Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (37 page)

But Marigan was still looking at her as if...  “Is there
more yet?”

He nodded slowly.  “And this’ll be the part you’ll not
believe, but I swear it, I speak it exact as it happened.”  He paused to wipe
sweat from his brow in spite of the chill air.  “Back down the corridor, then,
and down the stairs to the servants’ wing and back into my very chamber I gone
then, all the while counting myself lucky as not to be caught and wondering
only a bit at what I’d just seen.

“I swear, I know not how long she stood beside my bed as I
slept, but presently as I looked up, I seen a child there, a girl child dressed
in shining white, blue bows in the darkest black hair, and a vision she were,
truly, save the wicked white glow at her eyes.”  He shuddered visibly.  “Then I
.  She what I seen, she’s the sheriff’s own grandchild, she who lays below on
unhallowed ground, and revenant at that!  Thin, she was, and pale.  A sharp
grin from her, then, and I nearly blacked out at the sight of it, there
thinking to have met my death, but she touched my arm and whispered to me only
that I must tell you this.”  He opened his mouth to speak, but stopped.  “Are
you sure you’d hear?”

“So please you,” prompted Gikka.

“Very well, then,” he sighed, and drew a deep breath.

“Shadowrider, rest not in twain,
Futility calls vengeance thy name.
But turn thy heart from setting sun
And falling star to gather one,
The Guardian Last, thy finishing shard,
To close your ranks, the sea to ford.”

He blinked at the woman. “Means this aught to you?”

She waved to him to continue.

“Come to castle, come to Death,
Let daybreak steal thy very breath,
Fly instead to craggèd crest
And set thy split halves whole, at rest.
The Guardian Last, thy finishing shard,
To close your ranks, the sea to ford.”

When the squire only nodded slowly, he gasped.  “Can’t you
see?  She calls you to die at the castle, that evil child, and me the
messenger, is why I’d no mind to tell you.”

Finishing shard.  To close your ranks.  A dark smile curved
over Gikka’s mouth.  “Chul,” she said, and touched her hip with her thumb.  At
once and with no questions on his lips, the boy slung the bag over his shoulder
and ran from the stall.

“No, please.”  Marigan watched him go, then turned to her in
amazement and fear.  “But you’re—!  Sure you’d not go against Lady Renda’s
word.”  He wrung his hands miserably. 

Gikka laughed quietly.  No, she would not go against Renda’s
word.  But neither would she wait around Farras.  Her course was clear now. 
She drew a golpind from her boot and pressed it into the man’s hand.  “For your
trouble,” she said and turned to run from the house, “and your silence, aye?”

Castle Brannagh

F
or
two hours Renda stood alone, motionless beside the sealed stone in the old
chapel, thoughts reeling between the duty before her and the certain threat
from the farmers without.  She did not know whether Maddock and the rest had
been watching when she and the cardinal left for Castle Damerien—she supposed
they had—but when they’d returned, the villagers had lined their path to watch
them pass, setting litters full of their dead and dying right in the road.  The
cardinal had turned his horse around them without comment, his punishment on
the House of Brannagh for sheltering Pegrine.  Behind her visor, Renda had
wept.

Her helmet and swords lay upon B’radik’s altar awaiting the
cardinal’s ritual blessing, and her lips moved with the ritual prayers, but her
heart felt black and diseased with pain.  Even as she stood in this hallowed
place praying for B’radik to grant her courage to face the task ahead, part of
her soul wished her breath would stop within her breast and grant her peace.

It was not until they had reached her father’s audience
chamber that she saw the long weal along the cardinal’s right arm, a raised
scratch from a child’s overgrown fingernail that ran from his wrist to his
elbow.  Even though it had not drawn blood, it festered under Renda’s eye with
dark squirming wisps of evil.

This was their proof, the cardinal had shouted over her
father’s protestations of Pegrine’s innocence, this evil that clung to her
scratch.  It was no longer a matter of a simple grave consecration.  She was
unquestionably an agent of the enemy and must be put down at once.  The plague
would not abate until she was destroyed.

Had Renda not borne witness to a good part of the cardinal’s
story, her father had snarled, he might have thought Valmerous was playing the
dramatic, driving up his price.  The accusation had cut the cardinal to the
quick, but he was unrelenting in his insistence that they allow him to do them
this service, for the good of all Syon.  At last, her father bade the cardinal
do as he felt necessary to save Syon before he had retreated into his chamber
and slammed the door.  But likewise he had made clear that he would have no
part of it.  Her mother, upon hearing the sheriff’s angry shouting, had
likewise retreated into her drawing room with stoic calm and refused to hear
more of it.  Lady Glynnis was already at prayer to B’radik and would be so
until dawn, if need be, to protect her granddaughter, the cardinal’s word
against her or no.  Either that or she was planning to join the child in death.

Which left only Renda to help him. She hated him for it and
hated herself for her blasphemy and her lack of honor, that she would rather
sell the whole of Syon to destruction than harm Pegrine.

