Magic, Myth & Majesty: 7 Fantasy Novels Read online

  The clock in the square showed 11 o’clock when he arrived, and Cyrus settled himself by the fountain after filling his cup from it twice. It tasted much, much different from the water he had been drinking from the rivers and springs of Arkaria over the last month, he reflected as his horse, Windrider, came up and dipped his face into the water for a drink. Cyrus shrugged and turned to scan the square, blinked and did a double take.

  “Hello old friend,” Orion said from a few paces away.

  Cyrus nodded. “Hello, Orion. How goes it?”

  The ranger smiled. “Quite well. What brings you to Reikonos on this beautiful day?”

  “I’m just passing through, but I’m waiting to meet another Sanctuary officer here.”

  Orion couldn’t hide his pleasure. “So the rumors are true: you’re an officer now. Good for you.”

  Cyrus returned the ranger’s smile, a bit more guarded. “Yeah. Doing our best to rebuild after the debacle.”

  Orion’s eyes fell and his face turned grave. “Rebuilding is going to be a long road for you, brother. I’m sure you’ve heard: the big guilds of Arkaria have gotten most of the talent and everyone else has been scrambling to get their hands on as many new recruits as they can. There’s not much left at this point.”

  Cyrus smiled. “We’ll see.”

  Orion walked closer, sitting himself beside the warrior on the fountain. “Listen, when I brought you to Sanctuary, it was because you’re a great warrior with the potential to be one of the best — if not the best — in Arkaria.” Orion smiled again, but with a hint of insincerity. “But that was when Sanctuary was rising, when they were a force to be reckoned with. Because of — all that,” the ranger said, glossing over his defection, “Sanctuary is going to struggle as a fighting force for some time.

  “You’re a great leader,” Orion coaxed him. “Goliath could use your talents.” Orion looked around the square. “Your only hope of successful expeditions with Sanctuary in the near future is going to be small actions, little invasions. With what you’ve got left you won’t be seeing any of the realms without the Alliance.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Cyrus’s eyes focused on the dirt at his feet, “is I should leave Sanctuary behind, like you did, so I can move up to Goliath?”

  “Right,” Orion said. “Isn’t your purpose to be the best? Don’t you want more?”

  “I do.”

  “Then follow me,” Orion’s eyes were alight with possibilities, “instead of wandering to the four corners of Arkaria in search of a farmer whose skill with a rusty pitchfork translates into swordsmanship.” The ranger smiled at him. “You’ll spend the next four or five months in the countryside, working your ass off so you can find a few good people, and the rest will be chaff that gets blown away by the next strong wind.”

  Orion’s hand landed on the warrior’s shoulder, reason filling his soothing voice. “Come with us. No need to rebuild, and with your skill and with the equipment we would give you, you could step into the role of Goliath’s number one warrior, and be an officer candidate in no time. Malpravus likes you; he says you have great potential.”

  “Oh my,” Cyrus breathed.

  Orion did not hear him. “Bypass the next few months or years of hell you’re gonna put yourself through to build an effective fighting force — your odds of success are very low. You’ll end up frustrated and Sanctuary will still be in the same spot in a year.” Excitement filled the ranger’s voice. “This is not a time for building strength. You can’t compete with Endeavor or the others; they’ve got a lock on recruiting. You need a guild that’s already got strength, that can step up and take you where you want to go.”

  “Well,” Cyrus said, voice flat. “You certainly paint a grim picture.”

  The ranger shrugged. “It’s reality. What do you say?”

  “To your proposition?” Cyrus asked, voice again devoid of emotion. “Thanks, but no thanks. I haven’t forgotten what Goliath did at Enterra, even if you have. If I’m to fight to the top, it should be in a place where I can trust my guildmates.”

  “So you’ve fallen into the trap of Alaric’s ‘noble purpose’.” Orion shook his head. “Instead of wanting to be the aggressor, the victor, you want to be a defender? Spend your time helping the helpless instead of getting more powerful? You’re going to be sorry a year from now, when Goliath is exploring the realms of the gods and you’re still struggling to fight off bandits in the Plains of Perdamun.” Acid dripped from the ranger’s words.

