Ghosts of Sanctuary Read online

  Ghosts of Sanctuary

  The Sanctuary Series, Volume Nine

  Robert J. Crane

  Ghosts of Sanctuary

  The Sanctuary Series, Volume Nine

  Robert J. Crane

  Copyright © 2018 Ostiagard 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].

  CONTENTS

  Prologue

  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.

  Author’s Note

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Other Works by Robert J. Crane

  Prologue

  Shirri Gadden had landed herself in trouble this time, the sort you couldn’t exactly pull yourself free of without the kind of help that didn’t come cheap. Shirri’s problem was that she was broke, and since help didn’t come cheap, it was a double pox, the sort you got right after you recovered from the last ailment.

  She hurried down the street with the cloak over her, trying to ignore the pounding rain coming down. Reikonos wasn’t a pretty town, not unless you were rich and lived in the parts where they had big houses and big gardens. Down here by the factories it was ugly, with black coal smoke belching out of tall brick stacks, dumping ashen residue on everything. She had a small flat near here, and it was impossible to keep it clean with all that vexation dumping down all the time. She’d heard tell from her mother of a time when the skies above Reikonos were blue, but that sounded like a falsity to her. The factories with their black clouds and smokestacks had been around for as long as she could remember.

  She skirted past a pub and dodged down an alley. She’d been this way a few times before. It wasn’t real safe to be wandering in this part of town after sundown, but then, there weren’t a lot of parts of Reikonos where it was. Cutthroats would steal a coinpurse from a corpse more gladly than mugging a living victim; less chance they’d get caught if they left their prey dead in an alley rather than let them walk away to scream for the city guard.

  Shirri heard the footsteps before she saw who was making them. It was like a constabulary bell ringing, clanging from one of the towers all around the city. She turned her head and saw them—

  Oh, Davidon, she saw them.

  She took to running, knowing damned well they’d catch her. They looked tall, she was short, and there wasn’t a chance in a dragon’s mouth she’d get away from them, not in this knot of alleys. She knew them, knew them well enough to know that anyone with half a wit would have someone posted ahead, just past the empty lot on the high street.

  Still, death came for those who stood still, so Shirri broke into a run. If they were honest criminals, they might write her off as a bad job, say forget about it and go drag away some drunk staggering out of Minndee’s bar on the street over—

  They didn’t write her off.

  They started after her at a run, hoots and catcalls filling the alley. She knew what a calm criminal sounded like, the sort that might have put the fear of Davidon in her and been off about their business. These weren’t that type. These were the other.

  The ones who enjoyed hurting people.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered to herself, cutting around the corner. She could see the vacant green space up ahead, across the empty street. A glance skyward proved that the clouds of smoke had covered the sky this night, and there was not even a sliver of moon to guide her. The street torches burned, making her wonder if she could somehow disappear past that lot, maybe—

  One of them burst out of a side alley laughing only five feet behind her, and she knew her time was nearly up. Shirri screamed, knowing even as she did that no one would hear her, no one would help her—not in this town. Not the guards. Not the citizenry. No one.

  Not in this town. Not in Reikonos. Everybody always said it: there was no hope left in Reikonos. The man behind her snatched her cloak just as she made it to the cobblestone street, the gaslights above her sending off their warm glow. She stumbled, twisting her ankle as she fell. She landed hard on the stones, her elbow cracking and a gasp of pain forcing its way out of her lips. She curled up instinctively, cradling the elbow, the ankle radiating pain of its own down her foot.

  “Lookee what we got here, lads and ladies,” said the burly man who’d chased her down. There were others emerging from the shadows now, their grins the first thing she saw, teeth shining in the gaslight. “Shirri … this is why you shouldn’t run when you know you owe.”

  “I don’t have it,” Shirri said through gritted teeth. The pain in her elbow was impossibly bad. She could feel the rough hints that a bone had broken there, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it except lie here and hope they left her alive when they were done with whatever they intended to do. She had ideas, and every single one of them terrified her.

  “Well, then that makes you kind of useless, don’t it?” Burly asked. He was just a rough from the streets, he didn’t even work for himself. It somehow made it worse that the man who was going to kill her wasn’t the man who really even wanted to kill her.

  “Let’s take her to the wall and toss her over,” a woman with a weaselly voice said, not even disguising the thrill at the thought. “Watch her spend her last moments trying to decide whether to drown or get ripped apart.”

  “That’s always a fun one,” Burly agreed. “Costs, though, paying off a guard to let you. Doing the job here, though …” He grinned. “That’s free.”

