She turned over in her bed, pulling the furs up around her.
“By B’radik…” Renda muttered under her breath, looking around her.
Blood slicked the throne room floor; blood from Kadak’s soldiers, blood from their own. The two knights moved as well as they could through the settling smoke and dust, dodging head down between the heaps of shattered rock and broken bodies while a hail of molten stone pelted their armors. Renda crouched beside Lord Daerwin. No one else stirred in the rubble. They were alone, now. Alone against—
“Not I, threatened by army, by sword, Brannagh!” The hideous creature called Kadak writhed around his throne, a huge, lumpy mound of what looked like potter’s clay left too long on the wheel. His strange split mandible struggled to form the words in their language. “My end come of them; I foreseen it. Vengeful, vengeful; never forget, them.”
“Them?” Renda whispered, but her father shook his head.
“Mages, perhaps?” he whispered.
“Bah, Brannagh.” The creature laughed thunderously. “I no fear mages, mages all dead! I kill them all. I fear only them! They have the power to unmake. They will be Kadak’s end. But they not here.” He flexed his claws, and a pillar behind them exploded.
They dove behind another heap of rubble and covered their heads until the marble shrapnel settled. Then Daerwin edged himself out while Renda scrambled forward and put her back to one of the few standing pillars in the chamber. The great beast turned toward her, raising his claw.
“Kadak,” the sheriff shouted, and the monster’s great head jerked to face him. “Your forces are defeated, your allies have fled.”
Renda crouched low behind her pillar. She had heard a silence fall over the Hadrian army and then a low rumble, and all at once, they had run shrieking from the fortress, trampling each other, breaking open the very walls to escape. Somehow, Dith had done his part, and Gikka would do hers. Duke Brada would soon be away, safe.
Through the corner of her eye, she watched the creature slither lower on his stone and felt a chill on her spine. Cold, dark. Something badly out of place. She flexed her hand around her sword and silenced her fear.
“You are finished.” The sheriff inched closer. “Surrender.”
The pillar at Renda’s back blasted apart, but she had already moved to the wall, sword ready. She saw an opening and was already in motion before her mind was quite sure what she saw. Two great steps, and she leaped the throne at Kadak’s back, plunged one sword between the armored spines of his neck and ripped across his throat with the other.
A wicked laugh erupted near Lord Daerwin, and the knight jumped back. A demon guard exploded from the rubble with its eyes glowing yellow, and it raised its poison-spiked ha’guaka ax over the sheriff’s head. Its huge mouth grinned wide above its destroyed throat. “You not win this way, Brannagh.”
“Neither will you.” Daerwin buried his sword deep in Kadak-the-demon’s gut.
The yellow glow dissipated from the dead eyes, and the body crumpled into silence, but not before a new laugh echoed near the doorway.
“Renda!” Lord Daerwin worked to free his sword from the demon’s body.
She looked up to see one of their own soldiers, a farmboy in the ragtag remains of his armor, rising unsteadily. Blood seeped from a fatal gash in the farmer’s head, but his eyes gleamed a horrible, unnatural yellow.
She felt a surge of outrage that Kadak would so defile the dead, but she set it aside. The boy’s spirit was in the stars. Kadak could do him no harm now. She had no time for outrage.
Kadak-the-boy hurled handfuls of burning sand as he moved toward Daerwin. “Who surrender now, Daerwin of Brannagh?”
The sheriff pulled desperately at his sword, but it was stuck fast in the dead demon’s torso. Weaponless, he backed away toward another pile of stone.
Renda threw her second sword to her father as she passed and circled toward Kadak-the-boy. The creature was flanked. “Yield, Usurper! You have nothing left.”
“Wrong, girl-knight. I have Damerien.” He laughed when Renda sprang from one broken wall to another to dodge a spire of white flame he raised from the floor, and he swept his fingers through the air to raise a barrage of flying stone and grit. “You come for him,” he mewled, slinking closer. “You think maybe with him, you win? Damerien the Father, Damerien the Son.” Kadak-the-boy snickered. “But he not here, neither.”
Behind him, Renda saw a shadow pass across the smashed doorway and vanish in the darkness. A moment later, Kadak-the-boy jerked sharply and fell, the yellow glow leaking from his eyes.
