Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (24 page)

“This worries me deeply.  I have not seen this level of
wanton arrogance in mages since….  Ask him if any among them killed anyone.”

Dith asked.

The guard frowned at him and shook his head.  “Only those
who tried to stop them, as I say.  Raped and stole plenty, but no cold
murder.”  He looked behind him through the gate.  “Tore the town up and left it
bleeding in a heap when they left, but almost out of clumsiness more than
malice, like they meant nothing by it.  Like a horse stepping on an anthill. 
Made it none the better for us ants, of course.”

“No wanton killing.  That is a relief, at least.  These
mages were almost certainly the ones who attacked my keep, in that case.  I
cannot imagine such another army of mages wandering Syon.  Now we know they
came through Pyran, but the question is, where did they come from?  And more
importantly, where did they go? I have my suspicions, but…”

“Did anyone talk to them?  Did they say why they were here
or where they came from?”

“Nah, nobody could understand a word they spoke.  Not as
they were inclined to talk much anyway.  They just climbed up dripping wet from
the sea just north of the piers.”

“From the sea?”  Dith frowned. “How do you mean?  Do you
think they lived there, or perhaps swam here from somewhere?”

“Lived there, under the sea!  What an imagination!  Here’s
how it was:  first, just one of them climbed up from out the water and looked
around.  We’d thought him a survivor of a wrecked ship or some such, but he
vanished before anyone could get near enough to ask.  Just gone.  A while
later, the rest come popping in, neat as you please, like to deafen us all with
the noise of it.”

“Brilliant.  The sea is always more or less at a level at
a given time of day, and the northern bay is nice and deep, so if the
calculations are off, there’s little harm done.  No need to reckon the height
of the land or the positions of buildings or people.  The seas can be
turbulent, but if you’re near enough to shore, that’s survivable.”

 “We only just managed to get right again, this many months
later.  Business is back to normal in the last month, and the fishing fleet’s
only just returned to port.”  He nodded behind him toward the town.  “You’ll
find the taverns and hostels are full up, I reckon.”

“I suppose I would even if the fleet were out, considering.”

The guard’s anger seemed to have subsided, but now,
remembering who it was before him, it crept back into his tone again.  “So now,
here you come, dressed like one of them, like a joke to rub our noses in our
pain.  But you come riding a horse so no one takes it too seriously or thinks
you’re the one who harmed his sister or the one who emptied his stores. 
Coward.  You’d hurt people in their hearts then cry ‘it were but a joke!’ ere
they come to beat the whoresblood out of you.  I’ve no more to say to you.  You
run off and come back when the gates are open, and you take your chances with
the citizens then.”

Dith shook his head with a laugh.  “Oh, and we were getting
along so nicely, too.  Very well.  I will make this as simple as I can.”  Dith
shrugged the rucksack up on his shoulder irritably.  “I sympathize with your
town’s misfortune, but I am a mage.  Believe it or don’t, as it suits you, but
I have business here, and the sooner you let me in to see to it, the less
likely it is that I will raze what’s left of this city to the ground.  Unlike
those others, I am not squeamish about a little ‘cold murder,’ as you called
it.”  He smiled, but there was no warmth to it.  “I ask only as a courtesy. 
Now, either you open the gate, or I will.”

As if on cue, Glasada neighed nervously and skittered over
the path.  Dith raised a hand toward the gate and looked at the guard
expectantly.

The poor guard’s eyes widened as he looked at Glasada’s
eyeless face for the first time, and a glimmer of doubt crossed his face. 
“Easy now!  No need to get vexed about it,” he said with still a shadow of his
former bluster.  “I will open for you, but do not you make me regret it.”

Dith allowed the guard his impotent parting growl and
lowered his hand.  He was far less concerned with winning the argument than
with achieving Pyran and finding passage across the sea.  If passing the gate
were the worst obstacle in his path, he would be thrilled, but with news of the
mage army having passed through Pyran, especially with the destruction they’d
left in their wake, he began to despair of his success.

“You want to try it your way, very well.  But I think you
waste precious time.”

It was not as if Galorin could help him port straight into
Byrandia.  As he’d told Dith before, the landscape will have surely changed in
four millennia.  So, barring that, he had to find a ship to take him across.