  “Please, no,” Shirri said. The pain had faded under the panic, the certain knowledge of what was coming. She couldn’t see any way out of it, no hope of rescue. They had her surrounded, they had the numbers. She had no way out, and the desperation clawed at her like a cat sealed in a sack and tossed in the moat. In her case, it manifested in the most curious way, a plea that she said, under her bre
ath, like a ritual turned to a shield, in just the way her mother had taught her, long ago:

  “I invoke thee who hear my plea, I request thy aid, For those who are soon to die.”

  “You think that’ll help you?” Burly asked, sounding vaguely amused. “I don’t think you realize—”

  A sound like thunder following a lightning strike rattled the nearby windows, shaking the ground beneath Shirri. She watched the toughs take a step back, uncertainly, rocked by the strange sound. There was a flash, and she looked around, trying to see where it had come from, but there was no telling, really; it almost seemed like it had come out of the building with the sharp spires and the tower that stretched up behind—

  Wait. Had that been there a moment ago? Shirri’s head swam with the pain, and then the sound of a door opening in the distance echoed across the street.

  It sounded like hope.

  “Is someone there? Help me!” Shirri shouted before Burly reached down and grabbed her, stuffing a hand in her mouth. He tasted like whiskey distilled in an old, dirty barrel.

  “You hush up there,” Burly said, peering into the dark. Something was moving out there, Shirri could see it. There was a sound, too, like …

  Footsteps?

  “Whoever you are,” Burly said, motioning for his comrades to close in, “I’d suggest just walking on this lovely evening—if you wish it to remain a lovely evening and not a bloodbath.”

  “I’ve always enjoyed a good bloodbath,” came a woman’s voice from the darkness, sharp and playful and proper. She stepped out of a shadow and Shirri saw her, clad in silver armor from head to toe, blond hair bound tight above her head in a flowing ponytail. She looked straight at Shirri with something akin to amusement, then shifted her fierce attention to Burly. She had the pointed ears of a pure elf, and Shirri blinked in surprise at that.

  “Well, it’s going to be your blood, darling elfy, so I doubt you’ll enjoy this one,” Burly said, chuckling under his breath. “Look at this getup, thinks she’s a brave lady knight.”

  “She’s a lady of the elven kingdom, actually,” came another voice, this one from a man with platinum hair. He looked calm and composed, but wore a smile, and in his hand was a mace with a metal ball that he rolled in a circle with his wrist. He wore immaculate white robes that didn’t look as though they had a speck of ash on them.

  “Ain’t no elven kingdom,” one of the toughs said. “Who you supposed to be?”

  “A bunch of minstrels out for a walk, clearly,” came another voice, this one jovial and lighthearted—and completely out of place. The speaker stepped into the gaslight and Shirri gasped, as did a few of the others. He was tall, taller than any person had a right to be, and with skin as green as the ocean by the docks. He almost looked like … but he couldn’t be. “Would you like us to sing you a tune? Because that’ll cost you.”

  “Oh, we’re going to make you do the singing, greenie,” Burly said, putting a dagger to the side of Shirri’s face. She felt the point of the blade at her cheek. “Compliments of the house.”

  “I don’t think this gentleman has good intentions,” came the voice of another man, older, and when he stepped out, Shirri frowned. He was wearing armor, too, grey and battered. He wore a sword on his belt and kept his hand upon the hilt, and spoke from behind a helm that looked like a bucket.

  “You may be dressed funny, but you’re not quite as dumb as you look,” Burly said. “Now … last chance. I’m feeling generous. Go back to the carnival you all came from and we’ll call this just another fanciful night in Reikonos. No harm done to any party, but—”

  “Harm is about to be done.” A dark shadow slipped out of the inky black night, and Shirri’s eyes rolled off it. She heard the voice of a man, deep and resonant, and when she finally saw him, she realized he, too, was covered in armor from head to toe. This armor was different than the others, though—

  It was entirely black, and he wore two swords at his waist.

  Shirri felt her breath catch in her throat, staring at him—at HIM—him, dressed like HIM—

  One of the toughs let out a laugh, but it was shrill and high and unconvincing. “Look at this fartwat! Thinks he’s Cyrus bloody Davidon, he does!” He laughed again, but it died as he looked at his fellow criminals, and a dull, painful silence settled in instead.

  “That’s right,” the man in black said, and as he stepped forward, his hands fell to his swords. Through the bottom of the helm, Shirri could see a ghostly smile. Then the swords erupted from their scabbards and were in his hands faster than Shirri could draw a breath, and suddenly—

  Suddenly, she wasn’t afraid anymore. “It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s really … him.”