The beast at the throne raised its head, and Renda could see that her cut across his throat was all but healed. He suddenly rose to his full, terrifying height and stretched his forelegs wide. Every wall exploded in white hot light.
Renda dropped to the ground beside her father and gasped. In full view, where the boy had been standing, knelt Gikka, flicking blood and something else from her stiletto, something that sizzled on the hot floor near the wall. And beside her, Brada, Duke of Damerien, leaned against the doorjamb wrapped in nothing but a muddy, threadbare cloak—Gikka’s cloak. Under his black, blood-matted hair, his deep brown eyes shone almost gold with fever, and dark blood seeped from his parched mouth, but he bared his teeth and raised a shaking hand toward the creature.
Instantly, the heat was gone. The fire, the smoke, gone. Only light remained.
“Damerien.” Kadak’s voice betrayed surprise and a bit of fear. He recoiled in the cool brightness, his eye fixed on Gikka who crept between the piles gouging out the eyes of the dead, closing his doors. “You not destroy me, neither.” He laughed haughtily. “Only them.”
Brada stumbled forward weakly. “All of them,” he gasped, “or just one?”
“Here, none!” The monster spat an angry shower of fire over them. “I see none!”
“Ah, prophecy.” Brada waved Kadak’s attack aside and smiled faintly. “Such a delicate thing.”
Renda met his gaze as she stalked closer and closer to the beast. Through the corner of her eye, she saw a new shadow cross the doorway, but she could not stop to look. Her two-handed grip shifted around her sword hilt. She saw the creature look toward the doorway, felt his terror rise…and she struck.
She breathed in, awake and dully aware that she was standing in her sweat-saturated nightshirt, sword drawn, scabbard thrown aside on the floor. Stone floor chilled her bare feet, and embers from the fireplace cast a glow over stone walls that glinted off her blade. On the wall, a tapestry.
She stared into the tapestry, lost, watching her world solidify around her. It was the tapestry her mother had made of the Battle of Durlindale, where her grandfather Vilmar had died.
Castle Brannagh.
She was in her bed chamber at home, but why? What had happened to her?
Time rushed over her, as it did every time she awakened, and she felt the familiar dull despair crush her heart. The war was over, and two years had passed, two years lost to emptiness.
No, not just emptiness. Not this time. Never again just emptiness.
Pegrine was dead.
She choked out an angry, bitter sob.
Renda’s father had told her that she was haunted by dreams of the violence and horror she’d seen in the war—atrocity and carnage her young mind had not been adequately prepared to handle. But he was wrong. By the gods, the battlefield was where she’d known her place and known almost by instinct what had to be done. The battlefield mattered. On the battlefield, she could win.
Her dreams were the only place where she felt alive anymore, and they were haunted by the mindless futility and horror of this new world at peace, this world they had worked so hard to achieve, where little girls could be butchered by corrupted priests.
She did not scream anymore. She did not give in to the tears of rage, not since Pegrine’s death. She just settled back into her bed and buried herself under the furs, hoping to dream again and this time, perhaps, never to wake at all.
Six
Kharkara Plains
Shouts brought the Dhanani chieftain from his tent—shouts, jeers, taunts. The sounds of sporting and of wagering, two pastimes that were woefully ill-advised during the Squirrel’s Moon when the tribe should be hunting and salting meat and gathering their meager crops against the coming cold. Instead of tending their chores, his people were milling around the Meeting Ground, boosting their children up on their shoulders and craning their necks to see.
His unbound hair shone silver over his black skin, but he still moved with the sure speed and grace of a hunter in the prime of life. The richly carved ironwood staff he carried was the legendary Verge of Anado, Dhanani god of the hunt, given by Him to the first chief of the Dhanani and handed down by combat. The man who carried it ruled all the tribes of the Kharkara plains. Chief Bakti Ka-Durga Ba-Vinda used that staff to gently move aside those of his tribe who had not the sense to step out of his way on their own, until he came to the Meeting Ground and saw what had gathered them here.
At the center of the great flat expanse of bare rock, two men circled each other with their weapons raised, poised for Golchok, the sacred fight to the death. As he recognized their faces, the chieftain wondered how these particular men had come to this.
