Warlord (12 page)

Fredaula’s lined face reddened. “It’s criminal, what Danay does to the kingdom.”

“I’m not going to report you,” Cyrus said with a shrug, “merely calling it as I see it. King Danay and I have no love for one another.” He started back toward the entry to the tunnel.

“You …” Fredaula scurried to keep up, “… you’ve met the king?”

“Met him,” Cyrus said, “defended his kingdom, got into a rather heated argument with him. All of those, actually.”

Fredaula seemed to soften slightly, her wrinkled face relaxing. “Oh. Well. I didn’t expect such a steadfast defender of the kingdom to be …”

“I defend the people,” Cyrus said, boots crunching in the tunnel grit. “The Kingdom and its current monarch can go spit for all I care.”

“A noble calling,” Fredaula said.

“Yes, it fills him up all the way to his eyeballs,” Vara said, and Cyrus caught the hint of a smile at her lips in the way she said.

“We will, of course,” Curatio said, sending a darting glance to Cyrus suggesting he had caught all of Vara’s meaning and perhaps was suppressing a comment of his own, “be consulting with our council before making any decisions.” Cyrus eyed the healer and received a look in return that suggested he was perhaps stating this as a reminder for all in the tunnel, a small group that only included the three Sanctuary officers and Fredaula. Mendicant, Martaina and Scuddar had drifted down a secondary spur with Cora a few hundred feet back. Miners worked carefully, tapping at the walls with pickaxes. They made way as Cyrus and his party brushed past, bowing their heads slightly and hiding smiles as he passed.
Probably hoping we’re their salvation.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Fredaula led them back out of the tunnels and into the pit at the bottom of the tree. Fann’otte did not open directly into the mines; it was hollowed near the bottom, the ramp clear all the way into the roots, and a series of doors on the ramp allowed for carts to be pulled up into the tree proper with their precious ore. Cyrus listened as they opened one of the doors and he emerged into the quiet air of the tree, absent the tinking sound of pickaxes working in time. To his ears it was another maddeningly careful security precaution.

But to these elves, it’s perhaps the difference between life and death.

Mendicant, Martaina, Scuddar and Cora waited ahead on the ramp, pausing in the middle of some quiet conversation upon their approach.
This whole place is steeped in silence
, Cyrus thought.
It is the deadest town I’ve ever seen, perhaps even more bereft of life than the Realms of Darkness or Death.

Mendicant watched Cyrus’s approach and scampered toward him slightly, robes dragging the ground. “Did you see what they mine?”

“I saw it,” Cyrus said, slipping into the impromptu circle as Cora moved to allow it to widen to accommodate the new arrivals. “And it is certainly impressive.”

“We can come to some accord if you were to deal with this giant problem,” Cora said, perhaps a little too coy behind her smile.

“Cora,” Vara said, shaking her head, “you should know better than to try and influence us in so crass a manner.”

“I doubt it will have much bearing,” she said, slightly chastened, though not much given the gleam of her eyes as she looked at Cyrus, “but still … should you rid us of this problem, our gratitude will be made manifest in the form of a ten percent commission to Sanctuary in perpetuity.”

“I doubt we’ll take it,” Cyrus said, looking around the circle.

“It is yours whether you want it or not,” Cora said. “We make no demands save for that one—that you will not do this thing without recompense.”

Cyrus sighed, and caught a cocked head from Curatio that suggested easy resignation to the riches offered. “Fine,” Cyrus said. “I’ll put it into consideration with everything els—”

An explosion of sound came from a nearby door, causing Cyrus and the others to jerk their heads around to seek the source. The door slammed open and a peal of laughter filled the air as a child, no more than three in Cyrus’s estimation, came bounding out on unsteady legs. An elven man with youthful features emerged from the door and caught the tyke a moment later, scooping the child up and lifting them against his chest. He was flushed and red, and when he saw Cora and Fredaula, he blushed an even deeper scarlet. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Fredaula’s countenance was dark. “You know better, Arisson. You need to keep the children in that room, safely in the quiet space beneath the earth, at all times.”

