Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (34 page)

“Please,” the woman sobbed and coughed, at last falling back
as he kicked his horse up into a pleasant trot.  “He’s dying, please, I beg of
you, help him!”

Renda slowed her mount, expecting the cardinal to answer the
poor woman’s pleas, but he rode on without looking back, looking neither left
nor right but staring only ahead, along the path to the castle.

“But he’s dying!  He can’t wait!”

“Madam,” spoke one of the priests as he passed the woman,
“you must understand.  We’ve been summoned by the sheriff.  We must not stop
until we reach the castle.”

Renda looked back, and the red tomato stain on her armor
seemed to burn through to her heart.  Chatka’s prophecy was coming true in
spite of her, in spite of the best intentions of Brannagh to save the farmers. 
She could order a stop, let the priests save this one dying man, let the
villagers take it as a token of good faith.

“The castle?”  The village woman laughed incredulously,
casting a look of contempt toward the knights.  “The sheriff!  He’s untouched
by this plague!  What of the rest of us?”

The rest of them, indeed.  The order, the simple motion of
raising her hand that would have stopped the horses and let the priests tend
this man, died without a twitch.  Renda nudged Alandro up into a trot toward
the drawbridge, trying to block out the sounds of the woman’s sobs.  The
villagers would not accept a single token healing, not when each of them had a
houseful of plague and dying.  Had the priests stopped at every stricken hovel
along the way, they would never have reached Brannagh at all.  Once inside the
castle gates, they would be best equipped to fight the plague for everyone.

“It was he who called for us,” she heard the priest say, and
turned to watch him touch the woman’s forehead comfortingly.  “I’m sorry.”

“See it now!”  The woman clutched at his deep brown habit in
desperation.  “Come, please, see it in my husband!  Then you can cure him,
aye?”

But the priest pulled himself from her grip before his horse
trotted away.  Those behind him gave her a wide berth, riding past without
letting themselves meet her eye.

Renda rode on behind the cardinal, shutting out the woman’s
cries, shutting out the rage in the villagers’ faces and their distrustful
murmurs upon seeing that the priests were all Hadrians.  Once inside the
castle, the cardinal would prove Chatka wrong.  She had to believe that.

Red and blue.  Red on the Lioness’s breast and blue at her
gates, but not for you, not for any but those who need it not.

“One of you, please,” the woman cried hopelessly, running
behind them until she fell to coughing again.  When at last she recovered her
breath, she watched them ride away over the little rise and down along the road
toward the moat of the castle.  “It would take but one of you...”

They rested for several hours after taking their midday meal,
and then the priests excused themselves to prepare for the evening’s work, to
Renda’s frustration.  She bit back her impatience and told herself not to
begrudge the cardinal and his priests a few hours of rest before they began
their work.

An hour before sunset, the cardinal presented himself to
Lady Renda and the sheriff in the audience chamber dressed in a fresh blue
cassock and with his feet still bare.  He held out a small plate with a single
gold coin in the center, and his pale eyes twinkled merrily as he watched the
sheriff and his daughter exchange perplexed glances.

“A ritual greeting,” he said with a laugh, “no more but so.”

At last the sheriff shook his head.  “Forgive our ignorance,
Cardinal Valmerous.  We are not so familiar with the Hadrian pantheon this far
to the south.”

“Ah,” the cardinal nodded, apparently disappointed.  Then he
set his plate on the sheriff’s broad desk.  “I see.”  He crossed his hands over
his lap.  “Vilkadnazor the Unshod is the Hadrian god of charity and social
order,” he explained, looking for understanding in their eyes.  When he saw
none, he went on.  “Those who have are blessed when they give, as are those who
have not when they receive.”  He glanced sideways at the coin on the plate. 
“Hence our ritual greeting, to bless and remind each man—or woman, as the case
may be—of his proper place.”

Lord Daerwin nodded and immediately put two gold coins into
the plate.  At once, the sheriff’s coins disappeared leaving only the
original.  He looked up at Valmerous.  “Is this as it should be?”

The cardinal smiled gleefully.  “Yes, indeed it is.”  He
stowed the gold dish inside his robes, and at once, his expression took on a
more somber tone.  “Your messenger reached us a score of days ago.  You
mentioned disquiet in the woods and an unconsecrated grave, a corrupt
bishop...”  He shrugged apologetically.  “I had no idea.”

