Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) (45 page)

“Perhaps, but what about their lives?”  He nodded toward her
father and Chul.  “Or the girl?  The sheriff is injured, the child trapped in
the shadows.”  He shrugged, his whole form rippling beneath his searing armor,
and lifted his hands toward his hood.  “And as for the Dhanani…”

“Chul, look away!”  Renda shouted back to the boy.  “Trust,
and do not look, no matter what you hear!”  She gripped her sword and ran
straight for Valmerous.  But instantly, she was hurled to the ground by a
terrible explosion.  In a blur of heat and light, Valmerous, his hood thrown
back, had flared into a giant whirling, thrashing fireball.  But he was not
alone.  Someone or something was inside, grappling violently with him, burning
and smoking, the two bodies tearing each other apart.

She spared a glance at her father, at Chul, who sat beside
him with his eyes carefully turned away from the scene—no, her heart whispered,
not Pegrine.  She turned to the spot where the little girl had been standing,
creeping back away from the sunlight.  But as she feared, the girl was gone.

The cardinal twisted and turned, uttering prayers that
spattered feebly against Pegrine while she scratched and bit and tore at him.

The two bodies inside the inferno fell to the ground, still
battling while their flesh burned.  But when the agony of the flames and her
vicious attack left him unable to fight her anymore, Pegrine lifted herself up
from the burning mass, up out of the fire of his shield into the lethal
daylight, to raise a taloned hand above her head.  Then, with a final shriek of
victory, she raked her talons through his throat.

The cardinal, already close to death, convulsed only once
and lay silent.  His terrible shield of heat collapsed to leave only the
vengeful flames that leapt up from his body and Pegrine’s until even they
subsided.

Then, in the full light of the winter’s sun, the little girl
sagged and fell to the ground beside him.

Renda sank into the hot, dry dust and cradled the poor
charred little body to shield it from the sun.  Pegrine’s beautiful black
ringlets were gone, burned away, as was a great part of her skin and flesh, but
in her last moments, her hand reached up to touch the tears on Renda’s face.

“Don’t cry, Auntie,” Pegrine’s hoarse voice rasped, “I told
you.  It was only for a little while.”

“You won,” Renda smiled through her tears.  “You protected
Damerien, freed B’radik.”   She looked up into the morning sky and blinked back
her tears, searching for all the things she wanted to tell Peg of honor, of
duty, of heroism, and finding only her tears.

The child drew a difficult, gurgling breath so she could
speak.  “I only wish…”

“What, sweet?”

“…it could be over for you, too.”

Then she was gone.

Renda held her close for a moment, as close as the
cumbersome metal of her armor would allow.  Then she settled the child’s poor
burned body to the ground, and in a merciful flare of sunlight, it was gone to
ash and dust.

She stared at the ground for a long time, not thinking, not
feeling.   The dust that had been her niece’s body spread itself on the cold
Bilkarian wind until at last it was gone.

After a while, she rose to her feet.  “Chul,” she said
quietly and nodded toward her father, “help me get him to the horses.”

C
olaris
stood irreverently on the scrollwork of the duke’s headboard, snapping and
clawing at the handful of Keepers who tried to take his message case from him. 
Below him in the cold darkness lay Trocu Damerien, with what was left of his
dark gold curls bathed in sweat.

“Easy, Colaris,” soothed Nestor quietly, drawing his hand
back after the bird gave it a sharp nip.  “There’s a good lad.  Very well, for
the duke and no other, your message, aye.”  He turned to the other Keepers who
surrounded the duke’s bed.  “Sure there’s no helping it.  We shall have to wake
him.  Lord Daerwin would not have sent Colaris if it were not urgent.”

One of the others, a woman, shook her head.  “It’s too much
a danger to wake him.”  Out of habit, she switched to their ancient tongue,
just as she always did when speaking to him in private, as if to keep secrets
from the others.  Or, perhaps superstitiously, from the sheriff’s harrier.  “As
it is, we should be already away from here, preparing for the Succession before
it’s too late.”

“Idiot!” seethed Nestor.  “Fiona, have you been asleep this
many a year?  Does this endless watching dull your wits?  He’s yet to see his
thirtieth year, Trocu is.  To put him through the Succession now would raise
even the dullest man’s brow, to wonder how it is that our unmarried duke could
already have a son grown near as old as he.”

Fiona raised her chin.  “I for my part should rather take my
chances with whisperings and gossips than face what comes without Damerien’s
strength for ours.”

“He has survived this many a thousand year by not allowing
the least credence to be given to such whisperings and gossips.  Now you would risk
that by giving the doubters proof?”

“An Trocu should die, what then, Nestor?”  She whispered,
but her fear and anger were unmistakable.  “Sure Trocu’s heir can find answer
and ease their minds. 
After
the Succession.  Repeat a thing often
enough, it becomes truth, this thou knowest.  But dost remember how near a
thing it was with Brada, how we very nearly lost him before he could complete
the Succession to become Trocu?  I’d not risk it again.”

“That was a different thing entirely, Fiona.  Brada was mortally
wounded, barely alive.”

