Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (38 page)

Behind her, Renda felt a rush of cool air, as of someone
moving past her, as of a whole troupe moving past her on all sides, but try as
she might to see them through her visor, she could not turn her eyes before
they vanished from her sight.

The cardinal took another step backward.

At the walls of the chamber, tiny glints of torchlight
appeared and disappeared, as if reflected in moving metal.  Armor.  But whose,
her father’s?  Surely not at every corner of the crypt at once.  She glanced
down at her sword and saw but a single reflection there.  Her own.

Another step, and now Valmerous stood just before his
panicked priests.  “Start again, or by Xorden, your silence will be your end!”

By Xorden?  Renda blinked.  What could he mean, by Xorden?

Suddenly, from above the empty bier and at stations
throughout the crypt came the sounds of men, armed men, swords coming
unsheathed, armor creaking and clanging.  Looking up, Renda saw only vague
shapes at first, only the shadows that moved between flickers of torchlight.

For a single terrifying moment, the priests huddled in a
mass, all praying and gesturing for protections.  Then they scattered, running
pell mell for the door.

Renda began to see now what had kept the priests paralyzed
with such fear, and her eyes grew wide.  At least two score of knights, whether
shades or undead like Pegrine she could not tell, swung swords and maces over
the priests, crashing and sparking against the protections they had set.  She could
not see them clearly, but their movements and cries of battle fired her blood,
and in brief flashes, she saw the Brannagh coat of arms amid flashes of steel.

Some of the protections were formidable and had to have been
set before the priests began their chants. Set against the living—against
herself, against her father, perhaps.  But these failed against the dead, and
within only a few moments, one of the clerics fell beneath an ancient mace.  As
his life drained away, she saw his aura turn wispy and black, the false flat
aura he had worn melting away with the last of his strength.  Another fell
before they reached the passage to the outer chamber where more of the dead
knights awaited them.

The cardinal ran toward her, black veils of evil falling
about his own head and shoulders.  He took her hand and pulled at her,
mistaking the horror in her eyes.  “The vampire has unhallowed the whole of the
crypt!  The dead of Brannagh rise in their unrest and attack!”  He tugged at
her.  “Please, I have spent my strength; I’ve not the power to turn them to
their rest, not by night, please!  We must to the glade where she died; it is
our last hope against her!”

How could he stand there, reeking of his wickedness, and
speak to her of destroying Pegrine?  Her rage and disgust threatened to
overwhelm her.  She pulled herself free of his grasp and raised her sword, but
in the sword’s pause at the top of its arc, the cardinal’s eyes widened.  He
backed away, mumbling and gesturing for protections.  Renda swung on him, but his
protections threw off her blade.  Then he ran from the crypt.

She moved to follow him, but when she glanced once more into
the rear chamber, she stopped, and her eyes grew wide.  Upon her bier stood
little Pegrine just as she had at Castle Damerien, hemlock sword raised high
above her head.  Behind her, white light filled the crypt, light that seemed to
Renda to glow from the form of a grown woman around Pegrine’s tiny body, and
another form as well, that she could not make out in the darkness.

Renda stepped toward the bier, shielding her eyes from the
child’s glow, trying to see who it was who stood behind the child.

“Auntie?” little Pegrine called happily.  Once the cardinal
was gone, the glow that enveloped the child faded, and she ran toward Renda and
threw her arms around the knight’s armored waist.  “I knew you’d come.”

“Peg,” she said, hugging the child to her.  “I’m so
sorry...”

“Halloo, Renda.”

She stood then and stared at him, afraid of what she might
see once her eyes adjusted to the dimness again.  His wounds had been
grievous.  But he stood before her as he had in life, in perfect armor the
equal of her own, and as ever, he smirked at her bafflement.

“Roquandor.  Dear Brother…But how—”

He raised his hand to silence her and sheathed his sword with
a hiss.  “We’ve no time.  Where is Father?”

Her eyes moved over him in amazement.  “I—in his chambers, I
should think.”

