"Everything is a possibility in my mind, lately," Terian said. "But every conversation I had with Nyad or others about the King suggested that with the exception of my own, he was possibly the least warm and loving father of all."

"True," Cyrus said. "This feels like something else other than fatherly regard. Pride, perhaps. Whatever it might be, it loses us an ally when we should all be steadfast in our opposition to the t.i.tans." He looked up at Terian. "Still, the fact that you stand with us ... and sent ... uh ... your amba.s.sador to help us ..." He raised an eyebrow, trying to stay away from condemnation. "Well, I appreciate it, even if I didn't exactly expect the form that help took."

Terian turned quite serious. "She helped me with the Sovereignty in invaluable ways. And when she did what she did to you, she was in a difficult spot-"

"She was a traitorous wh.o.r.e," Vara p.r.o.nounced with sheerest loathing, "and the only positions she was in were on her back, and astride-"

"Let's not," Cyrus said, grimacing, "get into exhaustive detail." He paused. "My regards to her nonetheless." He tried to ignore the scandalized look in Vara's eyes. "She saved our lives."

"She owed you considerably more than that for the gift of the scar that graces your lower back and that still seems to ache in moments of exertion-"

"There's an argument and I'm not part of it," Terian mused idly, "I feel like I've done something wrong."

"I have another question for you," Cyrus said, changing the subject. "Uhm ... about your armor, err ... Alaric. Has he ever ..." Cyrus took a deep breath, "... appeared to you, in, say ... the Tower of the Guildmaster?"

Terian's eye bucked upward, then settled as he went from surprise to amused resignation in the s.p.a.ce of a few heartbeats. "He appeared to you, too, huh?" He nodded, now resolute. "That makes sense. It'd be the two of us, I guess."

"Oh, you're both so very special," Vara said acidly.

"Well, I think we just need more help than you," Terian said.

"You're about to need help of the sort only a healer can render-"

"What did he say to you?" Cyrus asked.

Terian blushed a deeper navy. "He ... encouraged me ... taught me to be a paladin, actually, in those moments." He reached back, slowly, and pulled the black axe from behind him, then muttered something under his breath as it flamed to life, drawing a gasp from Vara. "He taught me this."

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d," Vara said, "pretty soon he'll be teaching that to everyone."

"You're still special," Terian said with a grin.

"Healer, you're going to be needed over here."

"Peace," Terian said, extinguishing the flame. He paused then nodded to Cyrus. "What did he tell you?"

"He reminded me I wasn't alone in the fight with Yartraak," Cyrus said simply, giving Vara a look that immediately caused her own to soften. "And more recently, someone else summoned me to the Tower while invoking his name-Terrgenden, the-"

"G.o.d of Justice," Terian breathed, nodding. "He's quite the fellow, isn't he?"

"And now you sup with G.o.ds?" Vara asked, under her breath. "This land has gone truly mad."

"I met him and Vidara both, actually," Terian said, drawing an even more ireful look from Vara. "She seemed nice, your G.o.ddess. They named you after her?"

Vara's eye twitched. "Yes."

"She seemed ... calmer," Terian said. Vara's reply was lost under her breath.

"You think he's still alive, then?" Cyrus asked.

Terian seemed taken aback at that. "Actually, I thought I was having a delusion, but now that you're telling me you saw him in the exact same setting-and I a.s.sume he sort of ... pulled you out of the middle of a battle going unfavorably?" Cyrus nodded. "Then yes, I think ..." The white knight nodded, "... it stands to reason he's still alive, somewhere, somehow, though how he's doing this is a bit mystifying."

"Any idea what we should do about it?" Cyrus asked, the wind whipping around him.

"Have you thought about searching your quarters thoroughly?" Terian asked with a grin. "Maybe look under the bed?"

"I a.s.sure you, no one could have survived under there the last few months," Cyrus said, earning him a gauntleted slap to the upper arm from Vara that rang out under the grey afternoon sky.

"If he's appeared to us but is not showing up," Terian said with a shrug, "then I daresay he doesn't want to be found. And while trying to hunt a ghost through the countryside of Arkaria sounds like so much fun-stopping at every house, 'Hey, have you seen a man who can fade into insubstantial mist?' slamming of doors in your face, repeat endlessly-" He shrugged once more. "He's the Ghost. What he does is at least as mysterious as how he does it, and if he doesn't want to be found ..."

"Then we're on our own, I suppose," Cyrus said.

"I think that might be how he wanted it," Terian said slowly, and when both Cyrus and Vara were looking at him, he went a little further. "Think about it ... he was the Guildmaster of Sanctuary. While he was here, I might have always had somewhere to run back to, and while you were the General, you had essentially topped out on how far you could go in this guild." He gestured to the central tower somewhere hidden behind the wall at his back. "But now ... well, look at us. You're the Lord of Perdamun, I'm the Sovereign, she's the Guildmaster's woman-" His grin broke loose and he received a slap of his own from Vara, hard across his vambraces, the metal clanking as he broke into laughter. "Kidding! Only kidding!" His smile disappeared. "We were in his shadow. But now ..."

