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  “Something a great deal more complimentary,” Cyrus said, looking directly into her eyes and letting her look back into his, “and more pertinent to the matter at hand.”

  “Ohhh,” she let out a sigh. “It is the middle of the night, and you’ve woken me from a sound sleep. I do not know if you noticed upon my kiss, but a poor taste lingers in my mouth—”

  “Sorry about that.”

  She raised an eyebrow in amusement. “It was not your doing, on this occasion, though I might suggest drinking fruit juices more regularly in the future.” She pursed her lips and looked vaguely … pouty, for once, he decided. “I can promise you that on the morrow, I will be fully happy to engage in almost whatever you wish to partake in—within reason—when I am fully awake. But for tonight …” Her voice entered the territory of a plea. “Can we not just go back to sleep?”

  “I suppo—”

  He was cut off mid-thought by the sound of a trumpeting from somewhere in the night. It echoed and resonated through the stone walls around them, stripped of the volume he knew it would have contained only a floor below in the officer’s quarters. It was followed by another blast, and then the ringing of persistent bells, and the sound of shouting—faint, but growing in intensity with every passing second—filled the night.

  “ALARUM! ALARUM!”

  Cyrus’s eyes met Vara’s, and he saw hers widen in surprise as they both hurried to leave the warm, comforting sheets behind for the cold suits of armor that sat on the mannequins at the end of the bed, waiting for their wearers.

  3.

  “I’m amazed at how fast you changed from ‘Let’s just go back to sleep’ to being ready for action,” Cyrus grumbled as they descended the stairs. Vara loped along ahead of him, taking them three at a time, her hand on her sword.

  She shot him a serious look. “If you’d lived through the year of the siege, you might be a bit more circumspect about this and a little less grumpy.” He could see the tension in her shoulders even through the armor, in the way she held herself, in the tight lines around her eyes, and the way the humor she’d displayed in bed had vanished the moment the shouts, bells and trumpets had reached them.

  “If you’d acceded to my desires about five minutes ago, maybe then I’d be less grumpy, but otherwise—”

  “What the hell is going on?” J’anda Aimant’s thin voice sounded surprisingly strong as he rushed down the steps behind Cyrus. He wore full-length blue robes with runes stitched into the luxurious material, and vestments hung over his neck like a scarf with ancient lettering that marked him as an enchanter. He carried with him a long staff of metal that came to a glassy orb at the tip. It glowed purple from deep within, some magic that looked as though it might leak out at any moment. In spite of wrinkled blue skin and an aged look that had drained some of the vibrancy from his step, the enchanter easily caught up with both Cyrus and Vara, his quickness belying his appearance.

  He's been different since he returned from Saekaj Sovar, Cyrus thought, watching the dark elf’s speedy approach. Faster, more energetic. Enough to put to lie the appearance of age he picked up in Luukessia. He glanced at the orb atop the staff and wondered, not for the first time, exactly where J’anda had gotten it. Answers, however, had not been forthcoming. “No idea,” Cyrus said. “Other than a bellowing of ‘ALARUM’ from what sounds like the foyer.”

  “Could it be danger at the walls?” Vara asked, and a thin streak of worry laced through her voice, almost causing it to crack a bit. “Some siege force, perhaps?”

  “I looked out the balcony windows while you were putting on your greaves,” Cyrus said, eyeing her. “There’s nothing on the plains and a full moon shines down.”

  “The portal in the foyer, then,” J’anda said as they came to a great clot of people upon the stairs. The staircase was jammed full, and Cyrus stopped before running full-on into a familiar, black-robed, green-skinned figure.

  “Hihi,” Vaste said, turning to look up at the three of them. He looked past Cyrus and Vara to J’anda. “What, did you go to bed with these two tonight?”

  “No,” J’anda said, voice strangely husky. “It takes me a little longer to dress these days.”

  “You certainly weren’t slow coming down those stairs,” Cyrus noted, and his eyes fell to the staff again.

