Master (Book 5) Read online

  Master

  The Sanctuary Series

  Volume 5

  Robert J. Crane

  Master

  The Sanctuary Series, Volume 5

  Copyright © 2014 Midian 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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  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my grandfather, a retired factory worker who read thousands of books in spite of not going any further in school than eighth grade. He had a love of reading that was handed down through the generations to land on me. Thanks, Papaw. I'll miss you.

  NOW

  Prologue

  “I thought she hated me at first, you know,” Cyrus Davidon said as he stared out the window. Darkness had descended upon the Plains of Perdamun, a light rain falling on the already saturated ground. “When we met, I mean. I thought she acted the way she did because she hated me.” There was a seeping chill around him, even as the fire crackled in the hearth at his back. “I was sure of it the first year, and I never really reconsidered it after that.” He shrugged, his black armor clanking as he moved his broad shoulders. “I just thought she hated me. All the way until … Nalikh’akur, I guess.”

  “Was that the place she tried to drown you?” Vaste’s dry voice crackled with wit. Cyrus turned to see the troll sitting in a chair, pulled up next to the fire. His frame was enormous, even taller than Cyrus’s seven feet. The troll’s teeth were pronounced, catching the glare of the dancing flames. Even still, there was no menace about Vaste. The sweet smell of the burning wood wafted under Cyrus’s nose.

  Cyrus felt himself laugh, unintentionally. “Yes. But it was bit more complicated than that. I had a fever, you see—”

  “I’ve heard this story before and it bores me,” Vaste said, shaking his great green head, blurring his dark eyes as he moved. “Tell me a fun one—like that time she came to your quarters when you got back from Luukessia—”

  “That’s not a fun one,” Cyrus said darkly.

  “Tell it anyway,” Vaste said. “I never get tired of that one.” His glee was palpable, as it often was, but there was a hint of hesitancy as well, a kind of velvet touch that his sarcasm seldom held. Waiting to see how I react, Cyrus thought.

  Cyrus felt a sigh building. He stared at the troll, but he sensed no intentional antagonism there. This is who Vaste is, how he relates to the world.

  How he deals with … what we’re dealing with here.

  “All right,” Cyrus said, and inspiration struck. “I have a better idea.”

  “First, I’m shocked you have an idea—”

  “Quiet, troll,” Cyrus said and fumbled with the leather-bound diary at his side, lifting it up with a flourish. “How about I read you Vara’s impressions of that night?”

  Vaste arched a black eyebrow. “Proceed.”

  Cyrus flipped through the diary, searching for the date. When he found it between the careworn pages, the delicate, flowing handwriting was easy to read.

  “I walked to Cyrus Davidon’s quarters in a fit of annoyance. We’d had a conversation in the Council Chambers when he returned, and it had been deeply unsatisfying, like eating a meal in a gnomish tavern.”

  “What was it with her and the gnomes?” Vaste asked. “So much hate.”

  “Hush,” Cyrus said. “Apparently in a bid to devalue myself further, I made a decision in the night that proved to be ridiculously fateful. I walked to the door of his quarters, and I knocked.

  I stood there in the dim light of the torches, their flames dancing on the wall, and counted all the reasons I should go back to my bed. It was waiting for me, it was warm and inviting—and I was sure to toss and turn for the rest of the night. I was wearing something rather scandalous, I realized a moment after I knocked, the type of thing I wear to bed, with its curls and lace—”

  “Tell me more,” Vaste said.

  “I’m about to tell you a whole lot less,” Cyrus said, giving Vaste the eye. “I stood at his door in my grossly inappropriate attire, worried for the half second before I heard his movement within that I would be thought a slattern for certain. Then, once I heard him coming to answer it, all thought of panic at how I was dressed fled me and was replaced by a much more sweeping, general sense of panic.

  He opened the door—quite nude, I might add, which thus soothed my concern about appropriate attire.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me,” I replied, not really sure what to say. He looked as if I’d woken him from a good sleep. His dark hair was tousled, and he was months—or years—unshaven. A thick scar ran across the base of his neck, a horrible, jagged mark that came from a tale that made me quite ill in the hearing. “May I come in?” I asked, then flogged myself mentally for the stupidity of my question. He was nude, after all, that much was obvious from what was visible in the half-open door.

  He squinted at me in the dim light of the hall, shrouded in the darkness of his own room. He had a vacant expression that was not usually present upon his face, no matter how much I might wish to convince him otherwise in moments of ire. “Didn’t we already have this conversation?” he asked, blinking the sleep from his eyes. With that, he turned to look over his shoulder to the bed, uncomprehending. “Oh. Ohhhhh … oh, damn.”

  It took me slightly less time with my superior elven eyesight to make out the shape in the bed, of course. Her blue skin was slightly at odds with his light sheets, but her white hair shone quite well. I saw the blink of her eyes, as well, while she watched the whole exchange. I doubt he caught it, of course, but it was there and I saw it.

