Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (45 page)

Trocu leveled his gaze at Daerwin.

The sheriff raised his chin.  “It is enough loss for the
knights of Brannagh to die defending Syon, but we cannot lose her duke as well. 
An Syon loses you, our deaths mean nothing.  Renda’s death…means nothing.  Ride
back to Syon at all speed.  As long as you remain––”

A blast crumbled away one of the coral spires, and they
ducked under an overhang as the debris fell around them.

All save Damerien, who had not moved.  “As long as I remain,
what?  Alive? Cowering like a gouty centenarian in my castle?  That’s as
obscene to me as standing about with the horses whilst your knights fight and
die.”  He turned on his heel and strode away.

The sheriff shouted over the sounds of battle to him.  “It
is their place to fight for Syon and to die if necessary!”

The duke turned a curious look toward him.  “Today it should
not be necessary.”

Alandro chuffed softly, a sound that would otherwise be lost
in the screams and cries of battle, but Qorlin’s horse heard it, and both
horses cut hard to the right at full speed, dragging the chain through the
demons, pulling down those who were not fast enough to escape like so much
grain.

The chain was cutting through fewer of them now that it was
clogged with clumps of flesh and was of most use simply knocking the creatures
to the ground where the other three knights fought through them or the horses
trampled over them.  Sometimes the chain dragged one of the demons quite a
distance, looking to the horror of the rest of the demons like he was flying
unnaturally over the ground, dashing his head and limbs against the rocks and
coral until he fell to pieces.

“They run, but not like they should,” breathed Kerrick. 
“Something is amiss.”

“Aye,” panted Amara, slashing away those that came within
her reach and immediately changing her position.  Like the others, she knew how
to fight from concealment, and this many years in Renda’s company, she’d even
quieted her conscience at doing so. 

Deceit, as Renda had been at pains to teach her, was how
battles were won, from the grandest skirmishes of armies to the clash of
peasant swords.  The academy’s “dreary knightish rubbish,” as Gikka had called
it, was fine for mannered duels but had no place in warfare.  Real honor came
in protecting those in your charge, however it might be done. 

Around them, demons fell readily enough.  They fell to the
chain, they fell beneath the swordsmen’s blades.  They ran screaming.  But
Kerrick was right.  It felt too…perfect, too controlled.

Deceit, indeed.

She looked around her in the darkness. The disorder they had
caused was somehow quieting, righting itself as quickly as the terror had
spread in the first place.  She slowed her mount with the others, her sense of
her own terror mounting beneath the impossible quiet and order that settled
around them.  “Viscount…?”

One of the demons picked something up from the ground as he
ran, and turned to throw it into the air behind him, right in the path of the
knights.  It was a handful of fine, powdery silt, dried ocean-bottom sand, which
spread on the wind.  To her sick horror, Amara watched the tiny grains take on
a glow, put there by a mage not far away.  Before she could warn them, before
they could stop, the knights had ridden through it.

Amara jumped to hear one side of the heavy weapon hit the
ground ahead of her, the blood and hunks of demon flesh that clung to it making
the deadly chains thud wetly rather than clang out a bright alarm.  She could
see bits of hair and flesh in it.

She could see it.

A slow scream of horror rose in her throat.  Not only could
she see the hideous bloodied chain and a peculiar shimmer around the rest of
the knights.  Around herself.  And the demons were looking right at them.

A glow was coming from the silt that dusted their armor,
their weapons, their horses. Dith’s magic was meant to bend any ambient light
around them, not light emanating from the knights themselves.  With no other
light to blend with it, the twisting shimmer coming from the sand bent close
about the knights, outlining and marking them in an almost liquid haze.

Her scalp prickled and she gritted her teeth.  Her hand
clenched around her sword.  The demons crowding around them were no longer
looking at the empty space around them.  They were looking right into their
eyes.  The five knights were visible.

In the protracted seconds between when the knights had
dropped the chain and when it finally came to rest, Renda and Qorlin were
turning.   Amara’s mind raced.  Renda and Qorlin had dropped the battle chain. 
Dropped it on the ground.  Discarded it.  The only time they would do that is
for speed.  They would need speed to move.  To run.  To retreat.  Retreat!  Her
mind screamed at her muscles to move.

