Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (22 page)

“What was that,” he asked. “I just saw his mouth under that
hood, and now I feel cold.”

She nodded.  “That was a Hadrian,” she said, “and I’ll thank
you to keep your distance from them.  You’ve Aidan’s cautions and mine,
besides, as touch Hadrians.”

He nodded, but she watched his gaze flick up toward the
door.  Damn the boy’s curiosity.  She would have to mind him more carefully
now.

Gikka broke the seal on the first scroll and pocketed the
wax pieces.  It was written in the curious scrawls of High Hadric script, and
as fluent as she was in High Hadric to hear it, her reading of it was far more
work.  It might be a tenday or more of study for her to make sense of it. 
Apparently the writ had seen some weather before it was so carefully bound and
sent to her, and parts of the ink were blurred.  It was an official posting,
some sort of decree.  She recognized only a few of the words and a single given
name, but they were enough.

It was a notice of bounty against Dith.

Worried, she opened the second.

Hodrache Range

T
he
traveler smiled where he stood at the outskirts of the little town of Montor
and raised his bottle of water in a silent toast to his Gikka before he drank. 
From here, the valley rose softly into glorious, gold-drenched foothills at the
base of the Hodrache Range in a warmly rounded arrangement of terrain that
raised randy thoughts in a man’s mind, especially one who had been away from
his woman for so long.  He slung the jug at his hip again and turned west from
the main road, into the town.  From the look of it, Montor—“Gateway to the
Range,” as the freshly painted sign read—would be his last chance for a hot
meal and a bed for some time.

A single narrow road leading from the main wagon road on one
side of Montor to the mines on the other seemed the town’s main thoroughfare,
indeed its only thoroughfare, and from overlapping footprints that filled and
flattened the ruts and the trampled grasses on either side, one well-traveled
for all that it was empty just now.

Shops and homes, some more auspicious than others, crowded
up against the sides of this road.  Tall fragile buildings made entirely of
wood, with large elaborate signs hung out over their doors.  But the stores were
all closed, and with an hour yet before sunset, that was most peculiar.

With the streets and outlying paths so empty, he wondered if
the whole town might be abandoned, but when he looked above the shops, he saw
several people peering out their windows at him, half-hidden behind their gauzy
colorless draperies.  He gave a wry smile and a bit of a wave, and he shrugged
the rucksack up on his shoulder.  Apparently someone had seen him coming.

Hadrians are a breed apart, Dith told himself with a
sigh—distrustful, superstitious, cowardly.  He glanced up at one window to see
a pale woman pointing at the beautiful seamless gold fabric of his robes. 
Greedy.  He gazed up at her with his blue eyes—Limigar’s own eyes, as Gikka’s
miners called them—and her hand froze mid-gesture.  A moment later, she fell
back from the window in a terrified faint.

He fingered the strap of his rucksack thoughtfully and
continued on his way, squinting at the signs as he passed. 
Batierich,
Bulandriar, Flicherich
.  Butcher, baker, fletcher, but no tavern, no
rooming house.  And even if he found one, it was likely to be closed up like
the rest of the town.  At least to him.  He was beginning to doubt his chances
for a hot meal and a bed after all.

He quickened his step, already putting Montor out of his
thoughts and hoping to get in as many miles before dark as he could.

Suddenly, from the road ahead, a long thin shadow stretched
toward him like an accusing finger, and he slowed his step, shading his eyes
against the sun to see what made it.  Then he saw it move, just a casual shift
toward his right, but it was enough.  He stepped cautiously forward, freeing
his hands from the strap of the rucksack and pushing back his sleeves.  His
blue eyes squinted into the sun.

Then he found himself flying through a doorway.

Dith’s brain had barely registered the image—dark green
robes, wild, colorless hair flowing down the man’s back—before his reflexes
took over and threw him out of harm’s way.  He kicked himself for a fool.  Had
he not been paying attention he would have walked right into a priest of
Rjeinar.

He did not take the time to stand but scrambled back to the
doorway on his knees to see if the Rjeinarian was coming after him.

No.  Somehow, impossibly, it seemed that the old priest had
neither seen nor heard Dith crashing through the door.  Dith stood and brushed
the ash and dust from his robes, increasingly aware of the tense silence behind
him.  Outside the destroyed door, the plain sign still swung back and forth
from the force of his entrance: 
Bavrichna Cliare’k
.  Cliare’s Pub.

