Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) (64 page)

“I just bet he will,” Ryin said softly.

“When?” Cyrus asked, taking a step closer. Imina watched him, tracking him as he approached, and she shuddered once more, in a way that Cyrus never remembered her doing, not ever before in all the years he’d known her.

She held out a hand to stay him, backing up just a step, slowly. He stopped, and she lowered her hand, then closed her eyes and nodded before opening them again. “He told me … told me to tell you … soon. That he would call for you very, very soon.”

“This is quite the surprise,” Vara said as they all stood once more in the Council Chambers of Sanctuary, light waning as the sun sank in the afternoon sky. “Here I thought Ryin would be back instantly and you later, if at all—and certainly not with a … guest.” She peered at Imina suspiciously, though whether it was born of Imina’s recent proximity to Goliath and Malpravus or something more personal, Cyrus was not entirely certain.

“Heh.” Aisling chortled slightly under her breath, her lips tightly pushed together and her cheeks rounded as though she were holding in a laugh as she looked sideways at Cattrine. “Heh heh.”

Cattrine looked back at her, frowning, as Aisling’s eyes darted to Imina and then Vara. “What …? OH.” And the Administrator of the Emerald Fields flushed a deep shade of red.

“What?” Vara snapped.

Aisling still made a great show of containing her smile. She nodded at Imina, then Cattrine, then shrugged her own shoulders and nodded at Vara. “It would appear the gang’s all here.”

“The … what?” Ryin asked with a frown.

“That’s a pitifully small crowd, Davidon,” Terian said, with a frown of his own. “The greatest warrior in Arkaria should have done better.”

“What?” Cyrus jerked his head around at Terian. “What the hell are you people on abo—” He realized what they meant as the thought landed on him with the force of an axe to the middle of his head. “Oh. Gods.”

“I have no idea what we’re talking about,” Ryin said, looking to J’anda for guidance. The enchanter, however, was a particularly dark shade of blue and pretending to look out the window.

“Oh, I get it now,” Vaste said, cradling his belly in discomfort. He cringed in pain and rubbed his midsection.

“I don’t,” Scuddar said with a shrug.

“Well,” Calene said, whispering a little too loudly, “I think we’ve got assembled here before us all the lovers of Cyrus Davidon—”

“Enough,” Vara said in disgust.

“Oh, Cyrus,” Quinneria said, putting her hand on her face to cover a blush.

“What?” Cyrus threw up his hands. “This is—a—I mean—how is this my f—you know what, we have bigger problems to worry about right now.” His cheeks burned hot with embarrassment, and he tried to turn himself toward righteous indignation. “Malpravus is apparently of a mind to call me out, and soon, according to Imina.”

“It’s what he said.” Imina looked a little flustered herself, though she was looking between Aisling, Cattrine and Vara in turn with a fair amount of dark suspicion of her own. “Also, I would rather not be here at all, if I may make it plain—”

“You’re free to return to Reikonos if you’d like,” Cyrus said.

“And what guarantee do I have that your enemies won’t come after me again?” Imina said, her own cheeks reddening as she turned to face him down. He’d seen her like this before many times, especially at the end of their marriage.
At least she seems to be coming back to herself now
, he thought.

“Well, there are quite a few less of them now,” Mendicant said, “at least versus when they last attempted it.”

“That is true,” Calene agreed, “we’ve been quite efficiently wiping them out as we go. If this keeps up, maybe we’ll see Goliath’s end here soon enough.”

“One can hope,” Terian said.

“Would you like us to keep her under guard?” Scuddar asked Cyrus, his quiet voice cutting over all else with a certain solemnity that Cyrus would not have found out of place in a temple.

“She can go if she wants,” Cyrus said, “or she can stay.” He looked right at Imina. “Up to you.”

“I don’t know where Malpravus means to have his clash with you,” Imina said quietly, staring straight into his eyes with a coldness that he did not remember even in the worst of their fights, “but I want to be as far away from it as possible when it happens.”

“Sister,” Vaste announced, “you aren’t the only one.”

“Well, she has sense,” Vara said.

“Don’t we all?” Cattrine asked with a cocked eyebrow.

“
You
do,” Vara said.

“Which means I don’t, apparently,” Aisling said with another roll of the eyes.

“I reserve my opinion on you for the time being,” Vara said, somewhat grudgingly.

