Warlord

Warlord

The Sanctuary Series, Volume Six

Robert J. Crane

copyright © 2015 Midian 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.

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I have become death
, Cyrus Davidon thought as he looked out across the endless waves of brown grass that covered the Plains of Perdamun. Scorched earth reached up to the edges of the cracked and damaged curtain wall that stretched around Sanctuary, stones fallen out, an enormous V-shaped gap carved into it only a hundred feet from where Cyrus stood next to the granite memorial stone. It even smelled like death, as though a pile of rotting corpses lingered somewhere over the horizon, the smell blown on the wind and forcing its way into Cyrus’s mouth, crawling down his throat.

The tingle of the air’s chill ran over his flesh beneath his black armor, and he shivered in the dusk air.
In the absence of Mortus, I am the closest thing to death that walks this world. I have become death … and it has cost me everything
. His eyes swept the horizon for signs of life, but save for the grass that stubbornly clung to it, he found nothing.

“I am death,” Cyrus whispered, his voice lost under the breeze. Or so he thought.

“Well, at least you know who you are,” Vaste’s calm amusement cut across the gap between them. He turned and saw the troll standing under the grand gates, watching him.

Cyrus bit back an angry retort. “Didn’t know you were there,” he said instead.

“Would it have mattered if you did, Mr. Death?”

Cyrus took a breath of the air and then a step toward the troll. His foot sank into the sodden ground, drenched by rain but still lifeless. “Perhaps not,” Cyrus said. “But you don’t need to call me that.”

“I didn’t start it, you did,” Vaste said, giving him a raised eyebrow. “I mean, calling yourself death? That’s grim, even for this place.” He swept a hand around to encompass the whole of Sanctuary, looming large in the falling darkness beyond the wall. “Come on,” he said, a little more gently, “let’s go back inside.”

Cyrus cast another eye across the Plains of Perdamun before nodding his head.
It is grim, even for this place.

But that makes it no less true
, Cyrus thought as he took the troll’s invitation and followed him back into the halls of Sanctuary … into halls empty of all but the whispering voices of the dead …

…
Into the only place where I still belong.

Who are you?

The question echoed in Cyrus Davidon’s ears as he stared at the ashen ground beneath his plate-mailed boots. His sense of balance was askew; he felt as though he stood on a slanted hill even though the ground appeared flat all around him, clear to the horizon. It was a dark sky; not night, but as if clouds had rolled in on a clear day. The dim light was forbidding, reminding him of twilight in the north in the wintertime.

Cyrus tested his footing, and the world moved as he did so, shifting around him as though his strength was enough to topple it with one hard step. He brought his hands up to steady himself, but futilely; the world shifted again and seemed to straighten out. Despite the dark sky, the air was hot, like the breath of summer coming down the back of his neck, his armor taking up the heat and baking him like his own personal oven.

He clinked his fingers reassuringly on the hilt of Praelior, his sword. The world around him may have been unpredictable, unfamiliar, and mad, but at least there were some things he could count on. He didn’t draw his blade, not yet, but he let his fingers dance across it, sinking into the soft layer of padding that separated him from the hard metal that protected him during battle and war.

There’s no battle or war at present, though
, Cyrus thought, viewing his surroundings through a hazy eye and a clouded mind.
There’s nothing to be afraid of but—

Who are you?
the voice came again, rattling the earth beneath him and shifting the dark ash beneath his feet. It moved like it had been stirred by the wind, but it hadn’t; there was no wind to speak of. This was a simple movement of the earth, like shifting sands, and suddenly his legs felt unsteady again, as though the ground beneath them might give way.

“My name is Cyrus Davidon,” he called it into the dark sky. He clenched Praelior’s hilt in his fingers, forgoing the gentle, reassuring stroke and progressing to taking a firm grip, waiting for the power in the blade to wash over him—

Except it didn’t.

Cyrus took a sharp breath and tasted the air. It was thick with the smoky smell of ash, as though the movement of the ground had dislodged it and dispersed it into the air, a thick cloud that was part of the haze around him. He coughed, choking on it as he tried to clear his lungs. It passed after a moment of hacking, though the rough traces of it felt like they left a mark on his throat, dry dust stretching from the back of his mouth on down, leaving him with a scratchy sense beneath the gorget that protected his neck.

