Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (27 page)

“Do you not?”  The tanner sat again.  “Look, it’s not just
me.  Us all, when we seed Chatka dead, we standed around thinking and working
it out.”  He ticked off the points on his thick fingers.  “‘Quell the overspilt
dark,’ to kill Chatka and shut up her dark words against Brannagh.  ‘Sweet and
silent hand,’ that’s poison, but at a sweet hand, a woman’s hand, aye.  And
silent, by Didian, who but Gikka?  And ‘trusted ‘gainst our better nature,’
again, who but the assassin?  That, and then Botrain, he brung up the grudge
Gikka had against her for spying her out in the crowd that night.”  He looked
between the sheriff and his daughter.  “If you can’t see it, it’s because you
won’t.”

“‘To claw and steal away the fire?’” prompted Renda angrily.

“I…don’t know.”  He looked away and fingered his amulet rope
again.  “I’m not remembering the exact line we took, but it’s plain enough.”

Renda fumed.  It was plain enough indeed.  They had decided
Gikka was to blame, and Chatka’s prophecy just reinforced what they wanted to
believe.

The sheriff nodded and looked up at Renda.  He saw what she
saw.  They could not hope to fight the villagers’ conclusion, and Gikka’s very
absence all but proved her guilt in their eyes.

“Know, Maddock, that neither I nor the Lady Renda charged
Gikka of Graymonde, nor any other soul, to harm Chatka, much as her words vexed
us.  This upon my word as Sheriff of Brannagh.”

“You lie.”  The tanner rose and glared at the sheriff.

“Sit you down!”  Renda seethed.  She whirled, and with her
swordpoint against his gut, she pushed Maddock back down into his chair.  “You
have overstepped yourself.  You and I shall have business together, Maddock,
and soon.”

The tanner’s hard gaze broke, and he looked away.

“But,” the sheriff continued as if nothing had happened,
“even so, in the interest of justice, I must consider what you say, that Gikka
might have found reason to attack Chatka on her own.”

“What?”  Renda stared at him.

“Hear me out.”  Lord Daerwin gestured for her to put down
her sword.  “Please.”

She sheathed her sword in exasperation and paced away from
the table.

“Maddock,” he asked, “how did Chatka die?”

“Poison—boticlan, an it please you—as you seen,” the
villager muttered sullenly over his tea.  “No saying how.”

“You saw no marks on her, no sign of struggle?”

“None.”  The man glowered at him.  “Her food or drink must
have been poisoned.”

“Must have been!”  Renda slammed her fists down on the table
before him.  “Come, what proof have you that she died of anything but her own years?”

“Or the plague?” offered the sheriff softly.

“Plague’d not touch her!”  The man stood, clearly offended. 
“She was pure, unlike those of this house who consort with undead and
assassins.”  He watched the sheriff and Renda exchange glances.  “Her vision
was strong, and she seen her death at Gikka’s hand, is all I know.”  He turned
to the sheriff.  “Enough of this.  Lord Daerwin, we of your villages demand of
you the death of Gikka of Graymonde.”

“You overstep yourself again, Maddock,” said Renda menacingly.

The sheriff met his gaze.  “You have no idea what you’re
asking of me.”

“Asking!”  Maddock laughed incredulously.  “Oh, no, we’re
not asking, m’lord.  An you don’t, you force our hand.”

The sheriff stood then, and his eyes blazed with fury.  “Do
not threaten me, Maddock.  Without the grain gathered by my knights, by my own
hands, and put away in my storehouse, the villages will starve.”

“Not after your storehouse comes our storehouse.  M’Lord.” 
With that he rose and strode from the chamber.

For a moment, the two knights stood staring at the door. 
Then, from far away, they heard the sound of the heavy outer doors closing. 
The gauntlet was thrown.

“I’d have cut him down where he stood, had you not stayed my
hand,” Renda said quietly.

“And you would have brought them all against us, had you
done so,” he sighed, “which you know.  Else I could not have stopped you.  In
any case, I doubt we could stand against them now, toe to toe.  Thank the gods
for these ancient walls.”  He sat heavily behind his desk, and the dust of his
dead knights billowed up from his clothing.  “Renda, you must send for her.”

