Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (42 page)

Still, they were in its path.

“Down!”  Renda threw herself to the ground to cover her
father with her own body while the wave broke over them.  The concussion was
overwhelming, and her armor seemed to compress around her, trying to squash
itself flat under the force.  She could not breathe, could not move, and the
flow of power held her pinned to the ground.

The wave stretched outward instantly, blasting through the
dead warriors who had no time to escape it, straight toward Chul.  Too
dumbfounded to throw himself down or try to run, he could only watch the blaze
of power hurtling toward him.  But it drew up short and splashed sullenly to
the ground at his feet.  Chul backed up clumsily, unsure what he had just seen,
and fell through the trees.

Untouched by the ferocious attack Themselves, the two
Dhanani at either side of him had held Their hands outstretched toward Chul,
and crashing against Their combined strength, the great wave had bled to death
at the boy’s feet.  Now They turned and raised Their hands against Valmerous,
and Their powerful attacks sliced toward the priest, the combined powers of
Mercy and Death.

“Barlow!”  Renda called when she’d regained her breath.  The
wave had passed at last, and she could move again.  She lifted her head above
the settling dust and squinted through foul, greasy smoke, looking for the two
knights.  “Matow!  Chul!”

The glade was all but empty.  Most of the dead warriors were
gone, and the other two knights and Chul were nowhere to be seen.  They’d
vanished.  She found no bodies, no weapons, no armor.  No trace of them.  Apart
from her father and herself, she could make out only a last scattered handful
of the risen warriors and the other two Dhanani through the smoke.

“Here!”  Chul scrambled toward her through the smoking
brush.

Then the two Dhanani lifted Their hands.

She ducked and threw her arms across her father again. 
Great icy blades sheared by just a hand’s breadth above her head, blades that
ripped open clefts in the nearly opaque wall.  Through those clefts, she could
clearly see Valmerous shaking out his blue mantle and setting it over the altar
as calmly as Greta might set a tablecloth.  Somehow, he was completely unmoved
by the attack.  Unaware of it, if that were possible.

Her father was barely conscious.  She could not leave him
here; he would never survive another attack alone.  Whatever else she might do,
she had to see to him first.  “Come, come,” she whispered to him, heaving him
up to lean on her shoulder and half carrying, half dragging him back to the
safety of the trees.  “We’re caught between.  We can’t stay here.”

“No,” groaned the sheriff, “Valmerous must not win…”

“You can’t come on, and I’ll not leave you here,” she
grunted under his armored weight, “Valmerous be damned.”

“Damerien….”

“Damned, I say.”  A flicker of movement drew her eye, and
she paused to look.  Nothing overt, nothing clear, but it was inside the dome
with Valmerous, and in the moment it took her to turn her gaze to that spot, it
was gone.

Her mind raced.  One form attended the altar.  Valmerous. 
The other seemed to be near the other side.  It was small, whatever it was, and
fast.  At least it seemed so.  What she had seen had been no more than a
shimmer, a bare shuffle of movement that might only have been the last leaves
of the trees falling to the ground.  But there it was again.  No, she was
certain now.  Someone was inside with Valmerous.

She chewed her lip and considered her position.  Barlow and
Matow were gone, likely dead, and her father was badly injured.  She was the
last of the Knights of Brannagh, alone against Valmerous and his god, the last
defender of B’radik.  Her only ally was a young Dhanani.  The hopelessness of
her situation was almost laughable.

She turned her eyes toward the two Dhanani shamans or
sorcerers, whoever they might be.  They were fantastically powerful, and they
seemed most committed against this cardinal, which made them her allies, at
least temporarily.  Her brow flickered upward.  Perhaps all was not lost after
all.

“I have him.” Chul slipped his arm under the sheriff’s other
shoulder and, between them, they moved him a few feet deeper into the shelter
of the woods, where they settled him against a stout tree trunk.

“There, there.”  Renda took off her father’s helmet and lay
her thick cloak over him to keep him warm.