“In his v’ry chaimbers, withal,” thundered a voice from
behind her, and she wheeled to see a man of about her father’s age, his height,
even the flinty steel of his eyes, glaring down at her from his raised visor. 
But this knight’s armor was at least half a thousand years old in design, of
thicker, heavier steel forged at a lower temperature than hers, though it might
have been smithed that morning, and he wore a thick white mustache above his
lip.  “What Shire Raiffe of Brannagh, Daerwin, to set in whaiting at his
chaimbers whilst his childerns fight the Hodrachian horde belough!”

“Peace, Lord Borowain,” spoke Roquandor softly, “the sheriff,
my father, has no idea what the cardinal is about.”

Borowain?  The Peacekeeper?  The last Sheriff of Brannagh
before Kadak seized control; the first to fall to him.  This was all so far
beyond her ken that Renda had to tear her gaze away and look instead at her
brother.  Her dead brother.  She had to focus, to give her thoughts some
ground.

“An he’d have his eyleds opent and his sworde draughn
instedde of hiding in chaimbers...” grumbled the ancient knight, but the rest
of his words were lost as he ambled back into the shadows of the crypt.

“Roquandor, you said we’ve but little time,” she said,
looking about her at the great gathering of knights who stood near, the ancient
sheriffs of Brannagh, and she fought down a dizziness that threatened to overcome
her.  “But the cardinal tells me his strength is spent.”

“Perhaps for the moment, assuming he speaks true, but that
is all that grants us any respite.  He will attack us again with the few
priests left to him, and by day whilst the child sleeps.”  He ruffled his hand
absently through Pegrine’s hair as he spoke, just as he had in life.

“I think not,” said Renda, looking between the shades of
Brannagh’s dead.  “He spoke of the glade where she was killed; he said it was
his only hope against her.”  She looked back toward the entrance to the crypt. 
“He knows I have found him out; I doubt he will wait any longer than he must.”

“The glade,” echoed Roquandor.  He crouched beside his
daughter.  “Peg, do you know why the glade?”

After a moment’s pause, the child shook her head.

“Ef I mayte,” came a lilting deep voice from nearby.  At
this, another knight came forward, only a few years older in appearance than
Roquandor, yet she had from him a sense of extreme age.  His armor was no more
than a pair of spiked vambraces over his forearms and a thick breastplate of
urine-hardened leather over chain, somewhat more aged than even Borowain’s;
ancient when Borowain’s was yet new.  This knight had no visor on his helmet,
only a mesh of coarse steel mail across his jaw.  When he spoke, his Syonese
was so very different in character even from Borowain’s that Renda found she
could hardly understand him at all.

Roquandor turned to her. “Lord Dilkon says that in his time,
it was well known of undead, even those created as Pegrine was by a god’s will,
that they hold three places sacred to their unnatural lives, three places in
all the world wherein they lie vulnerable to attack: the place of life, the
place of death and the place of repose.”

Dilkon.  Renda glanced for only a moment back toward the
outer chamber of the crypt, toward the place where the two skulls of Dilkon’s
daughters rested.  She nodded to him a bit self-consciously, like one who had
unwittingly stumbled onto the most personal effects of his life.  Then she raised
her eyes to him.  “So the cardinal must destroy all three, then.”

Lord Dilkon shook his head and spoke once more to Roquandor.

“No, he says Valmerous need make use of only one.” 
Roquandor looked down at his daughter.  “But as each is defended, the nursery
by Nara, the crypt by us, he has only the glade left to him, and none to defend
it but Peg herself.”

Renda raised her sword.  “Aye, and the living knights of
Brannagh.”  She faltered.  “Those of us who remain.”

Roquandor nodded sadly.  It seemed for a moment as if he
would say more, as if they would all say more.  But instead, he offered her
only a brave smile and a clap at her shoulder.  “Away, then, Renda.  You’ve not
much time before sunrise.  May the gods ride with you.”

