Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (24 page)

“Nonsense,” said Dith.  “They will wake any time now.”  He had
used so little energy he wondered that they had fallen asleep at all.  They
would never come awake—of course they would; what was Kano saying?

Kano smiled again and looked back over his shoulder to where
several townsmen carried the two guards outside into the sunlight and knelt to
splash their faces with cold water.  “Perhaps among the stars.”  The cleric
continued his apparently solitary walk away from the court, passing once more
the tavern where Dalthaz had hired Dith the tenday before, glancing in his
blind way toward the brand new door on the charred doorframe.  “And what of the
temple?”

Dith laughed and ran to catch up with the priest.  Ah, now
they would finally get to the meat of the conversation.  “If you can read my
heart so well, then you know ‘what of the temple.’”

“Yes,” he murmured.  “But do you?”

Dith stared at him sideways a moment, sure that he was
missing the old man’s meaning.  “Just like a priest, to speak in riddles.  No
love is lost between Rjeinar and me.  You know this as well as anyone could. 
You and the rest of his priests have dogged me since the war’s end.”  His voice
sounded uncertain, even in his own ears.  “Destroying the temple was my revenge
against him.”

“Revenge.”  Kano smiled.  “So it had nothing to do with
the...bandits?”

“Nothing.”

“I see.”  Kano stroked his chin.  “But this revenge of
yours,” murmured the cleric with veiled amusement.  “Revenge for what?”

“For two years spent under his death sentence, dodging every
green-robed cleric that crossed my path.”  Then Dith laughed.  “I suppose He
might even find that amusing if He has the wit to see it.”

The whites of Kano’s eyes flared red, and a strange low
voice erupted from deep within his chest.  “Beware, Dith the Blasphemer, lest
you raise My wrath against you again.”

Dith stood back and lowered his hands from the straps of his
rucksack to his sides.  Strange how much the red-eyed face of Kano resembled
the image he had created in Kadak’s stronghold.  “What do you mean, again?”

But the strange voice only laughed.  Then, just as quickly,
the red of Kano’s eyes faded to white.

“Rjeinar,” Dith called, setting his rucksack on the ground
and raising his arms to the heavens.  “Face me!  Do not hide behind an old
blind man’s skirts!”

Kano shook his head.  He bent to lift Dith’s rucksack and
handed it to him before he hurried the young sorcerer along the road.  “They
will expect you to stay to the roads, since they think you ill equipped for
climbing.  Instead, trek eastward two miles, to the lake I mentioned.  A spring
feeds the stream that fills that lake, and it flows through a deep ravine up
the mountain to the north; you will have to climb up and then down and then up
again to cross it as there is no bridge.  From there, turn north and run
parallel to the goat path.  The way is hard, but I believe you will find what
you seek there.”

“Galorin’s Keep?”  Dith looked that way but saw only
forestlands and the rise into the Hodrache Range. 

“If that is what you seek.”  The cleric touched Dith’s
shoulder and somehow managed not to burn his hand. 

“Why do you help me?”  Dith looked suspiciously along the
path the priest indicated, wondering if he should trust the Rjeinarian. 

“Because you did what no priest could do.  What I could not
do.  You freed Rjeinar.”

“I did what?”

But the priest merely gestured ahead impatiently.  “There is
no time.  Soon you will understand.  Go now,” he whispered, guiding the
invisible mage off the road and continuing along his path.  From behind him, he
could hear the sounds of galloping horses slowing.

“Pardon, Kano,” panted one man on horseback.  “You’ve not
seen that mage come by, have you?  The one that destroyed your temple?”

Kano smiled up at him with his blank white eyes, and the
mounted man visibly shuddered.  “Seen?”  Kano chuckled softly.  “Surely not.”

The rider nodded uncomfortably to the cleric.  “Good day to
you, then.”  Then the search party kicked their horses up into a fast gallop
and sped away along the road.