“Oh, beg pardon, my lady.”

She looked up to see Nara’s soft white glow turning away from
the chapel door.  “Stay a moment, Nara,” she called to the old woman.  “I pray
you.”

The nun paused in midstep and looked down at Renda.  “Aye,
madam,” she wheezed presently and shambled into the chapel. Her rheumy eyes
missed nothing, stopping a moment upon the helmet and weapons on the altar, and
then upon her young mistress’s teary eyes.  But instead of stopping at her
usual place near the door, Nara made her slow but bold way forward until she
stood beside Renda, until the brightness of her habit touched the knight’s
armor.

“You are come once more to set Peg to rest, then, madam?” 
Her words were uncommonly calm and flat, betraying no accusation nor any
pleadings on Pegrine’s behalf.  She might have been asking the time of day.

Renda stared blindly at the stone sealing the crypt.  “Aye,”
she said finally.  “Upon the cardinal’s word.”

Nara nodded.  She glanced at the altar briefly before she
turned her eyes upon Renda again.  “My lady,” she whispered softly, as if the
walls themselves might be listening, “I wonder if I should appear
presumptuous—”

Renda turned to her.

“—were I to give my own blessings over you, the blessings of
B’radik.”  She smiled reassuringly and looked back toward the door.  “I mean no
disrespect to his Eminence; it would but ease my heart, to set Her hand over
you.”

Renda looked into the old woman’s eyes, and, without a word,
she picked up her helmet and her swords.  Then, armor complete, she knelt
before Nara, curious at the strange sense of danger that crept into her heart. 
Surely the cardinal could not take offense that she had accepted B’radik’s
blessing, but even so, she hoped Nara would finish before he arrived.

Nara must have felt it, too, because she used a different
ritual, one that Renda had not seen before.  She used none of the sacred oil
and spoke but half the prayers.

But the knight’s armor flared brilliantly against the
darkness of the chapel, and the nun seemed to greet the glow with relief.  “Yet
our goddess favors us, my lady,” she breathed as she turned and ambled out of
the sanctuary.

But by the time Nara passed through the doors of the chapel,
Renda’s spirits had fallen again.  Nara’s blessing—B’radik’s blessing—was
welcome, naturally, but Renda found her strange stoicism disturbing, especially
if the old nun understood what the cardinal was about.  But then, perhaps she
understood better than the rest of the house.  After all, Pegrine could only be
the worst order of evil for Verilion to reject her.

Except that she had not been rejected by Verilion; she had
been hidden from him by the bishop.

For evil purposes.

Then again, she had been rescued by B’radik.

Or so she claimed.

Renda sighed in frustration, hopelessly lost in the tangle
of contradictions.

She heard footsteps climbing the stairway to the chapel, and
frowned.  Valmerous was barefooted; she would not hear his step on the stairs. 
Yet the footfalls approached the chapel as surely as they sounded within the
stairway, the footfalls of ten men.

“Lady Renda.”  The cardinal entered the chapel followed by
all ten of his priests, and his voice held a note of surprise.

“Eminence,” she returned with a bow.  “Gentlemen.”

“I confess, I had not thought you would join us.”  The
cardinal strode past the altar and knelt beside the sealed stone.

“Eminence,” she began abruptly, “on the way back from Castle
Damerien, I told you what Pegrine said to me of her transformation.”  She
steeled herself for another battle of wills, but he only blinked at her,
uncomprehending, so she went on.  “What if Peg speaks the truth?  What if B’radik
bargained with Verilion, that She might somehow—”

“To what end?”  The cardinal smiled kindly.  “Recall, if you
will, that this child, this vampire, attacked his Grace, and before my very
eyes, at that!  Not to mention the destruction of B’radik’s temple.  No,
madam,” he said, shaking his head and turning away, “make no excuses for her. 
An her soul was bought from Verilion, evil was the coin, and no other.”  He
looked up at her with a sympathetic smile.  “I know you would not have it so;
indeed, that the sheriff should deny it so completely is none too
surprising—she was his only grandchild—but do not let your love for the child
she once was stay you from your duty, Dame Knight.”

Renda’s lips thinned behind her visor, but she said
nothing.  She cut through the wax seal with her sword and with the help of
three of the clerics, lifted the stone out of its place.  Taking up a torch,
she led them down into the crypt tunnel and carefully lit the sconced torches
from her own.  Once there, she raised her sword and struck through the seal of
the mausoleum and pulled open the great doors.

She moved to enter the crypt, but Valmerous touched her
arm.  “My lady,” spoke the cardinal quietly.  “I would spare your sensibilities
in this matter; I know how much the child meant to you.”

She drew herself up.  “I am a Knight of Brannagh, Eminence;
you need not spare my sensibilities.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, and she could hear the barest hint of a
chuckle in his voice.  “But this is no matter of swordplay and honor and
knightly nonsense; this is a grave consecration, the work of priests, and I
would not have it sullied, pray pardon me, by the presence of...nonclergy.”