  J’anda reached forward and swiftly tapped Cyrus on the head with one of the metal fingers that clutched the globe at the tip of his staff. It made a tinging noise that echoed in Cyrus’s ear, and it actually hurt a little from the impact, causing Cyrus to step down onto the stair beside Vaste. Cyrus shook off the ringing from his ears and looked up to see the enchanter smiling at him. “Why do you ask questions you already know the answer to?” J’anda asked.

  Cyrus opened his mouth, trying to clear the ringing in his ears. “What’s it called?”

  “Rasnareke,” J’anda said, flourishing the staff, purple orb glowing, “the Ward of Justice.”

  “Who gave it to—”

  Something else clanged on the top of Cyrus’s helm, and he cringed, looking back to see Vaste staring at him with black pupils buried in a yellow iris, his white wooden staff still held guiltily high. “Oh, I’m sorry. I saw him do it and thought maybe it was ‘Bop Cyrus on the Head Day.’ Which, I might add, would easily be my favorite holiday save for ‘Beat the Stuffing Out of Ryin Day.’”

  “Did someone say my name?” Ryin Ayend’s high voice shouted from across the open space of the staircase’s spiral. Cyrus looked down to see him half a circle away, looking around for the speaker.

  Cyrus adjusted his helm again, slightly, less out of need than in hope for the ringing in his ears to stop, and his gaze fell to Vara. “Usually in the past,” he said as her eyes met his, “you would take several people knocking me about the skull as an opportunity to land a hit of your own.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Things are not as they were in the past, though, are they?” She smiled, just a trace. “However much I might occasionally wish it in the middle of the night, you randy little—”

  “Okay,” Vaste said and turned abruptly with a twirl of his robes, “This is just so adorable I think I’m going to be nauseous.” He paused. “Yes. Yes, that’s nausea. Clearly a reaction to your oh-so-cutesy natures, and it’s manifesting in—” He brought up a hand and placed it over his lips. “Going to vomit. Yes. It’s happening.” He looked over the side of the staircase and down. “Ryin! Come here! I have need of your robes to catch my regurgitation.”

  Cyrus looked across the gap and saw Ryin looking around again, once more apparently searching for whoever called his name. “You’re going to give that poor man an ache in his neck.”

  “The nausea’s passed,” Vaste announced, straightening up.

  “Are you certain?” Vara asked, looking at him innocently.

  “Mostly,” the troll said, regarding her with a healthy dose of suspicion. “Why?”

  Vara grasped Cyrus by his newly shortened hair and dragged his head down for a kiss, long and passionate, and interrupted by a heaving noise from Vaste. “I’m just going to jump off here,” the troll said, leaning over the edge of the staircase. “Make sure no one resurrects me at the bottom.”

  Vara laughed in a somewhat evil way at his discomfort. “After years of you tormenting me, troll, I see nothing but advantage in this.”

  Vaste’s lips pursed and faded to an almost yellow color. “This is what you get for wishing people well. From now on I’m wishing you nothing but ill.” The faint sound of someone shouting “Alarum!” below wafted its way up to them as the clot on the stairs began to work its way loose and movement resumed. “On second thought,” he said, “perhaps I’ll wait on that until we see how this works out.”

  “A prudent gesture,” came the voice of Curatio as he slid into place next to J’anda. The healer looked more than a little disheveled, his face almost as pale as his white robes. For as long as Cyrus had known him, Curatio had looked nearly ageless, for he indeed was. But now
, Cyrus thought as he looked the elder elf up and down, he looks like he was dragged from deepest sleep and set upon a by a pack of angry rock giants.

  “Are you quite all right, Curatio?” Vara asked with more than a touch of concern. “You don’t look—”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” the healer said brusquely. He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it. “I apparently did not wake immediately upon the sounding of the alarm.” He’s another one that hasn’t been right for a while, Cyrus thought. “Do we have any idea what has prompted this middle of the night awakening?”

  “No army at the walls,” Cyrus said, nodding to the empty space that stretched stories below to the foyer. “Maybe a battle down there at the portal?”

  Vara listened carefully, and Curatio did the same, tipping an ear toward the shaft running through the middle of the tower. “No sound of swords clanging,” she said, shaking her head. “Just shouting. A great lot of bloody, indiscernible shouting.”