  “Perhaps,” Cyrus said. “But at least I’ll know that if I have a guildmate at my back, I need not fear they’ll put a knife in it.”

  With a tight smile, Orion offered his hand to Cyrus once more, who shook it. “Best of luck, Orion,” Cyrus said.

  “To you as well,” Orion said, but the words echoed with a certain hollow quality.

  Curatio had shown up in the square a few minutes later, all smiles. “Good to see you, brother! Let’s see if we can make the next leg of this journey as productive as the first.”

  They headed out the eastern gate of Reikonos and followed the road past the coliseum on a frantic schedule much like he had followed with J’anda, with too little time between meetings and times to talk with candidates on a one-on-one basis. Once again he found himself traveling late into the night, he and Curatio shorting themselves on sleep to meet Alaric’s schedule.

  “When you get back to Sanctuary,” Cyrus had quipped one day as they were leaving a village, “please do give Alaric my thanks for his attempts to kill us.”

  “Aye,” Curatio said with a smile. “I don’t think he believed J’anda when the enchanter told him that you were run ragged on the first leg, but I’ll make sure he knows it when I return.”

  “Assuming that by the time we get done there’s anything left of you to return. Any news on the weapons?”

  Curatio shook his head. “Nyad and I went to Pharesia to warn them and Alaric personally went to Reikonos to speak with the Council of Twelve that rules the Human Confederation. We were informed that both weapons are still there, and safe as they can make them.”

  “Did they take you seriously or brush you off?”

  Curatio raised an eyebrow. “I know we were taken seriously in Pharesia. I suspect Alaric has enough credibility to get his message across in Reikonos as well. How many people do you know who go before the ruling Council of Twelve?”

  Cyrus thought about it for a moment. “That would be the first. Not many people get an audience in the Citadel.”

  Over the next days they found the ground and the air around them getting colder, snow beginning to pile up as they trudged from the summery beauty of the Pelar Hills into the frozen tundra of the north that surrounded the mountains of the Dwarven Alliance that was north and east of Reikonos. Their destination was Fertiss, the dwarven capital, but they made stop after stop at human and dwarven villages along the way.

  The humans of the northern clans were dramatically different than the dwarves that populated the frigid lands. Somewhat furtive and suspicious, the dwarves largely kept to themselves. The men of the north, on the other hands, welcomed them with open arms and Cyrus and Curatio had far too much ale in the days that followed.

  “Next time we come this way I’m sending Andren in my stead. I cannot recall a time when I’ve had that much to drink,” Cy said one morning after a long, boisterous night at the inn with several potential recruits. His head was still swimming.

  “There’s a reason for that,” Curatio said, looking a bit green. “You’re yet young enough to make these sort of mistakes. I’m old enough that I should know better.”

  In village after village Cyrus made his plea for people to join them, always closing his argument with the same words: “Some of you have wanted adventure from a young age, have wanted to live life on your terms and not reliant on what the soils would give you or the nobles would hand you or what money would come in. Many of us believed that that life was not possible, that we had not the skill
nor the ability to live in such a way.”

  His eyes scoured the crowd, trying to make contact with every person in whatever place they were meeting. “I know this because I have felt the same — that perhaps life had passed me by, that I was always destined to be poor and stuck in a life I cared nothing for. I tell you now,” he said, fire in his eyes, trying to pass it on to the others in the crowd, “that this is lies. Adventure still awaits!

  “You can have whatever it is you desire, but we must fight for that life. I can train anyone who wishes to learn to be an adventurer, who wants to learn to live for themselves instead of their lords, their masters. I can train them to live a life of adventure, with a purpose greater than living just for themselves.”

  By the time he got to that point, he had already talked for several minutes about Sanctuary — who they were and what they did, where they wanted to go. His call to action got responses from his audiences. By the time he and Curatio reached Fertiss, they had actually outdone what he and J’anda had achieved in the first thirty days.

