Master (Book 5) (12 page)

“It’s doing a fine job with the first half of that,” Vara said. Her tone was only a little brusque.

“Indeed,” Cyrus said, and they moved into a wood, the path dissolving before them in a thicket.

They were now in a brambly forest, all the trees as twisted and ugly as the first they’d encountered. It seemed like the woods had crept in around them, marching to encircle them in a moment when they had paid little heed. Cyrus knew they had been walking, had come into it on their own, but it felt different, like it was gradually drawing them in.

Deeper into the dark. Into the depths of it
.

“This feels utterly wrong,” Vara murmured.

“Without doubt,” Cyrus said, feeling her arm stiffen even through the armor.

“I have heard tales of this realm for as long as I can remember,” Vara said. “Tales of the great trees that speak to the weary traveler, that love the Mother of Life and her ways, that would answer questions and tell you of the days when they were young and barely more than saplings. This is supposed to be a place of magic, of life, of holiness.” Her voice took a harder edge. “To see it perverted into this darkness and gloom is an insult to all who worship the Life Giver.”

They walked in silence, the dark, brambly woods quiet around them. The place was shrouded in an eerie calm, and Cyrus tightened his grip on Vara’s arm as a fog began to seep in. The air around them became hazy and he stepped closer to Vara, allowed his pauldrons to clink against hers. She, for her part, did not seem to mind.

“So …” Cyrus said after a few more moments of silence. It was beginning to grow unbearable.

“Not now,” Vara said as they passed a tree with bark gnarled in such a way that it almost looked like it had a face.

Cyrus looked at her with a frown. “Not now what?”

“Not now for any conversation of depth or emotionalism you might wish to have,” she said, not looking at him. Their pace was even, and he had to walk faster than he might have otherwise in order to keep up with her long strides. “I doubt whatever foul evil runs rampant in this realm will allow us the time for a leisurely conversation about the mountain of unresolved emotions we might have built over these last months and years.”

“So you do have unresolved emotions for me,” Cyrus said with a slight smile.

“If you would be so kind,” Vara said searingly, barely turning to look at him, “try not to be an arse.”

“That could be difficult,” he said, looking into the fog enshrouding the trees ahead. She did not reply.

They walked on, Cyrus uncertain of the direction they were taking. Gnarled, ugly trees continued to seemingly spring up in the middle of the heading he had taken. There was no point of reference in the distance—no light, nothing to break the monotony of the glade.

“This plane is not unruly,” Vara said as they steered around the massive trunk of a tree that reminded him of the King’s garden in the palace in Pharesia, “it is full-out evil, and darkness drenches every surface of this realm.”

“What about the servants?” Cyrus asked and paused. Something just beyond his sight was moving, and he heard it in the brush, rustling.

“I cannot imagine they would escape the touch of whatever is claiming this place for its own,” Vara said, her voice full of caution. She stood next to him, eyes fixed in the same direction as his, and he would have sworn he saw her pointed ear twitch.

“What kind of servants would the Goddess of Life employ?” Cyrus asked, feeling his hand tense on the hilt of Praelior. He could see the grass moving now, something shuffling just beyond his sight.

“What you might expect to see in a glen, according to legend,” Vara said, every word strained. She watched with him, the anticipation growing taut. “Her land was to be a natural and pure haven for life.”

“So—” Cyrus did not get another word out before something burst from the brush in front of him.

It was a deer—or perhaps had been at one point. Where smooth, brown and white fur might once have been, now was a raven-colored pelt, matted down. It charged at Cyrus, massive pronged antlers pointed directly at him. He did not react in time and one of them caught him in the shoulder and spun him about.

Vara went tilting in the other direction, and Cyrus lost track of her as he hit the ground. He kept his grip on Praelior, wondering how it was possible that some hart bursting from the bushes had been faster than he.

I have my sword in hand
. He shook his head, trying to clear it.
That thing is
fast.

Cyrus started to his feet and something hit him squarely in the back, ramming him hard to the ground. Hooves stomped at him, pummeling his backplate and racking him with pain.

