Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Read online

  He walked up the hardened steps, carved out of the rocky floor of the cavern, letting his gauntlet clank along the bannister that rose out of the ground. It, too, was stone, and carved with some effort and craftsmanship, probably done over the course of a hundred years as the sculptor responsible could tear himself away from more pressing and lucrative work. If Saekaj were a multi-tiered cake of the sort he’d seen in Reikonos bakeries, those houses by the front gates were almost on the table, one accident of gravity away from falling off completely and being swept up by a broom with the other detritus on the floor.

  Terian tried the entry door, which was stone and not wood; another sign of the humbleness of this abode. It swung under his push, and he noted the lack of a lock on it. No one would come to Saekaj to steal from someone this far down; they’d be better off robbing from someone at the front gate of Sovar. Less dangerous.

  He stepped into a hallway that ran along the side of the first-floor dwelling. A staircase ahead went both up and down, circling in a rectangular configuration like a snake coiling itself. To his left was the path to the basement; to his right, the way up.

  The door of the first-floor apartments bore a crest of an unfamiliar house, something small and birdlike that had wings extended on either side of it. Dismissing it, Terian moved on to the staircase. The way the Sovereign told it, my house is in greatest disgrace. Being in this building alone is certainly proof of that, but … perhaps there’s even more to it. He looked at the yawning darkness of the downward path. A single lamp sat extinguished in a sconce on the landing below, suggesting that whoever lived down there lacked the coin for oil.

  Sighing, Terian walked down the stairs, listening to the supports below the stone tile cry protest at the weight of his armor. He kept a hand on the banister, almost afraid to relinquish it for fear he might be somehow stuck down in this place in a nightmare.

  From the landing he could see the door to the basement dwelling. When his eyes fell on the crest mounted haphazardly on the door, he grimaced. It was slanted to one side by a few degrees, and achingly familiar.

  It looked like a stylized eye with eight lightning bolts streaking out from it, four on top and four on the bottom. So this is it, he realized, bowing his head. I’d long thought that if my father died, we’d be nearly out of Saekaj within the year, but this … to see it …

  His heart sunk in his chest, like a bladder of wine that had sprung a leak. He could feel his hopes deflating within, the loss of everything that he’d had pressing in on him now more than ever. I threw it all away for … this. To avenge a father whom I hated in life. To assuage guilt over things I said to him that I didn’t regret until he was dead.

  Terian held out his hand reluctantly, poised to deliver a knock to the stone door. Chips in the surface indicated that it had been knocked on more than a few times, and without regard for damage done to it in the process. He slapped a palm on it after a moment’s pause, realizing quite simply—I have nowhere else to go.

  The answer to the door came more quickly than he would have expected, as it swung open quickly to reveal a shadow in the grim, unlit darkness. “It’s me,” he said.

  The shadow bade him forward and Terian entered the dwelling, eyes unable to discern much other than furniture in great blurry shapes. There was not a light lit anywhere in the flat, and his vision had not adapted to this utter lack of illumination, not yet. “I can’t see a damned thing in here,” he muttered.

  He sensed rather than saw the shadow that answered the door, moving to one of the shapes of furniture. The figure walked with a slow indifference, almost a shuffle, like the body hidden in the dark had been put upon to the point of excess weariness. So … is that Mother … or the other that Malpravus mentioned?

  The sound of flint striking in the darkness was followed by a spark of flame. It was a tiny glow, the wick of candle catching its end, but it shed enough light to see by. It glowed warmly, spreading its luminescence to the four corners of the small living space, and putting alight the face of the bearer in stark, orange colors.

  Terian felt a gasp escape his throat before he could catch it; not that he could have kept this bottled up in any case, so great was the shock to his already wearied system. He blinked, then blinked again, trying to reconcile what his eyes were telling him with the truth that his heart had been told and believed, the one that had driven him down a harsh, broken path for this last year and more without relief or release.