Aisling hesitated for a moment, as though trying to comb through the statement for something other than its surface meaning. “Thank you … I think?”

“You’re welcome, possibly,” Vara said, plunging straight ahead. “What is the likelihood that Malpravus will choose Reikonos for his final battle with—”

“I don’t think he means to have a battle,” Cyrus said, shedding a gauntlet and flexing his fingers, feeling the slick sweat on his palm. “He wants me to be there when he does something to—to take the steps into this new power.”

“Awww,” Vaste said, “he’s looking for the friend he’s never had but always wanted, and it’s you.”

“Yeah, you can’t have me all to yourself anymore,” Cyrus said.

“I was always sharing you with that blond interloper anyway,” Vaste huffed. “I don’t even know what you see in her, my arse is so much more supple than hers.”

“It’s really not,” Cyrus said as Vara blushed a blood red, and then turned to Quinneria, whose eyes were narrowed and who was shaking her head. “If Malpravus was going to … I don’t know, ascend to your level … where would he go?”

Quinneria held up her hands. “He’ll need magical energy.”

“Well, that seems to come automatically,” Ryin said.

“Not in the amount he’ll need it,” Quinneria said. “You recapture or regenerate a certain amount through rest and time and normal eating and drinking, but that’s enough to cast
some
spells. The type he needed to even throw out what he unleashed in the Tower …” She pointed to the ceiling. “That requires more. And there are places in Arkaria where the magics pool, and where one can regenerate that energy more quickly. Seams of power, I came to call them.”

“Great,” Vaste said, “so where’s the ‘seam of power’ Malpravus will choose?”

“I don’t know,” Quinneria said with a shake of the head. “There are so very many, all with varying strengths—”

“Where’s the most powerful one?” Cyrus asked.

“The upper realms,” Quinneria answered. “But those are guarded by deities who would take a rather angry exception to him trying to access them—”

“How about the Realm of Death?” Vara asked. “That one seems perfectly suited to him, especially since Malpravus excels at controlling the departed.”

Quinneria shook her head. “There’s not one there, as such.”

“You seem certain,” J’anda said suspiciously.

“Quite,” she replied. “There is in the Realm of Darkness, though, so that would be a possibility, albeit slight.”

“Mortus and Yartraak aren’t the only dead gods,” Terian said. “At least according to Alaric and Curatio. Could he want to access one belonging to one of the dead ones? The ones that died in the war ten thousand years ago?”

“He couldn’t,” Quinneria said with another shake of the head. “Those are claimed by the remaining gods. I suspect Yartraak’s will be taken by another deity in the next year or so—”

“Yartraak drained Aloakna,” Mendicant said, speaking aloud as he thought, “taking the mortal souls for himself … and you say these other gods sit on … seats of power—”

“She said ‘seams,’” Ryin said, a little haughtily, “get it right.”

“They really are ‘seats’ of power to the gods,” Quinneria said kindly, looking right at Mendicant. “And you have a good thought there, but of little practical application to our current discussion, I’m afraid. The point is, Malpravus will be going for lower-hanging fruit, and there are many spots on Arkaria far easier to access. He won’t want to fight a god before he does what he means to …” She lowered her voice. “He would do that
after
.”

“My stomach is rumbling even more angrily after that little piece of news,” Vaste said. “So … care to start naming these, uh, seams for us?”

Quinneria sighed, narrowing her eyes as she thought aloud. “Reikonos sits on one—”

“Oh, hell,” Imina muttered.

“—as does Zanbellish, though he’s likely drained that for a time …” She continued to frown as she spoke, “The Temple of Death in the Bandit Lands—”

Cyrus and Vaste snapped their heads around to share a look. “How do you know about that?” Cyrus asked, coming back around to look at Quinneria.

She smiled. “Who do you think trapped the Avatar of the God of Death away in that seal in the first place?”

“Uhm …” Vaste said, “You?”

“Well, it was Alaric and I together,” Quinneria said with a nod, “but yes.”

Terian slapped his hand hard against his belt, rattling the axe that ran along his back. “What about the temple northeast of here in the Waking Woods?”

