neither will you.” The blow was sure to kill him, Cyrus knew, and yet there was nothing he could do to stop it as it began to descend—

A soft glow lit the mist, orange, like a hearth in the distance, as Cyrus watched Urides bring down the staff to kill him. It was a certain thing. Rodanthar hung limply in his fingers, and he could barely see. His left eye was sheerest agony, pure pain, and he could not see out of it at all.
Is this how it was for Alaric …?
he wondered dimly, the thoughts coming slowly as the staff came down.

The room smelled of humidity, the sweat and stink somehow more potent for the thick air, and Cyrus could nearly taste it upon the back of his tongue. He saw the veins jutting from Urides’s forehead, the smile of self-satisfaction as he brought down the killing blow, lit by the orange glow behind him, quartal chainmail peeking out from where Cyrus had rent open his robes.

The glow grew brighter as Urides’s staff came closer. Its end came to a severe point, the force of a godly weapon tightly bound in a small area, certain to dash Cyrus’s brains out the side of his head when it struck true. And it would strike true, for only Rodanthar could halt its sweep now, and the sword was nearly upon the ground. Cyrus’s fingers clung numbly to it, but it was dangerously close to falling out of his hand altogether.

The blaze of orange grew in the light behind Urides until he was all-consumed in shadow and mist, like a dragon had loosed its breath behind him.
But there are no dragons in Reikonos
, Cyrus thought, blinking.
Not
—

Urides’s hand slowed, jerking the staff’s end away from its intended path. His eyes widened in pain, magnified as though he had his lenses on once more, and he convulsed, looking as though lightning had hit him squarely in the back. His lips went from the cruel smile to agonized fury in less than a second, and Cyrus was reminded of seeing a soldier stabbed in the back by Longwell’s lance. The pain on Urides’s face was writ large, and the glow increased in brightness until—

Flame burst out of Urides’s chest in a tight circle, concentrated, and flared between the links of the chainmail as it burned the heart out of him. Urides jerked like someone had taken hold of his strings and was yanking them. He tried to speak, to cry out, but smoke streamed out of his mouth and a smell like burning meat filled the air. Cyrus rolled aside, falling to his back, unable to get his balance as the flames burning through the chest of Pretnam Urides raged hotter and grew wider, enveloping his wide paunch and cutting him in half with fire.

“So Dismal Swamp was your doing?” Vaste asked, stepping out of the mist to Urides’s left as the fire continued to flare from behind the wizard. Urides’s head turned, jerkily, to look at the troll, eyes nearly uncomprehending. “Then I owe you this.”

Vaste plunged the spear-tip of his staff into Urides’s jaw and pushed. The wizard’s legs fell below him, severed from the top of his chest by the fire spell that had consumed him whole from breastbone to groin, the quartal chainmail lingering behind like a meatless skeleton as the flame stopped, dissipating to reveal—

Larana standing some five feet behind him, her face impressively red, lip quivering, eyes welling up, her hands thrust out with smoke pouring off them. She said nothing, but the way she looked at Urides’s remains, which were split between his legs fallen to the floor and his head and shoulders hanging from Vaste’s spear, was purest hatred.

“Care to roast the rest of him, too?” Vaste asked, dangling the dead remainder of Urides and his streaming chainmail before her. She shook her head, now seemingly embarrassed. “Fine, I’ll do it, then,” and the troll unleashed a much smaller flame spell that cleansed the head of his staff in a few seconds, leaving only a few smoking bones behind, hidden in the quartal chainmail. “Hmm … they can resurrect that, can’t they?”

Larana nodded slightly and then thrust out her hands. Vaste stepped back only a second before she flooded the room with another heat of such intensity that Cyrus was forced to look away, still unable to see out of his left eye. He lay there, watching, as Larana finished her spell and nothing remained save for the chainmail and a blackened scorch on the floor of the tower; no bones, no ash, not a sign that Pretnam Urides had ever even been at this place, save for—now that the mist was clearing—his mail, his staff lying upon the floor a few feet away, and his lenses upon the table by his bed.

“Hmm,” Vaste said, swiping the staff from the floor. “Philos, the Burden of Knowledge?” He looked at the scorch mark that was all that remained of Urides. “I guess you’ve been unburdened.”

“And you were never burdened to begin with. Not with knowledge, anyway.” Vara stepped away from one of the nearby balcony doors, now open, wind clearing the steam from the room.

“Hah,” Vaste said without mirth. “You didn’t seem so smart when he clocked you from the side. You didn’t even see it coming.”

“Because he was using a godly weapon,” Vara said, the blood staining her face and hair causing Cyrus to cringe. She laid eyes upon him and extended a hand, then stopped when she saw Larana’s fingers already glowing white. Cyrus’s head cleared less than a second later, the pain in his left eye fading as his sight suddenly returned.

“Speaking of which,” Vaste said, looking at Philos in his hands. He glanced up, and tossed the weapon to Larana, who caught it with fumbling fingers. “I think you deserve this.”

“I …” Larana mumbled, looking down at the staff uncertainly. “You … you …”

“Yes, I know,” Vaste said, nodding sagely, “I stepped in and neatly stabbed right through his ugly, stupid face, which, let’s face it, was a service to all Arkaria. But …” he nodded at the staff now cradled in Larana’s hands, “You had him, fairly. You deserve it.”

“I …” Larana began.

“Take it,” Cyrus said to her, pushing to his feet as J’anda came from behind him, another balcony door opened, the air clearing further now that a wind was seeping through the tower. “You deserve it.”

“All right,” she mumbled, turning the staff about in her hands. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for not letting me get killed by that rank bastard,” Cyrus said, rubbing his head, fresh blood still dripping down upon the day’s stubble on his cheek and jaw. He stared right at Larana, who met his gaze with those vivid green eyes. “That would have been intolerable.”

“I could probably tolerate it for a while,” Vaste said, “but I suppose sooner or later I’d get lonely. You know, because of the—”

“Utter lack of troll beauty, yes,” Vara said.

“I said ‘intelligent troll beauties within—” Vaste began.

“I know,” Vara said, cocking her eyebrow through the smear of blood on her face, “and I meant what I just said … entirely.”

“Why must you hate us so?” Vaste mused idly.

“Perhaps she simply does not appreciate you,” J’anda said, frowning at the blood on his robe’s shoulder. “At all.”

“Few do,” Vaste said, shaking his head sadly as the night breeze blew through the tower.