“Indeed, if you can find passage aboard ship, it’s all to
the better.  We will certainly make less noise that way.  I just despair of the
likelihood.”

Dith did not think much better of his chances.  He would be
lucky to find a ship’s captain willing to speak to him, to say nothing of
finding one willing to attempt the crossing with him.  Most of the captains in
Pyran were Hadrian, and they would never allow someone with his blue eyes on
their ships.  He saw no point in even talking to them.  Furthermore, he
supposed that any Bremondine or Syonese captain foolhardy enough to attempt the
crossing was not a captain he should trust to attempt it, which left him in a
bit of a conundrum.  Still, if no one here would try the journey, there was always
Brannford.

“No, no, not Brannford.  The crossing’s many times as far
if we set out from Brannford, and the sea is just as angry.  We will find
passage here or not at all.  But not with you dressed like this.”

“You’re joking.  Sir.”  The Syonese captain kept his seat.

“No, Captain,” said the disguised mage, “I am quite
serious.  I need to reach Byrandia, and I was told your ship is the strongest
of the fleet and most likely to survive the journey.”

He felt the captain’s gaze travel over him, from his long
nearly white hair to his rich clothing.  The captain looked closely at the
heavy velvet of his cape, the bright silver buckles of his belt and scabbard,
not to mention his lovely sword, and he could almost hear the calculations in
the man’s mind––clearly Dith had sufficient money to pay to outfit a ship for a
voyage to Byrandia.  But the captain did not seem convinced.  His eyes kept
returning to Dith’s filthy orange rucksack. 

At last, the ship’s captain shook his head.  But he was not
angry.  The sunburned corners of his eyes wrinkled with a certain mirth, and
his fingers played over the turned up ends of his graying mustache.  He grinned
“I can’t help but wonder if this is not some kind of elaborate joke.  Not to
say I’m not grateful for the
jurfaele
, mind you, but what you ask…”  he 
laughed.  “Did the other captains put you up to this?  Having a bit of fun at
my expense, just because of a drunken boast?”

“The Hadrian captains?”  The mage’s blue eyes twinkled.  “Do
you suppose they would even speak with me?”  He took his seat across from the
captain.  “I ask again, can your ship make the crossing or not?”

The captain, challenged on his ship’s ability, set his mug
down quietly and glared at him.  “If any ship can make the crossing, my
Jenna
Calera
can.”

Dith smiled.  “I am pleased to hear it.”

“And my question is why she should.”

“Coin.”  He settled back in his chair, easing into the
negotiation.  “What other reason do you need?”

The captain laughed.  “You don’t have much commerce with
sailors, do you, son?  We don’t sail for coin.”  He took up his mug and drank. 
“We could be farmers for coin and have an easier life of it.”

Ah, yes, the romance of a life at sea, Dith mused.  But he
knew that if they reached an agreement, coin would play a large part.  Very
well, then, he could humor the man.  “Fame, then.  If you take me to Byrandia,
yours will be the first Syonese ship to make landfall there in thousands of
years.”

The captain nodded while he drank.  “Better, better. 
Appealing to my sense of glory and adventure, beat the Hadrians there, and so
forth.  I must admit, there is a certain appeal to that.”  He chuckled again. 
“All right, enough dancing.  Let me put it another way, and this I ask in all
earnest: why should I risk my ship and my crew for your voyage? What is our
part in all this?”

Dith considered.  “Fishing is not very lucrative during the
Feast of Bilkar.”

“Unless you know where to fish.”  The captain set the mug
down on the table and looked him in the eyes.  “Boy, don’t try to tell me my
business.  You can’t give a better reason to go than that fishing in the off
season is a bit of effort?  That’s call to dally with our wives, not set out
for unknown waters.”

Dith stared at the table for a long time, uncertain what he
might say.  It was a long, uncertain stare that he knew told the captain more
than perhaps it should have.  “Perhaps you could be the one to open new trade
routes…” he offered weakly.

The captain cocked his head.  “Perhaps my question should
be, not so much why we should make the crossing, but why you should.  Is this
some kind of dare your friends have set you to?”

