Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (36 page)

“As you will, Eminence.  Your Grace,” she breathed.

Nestor followed her out and pulled the doors closed behind
him.

“How long has he been thus?” she asked once the doors were
fully closed.

Nestor shrugged.  “Not long, truly.  A few days, it’s been
bad, is all.”

“It cannot be the plague.”

“Of course it is.”  He shook his head at her shocked
expression.  “Not that he has it himself, no.  Did you think that Brannagh was
blessed somehow, protected by the grace of the gods?  With B’radik bound, no
less?  No, his Grace, it is, shields us all.”  Nestor shook his head.  “But
these last few days, it wears on him worse than before.  Last night come this
worst of it.  The whole night I was at mopping his brow and changing his bed
for all the sweating, feeding him water and fever remedies by the clock, and
the Keepers was beside theirselves, aye, pacing and muttering.  But for the
urgency of his Honor’s message, the duke should have spent the day abed, and no
mistake.”

“Aye,” she said quietly, glancing at the door, “but his
Eminence has urgent business.”  She crossed her arms and paced across the
floor.  “The Keepers are with him, then?”

“Aye.”  Nestor nodded toward the audience chamber.  “I seen
no need to call the cardinal’s attention to them, for all his bother about
confidences.  None are more in the duke’s confidence than his Keepers.”  He
looked worriedly towards the door.  “Once his Eminence takes his leave, they’ll
tend the duke proper, see him through.”

Renda nodded.  Nestor himself was a Keeper and bound by
their ancient oath of fealty to the House of Damerien, though of habit, he
referred to the rest of the Keepers as “them.”

“But should he grow too weak, their power will desert them,
aye?”

“No danger of that.”  He touched the wall absently. 
“They’ve laid by a bit, just in case.”  He saw the concern in her eyes and
smiled.  “Oh, but it’ll not come to that, Lady.  A fine mess that would be, no
bride, no means to an heir.”  He looked toward the door.  “Is an evil harsh
business, this, is why I called them.  I’m thinking they’ll see him through better
than me alone.  Besides,” he grinned, “best to have a full house of servants
with company and all.”  He squeezed her arm gently and quietly moved off down
the hallway muttering under his breath about the darkness of the sudden storm. 
He took up several unlit candelabrum as he went.

She watched the old Bremondine man amble away into the
darkness, and by some peculiar twist of her thoughts, found herself once again
thinking about Gikka.  Her first thought, once they had seen the cardinal, had
been to bid Gikka and Chul through the messenger to join her at Brannagh. 
Surely with Maddock and the rest subdued and beholden to Brannagh for their
very lives, the villagers would forget their anger or at least hold their
tongues, and Chatka’s death prophecy be damned.

But instead, she had counseled Gikka and Chul to stay away
and take no action against the villagers yet, knowing even as she spoke the
words to the memory messenger what Gikka’s reaction would be.  The messenger’s
ears would ring the tenday for it.  But Gikka would obey her.  Once the
cardinal and his priests had the plague well in hand, she would have Gikka and
Chul join her at Brannagh, but until then they were best kept at arm’s length.

Renda turned in the darkness and strode across the hallway
to sit and wait.  She had grown used to waiting.

A scream rang through the corridor around her, a strange,
high inhuman squeal of rage.  The sudden shock of it had her on her feet with
her sword drawn.  In the silence following the scream, she heard only her own
heartbeat.  For a moment, she wondered if she’d imagined it, if she’d fallen
asleep on the bench and been jolted awake by a bad dream.  The hall was so
quiet.

She listened against the audience chamber door and heard
only the deepest silence.  Then she heard a shout and an extreme exhortation in
the cardinal’s voice against…something.  Something evil.  The terror in his
voice was clear even if the words he spoke were unfamiliar.

Sword raised, she kicked open the door.

Valmerous was backing away, warding, crying out and
sputtering, cascades of prayers and protections whirling about him, his voice
breaking under his terror.  The duke sat slumped over in a faint, pale and
drenched in cold sweat, ready to fall from his throne to the floor, and beside
him, brazen and serenely confident, stood Pegrine holding her wooden sword.