“Indeed,” Renda answered, “we have been in desperate
straits.  But now that you have arrived…”

Valmerous nodded.  “Yes, of course.”

Daerwin nodded and glanced at Renda.  “When I sent the
message, B’radik’s priests had not yet—”

But Valmerous continued over him.  “Had I known your
situation was so grave, I would have come at once.  Fortunately, however, on
the eve of my departure news of your plague reached me.  Else I might have come
alone.”

The sheriff fell silent and merely nodded.

“A plague that strikes those who serve the gods, even
indirectly, and that cannot be cured?”  He shook his head gravely.  “Unchecked,
this could spread over the whole of Syon, and beyond.  An irresponsible thing,
terribly irresponsible.”

Renda frowned.  Irresponsible?  Of all the words she might
have expected, that was not one.  But then Valmerous might not be as fluent in
Syonese as he had seemed at first.

“It spreads quickly, yes?”

The sheriff nodded.  “Already we have fewer than a score of
knights, and only four priests tend the wounded—five, with my granddaughter’s
governess.”

“A governess.”  The cardinal shook his head sadly.  “I see.”

“If you would like to see for yourself—”

“So tell me, Lord Daerwin,” he continued, “How many have
died of this plague in the last two and a half, almost three months?”

Lord Daerwin looked down.  “Eminence, as you may have
noticed, we’ve had a bit of trouble with the farmers since the plague began.”

“Not surprising.”  He stroked his chin thoughtfully.

“No, I suppose not.  But the villagers keep to themselves
now, and today was the first we’ve seen of them all in one place.  When the
plague began, I had well more than five thousand men, women and children.  You
saw for yourself how few remain.”

“Yes, yes, I see.”  The cardinal nodded.  “Yet the House of
Brannagh itself remains untouched.”

Renda nodded.  “Yes, all save the knights themselves.”

The cardinal cocked his head.  “The knights, the servants, those
who are Brannagh by marriage.  All are subject to this plague?”

Renda looked at her father before answering.  “Only the
knights.  Even the last of the priests seem immune now that they are at
Brannagh.”

“Interesting.”  He smiled.  “And reassuring, I must say.”

Daerwin stood.  “If you would like to see the hospice—”

“Yes, yes, by all means,” he said, rising suddenly.  “That
would seem more urgent a prospect than a grave consecration, at any rate.  And
perhaps along the way,” he said, following the sheriff outside, “you might be
good enough to tell me more about the death of Bishop Cilder.”

Outside the door to the garrison, the cardinal’s forehead
broke out in sweat, and he drew from his cassock a blue handkerchief to cover
his nose and mouth.  “Forgive me,” he said, “but the smell is...overwhelming.”

“Indeed,” answered the sheriff, and his voice held a tone of
surprise.  “I shudder to think we’ve all grown so used to it.”  He knocked at
the garrison door.  When no immediate answer came, he cleared his throat and
knocked again.  “Our priests have made great gains in learning to fight this
plague; at first, it seemed a man might live a day or two at most ere it killed
him.  But now, thanks to Arnard and the rest, we have knights and villagers who
survive it for up to a tenday ere they succumb.”

“A bitter blessing, that,” spoke the cardinal through his
cloth.  “If they must die within the tenday, it were better they died
forthwith, yes?  To spare them the pain?”

“Except that our priests have managed to cure it, as well.” 
Renda smiled proudly, ignoring the dark look from her father.  “Some five of
our knights have been saved, praise B’radik.”

“Cured, did you say!  Well,” he laughed into his
handkerchief, “I suppose you’ve no need of our help, then.”

“On the contrary,” answered the sheriff quietly, “we’ve more
need of you now than ever before.”  He knocked again, more insistently.  “We’ve
begun receiving victims from nearby monasteries and convents, as well as the
parish churches and temples, all those who serve B’radik.  I’ve had no word
from Her high temple, however, and I fear the worst.”

“All these are on Brannagh land,” Valmerous noted.  It was
not a question.

The sheriff nodded.  “Our beds are kept full.  Any help you
might be able to offer,” he said with a glance toward Renda, “would be most
welcome.  Arnard!” he called and knocked again.

