Master (Book 5) Read online

  Cyrus watched with amazement and dread, suspicion clouding every sense. Why …?

  Cass Ward, his task finished, made his way back to the entrance of the dining hall quietly, with nary a step turning up more than near silence. He paused at the entry, his head slightly bowed. “None of us is ever alone,” he said into the empty hall.

  With a single look skyward, his eyes fell on the place where Cyrus stood in the darkness, and Cyrus felt a chill. He knows.

  Cass disappeared through the door quietly, shutting it behind him, the slight thump of the wood on wood echoing only for a moment after he had passed.

  Cyrus lay awake that night, and the next, and the next, fearing the worst. He watched the shadows, waiting for the inevitable attack to come creeping out of the dark. When he slept, it was fitful and brief, coming in spells that were brought on by extreme fatigue and ending when he awoke from his nightmares in a cold sweat.

  It was two weeks before he realized that the attack was not coming, and over a month before his sleep returned to normal, deep and placid, his only refuge.

  It was not long after that when Cyrus realized that every time Cass Ward said, “We are none of us alone,” in his presence, he was always—without exception—looking at Cyrus when he said it. After that whenever he heard them, Cyrus thought of them differently, a strange resonance plucking at a string deep within him, and it gave him the faintest flicker of hope.

  Chapter 45

  Cyrus stared up at the desecrated corpse of Cass Ward, feeling empty inside save for one, lone note, the pluck of a chord in his soul, the resonance of it echoing within.

  Fury.

  It coursed through his veins, reckless, hateful, consuming him with anger that ran like a river current over him. The shadowed body above shuddered with the foul wind off the swamp, and Cyrus shook in his armor, his hand vibrating to that pitch coming from inside.

  They are hateful, spiteful, disgusting, worthless, destroyers of all that is worthwhile and good. He looked up, remembering the righteous rage that had flooded him when Narstron had died. It came back with a new face, red eyes shining down from Cass’s head.

  “Cyrus?” Vaste’s voice was a distant sound, the call of a friend on a clear summer’s day, far from the deepening sundown in which he stood on the edge of the world, in a place that was home to the beasts that had killed his father, destroyed his childhood, left him at the mercy of people who hated and drove him and flayed the decency out of him.

  I have no decency remaining.

  His hand found Praelior, and the world slowed around him.

  “Get Vara,” Vaste said from somewhere behind him, a dragging sound like he was stretching every word for comic effect.

  The world was awash with that color yellow, turning red as the sun sank further behind the pillar. It was flame on the horizon, flame the like of which he’d seen Verity turn loose. Flame like I’ll see her turn loose again.

  Soon.

  Cyrus drew his sword as he stared, taking a slow circle around to see his surroundings. The only troll in sight was Vaste; but there were bodies, people, as far as his gaze could see. Half or more of them were bedraggled, haggard, creatures wearing cloth or less, fresh scars, fresh wounds, old wounds, infections, puss-laden sores and worse visible on their bodies. They were barely recognizable as the living, barely knowable as people—gnomes, dwarves, humans, elves, the occasional goblin, even. He felt no hate for the goblins; he had known too many of them by now, known them as friends and foes, in war on both sides of the fight.

  Cyrus’s eyes fell on Vaste, and he saw the alarm in the troll’s eyes. It was wisdom, wisdom in the yellow eyes, wisdom that told Cyrus that the troll knew his mind.

  “Why Vara?” Nyad asked, from behind Vaste’s elbow. “Don’t you think it should be Aisling? Or Curatio?”

  “Get Vara,” Vaste said, certainty and alarm flowing in equal measure. Nyad disappeared into the crowd behind Vaste, heading swiftly back the way they had come, robes rustling as she moved down the avenue.

  Cyrus took a breath of the dank, foul-smelling swamp, slave-market air, a breath of disgust and vitriol that cleansed him of any doubt. He had fought trolls, more than he could count, and only one had been worth a damn. “Get behind me, Vaste,” Cyrus said.

  Vaste’s hands came up, palms facing the warrior, his staff resting against his shoulder. “Don’t do this.”

