“Possibly.” Dalthaz nodded uncertainly. He seemed to want to say more, but he did not. “Well, in any event, now you understand.” He rubbed his bald scalp nervously. “We have tried every means at our disposal, but we cannot so much as reach the door. Their defenses are,” he pursed his lips a moment, “powerful in the extreme. Four men tried, but...” The mayor suddenly smiled with all the reassurance he could muster. “Those inside—”
“The bandits.”
“Yes, the, er…bandits. They took retribution, as well.”
“Retribution?” Dith frowned. “How so?”
Dalthaz sighed. “No woman of Montor has conceived a child since they took the temple, and we fear for those who were already expecting.” He patted at his cloak as he spoke. “So you see we’re taking a terrible chance...”
They were not the only ones taking a chance. These were not simple bandits, not if they could exact that kind of retribution. Dalthaz was clearly keeping something from him, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. Dith looked down. “This is Rjeinar’s only temple here?” When the mayor nodded, he looked back toward the building. “All the priests are within?”
“It is the main temple of His recivalesche, yes, but,” Dalthaz shrugged, reaching into his boot, “one Rjeinarian priest remains outside the temple, the one you saw on the street, but...”
Dith looked at him and frowned. How did he know Dith had seen a Rjeinarian on the street? He’d been inside the pub.
“Suffice it to say, he’s grown old and feeble.” The man chittered, patting the pockets of his breeches. “He is no use against this. Ah.” He pulled out a folded bit of birch bark and put it into Dith’s hand. “This is a map of the temple. We got the old Rjeinarian to draw this—”
“So you would have me defeat them for you.” The sorcerer peeked around the edge of the fence once more before he fell back beside the mayor. He turned to face the man, and his eyes held a peculiar sort of twinkle. “I want to be certain we understand each other clearly.”
“Yes, we want them defeated.” The mayor frowned curiously. “Of course. That is why I brought you out here.”
Dith stood and moved to stand before the huge gate of iron bars. But he did not open them, did not touch them, and the small birch bark map fell unread at his feet. He pushed back the sleeves of his robes to bare his hands, and he raised them toward the stone building.
“But...” The mayor stood beside him, looking anxiously between the conjuring mage and the building. “But...”
Dith cried out sharply, and a huge white flame exploded from the building. The windows burst from the towers, and flaming, partially melted stones crumbled to the ground near the gate. The building was completely engulfed.
“What have you done!” cried Dalthaz, holding his head in his hands. “What have you done!”
But Dith was not finished. He closed his eyes once more, and a great storm of ice and hail flew from his fingers to crash over the burning temple. Instantly, the rage of the fire became no more than an angry hiss of steam and smoldering ash.
The mayor looked on hopelessly, barely managing to step aside before a great rush of warm water poured through the gates and washed away the map. For once, his ready smile failed him.
Dith only stood watching Rjeinar’s temple fall to pieces, watching the sooty water flow over his feet, with an enigmatic smile on his lips. After all, Rjeinar could only kill him once. He said nothing, letting the gold cloth of his sleeves tumble down over his hands once more.
The townspeople came running out into the street. The sound of the explosion and the glow at their windows had brought them running from their shops and homes, some carrying buckets of water, but by the time they reached the temple, it was no more than a smoldering ruin.
“Constable!” shrieked the mayor. “Seize this man and chain him in the prison.”
Behind Dalthaz, the remaining stones of the temple flew apart viciously, as if kicked by a giant schoolboy, and Dith laughed openly. Within seconds, nothing remained but a heap of rock and ash.
The constable approached him very carefully, and at first, it seemed as if Dith would resist. But instead of resisting, Dith obediently presented his arms to be bound behind him. Every Hadrian schoolboy knew that a mage was helpless without his hands to direct his energy, and once Dith was bound, the Hadrians were much bolder. The townspeople who had hidden from him before threw stones at him as the constable led him away to the jail. They did not seem to care that the stones bounced off without hitting him.
“It was worth it!” Dith cried to the heavens as he stumbled away behind the constable. “It was worth it just to see You angry, Rjeinar!” Through the corner of his eye, he saw a shock of white hair and a green robe, but when he looked again, it was gone.