“That’s my business,” he answered, shrugging up the rucksack
on his shoulder.

“You bring your business aboard my ship, it becomes my
business.”  The captain crossed his arms.  “Did you break the law, kill
someone?  A bounty on your head?  Some girl with your brat in her belly?”

Dith sighed.  “No, nothing so…nothing like that drives my
crossing.”

“Then what does? A man, especially one who is clearly no
sailor, begging your pardon, does not decide to go picnicking in Byrandia over
his morning tea.”

“Oh, this should be rich.  Go ahead, tell him.”

Dith took a deep breath.  How could he possibly convince
this captain, the only one in all Pyran who had even been willing to talk to
him, to take him and his eyeless horse across the violent eastern sea to
Byrandia because a strange ugly rock in his rucksack and a voice in his head
push him that way? 

He chuckled bitterly at the hopelessness of the situation, finally
accepting defeat.  “Never mind.  You would never believe me.  I’m sorry to have
troubled you.”

“Suit yourself, but it’s no trouble.”  The captain shrugged,
draining off the last of his tankard.  “I could listen to almost anything over
another
jurfaele
.”  When Dith made no answer, he continued.  “Son, I
understand what it is to be young.  Listen, I’ve a berth free and plenty of
work hauling in fishing lines if you’re inclined.  It’ll put calluses on your
hands, muscle on your frame and a tan on your hide, if you’re not afraid of
hard work.  We sail at high tide.”

Dith smiled, genuinely touched by the man’s gesture. “Thank
you, that’s very kind, but I truly must reach Byrandia.”

“But you can’t say why.”  The captain nodded, clearly
unconvinced but not willing to argue about it, and shook his hand.  “Well, good
luck to you.  If you change your mind…”

Dith tossed a coin to the barkeep and nodded back toward the
captain.  “Enjoy your ale.”

Outside the tavern, Dith kicked angrily at the ground.  He
should have expected as much.  Galorin had told him this would happen, and now
the presence in his mind glowed with irritating smugness.  The young mage
clawed at the top of the scratchy close fitting doublet to loosen it at his
throat, unaccustomed to the binding and the heat trapped by the heavy cloth. 

He could stow away on the ship––the
Jenna Calera
––and
hijack it once it was safely out to sea.  That was one possibility, though he
did not like his chances of getting Glasada aboard without being noticed, and
leaving his horse behind now that he finally had one was out of the question.

At the hitching post outside the tavern, Glasada nickered
softly, worriedly, and Dith rested a hand against him.  Suddenly, the horse’s
head turned sharply to look back along the road toward the gates where the gate
captain and several of the guardsmen, some Hadrian, some Syonese, were running
toward them.  Dith calmly tied the rucksack to the saddle while he watched
them, feeling an uncomfortable heat building within his clothing as his
protections strengthened around him.

“That’s he!” called the guard who had stopped him at the
gate earlier.  “That’s the one.”

“You there!”  The guard captain was shouting as he ran toward
Dith.  “Halt!”

The mage looked the other way, toward the piers, plotting an
escape route, and he swung himself up onto Glasada’s back.

“Wait!” the captain called again.  “Please!”

Please.

Dith looked down with a sigh.  “Please” had gotten him into
trouble before with Hadrians.  But the captain’s colorless eyes looked
desperate, genuinely fearful.  Instead of riding away, Dith considered a
moment, then swore under his breath and rode instead toward the guards, who by
now were fairly winded.  They’d run the better part of a mile between the gates
and the dockside tavern where they’d found him, assuming they’d come a straight
line rather than searching every street for him, and they were not in the kind
of battle-ready shape they’d maintained during the war.

“I am Captain Gran Barod of the Pyran Guard, and I would
know this of you at once,” gasped the guard captain between labored breaths,
looking worriedly over Dith’s clothing.  “Are you truly a mage?  No coy banter,
no stories.  Please.  I need the truth.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Answer my question honestly, for our lives, I beg of you!” 
Captain Barod’s face was red, but not with exertion as much as with fear.  He
had clearly been warned about Dith’s eyes, and he tried not to look directly
into them.  “Are you really a mage, and one of power?”