  Cyrus and Curatio said their farewells in the halls of Fertiss, a city built into the mountains, combining dwarven love of cave architecture with the tacit acknowledgment that many outsiders did business in the dwarven city, and as such, half the town was located outside.

  As Curatio disappeared in the light of his return spell, Cyrus reflected that although a genuinely decent elf, the healer was not much for conversation. Cyrus had only successfully engaged the healer about Sanctuary and their efforts. Whenever asked a personal question, Curatio would simply smile, shrug, and move on to another topic; usually an evaluation of one of their potential recruits, leaving the warrior frustrated. Curatio also refused to discuss members of Sanctuary, greatly curtailing their ability to find common ground. “It’s not my place to say,” was the elf’s response when asked about anyone, from Vara (most commonly) to Alaric.

  Cyrus settled down for the night in an inn nestled in Fertiss’s foreign quarter, where the next person from Sanctuary to accompany him was to meet him on the morrow. He enjoyed a long soak in the inn’s hot springs, and it was five o’clock in the evening when he fell asleep in the extra large (to dwarves) bed. He did not wake up until he felt a gentle caress on his cheek at ten o’clock the next morning.

  29

  Cyrus awoke to find Nyad smiling down at him from the edge of his bed, hand gently stroking his face. He blinked three times in surprise before he sat up. “How did you get in here?” he asked in shock. “I locked the door!”

  The elf smiled back. “Locks are no great difficulty for a wizard.”

  “Especially when the innkeeper opens it for you,” said a dwarf from the door. “You know this elf? She said she was to meet you.”

  Cyrus looked down at the dwarf. “Yes, thank you.” The innkeeper nodded and shut the door behind him. Cyrus turned back to Nyad in surprise. “I thought they were sending an officer?”

  She shook her head. “There are only so many of you to go around, you know. They sent me instead; the Council is busy making preparations for war and training the candidates you’ve sent.”

  He yawned. “Sorry, I’m a bit tired; was just trying to catch up on my sleep.”

  “You’ll need it. Alaric has set an aggressive schedule for us,” she said, handing him a piece of parchment with dates and times written on it.

  Cyrus studied the parchment with a frown. “This is worse than the last two parts of the journey.” He looked up at Nyad. “Curatio told me he was going to get Alaric to loosen up the schedule.”

  Nyad looked back at him. “Yes, Alaric said you might demur. He said to remind you that time is not our ally.”

  “I suppose,” the warrior said. The sleep he had gotten had not cured his chronic sense of fatigue and malaise, but it had helped somewhat.

  “Very well then,” Nyad said, jumping to her feet. “Let’s make a start on our mission.” She clapped her hands together like a child and looked at him expectantly, still wrapped up in the covers.

  He looked back at her. “I’ll be needing to get dressed before we can go.”

  “All right then,” she said, still staring at him. “Get to it! We have not a moment to waste!”

  He blinked at her. “Nyad, I’m not wearing anything under the covers. I’d like you to leave so that I can dress.”

  “Feh!” She brushed him off. “I’m two hundred and eighty-five years old, and spent more than fifty years of my life in Termina. I promise you,” she said with a smile, “there’s nothing you have that I haven’t seen before, many, many times.”

  “You haven’t seen mine,” he said and refused to move.

  Calling him a prude, Nyad finally acceded to his wishes and left, slamming the door behind her. Once he was dressed, they mounted their horses and rode out the front gate of Fertiss, making their way down the mountain paths.

  “So you were… uh… with humans in Termina?” Cyrus said, uncertain how to broach the subject.

  “With? You mean in bed with?” she said with a cackle. “Oh, certainly. Humans, dwarves,” she said, voice turned wistful. “A gnome one time — that was very unsatisfying. Even a dark elf or possibly five — that was a strange night,” the wizard said, lost in thought. “Termina is a very different place from — well, from where I was raised, which was in Pharesia, of course, but… even more so from the environment in which I was raised.”