Arnard opened the door and stood blinking at the three
silhouettes in the doorway, unsure whether he might be imagining the broad
tasseled galero on the third figure’s head.  “Your Eminence?” he offered
weakly.

“Valmerous,” spoke the other, “Cardinal of the Temple of
Vilkadnazor the Unshod.”

“I greet you in the name of B’radik,” spoke Arnard, barely
concealing his joy, “and will sow your heart with truth and light!”  He moved
aside at once to let the cardinal enter the hospice.

Renda watched the cardinal stand in the doorway and take in
the whole of the old garrison’s bottom floor, the burlap sacks on the floors,
the priests kneeling in the sloughed dust of flesh and bone beside the dying,
the burning odors of death and vomit that drove out all the air of the place. 
His face was even more pale behind his blue handkerchief than usual, and his
clear eyes were wide.

Renda looked out over the sprawls of burlap mattresses and bodies
and wondered when exactly she had become so hardened to the sight of men’s
flesh being flensed from their bones.  When was the last time she had had the
energy to weep for one of her lost knights?  She found she could not recall the
name of the last victim who had crumbled to dust in her arms.

The cardinal stepped forward a bit hesitantly, stepping
through the dust of dying men with his bare feet, careful as he moved not to
jar or jostle their mattresses.  Renda and the sheriff followed in his wake, each
offering a word of comfort or a gentle touch to the men and women who had seen
the cardinal and wondered why he passed them by.

A young woman’s voice rang out suddenly in a strangled cry,
and Renda ran to her bedside with the cardinal and the sheriff close behind. 
The young woman, the knight Patrise who had warned them of the villagers’
approach before the attack on Graymonde, lay dying, and some part of Renda’s
mind shouted that she was in the wrong part of the hospice to be dying
already.  She still had a blanket whose lightest pressure on her skin boiled
the flesh away.  When Renda knelt beside her, the priests were working to lift
it from her as gently as they could.

Renda gasped when she saw the extent of the young woman’s
disease.  Her belly was nearly hollow now, the flesh and gut having sloughed
away, and one arm and both legs were now no more than bone.  She glanced up at
Renda with her one remaining eye and smiled as she could, raising her fingers
from the bed in a weak salute.  Then suddenly she screamed again, and Renda had
the impression of a cliff wall collapsing within her.

Renda touched her fingers gently.  “The cardinal is come,
Patrise,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder to look at the old cleric
behind her.  When she saw that the young woman had seen the cardinal and
understood, she smiled.  “Be strong.” Renda moved to step away to let the
cardinal kneel beside the woman, but he only stood staring down at her, his
face pale and oily, his sweat cutting ruts in the dust of dying men that
covered his face above his handkerchief.  He only stared at her and did not
move.

“Renda,” whispered the young woman, and a deep fear entered
her eyes.

“Shh, do not speak.”  She looked up once more at the
cardinal, but now he only stood with his eyes closed and his head bowed.  “Save
your strength,” she murmured, turning her gaze back to her knight.  “Once you
are well again,” she whispered, willing the tears from her eyes, “once you can
ride again, we will go north to your family’s lands, to see how your brother is
minding your lands...”

But Renda could see a cloudy gray distance coming into the
young woman’s eye.  “Patrise,” she called, staring forcefully into that eye,
trying to draw her gaze once more.  “Patrise, stay.  Do not die.”  But the next
moment, the rest of the young woman’s flesh dissolved away to dust.

Arnard touched Renda’s shoulder and moved to lift the sack,
to carry it outside the garrison and dump what little remained of the young
woman’s bones into the newest mass grave.  They could not afford to mourn, he
had told her many times.  That must come later, if at all.

“No,” commanded Renda, and at the hard, angry look in her
eyes, the priest backed away.  She lifted the mattress herself and carried it
out, past the cardinal, past the sheriff, not looking up to meet their eyes,
afraid of what wrath her gaze might bespeak.  “I will see to her.”

When Renda made her way back to the hospice an hour later,
her father was standing outside the garrison with Arnard, the cardinal nowhere
to be seen.  Even from the gate, Renda could see that Arnard was twisting his
hands and pacing back and forth.  She had never seen him so upset.