Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (46 page)

Then all was lost in a flare of light.  A surge of energy
rippled through the strands so powerful that the guardians were forced to use
their power to damp it before it could disrupt time and space.  When they
looked again, the complexion of the battlefield had changed. 

Their army was destroyed.  The survivors stampeded away in
terror, trampling each other in their panic.  But worse, much worse:  they
watched the injured mages, the ones who had been too slow to run away,
withering and falling away, their lives and their power drained.  The energy
signature was unmistakable.

“Wittisters,” hissed Kesastra.  “Feeding on the mages you
sent.  I told you!”

“Wittisters be damned, find me that horseman.”  Nial shut
his eyes hard, searching the threads even as he felt the blanket of magic
thicken and cover the landbridge again.  “He is the real danger.”

“Damerien,” Dolik gasped, looking up at the other
guardians.  “It must be.  And he returns to Byrandia.”  He looked around at the
others.  “You know what this means.  It is the prophecy.”

The leader ignored them.  While the others had peered
through the deepening haze at the destruction of their army and sought in vain
for Damerien, she had reached further, deeper, and just before the magical haze
clouded her vision again, she’d found a hastily erected shield within the
strands, one whose signature she knew.  Intimately.

Galorin.

She smiled quietly to herself.

The Lacework

She was fighting.  She had been fighting for a long time,
mindlessly hacking away at enemies that ran at her, fighting for so long that
she could not remember when the fight began or even quite where she was or why.
 Such things did not seem important.  All that mattered was defeating the enemy
and defending Syon.  She had to keep fighting.

Just now, however, it came to her that her sword was never
quite in the right place, always just a little late for a killing stroke, just
a little slow.  She needed to calm herself and concentrate.  She needed to make
herself move with more speed and cunning.  She had to be more efficient.  She
had to drive herself harder.

But she was so very tired.

Finesse had long since abandoned her, and in her fatigue,
sometimes it was all she could manage, to push away the enemy’s attacks, and
always, someone else would get the killing stroke.

Not I, threatened by army, by sword, Brannagh!

Her sword had not killed Kadak.

“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.”

Her sword had not killed Valmerous.

The war hero lowered her bloodied battered sword, watching the
demons around her continue to fall anyway as if she continued to fight. 
Watching Kadak’s eyes explode within his skull right before she severed his
head, his life already all but dispatched before her sword connected.  Watching
Pegrine rip through Valmerous’ throat with her talons while she stood helpless
outside the barrier.  Watching the demons bleed from their eyes in terror under
the impossible brightness.

She had not defeated these demons.  She had not saved her
knights.  She had not saved Syon.  All her life she had been trained as a
warrior.  She had given up so much to live in a world which had had no place
for a living weapon like her, a world for which she’d had only contempt, only
to be praised as a hero for victories that she knew in her very core were not
really hers.

She had killed more than her share of demons, but so had all
of her knights.  In the end, when the last stroke mattered, it had never been
hers.  She could as easily not be here at all, and the outcome would be the
same.  The same could be said of her entire life.  And yet she knew nothing
else.

As the enemy gathered itself for a final charge, she lay
herself down on the hard ground of the landbridge and closed her eyes, ignoring
the sounds and smells of death around her, knowing that once again, what she
did would not matter.  The battle was not hers to win, and yet, if the prophecy
held, she would emerge alive and victorious because of the prophecy. 

Always the prophecy.

With only a sharp intake of breath, she was suddenly awake,
returned entirely to herself with cold wet ground at her back and a smell of
smoke and death stinging her nostrils.  She had no idea where she was.  When
had she fallen asleep?  She drove the remnants of the disturbing dream from her
mind and listened to her surroundings to orient herself before she moved. 
Nothing stirred around her. 

She opened her eyes slowly in the still gray dawning light
and looked as far in every direction as she could without moving her head.  The
crumbling coral towers of the Lacework were a few hundred yards off her right
hand––

The Lacework.  Battle.  Demons.  Dropping the chain.  Light
burning her eyes––too much light. 