“Peg?” she breathed, not believing what she was seeing. 
Renda raced to the duke’s side, looking back and forth between Pegrine and the
cardinal.

“Trocu?”  She shook the duke gently.  His face was white and
bathed in cold sweat.  “Trocu, can you hear me?  What is happening here?”

“There!” Valmerous cried, “there is your plague, there is
your corruption!  Demon, vampire, undead!  She is the one, yes?  The sheriff’s
granddaughter, yes?  As long as she walks, this plague will haunt you!”

The little girl hissed at him and brandished her sword.

Without thinking, Renda put herself between the cardinal and
Pegrine.  “No!  She is not the cause of this!  She cannot be the cause of
this!”

“Now you know,” Pegrine said.

“Know what?” Renda asked.

But already, the child’s form had begun to fade into the
black clouds outside the window.

“Pegrine, come back!” she called.

“What, what is this!”  Valmerous cried out, staring between
Renda and the open space where Pegrine had been standing.  “You, a Knight of
Brannagh, sworn to B’radik, you call this vampire by name?  You defend this
creature of evil against my word as a cardinal!”

“No, I…”

“She would have killed the duke, had I not been here to
protect him, and you dare protect her!”

“I don’t understand.”  Her sword drooped, uncertain.  She
looked back at the duke, where he slumped upon his throne.  No.  Pegrine would
never harm Trocu.  But Pegrine was dead, and who could say what drove the
undead creature who wore her form?

Vampire, he had said.

Had she attacked Trocu?  It made no sense.

I also remember a child.  At the end.

Why would she attack the duke now, with a cardinal standing
hard by, not to mention the Keepers?  On the other hand, why had the Keepers
done nothing to protect—

Through the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of
movement—she turned toward the cardinal.  His eyes suddenly rolled up into his
head, and he dropped to the stone floor like a dead thing.  His cassock was
damp and cold, and he shivered when she lifted his arm about her shoulder and
carried him from the audience chamber.

She turned at the door to see the Keepers stepping from the
walls, silent, brooding, moving toward the unconscious duke.  She wanted to
talk to them, to ask them what they had seen, but at a glance from one of them,
she shuddered and closed the door behind her.

Nestor stood outside the door, a lit candelabrum in hand,
and after only a moment’s hesitation, took the cardinal’s other arm to help
Renda carry him.  “A terrible storm, this,” whispered Nestor.  “Rain and wind,
lightning.”  He gestured toward the staircase.  “I’ve made up beds for you. 
Sure you’d not ride back tonight.”

“We will,” spoke the cardinal weakly.  “I’ll not spend
another moment toward nightfall in this tainted place.  It pulls the very life
from me.”  He turned his head up to Renda.  “I can ride.  Please take me from
here at once.”

She looked at Nestor a moment before she looked back at the
cardinal.  “But why—”

“No, not another moment.  How could I have been so...?  We
must see to the child’s grave at once.”  With that, he drew himself away from
her and stood, a bit unsteadily.  “Else all may be lost.”

The Maze in Farras

T
he
messenger let his eyes take in the cracked mud-daubed walls of the house, the
tattered cloth curtains whose colors had long gone to gray that cut the large
central chamber into vacant stable-like stalls.  The woman who owned the place
let the stalls to whores and drunks by the clock or by the night, as it suited,
but by daylight the whole of the place stood empty.  Empty save for himself and
the two with him.

He saw no belongings stacked against the walls, no sign that
the woman had spent more than the present moment here; this was merely a
meeting place, and he saw at once that moments after their business was
concluded she would disappear deep into the Maze again, a place even he did not
treat lightly.

He glanced away, letting his gaze fall upon the boy whom she
had called only Chul—an obvious alias, but that suited him fine.  Knowing names
was a curse, especially for one like him.  The boy sat on the floor nibbling a
cheese tart, turned lazily away as if oblivious to their conversation, but the
messenger was not fooled.  At the hip of the boy’s cloth breeches hung a forbidding
Dhanani hunting knife, the hilt already smooth and well worn with use.  This
boy was no child, and he was no more ignorant of the message’s importance than
Gikka herself.