“What?”  She could not believe what he was asking of her. 
“You believe them, then?”

“Of course not.  I’m all but certain that Chatka took
boticlan to escape the dishonor of the plague.  Then again,” he said with an
uncertain shrug, “Gikka is a shrewd one.  She may well have had a hand in it an
she thought it a service to us.  Regardless, she must answer this charge
directly, or they will hound her and us until they have their quittance. 
Whatever her intentions may have been—”

“Assuming she killed the old witch at all.”  Renda shook her
head in disbelief.  “We have only their words for what the old woman said ere
she died.  For my part, I doubt Gikka would waste her time on such a one.”

“But, Renda, they will not rest until she pays for Chatka’s
death.”  Her father looked up at her. “Whether she stands guilty or no, we have
no choice but to bring her here to face the charge.”

“And how is she to prove herself innocent?  What possible
word or deed might acquit her?  You heard them.  That they did not see anyone
means Gikka is guilty in their eyes!  They demand her death whether she stands
guilty or no.  Maddock’s said as much.”

He rubbed his eyes wearily.  “I suppose I could imprison
her.  How long do you think she might stay below ere she freed herself?  A
tenday?”

Renda glared at him bitterly.  “Unlike yon rabble, Gikka of
Graymonde is loyal to the House of Brannagh.  She would stay below forever an
the door stood open, upon your merest word.”  She turned away from him in
disgust.  “Would that you might grant her the same trust.”

“Enough, Renda.”

“You would have me summon her, then?”  She laughed with
angry disbelief, and her voice rose with rage.  “You would have me bring her,
if not right into their murderous hands, to her death of plague to appease your
mutinous canaille without?  Nay, I will not!”

“Renda!”

“And nay again, Father!”  She drew her sword and strode
toward the door.  “My sword wants blood since the war’s end.  If I must, I will
dispatch them all myself, one by one, but I will not sacrifice Gikka to them!”

“Hold, Knight, and hear me!”  He rose and moved between her
and the door.  “By the gods, child, it is a most dire risk, to bring her here,
but as surely as I stand before you, she is safer in my prison than she is at
Graymonde!”

He was right.  Assuming that Gikka had no hand in this, she
would have no idea the villagers were against her.  The first time she rode
into Brannagh lands, they would ambush her.

“I say we bring her hither, let them see her sent below, and
then a few days hence when they turn to other matters, she may quietly
disappear back to Graymonde.”

She stared at him.  “Can you be so naive?  They will not
settle so easily.  They know her, Father.”  Renda shut her eyes and turned
away.  “It’s said all over Syon that no prison can hold Gikka of Graymonde;
thus they demand her death, and I warrant they will not rest until they see her
head on a pike without.”

The sheriff nodded. 

“There has to be a way for her to defend her name.”

Her father looked up at her.  “What did you say?”

“I said, there must be a way for her to defend—”

“Her name.  Yes.  There it is.”  He turned to Renda.  “Go
speak with them at the gate, and in civil tones, or all is lost.  Tell them
that we must grant her opportunity to defend her name against these charges, as
we would any accused.  Tell them those words exactly, mark.  The opportunity to
defend her name.”

Renda was baffled.  Defend her name?  “Aye, but what good—?”

“Trust me.”  He smiled shrewdly.  “They must agree.  If they
would have any sympathy for their rebellion, they must follow all the forms. 
And naturally, they would be fools to expect any less for our loyal squire than
the right to defend her name.  In their agreement, they sow the seeds for their
own defeat.”  He templed his fingers.  “It’s hidden well, but I shall find it. 
It changes the whole flavor of the charge and sets them at risk if she is not
guilty.”  By now he was muttering to himself, looking over the old parchments. 
“Imagine it.  Gikka of Graymonde served, for once, by the arcana of Syonese
law.”  He looked up to see her still standing before him.  “Go!  Be quick!”

But by the time she reached the gate, the disgruntled
villagers had already gone back along the road toward their homes, having
already decided that the sheriff would not agree to their demands.  As an
ominous reminder, they had left behind the litter bearing Chatka’s body.  Given
their purpose and determination when they had approached Brannagh’s gates,
Renda did not have any sense of retirement about them.  They were preparing. 
They were leaving only to gather their horses.  They were preparing to attack.