The knights wheeled their mounts to run, but it was already
too late.  A moment later, the demons attacked.

The Citadel

“Naturally we sent reinforcements.”

“Naturally.”  The leader looked around at the silken
tapestries and draperies of the stone chamber.  Her gaze danced across the
faces of the other three, first at the one who had spoken, the same who had
awakened her, the one whose birth name was Nial, then at the other two.  He was
always the one charged with speaking to her when there was bad news to report. 
The others just stood by quietly, trying not to draw her attention.  Cowards.

She was disappointed that her withering gaze was lost on
them since they would not look up at her.  She settled back against the rich
cushions, smug satisfaction creeping into her voice in spite of the
precariousness of the situation.  “You cannot still believe he is dead, can
you?” she purred.  “Not now.  Not after all this.”

“Have you listened to anything we’ve said, or are you still
clinging to your obsession with your old lover?” Nial snapped.

“The one who raised the landbridge is mounted,” murmured the
one who had once been called Kesastra.  She was nearly as striking as the
leader, but with unruly dark hair that she had a habit of tucking behind her
ear.  The leader peered at her intently waiting for her to go on.  “That, and
he has stayed invisible on the strands as if he uses no magic.  Even we cannot
see him.  The only reason we know he comes this way is that the others have
seen him on the landbridge.  That, and the mage that was captured and killed…” 
Her voice bordered on shrill, and her eyes were wild.  “Don’t you realize what
that means?”

“Oh, calm yourself, Guardian,” the leader chided.  “We all
saw the landbridge raised and the power he used to do it.  He is no Wittister.”

“Neither is he Galorin,” Nial snorted.

She glared at him, but continued speaking to the others. 
“You saw how he blanketed the entire landbridge in magic to blind us.  Whoever
he is, he is clever, I will give him that.  He does not blind us with darkness;
he blinds us with overmuch light.  We see his power everywhere at once, but
above all, we see that it has nothing of Wittister about it.”

“On the other hand, we must remember what was reported of
the dead mage sent back to them as a warning.”  The youngest of them, Dolik,
templed his fingers and spoke in his monotonous pedantic tones that matched the
middle aged appearance he affected.  “His death was unmistakable in character. 
It seems obvious that at least one Wittister mage is somewhere on the
landbridge.  I think we are agreed that this one who raised the landbridge is
not the Wittister, judging by the nature of his power, so the real question
becomes whether the Wittister pursues him or aids him.  That remains unknown.”

“In that case, he is not alone,” the dark-haired woman
replied, her voice rising in pitch again.  “Either way—”

“Guardian,” he said as if addressing a child, “the
Wittisters may also pursue him for their own ends.”

The leader sneered.  “Has it occurred to you to ask how even
one Wittister mage could have made his way from their abbey––deep in the southern
highlands––across the entire continent and even across the landbridge to join
forces with this mage and attack your forces from the west, from Syon, all without
using any magic lest we mark him?  Had the Wittister left the moment the bridge
was raised, he could not be but halfway across Byrandia by now, riding at full
speed—that is, assuming you didn’t send him across yourself as part of your
little invasion force.  Unwittingly, of course.  The way you do everything.” 
She hoped Nial would rise to her bait, but he ignored her.  She raised a brow
at the others.  “That is, assuming there even
is
a Wittister mage.  I’ve
yet to see any real proof of it, your desiccated mage husk aside.”

“In any case, the reinforcements should have arrived by now.
“  Nial looked across the strands.  “We should have word back from them soon
and gain a better understanding of what we face.  Curse this blindness!”

The leader thought a moment then frowned.  “Believing that
you faced Wittister mages, you sent reinforcements.  Is that what you just
said?”

Nial nodded.  “Yes.”

“More mages?”

He nodded again.  “We thought––” 

“You sent them a fresh army of mages upon which to feed!”