The messenger shifted uncomfortably in the silence and
crossed his legs where he sat upon the straw strewn on the floor.  “And of
course, there’s the bag of tarts for the boy, there.”

“Aye, the tarts,” Gikka nodded thoughtfully.  She fingered
the shabby curtain for a time, considering, before she turned to him again. 
“And full certain, you are, Marigan, there’s no more to it?”  She smoothed her
brow with the edge of a long nail and stared at the man intently.  “You speak
her words true, aye, and you seen nothing sideways, nothing as struck you odd
on your way?”

His brow wrinkled a bit, and his gaze dipped toward the
floor.

Gikka watched him, watched the nervous fidgeting of his
hands. She smiled amiably and leaned against the wall.  “Speak it, whatever it
is; I’ll know soon enough an you don’t.”

“No eye have I for what’d strike you odd, Mistress,” he said
carefully, placing each word as brick and mortar between them, “but now, come
to mind of it, as I come upon the castle, I did see something odd.  A priest, a
cardinal.”

Gikka straightened.

“Aye, and ten others besides, priests and temple dwellers
all.”  His eye narrowed.  “Hadrians, the lot,” he added with distaste.  “They
rode into Brannagh upon my very heels.”

She smiled as she turned away from him.  “I’m thinking those
of Brannagh’d take any cardinal just now.  And eleven, at that; by the gods,
the plague’s as much as done.”  But almost at once, her smile faded into a
frown.  “But I’m wondering why she spoke no word of it.”  She scowled over her
shoulder at Marigan.  “Or is that a bit you’re forgetting?”

“No, you mark it right, she made no mention.”  He looked
away again, biting the inside of his cheek.  He had answered a bit too quickly,
a bit too handily, and so ready had his words been upon his tongue, he had let
pass an insult hurled at his memory, the very heart of his being.

Gikka’s eyes narrowed.  “You know a bit more, then.”

“Mistress.”  He licked his lips almost painfully.  “It’s not
for me to spy...”

“What spying,” she laughed quietly.  “An they speak it
before your ears, knowing full well you’re a memory messenger, they’d as much
as have me know.”  Her lips thinned to a line.  “Tell me at last, afore I whet
my daggers upon your skull.”

He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes.  “All right,
then, but let it not get back to them as I spoke of it.”  He thought a moment. 
“As I say, the cardinal was come fair upon my heels, aye.  Now, at once, they
spended time behind closed doors—this whilst their kitchen mum done set me at a
full table so’s I’d not be listening at the keyhole—the Hadrian, my lord
Sheriff and Lady Renda, they talked a bit, until at last out they come, and
it’s off to the hospice.”

“So the cardinal’s priests, they set straight to work,
then.”  Gikka crossed her arms impatiently.  “Go on.”

The messenger looked down.  “But that’s just it, missus. 
They did not.”  At her questioning look, he shrugged.  “The cardinal retired
right off, so it seemed to me, but I bent an ear at an open window, and heard,
I did, bits of an altercation in the bailey twixt Her Ladyship and his
Honorableness touching our cardinal, and ugly words at that.”

“Twixt the sheriff and Renda.”  Gikka cocked her head.

Marigan licked his lips again and lowered his voice.  “Seems
the cardinal did naught in the hospice, even as a knight died at his feet, and
this whilst the hospice priest says they lose ground against the plague, no
less.”

Gikka looked at him sharply.  “Arnard said as much, truly?”

He swallowed hard and nodded.  “Is why they set to
argument.  Lady Renda took none too kind to yon cardinal, aye, and after she
and her father had words, her to complain the cardinal did naught, him to call
her ungrateful, he went within to slam his chamber doors, and she set to
polishing her armor with teeth bared.  For the consecration, it was to be, but
to mine eye she took especial care at her blades.”

Gikka shook her head and slammed her hand against the stone
wall.  “And yet she bids me stay away; why?”  She drew herself up and turned to
the messenger again.  “Is there more?”