It might have been hours or days later; he could not be sure. They had fed him and given him water several times, but in the depths of the prison, he could not reckon the time of day. With little else to occupy him, he had spent a great deal of his time asleep, so that even his own body did not know whether the sun shone or not. But once, toward the end of his stay, he had a visitor.
“You are the one called Dith?” came a voice near his cell door.
“I am,” he said from his bed, not bothering to try to see through the darkness to the form outside the bars.
“I am Kano.” The voice drew breath. “Late of the temple of Rjeinar.”
Ah, the one who remained outside. The one who had so deftly steered him into the mayor’s hands.
You see, son, we were told to expect you.
“Are you come for revenge, Kano? Go on, then.” Dith sneered and turned his back to the shadowy form. “I’ve vexed your Rjeinar. Twice. My life is complete.” He glanced up toward the top of his prison where several amulets hung above his reach, then out toward the priest with an insincere smile. “Although with my power damped by these amulets, you’ll not find me much of a challenge.”
“Amulets, bah. Do not speak nonsense.” The cleric drew nearer the bars, and in spite of himself, Dith’s eyes widened. Even in the dim torchlight of the dungeon, he could see the countless marks of vengeance, the tattoos, the ritual scars on Kano’s hands and face. The whole of the man’s body beneath his green robes was likely similarly marked. The cleric’s hair was cut away in thick swaths to leave the rest to stand out in a wrathful shock about his head. But even more, he could see the ultimate mark of Rjeinar’s grace. The old cleric’s eyes were opaque, solid white with no color at all, not even the colorless color of Hadrian irises. Rjeinar had closed Kano’s eyes completely. “You have lived under Rjeinar’s vengeance for three years, Dith.”
“Yes, I have.” The sorcerer chuckled quietly before he sat up on the wooden cot. “It seems your god has no sense of humor.”
Kano sniffed. “Rjeinar has an appreciation of wit,” he replied, “particularly well-wrought schemes of vengeance. But He has no patience with those who treat Him lightly. I am sworn to His service, but even I would not dream—”
“You self righteous little scut,” Dith laughed bitterly. “I used His face and His name only to confound a bunch of Hadrian traitors and rescue Duke Brada; I promise you, I took no pleasure in it.”
“You had but to ask—”
“Brada was dying; the Resistance had come into a trap!” He turned his head away in a dismissive gesture. “I did what came to mind. I used His likeness to scare away the Hadrians. Or would Rjeinar have Kadak still in power?”
“His…likeness?” Kano sighed. “Ah. You do not understand. This discussion is ended.” He turned to walk away.
“Is that all, Kano?” Dith cried after him. “You brought yourself into this place just to remind me that Rjeinar still bears me ill will? Did you forget your all precious vengeance, Priest?”
“No,” replied the cleric coldly, still walking away. “I came to offer you a bargain.”
“Don’t waste your breath,” muttered the mage. “I have had enough of your mayor’s bargains.”
/>
At the prison door, Kano turned, and through the darkness of the corridor, Dith thought he saw the priest smile. “A bargain,” he said, “from Rjeinar.”
Dith woke to find the constable shaking him. “Good thing,” the guard muttered as Dith finally opened his eyes and rose from his bed. “Hate to think something happened to you before we could execute you proper.”
Dith smiled and turned, putting his hands behind his back for the constable to bind. He glanced at the ceiling and noted with some satisfaction that the amulets remained behind. Not that they would have made much difference, but he would rather do without the pain. Besides, the Hadrians could take comfort enough; his hands were bound. Just the same, two large guards joined the constable outside the prison block to escort Dith up the stone stairs and past the menacing executioner’s block just inside the justice chamber.
Dith was not terribly surprised to see Dalthaz sitting at the judge’s bench. The Hadrian mayor was dressed much as he had been in the tavern except that now he wore a pompous blue rag of some sort tied about his neck, no doubt with all sorts of historical significance in Hadrian jurisprudence. To Dith’s eye, it looked rather like a foppish hangman’s noose.
The constable led him to stand at the very center of the chamber, still held by the guards.