  “Not a bloody chance,” Burly whispered back, awestruck. “It—no—he doesn’t even—”

  “My name is Cyrus Davidon,” the man said, and she felt it—she knew he spoke true. He held the blades up, and they looked like every illustration she’d seen in every book on him she’d ever read. There was a sound of leather boots slapping against an alley floor, and then another, and another, as the criminals started to run.

  “It’s bloody impossible,” Burly said, retreating back, dragging Shirri with him. His grasp at her neck was loosened, fading, along with his hope. “He can’t be—he’s—he’s a bloody myth! And—and even if—if—he’s been gone a thousand years—”

  Shirri looked at the five of them, in the darkness, as they closed together—the woman, the green man, the elf, the knight and finally, the man in black. He stood there by gaslight, holding aloft his swords. “I was gone,” he agreed. “For a while. And now …” And the smile became a grin as he seemed to shiver in the gaslight, as though a cloud of smoke from a nearby factory covered him over for just a moment, and then drifted on. Shirri felt the warmth run through her as Burly’s last hope flagged, and his arm slithered off her throat, fear taking him as he ran off into the night, fleeing from the specter that stood before her, a ghost that seemed to have drifted right out of the mists of history and solidified right there, in front of her, before her very eyes.

  The man in black smiled, a ghost that had come out of the night, out of the darkness—to save her. And he spoke, as she stood there, witnessing it at last—the thing the people had all talked about, hoped for, wished for, for as long as Shirri could remember …

  His return. “… And now I’m back.”

  1.

  “… And now I’m back.”

  Cyrus Davidon’s words echoed through the dark alleyway, like the rattle of stones against the sides of a barrel. Their foes had fled, but he remained, Praelior in one hand and Ferocis in the other, the sense of power intoxicating, flowing through him in a way that he hadn’t felt in a thousand years.

  “He’s struck the dramatic pose,” Vaste said from beside Vara. “Is he preening? I can’t tell if he’s preening, it’s so dark.” With a flick of his wrist, his hand lit, and light sheered through the darkness as though he’d lit a candle.

  “I don’t know if I would go so far as to call it ‘preening,’” Curatio said, his platinum hair lit in the glow of Vaste’s hand. “But there is a certain element of the theatrical in his efforts this eve.”

  Cyrus blinked, then sighed, shoulders sagging. “You people—I can’t go anywhere without a damned critique, honestly. I swear—” He sheathed Ferocis, and the world slowed down slightly. “They ran, okay? I was aiming for intimidating, and apparently I hit the mark, because, witness them, being gone—and the girl saved.” He pointed at the waif of a girl standing just down the alley, blinking at them all. “Hope kindled, girl saved, now we can return to our—I don’t know, etheric slumber.” He frowned. “Though, to be honest—”

  “I don’t really want to go back in yet,” Vaste said.

  “Nor I,” Vara said, her long blond hair flashing in the light of Vaste’s spell. “That bright light, always the same shade of milk—”

  “The lack of smell,” Cyrus said, looking around, sniffing. “You
getting this?” He made a face as a wave of something awful seeped into his nose, noxious, as though someone burned something particularly offensive. “It’s like Vaste had the worst movement of his life and then set fire to the outhouse afterward.”

  “And there’s ash over everything,” Vara said, brushing at her shoulder. Specks of grey had appeared like dusty blemishes on her immaculate silver armor, conspicuous in the glow of Vaste’s spell. “As though they’ve allowed the communal ovens to burn every hour of the day.”

  Cyrus looked at dark skies around them. Buildings of deep red brick stretched tall on either side, and in the distance, other towers and spires loomed, higher than the blocky structures that hemmed them into this alley. “Looks like things got … taller in our absence. What are all these—these—I can’t really tell in the dark.” He waved a hand over his face, casting the Eagle Eye spell. “Are those … I think they’re belching smoke.”

  “Explains why we can’t see the moon,” Vaste said, peering toward the streets at either end of the alleyway. The glow of torch or fire in the distance hinted that they were perhaps lit the way Reikonos of old had been, though they seemed to have a different cast to them. “I thought it was just clouds.”

  “There is definitely a pall that hangs over this place,” Vara said, looking about. “Those toughs—I know your hometown has had many a disreputable sort over the years,” she looked to Cyrus, “but this seems brazen, even for Reikonos, don’t you think?”

  “Honestly, I’m just happy to hear your voice again—your actual voice, not that tinkling sweetness that somehow pours right into my head,” Cyrus said, “and also that it didn’t happen to be you accusing me of being the sort of thug we just encountered.”

  Vara frowned at him. “Why would I do that?”

  “It used to be your modus operandi,” Cyrus said, favoring her with a tight smile.

  “That was a thousand years ago,” she said, “and before I married your lug arse. Try to keep up, will you.” She cast a look around again. “Things have changed.”