Graymonde Hall

“
W
ell,
well,” breathed Gikka, setting her candle down on the work table.  She drew her
shawl up about her shoulders and let the mews door close softly behind her. 
“If it ain’t Colaris, come bearing tidings!”

The little hawk’s slender, black-edged wings hung down and
away from his body, and he held his beak open to pant in spite of the cold
night air spilling in from the open window behind him.  She could tell that he
had flown hard tonight, keeping low over the trees as was his wont during the
war in spite of the darkness, and now he stood tapping his foot irritably, the
one with the little scrollcase strapped to the ankle.  His owlish eyes glared
at her before he fluffed his feathers and gave the bellpull one more
ill-mannered jerk.

“A bit slighted, are we, to carry my lord’s messages
about?”  She laughed gently and took the rope from his beak just as he was
about to pull it again.  “Oh, no.  I’ll thank you to leave the bell lie a
bit.”  She set down the small pan of water she had brought up with her and
stroked his back once before she strapped the falconing glove on her arm. 
“Here you are, and mind you drink it slow.”

While the bird sipped daintily at the water and cocked back
his head to swallow, Gikka moved to the window and looked out into the night,
over the shadowy grounds of Graymonde Hall and beyond the gate to the darkness
of the road leading toward Brannagh.  The sheriff had not sent his hawks out
with messages since the war, when speed was of the essence.  She looked back at
the bird who was visibly more comfortable now.  Something was surely amiss that
they would risk sending out the sheriff’s prize harrier by night, even with the
protections Nara must have set over him.

Gikka shivered against the cold air and reached to pull the
window closed, but Colaris squawked at her and flew to the sill, knocking his
pan of water to the floor with a crash.  The woman shook her head gravely.  So
he was to return by night, as well.  Something was very wrong.

“All right, then, up you come, lad,” she soothed and offered
her arm to him.  At once, Colaris stepped onto the glove and clutched the hard
leather with the talons of one foot while he raised the other that she might
take the tiny roll of parchment from its case.  Even before she could open the
scroll, the bird fluttered his wings impatiently.  So they were expecting no
reply, then.  Gikka quickly fed him some small pieces of dried meat that she
had brought up with her then closed the empty scrollcase at his ankle and sent
him on his way, shutting the small window behind him.

The seal on the scroll was set from a perfect miniature of
the signet in the sheriff’s ring, a match to the seal she had cracked on the
outside of the case.  Even so, she doubted the message had come from him.  She
opened the little parchment and squinted at the tiny writing in the light of
the candle she had brought up with her.

After she had read the message for the third time, after she
had set it aflame with her candle and set it to burn on the stone workbench,
even after the last ash had been taken up by a draft and dashed against the
doorway to dust, she sat in the empty silence and watched the candle wax melt
and drip down until at last the flame puddled and drowned.

“Just a wee owl,” growled Maddock squinting up into the
moonlit sky.  They had slowed their horses to listen, having only glimpsed the
bird as it crossed the small patch of sky above the trees.  In any case, it
flew against their way, not with it.  “Ride on.”

“An owl,” muttered one of the men behind him as he kicked up
his horse, “but no owl flies so high or so fast.”  When Maddock continued to
ride away without making answer, the man nudged his horse forward to catch up.

“A hawk, then,” Maddock snapped back, “but it ain’t no
bloody flying wolf.”

The men fell silent now, marching their horses through the
thinner woods at the southern boot heel edge of the Bremondine forestlands. 
Soon the trees would thin away to the west, and they would continue along the
woodland border northwestward toward the outermost foothills of the Fraugham
mountain range and the mines, and from there back to the main road and straight
on to Graymonde Hall.  Another two hours at this rate; two hours of fearful
shadows that turned his men’s anger to fear and dulled their resolve against
Chatka’s murderer.  But for the time saved cutting through the woods, he might
have been better served to keep to the main roads and avoid all the dangers,
real and imagined, of the Bremondine forests.