  Cyrus spun once more about, taking in the refuse, the wastes, the dregs of the market around him. They stared, the drifting, aimless flotsam barely alive. His eyes fixed on an elven woman who caught his gaze, her brown hair twisted and ragged. Her nose was slightly angled, but she had been pretty once. Under the dirt, under the markings of the whip that showed on her bare shoulders, there was a hint of something familiar. He brushed his way through the crowd as gently as if he were stirring aside the cloth that had hung over the cages, careful not to knock anyone over.

  “Elisabeth,” he whispered, and the elven woman looked up at him in faint surprise. “Elisabeth, it’s you.”

  She opened her mouth slightly, and there was a flicker of recognition. “I know you,” she said.

  “It’s Cyrus,” he said. “Cyrus Davidon.”

  “Cyrus Davidon,” she murmured. “I knew a Cyrus Davidon once. A long time ago.”

  “It is I, Elisabeth,” he said, and he reached out with his left hand to brush her cheek. She pulled away abruptly with a gasp, jerking her hands up as if to defend herself from his touch. “I’m Cyrus. The Cyrus you knew.”

  She squinted at him, shaking her head. “No,” she decided finally. “He’s long gone by now. Long gone. They’re all gone.”

  “Who is all gone?” Cyrus asked, staring at her. The rage was curdling within, rising with her every word. He longed to strike out but not at those around him. It was the ones beyond that, the ones in the mud homes and buildings around the square. His mind was clear enough to recognize the victims, to separate them from the tormentors.

  And, oh, how he wanted to greet the tormentors. To open their arteries, to make their necks sing through new and gaping holes that he himself did carve. His world was chaos and pain, conquest and fury, and he knew it well. He spoke the language fluently, and it spoke back to him through the sword in his hand.

  “They’re all gone,” Elisabeth said sadly again.

  “Cyrus,” Vaste said.

  “Not now,” Cyrus spat bitterly back at him, not even bothering to turn.

  “Cyrus.” This came from Erith, tinged with loss, and he wondered when she had come into the square. He did not turn to look at her either, afraid that his fury might be loosed on one of them unintentionally.

  Cyrus made to touch Elisabeth’s arm, but she shuddered, flinched away again, blanched at the hint of his motion, falling to her knees and out of his path. He walked past her as the newly freed slaves made way for him, ducking away as though he were an overseer or the lash, reaching out for them. They parted like gates allowing for his passage. And pass he did, through the square, around the cages, threading through the knot of living beings that had been reduced to this; unthinking, unfeeling, frightened, bloodless creatures that knew naught but pain.

  Cyrus knew pain.

  Oh, but he knew pain.

  He dared not look back; not at the pillar, not at his army or officers, not at the friends he knew tread behind him like they were tied to his very heels.

  “Cyrus,” Andren said, and he heard him and ignored him with the rest. The word was part plea and part warning, and it went utterly unheeded, drowned in the river of fury that still pushed Cyrus along in its wild currents.

  At the edge of the square stood mud buildings, bigger than huts, bigger than the others. Slaver dwellings, he figured. Cloth hangings separated them from the open street, and they rustled. From breeze or fearful hands, he did not know. He reckoned there must have been some of the latter behind them, and he meant to find their owners, carve them free of said hands—

  “This is not the way,
” Vaste said. “They’ll answer for their crimes, but this is not the way—”

  “It’s my way,” Cyrus said in a low, thunderous voice. It crackled and writhed, a living thing where it should have been dead. “It’s the way of the warrior, don’t you know? Of the conqueror? Of the lone combatant, who falls upon his enemies like a hawk on a field mouse or a rabbit. Well, I am the raptor and these—these vermin are quailing before me.” Cyrus held up his sword and let the fury settle on his bones. “I know what I have to do.”