Dith paused in his step.  He might have heard the old priest
whisper, “Rjeinar’s blessings over you, Blasphemer.”  It was probably just the
wind.

T
he
river was always lower during the Gathering than it was at the Feast of Didian,
especially this high in the mountains, above the springs that fed the lower
creeks.  Last year’s snows had completely melted off, and the glacier that
yearly sought to press its way through the northernmost peaks had likewise
given off its yearly melt to stand shrunken and thwarted again.  The snows had
begun early this year, and the rugged peaks to the northwest stood dusted in a
thin sheet of white.

From somewhere near the center of the icy river, Dith burst
from beneath the water and sputtered for breath.  He waded crossways to the
current, working his way back along the boulders on the river bottom that
touched the surface in places, and he splashed the mud from his naked body as
he moved.

Clenched tightly in his hand, he carried something he had
found at the bottom of the river, something sought by men and women of the Art
for thousands of years but never found, as far as anyone .  Not since Galorin
first exiled himself to his Keep.  And now, Dith the Merciless held it in his
hand.

It was a flattish black stone no larger than a coin, a dull
river-tumbled rock of no especial value and clearly flawed, but it was the
right one.  He was certain.

He lay the stone flat in his palm and slowly turned it in
the morning sunlight until a glint caught his eye.  Just off-center and to the
far side of the stone, a strange silvery vein marred the surface, forking and
rejoining toward the right side of the stone just as the river forked to the
south and rejoined a few miles before it reached the delta.  Just before the
fork, tiny spider web strands of silver joined the vein just as the spring
creeks joined the river farther south. 

His gaze moved left over the stone.  He had seen what lay to
the south; he was much more interested in knowing what lay above him, to the
north.  There the vein split several times toward the near side of the stone,
toward the west, but the central part of the vein continued almost to the edge
of the stone until it split for the last time.  Just above that final western
branch lay a curious splotch like a drop of molten silver. 

This was not how he was supposed to find it.  Legend held
that the worthy sorcerer would call it to himself from the banks with his
power.  The Stone would decide whether or not to answer him, whether or not he
was worthy.  It almost seemed like bad form to go in after it.

Dith grinned where he crouched on the pebbled bank and
kissed the stone. Then he flicked it as far as he could over the river,
watching it skip twice, three times, before it sank beneath the milky
turbulence, safely hidden once more.  The keep was between the river’s
headwaters and a bit to the west.  It seemed the most likely place for it in
these mountains; he wondered that no one had ever found it before him.  Then
again, it was probably high on a cliff wall and surrounded by bare rock faces
and steep mountains, as he had seen in his dreams.  He could be no more than a
tenday’s climb from finding it, from being able to see it at the very least. 
Once there...

He sighed then and shivered in the cold, and his triumphant
grin faded.

Last night’s fire he had started with flint and steel, just
as he had every night’s fire since he left Montor half a month ago.  It was a
necessary skill, he told himself, one he should keep in practice.  Besides, he
had not tried to start a fire without magic since he was a boy, and he found a
certain novelty in it, a certain mindless challenge, Man against Nature or some
such.  But last night, the wood was wet and nearly frozen with the early
mountain snow and ultimately Nature had defeated him.

Oh, he had managed to get the fire started, though it took
him the better part of the night, but it starved and died soon after he had
fallen asleep; to his disgust, the robes he had washed in the river the day
before hung stiff and frozen where he had spread them to dry beside what was
now no more than a cold pile of blackened wood.  He could dry them himself with
a thought, but that was beside the point.

Last night, when the first drops of cold rain started to
fall, he had raised his hand in frustration, ready to loose a small spark into
the stubborn wet pile of wood.  But then he had lowered it again, angry with
himself for letting his power become such a habit, such a weakness.  Angry that
he should be so powerful and yet so powerless.  Other men could start fires
with flint and steel and, yes, with wet wood as well, and using no magic at
all.  Other men understood their limits and lived within them, he told himself.

