Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (44 page)

The ground rumbled angrily at Chul’s feet.  The two Dhanani
who gestured and shouted at the edge of the glade were too far away for him to
hear, but in his mind, the gods shouted at each other in a whirl of angry
voices.

“
Once Your pet, Damerien, and his insipid knights are
dead, no one will remain who remembers Your doctrines.  How long, then, before
they forget Your name, Your realm? Just as they forgot Ours.  Tell Me, does
that feel like justice, B’radik?
”

Nekraba shook her head.  “
Do not blame B’radik.  You led
them to it
.”

“
Me
?”  His attention turned to Her, and His tone
softened.  “
Noti was the leader—
” 

“
The god of entropy
?”  Anado laughed bitterly.  “
He
was a lazy, incompetent fool, unambitious in every way!  He kept no temples, no
followers, even then; what had He to gain from rebellion
?”

“
Or lose.  Hence Our surrender
.”  Xorden laughed
crazily.  “
Noti was a poor choice to lead.  Now, Kadeta, or even Pildaro—
”

Anado was horrified.  “
You would loose the gods of war
?”

Suddenly Chul understood much more than he had.  His eyes
played over the crumbling, decaying deadfall and the fallen leaves, over the
two Brannagh knights at the edge of the cardinal’s dome, and he understood.  He
knew what he had to do.

His father had been right.  All his stories from the Before
Time had been true, whether Vaccar had known it or not, as true as if they’d
been spoken in the Old Voice by the Storykeepers.  The Invaders and their
gods—these same Knights of Brannagh—had taken everything his people had ever
had, destroyed them, banished them to the Kharkara Plains. Stepping forward
with all the stealth and silence Gikka had taught him, with a single stroke of
his blade, he could return his people to—

Welcome.

—their proper—

Of me, lad, you’ll have your honor, or you’ll have your death.

—glory.

And no mistake.

Another flash of light from within, but this time the wall
did not seem to weaken.  Pegrine stood then, for she had fallen to the ground,
and now the light seemed to expand around her.

The cardinal bowed graciously with his shattered bone staff
in hand, and reached behind him to the altar without taking his eyes from the
child.

Renda blinked at the wall, looked away a moment, then looked
back.  Yes, the rift in the wall was widening slowly as the power at the edges
cooled and dissipated; he was turning more and more of his energy toward
completing his rite.  Through the widening rift in the dome wall, she saw the drops
of sweat on the cardinal’s brow, but his expression was calm, controlled.

Light blazed through the dome again, a blinding white light
that left no shadows.

“You cannot hope to stop me now,” Valmerous crowed, blotting
his brow with his sleeve.  “I’ve won.  Your avatar shall fall, and so shall
You.”

But neither Pegrine nor the goddess made answer.  They
seemed most intent on filling the dome with light to drive out all the shadows,
especially those beneath the cardinal’s mantle on the altar.

The glow, perhaps, but—

Smoke rose from the altar where the cardinal’s hidden
implements had been touched with white hot light, and in only a few moments,
the cloak covering them fell flat.  But Valmerous did not seem to care.  He
whisked it away to bare the steaming stump.  Then, not waiting a moment longer,
he raised what was left of the bone spear high above the bloody wooden altar—

“Alder’s heart!”  The sheriff surged up, his eye gleaming. 
“But what of the glow—” He looked up to see Chul standing over him, knife in
hand.

“
Chul Ka-Dree
.”  The new voice in his burning,
anguished mind seemed at once to seep in under the others and to drown them
out.  It was deep and rough, crumbling like an old wall but full of vibrancy
and life, and even before he turned his eyes to look, he knew who had spoken to
him.  At the edge of the glade, a new presence had joined Anado and Nekraba, a
hideous, pale giant who rose from the soil and towered over Them.  It was the
most feared of the Dhanani gods, Mohoro of the Underground.  And he spoke only
one more word: “
See
.”

Suddenly, Chul was standing alone on a mesa overlooking the
dusty Kharkara Plain. This place was called Hawk’s Perch, a favorite lookout
for the hunters.  For the first time in a season, he could look across the vast
distance from one low, curving horizon to the other, breathing deeply, freely,
without trees or clouds or stone houses to hide the length and breadth of his
world from him.  By the gods, he missed the plains.  Over time, he’d grown used
to waking up inside stone walls, but at night, before his eyes closed, his soul
still cried for the soaring depth of infinite starry sky.