“Yes!  One and all could see exactly how it fared with
Brada.  Sure there was no question!  But with Trocu, we know he lives only by
the steam of his breath on a mirror.  Verilion could steal him away in his
sleep even while we speak!”

Nestor snorted.  “I doubt even Verilion would like His odds
an He tried it…”

“Damerien could slip away,” she insisted.  “What then!  It
could be a hundred year ere he regain strength enough to return, if at all, and
us without him for the nonce, without his essence to give us power, in the
midst of the coming maelstrom.  An we lose him now, we lose all.”

“Lose all…?”

She looked away.  “I’ve already long since lost all sense of
how to work the strands that bind this world without his strength.  So it is
with us all, I fear.”

Nestor laughed grimly.  “Then it is your weakness, not his,
that speaks for the Succession.  You care only for yourself and your own need
for his power, Fiona.  You’d have a new duke, hale and strong, throwing all
five thousand years past and the prophecy ahead into chaos to feed your need,”
he spat.  He turned to the others, mocking them.  “‘I can’t lace mine own boot
without Damerien,’ quoth he.  ‘I can’t poach mine own egg of a morning without
Damerien,’ quoth she.  I wonder, can any of you walk up a stair or down without
you call upon his power?  Are you—the very ones to whom he entrusts his life,
cycle upon cycle, his keepers, his bodyguards—are you all grown so feeble that
the merest babe has now more power of himself when he wets his swaddling than
all of you combined?  What use are you to him or to yourselves?  What use were
you when the cardinal attacked him?”

The Keepers shuffled uncomfortably.  “But we would not
betray ourselves to him, Nestor,” answered Fiona.  “Can you imagine what he
would say, what he would do?  The child Pegrine stood to guard the duke, and
she was enough.”

“What luck,” he muttered.  “I’d hate to think you’d have to
raise a finger to protect your lord as you’re sworn to do.”

“That is unfair.  As it was, we drained the Hadrian of his
strength so we could see to Damerien.”

“Before or after he attacked?”

They stood in silence, staring at the floor.

“Before or after Renda herself came into the room to defend
him?  Have you any idea how your cowardice put the future of this land at
risk?  And what of Damerien?  The Succession would weaken him at his very core
at a time when he may be all that stands to protect Syon.  Not just this body,
his very bloody core!  Have you spared a thought to that?”  He pushed harder. 
“What of the land?  What of the people?”

They stared at Nestor, unmoving, silent.

Colaris bobbed his head and hissed impatiently, whacking the
foot with the scroll case against the headboard at his feet.  Finally, he
leaned down and called sharply right at the duke’s ear.  “Kek!  Kek kek kek!”

For a moment, there was no movement from Trocu, and Colaris
moved his head closer to call again, but presently the duke’s eyes opened to
see wide owl eyes and a sharp beak looking into his face upside down and rather
quizzically.

“Kek…” added Colaris softly.

“Colaris?”  The duke’s voice was hoarse and barely audible. 
“How now, little one?  What brings you…?”

Trocu sat up weakly and drew the blanket up.  Beside him, on
the night table and on the dressers lining the walls, candelabrum flames
flickered softly to life, until the room was bathed in a gentle glow of
candlelight.  Trocu looked around at the Keepers, noting the expressions on
their faces as they looked at him.

Colaris hopped gently down to the blanket and lifted his
foot so the duke could open the case.  The duke fumbled with the clasp, and
Nestor stepped forward to help, but the bird fluttered his wings and glared. 
The old Bremondine stepped back.

“It’s all right, Nestor.”  Trocu smiled weakly at the crowd
of keepers around his bed.  “A bit of rest seems to have done me good.  I must
have given you quite a scare, for all of you to be hovering over me so,” he
said.  He rubbed at his dry throat and reached for the cup of water next to his
bed to take a drink.  “Fear me not.  There will be no talk of Successions, not
for quite some time.”  He cast a meaningful look at Fiona and set down the cup.

“So what’s this about, Colaris?” He scratched the bird’s
head for a moment.  Then he slid the tiny scroll from its case and read it.  So
they had discovered the Hadrian cardinal’s treachery, good.  He was afraid they
would not.  But it was as he feared, then.  The plague was no more than a
distraction, and far more was at stake than he’d imagined.  Ah, prophecy, he
mused darkly to himself.  Such a delicate thing.

“Nestor,” he said, his voice gaining strength even as he
spoke.  “Fetch me some riding clothes, something unobtrusive, and gather
provisions, see to the horses.  We leave before sunrise, as soon as all is prepared.”

The Keepers, strengthened by the duke’s waking, raised a
cacophony of protest as Nestor opened the duke’s armoire and began gathering
the duke’s things.

The flames on the candles flared.  “Silence, all of you, or
have you forgotten your place?”

The roar of Damerien’s power, even muted by his body’s
weakness, was unmistakable, and they fell silent, chastised certainly but
relieved to feel the warmth of his life energy flowing over them.  Trocu might
not be as strong as he had been, but neither was he on his death bed as they
had feared.

“Nestor, only you and the boy Jath will accompany me,” he
continued.  “The rest of you will keep to the castle and present all outward
appearance that I am within but indisposed, just as I have been for the last
many a tenday.  Nothing has changed.  Is that understood?”