Limits, indeed.  He laughed at the heavens and cracked the
worst of the ice off his robe before he pulled it on, still damp and cold.  His
power grew by the day, by the hour; it had no limits but those he chose to
impose upon it by his own design.  He controlled it completely; likewise, he
controlled when he would and would not use it.  Now, for example, he chose not
to use it; he would not be forced into using his power, not even by his own
discomfort.  He slipped his soft seamless Bremondine boots on and stood,
grateful for their warmth. 

He had chosen not to use his power to start his fires, and
he had chosen not to dry his robes with it.  Just as he had chosen not to call
the River Stone with it.  He could not allow the River Stone to reject him,
after all, so he had fetched it out of the river himself, no mean feat and
certainly a show of power in itself.  But he would not let his power control
him.  He could not.

He was not afraid of it, not at all.

He swallowed hard and stared down at his boots.

Not exactly.  But something had changed over the last
several months, and now, since before Montor, really, he found himself as
clumsy with his power as if his hands were mittened in wool.  No, it was more
as if he had just lost the last twenty years of work, of discipline.  And yet
everything he had learned was still there, still reachable, perhaps even more
finely-tuned than ever before.  It was just that none of it applied anymore. 
He gazed up at the bald crest that rose to the north.  The mountain beckoned to
him; Galorin’s Keep was almost within sight.  And he could not trust himself to
start a simple fire.

Even if he could not put a name on what was happening to him,
he had known what caused it even before he undertook this journey.  It was why
he had left Graymonde in the first place.  This was not some sort of revenge on
Rjeinar’s part.  Nor was the burned tavern door the first time he had lost
control.  No, nor the second, nor the two hundredth, he told himself harshly. 
Not to mention the temple.  Never had he felt so much power surge through him
before, and for the first time he had felt a flicker of fear.

Fear, nonsense.  He would never fear magic, least of all his
own.  His power was growing too fast, outstripping his control; it was that
simple.  Galorin would see his talent and help him to regain his control, teach
him how to direct this incredible power.  Either that or he would call him a
threat and kill him out of hand.  If he could.  Dith frowned and skipped a
stone into the river.

Before Montor, before he left Graymonde, even before the end
of the war, he had felt changes in his power, barely noticeable, a thousand
little things that others might have written off to luck, to Limigar’s
distraction, what have you.  He wrote it off to simple good fortune when he
thought of it at all, and he chose to ignore it for the most part.

At first, his vision had cleared a bit; not his vision in
this world, but his vision of what he would create, what he would change.  The
minutiae that controlled what could and could not happen, what was and was not
possible.  When he would use his power, time seemed to slow for him, and he
could carefully examine each thread, each particle of each thread, each
infinitesimal degree of force that flowed around him.  Then, when he was ready,
just the least little tug here or there...

Later, he noticed that he seemed much stronger, less drained
and exhausted after each battle.  Sharper, quicker.  He was better able to
direct his protections over the soldiery, better able to aim and even contain
his attacks.  The magic seemed swifter, more powerful.  More deadly.

Then he destroyed the ship in Brannford port.  The explosion
had been pure luck, he had told himself then; after all, the weather had been
unusually dry.  A few sparks in the dry wood, and up it went, Kadak’s
graetnas
and all.  Except that he had felt the power surge through his body, and it had
not felt like a few sparks.  In the heat of the moment, in the heat of all
those moments, he had not wanted to look any closer.

No, that was not quite right.  He had wanted to look closer;
he’d simply never bothered, an odd thing in itself.  Since when had he been so
deliberately unobservant, so less than curious?

At the time, he had entertained no explanation beyond his
own innate talent and practice.  He had been too busy helping to defeat Kadak
to consider it further.  But looking back on it, he had to wonder.

Hadrians always were a bit jumpy, and at the stronghold,
they’d been even more nervy than usual.  He had always assumed that their state
of mind had made the illusion more believable to them.