Cyrus stared at the dark elf, taking his meaning. He exchanged an uneasy look with Vara, all thought of reprisal for Terian's comment clearly struck from her mind by one that was causing worry lines to crease her brow. "So we really are on our own," Cyrus said, and this time no one answered, for none of them had one that gave them even the slightest feeling of rea.s.surance.

The knock at Cyrus's door sounded as he was almost ready to extinguish the torches for the night and call it an evening. The white silken sheers that stood in front of the four balconies in the Tower of the Guildmaster were wafting lightly in the wind. Vara was still absent, gone down to the foyer some hours earlier to "put in an appearance," as she had said it, kissing him before she had left. It had been necessary, he figured, for one of them to go, but he did not feel like putting on the brave face, not this evening, though at the sound of the knock he marshaled his reserves for that very purpose.

"Come in," he called, his armor still on, rising from the chair in the corner of the room as the door squeaked open down the thin slit of the stairway pa.s.sage.

He waited where he stood, knowing full well that Vara would not have knocked unless she brought someone with her, and when he saw the green cloak and cowl, he relaxed a little. "Martaina," he said.

"Guildmaster," she said, oddly formal, looking around. Her eyes fixed on a white sheer as the wind caught it, and Cyrus struggled to remember if she had been here before.

"What can I do for you?" Cyrus asked, easing toward her, his armor making soft noises, metal boots sc.r.a.ping against the stone floor.

Her pa.s.sage toward him was slower, with yet more reserve, hands threaded behind her back, but her eyes were clear as they took in the details of the tower around them. Her bow was absent and so were the blades she kept on her belt. It was a curious thing, seeing her like this, and he realized at last her bun of hair was freshly done, though poorly. "There's nothing you can do for me," she said, finally looking directly at him. "I've come to tell you ... I'm leaving."

Cyrus felt as though a physical blow had struck him, as though he might teeter back and fall into the seat he'd just left. "Leaving? Now?"

"It seemed the time," Martaina said, voice a little hoa.r.s.e.

"There are others that might be more opportune," Cyrus said, "such as when we have not just had funeral rites for-"

"I know full well how many we just said our farewells to," Martaina said with more than a little edge. "I trained those rangers myself, two of them from farmers with no skill, one from a simple shop clerk in a small town, and the other three from little experience." She did not blink. "And of course I knew all the others, though two better than most." She bowed her head. "And one of them I had known almost all his life."

Cyrus blinked, looking up. "You knew Thad since ...?"

"Since when he was a child," she said succinctly, "and I was most definitely not."

Cyrus let the quiet hang between them as he digested that. "Where ... would you go?"

"Amti," she said simply. "Gareth is there for a reason. Amti is the place in Arkaria most like where we were raised." She drew her arms up across her chest, cradling her own elbows. "I see in that jungle the seeds of olden days, the days of my childhood long gone. I see people in need of hunters-"

"We need you here," Cyrus said.

"I have nothing more to give to Sanctuary," Martaina said simply, "and if I stay, I will be hollowed out and left as empty as I heard Terian once accuse you of being." She met his gaze with something akin to guilt. "I will be on hand to help as I can between now and the end of this present crisis with the t.i.tans, because it benefits my new home, but after that ..." Her voice faded, and she made her retreat, pausing at the top of the steps, "seek me no more, for you will not find me willing to return to this place."

Cyrus tried to find some words to say, some small comfort, even something so little as I know how you feel, but he found it rang false in his mind. He faltered, and she lingered only a moment longer, then retreated as silently as ever, shutting the door so expertly he was not even sure she was gone until he walked up to the edge of the dark of the stairs and checked for himself.

The Council Chambers were once more marked with quiet on the following morning, an air of mourning still hanging over them. Cyrus wondered if it would ever lift again, but seeing only a few days separated them from the event itself, he did not dare to call into question the finite nature of grief, instead tending toward more prosaic matters-even the ones that were not at all pleasant to contemplate.

"Martaina, too?" Erith's shocked whisper penetrated the silence. Dark clouds were gathered outside the windows behind Cyrus, and the torches and hearth burned with quiet warmth that he found himself deeply grateful for. "G.o.ds, we're losing the old guard quickly now."

"Yes," Vara said, "with the exception of Curatio, I am the longest-serving member of the Council now." She shook her head. "Next in line stand Cyrus, Vaste and J'anda."

"I'm olllllllllld!" Vaste cried, leaning his head back. "Why, I'm practically the Elder at this point."

"You've been an officer for five years," J'anda said, a little nonplussed.

"The same could be said of our esteemed Guildmaster," Vaste said, pointing at Cyrus, "and just look how it's aged him!"

Cyrus suddenly longed for a mirror. "I ... uh ..." He looked at Vara and lowered his voice to a whisper. "Am I really that aged?"

"Like a good cheese, dear," she said, "better with time and all that."

"Or possibly just rank like one," Ryin muttered with a wry smile that was the first bit of good humor that Cyrus could recall in the chamber in days.

The laughter echoed over the empty seats between them. "Shall we discuss the business at hand?" Longwell asked once it had faded.

"How are the Emerald Fields doing?" Cyrus asked.

