Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (17 page)

Chul laughed at how well Jath mimicked the Bremondine
retainer’s burr.

“He told me this is just my special way with the Art.  We
each have a special way.  That’s why it’s tragic when any one of us is lost.”

“The Art?”  Chul let Colaris down to the floor and flexed
his arm.  “How do you mean, like magic?”

“Aye, magic.”  Jath nodded.  “Mine is not like what normal
mages do, though.”  He chuckled.  “Else I should be the worst stable boy on all
Syon.”

“How does it work?  Your special way, I mean.”  He leaned
forward.  “Not how you pull the threads or…however that’s done…I wouldn’t
understand it anyway.  But what does it look like when you see things?”

Jath thought a moment, then got up and picked an apple from
a bowl on the sideboard by the stairs.  “What is this?”  He sat on the floor
cross-legged and gave it to Chul.

He looked it over and handed it back.  “An apple.”

“Yes.”  Jath smiled.  “You see an apple, shiny, round.  You
can know things about it because you know what an apple is.  You can guess how
it might taste, the crunch, the smell.  That’s no magic.  You make a good guess
since you have tasted apple before, but still, it’s a guess.  All you can know
is just what you see:  an apple.”  His gaze dulled as he looked at the apple
and his voice grew distant.  “I see its core that I will throw to the roadside,
the tree that will grow from its seed, the apples that will grow on the tree
and the marquess’s bride who will stop to pick an apple and meet a dashing
soldier.  I also see their bastard son who will one day become marquess himself
and bring forbidden blood to their line…”  His gaze sharpened again.  “I see
what’s important in a thing.  Sometimes I see the past, sometimes the future,
sometimes what’s going on just over the next hill, but that’s all.  Most times
I don’t know what it means.”  He chuckled.  “That takes someone smarter.”

“I think you’re smarter than you let on.”  Chul smirked. 

“Yes, well.”  Jath cocked his brow and tickled Colaris under
the chin.  “I’d almost have to be.”

They sat in silence petting Colaris for a time, each
considering what the other had said, each feeling for the first time that
someone truly understood.

“Come,” Chul said finally, “did you really see all that in
that apple?”

Jath snickered.  “No.”

They both laughed.

“Well, not exactly,” added Jath.  “Durlindale might have to
do without their new and far more just marquess for a while.  Thanks to the
vile little worm I see chewing his way out ere he smother, I’ll not be eating
this apple.”  He tossed it back in the bowl.

Gikka sat in silence sipping her tea after she’d finished
relating Chul’s story to Nestor as best she could.  She supposed she could call
the boy in and ask him to tell it, but he’d been over it so many times already,
and it did not get much clearer with each try.  She saw no point in putting him
through it all again.

Poor Chul.  He’d tried to tell her what had happened in the
glade several times as they rode, but his story had been so disconnected.  It
seemed almost dreamlike in his describing, the real battle overlaid in his eyes
with the gods’ visions and all, and like a dream, it was hard for him to retell
with any sense without trying to guess at the missing parts.  So now, in
telling Nestor and having to fill in her own gaps in the story, she wondered if
she’d gotten any of it right. 

When the duke’s retainer did not speak, she added, “I’ve not
the wit to make sense of it, and I’ve only what the boy could recall, but at
the heart, my sense of it is that the Hadrian cardinal and his priests are
dead, one and all, and that the sheriff and Renda yet lived, at least as Chul
left them.  Of the rest, of Pegrine and all….”  She shrugged and emptied her
cup.

Nestor thought for a while in silence,templed fingers
resting against his lips.  Then he rose to pour them both more tea.  The pot
had cooled a bit, so he warmed it with his hand, luxuriating in the tiny sliver
of power he allowed himself to use, before he poured.  “You were headed to
Brannford on your own, then, with no knowledge of the troubles.”

“Aye, so we were.  My thought, it was, to leave the boy
there with someone I trust and go find Dith to help the fight at Brannagh and
help me rebuild Graymonde besides.  But then comes Chul with news of Brannagh’s
fall and Renda’s bidding for us to meet them at Brannford but no word as to
why.”  She shifted in the seat.  “No matter, that.  There at her bidding or
mine, it only matters that we’re there. An she grants me leave, I can still
fetch Dith down to help.”