Below, familiar animal skin tents and huts lined well worn
paths, landmarks he’d held in his heart since he was a toddler, and his whole
being ached with memories.  The sun had not yet risen; no one walked outside
the tents except the healer, Aidan.  Chul watched him move from tent to tent to
cast Anado’s blessings over those within.  A young mother coughed in her sleep,
a hard, dry cough, and the shaman paused, concerned.  He searched the small
pouch he carried and found a small vial, which he left at the threshold for
her.  Then he moved on. 

No one saw him pass, and by day, no one would pay him much
notice.  No one bowed to Aidan or carried him through the camps in a great
curtained palanquin.  No one felt compelled to give him their children.  No one
in the tribes feared him.

Of course not.  Chul stared down at the warm dust on his
feet, unsure what he was feeling.

By the time the warriors stirred from their beds, rising and
stretching, some disentangling themselves from their wives’ arms, Aidan was in
his own tent again.  Soon, all the men of the tribes had all come to the doors
of their homes and were facing the rising sun with their knives in hand.

Then Chief Bakti came out carrying the Verge of Anado.  At
the sight of him, Chul’s hands flew reflexively to his forehead, back to back,
even though no one could see him.  He remembered the awe he’d always felt in
the presence of the hunters, especially the chief.  He’d always envied them
their sleek muscles and sharp eyes, their hardness, their confidence in the
kill.  Their pride.

His eyes ran with hot tears of love and loss.  These were
his people, these proud, beautiful survivors, not the soft, flabby creatures
he’d seen bowing and smiling, groveling and sacrificing their children to their
political god.  Everything he was, everything they were, everything that was
Dhanani, was here now, in this place, in these people, harrowed out and made lean
by hardship.  He could not take that from them or from himself.

And though the warriors could not see him, exile of the
exiles, for the first time, he raised his knife with them to meet the sun.

“Ge jhombra ri tanara Xorden!”  Throwing back his head to
cry out with triumph, Cardinal Valmerous crashed the splinters of bone down
into the very heart of the alderwood stump.  “I feed this life to Xorden!”

The first ray of sunlight splashed angrily over the Dhanani
blades; the plains predator bared its fangs in defeat.  Then, the morning
joined, ten thousand hunters stretched and yawned in the doorways of their
tents before they turned away to face the business of the day.  But in another
place, a small clearing far to the east of the Kharkara Plains, a single tiny
burst of Dhanani sunfire flared from one bloodstained knife and bit through the
last shadows of dawn to flash away the heart of an ancient altar.

“
Mohoro
!”  Xorden’s voice was furious.  “
What have
You done
?”  But he was speaking to empty air.  The three Dhanani gods were
gone.

In the heartbeat that followed, Renda threw up her visor and
squinted into the intense heat.  Her eye darted from Chul to the empty glade to
Valmerous to Pegrine, trying to see what had happened, what had changed.

Then horribly, Pegrine’s eyes began to dull and fade.  She
stumbled, unable to keep her balance, and a flash of fear crossed her
features.  Then, without a sound, she collapsed to the floor of the glade.  The
light that surrounded her was gone.

“No!” Renda shrieked, all but hurling herself toward the
dome wall in spite of the heat.  “He has destroyed her!”

“Peace,” her father gasped, his eyes closed against the
terrible scene.  “One thing more remains.”

“To what?”  She glared at him and rose to her haunches, once
again ready to spring through the nearly open wall.  “Pegrine is gone.  It
falls to me, now.”

His eyes looked up into hers, stony, gray, the walls of
Brannagh itself.  “Wait.”

Valmerous moved cautiously inside his dome to stand beside
the child’s body.  He nudged at her with his bare foot, joggling her where she
lay until he was satisfied that she was indeed dead.  Then he threw his head
back and laughed, a hideous, Hadrian laugh that chilled Renda’s soul.

He had won, the laugh said, as he had known he would.  But
he was not finished yet.  One thing more remained.  Finally, having seen to
Pegrine, he would be able to obey Xorden’s command: he would destroy Duke Trocu
Damerien.

