Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (13 page)

Some hours later, Renda sat in the dark gallery above the
great hall and closed her eyes, letting her mind go where it would in the
darkness.

She had developed this habit over the years of taking time
to reflect once the camp had quieted and the fires had burned down.  During the
war, she’d used the time to plan the coming day’s battle or to review
intelligence.

These days, lacking any other purpose, she used the time to
grieve.

Not just Pegrine.  The sharp pain of her niece’s death was
still fresh and bleeding, yes, but she had lost so much more over the years, so
much of herself, so much of her heart.  During the war, she had not had time
enough to bury the countless men and women she’d watched fall to the armies of
demons, much less time to mourn them.  She had not cried when her brother
died.  She had told herself at the time that she had not the luxury of such
indulgence, not when she had an army to lead.  The idea of a woman leading
them, and really no more than a girl at that—she had turned seventeen only the
month before she’d been named their commander—had been difficult enough for her
men, even as she’d started recruiting more women into their ranks.  She could
not show them any reason to think she was not strong enough to lead, and
mourning openly showed too much softness of spirit and weakness.  She had told
herself she could not allow herself the admission of defeat that came with
mourning.

But now, six years later, safe within the castle with
nothing else to take up her thoughts, she had to admit to herself, just as she
had night after night as she sat in silence, that somewhere in all those
battles and all those losses she had turned that refusal to show emotion into a
refusal to feel emotion.  She had hidden away that softness of spirit deep
within herself, but now when she went looking for it, it was gone. Now that she
had time to grieve the dead, she had no tears stored up waiting to spill for
them. 

Oh, tears she had in plenty, tonight of all nights, but they
were selfish tears for the cold, heartless weapon she had become in order to
win the war.  As she’d wondered already several times that day, was there any
more to her than that?  Would there ever be more to her than that? 

Her thoughts wandered to Aidan, to the kitchen maids’
giggling over Chul, finally to Kerrick.  A quiet bark of laughter escaped
between her tears.  A beautiful man whose company she enjoyed, a Knight of
Brannagh and future Viscount, had just asked her to marry him.  This was the
dream of every young noblewoman in Syon.  It was supposed to be her dream now. 
But her dreams…

Could she allow herself the luxury of such simple humanity? 
Luxury…  The silliness of girlish infatuation was luxury indeed, but if she
included the agony of losing her brother and little Pegrine and all the
countless others who lay dead and unburied in the killing fields of Syon,
luxury seemed the wrong word.

Perhaps she was better off feeling nothing.

“M–my lady.”

She turned to see one of the nursery maids beckoning to her
from the corridor, terrified and trembling. “How now, Mika,” she whispered to
the girl, but the girl only sobbed.  In her hand, she held the knight’s sword
belt. 

“I hear it again,” the maid whispered, moving away along the
corridor.  “The laughing I spoke of, by the gods, I hear it again.  Please, my
lady, please!”

Renda followed, taking the sword from her. “And you’re
certain of what you heard,” she asked when they rounded the corner toward the
nursery.

“Aye, Lady,” breathed Mika.  “It’s a child’s voice in the
nursery, laughing and babbling, as children do.”  Tears welled in the maid’s
eyes.  “First few nights, I heard it, and it didn’t strike me odd.  I mean, I
heard the same night upon night these many years,” she sobbed, and her voice
rose with her panic.  “Except that she’s gone to the stars, now, and her voice
remains!”

Nara’s chamber was just inside the nursery with the
children’s bedchamber beyond the edge of the large play area—the bedchamber
Renda and Roquandor had shared as children.  With only one child in the castle,
Pegrine had had the whole huge room to herself, a bright room by day, full of
light and cheer with plenty of room for her toys.  Now that same door stood
closed, forbidding, and beyond it, if she listened even from this distance,
Renda thought she could hear—something.

When they entered the nursery, Renda stopped at Nara’s door
first, but she hesitated before she knocked.  Nara had not recovered
completely, not yet, and she still would not speak of what had so frightened
her on the night of Pegrine’s murder.  To ask for her help now might be too
much of a strain on the old woman.  But Renda had no choice. 

“Nara,” called Renda, tapping against the door with the hilt
of her sword.  “Nara!”

The old woman opened the door slowly and peered out, casting
a gloomy white light over the knight.  “My lady?”