“But—”

He raised his hand to silence her.  “I pray you, wait
without.  When all is accomplished, you may enter and assure yourself of our
success.”

Renda sheathed her sword and stepped aside helplessly while
the priests filed into the crypt.

“Once we are within, my lady,” the cardinal called to her,
“seal the crypt tight, lest the evil escape.”  With that, he bade her push the
doors closed behind him.

Renda looked at the small lump of wax she had brought to
reseal the tomb.  She had only enough to seal both the door and the outer stone
once, so she pushed gently against the doors to see that they were well closed
before she settled herself upon the ground to wait.

Inside the chapel, she heard the priests’ voices rising
together in a chant that raised the hair on the back of her neck.  The words
were muffled through the stone doors, and try as she might, she could not make
out the words.  The sounds of the chant were unlike any she had heard in the
temples, but she knew so little of the Hadrian traditions.  Like as not,
Cardinal Valmerous would use chants from his own temple and his own god.

Except that the words did not carry the brusque timbre of
Hadric, not even through the stone.  If anything, they sounded vaguely Dhanani
to her.  But the likelihood that Hadrians would speak Dhanani…

Then she heard a kind of quiet keening, as of children far
away, quiet enough that the least sound overwhelmed it in her ear, quiet enough
that it might only have been her imagination.  The same sound had brought her
running from her bed years ago.

It was the sound of the crypt’s guardians, the babies in the
walls, and as she moved back and forth through the tunnel, the keening became
crying, and the crying became screams, unbearable screams in her brain.  Then,
all at once, they stopped.

She turned, off balance in the sudden silence.  Even the
chanting had stopped, and now her ears made up sounds to fill the emptiness. 
She almost laughed behind her visor.  Her exhaustion was wearing upon her, and
now she was dreaming awake.  She stood then, feeling strangely alone in the
tunnel.

A moment later, the chanting resumed within the crypt where
her kinsmen’s bones lay upon hallowed ground, and where little Pegrine...

Pegrine.

Come, tell me you’ve missed me, too.

Renda’s eyes brimmed with tears.  Every vision, every memory
of Pegrine was full of light.  She glanced at the crypt door.  Try as she might
to blanket the child’s image in her mind with darkness, she could not.  The
bishop, yes.  The bodies of the wicked priests in the temple fields, yes.  But
Pegrine glowed as pure in her memory as Nara, white, pristine, perfect.  No
taint marked her.

If only until she could speak to her, ask her why she had
attacked the duke.  What harm, to stay her execution a few moments?  Renda rose
and drew her sword, but then she stopped at the crypt door, uncertain.

Was she once again letting her attachment to Pegrine sway
her from her duty, as the cardinal had said?  Was this the very reaction he had
feared when he had asked her to wait outside the crypt?

I would not have it sullied, pray pardon me, by the presence
of...nonclergy.

Renda’s brow furrowed.  Since when did the presence of a
knight sully a grave consecration?

Then again, the cardinal had overlooked the blessing of her
armor and swords—a reasonable oversight.  Perhaps.

Hadrians chanting in Dhanani.

She listened tentatively against the door and heard only a
low mumble deep within the crypt, near the tomb of Lexius, near Pegrine’s
bier.  She must see for herself; she must know for certain whether Pegrine was
indeed the evil of the house.  Quietly, she pushed open the door.

She had given her only torch to the cardinal, and he had
neglected to light the sconced torches inside the crypt, so her way was dark
but for the torchlight that came from the rear chamber where the priests
worked.  It was just as well; she would rather they not know she was there,
anyway.  Gikka would be proud.

She made her way between the large sarcophagi, past Dilkon’s
baby daughters, past Dilkon himself and Remiar, past the Peacekeeper.  Her hand
brushed over the stone of Cardon’s tomb, only vaguely aware of its warmth.  She
frowned into the darkness ahead and drew her sword.  Then she made her way
toward the rear chamber.

The cardinal stood in silhouette against the single sconced
torch at the rear of the chamber.  He raised his hands high above Pegrine’s
bier, above the little girl’s body where she lay just as she had the day Renda
and her father had first come into the crypt, with the vile wooden sword held
peacefully in her hands.  Even the flowers on her bier were fresh.

Renda’s lip trembled, and she gripped her weapon.  Her hail
to the cardinal, her injunction to him to stop, was upon her lips, but from the
assembled body of priests, a new chant rose over her voice, loud and powerful,
until the words began to echo over themselves in the darkness, making new words
and new chants of themselves.

She stepped forward into the chamber, thinking to make her
presence known, but just then, the cardinal jumped back in terror.  Pegrine’s
bier was empty; her body, her toy sword, everything had vanished, leaving only
doucetels, rosebuds and snow berries.

The chanting slowed, degenerated into confused mumblings and
finally stopped.  The priests stood in stunned silence, staring at the bier. 
Above his head, the cardinal’s hands still gestured, but he took a shaky step
backward.  “Do not stop, damn you!” he cried.  “We must vanquish her or all is
lost!”