Heretic (The Sanctuary Series Book 7) Read online

  Heretic

  The Sanctuary Series

  Volume 7

  Robert J. Crane

  Heretic

  The Sanctuary Series, Volume Seven

  Robert J. Crane

  copyright © 2015 Revelen 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.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher. For information regarding permission, please email [email protected]

  Table of Contents

  NOW

  Prologue

  TWO YEARS EARLIER

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  65.

  66.

  67.

  68.

  69.

  70.

  71.

  72.

  73.

  74.

  75.

  76.

  77.

  78.

  79.

  80.

  81.

  82.

  83.

  84.

  85.

  86.

  87.

  88.

  89.

  90.

  91.

  92.

  93.

  94.

  95.

  96.

  97.

  98.

  99.

  100.

  NOW

  Epilogue

  Author's Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  NOW

  Prologue

  “There is no hope left,” Cyrus said into the silence of the Council archive, mist starting to seep in as the day began to fade around them. They had sat in silence for some time, he and Vaste, since they had returned to the top of the tower. Clouds were darkening the sky and a thick fog was creeping in over the Plains of Perdamun.

  “Ugh,” Vaste said, sticking out his tongue as he placed his scarred face in his mighty green troll hands, which were at least twice the size of a human’s. “I’m finding it really difficult to be around you right now.”

  “So leave,” Cyrus said, looking out the window at the darkening plains. Shadows played across the hilly terrain, and he surveyed them with blank eyes. A dragon could have emerged from the mist blowing fire and roaring fury, and he wouldn’t have much cared. Though it seems unlikely Ehrgraz would let a dragon come this far north, he thought idly.

  The troll raised his head up, peering between two fingers with a yellow-onyx eye. “Why? So you can drive your sword through your own face over and over in peace?”

  Cyrus lifted a hand and a dash of flame burst out, lighting the room brighter than the fire in the hearth. The shadows clinging to the sandy-colored stone walls faded instantly. “I think I can do it a little more efficiently than that.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving,” Vaste said, standing up. He snatched at the leather-bound journal beside him with his wide fingers. Seizing it and stalking over to Cyrus, he shoved the book in his face. Up close, Cyrus could see the subtly pebbled texture of the leather. It smelled of secrets, rich and alluring, the parchment wafting with an unmistakable aroma. Even the ink smelled familiar, sweet, but Cyrus yanked his nose away as though it were something vile. “Read this,” Vaste said.

  Cyrus turned away purposefully, looking out the window, back to the shadows, fog and darkness shrouding the Plains of Perdamun. Nightmares lurked out there, but they held no fear for him any longer. “I don’t want to,” he said.

  “Read it!” Vaste said, more insistently. He thrust the book out at Cyrus again.

  Cyrus glanced back at the troll, trying to keep his expression impassive. Vaste’s eyes were wild, his lips gently parted, his arm shaking just slightly as he held the book toward Cyrus. A worthy try, my old friend, but you won’t sway me from this course. “I already have.”

  “Read it or I’m going to strip my clothes off and dance naked in front of you right now,” Vaste said, “and I expect once you see the beauteous curves of my arse, it’ll snap you right out of that funk you’re in.” He gyrated his torso in a suggestive manner that caused Cyrus to take a step back and clank into the wall, his backplate thumping against the edge of the window sill.

  “You’re the worst company,” Cyrus said, snatching the volume out of his hand in resignation after a moment’s consideration. He’ll likely do it. “Do you want me to pick a random passage or do you have a specific—”

  “Here,” Vaste said, ripping the diary open and thumbing through until he reached a specific page. “This,” he said with satisfaction, thrusting the journal back into Cyrus’s hands. “Now read, or you get the green arse.”

  “This isn’t why I wrote to you—”

  “Read.”

  Cyrus turned his eyes toward the page and started to read the flowing script.

  In spite of all that has happened in the wake of the battle in the Jungle of Vidara, in spite of all we lost, today might, in fact, have been the happiest day of my life.

  Cyrus tore his eyes away from the page and looked up into the smug face of the troll standing above him. “You think reading this is going to make me want to kill myself less?”

  “Just read the damned thing, Davidon, or I’m pulling off this robe and you’re going to see what a real troll looks like down—”

  Cyrus threw up a hand in surrender and buried his nose in the book, picking up where he left off. There were occasional smudges on the parchment where the ink had gotten wet as the passage had been written. He noted them as he went, trying not to add his own contribution to the pages. As he turned to the next page, the parchment made a rich crackling sound like faint thunder on a stormy night.