“Nara, the maids are hearing voices in the nursery,” Renda
told her.  “If Pegrine...” she began, but her voice broke.

But Nara had already stepped away from the door to take up
her shawl.  “If my little one’s spirit walks,” hissed Nara when she came back
to the door, “I shall do my best to put her to rest, and thank B’radik that I
may yet be of service to this house.”

Renda nodded gratefully.  Then she led the way across the
empty play area to Pegrine’s door.

Almost at once, the hair on the back of her neck bristled. 
Indeed, she could hear the sound of childish giggling and play, sounds she had
heard often from Pegrine’s chamber while the child lived.  But at her approach,
the voice fell into the heavy rhythms of a child’s rhyme.  Even with her ear
pressed against the wooden door, Renda could not quite hear it well enough to
make out the words.

“Ano, ano, poison’s bane,
Sword of hemlock, godless stain,
Sovereign’s secret whim she tells,
The child among the doucetels.”

The voice Renda heard now was Nara’s, falling in perfect
rhythm to the child’s chant inside the chamber.

“The pith, the blood, the heart, the glow,
To free Her hand and guard the throne.
Four thousand years the Five are four,
The fifth is found and binds the shores.”

“Nara, what rhyme is this that you speak?”  She turned in
horror and peered into the old woman’s eyes.  “Is this some nursery song you
taught to Pegrine?”

“Nay,” she wheezed, looking away in terror.  “I called upon
B’radik to cleanse the chamber, my lady, and I hear only this cursed rhyme in
mine ear!

“Of dragon’s line, doth legend spin
Brannagh from Damerien,
Truth to guard and light to shed,
Dread the coming banishèd.”

“Dread the coming banishèd?”  Mika’s voice trembled, and she
looked from Renda to Nara and back.  “What means it, my lady?  Are we to dread
the ghost, the banished soul?”  She turned to Nara.  “Is there more to it?”

Renda frowned and gestured the girl to silence, ignoring her
own thoughts that perhaps by taking in Chul, somehow the house was in danger. 
But if so, the warning was a bit late.

“Ano, ano, poison’s bane,
Sword of hemlock, godless stain,
Sovereign’s secret whim she tells,
The child among the doucetels.”

She pursed her lips in exasperation.  The pith, the blood,
the heart, the glow.  The four bloods, and by extension the four knightly
virtues.  All right, then, the knights would be the ones to guard the throne. 
But that was no great revelation.  The Knights of Brannagh had always guarded
Damerien’s throne.  As to the Five being Four and binding shores, she only
shook her head.

The rhyme could mean any of a thousand things, but only one
for certain: B’radik would not, or could not, drive out the child’s ghost.  Or
possibly, they faced more than just a spirit in Pegrine’s chamber.  Either way,
the duty now fell upon Renda to destroy it.  She shut her eyes tightly.  To
destroy Pegrine’s soul, if need be.

“Enough,” shouted Renda, opening her eyes again. She took
the door handle to turn it.  But the door was locked.  She turned to the maid. 
“Who locked this door?”

“Locked?  No one, my lady.”  The young woman sobbed again. 
“It stood open when we took her things out, and no one has been inside since.”

Renda turned to Nara.

“Aye, my lady, the door stands open by daylight.”  She
looked nervously at the closed door.  “I’ve not seen it by dark, not since
Peg’s death.”

“And since when has this door had a lock?”  Renda looked
around her in growing irritation.

“You remember aright, my lady.”  Nara frowned, backing away
from the door.  “The children’s door was never fitted with a lock.”

Renda pounded at the door with her sword in frustration. 
“Come, Spirit,” she called, “if you would have words with me, open this door.”

Abruptly, the chanting stopped.  Renda reached out to take
the handle of the door, unsure how she might react if the door stood unlocked
now.  She steeled her nerves, blotting out the fearful imaginings of her mind,
and touched the cold metal.

Under her hand, the door flew open.  Her heart thundered in
her chest, but she took a careful step forward, moving her sword through the
shadows before her.  In the darkness, she saw the bed, neatly covered with a
white dropcloth, the chest of drawers, the armoire, the shelves.

Otherwise, she saw only darkness.  Silence and darkness, as
still as the clearing where she had found Pegrine’s body.  Yet she felt
nothing.  No chill breeze, none of the strange sense of disorder that had
marked the glade.  The chamber was simply empty.  She moved to enter, but Nara
stopped her.