The rest of the Keepers nodded.

“You may find yourselves defending the castle, so I suggest
you plan accordingly.  Now away with you.  We all have much to do ere I
depart.”

Almost at once, they melted into the walls and were gone.

“Nestor, come,” he said.  “We’ve no time to waste.”

*          *          *

She sat in the early morning darkness on the third step of
the family mausoleum scratching the unusually long nails of her little fingers
on the stone step beside her.  Her head would not peek above the sides of the
stairway unless she chose to look, so she was in no danger of being seen from
the main house if anyone was within.

She’d made peace with what she expected to see long before
she set out from Farras, and in truth, what she’d found was not as bad as she’d
expected.  She had her Hadrian miners to thank for that, as anxious as they
were to take up housekeeping in her estate, but it would not buy them an ounce
of mercy.  She’d already seen to that.

The main house still stood.  Maddock and his men had set it
burning right before they left with her sword, but being as it was an ancient
hall from the earliest days of Syon and all stone and mortar, it did not burn
well or long.  She’d lost some furnishings and draperies, things—just
things—and easily replaced.  Everything irreplaceable she’d either hidden or
taken with her.  Barring that, she had a good mind where to go to recover it.

Only charred piles of old timbers and ash remained where the
stables, the mews and the barn had been.  The servants’ house had been
vandalized and had not a single door or window intact, but, like the main
house, it was built of stone and did not burn well.  If Maddock and his men had
noticed that the both the servants’ quarters and the stables were empty, it had
not seemed to give them pause on their rampage.

Gikka had fetched up her papers from beneath the rubble in
the crypt where she’d hidden them, those absurdly flimsy weapons for securing
one’s belongings that were only of use in a world not at war.  She only hoped
that she would need them again one day.  She’d also taken the opportunity to
empty the crypt of the miners’ stashed gems as well.  They’d be furious when
and if they found out, and they might even guess it was she who had robbed
them, not that it would matter.  They would soon have much larger problems.

Four modest shrines lined the mine roads between the miners’
shanty town and the mines, all shrines to the blue-eyed Hadrian child god
Limigar—Limigar, whose outermost shape could change but whose eyes were ever an
icy blue.  Limigar, the spoiled brat who would ease His boredom with cruelty,
especially against those who took risks if He did not have a steady supply of
new toys and games to entertain Him.

So, once a tenday, Gikka’s miners, as well as Hadrians
elsewhere who would climb mountains, sail seas, gamble, give birth, open a
shop, or do anything involving risk, would fill Limigar’s shrines with
offerings of games and puzzles, signed with their names or the names of those they
wished to favor, to buy his distraction.  How those lazy Hadrians managed to
come up with clever new toys for him every tenday was a mystery to Gikka.  If
they’d ever turn half that ingenuity toward their work, they should own all of
Syon in a trice.

She’d considered simply smashing the toys in the shrines to
pieces, but remembering herself as a child, she decided Limigar would likely
find it more frustrating to get toys that were nearly perfect, that almost
worked but for a single missing piece.  So slowly, painstakingly, she moved
from one shrine to another, taking key pieces from each of the toys and games.

Only one of the puzzles in one of the shrines would be
intact when the offerings vanished in the morning, one maddeningly simple
collection of curved wooden rings the size of a man’s wrist that had to be fit
one within another in exactly the right order or they would go all awry.  The
set of rings was beautifully carved with Chul’s own hunting knife, a brilliant
diversion he’d made in his idleness in Farras, and here was a use for it.  It
was surely something Limigar had never seen—a Dhanani puzzle for a Hadrian
god.  She wasn’t one to cling to Hadrian superstitions, nor any superstitions
in truth, but right now, she would take any advantage she could get, especially
for the boy.  She’d only hoped it would shield them from Limigar’s wrath when
he discovered the toys she had broken.

That seemed a lifetime ago.  She looked up at the horizon,
where the sun was almost ready to crown.  The miners had left hours ago to head
for the mines.  They should be arriving there soon, and not long after
that…well, she hoped to be well away from here by then.

Where was Chul?  A worried frown crossed her brow.  He
should have delivered his warning to Brannagh and been back hours ago. 
Something must have happened.  She stood, considering her options.  She could
ride to Brannagh and take her chances with what she might find there, or she
could go straight on to Brannford, as they’d planned in Farras, and hope he had
the wit to seek her there.  The boy had protested when she said she would leave
him in Brannford while she sought Dith, but she had made clear that she was not
taking a Dhanani into the Hodrache Range, into a land infested with Hadrians.

Hadrians.

She cursed under her breath.  All it would take is for the
boy to see one of those cursed Hadrian clerics at Brannagh, just one, and he’d
lose control.  She’d planned so carefully, sending him in as far from the
chapels and the guest quarters as possible, straight to the family’s private
quarters.  She’d warned him not to be seen by anyone, and she’d even given her
cloak to him.  Most of all, she’d warned him about the Hadrian priests.

Her mouth felt dry.  She’d seen what happened when Aidan saw
his first Hadrian.  Maybe she should have ignored Renda’s orders and gone
herself.