  “But you’re dead,” Terian whispered when the breath found him, and his eyes had convinced him that the face being lit by the candle was, in fact, what he had thought it was.

  Amenon Lepos stood before him, his blue face paler than Terian could ever recall it seeing. His flesh hung ill on his skull, like it had been stretched over bone and then left to sag, inelastic. The candle was clutched in his hand, though, and there was unmistakable light in his eyes—he was alive, of this there was no doubt in Terian’s mind.

  7.

  J’anda

  Dearest J’anda, the letter began, I write to inform you of ill tidings which I know will not please you. It is a burden I take upon myself in fear that word of the rumors may reach your ears in the distant lands to which you have consigned yourself by decision and fate. Though it has been too long since we were last able to renew our long acquaintance, I still trust no one other than myself to deliver this heavy blow to you, hoping that perhaps seeing it come from my quill will lessen the power of its impact.

  Less than two weeks ago, Vracken Coeltes was made the head of the Gathering of Coercers in Saekaj.

  J’anda paused, the words of the last sentence like someone had taken a knife and begun carving his veins from within his very skin. His intake of breath grew sharp and hard, as though his lungs were trying to deprive him of his life. The words on the parchment blurred before his eyes, and the sharp, acrid taste flooded into his mouth.

  Vracken Coeltes …

  J’anda had not heard nor seen that name in almost a century and had hardly expected the reaction it produced. It was a staggering, sickening blow, as though someone had come along and smashed a priceless vase across the back of his head; it stung in the moment—and also later, as one came to realize that true value of all that had been lost.

  “Vracken … Coeltes,” he muttered, his breath still coming in fits, his throat tight as though he had swallowed a tough piece of meat and it had become lodged, intransigent, in his gullet.

  He felt the tightness in his chest like a fist clutching inside his rib cage, and tried to ignore it, tried to push past it, to turn his still-blurry eyes back to the page at hand. It is not the end of all things, this news. Coeltes was always a more capable liar than he was an enchanter, and head of the League is certainly a position of a politician. This is … expected, I suppose.

  Then why didn’t I expect it?

  It was as though the threads of a life he thought he had let loose of had thrust themselves back into his hand once more, unasked for. Much like a slinking animal one wishes to be rid of which continues to follow. That is Vracken Coeltes, surely. I thought I was rid of him forever, and yet this letter follows me here … finds me here …

  He pulled the letter up once more, the parchment crackling as though there were bones in the paper that protested his treatment. His eyes focused once more, he continued to read.

  I apologize for being the one to deliver this unkind news, but I could think of no other that I would entrust it to that could predict your reaction or soften the news to a merciful enough state to be conveyed. It is an ill turn I do you now, but I hope that it spares you a gloating one from another source, one who does not feel your wounding as acutely as I do.

  With warmest regards and affectionately yours,

  Zieran Lacielle

  J’anda let the parchment fall from his fingers and looked for a place to sit. His bed remained in the shattered heap that Vaste had left it. He sighed and pulled the hard wood chair out from beneath his desk. He’d meant to get
something softer at some point, but that point had simply never come. He lowered himself into the chair and blinked in surprise; there was indeed a pad upon it, prompting him to smile slightly. “Larana, you thoughtful lady.”

  J’anda sat heavily upon the padded chair, letting his back fall against its rest and his neck lean back limply, uncaring about the potential for cramps. It gave him a pinching feeling in the base of his neck, but he ignored it.

  Vracken Coeltes in charge of Saekaj’s Gathering of Coercers … this is …

  A mournful quiet fell over him then as he tried to find a word sufficient to his purposes. Catastrophic seemed … overblown. Coeltes was competent, after all. Disastrous wasn’t quite right either.

  “This is a grave injustice,” he finally decided, voicing the thought to his empty quarters.

  And though he sat there thinking about it for some time thereafter, he came to absolutely no conclusion what to do about it.

  8.