  Saw it and let it boil my blood as though a dragon had breathed into my veins.

  “Vara, wait!” he called, stepping out into the hall to give chase as I made to leave.

  “You are naked and have just bedded a dark elven thief,” I said to him without turning back. I am certain that ‘dragon-like’ would have applied to my attributes in that moment as well. I was hot, furious—at myself for being too late, at him for sinking so bloody low as to dive back into bed with that. “I think our discussions are at an end.”

  “But—I—” Had it been in different circumstances, I might have thought his sputtering adorable. Yes. Me. I might have. This was, after all, a commanding General, an incredible leader, and I had just reduced him by my presence and his guilt to an incoherent mess.

  As it was, I simply found it contemptible. “I need no explanations from you, General.” I said it, I meant it, and I emphasized it as I gave him a pitiless gaze.

  He said nothing, and I left him in his naked shame, standing there in the hallway like the fool he was as I stormed back into my quarters to scream my bloody rage into a pillow until I had no more voice left to give it.”

  Vaste’s chuckle was low. “She tells it better than you do.”

  “You’re an ass.” Cyrus scowled and snapped the diary shut. “It was late, I was half-asleep, I had spent days in battle and I had a yearning for—”

  “You thought with the wrong head,” Vaste said. “Th
at’s my conclusion. Every man has done it, though, in your usual attempt to be the undisputed master of everything, you did it in a rather more spectacular fashion than the rest of us would have.”

  “I am glad this tale tickles your fancy,” Cyrus said, moving back to the window.

  “At this point, I’m glad to find anything that tickles my fancy,” Vaste said, and Cyrus heard him lift himself off the chair as the wood protested at the troll’s weight. He held his distance, his slow, heavy breathing audible over Cyrus’s shoulder. “It’s been dark times for a while, after all.”

  “The darkest,” Cyrus said.

  “Thank you,” Vaste said. “For humoring me. It was … surprising to me that you did. You could have balked.”

  Cyrus glanced back at him, watched the orange glow play over his green skin, turning it yellow. “You’re just being you.”

  “But you’re not yourself anymore.”

  Cyrus bowed his head and pursed his lips. “Got no cause to be.”

  Vaste let that silence linger for a moment. “Let’s change that.” His voice took on a hint of life. “With what you told me … I mean, this could be … enormous. And coming from a troll, that means quite large indeed.” The flicker of amusement fled his voice with the next sentence, turning to earnestness. “Others would come, and gladly.”

  Cyrus felt the frown crease his forehead, weigh it down and squint his eyes nearly shut. He turned to look at Vaste. “What do you think is going to happen here?”

  “You called me back,” Vaste said, staring back at him. His expression was guileless, almost innocent. “We’re going to begin again, aren’t we? To rebuild? We need a leader.” Cyrus could see him about to burst with the floe of excitement that was cracking loose in him.

  Cyrus just stared at him and felt the mixed emotions roll through—regret, for leading his friend astray. Concern. Worry that he might have said the wrong thing in his letter. He doesn’t know, Cyrus thought. It’s not quite time to tell him, either. Soon, though. Still, that misperception he’s carrying …

  “Well?” Vaste asked, and his dark eyes were alive, dancing in the firelight. “When do we start again?”

  “We don’t,” Cyrus said. The words were so heavy that he had trouble getting them out, as though they were an immense boulder lodged in his soul. As soon as he said it, though, he felt the burden lift, and he was light and free again. He watched Vaste’s face fall, and even though he knew his point was made, the blow was dealt, he said it once more, lower, for himself. “We don’t.”

  Four Years Earlier

  Chapter 1

  Cyrus Davidon thrashed about, the water pressing in on him. There were walls in the middle distance, not far. He was in a passage that extended ahead, blue with the tinge of the water around him, his eyes enhanced by a spell a druid had cast so he could see in the dark. Another spell allowed him to swim without breathing. The briny water was held at bay just outside his nose, but he could smell it, the salty, despoiled flavor lurking like a distant whiff of bread baking in the distance.

  The water was cool against his skin, his armor conspicuous by its absence. He was in deep water now; the metal weight would have been an impediment to his ability to navigate, so he’d left it behind, and he indeed felt weightless as he swam. A grey corridor of stone swept ahead of him, leading beyond his line of sight. He followed it, one hand on his sword and the other alternating between swimming to propel him forward and touching the stone that surrounded him. He could hear noises in the distance through the water, a faint sound of rumbling like a rushing river.

  Next time I get the bright idea to run an expedition that involves a sunken temple, someone should stab me repeatedly in the head, he thought, the water forcing him to blink his eyes. I think Vara would do that rather gladly. His eyes burned just a little, as if he’d held them open far too long. Straining to see ahead through the passage, he could make out shapes in the murk, faint lines that blurred as though he were looking through his own tears.