C
hul
rode carefully and quietly, no more or less so than any Dhanani rider would
traveling through Invader lands, and he took no especial pains to hide his
presence or his horse’s tracks.  Gikka’s spies had said that Maddock always
kept two or three of his people watching the castle, but unless they knew to
watch for a Dhanani, they would not pay him much notice.  Assuming they saw him
at all.  If they did stop him, if for some reason Maddock was with them and
recognized his face, well, he had an answer for that, too.  But he was willing
to risk the confrontation to keep his horse’s speed as long as he could.

The Groggy Bear’s Moon had been full most of the way from
Farras, a mixed blessing since it had illuminated his white horse as well as
the light frost covering the path.  But it was down by the time he and Gikka
had reached the eastern side of the foothills, and the night sky had grown even
darker since they had parted ways at the hilltop.  The horizon still showed
only darkness.  He put sunrise at half a night away yet, and beyond the lumpy
shadowy meadowlands at the base of the hill, he was already beginning to make
out the dark lines of the castle.  He had plenty of time.

But as he came around a small clump of rock and brush a few
hundred yards from the castle wall, the hair on the back of his neck bristled. 
Chul slowed his horse and dropped silently to the ground in a low crouch behind
a dense clot of trees and brush.  He could smell it in the dust hanging over
the fields and in the shocked silence of the night.  Something was wrong.

The whole land around him shuddered with fear.  He looped
the horse’s rein over a branch and crept closer, pulling Gikka’s cloak free of
his rope belt as he went.  Starlight glimmered over the bare fields and over
the terrified eyes of the night animals—over his own, if he was not careful. 
The animals stood as still as stone on the open ground, too frightened to move
even with a hunter stealing up behind them.

Chul held his breath and listened against the darkness,
against the low mist rising near the castle.  Strange.  No noise of crickets,
no bats.  He pulled the cloak close about him and slowly let out a frosty
breath.  His father had warned him about such silences; they always ended in
death for a reckless hunter.

But already the sense of disruption and danger was fading,
and before long, a few of the animals took tentative steps toward the dark
northern meadow and sniffed the air.  Satisfied, a few crept timidly back to
the shelter of the brush, still watchful but no longer quite so terrified. 
Their caution seemed to fade, and in just a few moments, the quiet scurry and
bustle of the night had returned.

He frowned to himself, frowned over the darkness, but
whatever had frightened the animals so completely was gone.  He sorely wished he
could have seen it go, whatever it was, a mountain lion or a bear.  Just to be
sure.

Then he laughed.  What, was he an old woman now, to be so
fretful?  He had his knife; he’d have been safe against it, whatever it was. 
Besides, it was gone.

A new silence fell over the land, similar to the first but
somehow different, far more frightening, and the remaining animals scattered
and scrambled for cover.  To the south, a slow wave of darkness rippled up over
the low ridge that separated the higher northern meadowlands around the castle
from the lowland farms, so subtle against the featureless black of the
landscape that he was not sure right away what he was seeing.

He blinked and squinted through the darkness, trying to see
the whole shape of it, trying to find the outlines of black inside black.  It
seemed only to breathe, this wave, not so much to move, and a moment later, it
settled into the shadows again.  Everything was as it had been before, except
that now an army was coming up to surround the castle.

They were still far away, and he well hidden; they had not
seen him yet.  He jerked the hood of his cloak over his head and settled back
silently against the brush as Gikka had taught him, calming the panic in his
breath and waiting for the cloak to awaken. Almost at once, his body reeled
with the fatigue and heat of a day’s run while the Keeper’s cloak drank its
fill of his strength.  He breathed slowly, deeply, until the heaviness passed,
and watched the darkness creep slowly northward toward the castle, the scatter
of eyeshine.

This was supposed to have been easy.  Get in past Maddock’s
scouts, warn the sheriff and Lady Renda about the cardinal, and get out again
before daybreak.  The
Idri
, the cardinal, Xorden.  He swallowed a bark
of desperate laughter.  Gikka had been so worried about the Hadrians and their
Old Voice chants, but what were a few priests next to an army?