  Terian

  “I was dead,” Amenon Lepos said, his eyes black pools reflected in the candlelight, “just as you always wished. But unfortunately for you, death was no more faithful in its charge to hold me than you were as a son sworn to obey me … and here I am once more, as stuck with you in this place of shame as you are with me in your own disgrace.”

  “What sort of necromancy is this?” Terian asked, keeping himself from recoiling in horror only through greatest control.

  “The extraordinary sort,” Amenon said, holding still as the death he had purportedly left.

  Terian felt ill, shot through with nausea compounded with disgust. It is a great helping of revulsion that fills my belly. Once dead, supposedly permanently, the bastard did not even have the grace to stay that way.

  “I can see what crosses your mind at present,” Amenon said, his voice hoarser than Terian remembered it.

  “I doubt you have any notion of what flits through my mind.”

  “No?” Amenon asked. “Are you not … disappointed?”

  “That much is obvious,” Terian said, keeping himself level only through virtue of his exhaustion. “That death would find you a morsel too unpleasant to keep should not surprise me—”

  “What you ascribe to rejection,” Amenon cut him off, “glosses over effort and planning. My corpse lay in state in the Halls of our honored dead for over an annum before the Sovereign saw fit to call for my revivification—”

  “Not sure what he was thinking there.”

  “He was thinking that his Sovereignty ill-profited from my loss,” Amenon said, harsh as ever. “He was thinking that my aid would help him in returning his armies to victory.”

  “Sounds like he misjudged that one rather badly, based on recent results—”

  “Do not dare to speak that way in my house,” Amenon hissed. The candle shook in his hand, the light dancing off the walls with the subtle motion. “Your disloyal tongue is of no aid to us in this, our hour of need.”

  Terian looked around the room, studying the carved-in shelves stacked high with trinkets from the old manor house; it was the accumulation of a life’s worth of possessions crammed into a room half the size of his father’s old office. From where he stood, Terian could see a door to a single bedroom and a small privy with a bucket in lieu of plumbing. “Your need appears to be rather great.”

  “And your aid is rather small,” Amenon said. “Why even come here? You have made clear your desires in days past, your feelings about me and—”

  “I tried to avenge you, you insufferable prick,” Terian snapped, watching his father’s face fall to skepticism. “That’s right. I nearly killed Cyrus Davidon for you, in your name.”

  “The warrior in black,” Amenon mused, voice no louder than a whisper. “He stabbed me in the back, did you know? While I was dueling that elven woman with the hair as golden as the sun’s rays.”

  “He would have made a good dark knight,” Terian said. “And you should never cross Vara in his presence. He’s inordinately sensitive about her for some reason. Probably down to not getting laid, I would say—”

  “Your crudity does you no credit,” Amenon spat, and then his expression returned to nearly neutral, just a hint of twist in his pale lips. “So, you neatly cut off your own retreat by betraying one of your guildmates. I confess, I would not have thought it of you; I assumed you long ago had contorted yourself into eating out of the hand of your gentle and forgiving guildmaster, following his lead away from such unpleasant and boorish repartee toward insult and grievance.”

  “You thought I’d just talk it out with Cyrus Davidon?” Terian asked. “‘Oh, hey, did you know you killed my father and took his sword?’” With that, he pulled the broad red blade and watched his father’s eyes take on an aura of dark envy. “I feel certain that such a conversation would have ended in roughly the same state as the path I chose.”

  “I wouldn’t have cared to speculate about whatever activities my former heir might care to participate in,” Amenon said, “given that you and your guildmates handle things in ways unfathomable to me and mine. For all I know, you and your ilk settle your grievances with a daily veredajh that involves everyone in your guild in their nakedness—”

  “We call them ‘orgies’ outside these caverns,” Terian said, taking some small measure of delight in seeing his father blanch almost indiscernibly. “And that’s not exactly how I would expect grievances to be settled, though it sounds better than the path of vengeance I chose.”

