Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

Published by Raconteur House

Manchester, TN

Printed in the USA through Ingram Distributing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business
establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

SWORD OF HEMLOCK

Lords of Syon Book One

A Raconteur House book/ published by arrangement with the
author

PRINTING HISTORY

Raconteur House ebook edition/February 2013

Raconteur House mass-market edition/April 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Jordan MacLean

Cover by Katie Griffin

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For Mike and Jericho

Castle Damerien
in the year of Syon, 3845

T
he
knight took the gold ladle from the vestibule fountain and gulped down the cool
water with abandon, letting it splash down his chest to the stone floor.  He
was scandalously underdressed in only breeches and a loose shirt, but he’d
ridden light, opting for speed and comfort over propriety.  Besides, better
that no one in passing could mark him as a Knight of Brannagh—much less as the
sheriff himself—especially if they guessed that he was headed to Castle
Damerien.  He would not feed their rumors and fear mongering.

He scooped up another ladle’s worth, and, resisting the
battlefield habit of pouring it over his head, he drank it off again, meanwhile
taking in all the familiar sights and sounds of his boyhood home.  Behind him,
his father’s retainer heaved closed Damerien’s great keep doors against the
mid-season heat, and all at once rich smells of roasting meats and baking bread
filled the air from the kitchens below.

A celebration, then.  But he dared not to hope.

“Nestor.”  He smiled, clapping the old servant
affectionately on the shoulder.  “I trust you are well.”

The old man bowed.  “Well as can be expected, Lord Daerwin,”
he burred softly.  Nestor’s long hair was pure white now, instead of the waves
of smoke and fire the young lord remembered so fondly from boyhood, and he
walked with a marked hobble in his step.  Beneath these outward shows of age,
however, the old Bremondine looked just as the knight remembered him, still
strong and lithe with all the clarity of his wits behind his piercing black
eyes.

Growing old was a bittersweet blessing in time of war, and
the years had certainly passed, but he had never expected that something as
mundane as time could affect those of his father’s household.

Nestor chuckled at the wistfulness and perhaps even despair
in Daerwin’s eyes.  “Come, come, lad.  Things are not as bleak as they seem. 
Not yet, at any rate.  To that end,” he said with a vague gesture upward,
toward the high stone ceiling, toward the smaller audience chamber on the
second floor, “best we not keep your father waiting.”

Daerwin nodded and let Nestor lead him like a stranger
through the very halls where he had learned to walk.

Castle Damerien stood not a half-day’s ride from Brannagh,
but somehow, he usually found ways to avoid making the journey.  Until his
father’s illness, neither he nor the duke had spent much time this far from the
front lines.  While his father’s armies had slowed Kadak’s advances across the
south, Lord Daerwin and his forces had been far to the north destroying supply
lines and keeping the enemy contained.  The duke had fallen ill at the first snows
of the Feast of Bilkar, and the duty to lead the lords of Syon and their
knights and vassals against the Usurper had fallen entirely to Daerwin, leaving
him with even less time or reason to come this far behind the lines.

So he had told himself, at any rate.

The truth was that since he had succeeded his uncle as
Sheriff of Brannagh, he had been back to Castle Damerien only once, nearly ten
years ago.  He had come for his mother’s funeral.  Apart from public matters,
the war and other affairs of state, the funeral had been the last time he and
his father had had time or privacy to speak of anything other than the war. And
such a strange conversation it had been…

Daerwin, I must see you at once.  The time has come.

“Thick evening coming, aye?” Nestor offered, taking up a
fresh candelabrum to light their way once they passed the grand archway leading
toward the great hall.  “The whole air’s a clot of steam, so it seems to me.”

“Aye,” answered the sheriff, grateful for the distraction.
“Damp and hot.  Didian owes us a rain, and I expect a full storm by midday
tomorrow, an He fails to temper it.  Could harm the crops.  They’re young yet,
and they’re all that stand between us and another famine, come the Gathering. 
But better rain than this heat.”

Nestor chuckled to himself.

“What, you think not?”

“Oh, far be it from me, my lord.  What I know of farming’d
fit on the point of a pin,” murmured the servant.  He stepped aside of habit to
let the nobleman enter the great hall ahead of him.  “No, my thought it was that
tending your farmers suits you.”  He glanced up at the young man’s back as he
passed.  “A shame you’ve the war instead.”