When he turned, he saw a dozen Hadrian men in various
attitudes of surprise behind their tables.  Some had spilled their mugs. 
Others had stood with their napkins stuffed under their chins, their mouths
hanging open or stopped in mid-chew.  No one moved.  Finally, after each had
glanced up and down his form once and at the charred doorframe behind him, they
all took their seats again and kept their glassy colorless eyes carefully
averted.

None would so much as meet his eye, much less address him,
no matter that he looked right at them.  So, with another careful glance out
toward where he had seen the Rjeinarian, he drew himself up at the bar and
called for a pint.

The barkeep, no doubt Cliare himself, dropped a mug before
him without a word and crept away, not bothering to ask for his coin, not
looking up at him. 

He shrugged, raised his mug and drank.  While his back was
turned to the men of the town, he could feel the colorless eyes peering and
probing at him with a sort of furtive anxiety or perhaps calculation.  They
would see the seamless robes and mark him as a mage.  And then they would see
his blue eyes and nothing else—not his long white-blond hair, not the fact that
he towered a head taller than any man in the room—no, it was always his eyes
that held them.  The eyes and the mischievous twinkle in them.

They would never be caught looking directly at him. 
Whenever he glanced up, he found the men all about their own drinks and showing
no interest in him whatsoever.

Nearly half an hour later, with the sun down and no sign of
the priest, he emptied the mug and set it back on the counter.  Then he looked
up at the bartender.  At last, and with a discontented sigh, the man came
nearer.

“Another for you, then, is it?”  The barkeep addressed him
in Hadric, but in a vulgar, familiar sense that would have insulted any other
man in the tavern.

He stared into the barkeep’s eye until the man looked away,
all the while listening to the tense Hadrians behind him.  The barkeep had a
right to be angry—his door was burned off its hinges—but what of the rest? 
Finally, Dith shook his head.

“Perhaps later,” he spoke in perfect accents, and felt the
tension behind him heighten.  He rose then and hefted up his rucksack to leave.

“Say, you there,” cried one of the men in fearful,
belligerent tones.  He was obviously distrustful, but he seemed intent on
engaging the traveler any way he could.  Detaining him, perhaps.  “Are you
truly so strong, or just daft, walking the open street so?”

He only smiled and settled his seamless cap upon his head. 
So it began.

Behind him, he heard a chair scrape across the floor, and he
heard heavy steps approaching him.  When he turned he saw a portly man with a
weak chin reaching up to touch his shoulder.

“Did you not hear—?”  But then the man screamed in pain and
backed away, cradling his burnt hand.

Meanwhile, he continued toward the doorway until another
man, this one tall for a Hadrian and quiet with deep care worn into his brow,
called out, “Stop!”  The man’s voice seemed about to break, and when Dith
turned to him, he smiled gently.  “Please.”

At this, he did stop, surprised by the man’s tone.  These
Hadrians had watched him the better part of an hour muttering between
themselves that he was far too young, far too fair.  To wait until he was ready
to continue on his way before they could raise voice enough to speak to him,
and then to stay him from his path with such insistence—the scorn and
disrespect in his voice was only partly affected.  “What do you want?”

The careworn man stood forward and glanced a bit
self-consciously toward the rest of the men who had by now gathered behind
him.  “Please, forgive our manners, friend.”

Friend?
  He chuckled darkly.

“We are not much used to seeing one of your...vocation
here.  Not since well before the war,” he added.  The laugh and the embarrassed
shrug were meant to put Dith at ease, off his guard.  They did not.  “Not since
well
before the war,” he repeated earnestly, as if it should mean
something.  It did not.  “I suppose you might think us a bit provincial, to
gawk and stare so.”

Dith shifted his feet impatiently, vexed that they could
neither leave him alone nor come directly to the point.  “‘Rude’ is the word
that comes to mind.”

The Hadrian’s smile faded.  “Fair enough,” breathed the man
with a bow of his head.  “But I do not want to let such provincialism—” he met
Dith’s icy blue eyes, a profound act of courage “—or rudeness, as you say,
drive you away.  You see, son, we were told—”

Dith narrowed his eyes, letting his impatience show more
clearly to them.

“—to expect you.  Now, it’s clear to me, clear to all of us,
that you have power that we desp—”  The calculating smile again.  “That could
help us.  For a price.  I am called Dalthaz,” he said, bravely extending his
hand.  “I serve as mayor of Montor.”

“Dith,” answered the sorcerer, and he shook the man’s hand
quickly.  From the even look in the mayor’s eye, it seemed he had not heard
Dith’s name before.  That was probably just as well.