His face felt hot.  “I am not stupid.  I warned the
reinforcements before they left, and they did not go unguarded.”  He looked to
Kesastra and Dolik, who nodded supportively.  “I sent
draemondrae
with
them, the
draemondrae
who just took Hadar’s Port.”

“I see,” she said, a bit uneasily.  “Terribly involved in
this, aren’t you?”  She looked around at them.  “You and your
draemondrae
and
your army of mages.  My, but you all have your fingers right in the pie,
sending one army after another.  You should know by now that this is the
trouble with taking such an active hand: once you take action, you find you
must keep taking action to right what you upset with your last action. 
Especially if you are inept, and your actions tend to fail so
catastrophically.”

“Galorin is dead!” he blurted suddenly.  “I saw it myself––”

“You saw what, Guardian?” she laughed, enjoying his
discomfort, but her laugh was a bit brittle.  “A blurred vision mark, cobbled
together in haste, of a beaten old man’s corpse being dragged from his home and
burned?  Did you see his face?  Would you even know it after all this time?” 
She leveled her gaze at him, a smirk curving her lip.

He spoke evenly, but still she marked the petulance in his
tone. “They said they were certain it was he.”

“Oh, of this I have no doubt.”  She smiled irritatingly.  Had
he not considered that this grand force of mages he had sent could not possibly
have ever seen Galorin and would be easily fooled?  And Galorin would have seen
to it that they had no reason to question.  He would have given them exactly
what they expected to see, an ancient wizard in seamless platinum robes who for
some reason was easy to take from his keep and kill.  They would never even
question how a Guardian fell so readily to them.  “You saw what you wanted to
see.  Tell me, did they recover anything?”

Nial glared at her.

“Any of the documents he stole?  His own vision mark? 
Surely he had time to create one as they besieged him, once he knew he had no
escape.”

Nial looked down and shook his head. 

Ah, so her suspicions were true.

“I see.  All was ruin, and they found nothing but an old man
whom they promptly killed and burned.  And now they––and you––see Wittister
Mages on the landbridge.”  She laughed again, more confidently now, and a kind
of warmth crept into her words.  “Galorin surely lives,” she declared.  “I can
see his sense of humor in all this.”

The other two Guardians cast veiled looks between
themselves.  Dolik scratched his balding head and considered carefully.  “The
B’radikites’ portion of the prophecy does say that the fifth Guardian will
return and raise the landbridge––”

“No, that is not what it says at all.”  Kesastra shook her
head.  “You are bending the prophecy to fit circumstance and then calling it
fulfilled.  The actual words are, ‘Four thousand years the five are four’––”

“Obviously,” snapped the leader, irritated that they had
preempted Nial’s squirming by changing the subject, “except that we weren’t
reduced to four until you three had the brilliant idea to kill Galorin.  It
would seem the calendar only just began on this prophesied four thousand
years.  Assuming he is even dead.”  What a jumble.  It confounded her spirit.

“Not necessarily,” the other woman said.  “He destroyed the
landbridge and severed all contact with us, so for about four thousand years,
we have been the only ones who have served as Guardians.  It only says ‘the
five are four,’ not
why
the five are four.  In that case, if he is not
dead…”

Something changed.

They all stood, their minds racing together and separately
along the threads.  The blanket of magic covering the landbridge had quite
suddenly weakened to almost nothing, but only for a moment, a moment they
watched in horrifyingly slow detail.  

A single horseman, armored and surcoated in deep green and
gold, had ridden out of the Lacework on a black horse and had drawn his horse
to a stop before the scrambling chaos of battle.  The audacity of his manner
gave the attacking mages pause even while the
draemondrae
continued
their battles with a handful of knights further away. 

Damerien.  It could only be the prince.

One of the knights, a woman with deep auburn hair and bright
gold eyes, looked up through the blood and gore streaking her face and the
draemondrae
falling beneath her blade to see the horseman, and her eyes went wide.  She
drew breath to shout to him, riding toward him at all speed.

The woman.  The savior of Syon, the hero of the Five Hundred
Years War.  The woman of the prophecy.  The leader had to swallow her anger at
the others to keep it from touching the threads.  How could they have been so
stupid?