  He pictured the rage of his father in that moment, saw the grave in his mind’s eye, a specter rising from it clad in bone and rotted flesh like it came from the darkness of the Waking Woods, moaning voice and death rattle echoing as it came for its prey. He saw it rise in his mind, fearful eyes, glowing red, fury of the ages and the righteous unleashed, the fury of a son who had never really known his father because of them, laying waste to his enemies, and he knew what he was—

  His hand clutched Praelior high above him, and the cloth of a door separating him from one of them, one of the unworthy, one of the prey, was only inches from his grasp, waiting to be torn aside, weapon plunged in, screams ripped free from heinous, slaver throats—

  “Cyrus.” The voice was clear, rattling through his sword as though it struck the blade with lightning. It rattled down his bones, into his soul, ripping away the anger like a cloth covering denuding his door, leaving him exposed to the message and the voice, that voice, full of wisdom and knowledge and carrying so much strength even in death—

  “Cyrus,” Alaric’s voice said, “… don’t.”

  Cyrus felt his grasp slipping, felt his hand shaking, not from rage but from some strange relief granted by the sound. He turned, hoping to see the face of the aged paladin. He wanted to see the hope in the eyes, the wry smile that told him without words that everything was going to be all right, that gave unspoken comfort the like of which he had not known in any of the remembered days of his life.

  “Cyrus … don’t,” Vara said, and she was there before him. He blinked, looking for Alaric, but he was gone. Had he even been there at all? It was her though, silver armor shining, blond hair as yellow as the light disappearing over the horizon even now. She was sweet, and soft, and gentle, and he felt his sword return to the scabbard by instinct alone, his desire for blood as easily put aside as a meal once his belly was full. “You are better than simple vengeance,” she said, and in her voice he heard the echo of Alaric Garaunt’s words, and of other words, as well, from farther back—soothing and lovely, and that reminded him somehow of something his mother had once said.

  “I am better than simple vengeance,” Cyrus repeated, and it gave him strength. His fingers lingered on the hilt of Praelior, but the desire to strike out with it was as gone as Cass Ward. His eyes drifted up to the pillar once more, and where moments earlier he had felt the hatred flare, he now felt only sorrow in its place.

  “General,” Curatio said, now curiously in the front of his mind. Had he been there a moment earlier? There were others, too—Vaste, Nyad, Larana, Belkan, Andren. They formed a semi-circle with Vara at the center, and a square of refugees and Sanctuary members filling it to the brimming beyond. It was silent, and Cyrus could hear the blood rushing in his ears; not from anger any longer, but from an emptiness that followed in the wake of his decisive wrath. “Their portal is destroyed,” Curatio said. “We are quashing the last of the resistance in the fields now. Gren is conquered.” His voice came low, a whisper of triumph. “They are beaten.”

  I feel a strange lack of desire to cheer, Cyrus thought. His eyes found Vara’s still watching him carefully, looking for a sign of what he would do, some hint that he intended to turn and strike out at the occupants of the building behind him. “Clear the city,” Cyrus said in a strangely choked voice. “Building by building. I don’t want it burned, but I want it cleared. Let them remember being driven out, and then let them come back once we’ve left. Gather up every slave and … get them back to Sanctuary for now. We’ll feed them, we’ll clothe them, we’ll repatriate them as needed.” He swallowed heavily.

  “That will be … quite expensive,” Vaste said quietly but not accusingly. “In time and gold.”

  “We’ll find a way to make it work,” Cyrus said and turned to give the cloth hanging behind him a last look. He saw it rustle, faintly, the wind at play.

  “And what of the trolls?” Vaste asked.

  “Let them remain here in their homeland,” Cyrus said and turned his gaze to the pillar once more. He turned his head, letting out a final, poisonous breath as he felt the last of his hatred leave him. It was a curious sensation, and he thought of the creatures lingering in the hut behind him. They were about to be left without the labor to work their fields, to feed their hogs, to have the basics of life done for them. “They’re no longer a threat to anyone.” He passed Vara, avoiding her shoulder so as not to crash his pauldrons into hers.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. He heard her as he passed, a voice of infinite regret, a careful sadness, all currents under the river of her words.

  “I’m going to bury my friend,” Cyrus said, making his way toward the pillar with slow, dragging steps, as though a lifetime’s weight were upon him. “Going to show his body the respect it deserved.”