Her heart jumped, but she forced herself to stay still and
listen.

The demons were gone.  So were the mages.  Around her she
saw only broken and withered bodies amid shattered rubble in every direction. 
All was silence.

She felt for her fingers and toes, inventoried her body for
injuries beyond the bruising on her back where she’d fallen to the ground. 
Finding none, she rose carefully, watching around herself for movement and
taking up her sword and helmet from the ground where they’d fallen.  The helmet
had taken some damage which would certainly explain the ache in her head and
why she could not remember what happened.  Her sword had mats of demon hair and
blood on it.  So she had managed to kill a few.  She smiled coldly.  At least
that part of the dream had been false. 

Around her and extending outward toward the eastern horizon,
she saw dead demons and dead mages scattered over the landscape.  Not enough of
them, she saw.  Truly, not but a tenth of the army she’d faced lay dead.  At
best a quarter. 

So where were the rest?  And where were her knights?

She looked behind her at the Lacework, which was ominously
silent, and she feared the worst, that the rest had swept past her knights and
past the archers on the stone bridge and had gone on to Syon. 

Light, too much light.

She looked down at her sword again, desperately wishing to
know what had happened.  How could it be sunrise already?  The sun had barely
set when they engaged the demons.  Was that why it had grown so bright?  Her
head ached.

The duke.

“Damerien!” she shouted.  Alandro swung around and raced
toward the lone mounted figure that rode out to face the army of demons and
mages.

The duke raised his sword toward the demon army. 

With a great roar, the demons charged toward him while
the mages readied magical attacks.

“No!” she shrieked, driving Alandro harder, knocking
aside demons as she went.  She would not reach him in time, could not reach him––

Her head ached.

She made a silent signal with her hands and listened.  She
heard nothing and saw no movement, looking out across the blasted ground and
heaps of coral rubble where the reefs had stood.  If any of her knights
remained here among the stillness, they must surely be dead.

She signaled again, and this time she was rewarded with a
quiet nicker from a stand of coral not far away.  A moment later, Alandro put
his muzzle into her hand, and she rubbed his chin.  His armor was badly dented
in places, and he had a few frightening gashes, one above his eye and another
at his withers but fortunately she saw no sign of poison.  He walked slowly and
carefully, like he’d taken a bit of a spill himself, but the cuts were not
deep, and he had not broken any bones.  He would mend with a bit of rest.

She led him to higher ground, grateful that his movement
eased as he walked.  If necessary she would be able to ride, but she would let
him rest as long as she could.  She moved to the top of the small hillock, the
better to survey the area, take stock of her position and formulate a plan. 
The most important thing would be to see who still survived.

“Ah, there you are,” came a familiar Bremondine burr through
the smoky haze.  Gikka dropped back the hood of her cloak and shook back her
mannish loose hair, and at once, she and her horse emerged from the gloom.  “And
just where I said you’d be, so please you, as hale and blush as you’ve any right
to be, considering.”  She brought Zinion up beside Alandro while she scanned
the horizon.  “How fare you, lady?”

“Confounded, to be sure,” Renda said, rubbing the back of
her head, “cut and bruised with battle but otherwise unharmed.”

“Seems we’re as baffled as you, all of us, but most with no
knock on the head to thank for it.” 

“Where are the others?”  Renda looked across the
battlefield.  “Where is the duke?”

“Ah, no,” Gikka said, “you’ll not find them there.  Come.” 
She turned southeastward, and Renda followed.  “The duke lives, though the gods
only know how.” 

“I saw him only for a moment.  I tried to reach him, but I
was too slow.”

“I’ve in mind it was by his design, that, the stubborn
wretch.  He had to know you’d try.” 

Renda watched Gikka scrutinize the demons’ bodies as they
passed, no doubt with an eye toward making sure they were dead. 

“Nestor gives out that His Grace took a bit of a spill on
his adventure and would rest whilst we gathered up to leave,” Gikka continued,
“more by way of keeping anyone from questioning him than for his recovery, says
I.”