The Bremondine stared up at her, neither nodding nor shaking
his head, only staring.

In a blur of motion, Gikka’s face was suddenly inches from
his own.  “I’ll not ask it again,” she seethed.  “Speak what you know.”

Marigan wrung his hands.  “Please, missus, I’m not
understanding what it is I saw, and if I speak of it, most like I’ll set you
awrong.”

But Gikka did not move, did not speak, only stared into his
eyes from where she crouched before him until at last he looked away.

“Very well, then,” he said shakily, “very well.  Happened
much later, it did, aye.  By night, they put me up in the servants’ wing, clean
bed, a fire.  But afore the sun leaves the top towers of the keep, I’m at the
stairway and up to the guest wing, there to learn what I may, in case—”

“You might sell it to the sheriff later, aye, get on with
it.”  She stood again.  “What did you hear?”

“At first, I heard nothing at all, not a word, not a
prayer.”  When she only stared at him, he shrugged.  “Well, that’s queer, ain’t
it, that priests as would consecrate a tomb on the morrow’d not be setting
themselves at prayer and such?”  She nodded at last, and he relaxed.  “Queer,
as I say, so I listened, I did, at each and every door, but not a sound come
forth.”

Gikka frowned.  “They slept, then.”

Marigan raised his chin.  “They did not!  It wasn’t until I
reached the cardinal’s own chambers, I heard their voices, but quiet like, that
they’d not be heard without.  At first, they spoke together, chanting as
priests will, but in no language I ever heard.”

“Hadric?”

The man laughed bitterly.  “I’d know Hadric grunting an I
heard it, missus, nay, that, it weren’t.  Set the very chill along my spine,
like no chant I heard before, and I made out of it just two names: B’radik and
Damerien.  Now, I’d have you understand, I know not whether they spoke for a
blessing or a curse.”

Gikka watched him, watched the sweat bead upon his brow. 
The man was truly frightened.  “Go on,” she said softly.

“You’ll not believe it, missus.”

“Go on.”

He nodded and licked his lips once more.  “As I stood at the
door, I set mine ear and then mine eye against the keyhole, back and forth,
listening to mumbling and planning within, not hearing but a word here, a word
there, seeing only the backcloth of their cassocks and such and thinking to
myself I’d not a jot worth the sheriff’s ear.”

“Nor mine,” she observed impatiently.

“Aye, mistress, but attend, I come to it.”  He glanced at
the boy, who had just now closed the bag of tarts and stood to stretch his
legs.  “Listening, looking, as I say, but I seen naught.  Presently, I hear the
door come open, and away I crept, not back to the stairs, as was my mistake,
but deeper toward the heart of the keep, and to mine ear, them just behind.  It
was all I could do not to be seen.”

“They see you, then?”

He smiled proudly.  “Nay, not I, not Marigan, to be seen by
Hadrians.  Holed up, I did, in a doorway, there to watch them pass.  But then
they stopped outside what looked to me a marked off wing—”

Gikka drew breath suddenly.  “From the guest wing, did you
say, and away from the stairs?”  At his nod, she bit her lip.  “The nursery.” 
She turned to him sharply.  “Tell me, and no matter how it sounds to you, but
did you hear anything from within the nursery just then?”

“Before they went inside, nay, not the least.  But then in
they marched, free as you please, and out of mine eye.  Now there I was in a
‘nundrum, do I stay and miss all, or do I move ahead as might get me seen?”  He
grinned again.  “Ahead, aye, and right into the door of the...nursery, as you
say; the damned Hadrians has not an ear between them, nor eye for aught but the
door, so there I seen clear and free what they was about.”

“And?”

The messenger’s grin faded.  “They was fast about getting
into the one chamber, like it were of all importance to them, and ignoring the
other like it weren’t there.”  He shook his head in confusion.  “The cardinal
worked his charms and whatnot over the door, but for all that, it stood locked
to his touch.  Tasked, they was, to a one, and I’d in mind they’d be wanting to
go back and think some more at it.”  He rubbed his forehead nervously.  “But
now here is the part what makes no sense at all.  As I say, I’d moved within
the very nursery itself, there to crouch before the shut door as stood at their
backs, but as I sat, I seen a bright whiteness come up from behind me.”