The larger of the two and the clear favorite to win was Vaccar Ka-Nira Ba-Dree, an honored warrior and hunter who was feared more than he was respected within the tribe. Vaccar’s chest was still bare from the day’s hunt, but on his arm he wore the blackened storyskin of his victories in battle. While the storyskins of younger men were still empty and pale gold, Vaccar’s was black with the embroidered tales of his many feats. No one really believed that Vaccar had killed his wife, Dree, for running out of hair to make his thread, but this was just one of many nearly credible gossips whispered about him, so it surprised no one that Vaccar held no place at the tribal council. Except Vaccar.
His opponent was Aidan Ka-Zoga, the tribe’s healer, a tall, wiry man in a doeskin alb who disliked violence. He was one of the tribe’s spiritual leaders, a shaman of Anado of the Hunt, but he was also a master surgeon, trained by the best in all Syon. In his youth, Aidan had traveled among the Invader tribes, the Bremondines, those who called themselves Syonese, even the Anatayans, and against tribal tradition he had participated in their war that he might study the beliefs and traditions surrounding the different gods, knowing many, as he told the tribe, serving only their own. But some of the tribe’s older families held to more traditional ways. Thus the same knowledge that drew the respect of most of the tribe caused a few to shun him and distrust his prayers even in the face of death.
Near the two men amid a fistful of scattered scrolls and vials crouched a boy, nearly a man, shaking and silent, the front of his leathers wet with his fear. The chieftain recognized the boy as Chul Ka-Dree,Vaccar’s son.
Around the boy he saw scrolls, vials marked in many hands and salve-filled leaves bound into sacs with tree veins. He began to understand. The items could only have come from Aidan. Or from Aidan’s tent.
“The boy is my son,” seethed Vaccar. “A boil on my flank since his birth,” he shouted, casting a stabbing glare at the boy. “And he is mine to punish!”
“And I say,” returned Aidan quietly, calmly, with his bludgeon, a stout tree branch he had found nearby, still raised, “he has learned this lesson.”
“He is an animal. He cannot learn.” Vaccar spat on the ground where his son sat cowering. “By the gods, you should be the one demanding justice! He stole from you!” Vaccar swung his ax. Had Aidan not blocked it, it would have hit the boy. “He steals from everyone no matter how well I treat him. The boy is no good; he deserves to die!”
At this, the chieftain scowled and struck the ground twice with his staff, and instantly the gathered tribesmen turned away, the women lifting water pots to their shoulders, the men trimming the shafts of arrows and sharpening knives as they walked. They met each other’s eye as they walked away. They would see to their wagers later.
Watching each other carefully, the two men lowered their weapons and faced their chief. Chul turned, blinking like an animal in a trap, to see the chieftain looking down at him, and crossed the backs of his hands over his forehead in ritual greeting. But the gesture had less an air of greeting to it than one of cowering. He was terrified.
The boy’s face was swollen, scratched and scraped, and great handfuls of his hair had been yanked out and left on the ground beside him, leaving his scalp to bleed. Bruises stood out darker than his skin where it showed under his overly small leathers, and through the split seams and rips, the chieftain could see long smeary scars on his upper arms and thighs. Burns. Bakti breathed in sharply.
He looked at Vaccar for a moment, barely able to contain his disgust, then turned to Aidan. “You,” he said quietly. “Did this boy steal from you?”
Aidan looked from the boy to Vaccar, then to the chieftain, his jaw working. The tribesmen had no fortresses like the Invaders, no great stone houses with locks on the doors. Their lives were spent in animal skin tents within earshot of their neighbors. Everyone watched the children, everyone shared the work and the meals. Honor and trust were central to the tribe’s existence, and without them, the tribe would break down into warring clans. Thus the laws protecting basic virtues were harsh; thievery, even a child’s thievery, was punishable by death.
“The…lost items have been recovered,” Aidan said finally, casting a gentle smile toward Chul. He stooped to gather the scattered articles together not daring to look up into the chieftain’s eye. “I have not been wronged, Chief Bakti.”