“Indeed,” came Daerwin’s soft answer, but the conversation
was already forgotten.  The young lord had stopped just inside the doorway, his
eyes wide.

Of all the myriad chambers and galleries at Castle Damerien,
this great hall had always been his favorite, a huge open space bound only by
intricate tapestries, murals and frescoes depicting scenes from Syon’s glorious
past.  Ancient lances and swords had been mounted most respectfully under
banners of knights and noble houses.  Some of the ancient houses were long dead
or forgotten.  Others, like Windale and Tremondy, were still strong and well
respected.  Daerwin had loved this room above all others as a boy, and his
young imagination had soared surrounded by the legends and relics of Syon’s
history.  It was one thing to hear tired old lists of Borowain the
Peacekeeper’s achievements; it was quite another to touch the bloodstains on his
shield.

He found no comfort here now, though everything was just
where he remembered it.  Thick dust choked the famous Damerien tapestries, and
the duke’s prized murals chipped and peeled with neglect.  Between them, the
priceless weapons and armor lay rusting against the walls, too weary to stand
quite straight beneath their tilted banners.  But it was more than just this
chamber.  He had felt it at the fountain, even at the gates.  The stones, the
mortar, the very walls of the castle seemed ready to fall in on him.  Damerien
was crumbling.  He looked once more at the white of Nestor’s hair and felt his
scalp crawl.

Please, he prayed, please let it not be so.

“Something, my lord?”  Nestor’s gaze touched quickly on the
walls, the murals, the tapestries, but he continued on toward the stairway.

“No, no.”  The duke’s son quickened his step to follow,
trying to stifle the horror that grew in his heart.  When Nestor paused to look
back at him, Daerwin smiled weakly.  “Lead on.” 

“As you say, my lord.”

Some of the tapestries swelled and soughed in his wake,
shedding their dust like lazy soldiers snapping to attention.  By the gods,
even as wilted as they were, they were glorious.  He’d spent hours in this room
looking at the tiny details, wondering what the tiny stitched soldiers’
postures meant and what the legends scrawled in the bold strokes of ancient
Byrandian dialects said.

One tapestry depicted the end of the Battle of Berendor in
lavish scarlets and golds, where the forgotten gods and Their followers had surrendered
at the end of the Gods’ Rebellion. He’d understood even as a boy why the
forgotten gods had been portrayed without faces, but if he stared long enough,
he would see the shadows of noses and hints of eyes. 

A fresco nearby, done in glinting blues and silvers, of all
his favorite, showed Galorin, the legendary sorcerer, and his bold coup at
Pyran that at a stroke had severed Syon’s ties to the continent and freed her
land and her people from the rule of Byrandia’s king.  The Liberation was
perhaps the greatest moment in Syonese history, but he’d always wondered at the
hint of sadness in the sorcerer’s face.

Others showed the Bremo-Hadrian Wars and the earliest
battles of the present war, that which they’d taken to calling the Five Hundred
Years War in the hopes that it would end before it became the Six Hundred Years
War. 

Reds, blues, silver and gold, they were, rich, living colors
of battle, of victory, and always at the center of these heroic battles was the
golden-eyed dragon, sigil of the Great Liberator and his descendents, the House
of Damerien.  So much heroism, so much honor, all gathered in this hall.

The sheriff’s step faltered.

In a few days the sheriff would lead his knights and farmers
against Kadak’s legions again.  Baron Tremondy’s forces in the north had
managed a small victory; not enough to force a retreat, but enough to frustrate
Kadak’s newest supply lines into the south.  Unfortunately, the baron’s losses
had been terrible.  Without immediate reinforcements from Brannagh, Tremondy
and his followers would fall, leaving an open sluice for Kadak right through
the Bremondine forests, past Brannagh’s flank to Castle Damerien herself.

No one—not Brannagh, not even Damerien himself—could say
what had unleashed Kadak and his demon armies upon Syon so long ago.  Scraps of
prophecy held by the various temples had spoken of a war against a monstrous
beast, the harbinger of a new age, which everyone but the dimmest souls took to
mean Kadak.  While they did not speak of the creature’s origins, they hinted
tantalizingly of his end, obscure, maddening hints which had driven Kadak to
unspeakable acts of genocide in an effort to forestall his death.  Daerwin
wondered if a single man or woman of the Art remained alive on Syon after
Kadak’s vicious pogrom.  Now, stripped of their mightiest allies against him,
the lords of Syon were forced to battle Kadak’s demonic legions themselves,
sword to ax, blood to blood.