Gikka nodded.  “Setting in the nursemaid’s door, were you?”

Marigan shrugged.  “I suppose so, aye.  But soon enough,
says I to myself, even a Hadrian’d notice the light, and then is when I made my
run back for the stairway.”

Gikka flexed the muscles of her hands absently.  “Sure I
wonder what Nara was about.”  The young woman turned away from him to hide her
expression.  “A memory messenger, you are, sure you recall a word or two.  Of
their chanting?”

“Well, aye, the sound of it,” he said a bit uncertainly. 
“But I don’t know what—”

“You don’t know the tongue,” she hissed, “that’s not to say
I don’t.  Now, speak what you heard.”

He nodded and closed his eyes to concentrate.  “It went
something like,
Idri gai braniana ro—
”

“—
bana ka verere Anado
?”  Chul interrupted him in
surprise.

Marigan’s eyes widened, but he shook his head.  “—
viana
kai virara Xorden
.  I’m sure of it.  And more of the same.”

“Aye, sounds like Dhanani,” murmured Gikka with a glance
toward the boy.  “But not like I’ve heard before.”

“It’s the Old Voice,” Chul said.  “The Storykeepers tell the
old stories in that voice, stories from the Before Time.  But this is an
Idri
.” 
He turned to Gikka with a worried frown.  “Aidan calls the
Idri
to ask
Anado’s blessing over the hunt.  But the priests, the Hadrians, call it with a
different name.”

“Xorden, aye,” breathed Gikka.  The name meant absolutely
nothing to her; she was certain she had never heard it before.  And that in
itself was a strange thing.  Her gaze grew distant.

“Could be they made it up,” offered Marigan weakly.  “Could
be some tribesman taught them the Old Voice—”

Chul shook his head.  “No.”

“No, what do you mean, no?”  Marigan glared at him.  “I
could teach what I heard to anyone as cared to listen.”

“Yes,” answered Chul, “but you could not say something new
with it.  Don’t you see?  You could not make a new story with it.”

“Oh, but if I knew a thing about Dhanani, I could.”  Marigan
shifted and crossed his arms.  “You could.”

Chul shook his head.  “No.”

“No again!  And why not?”

Chul tried to explain.  “The Old Voice is…”  He shrugged. 
“No one can tell a new thing in the Old Voice, not even the Storykeepers.  Only
the stories from the Before Time can be spoken in the Old Voice.  New stories
are told in Dhanani, Bremondine, Syonese.  But not the Old Voice.”

Marigan cocked his head in thought.  “Tradition, then.”

“No.  The words do not come.”  He saw the befuddlement in
Marigan’s eyes and shook his head.  “You do not understand.”

But Gikka did.  This Idri was not some experiment on the
part of these Hadrians, something pieced together from bits and snatches of Old
Dhanani they’d somehow picked up along the way.  This had to be a genuine
prayer in Old Dhanani, a language unknown outside the Kharkara Plains, a
language the Dhanani could not possibly have taught to anyone, much less to
Hadrians.  Which meant they had learned it intact from someone else.

But then, comes an old, forgotten god…

Unbidden, a memory of Cilder guzzling down the thick soup of
Pegrine’s blood came into Gikka’s mind, and her heart quickened.

…a god who sees my pain, a god who grants me a tiny fragment,
but the barest splinter of the gods’ own knowledge for my own!

Had she heard Cilder utter a single word of prayer, a single
syllable of Old Dhanani?  No, she was sure, not a sound.  His offering had been
blood.  But if there was any chance the cardinal was in the service of the
bishop’s god, if the nameless god now had a name, Renda and her father had to
know.  Even if the
Idri
was innocent, an idea she did not entertain for
a moment, they had to know.  In any case, she knew what she had to do, orders
or no.  She even had in mind how to do it.