He thrust his sword blindly up and hit something. A harsh snort filled his ears, and the dark forest was still. Cyrus rolled and the deer fell from his blade, dead. The black evil that covered it melted with its fall, disappearing like black water draining off onto the ground. It vanished into the earth as Cyrus watched, still down on one knee, leaving the deer's corpse behind.

“Are you all right?” he asked Vara, who stood, a little crooked, just on the other side of the deer.

“I’ve just been run over by a four-legged animal,” she said, and he noticed she was leaning heavily on her sword. “I believe it’s broken my shoulder.”

Cyrus took a breath and felt a pain in his chest. His exhalation came out as a visible mist in front of him. “Can you fix it?”

He could see her glare from where he stood. “Possibly,” she said with a great deal of sarcasm, “if you might find it in your cold and unrelenting taskmaster heart to give me a moment to catch my breath.”

He nodded, trying to shift his body to see if he could make the pain subside. “I don’t think I’m the one you’re going to have to worry about rushing you along. The master of this realm is much harsher than I.”

“Bloody hell,” she whispered, and a light appeared at the tips of her middle and forefinger on her right hand. It sparkled in reflection on her breastplate, and then she stood straight again. “Yes, well, good enough.”

“Okay,” Cyrus said, trying to find his bearings. The thicket that the deer had burst from was straight ahead of him, and a slightly less thorny path ran just to the left of that. “This way.” She fell in beside him and they went on.

Every step he took was agony, a fire traveling down his side as though someone were jabbing a knife in his back every time his boots hit the ground. After a moment he saw a light in Vara’s hand again, and the pain subsided. He gave her a look.

“You should have said something.” She glared at him.

“I didn’t want to be a bother,” he said.

“You’re several years too late for that,” she muttered, and they went on, into the deepening cold of the woods.

They came to a clearing, and Cyrus emerged from the cover of the trees slowly. It still bore all the signs of the darkness that crept about in the rest of the realm, but a path seemed to cut right through the center of it, worn ground bereft of grass. “Are we fools to follow the path here?” Cyrus asked.

“We were fools to come here at all,” Vara said at his side. “Following a path seems to be the least of our sins at this point.”

“I was just trying to—” Cyrus began.

“I know,” she said, quietly. “You were trying to help. Arydni, this expanded version of Sanctuary you’ve created, you were trying to help them all.” There was something in the way she said it that provoked his interest, made him think there was something she was holding back.

“But?” he asked. He stopped and watched her as she took a couple steps forward without him.

She stopped and her head bowed, the blond hair drooping with her mood. She turned back to him, and when she spoke he could see the reticence melt away. “But … what we have done of late … the new men we’ve adopted from Luukessia? The mercenary way we’ve pursued payment for service? It’s not exactly the Sanctuary of old, is it?” She tilted her head to look at him. “With Alaric gone, we’ve not really stopped to ask ourselves how far off the path we’ve strayed. He would not even recognize Sanctuary as it is now.”

“We were expanding before he died—” Cyrus said.

“We were roughly five thousand strong on the day he left us,” Vara said. She spoke with cool detachment, bereft of the heat of passion he might have expected of her. “We are now more than fifteen thousand strong and have branched out into being an army for hire.” She kept her head down, not even meeting his eyes. “I have not protested any of the actions undertaken, because I understand the motives for all of them. However, we are rapidly becoming something other than the Sanctuary of old and are quickly leaving behind the days when we steered the course of our own destinies and were masters of our own fates.”

Cyrus listened until he was sure she was finished. “I agree with everything you’ve said. But I don’t know what we could do any differently, other than surrender on upholding our obligations,” he lowered his voice, “
My
obligations—to the people of Luukessia.”

“We are in an untenable situation,” Vara said, even more quietly. “I remain uncertain what can be done to preserve us as we were, other than shirking all these new responsibilities, and that is not the Sanctuary way, either.” She shrugged. “But I feel as though we have lost our way, and it pains me.” She looked around the clearing, and a leaf blew past her face. “In more ways than one.”

“Yeah, well—” Cyrus turned his head at the sound of movement behind him. There was motion again in the darkness, a rustle of grass, and he saw red eyes staring at him from out of the dark. “Aw, hells.”