  “It bodes ill,” Curatio pronounced, and Cyrus could not find it in himself to disagree. Cyrus looked with concern over the edge of the great drop. “Alarms called in the night, no sign of an army or battle …” His voice trailed off, and Cyrus felt his thoughts swirl as he considered possibilities, none of them making any sense.

  No battle, no invaders. No threats—the dark elves declared peace and Terian is at the head of their government … could he have changed his mind about burying the old grudge? Cyrus looked down again as the slow shuffle of the spiral continued, and he did all within his power to keep from trying to strong-arm his way past Vaste and down the stairs.

  He looked over at Vara and smiled in what he tried to make a reassuring way. “It’ll be all right,” he said, easily as much for himself as anyone else present.

  “I know,” she said, returning his smile, but lightly, as she did everything. She leaned forward and gave him another soft kiss on the lips.

  “Well,” Curatio said, “that was … very nearly sickening.”

  “Thank you!” Vaste bellowed, drawing every eye in the spiral for two whole floors. He lowered his voice. “I tried to tell them exactly that earlier, and I don’t think they believed me.”

  “Or perhaps we simply were hoping you would eventually jump, thus sparing us all your rancid troll wit, which is nearly as sour as your breath,” Vara said.

  “You should talk.” Vaste waved a hand in front of his nose as he looked up at her. “You kiss him with that mouth? Did you swallow a—”

  Vara flushed red as a ripple of reaction ran through the spiral below them. Cyrus noticed it in the form of a hush that fell, whispers straining to reach across the gap as his eyes found Ryin, who was listening intently to someone ahead of him in the line. When the druid heard what was said, his head rocked back and he blinked three times in rapid succession. “Ryin!” Cyrus called, drawing the man’s gaze toward him as the rumor raced up the spiral. “What is it?”

  “I could have told you,” Vara said, voice a quiet whisper behind him. He turned to look her in the eyes, again, but found the mirth that had been present only moments before had fled as surely as the desert dwellers of the Inculta disappeared at sunrise. There was a tentativeness behind her eyes, a hesitance that caused him to quiver as her ears reddened at the tips, with her blond hair now drawn back in its severe ponytail, as it always was when she was ready for battle.

  “What is it?” Cyrus asked, swallowing heavily. A sense of nervous anticipation flowed through him freely, and he placed his hand upon Praelior as much for the feeling it provided as for a place to rest it.

  “The Emerald Fields,” Vara said, her voice with a quiver of its own. Cyrus’s stomach dropped as though someone had shoved it over the edge of the stairwell. “The titans of Kortran have come through the Heia Pass … and they’re attacking the town as we speak.”

  4.

  The flash of a teleportation spell faded into dark night, and the smell of flames and smoke reached Cyrus’s nose before his eyes regained their sight. The orange glow on the horizon was the first sign of the trouble ahead, and Cyrus found himself giving orders before his mind had caught up with his balance. It was a hot night in the middle of summer, the moisture thick in the air as if a hard rain were imminent. “Keep a tight formation! We don’t know how many we’re dealing with, or what we’ll find when we get there.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgment before beginning his run, pushing out in front of his army of some three hundred. Flashes behind him told him that more were on their way in, and he trusted them to follow close behind him.

  “This is like a waking nightmare,” Vara said at his side as they headed toward the town in the distance. The clank of her silver armor was subtle compared to the shouts and screams that came from ahead, the cries in the night of battle and terror. “How many people did we have stationed here?”

  “Maybe five hundred at the portal,” Thad said, causing Cyrus to turn his head to look at the warrior in blood-red armor. He already had his sword drawn, a plain-looking weapon of mystical steel that had been procured from one of their endless trips to the Realm of Purgatory. It’ll be enough to cut a crease in titan skin, that’s certain. “We pulled half the garrison last year at Administrator Tiernan’s request.”