Nestor nodded.  “The sheriff’s message to the duke was much
the same, but that, from Brannford, with or without them,” he said gravely, “we
must make our ways to Byrandia.”

“Byrandia?”  She could not have been more surprised if he’d
said the moon.  She laughed with disbelief.  “There’s no getting to Byrandia. 
Are you certain sure?”

“Indeed.”  Nestor frowned.  “Though I know no more, truly,
and I was loath to mention it when I have no more to add.  Only so much fits in
Colaris’s little case, and even at that, Lord Daerwin’s message was hurried as
he was in haste to stop the damned Hadrians.”  He shrugged and sat beside her. 
“Gikka, I think I break no confidences to tell you that there is no place in
this world more dangerous to Damerien than Byrandia, and well the sheriff knows
it.  He’d not suggest such an expedition lightly.  So the question is not
whether but how, and of course, why.  What do we face when we get there?”

“Byrandia….”  She shook her head, mystified.  “I gather from
what Chul says, Xorden stands defeated, aye?”

“Defeated?”  Nestor shook his head.  “A god, He is, child––a
terribly old and powerful god, at that, especially if He has followers again. 
Gods do not suffer defeat except at the hands of other gods.”  Nestor sipped
his tea and frowned, lost for a moment in his thoughts.  “Well, and even at
that, He had His defeat from B’radik and Her allies in the Gods’ Rebellion, yet
here He comes again.”

“But what of the other Dhanani gods Chul mentioned?  The
ones in the glade?”

Nestor shook his head.  “Chul did not see any surrender, and
I do not believe B’radik would allow Xorden simply to leave if She and the
others had in fact beaten Him.  No, from the sound of it, Xorden merely
retreated.  My hope it is that He and He alone lies at the heart of all.  If
not…”

“Nestor,” she said quietly, “Xorden is a god of the
Dhanani.  He is wholly of Syon, not of Byrandia.  Us all going off to Byrandia,
this tells me it’s not Xorden we face, sure not Him alone, at any rate.  That
we leave no one behind tells me it’s not even Him we fear.  Or maybe,” she
breathed, “we’ve just lost all to Him already and there’s naught left here to
protect.”

Nestor rubbed his brow.  “I feel some guilt in that because
that creature, that vile
Hodrachnad av’dagnoch
, was right there, right
within my reach, tripping merry along his way and spilling his filthy lies to
Lady Renda, the nasty villain thinking he had us all fooled. Had I stopped him
on the spot, Daerwin and Renda might have been able to fight for Brannagh
instead.”  He held out his hand.  “Right here, he was, my
Pro’chna
.  Oh,
I had but to….”

Gikka touched his arm, feeling it shake with his fury.  “And
had you done, down would have come all the worst mischief, right upon your
head, then and there, right when His Grace was weakest.  No, your good judgment
won out, and the knights saw to him at the right time in the right place and
freed B’radik in the bargain.  Or so it seems to me.  That Brannagh fell is
none of your doing.  Save guilt for when you’ve earned it proper, Nestor.”

He closed his eyes and patted her hand.  “Well, and you’re
right
. 
You’re right, and well I know it.  But that Brannagh fell under
attack almost at once can be no coincidence.”

Gikka shrugged.  “Can’t it, though?  Maddock and the rest
were provoked by the plague, no question, but I’ve yet to see Xorden’s hand in
it other than that.  The knights were Wirthing, no question.  From their colors
and their voices as the boy heard them, they could be no other.  Jealous bloody
evil bastards, the lot, and Wirthing, himself, besides.  But they were provoked
by the war, and they steeped a good while on their bruised pride, long before
any of this weary nonsense.” 

Nestor sipped his tea and frowned.  “What worries me most in
Chul’s story, Gikka, is that he mentioned mages in and amongst the knights and
peasants.”

“Aye, so he did.”

“An army of mages, he said.”

She shook her head.  “You and Jath probably seem to him such
another army of mages.”

“Mayhap.”  Nestor stood and walked to the window, thinking. 
He traced his finger through the frost in the corner.  “I’d tend to think fear
grew their numbers in his eyes but for the destruction he described.  Brannagh
was not some tavern house in Belen, Gikka.  Even apart from the stone of the
walls, heavy ancient protections surrounded it, protections laid down by
Galorin himself.  To destroy it so completely….”

She could see his hands trembling.