When the rock in the westernwall of Kadak’s stronghold had
rumbled and roiled slightly, then stopped, he’d wondered why such simple
illusion was so difficult.  Very well.  He'd tightened his focus.  The great
roar and angry scarred visage of Rjeinar that burst forth from the rock had
been better than he’d hoped.  The spitting rage had been a nice touch.

“How dare you!” the god’s red-eyed image had shrieked,
loosing fire and lightning behind the fleeing Hadrians.  Dith had had to move
off to keep from being hit by the barrage.  Once he had seen the last of the
traitors run away into the darkness, he dismissed the god’s likeness with no
more than a wave of his hand.

How dare you…  He had always assumed that that was directed
toward the Hadrians, but now he wondered if it hadn’t been directed at him. 
But why?

After all the hubbub and hoopla of the celebrations, he and
Gikka had retired to Graymonde, there to spend their days doing little more
than eating and drinking and making love and laughing at the bards’ stories. 
They had had to tend her miners, but the miners were kept under control by
rumor and reputation and by their fear that the blue-eyed child god, Limigar,
the bringer of bad luck, might grow bored with their offerings of puzzles and
toys at His shrines and amuse Himself at their expense.  So Dith had had little
to do but show his blue eyes occasionally to keep them under control.

He doubted he so much as warmed a loaf of bread with his
power the whole time he stayed at Graymonde.  So it was not until very near the
beginning of Gathering that he had found the dusty little rucksack again, in
the stables where it had fallen behind the workbench.

Look what I brung you, Dith!

Slowly, he walked over the riverbed rock, toward where the
ugly orange rucksack lay slumped on its side next to the failed fire.  He
looked warily at the sack, but the sack itself was not to blame.  It, the cause
of all this, was inside.  His fingers reached out mechanically to pick his
rucksack up, fumble the top open and take the thing out.

When Gikka had given it to him, he had turned the odd thing
over in his hands just as he did now.

She’d called it a clever bit of stone and nothing special. 
It was an odd piece of dull black stone about the length of his hand, and it
might have been some natural piece of rock she’d found at the roadside except
for several abortive cuts and scrapes at the narrower end which somehow seemed
to him the top, as if someone had tried to sculpt it and found it too hard.  It
had similar scratches and marks lining the edge of the fatter bottom.  Top,
bottom, it was all arbitrary.  He could not get it to stand flat on any of its
faces when he set it down.  It ever seemed ready to wobble its way back to him.

It had all but jumped out at her from a saddlebag as she
passed, and thinking Dith would like it, she’d brought it back to camp for him,
though once she’d handed it to him, she’d been filled with a certain
apprehension about it.

The scratches and marks were too carefully made, too
uniform, and certain of them repeated themselves here and there, like some sort
of writing.  If he let his eyes focus past the stone, past the cuts at the
narrower end, they almost suggested something to his eye, something he could
not quite see.

That was when it had started.  He stared at the rock now as
he did each time he took it out, stared at the strange half-letters at the
broad end, the carving at the narrow end.  Each time he looked at it, the shape
of it became clearer, sharper, the suggestion of a form more definite.  Yet to
Gikka’s eye that could see flaws in gems at ten paces, the stone itself had
remained unchanged, which meant that it must be changing him.

He stood impulsively now and drew his hand back to throw the
stone into the river, never to see it again, never to feel it pulling at him
again.  Yes, bury it beneath the river with the River Stone where no one would
ever find it!  By the gods, what had possessed him to go back for it in the
Montor jail, when he might have saved himself several minutes in his escape and
been finally free of it?  Had they been just a bit smarter, the constables
might have caught him down in the dungeon, and for what?  An ugly, little,
needy bit of rock.

Without it, he told himself, he had kept perfect control of
his power, bending the light, creating the illusionary guards.  Yes, throw it. 
Do it.  He stopped with his hand back, ready to throw the rock into the river.

But the skin on his scalp crawled.  No.  No!  He had been
without it when he put the two guards to sleep, and they had not awakened.  His
hand squeezed the rock.