Renda watched Chul lay the back of his hand against Lord
Daerwin’s forehead, watched the calm reassurance that seemed to pour from his
hand, and she could not help but see the shadow of Aidan’s gentleness and
caring in him.

He carefully unwrapped the sheriff’s arm and frowned,
looking over the burned flesh.  After he wiped his knife clean on his leathers,
he pulled down the sheriff’s sleeve as far as he could under the armor and cut
off great hunks of it.  Then he fished two of Aidan’s salve-filled leaves from
his leathers, untied them and sniffed at them. 

“This is the same balm Aidan used on me when…”  He glanced
down at his own arms where the scars had gone light with time.  “It keeps out
infection and speeds the healing,” he said to the sheriff as he gently pressed
the ointment into the burns, “but it does nothing for the pain.  I’m sorry.  If
Aidan were here…”

The sheriff nodded groggily and fell back against the tree,
weak, exhausted by this new assault on his burns.

“Chul.”  Renda’s gaze touched on the other two Dhanani, who
had momentarily stopped their barrage of attacks on the dome.  “Who are they?”

“They,” he said without looking up, “are gods.”

He might have been talking about the price of goats at
Marketday, his tone was so calm, and it took Renda a moment to be sure she
understood what he’d said.  Her breath caught in her throat.  “Gods.”  She
stopped and stared at him.  “What do you mean, gods?”

“Anado and Nekraba, gods of the Dhanani.”  He rubbed more of
the gooey salve into the burns, then wrapped the linen strips around them. 
“They came to fight the cardinal.”

Gods, appearing to fight a mortal man.  “I think not,”
murmured Renda with a glance toward the altar.  “They came to fight Xorden.” 
She rose to her feet, not letting herself wonder why the gods of the Dhanani
had come to fight while the rest of Syon’s gods kept silent.  “Which leaves the
cardinal to us, I’m afraid.  Chul, stay here with Lord Daerwin.  I must find a
way into that dome.”

In his mind, Chul saw villages, towns and cities full of
Dhanani like those he had seen in the glade, dressed in sheer linen and smooth
silk in the midsummer heat.  The sun shone brightly over the water to the east,
and voices called out through the streets in the Old Voice, hawking food,
silks, trinkets from across the sea.  It was a sort of Marketday, but filling the
whole city from end to end.  It was unlike anything he had ever seen.

Servants richly dressed in robes of crimson and honey
carried palanquins draped with elaborate embroideries through the streets,
stopping here and there to accept a gift offered by this merchant or that.  As
they passed, the crowds of people would smile and sweep into low bows before
going on about their own business in the marketplace.

Katsa.

The word came unbidden, a word in the Old Voice that he had
never heard before, a strange word that had about it the flavor of both chief
and shaman, and for some reason, he had trouble keeping the word in his mind. 
It was as if it would hide in the deepest part of his memory or disappear
entirely if he did not repeat it over and over to himself.

The ones inside the palanquins were…
katsa
.  Rulers of
the city.  And the god they served was Xorden.

“
Tedriadre, Xorden
!”  Chul distantly heard Anado
shout as if He were far away.  “
Leave the boy’s mind alone
!”

“
Have You something to fear, Anado,
Quiixia
, He-Who-Would-Take-No-Side
?” 
The disembodied voice seemed almost to laugh in its mocking tone.  “
He is
Dhanani!  Let him see what his people had, what they were before the Invaders
came.  What they lost.  Let him imagine what they might have become if We had
won instead of the harridan goddess and Her pet, Damerien.  Then let him carry
what he’s seen back to his people
.”

“
Impossible
!”  Anado shook his head angrily.  “
B’radik’s
word is clear—
”

“
B’radik is bound
!”  Xorden crowed, “
I say let the
boy see and judge for himself
!”

“
If You insist
,” Nekraba snarled and raised her
fists, “
but if he must see, he will see the truth
!”

