Master (Book 5) (38 page)

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.

“General,” Vara said quietly. She stared at him, her own orb hanging before her.

Reluctantly, Cyrus nodded. There were only a handful of faces remaining now, all of them watching him. Curatio. Andren. Vaste. He knew they wouldn’t leave until he had.

Aisling. He caught sight of her in a motion at the corner of his eye, just barely visible in the entry of a mud hut.

With a last look, Cyrus took hold of the orb as he saw Vara do the same; the chime of the spell magic washed over him, sweeping him away and leaving him with a terrible sense in his gut that they were, all of them, alone, even in spite of the evidence he had just seen to the contrary.

The passing of the hours was a sweet blessing to Cyrus, listless in the days that followed. Guild business seemed to be on hold, the army in a state of flustered success over the victory at Gren. They seemed to Cyrus like the teenagers he had known at the Society who had embraced the mythical, wondrous and ephemeral first love; glowing in each others’ presence, holding hands like it was a mark of pride. He’d seen the behavior, thought it curious in his isolation, much the same as he viewed his soldiers now. Their voices hushed when he was around, their embarrassed relief and proud tones rang loud when they did not see him. They had done something truly worthy of note in their own minds. In the mind of most of Arkaria, Cyrus would have conceded, in that strangely detached way that he had, had anyone asked.

The days ground to a slow close, no meetings to snag them in their passage like blade on cloth, the dull tearing noise of sundered material. They slipped by and Cyrus watched them, a ghost in the halls of Sanctuary.

But not
the
Ghost.

Aisling attended him and he let her, without emotion or enthusiasm. The lack of feeling came as dutifully to him as it had in Luukessia, though he did not quite feel the soul-deep weight now that he had then. This loss was more personal, he conceded, but he kept it at arm’s length, away from his day to day emotions, dwelling on it only at day’s end or day’s beginning. But there was so little business to handle, with the everyone’s breath seemingly held for the approaching election, that he felt—for once—surprisingly unfettered.

He knew that he had changed in the eyes of his army, knew they had seen something in him in the square at Gren that had put rumors on lips. For good or ill, he did not know, but he suspected. He’d heard the whispers of the fury in his own mind, after all, and others had read it in his eyes. He’d meant to wipe the trolls out to the last, and that was not a secret. The thought of the barely averted slaughter weighed on Cyrus in those quiet moments, that and the voice of Alaric telling him not to succumb made him wonder if he had simply lost his way or if he was losing his mind.

On the day before the election Cyrus found himself in the gardens, steps almost preordained. He walked over the bridge, noting how like the Realm of Life it looked, even without the snows blanketing the ground. This gave him a spur of a sort, a little poke to his consciousness. Alaric Garaunt had been a man who kept his mysteries close, who embraced them in a way that he had never embraced anyone that Cyrus had seen.

The day was golden, one of those days of fall where rustling leaves and the brisk air made even Cyrus, in his current state, feel alive. He could smell cider on the air and remembered how someone—had it been J’anda?—had mentioned a nearby orchard. He wanted to pluck an apple from a tree and sink his teeth into the sweetness, taste the life as he drained the juice from it. He wanted to walk under red and orange leaves, watching each of them die just so he could remember that he was alive.