Who are you?
The voice was deep and hollow, rushing over the world around him with a rising fury. The ashen sand blew with the arrival of the question, and Cyrus turned his face away from its unseen origin as a cloud blew past. Reflexively, he squinted his eyes shut against it, but still some particle lodged painfully in the corner of his right eye. He resisted the urge to move his hand off his sword and dig at it, instead moving his left, pressing mailed fingers through the gap of his helm to do so. The rush of wind subsided and tears sprang out from beneath his heavy lids. He opened his one good eye and picked at the other in an ungainly fashion, the thick fingers of his gauntlet preventing him from doing much other than pushing gently at it.

“What the hells?” Cyrus muttered to himself as he realized his failure and merely tried to blink the eye clear with tears. It worked after a moment, and he was able to reopen it without the sense that someone had lodged a boulder beneath the lid. “I already told you who I am,” he said, now looking around for the source of the voice.

WHO ARE YOU?
This time the voice was a bellow that shook the earth, not a mere twist of perspective and balance the way it had moved with his feet earlier, but a full-on rocking of the ground beneath his feet as though some army of titans the size of buildings had marched past him at a run, their enormous feet causing the earth itself to protest at their weight.

Well, that’s about enough of this shit
, Cyrus thought, as the dust began to settle. This time he’d closed his eyes in time and raised a gauntlet to protect them. “My name is Cyrus Davidon. I am the Guildmaster of Sanctuary, Lord of Perdamun and Warden of the Southern Plains!” he called in challenge. He stared into the dark skies.

WHO ARE YOU?
The world rocked on its foundation again, even harsher if it was possible, as though a god had grabbed hold of the flat earth of Arkaria and given it a hard tug. Cyrus barely kept his feet this time, and the gusting of wind was like the force of a cyclone in the low country. If there had been trees anywhere in sight, he would have feared they’d have been torn up and thrown wildly at him, but when the angry question subsided and he blinked his eyes open and looked around, he saw nothing but dark skies and ashen earth in every direction.

“I keep bloody well telling you,” Cyrus said, borrowing one of Vara’s favorite words as he pushed back to his feet, “but apparently you don’t like my answer.” He looked once more, trying to find a face to direct his query to. “So … who the hell are you?”

WHO … ARE … YOU?
This time the question came with a mighty crack as the earth beneath Cyrus broke in two. It came like the rushing of a loosed river, tearing across the land at him as though it were a bolt of lightning streaking from the heavens to a tall tree. Even with his hand on Praelior, he felt nothing—no speed, no ability to react. It came as quickly as anything he’d ever seen and it split the earth between his legs and yanked them hard apart as though it meant to tear him asunder.

Cyrus fell, hand leaving his sword. He lost the ground beneath him, a flailing reaction to the fall that he had not seen coming. The earth yawned wide beneath his legs and he fell, catching himself with one of his thrown hands. The clink of his gauntlet against hard stone was preceded by the yanking force of his sharp descent suddenly coming to an abrupt halt. He felt the pain of it down his joints, rattling in his helm, the padding of his armor not doing nearly enough to defray the force that came with the harsh stop.

He dangled on the side of a newly made cliff, eyes drifting down into the impenetrable darkness below. It was as though a new shade of black had been invented purely for the purpose of this rift. He stared into it, almost fearing he could see eyes staring back at him out of it, compound eyes that glistened without a hint of light, attached to a mouth that would swallow him up, but only after grinding him to loose meat upon flat, unrelenting teeth.

Cyrus swung his other arm up once he’d gotten the sense of himself and his surroundings and managed to land it on the ledge next to the first with a clack of gauntlet upon stone. It came just in time, too, as the ash from above poured down upon him like water into a gutter. He turned his head in time to miss the worst of it, but he still received a full nose of the dark, silky cinders. It billowed around him in a cloud even as it rushed over his armor, sneaking into the cracks and tickling his flesh beneath his chainmail and clothes.

It stopped after another moment and all was silent for a bit. Cyrus hung there, waiting to see if more would come. When none immediately followed, he began to pull, his muscles forcing themselves against the armor as he began to strain. With Praelior as his aid, lifting his own bulk was an easy matter. Without it … well …

“Ungh,”
Cyrus muttered, lifting with all his strength. His armor groaned, a curious sound that he could not recall hearing before. He pulled up far enough to place an elbow on the rocky outcropping above, just as the voice thundered out once more …

… but this time from below him.

WHO ARE YOU?
it asked again, louder than ever, as though it had ripped his helm from his head and shouted it directly into his open ear. It rattled his head, drove all his thoughts out and left him without the concentration to formulate an answer. His grip betrayed him and his arm slipped, and Cyrus was left clutching the ledge above with but one hand, and then only his fingers as his palm wrenched free with a cracking of stone and a rain of small pebbles upon him from above.