Through the corner of her eye, Renda saw the sheriff’s slow
nod.  “Father?”

“The glow of light is no blood,” he murmured.  “The glow of
a killer…”

Valmerous turned back to his work, his hand absently
flicking away the sweat collected at his brow and showering it over the burned
altar.  From his mantle, where it lay upon the ground, he brought out a small
cache sack and took from it several bottles of oils and salves and little
trinkets, those that could not possibly have withstood B’radik’s light, and set
them upon the altar.

Beyond the cardinal, a small wretched form rose from the ground
where she had fallen, dark, with no light about her.  The beautiful white gown
she had worn was now dingy gray and stained with blood, and her hair hung in
damp black strings, bloodclotted strips that lapped at her face to leave
clumped red-brown streaks.

Renda drew breath at the sight of the hideous creature. 
This was Pegrine, a true vampire now, no longer needing the goddess to sustain
her and drive her.  But alive, or at least, not dead.  Not destroyed.

Her teeth were bared, long and sharp, and her neatly
manicured little girl nails had grown into hawklike talons.  But all these
observations were made in an eyeblink.  At once, she was upon the cardinal’s
back, chewing and clawing at him, tearing his flesh and shredding his back and
shoulders through his cassock.

The cardinal stumbled back in shock at her attack, but he
quickly regained himself.  He turned and twisted furiously until he managed to
loose Pegrine’s grip on him.  Then, hands free, he began gesturing and
muttering against her, abandoning one prayer for another and another, trying to
find the one that would work.

She dropped lightly from his back and circled, snarling like
a great wolf.

“Child of darkness,” he intoned weakly, staggering back in
agony, “I, Valmerous, Cardinal of, of Vilkadnazor the Unshod,” he smacked dry
lips, “I pray your god Verilion, in good charity, receive you and speed your
spirit through the stars.”  But still the child circled him, eyeing him darkly
and growling.  “I thus consecrate your...your place of death and your flesh,
and commend your spirit skyward.”

“Commend your own spirit skyward, Valmerous,” the little
girl hissed.  “You and your god have no power over me.”

“Depart, Undead!” he cried, raising his hands only as far as
his shredded shoulders would allow to ward against her.  “In the name of
…Vilkadnazor the Unshod.”

At once, a glow of white light showered down over Pegrine, a
brilliant blaze of fury.  “I doubt even Vilkadnazor has charity enough to grant
you this boon,” spoke a new voice, a woman’s voice, B’radik’s voice, sweet and
clear, with a touch of amusement that instantly gave way to rage.  “Not now
that He and so many others lie deceived and bound at your hand!”

So many others.  Only three gods besides B’radik had come to
fight Xorden, the three gods of the Dhanani.  The thought that only these four
of all the gods of Syon had escaped Xorden’s bindings left Renda’s heart cold. 
Her hands twitched around her sword, but she could not see her opening.  Not
yet.

“In Xorden’s name, then, depart!”  The cardinal thrust his
hands out toward the little girl.  “I abjure thee, Pegrine of Brannagh, in the
name of—”

“In the name of Xorden,” the child mocked.  “I did not die
for Xorden before.  I shall not die for Xorden now!”

“No?”  Valmerous gestured, and suddenly the wall, the dome,
collapsed away, taking its heat with it.  But just as suddenly, it reappeared,
surrounding his body like armor, moving when he moved.  “Perhaps you will die
for B’radik, then.  Or the creature Damerien.”

By the time the wall disappeared, Renda was already moving,
leaping through the brush.

“Renda, no…” her father gasped.  “You can’t help her.”

“Chul,” Renda called over her shoulder.  “Stay with him.”

Even when Valmerous raised the fiery wall as a shield around
himself, she kept coming.  With the wall as far away as it had been, she could
not have reached him before the heat of it killed her, but with it wrapped
around his very body, she had a chance. 

“Stop!”  Valmerous outstretched his hands menacingly, and
the heat around him seemed to swell.  “You cannot touch me, Knight, not if you
would survive.”

“My life means nothing while you live, Valmerous.”  Renda
raised her sword and prepared to charge through him.