“Coward,” spat Vaccar. “This boy has stolen from everyone in the tribe, my Chief, and he will again. His cursed mother must have whored herself to a Bremondine; no son of mine is he.”
“Vaccar.” Aidan’s voice was quiet, but behind it, a storm raged. “Dree was a good and faithful woman. You dishonor her memory.”
Vaccar laughed bitterly. “She bore me but a single idiot son, and then she died.” He picked up a handful of sand and threw it in his son’s face with contempt. “This boy reasons no better than a javelin dog. He’d be better off dead.”
Aidan scowled and continued picking up his belongings, but Bakti could see in the healer’s eyes that it was good he did not hold a weapon just now. Otherwise Vaccar’s skull might well be bashed in. Seeing that Chul made no move to clean the dust from his face, Chief Bakti crouched beside him and gently brushed it away, taking extra care where it lodged in open cuts. “Is your father’s word true,” he asked quietly, “that you have stolen from the tribe?”
Aidan looked up sharply, but Bakti met his eye, bidding him to silence.
“Yes, my chief,” he said with an even voice. “I have even stolen from you.”
Bakti nodded solemnly, letting his hand fall away from the boy. “So you have been inside my tent, then.”
Chul glanced at his father and sighed. Vaccar all but beamed with a sick sense of vindication. Beyond him, Aidan bound the last of the sacs and scrolls into the folds of his alb with shaking hands. Bakti heard him muttering under his breath the Ten Mantras of Mercy.
“Tell me,” said the chieftain with an enigmatic smile, “what did you take from my tent?”
“Two gold armlets in the shape of serpents.” The boy answered at once. He looked up to meet the chief’s eye with a level gaze. “And the ring with the blue r-ruby.”
“Diamond,” corrected Vaccar automatically, and he raised his hand as if to slap Chul. “Stupid boy.”
These were the most famous of the tribe’s treasures, his ceremonial armlets and the sapphire ring, treaty gifts from the Anatayans and the Bremondines—not the only treasures, surely, but the only ones the boy had ever seen. Bakti nodded thoughtfully, rocking back on his heels.
“Chul.” The chief took the boy’s chin in his hands and turned him so they were looking into each other’s eyes. “I hate thieves.” The boy nodded and again looked to his father, for what,
wondered the chieftain. For approval? Approval for condemning himself? His eye wandered over the burns again. “I hate thieves,” he repeated, shutting his eyes, “but do you know what I hate even more than thieves?”
Chul shook his head.
“Liars.” The chief stood suddenly and enjoyed watching the color drain from Vaccar’s face. “I have found dead vipers at the door to my tent.” He paced away from the boy, closer to the father. “Dead rats, dead hawks. Even dead javelin dogs,” he said, glaring at Vaccar. Then he moved back to crouch beside the boy again and smiled. “Chul, none but those of my blood may enter my tent, thanks to Aidan.”
Aidan shook his head humbly. “Thanks to Anado of the Hunt.”
“And of Mercy,” the chieftain added softly, brushing his fingers over the swelling beneath the boy’s eye. “No. My armlets and my ring are safe in my tent. If Aidan says he was not wronged,” he said, looking up at the healer, “I am inclined to believe him. Go on your way.”
But the boy did not move. He only gazed down at his own bruised knees and sighed, as if Chief Bakti had just given him a sentence worse than death.
Vaccar’s jaw dropped. He looked back and forth between Aidan and Chief Bakti before his gaze settled on the staff. “But he has stolen, my chief. Either kill him or, if you won’t, at least let me—”
The chief shook his head and turned to walk away. “You have done enough, Vaccar.”
A faint gust of wind touched the chief’s back.
Even before Aidan could shout to warn him, Bakti was already turning, his staff catching Vaccar’s ax coming down where his head had been a moment before. He turned again and twisted the staff between them to send the hunter flying gracelessly over his ax to sprawl across the ground. By the time Vaccar was back on his feet, Bakti was facing him with the staff readied.
“You would challenge me?” Bakti asked in amazement. “Why?”
“I would be chief.” Vaccar attacked again and snarled with the effort to battle the staff away, to put himself behind it, but the chief calmly nudged aside each blow and threw him back again. And again.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 9