This would be no tapestry battle.  Even if Brannagh and
Tremondy together could manage to drive Kadak back into the Hodrache Range, a
feat in itself, they could not hope to weaken his hold on the coastal cities. 
His presence, his terrible presence, was too firmly established there, giving
him a ready supply line into the south even if they could manage to cut off his
supply lines in the north.  They simply would not have enough men left to
challenge him outright.  The best they could expect would be to slow his
armies’ advance toward the duke’s castle and gain the Resistance some time. 
Then they could plan a few new ways to gain a little more time, and, if they
were lucky, a little more after that.

Just as they had for five centuries.

No.  They could not keep up as they had for much longer, and
even if no one else could see the signs of it, Daerwin could.  This war was a
slow, unrelenting saraband of gain and loss, advance and retreat, and not
without its price.  The combined armies of the Resistance now numbered but a
quarter what they had a century ago.  A good part of the land stood untilled for
lack of hands to farm it, which would lead to starvation and more death. 
Meanwhile, Kadak’s inexhaustible armies continued to chip away at them, battle
by battle.  Before long, there would be no Resistance.

Then the duke would resort to more drastic measures. 
Terrifying measures.  But not yet, Daerwin told himself firmly, not just yet. 
Please, not yet.

The time has come.

At last they reached the huge spiral stairway that led up to
the duke’s audience chamber, and gratefully, Daerwin turned his eyes away from
the banners, away from the shields and armor and weapons that slumped against
the walls, away from the tapestries, away from those terrible golden eyes.

Nestor climbed the stairs ahead of him, his crumpled back
silhouetted against the candelabrum he carried, but Daerwin could still somehow
feel the servant’s attention on him, as if the old man were waiting for him to
do something, say something.

“How is he?” the sheriff asked at last, struggling to keep
his voice calm.

“Well as can be expected,” answered the retainer.  But he
paused at the top of the stairs and drew breath, choosing his words.  “Best I
warn your Honor,” he began carefully, “His Grace is not in the best humor this
evening.”  He glanced sideways at the duke’s son.  “His gout is at him again.”

“Gout.”  Daerwin frowned.  Nestor, bless his heart, was
trying to prepare him for something, and against the duke’s express orders, no
doubt.  But what it was, Daerwin could not see.  Or would not.

“Aye, my lord, and all the rest, too.  It’s his age, you
see...” The retainer shrugged, and his voice trailed away as he continued up
the stairway.  “The years pass, yes, they do.  A man can’t be bound to bully on
forever.”

His age.  The sheriff’s hands trembled, and his heart
raced.  He only wished he understood, or that he did not.  He could not be
certain which.  He stopped in the stairway and breathed deeply, trying to
regain his composure.  In battle, he could keep an icy calm, but here, in his
father’s house…

The time has come.

A sick feeling rose in his gut, but he fought it down,
taking himself breath by breath up the staircase.  Soon enough, he told
himself, taking hope from the cheerful smells of the feast being prepared in
the kitchens below.  Soon enough, he would know his father’s mind.  Until then,
he could do nothing.

When Daerwin caught up, Nestor fell into step beside him. 
“Been expecting you since midday, he has.”  His voice dropped to a whisper as
they turned the corner toward the audience chamber.  “A bit impatiently, I
might add.”

“Impatient, bah,” came a crackling voice from the slightly
open door ahead.  “I am far, far too old to grow impatient at a few hours’ wait
for my son.  You needn’t warn him against me, Nestor.”

The retainer was pushing the heavy door open as the duke
spoke.  “Very good, your Grace,” he said with a resigned bow.  Then, avoiding
Daerwin’s gaze, he stood aside to let the sheriff enter the chamber, announcing
the young man as he passed.  “Presenting Lord Daerwin, the Honorable Sheriff of
Brannagh.” 

“Shire-Reeve,” the bundle of thick Bremondine blankets on
the throne snarled.  “My son is the Shire-Reeve of Brannagh!  Even the language
has no integrity anymore.”

Without waiting to be dismissed, Nestor withdrew, pulling
the doors closed behind him.

Just as Daerwin had feared, the audience chamber felt as
dead to him as the great hall below.  Bare stone floor gleamed for miles, so it
seemed, in every direction, an illusion broken only by the modest throne at the
far corner, with a plain wooden chair beside it.