“Let me cast my light about the chamber before you enter,
Lady,” she said, “lest some evil lurk in the shadows,” and the old woman
stepped into Pegrine’s chamber.  At once, the room filled with light, and Renda
lowered her sword.  The spirit was gone.

R
ock. 
Around him, above and below, on every side.  No air, no sky.  Chul stared up at
the great crushing expanse of stone above the bed, too terrified to blink. 
They had buried him alive, buried him with his father!  He tried to lift his
arm, but a soft weight of cloth held it down.  Nekraba had bound him already,
and now the giant Mohoro would come for him.  His breath came in quick gasps,
and his eyes darted back and forth from one wall to another, listening against
the darkness.  It was a mistake.  He had to get out.

The silky bedclothes slipped aside without much fight.  He
scrambled out of the bed, triumphant in his escape, and stood naked in the
middle of the floor trying to calm the panic in his heart.  On a chair beside
the bed, his leathers sat calmly folded beneath his hunting knife and sheath. 
These things alone in this chamber were his, and his mind wrapped itself around
them, groping for meaning. 

Then he remembered.  The forest, the horse he’d found
outside the tavern.  A table of endless food.  Last night, a kind man helped
him into this bed and stirred the fire—he looked at the fireplace where only a
few coals glowed.  Sedrik was the man’s name.  Lord Daerwin’s valet.  At Castle
Brannagh.

He remembered now where he was—

Dead to the tribe, buried in an Invader tomb.

—but his heart still heaved against the closed space.  He
could not seem to get a full breath.

He ran to the window, pulled it open and took the cold air
so deeply into his lungs that he coughed, but now at least the openness around
him eased his soul, and he could breathe again.  The morning sky was still
dark.  A few stars were beginning to fade into gray light, and before long, the
sun would be up.  And he would greet it as he should, as his father had taught
him before he died.

Chul took his knife and climbed up on the windowsill to
bathe in the fresh cool air of the morning, to breathe in all its myriad
flavors of stables, rotting leaves and freshly cut grains from the fields
outside the castle wall.  Warm aromas of cooking rose to him from the
kitchenhouse, and his stomach growled.  He was amazed that he could be hungry
again already.

In the bailey gardens below his window, a few of the knights
were out exercising their horses before breakfast.  They did not wear their
curious metal plates, and their massive warhorses moved as if they had no
riders at all, prancing and dodging playfully along the paths.  The knights
were far enough below him that their voices were no more than a quiet mumble,
but occasionally a comment from one would raise a short explosive laugh in the
others, or they would fall to good-natured sparring as warriors would.

He watched them as a wolverine watches bears.  He’d heard
stories of the Invaders all his life, but he’d never seen so many together
before.  The Storykeepers told the stories of the Before Time, of the time
before the scattered clans were reunited under the Verge of Anado, and the
strange picture-talk of the Old Voice painted the Invaders mysterious and cold,
unapproachable, even superhuman. The clans were supposed to welcome the
Storykeepers and learn from them, but the stories were so perfectly arranged to
teach a lesson, he always found himself yawning just to see a Storykeeper come
to the fire.

His father had also told him stories of the Before Time, but
his stories were in plain Dhanani, and these were all stories of pain and
hatred.  Vaccar’s Invaders were ruthless and bloodthirsty killers.  They hunted
and killed entire clans for sport, flayed children alive and fed them to their
dogs, and always, it seemed, because of one Dhanani boy’s moral failings.  The
stories ran together in his mind, one horror after another.  But more than the
stories, Chul remembered the savage beating he’d gotten for asking what came
before the Before Time.

Aidan’s stories were the best.  He usually told about the
Invaders’ war, of fighting beside them against the monster Kadak, and it was
from Aidan that Chul had learned that the Invaders bathed in water and slept
enclosed in stone, that they dressed in sliding metal plates for battle, that
their women fought beside their men.  Of the three, he thought Aidan’s stories
held the greatest mark of truth, but he had never dreamed of finding out for
himself.

His breath quickened.  He had seen it himself now, some of
it, and he could tell them at the story fire.  He had seen Lady Renda, a woman
who could put the warriors of the tribe to shame, and he had feasted with the
Invaders at their table.  He had even slept like them, bedded down in soft
cloth sheets under a sky of stone, something Aidan had never had the courage to
do—the warriors would cry out in amazement!