“Gikka, the boy may speak true, an he does….” he shook his
head.  “An
army
, Gikka.  Think of it.  This land, thank the gods, has
yet to feel horror on that order, and the danger of such an army is of far more
concern to me than even some dusty old god.  The havoc they could wreak upon
this world and the universe beyond chills to my very bones.”

Nestor was right, of course.  Gikka had not given much
credence to Chul’s description, so she had not taken the time to consider the
implications.  The histories in the sheriff’s library told of the days before
Kadak, before the pogroms, when mages were more common throughout Syon and
often even settled in villages and communes entirely devoted to the Art.  The
old stories held that mages together were many times more powerful than they
were alone, but since Kadak had gone about in a fit of hysteria killing every
mage his demons could find, people could go their entire lives now without ever
seeing one mage, much less two or more together.  So no one knew for certain if
the stories were true, nor likely would ever know, since so few mages were left
in Syon.

Nestor’s thoughts seemed to follow her own.  “I have to
wonder, then,
Pro’chna
: where in all Syon could one find, much less
gather together and keep hidden, an entire army of mages?”

The answer was suddenly obvious to her.  Not in all Syon
could they expect to find an army of mages.  “I begin to think that suddenly we
know why we go to Byrandia, Nestor.”

“You think they came from Byrandia?  But how?”  He sipped
his tea, considering. “The mages of Syon were refugees from Byrandia’s mage
genocide.  I should think it even less likely that someone could gather such an
army there.  But regardless of their origin, why go there if they’re here?”

She had no ready answer to that.  Perhaps Byrandia was where
they’d find the means to stop them or at least discover who might be holding
the leash.  “We can guess at it all the night, but until we see Lord Daerwin,
we’ve no way to know his mind.  Reckon on seeing him soon, though.  Trust in
that.” She sighed heavily.  “Sure I would that Dith were here.  It’s all the
more reason for me to see the boy safely to Brannford and then go to seek him
out.”

“You’ll not take the boy with you?”

She shook her head.  “Dith’s in the Hodrache.”

“The Hodrache?  But why…?”  Nestor looked away for a moment,
considering.  “Well, in any case, you’ve not a worry.  Your Chul could be nowhere
safer than in the duke’s company.”

“Thank you.  But I warn you.  He’s quick with his hands,
that one.”  She rubbed her forehead.  “None to expect it, him being Dhanani and
all.  Can you imagine the ladies of Brannford, caught helpless in the boy’s smile
even as he helps himself to their purses?”

Nestor laughed.  “Not to mention their petticoats, and who’s
to look shocked when all the new babes of Brannford come next year with a
certain unmistakable appeal to them?” 

She chuckled.  “Not to say they don’t deserve it, them in
Brannford.”

“Aye,” Nestor grinned.  “Well, I’m brought to mind of a
saucy
Proch’na
of mine not many years past whose smile emptied many a
freeman’s purse wherever the knights of Brannagh made camp.  I suppose we’ll
survive Chul just the same.  Fear him not, he and Jath will be sworn brothers
by Brannford if they’re not already.  But you will travel with us that far, at
least?”

“Aye, to Brannford, and then up the coast.  Certain sure,
Dith has left for me a trail of trembling Hadrians, so I’ve little fear of
missing him.” 

They both laughed.

Gikka finished her tea.  “By the time Dith and I return,
here’s hoping you’ll have found means to cross the sea.  I heard a story some
years back of a fishing ship captain who claims to have made the crossing
Brannford to Byrandia and back, but of course who would know an he made the
story up of whole cloth?”

“Well,” said Nestor, “were we to find him, I suppose a few
of us might be able to tell if he speaks true or no.”  He smiled and rose,
stifling a yawn, “Oh, your pardon,
Pro’chna
, ‘tis the hour and not the
company that tires me.  The dawn comes early, even in the Feast of Bilkar, so I
will bid you goodnight.”  He hugged her close.  “My sense of it is that we
should sleep safe the night, but we should be away at first light an we would
avoid trouble.”

She nodded.  “Sleep well, Nestor.”

Marketday

Gikka lay awake in the darkness watching her breath fog, cataloguing
the noises and rhythms of the house.  She’d been listening to the creaking and
groaning of the chimney cooling from the night’s fire, and the rats scraping
and skittering through the walls on their way to the kitchens below for hours,
to the point where the sounds had all but disappeared into the background now.