“Yes, more of them,” Vara said. Her sword was in her hand. She closed the distance between them and stood at his elbow. Red eyes were appearing all around them, little glowing orbs in the dark. “It would appear that Vidara’s servants were plentiful.”

“Well, she did run the Realm of Life,” Cyrus said, pushing closer to her and placing his back against hers. He heard the clink of his backplate lightly against Vara’s and stopped, adopting a fighting stance. “I would have expected she’d know a thing or two about how life is made, and made plentiful.”

There was a pause as the red eyes began to grow larger, approaching.

“Was that some crass joke about the Mother of Life being a harlot of some sort?” Vara asked.

“What?” Cyrus whipped his head around. “No. More like an acknowledgment that she held dominion over making these creatures reproduce as quickly as—say, rabbits.” He caught a glimpse of her frown. “It’s an expression—‘breeding like rabbits.’ It’s what we say when we mean someone is having offspring rapidly.” He saw her frown dissipate. “You don’t have that expression?”

“Not exactly,” Vara said, and her reply was laced with amusement. “In the Elven Kingdom, the closest approximation is, ‘breeding like humans.’”

Cyrus gave a dry chuckle and was surprised to hear it echoed lightly by her. “I’ve rather missed this.”

“Indeed,” she said, near a whisper. The figures were emerging from the darkness, almost beyond number. They had the same wide bodies, the same pronged antlers, and were covered by the same darkness as the ones that had come before.

“Back to back,” Cyrus said. “Like on the bridge in Termina.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “save there is no friendly line to work our way back to here.”

Cyrus looked at the red eyes, the dark creatures emerging from the woods of night. “Then I suppose we’ll have to kill them all, won’t we?”

“If anyone could do it, I suppose it’s us,” Vara said, and he could feel her behind him, feel her for the first time in months. Not a cold shadow, but her, truly her. “Why is it always us?”

“I assume we’re simply the best there is,” Cyrus said. The red eyes were unblinking, and he could feel them readying, preparing to charge.

“And there’s the ego,” Vara said.

“It could be that we just go looking for more trouble than most,” Cyrus conceded.

“We should make a pact to stop that,” Vara said, and a furious stomping of hooves nearly blotted out what she said next. “If we survive this.”

Cyrus felt a rough anger fill him, a fighting spirit that he’d found again on the Endless Bridge. “I wouldn’t worry about that. I’m much too frustrating to die.”

“At last, a point upon which we can both agree,” Vara said. “But … I am glad it is you here with me.”

“Because there’s no one else you’d rather have at your side for a fight like this?” Cyrus asked.

She made a
pfft
sound with her lips. “Because I’d rather not have anyone else in Arkaria die in such a damned fool manner.”

Cyrus nodded, still smiling, as the line of enemies around him broke into a charge. He backed tight against Vara and readied himself as the beasts came, heads down, at the two of them.

“We haven’t laughed like that in a while,” Cyrus said as they walked on. Both of them were caked in blood, and Cyrus was covered in dirt. Vara’s shining silver breastplate had a streak of grass staining it where she’d hit the ground during the fight.

The fight with the deer had been long and brutal, but their lives remained in little doubt. The deer failed to penetrate the tight circle held by the two of them, and they had rebuffed every attack until every last one of the creatures had been slaughtered. Cyrus ran a hand up to wipe a cold spot on his forehead, and found a bit of frozen gore stuck to his helm. It was growing progressively colder as they walked.

“You were gone for over a year,” Vara said, walking at his side. Her sword was still drawn and tight in her hand. Black blood caked her gauntlet where Cyrus had seen her punch through the chest of a still-living deer, killing it. “And since, you’ve been—” There was a flash of darkness across her face as she crossed under the branch of a tree.

“Otherwise engaged,” Cyrus said quietly.

“I was going to say, ‘busy fornicating with a dark elven slattern,’ but then I never was good at speaking to your more delicate sensibilities.” Her voice didn’t carry as hard an edge to it now as he had become accustomed to in council, but it still contained bite aplenty.

“A year is a long time,” Cyrus said. “Especially when—”