“He lives.  That is what matters.  No one saw anything?” 

The Bremondine shook her head.  “Muddled notions of a wicked
jolt and some sharp shakes in the ground.  Not much besides.”

Renda frowned.  It could be no coincidence that Trocu should
ride out alone and that suddenly the armies should be dispersed in terror.

Light, too much light.

“No mention of any odd light or colors?”

Gikka shook her head again.

“You were watching?  Or the boy?”

“Aye, I was on watch, up high in the coral, mine eyes right
upon His Grace as he rode out, the sheriff shouting behind him and bellowing at
Nestor to stop him.  Next I know, I’ve the boy Chul shaking me awake off the
very ground, himself to have risen to meet the dawn even in spite of the shock,”
she chuckled darkly.  “Bloody Dhanani.”

She led Renda over a hillock well south of the Lacework and
eastward.  From the top of the hill, they had a clear view of the battleground
and the bodies as they lay.

“To the good,” Gikka continued, “what demons did not die
outright fled back the way they came, screaming and wailing such that I’ve no
doubt they won’t stop ere they hit the far Byrandian shore, and maybe not even
then.”

They paused while Renda looked over the field from this
higher vantage.  Far to the northwest, the bodies lay in chaos where the
knights had cut them down, falling left and right, limbs splayed, heaped as
they fell.  But outside where they’d fought, most of the bodies had their heads
more or less to the east, like so many trees blown over.  They’d been running
away.  They had trampled each other in their panic.

Gikka glanced at Renda.  “Aye, fright was ever the means to
take them, sure, but we’d given up hope of it, what with the mages to mind
them.  We’d settled in for a long night, us, with no hope of making the run
we’d planned.  Then of a sudden, off they’ve gone, at a wee bit of a shake in
the ground.”

“It was quite strong enough to knock all of us senseless. 
Was it Dith’s doing?”

Gikka laughed.  “Sure if they were going to run on Dith’s
account, they’d have gone long since.  No, methinks it was something else. 
Sure not the sight of a lone man on horse, even if it is our duke.  Whatever it
was, I wonder if mayhap we should have run, too.”

Renda licked her lips and turned Alandro eastward.  “Gikka,
you know the duke is not like other men.  You remember…”

Her squire sighed.  “Renda, I remember my Duke Brada nearly
dead at the hands of such another army of demons.  He were barely alive as I
found him in Kadak’s fortress, torn and tortured to pieces.  Even he and the
power he brought to bear against Kadak at the end would not have been a match
for mages and demons allied.  His was not the hand as took Kadak’s life, and
right well you know it.”

Renda looked away.  Did she?  And if it was not the duke’s
hand that killed Kadak, whose was it?

“And begging your pardon,” Gikka went on, “but Trocu, great
man that he is, is not yet his father’s match, not by any measure.”  She
laughed bitterly.  “Do you know, for all this, it were probably no more than
the bit of a shake in the ground as set them off, maybe the landbridge settling
all on its own, and His Grace there to look the hero for it.”

“Very likely.”  After a moment, long enough to change the
subject, Renda asked, “What of the others?”

“We lost a few, Renda.  Sure I’ll not complain.  We could
have lost more, but every one lost is a hardship.”

Renda shut her eyes in dread.  “Tell me.”

“First, know that your father lives.”

Renda nodded.  “Praise B’radik.”

“B’radik, nothing,” the Bremondine spat, “it were a near
thing, and it took Laniel, Chul and me, all three, to hold him back from his
death.”

“What happened?

Gikka explained to Renda how the sheriff had discovered that
the mages were keeping the demons from fear and were making them almost
invulnerable. 

Renda frowned.  Of course.  It was not something she would
have anticipated, given that Kadak’s demons had killed all the mages they
encountered.  Such an alliance would have been impossible on Syon.  But having
seen it, Gikka’s explanation made perfect sense.  “But how did this nearly get
my father killed?”