  “How so?” Cy’s grip tightened on Windrider’s reigns.

  “Not that people don’t have sex in Pharesia, they do — what’s the point of living for thousands of years if you can’t enjoy yourself, right?” she said with a sly grin that made him remember that she was older than any human woman he’d ever met by almost two centuries. “In the Elven Kingdom relations are governed by caste. There are promiscuous elves in Pharesia, but if you wish to retain face, you must stay within the boundaries of the proper social behavior and not associate with someone in a lower caste than yourself. In Termina,” she smiled at the memory, “anything goes.”

  Cyrus’s eyes were wide, having learned more in the last few minutes about elves than he had ever really wanted to know. Nyad, catching sight of the look on his face, cackled. “Prude,” she called out again, louder this time, echoing across the snowy road and through the mountain peaks beyond, mocking him.

  “I am… not,” he said without feeling.

  “You are,” she said with another laugh. “Your whole society is.” She turned her clear blue eyes on him. “It’s not as though everyone doesn’t do it. But humans get so caught up in talking about it, as though there’s some righteousness to ignoring such a fun practice. And when you do talk about it, it’s gossip. So-and-so slept with such-and-such.” She snorted. “And don’t get me started on the delicate practice of saying ‘slept with’ instead of—”

  “That’s enough,” Cyrus interrupted, uncomfortable. “I get the point.”

  She laughed again. “I doubt it, but we’ve reached the edge of your comfort zone.” She looked back at him, eyes dancing. “We’ll keep working on that. I’ve got thirty days to despoil you.”

  They followed the mountains south to the river Mussa, leaving the frozen tundra and turning inland to follow the river south-west, stopping in the fishing villages by its edge. It was a wet country, with many streams feeding into the river, and a near-constant rain. They met with a succession of farmers and fishermen until they reached the shores of Lake Magnus, the largest lake in Arkaria. Taking a ferry across at the mouth of the river, they headed southeast into the Gnomish Dominions.

  Along the way, Nyad would chatter for hours about a variety of topics, most of which seemed to lead back to sexual matters. He could safely say that compared to her, he was a prude. She spoke at great length of her ‘conquests’ and would not hesitate to throw aside her robes at a moment’s notice with nary a consideration to propriety, fording streams in the nude with her robes carried safe and dry above her head.

  The third time in a morning that it had ha
ppened, Cyrus was fighting against the current in his heavy armor, teeth chattering from the cold, and the elf shook her head like a mother, already on the other side of the stream, redressed and mounting her horse. “Now your prudishness is going to cause you to catch a chill,” she clucked at him. Fortunately he did not catch a chill, but when they reached the fourth stream, he at least removed his armor before they crossed.

  “Better,” she said as he strapped the metal coverings on his wet body. “But you’re still going to be cold for a while.”

  His eyes lingered on her body when she undressed at the next crossing. As a human, she would have looked to be no more than thirty years old, and pretty enough, he thought. He reflected a bit too long, and she caught him looking. With another loud laugh, she pronounced with undisguised pleasure that he was beginning to come around to her way of thinking. Cy blushed but did not argue with her assessment.

  He stripped his armor off, and his underthings as well, and crossed in the same manner as she. Upon reaching the other side of the stream, he did not shy away from her eyes as she looked him up and down in appraisal. She moved closer, still in the nude, rain falling down, and wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close in a strangely comfortable manner, and put her hands on his face, drawing it to hers.

  She met the heat of his gaze, and did not break off. Her look was sly, though, and there was something else to it. “Let’s be completely open with each other before I completely open to you,” she said, pressing her naked flesh against him. “If I were to give you the relief you seek…” her eyes studied him, “would you be thinking of me? Or of another blond-haired elf of our mutual acquaintance?” He looked away and her face fell. “I feared as much,” she said as she pulled away from him and began to redress.

  His cheeks burned with embarrassment and he began to dress, slowly, frustrated. He heard Nyad’s voice behind him, formal in spite of the fact that they had just been pressed naked against one another. “You were married, yes?”