Chul clutched the cloak about his throat and looked back
toward the hills, wishing Gikka had ignored Renda’s orders and come with him.  But
she hadn’t.  Nor would she ride in at the last minute to save him if something
went wrong.  It was up to him to get what he knew about the Hadrians and now
this army to the sheriff and Lady Renda.  If he got himself killed—

The Invaders burned the whole village because of the boy’s
foolhardiness.

—if he failed to reach them—

The Invaders killed them all because of the boy’s stupidity.

—but no. Gikka trusted him to do this, enough that she had
left him to it and gone on to Graymonde to wait for him.  She had taught him
well, especially since their exile in Farras, and, as she’d said while she tied
her cloak through his rope belt, the time had come for him to earn his keep,
Hadrians or no.  Army or no.

Before he moved, he counted those he could see like a herd
of elk, two hundred, four hundred, maybe more; it was hard to tell in the dark
and mist, and more kept coming over the ridge behind them.  He watched the
stealthy cloud of bodies press closer to Brannagh, and he frowned.  Black
cloaked, almost silent as they moved; these could not possibly be farmers, not
even warrior-farmers a season out of trim.  Never mind that Gikka’s spies had
numbered the remaining villagers and farmers at no more than fifty; this army
was far too careful, far too disciplined.  It was as if the war had never ended
for them.

As soon as he regained his strength, he backed out of the
brush and edged his way away from them to the north and east, refusing to give
in to panic.  He could get past them; after all, it was still night and he
would not have to go by all of them, just the front ranks.  This had to be
easier than getting around in Farras in broad daylight with wary constables and
merchants watching.  The cloak would conceal him as long as he did not make any
foolish mistakes—

The Invaders cut out his mother’s tongue because of the boy’s
arrogance.

He touched the long thin coil of rope around his waist to
reassure himself. His horse would be here, west of the castle instead of up in
the northern meadow as Gikka had suggested, but other than that, he told
himself, the plan was the same: cross the moat and up and over the northern
wall, just the way he’d practiced in Farras.  Once his message was delivered,
Lady Renda would see him safely out again—how, Gikka had not said, nor did it
matter.  With any luck, he’d be away by daybreak with the attacking army none
the wiser that the Knights of Brannagh were prepared against them.  Looking
over the encroaching army, he allowed himself a brief, arrogant moment of pity
for them.

A twig snapped not far from him, and he froze.

North of him, someone lumbered out to meet the wave from the
south.  Large, hulking. It shambled along wrapped in threadbare blankets
against the cold, and its hands were bound in tattered strips of cloth, but as
it came nearer, there was no mistaking the odor of the tannery about it, the
same smell that had burned in the boy’s nostrils on the road outside
Graymonde.  Chul’s eyes narrowed.  Maddock.

His knife was already loosened in its sheath; a throw as the
man passed—

From his other side, a strong hand gripped his arm.

Idiot.  Pull away!  Get free!

No.  The cloak was made for this; he would not defeat its
illusion by moving.  Instead of pulling away, he settled his weight deep into
the ground as Gikka had taught him and used his other hand to slip his knife
clear.  But the large man released his forearm without looking at him and
reached across him to the next branch to pull himself along between the trees
and low brush, making his way to meet Maddock.  He never so much as glanced at
the boy’s face.

Chul blew out a slow, relieved breath, mildly alarmed to see
a cloud of mist congeal in the cold air in front of him.  Such a thing could
give him away; he would have to be more careful.

The man had passed too quickly in the darkness for Chul to
see much of anything about him but his plain cloth cloak, but Chul guessed he
was not from the village.  He had about him the rich and varied odors of
travel, like the bards who had come through the Dhanani camps or the Wirthing
knights he had seen in Farras—heavy smells of oilbalm and scrub pea that grew
only in the southern plains, some hemlock and velmon from the high forests,
others Chul had never smelled before.

He watched the two men approach each other.  He suspected
they were not equals.  The man with Maddock seemed of higher stature, perhaps
some kind of nobility.  Chul frowned.  Gikka had told him of Pegrine’s death
and Brannagh’s betrayal at the hands of Wirthing knights.