Quinneria straightened. “Certainly that is one. Many times, they built temples or chancels on these seams, because—”

“Gods, it’s empty, isn’t it?” Cyrus asked, cutting her off, staring at Terian as the Sovereign of Saekaj stared back at him, mouth slightly agape. “I mean, other than the ghouls that surround it—”

“The ghouls,” Quinneria said, “are there because of that seam. It is the magic that infuses the carcasses; it is their origin.”

“That’s one place in a wide, vast land,” Aisling said, shaking her head. “Why, of all Arkaria, would Malpravus choose that one location—”

She stopped as the atmosphere in the room changed; the light outside the windows was fading, but something about it had shifted like a cloud blocking the sun. Cyrus stood with his back to the balcony, but he could tell the change as it rolled across the shafts of light that were stretching across the table and the floor, shining in from the outside. The light had changed, was corrupted, and he saw it turn red as blood as it rolled slowly across the floor and the room began to darken.

“What the hell?” Terian muttered as they all turned to look out the windows to either side of the balcony doors.

Cyrus did not wait for the darkness to spread further; he broke into a run and from beside him Vara did the same. He went for the balcony and reached it first, one hand on Rodanthar. He threw them open into the afternoon sun and saw—

The sun was red as a butcher’s floor; the sky was darkening in its grip, the shades of blue that had hung there replaced by a crimson, turning the plains an awful shade of purple to replace the verdant green of summer.

“What is that?” Cattrine asked as they all filtered out onto the balcony, watching the sky darken as the shining of the sun was muted further with every passing second.

“The beginning,” Quinneria said, and her tone was mournful in a way that Cyrus found deeply, deeply disquieting.

A rumbling ran over the clear plains, like thunder without a cloud in the sky, and when it reached them, Cyrus heard a voice, plain and very familiar:

Cyrus … come to me
… Malpravus said, his words rattling the stones in the wall above them, the whole tower shaking. Pieces of debris fell from the ruin of the roof at its top, raining down on them from above.
Come to the temple
, the voice said, …
Come and see …

Come … And see my rise
.

“I’ll send Kahlee to rally the army,” Terian said as they descended on air, using Falcon’s Essence to reach the ground faster than taking the stairs, descending outside of the main tower of Sanctuary, the sky still dark and red. “They can be back here in less than an hour.”

“No,” Cyrus said, leading the way, wind blowing under his helm. “Rally them, but don’t bring them here. We need them in reserve, but committing them to the field of battle would be …” He let his words drift off like the winds blowing past him.

“It would make it a battle, Cyrus,” Terian said with urgent insistence. “Which is what we’re being called to.”

“No, you’re not,” Quinneria said, just a few steps behind Cyrus. “Don’t you get it? This isn’t a battle we’re being summoned to; it’s apotheosis.”

“Apothy-what?” Terian asked, frowning as they drew close to the muddied ground, an unearthly shade in this light. “Never mind, I’ll go tell Kahlee what to do.” He peeled off and doubled back toward the front doors below.

“It means … never mind,” Quinneria said. “He wants you to commit an army, just like I wanted all those trolls lined up at Thurren Hill. Bring an army and you’ll be marching them into exactly what he wants.”

“I know,” Cyrus called back as he came down, dispelling the Falcon’s Essence and hitting the ground at a run, heading straight for the stables. He cast a look back at Sanctuary, all scarlet and frightening, black shadows hiding in the crevasses of its facade. It looked disturbingly wrong like this; hellish, in fact, and he turned away quickly after making certain that the others had followed him down.

“Scuddar, Calene,” Cyrus called out, “you stay and mind the wall. Marshal the defenses.”

“Can’t pretend I’m sorry to be sitting this one out,” Calene said.

“Are you certain?” Scuddar asked, pausing where he stood.

“I need someone strong to lead the defense if it comes to that,” Cyrus said, looking over his shoulder at them both. “That’s you.”

“If they come, we will be ready,” Scuddar said with a nod and a half-bow at the waist. With that, he and Calene both broke into a run toward the wall.

“This is where I leave you, I think,” Cattrine said, approaching Cyrus quickly, Imina hesitantly standing a few steps behind her. “I will inform our army to stand ready as well, in case you have need.”

“Close your portal when you get back,” Cyrus said. He glanced at Imina. “Take her with you, please?”

Cattrine glanced at him then looked back with amusement. “Certainly,” she said, clearly holding something back that she did not say. “Come along, madam,” she said to Imina, “let me show you to a safer place than this.”