“I know,” Arisson said, in rough resignation. “It’s just a—it’s tiresome for them, you know, not getting to play outdoors or—”

“These are our laws, Arisson.” Fredaula had folded her arms and made an imperious wave back toward the door that the child had sprung through. Cyrus fixated on the fat little face, whose bright eyes were searching over the small group assembled before them. The child’s hair was of a length and the features so indistinct he could not tell whether it was a boy or a girl.

“Sweet Vidara,” Vara muttered in a low gasp. She broke from the small assemblage and moved toward Arisson and the child, stopping before them as though she were afraid they would turn into vapor if she drew any closer. She stared for a long moment and then, haltingly, started to reach out. She looked to Arisson for permission, and received a nod in return. With that, she pulled free of her gauntlet and reached a bare hand out to stroke the child’s ear, which was pointed all the way to the top.

“That’s a full-blooded elf baby,” Cyrus said as another chill ran through him. “A full elven child.” He hesitated. “Unless … are they like … eight hundred or something?”

Vara cast him a withering look. “Don’t be an oaf, we mature like you when it comes to childhood and adolescence.”

“Right,” Cyrus said, nodding. “Because you’re thirty-three, not two thousand, and you’re,” he gestured vaguely at her, drawing another exasperated roll of the eyes from the paladin, “well, you know. Mature and developed and lovely and … all that.” He looked to Cora, who wore a tight smile. “How?”

“We don’t know,” she said, now showing the same sort of reserve that Fredaula had exhibited when showing Cyrus the quartal. “We only know that … well, that it happens now. That here … the curse of the elves has not applied since we were founded.” She hesitated, as though admitting something particularly painful. “It is … the other reason we cannot bring ourselves to leave.”

“And you hide this fact from the kingdom?” Vara asked, turning furious eyes on Cora. “You keep this to yourselves? You selfish—”

“Why should we tell them?” Fredaula snapped. “Do you know how often the King of the Elves has rendered military aid to us? Humanitarian aid? Any aid? The next time will be the first. We pay our obligations—”

“And cheat,” Cyrus muttered.

“—and nothing else,” Fredaula said, giving Cyrus a hot glare at his interruption. “They deserve nothing else from us, those infinite pillars of a dying kingdom.” She spat, a blob that splattered on the wooden ramp. “Let them die, I say.”

“Seems they say the same about you,” Cyrus observed.

“They said it about us first,” Fredaula said, sullen. “Let their feet twist and jerk with their neck in the noose the same way they would have us hang, that’s how we feel about it down here.”

“And what if I felt the same way about you as them?” Cyrus asked, catching another deathly glare from Fredaula.

“Then for all I care, you can go hang with your problems, too,” she said, her aged skin affecting a darker tint.

“Fredaula,” Cora said, gently, trying to steer the conversation back to more civil waters. “Arisson,” she said, and the man with the child shuffled silently back to the room and shut the door. She looked back to Cyrus. “You have us at your mercy. The elves will not help us. Neither will the humans, the dark elves, the gnomes, the goblins—” She looked down at Mendicant, who seemed pensive. “We are on our own, save but for your help, should you be willing to give it.” She sighed and looked at the door that Arisson had just walked through. “We will pay any price to survive here, in our home, for your aid, should we be able to give it. If that means … telling the Kingdom whatever you want to tell them, we will pay it.” Cyrus watched Fredaula’s face harden, but when Cora continued to speak, the older woman kept her peace. “We are at your mercy,” Cora said, and she took a breath that suggested she labored with her unease like it was some foe that she had to fight, “for it is either yours or the titans that we will be cast upon,” the corners of her mouth twitched upward in a smile that did not remotely come close to reaching her eyes, “and I would rather count on that of the guild of Sanctuary, regardless of who reigns as Guildmaster.”

Cyrus stood in the Council Chambers of Sanctuary, staring out the balcony door onto sunlit fields at midday. He took a breath of the fresh air, so different from the stale interior of the trees of Amti with their scent of sap and wood shavings, and—in the case of Tierreed, the tree where they grew their food—the smell of dung and other compost.

“They need help or they’ll die,” Cyrus said to his companion, his helm left on the table of the council, his hand resting on the doorframe as he leaned against it and stuck his head out into the warm summer day. “Of that much I’m convinced.”