From here, Chul could not hear what they said to each other,
could not see their faces at all when they hunkered down together to talk.  He
gripped his cloak tightly and wondered if he should try to get closer, to hear
their plans.  They were not far from him; he would move in carefully—but no, he
decided, watching the starlight soften and dim around him.  The shape of their
plan was clear to him even if the details were not, and he could not afford the
time, not if his warning—both warnings—would do any good.  Not if he would be
away before daybreak, as he had promised.

Silently, he moved out of the clump of trees and made his
way north.

Colaris stood on his turbulent perch on the sheriff’s
shoulder, grasping the falconing épaulette with his talons and twitching his
wing feathers in anticipation while Lord Daerwin and Renda swept down the rear
steps into the bailey.  Renda’s Alandro and the sheriff’s battle steed, Revien,
waited in full war armor beside Matow, Barlow, Willem and their horses while
the sheriff sealed the tiny scroll into his harrier’s ankle case and gave the
bird his orders.

Colaris let out a soft cry and beat his wings.  In a moment,
the bird disappeared into the darkness above the east curtain wall as he’d been
ordered, and then banked away toward the east.  Toward Damerien.  The sheriff
did not watch after his messenger.  He lowered his visor and continued toward
the horses in silence with Renda at his side.

“Willem,” he said quietly when they’d reached the rest of
the knights, “you’re certain they saw the cardinal leave?”

“Aye, reasonably so, my lord,” the young knight answered. 
“I saw the three, the same that watch every night, clustered up at the far side
of the drawbridge.  Then the cardinal came from the stable with the rest of his
priests, all riding their horses’ bare backs and swearing and cursing and
threatening to bring down the wrath of their gods if I didn’t get that
portcullis up at once.”  He looked down, ashamed.  “Sire, forgive me.  I had no
reason to think I shouldn’t let them pass…”

“Aye,” the sheriff nodded impatiently, “of course not.  But
they were still there, then?  The watchers?”

“Between the cardinal’s threats and heaving up the
portcullis, I can’t say when exactly they left.  All I know is, they’d run off
by the time the cardinal and the rest cleared the bridge.” Willem looked behind
him to where Matow and Barlow stood by the horses. “But with all the cardinal’s
noise, I can’t think they missed it.”

“Half a clock past.”  Lord Daerwin looked back at the castle
as he fastened his mantle.  “The wonder is we haven’t had Maddock clamoring at
the gates already.”

“It can only mean he’s occupied with something.”  Renda’s
gaze drifted over the poor knights and their horses.  Only five able to ride
including herself and her father.  That there were any knights still alive at
Brannagh at all had been enough to keep Maddock and his rebels back—that or
maybe some shred of hope that the cardinal might indeed work a cure.  But with
that hope riding away at full gallop and Chatka’s prophecies coming true
against Brannagh’s best efforts, nothing would hold them back now.  Maddock
could no longer be content with his simple siege, a siege that could only work
against himself and his followers since all the grain was locked away inside
the castle’s storehouses.  It would have to come to battle, and soon.

Maddock had to know by now that the cardinal and his retinue
had left, and if his men had an eye between them, they’d have told him that the
cardinal’s men left in haste, fleeing what came behind as much as they ran on
toward what was ahead.  So the farmers would lose nothing to gamble that
daybreak would find the knights giving chase and the castle all but undefended,
and Maddock would be making plans to that end.  If he was wrong, if the knights
did not ride after the cardinal, he and his followers would stay back and do
nothing, but if he was right…

The trouble was that he was right.

“Assuming he discovers we’ve gone, Maddock will still need
time to organize an attack, and with B’radik’s help, we shall return before he
is ready.  If not, well,” her father sighed and squinted over the hard rock of
the curtain wall and the stout corner towers surrounding them, “these walls
have held off many an army; sure they can hold off a few sickly farmers,
especially with the siege weapons safe in our armories.”  He swung himself up
into his saddle.  “Come.”