  He cut the body down and dug the grave himself, refusing any help offered. Hours passed, darkness fell, and Cyrus took note of none of it. He dug a grave deep, and placed the body inside with care, arranging it in the right order as near as he could. The smell was punishing; the flies had been at work for days and there were gaps that could not be made up. As Cyrus threw the first shovel of dirt on his friend—the only one he’d had at the Society, ever—he reflected that the hope offered by Cass had been like a light in the dark, a candle blown out by a draft on a cold night. The warmth promised was soul-felt, and gone all too quickly.

  “We are none of us alone,” Cyrus said as he finished, patting the top of the grave with the shovel, wishing it was Praelior in his hand, wishing it was blood on his fingers instead of dirt. “Except when we are.”

  He stood in the shadow of the pillar, the night nearly fallen. With a last look around, his menace driving back all nearby, Cyrus drew his sword. Breaths were taken in surprise, but he had a wide enough berth.

  Cyrus felt the first cool wind come down off the hill behind him, night’s fall at his back, blowing under his helm and stirring his hair. He raised his blade and sunk it into the pillar hard; he pulled it out and chopped into the stone again. Pebbles clinked against his armor, chipping away from the monolith by his effort.

  The first grunting creak warned him to remove his sword. He circled around to where the pillar showed its weakness, and with his hand on the hilt of his sword, drawing the strength from the blade, he pushed. It gave, then gave some more. He put his shoulder into it and heaved against it. With a crack the pillar broke and lost its battle against the pull of the earth. It came crashing down across the emptying square, all those who remained standing far from the warrior in black, far from the vengeful man who stood alone.

  The pillar had fallen perfectly atop the grave. Cyrus took his hand from the sword and tested the weight, pushing it from the side with all his might. The ancient stone did not so much as move, anchored in place by a strength that was beyond the understanding of even men and elves.

  “I don’t think anyone will disturb him now,” Vara said. He turned to find her there, closest of everyone, standing only twenty feet away. Has she been there all along?

  “No,” Cyrus said and found he was having trouble forming the words. The labor had been long, and all color had long since seeped out of the sky. Candles and lanterns lit the square around him, Nessalima’s light spells shining from the fingers of the spell casters interspersed among the masses. “No, they won’t.”

  “You could have had our help, you know,” Vara said.

  “I didn’t want help,” Cyrus said numbly. “I just needed to …”
/>   “I know,” she said simply.

  Cyrus gave the square one more look. He saw none of the bedraggled refugees, the slaves chained to this place by chance and fate. He glanced at the fallen pillar. That could have been me. If only I had been the unhated one, if only I had been the one with the grace to not run afoul of the guildmaster of the Society.

  “Our business here is concluded,” Vara said. “The majority of our army has left, and every troll has been removed from the city and told not to return until daybreak tomorrow.”

  “Do you think they’ll listen?” Cyrus asked ruefully.

  Vara remained expressionless, her pale skin lit by the thousand different twinkling sources. “I think … if you’ll pardon the expression … you scared the shit out of them. I don’t think they’ll be rushing back even at daybreak. I have never seen trolls so submissive and agreeable to suggestion.” She was straight of back, serious. “I think we are done here.”

  “Then we should go,” Cyrus said, giving the shattered pillar a last glance. It had broken in one long piece, uprooted and fallen like a mighty tree—like the one that held aloft the roof of the dining hall in the Society of Arms.

  “We await your command, General,” Vara said, strangely formal.

  Cyrus blinked. We are none of us alone echoed in his mind. But you were, weren’t you? At the end? We are all alone in the end, Cass. He found no warmth in those words.

  And a leader is the most alone of all.

  “Get us the hell out of here,” Cyrus said, and he caught the small motion of Verity somewhere to his side, grey cloak rippling as she made to cast a spell. A light appeared before him, before every one of them that remained. A thousand blinks, a thousand flashes, and he watched them fade.

  He waited in that quiet place as they disappeared, one by one, until only a few were left. The orb hovered in front of him, awaiting the touch of his hand.