  “You disgust me still,” Amenon spat, “and I can taste the lingering breath of rot in my mouth, so that should give you some idea of how low I find you and your base ways.”

  “It’s good to be home,” Terian said, smiling tightly, holding in the fury he felt building inside him.

  “Amenon?” a small voice asked from the door to the bedroom. “I heard raised voices …”

  “Go back to bed, Olia,” Amenon said, not tearing his eyes off of Terian, “there is nothing of consequence, nothing that cannot wait until morning—”

  “Terian,” his mother said, “is it you?” He saw her only in shadow, but she looked thinner than he recalled, practically a crone, like a tree killed in ages past, thin, twisted limbs locked into unnatural positions.

  As she came into the light of the candle, Terian felt a similar gasp drawn from him as when he saw his father. Her hair had gone from pale white as a summer moon to grey and coarse like old vek’tag hair—which was what her nightgown was made of. The wrinkles on her skin ill-suited a woman who was nearing only the century mark now, and when the light caught her purple eyes, they looked faded, almost blue, as though her sight was being leeched away. “Mother?” he asked.

  “I can hear you,” Olia Lepos breathed, though her eyes failed to fall on him. She came forth, hands raised to ward off anything she might run into, shuffling on slow feet, her back hunched with a weight he could not even see. “Where are you?”

  “I’m here,” Terian said quietly, stunned still, unable to move to her side. He watched her come at him instead, her blindness obvious now. “Mother … what’s happened to you?”

  “Why should you care?” Amenon snapped. “Our problems are of no concern to you.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have answered the door,” Terian twisted to volley back at his father. “What’s wrong with her?”

  The resentment was etched on Amenon’s sunken and colorless features. “She’s ill,” he said at last, as though he were parting with particularly valuable possession under great duress.

  “No shit, that much must be obvious even to her eyes.” Terian paused, but saw no trace of reaction on his mother’s face. “What has happened?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Olia said, her frail hands reaching out to touch his armor as she shuffled the last steps to him. “All that matters is that you’ve come back to us now.” Her hands shook as they slid up his armor to his face. He hurried to remove his spiked helm, and her hands rubbed across his dirty and bearded face. “You’ve change
d.”

  “I’ve been away for a long while,” he said. “Been at war for a long while.”

  “I heard vanished beyond the sight of this world,” Amenon said. “Over that stone bridge in the east. I hadn’t wondered if you might return at some ill-timed moment.”

  “Apparently I chose a well-timed moment to return,” Terian said, “as the Sovereign has enlisted my aid in the war.” He let the news slip lightly, still unsure quite how to feel about it.

  “Oh, Terian,” Olia said, “such excellent news!”

  “This is … unexpected,” his father said stiffly.

  “Try not to fall over yourself with enthusiasm at this turn of events,” Terian said. “I wouldn’t know quite what to do with myself if I pleased you for once.”

  “Well, I am pleased that you are no longer anathema to the Sovereign,” Amenon managed, looking strangely discomfited all the while. “But I would not turn down a further explanation of your new role here.”

  “I’m working with Goliath,” Terian said carefully, “But the Sovereign also asked me to tend to my house, which to my ears sounds like—”

  There sounded a knock at the door that froze them all in their place. It came again, seconds later, and more insistent upon the second time.

  “Who would dare at this hour?” Amenon asked.

  Terian felt the heft of the red blade, still in his hand, pointed safely away from his mother. He gently brushed her hands off his face and turned toward the door, weapon at the ready. “Only one way to find out.”

  His father’s eyes flashed anger. “Put that away, you fool. This is not some slum in the back deep where thieves come to call in the wee hours under false guise, else I’d have answered your knock with a dagger.”

  “I have no shortage of enemies,” Terian said, loud enough that he suspected it could be heard on the other side of the door. “And I have no wish to leave myself open to death.” He gave his father a once-over. “I mean, look what it’s done to you.”