  He swam forward as the passage disappeared ahead. He emerged from the tight hallway to find himself in a wide, open chamber. His eyes strained to take in the whole thing. It was a little smaller than the Sanctuary foyer, complete with statuary that stretched from floor to ceiling. He estimated the height of the building would have been something approaching three floors. The statue resting squarely in the middle of the room was familiar to him: Ashea, the Goddess of Water. There was a darkness below, something his vision couldn’t quite penetrate, and he realized it was a bed of seaweed, growing out of the bottom of the temple.

  He saw motion in the murk, something rising from the field of green seaweed that waved in the currents of water like grass swaying on the Plains of Perdamun. Heads were moving, followed by long necks, snakes ascending out of the seaweed. They swayed out of time with the vegetation around them, at least eight of them by Cyrus’s count, lining up with their eyes squarely on him.

  He floated there, feeling the sword in his hand as he pondered how to go about it. This wasn’t part of the deal. There was a pounding in his head, a desire to have this over with so he could leave this magic behind and draw a breath on the surface. He longed for it, for the open sky and the boat he knew waited far, far above and out of the temple. The sooner I go through them, the sooner I can get out of here.

  He darted forward, using his legs to churn through the water in powerful strokes. He was aided by the mystical power of his sword, Praelior, which augmented his strength and speed. Even with the increased resistance of the water, it still made him fast.

  He came at the first snake and sliced through the water with his sword. It dodged back, avoiding his motion, mouth open as though it were hissing at him.

  Two more of them came at him, and Cyrus tried to backpedal but found his coordination off in the water. One caught his left arm mid-bicep, and he felt the sting of its teeth. Blood clouded the water as he brought the sword around and buried it in the neck of the thing. He barely got it back around in time to catch the other one in the throat.

  Two down. Six to go. He would have sighed, but the water made it impossible. Where’s my army when I need them?

  He spun in the water, scissoring his legs to push him back out of range. Four of the snakes waved in the seaweed ahead, waiting for him to get closer. It has got to be down in the grass, dammit. Somewhere. No more water expeditions; the Realm of Purgatory and that gods-damned eel are bad enough, but this is just intolerable.

  Also, where is my army?

  He knew they were somewhere above, but he’d gotten separated from the expedition while chasing one of the Mler, a fish-like creature, one of hundreds that were the guardians of this temple. Other than these snakes, that is. The servants of Ashea align against us, we plunderers of their birthright.

  Cyrus dodged the attack of another snake, this one barreling at him with mouth open. That one was coming for my throat; they’re plainly serious about keeping whatever is down there safe.

  He rolled in the water, spinning himself over and feeling the turbulence in the water at his maneuver. Bubbles rushed all around him as he threw his sword arm forward just in time to catch another of the snakes on the sharp tip.

  Three down. Five more, now.

  He pushed himself forward, dipping low into the grass. The snake closest to him tried to adjust but was already out of position. Cyrus went low and churned through the water, landing a strike that neatly cut it in half. He grinned and looked back at his foe, but the grin didn’t last more than a second.

  Liberated from the ground, the snake was oozing blood from its stump, but it was moving through the water unrestrained, now. Aw, shit. Now I’ve got a mobile enemy instead of a tethered one!

  Cyrus swam upward, toward the top of the chamber, removing himself from the threat of the last four snakes in the seaweed. They snapped at him impotently as he dodged away. The last snake followed, moving more slowly than an eel, but pursuing nonetheless.

  Cy reached the top of the cham
ber and caught himself on the stone top of the pyramid. He see could the other snakes far below, resting in the shadow of the massive statue. First things first.

  The snake came at him, and he launched himself off the wall at it. It dodged surprisingly fast. It’s holding out on me, faking me out! He felt the pain in his left hand as it caught him on the wrist with a fang, then it darted away before he could counter.

  Next time remind me to bring a shield. A thin line of blood seeped into the water from his wound. Oh, right, I’m not doing this again.

  The snake readjusted, hanging in the water a few feet away from him. It was coiled, blood clouding the water from its wound and his.

  Cyrus threw himself forward and sliced Praelior horizontally. The sword dug into the foot-thick snake and cut through, even with the reduced speed of Cyrus’s swing. Blood clouded the water, blinding Cyrus momentarily.

  He turned his head, trying to confirm that he’d killed it. It’d be just my luck if I hadn’t. He swam out of the cloud and saw the snake writhing, cut in half. It fell to the seabed below, just outside of the field of its brethren, and then remained still.

  Four down. Halfway home.

  He churned the water as he swam now, racing down at the ones that remained without preamble. The steady, burning pain of the bites from his other foes was nagging at him, but minor compared to countless other pains he’d felt before. He went straight at the nearest snake, saw it coil, waiting for him.

  It struck, nearly too fast for him. He threw his sword up just in time and positioned it perfectly. The snake ran its head at him as he raised the blade, catching it just under the jaw and sending the head spiraling away into the seabed.