Chul was at the edge of the glade again.  But Lord Daerwin
was not with him, nor was Lady Renda, and the sky above the clearing was as
dark as midnight.  A ring of torches burned around the alderwood stump—eleven
of them, he noted stupidly—and between those torches stood ten men in crisp,
identical robes of crimson and honey.  Young men and boys, Chul saw, not all of
an age.  At the altar itself stood the eleventh man, older and clearly in
charge of the proceedings.

Ten young men and boys, these wearing ceremonial knotted
silks in the colors of their clans, entered the circle of torches and knelt,
each one at the feet of one of the men standing.  Then they all stood and
embraced the men before them.

Outside the brightest part of the light stood their
families, proud families who were deeply honored to have had their firstborn
sons chosen to become
katsa
.

No, that was not quite right.  Their sons would indeed be
katsa
,
but something else was happening here, something that eluded him, a slippery
underbelly to this rite that was at the same time its real purpose.  If he
could just wrap his understanding around it...

“
Ha
!” the disembodied voice laughed.  “
So You
begin to see the unfairness of B’radik’s decree against Us.  For the boy to see
Your truth and keep it, You must break Her law and give him back what She took
from them when She banished them to the Kharkara Plains.  You must give him the
language, the words, the concepts and names of the lost doctrines.  Noti’s,
Mine, Kadeta’s, Pildaro’s—
”

“
And bring all Your poison back to them
?” Nekraba
screamed. “
I will not
!”

“
Oh, but You will.  Because without them, I’m afraid
he’ll never understand just what a monster I am
.”  The disembodied voice
seemed to smile and settle back against the cushions of oblivion around him.  “
Not
to mention these glimpses he’s already had.  What if he were to misunderstand
and judge all the gods harshly
?”

Nekraba snorted.  “
The judgment of a boy—
”

“
The judgment of Your people, Goddess
!”  He laughed
again, but this time his voice was much darker.  “
Without them, You are less
than nothing
.”  He paused, only a breath, to let Her consider.  Then he
smiled, his voice soft again.  “
Besides.  What does it serve, to show him,
if he cannot understand what he sees
?”

“
Enough
.”  Anado shook his head bitterly.  “
I had
forgotten how… gifted You were, Xorden
.”

The voice laughed.  “
You will do it, then
.”

Anado and Nekraba exchanged heavy glances. 

“
I suppose
,” He went on, “
You could wait, ask
B’radik…
”

“
Selectively
,” answered Nekraba at last.  “
He will
have only what he needs to understand
.”

Outside the brightest part of the light stood their
families, proud families who were deeply honored to have had their firstborn
sons chosen to become
katsa
. 

No, that was not quite right.  Chul frowned, and as
questions formed in his mind, they were answered.  Yes, it was an honor to have
a son chosen for the
katsara
, and for the first time, Chul’s mind could
contain and understand the reason.  Even while these new
katsa
were
still in training, before they held any voting privileges, the families’
requests and wishes would enjoy a louder voice in the
katsara
, and any
accusations or testimony coming from them would be accepted without scrutiny in
the courts.  The honored families stood to gain political power and influence
in the city for themselves.  Politics.  The word was new and alien to him, but
somehow, he understood it fully.  Indeed, a son in the
katsara
was a
highly coveted honor, so a new question was born:  how were the ten chosen?

In each pair, the katsa held a small cup out, and the one in
the knotted silks was to take it and drink from it, but one of them, a boy of
about Chul’s age, knocked the cup out of the
katsa’s
hand and ran from
the circle crying.  His father cuffed him viciously, dragged him back to the
circle with a groveling smile.

As the man turned away to resume his place, the smile became
cold, determined—the same smile his own father had worn when he attacked Chief
Bakti.  Looking into his eyes, Chul’s mind burned with a stream of angry
questions, and then, horribly, he understood.

“
Such honors
,” spoke the strange, soft voice in his
mind, “
have a price
.”

He shut his eyes, refusing to accept what he saw.  The boys
in the knotted silks were not the new
katsa
, as he’d assumed—the
katsa
had already been initiated in a public ceremony in the town center; they were
the ones standing between the torches.  These boys were their younger brothers.

“
That price
,” remarked the voice wryly, “
can be
rather high
.”