Except…

Except that he would never join them at the fire now.

He fought the tears back and stared at the horizon.  He was
dead to them, dead to his tribe.  He would never complete his Rite of Manhood.
He would have no home, no name.  He would have no mate, no sons; his father’s
line would die with him, just as it would have if Chief Bakti had killed him.
The only difference was in how much he would suffer before it was over. 

But who controlled that now?

Sunlight crept across the land toward the castle, toward
him, the hot plains predator stalking its prey.  The sun was the Hunter of Men,
the fiercest of Nekraba’s beasts.  The day it could sneak up on a hunter was
the day he would die. 

Today, if he so chose.

He stood on the sill and looked down the side of the castle
wall.  It was high enough.  A fall from here would kill him, but he would not
leave it to chance.  His hand tightened around the hilt of his hunting knife,
the knife he had made for himself, the knife his father had thrown into the
dirt in disgust—

This knife could not kill a sickly rat.

—and he pressed it against his belly with a sob.  He set his
toes at the edge of the sill and bent his knees, ready to jump, ready to fly,
if only for a moment.

Just as the light touched him, he thrust the knife up over
his head in defiance, the warrior’s challenge to the sun.  The first ray of
sunlight glinted angrily over his blade; the predator bared its fangs in
defeat.  No.  He would not die today.  Tomorrow, maybe, but not today.  Then,
with the sun fully on him, he lowered the knife again and slipped down into his
chamber from the windowsill.

*          *          *

Daerwin of Brannagh watched the sentry turn on his heel and
walk away before he looked down at the sealed letter just put into his hand. 
He had been expecting it, he supposed, or should have been.  He lowered himself
into the chair and set the unopened scrollcase on his desk to glare at it a
while, to burn it away to ash with his very gaze if he could.  But he could
not, and after but a few moments of staring at it, he lifted it with the idea
of breaking the familiar seal.

But his eye was drawn up by movement at the door to see one
of his knights standing there even before the young man could make bold enough
to knock.

Now, having been seen, the knight cleared his throat.  “A
word, my lord?”

“Kerrick, good morning.”  The sheriff stood and smoothed his
hands over his doublet, taking the time to let his eye travel over the young
knight and gain some idea of his purpose.  Kerrick stood before him in full
armor and surcoat, except that he carried his helmet in his hands.  Behind him,
the sheriff could see the knight’s attendants carrying trunks and valises to
the entry hall with great haste.   He smiled and set the letter down
gratefully.  “Surely you’re not come to take your leave.”

The young man bowed his head.  “I am, my lord Sheriff.”  He
looked up with a sad smile and handed a well rumpled bit of parchment to the
sheriff, gesturing for him to read it.  “It’s my father.  He is not expected to
survive the Feast of Bilkar.”  Kerrick cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “And
so I must to Windale.”

The sheriff nodded and looked down at the note he held.  The
script was elegant, feminine, though a bit shaken with weariness, he could see,
and sorrow.

Kerrick breathed in and looked away while the sheriff read. 
“My mother speaks of Father’s failing health, aye, but she also mentions a
certain growing malaise among the farmers.”  When he saw the sheriff look up at
him in alarm, he continued.  “They press bold upon their rights and demand more
and more of us, even the yeomen farmers whose lands we do not govern. 
Unreasonable, petty demands, my lord; they’ve no idea what they ask.”

“The viscount stands firm, I trust.”

“Aye,” answered the knight, “but since Father refuses them,
they take no pains to hide their contempt when our carriages pass.”  The corner
of his mouth twitched down in worry.  “Mother’s great fear, and mine as well,
is that, with the Viscount of Windale upon his deathbed...”

“Indeed, they may grow bolder still.”  After a moment’s
thought, Lord Daerwin clapped his hand against Kerrick’s shoulder.  “I shall
send some knights with you, the better to help your farmers see reason, aye?  
Choose whom you will, as many as you need; bid them return to us at your
leisure, when you are assured of control again.”  Lord Daerwin smiled
reassuringly and put the parchment back into the knight’s hand.  “Kerrick,
please, convey my kindest regards to your family.  Such news of your father
saddens me, and that your farmers should take advantage of his ill health
thus...”  He shook his head.  “I hold Taynor of Windale a dear friend and a
brave ally.  Should the worst—”

“Should the worst befall us,” spoke Lord Kerrick, drawing
himself up, “know that the new viscount is likewise a Knight of Brannagh and
holds those of this house as dear as his own.”  He bowed before the sheriff. 
“Should need arise, my lord, you have but to send word.”