"The recovery proceeds," Longwell said, now a little stiffer. "We're almost two months on from the attack now, and with our troops matched by Terian's, I think our survivors are sleeping rather soundly at the moment. The crop is in, and it was bountiful, so I believe the mourning period after the attack is ... more or less over for those not directly affected, of course." He lowered his head. "The threat, is, however, still present, somewhere beyond those mountains to the south."

"I should visit soon," Cyrus said, feeling a bit stiff about it. "I owe Administrator Tiernan my thanks for giving Terian leave to make the move that saved our lives." He nodded to Mendicant and Vara. "And I should inspect the troops, seeing how anyone stationed down there is in the most immediate harm from both elf and t.i.tan."

"The elves aren't going to do a d.a.m.ned thing," Vaste said.

Cyrus raised an eyebrow. "I was very certain of that as well, until recently, but then a thousand arrows pointed at my head reduced that quaint notion to vapor."

"Yes, but that was before Terian humiliated Danay in his own throne room," Vaste said. "Now I have to believe that the dark elves have attained their place firmly at the top of his hierarchy of anger."

"He did somewhat give his word that he was going to let us slip on this," Vara said, showing a little anger of her own, "though I would not suspect he will be forgiving or forgetting any of this anytime soon."

"As well he shouldn't," Cyrus said, leaning back in his chair, all his energy for matters at hand nearly gone. "For I certainly won't be doing either anytime soon, and I expect if an opportunity presents itself for him to strike back at us without causing himself undue inconvenience-or an invasion of dark elves-he'll do it in a second."

"But for the moment," Vaste said, "we have peace! Lovely, lovely peace! Except for the t.i.tans. And possibly the dragons." he ticked them off on his fingers. "And are the humans still mad at us? I can never tell, it changes so quickly ..."

"At least the trolls like us now," Cyrus said with a smirk.

"Some of them, perhaps," Vaste said, giving him a sidelong look. "Some of us are still not so keen on you, Lord of Perdamun."

"What do we do next?" J'anda asked, tapping his staff against the table. "It seems ill-advised to simply wait and see if the dragons take some form of action."

"Short of a full-scale invasion of the south over the mountains," Cyrus said, shaking his head, "I'm not sure there's much else we can do at the moment." He glanced at Curatio's empty chair. "And while that's certainly an option, I'd rather wait and see if the solution we paid so heavy a price to effect has any ... well, effect." That settled the room into a quiet, and Cyrus nodded at the empty seat to his right. "Has anyone seen Curatio since the shrine?"

"Since the fiery, icy, rock-flinging slaughter, you mean?" Vaste asked, letting the sarcasm drip. "Why, no, no I haven't. I can't imagine what he'd be doing other than perhaps mourning and recovering some of that eternal life that he spent to save all of the rest of us."

"I feel like I should check on him," Cyrus said, waving a hand to silence the troll. "Meeting adjourned, provided there's nothing else-"

"I was thinking of having a memorial marker carved for the recent dead," Erith said. "Just something we could place in the corner outside the cemetery."

Cyrus paused, hands flat on the table, prepared to scoop his helm off the wooden surface to leave. "That sounds ... like a wonderful idea," he said, guilt suddenly ripping through him unexpectedly. It started a churning in his stomach, a weak sense of inadequacy, like he was far, far too small for the chair he was seated in, a child in the middle of it, really.

Cyrus forced himself to rise quickly, thumping the table with fumbling hands as he gathered his helm to him. "All right, that's it for today, then." He smiled weakly and made for the door, reaching it before anyone else did. He heard the footsteps behind him and did not close it, instead hurrying on and up the steps to the level of the officer quarters.

He had made it nearly down the hall to Curatio's quarters when Vara came out of the staircase behind him. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" she asked, hissing into the empty hallway.

Cyrus turned and held a finger to his lips. "I'm checking on Curatio," he lied, just a little. He was checking on the healer, though that was hardly all.

"What happened back there?" she asked, lowering her voice as she approached.

Vaste emerged from the stairwell behind her. "Don't mind me," he said, steering around Vara, "I'm just going to go back to my quarters. Feel free to have a loud argument about your feelings just outside my door, I won't judge. Much."

Vara let out a long breath. "Why must you vex me so?"

"Hey, you're in my hallway," Vaste said.

"My quarters are right over there," Vara said, pointing at her door.

"No, yours are one floor up," Vaste said, pointing at the ceiling. "I haven't seen you down here for anything other than the purposes of getting some of your festive shoes in months."

Cyrus frowned. "Festive ... shoes?"

"Oh, is this where the argument is being held?" J'anda asked, thumping along with his staff in hand as he emerged from the stairwell. "Try to keep it down; I need a nap."

"I'm just here to check on Curatio," Cyrus said, more than a little annoyed.

"Well, after that, do try to make it upstairs before the fight begins, eh?" J'anda asked, yawning as he pa.s.sed by a torch, causing the flame to flutter.

"There's not going to be a fight," Cyrus said.

"Oh, I beg to differ," Vaste said, easing past him. "And it'll probably be loud and filled with screaming-"