  It was a gorgeous summer day, and we conducted the entire event on the lawn. From start to finish, from sunup to sundown, it was our day
, and it was a day of celebration. Not grief, not mourning, not quiet introspection, but our day to celebrate ourselves, to celebrate our love, so labored and long in the making …

  Perhaps to say that it was “long in the making” is an inappropriate way to describe love, but … well, it’s true, and fortunately so, in more ways than one.

  I did not wear a traditional dress, and my groom did not wear any sort of suit of the kind you might find on a gentleman of Termina, both of us preferring our armor to other finery. It was what we were wearing when we met, it was what we were wearing throughout our relationship—and why change a thing that works, even on a day like this one?

  Still, I walked down the aisle with flowers in my hands, my sister trailing behind me in place of my mother, and Cyrus stood there at the front, smiling but for the moment when he looked back to see Vaste at his shoulder rather than Andren. We ignored these moments where the loss, the sadness that had so filled our lives threatened to intrude on our special event, ignored it all and made this our day. Our happiest day.

  Our wedding day.

  Cyrus threw the book hard against the wall. He felt a smoldering within, a dark, crippling sensation of something growing within him—rage, resentment, fury. Common feelings, especially of late.

  “Well, at least now you’re feeling something other than maudlin self-pity,” Vaste said, looking up at him from where he had retreated across the archive, sitting with Alaric’s journal clutched in his hands. “That’s an improvement, probably.”

  “There is no improvement,” Cyrus snapped. “There is no getting better. Do you not understand?”

  “Cyrus,” Vaste said, “there is always—”

  “NO THERE BLOODY WELL IS NOT, VASTE!” Cyrus shouted into the archive, his voice rattling off the walls and echoing out the window onto the plains far below. “That’s what it means when you have no hope … that it will never, ever get better …” He waved a hand out the window. “Not for Arkaria.

  “Not for me.”

  His throat burned, the pain rolling down it as his face grew hot. “And not for her,” he said wistfully, “because she’s gone … and she’ll never come back.” He looked up at the silent troll. “The real irony, of course, is that she feared to be with me because she thought that once I died, she wouldn’t be able to bear living without me for thousands and thousands of years.” He listened to the silence in the archive. Vaste sat motionless next to the hearth, his skin yellow in the fire’s glow. “And yet it’s I who lost her first. I who suffered the cruelest of losses.” He sighed, and all the life flowed out of him with the breath. “I who can’t imagine living the next thirty or forty or—if fate be so cruel—sixty or seventy years of my pitiful little life-span without her.”

  He walked to the window and stared out into the rising mist. “So … to go back to your earlier question … no, I don’t mean to rebuild Sanctuary.” He looked at the stones that framed the window and put a hand on one, his gauntlet scratching lightly against the rough block. “This is their place, our place, where we grew the bonds of fellowship, the place where so … so very many of our friends lived and died, Vaste.” His voice grew faint. “I won’t insult their memory by pouring new life into it.” He turned around and saw the troll watching him with that rarest of emotions, the one Vaste almost never displayed—sadness. “This place … is the closest they have to a grave. It’s their tomb. Their mausoleum.

  “And I mean to join them in it.”

  TWO YEARS EARLIER

  1.

  “Of course you’re leaving,” Cyrus Davidon said into the silence of the nearly empty foyer of Sanctuary, his quiet voice carrying over the stone and overcoming the quiet crackle of the fire in the long hearth that ran down the entire side of the massive room. It burned like a long line of fire, reminding him of a spell sent forward like a charging knight on horseback, stirring up a straight cloud in its wake. Emotions played through Cyrus in quick succession—the sting of personal insult; the shock of another loss, a pin’s prick in a forest of them, before finally settling into the jaded resignation that seemed to permeate the very walls of the guildhall recently. “Sooner or later …” he said, trying to smile, “… everyone leaves.”

  Carisse Sevoux was a young human ranger whom Cyrus recalled from an occasion when she had delivered a message to his quarters. She had dark hair and a tanned face, as rangers tended to, along with a thin, lithe frame that was mostly hidden beneath her green cloak. When he’d seen her before he recalled a youthful face, but now she looked tired, drained of her vigor and vibrancy. There was no spark of light in her eyes when she spoke, not now. “I am … deeply sorry, Lord Davidon.”

  “You don’t have to apologize to me,” Cyrus said, trying to salve the nettled sense of pride he felt run through him. It prickled at his skin and itched at his mind. He forced another smile. “I’m still here, after all. It’s you who are choosing to leave, and it’s not as though you bound yourself to Sanctuary’s service for a lifetime.”