The sheriff shook his head.  “Kerrick, your first concern is
with your family and your lands,” he said, guiding the young knight toward the
door.  “If we find we just cannot go on without you, trust that we will send
for you.”  He smiled gently.  “But meanwhile, see to your renegades and most
especially to your father.  I should very much like to see him at Brannagh for
the Feast of Didian.”

Kerrick raised his chin bravely.  “So should I, my lord, but
I fear the tumors have filled too much of his bowel.  We have but to make his
last days comfortable, I’m afraid.”

“To my sorrow,” breathed the sheriff.  “But away then,
before you lose the day’s travel.  May the gods ride with you.”

“Lord Daerwin,” the knight said rather abruptly, and his
face burned red.  “Please do take my leave of Lady Renda, as well.”  He grinned
a moment.  “She was to humiliate me again in the practice chamber this
evening.”  But his grin grew wistful, and he looked down at his helmet.  “If
you would be so kind, my lord.  I should speak to her myself, except...”

But the sheriff had already looked away, his mind upon the
matter of the other letter, the one that sat glaring at him from within its
scrollcase on his desk.  “Except that you must be on your way.  Of course I
shall.”  He smiled and waved once more to the knight before he closed the
audience chamber door behind him.

Then, with nothing left to distract him, he picked up the
case and cracked open the seal, the asp guardant, the fillet d’or that wound
round the ornate W.  Inside was a letter from the Right Honorable Corin, Earl
of Wirthing, full of greetings and grovelings as always, and in the flowing
flawless hand of the earl’s scribe.  The letter asked most circumspectly and,
to his mind, most predictably, after Sir Bernold of Avondale and his sometime
companion, Sir Finnig of Estrella, both young knights being bound at last word
through Brannagh lands toward Wirthing Castle.

Lord Daerwin sighed and rubbed his eyes before he brought
out his own parchments, inks and pens.

*          *          *

Chul followed Sedrik downstairs hoping to see Lady Renda or
perhaps the sheriff and Lady Glynnis at breakfast.  He had learned so much from
them, and he’d looked forward to hearing more about the history of the House of
Brannagh.  Instead, he found himself in the great hall of Brannagh, surrounded
by a loud crush of knights and squires and pages and servants.

Breakfast at Brannagh was an informal affair with many of
the knights coming and going as they would, rather than sitting down to a
meal.  They took mugs of something hot to drink and rounds of fresh hot bread
with butter and cheese on the way to whatever tasks the day held for them. 
This informality was a holdover from the war, Sedrik explained, when they could
not afford much ceremony.  But for those who would sit, if only for a few
minutes, Greta had set out great pots of baked partridge eggs laced in cream,
vats of venison stew, bowls of late fruit from the orchards and plate after plate
of her cheese tarts.

After a few shouts of greeting when Sedrik introduced Chul
as a friend of Aidan, the men and women at the tables left him to eat in peace,
no more or less conscious of him than they were of each other, quietly
accepting of his leathers and his unmistakable Dhanani coloring.  For the most
part.  He did see that several of the women were staring at him and smiling,
though he did not understand why.  For his part, he ate in silence, soaking up
every morsel he could of dialect and grammar, nuance and gesture from them.

No one seemed to notice when he finished his breakfast and
left the great hall.  Sedrik had gone about his own tasks, as had most of the
rest of the household, and no one seemed to think he needed an escort.  This
left him free to explore the castle on his own.

The lay of the keep confused and fascinated him.  Corridors
wound round the outsides of the central halls, stairways rose from the great
hall to the audience chambers and galleries and up yet again to the private
wings of the castle, passages leading out to the armory, the scullery, the
apartments of the knights and servants.  He studied the ancient tapestries and
paintings that lined the stone walls, the banners hanging from the gatehouses
to proclaim which knights were in residence.  All these things might be useful
to him one day; he had to drink them all in and store them away.