  “And they’d have been in poor position to deal with anything out of the south,” Cyrus said, his long legs making less stride than they could have. He held himself under control to keep from outpacing his army. “They were meant to defend the portal against invaders, not the town against an army out of the south.” He pursed his lips into a tight line, his fearful anticipation growing with each step closer to the flames of war that beat in the near distance. His jog was not enough for him, not nearly. He longed to run, to lope along the worn and dusty road from the portal to the town, to use every bit of the speed that Praelior granted him to charge headlong into battle.

  “I know your mind,” Vara whispered at his ear. “But even you, with that sword, would find difficulty against an army of titans.”

  Cyrus nodded his acknowledgment, unable to find sufficient words to express the muddled rage seething under the surface. Titans are twenty feet tall and with all the proportionate strength that entails; a stray hand could cripple me with one good blow, and they’re not slow creatures, either. “I’ll maintain discipline,” Cyrus said at last.

  “I did not worry about it,” she said, “I merely wished to reassure you at following your better instincts. I know it is difficult. I, too, long to run ahead in order to inflict my singular rage upon these creatures, but without magical support, even we would be at a great disadvantage.”

  Cyrus breathed a hard breath, and it seemed to stick in his lungs like he’d taken in a bone that had lodged in his chest. The night sky was dark overhead but light in front of them, flames dancing into the night and giving the smoky clouds hanging ominously over the town a subtle glow. It brought to mind another battle he’d fought. “Does this remind you of—”

  “Santir, yes,” Vara said quietly. She was breathing a little louder now, not panting by any means, but he could hear her exertions. “On the night of the Termina battle.”

  The mere memory caused Cyrus to swallow heavily. “I hope we’re not walking into anything as bad as that … massacre.”

  They crested a small rise and the town came into view. At least a quarter of it was burning, flames billowing into the air in the northwest side of the main street. Houses farther off the avenue were catching as well, a stiff wind coming out of the east and carrying the fire between the wooden structures that made up the town. Large, shadowed figures loomed over the buildings and smaller ones ran to and fro in great numbers, their screams all blending together as the survivors attempted to flee.

  “Son of a bitch,” Martaina Proelius breathed, and Cyrus started slightly to find the elven ranger at his shoulder. She had her bow in hand and looked prepared to draw and fire it, even from here.

  “Hold,” Cyrus said and put up a hand that caught the glow of the fires and
turned his skin a sickly shade of yellow. He spun and looked over the army behind him, straining to raise himself up slightly. They filled the ground behind him all the way to the portal, already numbering several thousand. A flash near the portal forced him to avert his eyes for a few seconds, and when he turned back he saw a few hundred on horseback, plainly teleported directly from the stables. “Thad, keep the cavalry out of the fight in town. The last thing we need is to have them riding down our own people in tight confines. Send them around on the northern reaches through the fields, see if they can rally survivors. Have them gather anyone they find and escort them back to the portal for evacuation to Sanctuary.”

  “Aye, sir,” Thad said, saluting sharply with the hand he did not carry his sword in. “Anything else?”

  “Where’s Odellan?” Cyrus called, and his eyes alighted on the familiar winged helm of the elf somewhere in the second formation that had teleported in. “Never mind. I’m sure he’s got his own group under control—just repeat my orders to him as he passes.”

  “Aye.”

  “Army of Sanctuary, on me!” Cyrus called and started forward again at a slightly faster pace. He came down the small hill toward the town, looking hard at the first of the titans ahead of him. He could judge the height by the size of the buildings it moved near. The beast was easily taller than a two-story building and tore through a thatched-roof hut with a fearsome roar. This one had gotten away from his comrades that were filling the streets of the town, dark, shadowed towers in the streets of this small city.

  Cyrus waited for the sound of the army’s motion to betray him to the titan he stalked, but the creature was far too busy tearing the roof off the building ahead of it. It rummaged about in the house like a man through small chest, a stray hand destroying the wooden side of the structure. It made a low, horrible chortling noise and drew a massive fist out with something that looked like a small doll clutched inside it. With a sickening sense of disgust, Cyrus realized it was a person, a human being, though a hard squeeze by the beast ended that life without so much as an audible squeal. The titan threw the body over its shoulder without a care, and then turned back to the house as a cry from within the building echoed in the night.