  “I just need to go home,” Carisse said, glancing away from his gaze. She fiddled with the edges of her cloak, drawing them closer, as if to protect herself from feeling guilty. That’s all inside, lass, and adjusting your cloak will do nothing to protect you from it, Cyrus did not say aloud. She hesitated, taking a halting step toward the door. “Well … I suppose this is farewell, then.”

  “Yes,” Cyrus said quietly, feeling as though he were perhaps channeling the spirit of the last Guildmaster of Sanctuary. “Fare well in your travels, Carisse Sevoux, and should you ever have call to tread back this way again, you will find our gates open for you.” Faint though it was, the smile that he’d pressed onto his face felt almost physically painful.

  “Thank you,” she said, taking his words as gracefully as she probably could and then sweeping away with a flutter of her cloak as hastily as she could within the bounds of good manners. She might as well be running, though, thought Cyrus. She certainly seemed to want to, an extra jump to her step as she hurried out the massive door of Sanctuary’s guildhall.

  “Was that another departure?” The voice that came from behind him was sharp as the sword that rested on her belt. For once, his wife’s voice did not make Cyrus Davidon smile.

  “It was,” Cyrus said, watching the door as Carisse Sevoux slipped out into the grey day. “I’ve lost count of how many that makes it.”

  “Thousands,” Vara said, slipping up next to him. She swept her gaze over the mid-afternoon emptiness of the guildhall, her blond hair pulled tight into a golden ponytail, her silver armor losing some of its glister in the low light of the foyer. “Many thousands. And with most of the Luukessians guarding the Emerald Fields—”

  “This guildhall is becoming as ghostly as its last master,” Cyrus said, finishing the sentence for his bride.

  Vara studied him carefully, her attention now focused wholly upon her husband. Cyrus could feel her piercing gaze, surveying him, working its way through the cracks in his armor and those in his soul, and he only looked at her out of the corner of his eye, waiting for her to pose her inevitable question. “Did you take this leaving with quiet aplomb, then?” she asked. “With the dignity due your post?”

  “Of course,” Cyrus said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know,” Vara said quietly, in a tone of voice that told him she very much did know but had chosen not to fight about it. “What did you say?” she asked, moving on.

  “The same thing I’ve told so many others,” Cyrus said, turning his head to look at her. Her blue eyes glowed with a quiet intensity. “That if she found herself wanting to come back at some point, our doors would be open—”

  “Revolting. You’re too conciliatory.”

  “It’s what Alaric would have said.” Cyrus maintained his quiet composure. This is how Alaric would have explained it, too.

  “I heard you say something else,” Vara said, a hint of tension coiling into her frame, visible even under the dully gleaming armor. “Something ab
out … ‘Everyone leaves’?”

  Cyrus shrugged even as he reddened. He felt a strange urge to hide, some childlike urge to retreat from the criticism he knew would follow from her. “There is truth in that, no?”

  His wife looked at him so sharply that he flinched as if she’d thrust at a blade at him. “That’s a very dim view of the world.”

  “It’s a dim day,” Cyrus said, nodding to the enormous circular stained-glass window over the main doors that was barely lit with the sky’s light. “And it rings true.”

  “Your helm will also ring true when I clap my gauntleted hand upon it,” she said, pursing her lips in disapproval, “yet I doubt you have any more desire to hear that than I do to see my husband spew forth such forlorn, self-pitying twaddle.” Her voice lowered and softened, run through with a gentleness that he did not often hear from her in a public setting. “You’re better than this.”

  “I know,” he said, looking away from her again. “You’re right. All these—these many leavings—they bring out the worst in me.” He ran a metal-encased hand over his cleanly shaven cheek, scratching his face with his gauntlet finger. “I can’t help but remember in times like this that my father left, my mother left …” He pressed his lips together hard. “… Alaric … Andren …”

  “Most of them died,” Vara whispered, her hand touching his shoulder so gently that her gauntlet made no sound against his pauldrons. “It wasn’t as though they simply walked out a door and left you behind.”

  In the silence of the foyer, Cyrus stared at the open door, nothing but grey visible in the sky beyond. “I know I shouldn’t,” he admitted. “But on days like today, I can’t help but feel that way. The idea that … whether they want to or not, everyone leaves. One way or another.”

  “I won’t leave you,” she said, now brushing her own fingers across his face, careful not to pinch him between the armor’s joints.

  He turned his head to look at her pale face, hints of gold that had slipped out of her long ponytail drifting into her eyes. “No?”

  “No,” she said, and a mischievous light came to her eyes, “I mean to torment you for years and years to come, dear husband. It’s chief among the reasons I married you—”