Never mind the Bremondines themselves, the lowlifes, ever at
picking pockets in the cities or working schemes against simple farmers.  That
was all they were suited to, robbing and thieving and whoring and murdering,
passing off the rotten wood of their forests to them as was too poor to afford
proper Brannford wood.  Maddock sneered.  Never seen a Bremondine as worked an
honest forge or tilled an honest field, no, nor sold a stick of hale
timber—damnable thieves and beggars, the lot of them, and on these hidden
forest roads where the sheriff’s knights never came, they were shameless
cutthroats and brigands, robbing any as came along.

But Maddock was sure his men hadn’t spent a moment’s thought
between them on the Bremondines, not them.  Oh, no.  Their brains were muddled
in the legends and stories, ever seeking out the glimpse of the beautiful siren
women or golden coinworms on the ground.  Or their damnable flying wolves—great
bats, these, with wings the span of a man’s arms, whose look alone would steal
a guilty man’s soul right through his eyes. Maddock snorted audibly.  He’d
heard all the same stories himself over the years, but truth to tell, he’d
traveled these woods his whole life, trapping and hunting, and he’d never yet
seen anything more dangerous than a wild boar.  Nothing except those damned
Bremondines.

The villagers would never take his word, not when their eyes
peered to and fro through the shadows making up wights and wyverns to menace
them.  He looked back over them, no longer seeing vengeance and determination
but seeing only fatigue and fear.  It was one thing to glory in the plan to
attack Graymonde Hall and destroy the sheriff’s assassin, especially with the
women looking on and waving their kerchiefs to your courage.  It was quite
another in the quiet and wicked dark of the forests to think of facing down
Gikka of Graymonde on her own lands, in her own manor, after riding a hard
three hours by night.  Before long, they would be wanting to turn back.

“A hawk, did you say?”  Botrain kicked his horse up to ride
beside Maddock.  “But hawks don’t fly by night.”

Maddock turned a glare on him.  “Of course they do,” he
muttered.  “Else you’d not have seen one, would you?”

“This is a house of the dead,” whispered Chul.  He set his
back into a corner of the sunken doorway where he crouched beside Gikka and
peered fearfully at the top of the crumbling marble stairs that ascended to the
ground level just above his head.  He was certain that the small square of dark
sky above him was shrinking.

Desecrator.  Mohoro eats trespassers.

The ground was closing over his head to swallow him up.  He
could already feel the tightness in his chest where Mohoro of the Underground
stole away his breath.

“Aye, that it is.  The old Graymonde crypt.”  Gikka glanced
at him while she held the candle flame against the iron of the lock to soften
the wax seal.  “If you’d rather, you can mind the horses.  I’ll be but a
moment.”

Weak at the knees, boy?

“No, no, I’m fine.  I’ll stay with you.”  Chul scratched
nervously at the threadbare woolen breeches he wore and looked away from the
shrinking patch of night sky into the darkness beyond the rusty mausoleum gate,
his brain blistering with fear that he might see his father’s rotting face
floating in the flickering shadows.  First the stone bedchamber, now this… 
“But why do we disturb the dead?  I thought you said...”  His voice cracked, and
he fell silent, ashamed at the sound of fear in his voice.

“Aye, we will away, and soon enough, but I’ve business below
first.”  Gikka gently pried up the soft edges of the seal with the long sides
of her fingernails, careful not to distort the mark, an ornate G raised within
a flattened square.  Then she warmed the iron of the lock again and pried a bit
more of the wax up, a knife blade’s width at a time, so it seemed to Chul.  And
again.  Once the seal was peeled free of the lock, she flattened it across
Chul’s hand to cool.  “Take care you don’t muck it up, aye?  I’ll need it again
to close the gates.”

The boy stared at the wax seal, shutting out all the
darkness and the closeness of the soil and stone rising around him.  But then
he moved the seal into the candlelight and looked at it carefully.  He shook
his head at the black lines that ran through the red wax.  “This wax is burned,
see the streaks?  You’d best use fresh.”  When she only smiled, he looked up at
her.  “Why do you want to use this one again?”  Then he sat back in
amazement.   “This is not your seal, is it?”

“The seal is mine, sure enough,” she said, oiling her key
before she slipped it into the lock, “or it were, once upon a time.  Right up
until the miners took the damned signet and made themselves a cast of it.  For
now, it serves me best to let them think their counterfeit fools me.  And best
to have this same seal back in place, old burn marks and all, when I go.”