“Yes, yes.”  The mayor’s voice still seemed a bit worried,
and he approached Dith as he might a wild animal.  His eye flickered over the
burned door for a moment.  “Plenty of power.  Tell me, would you like to earn
your way onward, say, five gold crowns—ah, golpinds, as you call them?”

Five crowns was a fortune to these people.  It must be quite
a favor.  “For what?”

Dalthaz smiled.  “Services to be rendered, nothing more.”

Dith sneered.  The last thing he needed was to be stayed
from his path for coin.  Besides, they were Hadrians.  He was sure they were
planning something at his expense.  “I have no need of your money.”  He bowed
his head and turned toward the door.  “I’ll be on my way.”

“Come, now,” chided the mayor.  “So you have money, granted,
one could hardly hope to travel the Range without it.  But you must need
something—everybody needs something.”  By now, he was practically shouting in
desperation.  “Come, name something you need.”

He sighed, looking at the destroyed door, knowing the
Rjeinarian was outside.  They would not let him leave now, not easily.  Either
he would have to play their game or destroy them.  On the other hand, he could
think of something he needed.  Maybe he could strike a bargain after all.  “Do
you know the Keep of Galorin, in the Range?”

Several of the men gasped, but the mayor’s smile did not
waver.  “Ah!” he breathed. “You follow the legend.”  He stroked his chin, and
Dith could see the calculations happening in the mayor’s mind.  “Very well.  So
you have need of guides into the Range, then.”

“But Dalthaz,” whispered one of the men, and the note of
fear in his voice drew Dith’s gaze to him.  “Galorin is—”

The mayor raised a hand to silence him.  “Guides and
provisions, yes?”

The exchange was not lost on Dith, and his eyebrow twitched
upward.  What the man wanted to say, he could guess; he had heard it often
enough.  Galorin was a myth, an icon, nothing more.  Almost four millennia
after the Liberation, most of Syon was more comfortable believing that Galorin
had never lived.  But he had to know.  He had to try.

“Go,” the mayor said, patting one of his men on the back,
“fetch Tawn Baybric.”

“No,” answered Dith, watching them carefully.  “I need only
a nod toward a good road that leads to the keep; one that passes near a
river.”  When he heard quiet, nervous laughs from some of the men, he scowled. 
“I need no mouths to feed.”

“No, of course not,” Dalthaz said agreeably.  The rest of
the men fell silent.  “And for this,” the mayor chuckled, “this nod, you will
help us.”  He smiled again.  We have him, that smile seemed to say, and the
townsmen relaxed.

“Depends.”  Dith’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.  “Help you
with what?”

Minutes later he and the mayor stood at the gates of a large
structure near the edge of the town.  In the half light of the moon, the
crumbling stones of the great red building looked to be held up just by their
vines, and the grounds were ill kept.  Inside, moving past some windows on the
second story, he saw shadowy forms bearing candles who paused and seemed to
peer out at him through the darkness.  He immediately moved himself out of the
gate to stand behind the stone fence with Dalthaz.  The rest of the selectmen
had elected to wait at the pub.

“Some forty or so bandits, so I understand,” whispered the
mayor.  The man huddled under his cape against the cold night air and gestured
back toward the temple.  “They hold captive some ten or fifteen clerics
inside.”  The mayor glanced at Dith.  “Priests of Rjeinar.”

Rjeinar.  A bitter smile tugged at the corner of Dith’s
mouth, but he turned away to look at the building again.  “These bandits have
not harmed a hair of the clerics’ heads,” he mused aloud. “Otherwise Rjeinar
should have already taken His own revenge.”

“Possibly.”  Dalthaz nodded uncertainly.  He seemed to want
to say more, but he did not.  “Well, in any event, now you understand.”  He
rubbed his bald scalp nervously.  “We have tried every means at our disposal,
but we cannot so much as reach the door.  Their defenses are,” he pursed his
lips a moment, “powerful in the extreme.  Four men tried, but...”  The mayor
suddenly smiled with all the reassurance he could muster.  “Those inside—”

“The bandits.”

“Yes, the, er…bandits.  They took retribution, as well.”

“Retribution?”  Dith frowned.  “How so?”

Dalthaz sighed.  “No woman of Montor has conceived a child
since they took the temple, and we fear for those who were already expecting.” 
He patted at his cloak as he spoke.  “So you see we’re taking a terrible
chance...”

They were not the only ones taking a chance.  These were not
simple bandits, not if they could exact that kind of retribution.  Dalthaz was
clearly keeping something from him, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter.  Dith
looked down.  “This is Rjeinar’s only temple here?”  When the mayor nodded, he
looked back toward the building.  “All the priests are within?”