“And you ask me for counsel on this?” Administrator Cattrine Tiernan looked at him with undisguised curiosity. “I’m honored. I think.”

“You’re right in the thick of this, Cattrine,” Cyrus said, only giving her a glance before he went back to looking over the Plains of Perdamun. “You have more reason to be angry at these titans than anyone else, and more reason to want to avoid a war with them, as well. When the Council meets in a few minutes, I want you there to render your opinion, whatever it might be.”

“I will give you my thoughts,” Cattrine said, a little reserved, “though I find them a bit muddled after these weeks of reconstruction.” She let a breathy sigh. “Nothing is ever simple anymore, is it?”

“I didn’t find it particularly simple before a horde of undead ravaged your homeland,” Cyrus said, noting the slight blanch from her as he spoke, “but you are correct in that it does not seem to be growing less tangled as the years spin by.”

“We lost thousands, of course,” she said, drawing another look from him. “I didn’t know if you ever heard the full count. Not that we’ve got one, just the vague suspicions that come from trying to drag bodies out of rubble and wreckage while simultaneously building enough housing and facilities to feed and accommodate those who lost hearth and home in the attack.”

“How many?” Cyrus asked. “Roughly.”

“Five thousand,” Cattrine said, and at this she looked out over the plains herself, the midday sun hidden overhead by the top of the tower’s eaves. She still squinted against its brightness.

“What would you advise?” Cyrus asked, folding his arms against his breastplate, leaning his thick pauldron against the frame of the door. “Vengeance? Justice? Preservation? Risk?”

“You speak oddly, but I think I discern your meaning,” she said. “The idea of risking more by engaging these horrible, monstrous
things
in some great war … putting more of your people as well as mine into a fight … well, it certainly holds little appeal for me. But the thought of trying to protect ourselves from a foe who means to strike out slyly, secretly, until we are dead? That is a concern, at least, as we go about the business of rebuilding.”

“It was pointed out to me in Amti,” Cyrus said, “that if the titans mean to deliver destruction unto us, there is little defense now that they have magical means at their disposal. We cannot cover all the portals within walking distance of Emerald Fields or Sanctuary—assuming we could even cover the ones closest to us, which is questionable at best.”

“An implacable, unstoppable foe,” Cattrine mused aloud, before turning to face him. “Do you ever get tired of facing those?”

“I am tired in general,” Cyrus said. “But part of me … part of me thinks that Talikartin was blustering in what he said to me on the night of the attack. The titans have dragons at their lower gates, and they struck north because it was an easy direction to strike. If they want a full war, they won’t be able to gird themselves against the dragonkin and do it, I don’t think.” Cyrus sniffed, taking in a breath of hot air through his nose. “Or at least, that would be my strategy if it comes down to it—to make them pay such a cost in the north that they have no defense in the south.”

“I can see you have given this some considerable thought,” Cattrine said.

“I always do,” Cyrus said with a bitter smile.

“Then let me add my own thoughts to your pile,” she said, and any trace of a smile vanished beneath two weeks' worth of fatigue. “The peacemaker, the administrator in me would counsel you to avoid war. We have lost much, and as you said, you don’t know how stiff a foe you would be engaging. The war could be long and costly, and we would bear a burden that neither you nor I would care to count the consequences of in blood and our own dear when it was done.”

“Close up the gates, then,” Cyrus said, staring out across the sun-kissed greenery. Cottony clouds rolled across the skies in front of him.

“I didn’t say that,” Cattrine said, and now her voice was lower, almost a whisper. “For I have not always been a conciliator, nor an administrator.” Cyrus glanced at her and saw darker things in the depths of her lush green eyes. “I know by hard experience that there are some creatures that walk this earth that are so despicable, so monstrous—that they need no provocation, that they simply aim to dominate and destroy all that would not bow to them. They cannot be appeased, and showing any sign of accession to their wishes only prompts them to batter you even harder upon their next opportunity. For some, the rage is soul-deep,” she swallowed visibly, “and it will not exhaust itself no matter how many times they inflict their fury upon you.”

Cyrus kept his head down as she spoke, pressing his teeth tightly together. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you how happy I am you stabbed your husband in the back and then slit his throat.”