“The miners?”  He found the thought of men who spent most of
their lives underground both terrifying and fascinating, but try as he might,
he had never caught a glimpse of one; somehow, he was always away on one of
Gikka’s errands whenever they came up to Graymonde Hall.

“Aye, the lowlifes.”  She turned the key in the lock and pushed
open the gate.  “There we are.”  She picked up the cloth sack she had brought
with her and started down the stairs.

Chul felt sick.  Another flight of stairs descended below
them, deeper into the darkness, into the guts of the underground.

Chul glanced back at the square of moonlight high above him
before he swallowed his fear and self-loathing and followed Gikka into the
crypt.  He carried the strange wax seal ahead of him as a sort of talisman
against the spirits and demons of the underground, an absurd token, some small
excuse for his presence in this sacred place.  As he walked, he mouthed prayers
to Nekraba, the goddess of the dead, and Her consort, the pale giant Mohoro, to
forgive his intrusion.

But in spite of his fear and his prayers, he saw no demons
here, nor any other fearful monsters of the depths.  The crypt was empty; he
could feel it.  The spirits of the dead had deserted this place centuries ago,
just as Aidan said they abandoned their barrows in the Kharkara plains once
their bodies turned to ash.  No terrors seeped from the walls, no ghostly
voices railed against him here.  Except for the broken catafalques and a single
stone casket near the back wall, nothing remained of the ancients of Graymonde,
not even their names.

The crypt itself was another matter.  The granite floor and
walls were buckled and cracked and looked like they were poised to fall in over
him, and telltale bits of soil stood at the open cracks, ready to burst through
the walls to cover them and their trespass.  Yet Gikka moved beneath the broken
stones of the walls without a second thought.  Chul blinked his eyes and looked
again.  He even made bold enough to touch the stones gently.  These broken
slabs of granite had been standing thus for hundreds of years.  A third glance
and he supposed he might even be able to climb them, though he reeled with
vertigo.

He had to walk carefully over the uneven floor to keep from
dropping the wax seal.  These breaks, like those in the walls, were not new, he
saw, nor were the strange scorched areas that occasionally appeared in the
light of Gikka’s candle, and he found himself wondering just what had made
those of Graymonde abandon their family mausoleum so long ago.

He was about to ask Gikka, but she had already moved toward
the single remaining casket.  Just as Chul’s worst fears told him she might,
she set down the sack and began to pry up the lid.  To his surprise, the lid
was no more than a thin sheet of stone, not the true lid for that sarcophagus
at all, and Gikka lifted it easily.  While she set it down against the wall of
the crypt, he steeled himself—

Guess who’ll be there looking up at you, boy.

—and stepped over the broken floor to look into the open
grave.

“Aye,” whispered Gikka with a grin.  She knelt beside the
casket and picked up a handful of the rough gems that lay inside.  “They’ve
been busy, my thieving miners have.”  She turned to him.  “Come, find a spot to
set down that wax.  Do as I do; we’ve no time to waste.”

Once the villagers had ridden free of the forest, Maddock
led them to join the road that led north.  Almost as soon as the trees were
behind them, they stopped their trembling whispers of flying wolves and
avenging dragons and silently rejoined the task ahead of them with their
courage refreshed in the openness of the land ahead.  Only occasionally did
bunches of trees sidle up to the road, and even so, they were low enough that
on the whole, the men felt they could see from one side of the foothill valley
to the other.

By day or in the early evening hours when fires burned and
candles lit the windows, they might have been able to see the manor house from
here, but this late, the road was dark all the way into the mountains, even
through the little Hadrian mining town that lay along this road.  Even so, they
followed the road with determination, sure now of their way.

Zinion neighed and nipped irritably at Chul’s horse, the one
the boy had taken from the tavern’s hitching post on his first journey to
Brannagh.  Both animals stood at the gate in bare tack over worn saddle
blankets, the one nearly invisible against the shadowy darkness with his eye to
the road and his ears well forward to listen, the other showy and white and
grazing stupidly against the fence.  They carried nothing that would betray
them as belonging to Graymonde Hall.  Their saddlebags held food and extra
clothing against the cold, Chul’s few belongings, but little else.  They would
need their speed.