“Dith the Merciless,” spoke the mayor, and Dith could not help but smile. So they had heard of him after all. “You stand arrested of murder, mayhem, recklessness and blasphemy in the matter of the Temple of Rjeinar. What say you to these charges?”
Murder. So those in the temple had not been bandits after all. So who were they, then? He doubted he would ever know. Dith looked about him at the hateful glares of the townspeople—colorless stares that glanced away under his blue-white gaze. Then he shrugged. “Would it matter?”
By the time the townspeople had finished muttering and whispering, the judge had finished his angry scribbling, blotted it and handed it down to the constable. Then he sat back with a look of smug satisfaction on his face. A look of power renewed.
The constable glanced at the writ and nodded to the judge. “Having been found guilty of the charges of murder, mayhem, recklessness and blasphemy,” he intoned, already leading Dith to the executioner’s block. “Know now that the mage, Dith, also called the Merciless, shall be put to immediate death in the presence of this assembly.”
Dith looked over the faces of the crowd. Strange that Rjeinar’s only surviving cleric in the town should miss witnessing his death, especially under the circumstances. But he saw something else, as well. At the constable’s reading of his sentence, a fiery wave of righteousness and retribution passed over the faces of the crowd. Surely they were taking far too much pleasure from this sentence, as if Dith’s demise meant far more to them than he could guess. No, not pleasure, he saw. Relief. His eyes turned back toward Dalthaz, knowing and cold, and the mayor looked away.
They were not just executing Dith for his crimes. They were executing someone else by proxy. But whom?
At a nod from the constable, the two nearest guards came to take Dith’s arms. “Have you any last requests?”
Dith looked at the two men, studying their faces with his blue eyes until they looked away uncomfortably.
The constable shifted on his feet, taking up the large ax. “Have you any last requests, I said.” He cleared his throat. “Any last words?”
“Yes,” said Dith calmly. He glanced at the guard on his right. “Sleep,” he said softly, and at once the man’s helmeted head dropped to his chest. “You, as well,” he said to the one on his left. By the time the two men slipped to the floor, Dith had made his way to the door, dodging the startled townspeople and the constable. He had it pulled open before anyone could react.
As he opened the door, two guards who stood just outside grabbed him by his arms, which were still bound behind him.
“Guards!” cried the mayor, standing suddenly. “Stop him!”
But before the two could draw their swords, all three men vanished.
It would take them a minute or two to figure out that the faces of the two guards who had grabbed him at the door were the same as those who slept within. It would take them another minute to get over their shock that he had managed to use magic in spite of their bindings and their amulets, and perhaps two more minutes after that before they could organize themselves to search for him. That would be more than enough time.
Dith ran back through the corridors and down the steps to retrieve his rucksack from beneath the guard’s table near his cell. Then he ran lightly past the last burning shreds of the rope that had bound his hands moments before, bending the light around him as he moved through the corridors so that no one would see him. A moment later, having made certain no one was near, he pushed open the door and stepped outside into the morning light.
“Congratulations,” came a voice as he stepped beyond the doorway. He turned and raised his hands to defend himself, but the voice only laughed. In the sunlight, Dith saw the green-robed form of Kano standing before him. He fancied that had the man’s eyes had any color, they would have been staring right at him.
“I imagine you are bending the light around yourself so as not to be seen; smart, that. But then you wonder that I, who am blind, know you are there?” His strangely marked face split in an ugly grimace that seemed to Dith a sort of smile. “I could recognize you by your smell alone, mage, and I advise you that there is a lake nearby warmed by hot springs and surrounded by vringo plants, which might serve you well in that regard.” The cleric listened a moment, then gestured him to follow. “Truly,” he said in a much softer voice, “I recognized many things. Your step, your manner. Your thoughts.”
The mage raised one eyebrow. “So you can read my thoughts? What am I thinking now?”
The Rjeinarian chuckled. “Come, do you suppose Rjeinar leaves us utterly blind when he takes our sight? We are blind to petitions of pity, blind to pleadings for mercy, but not to the hearts of men.” He turned toward Dith, as if he might still see, then turned back to the road.
“Your heart, for example. Very instructive.” He smiled again. “I see in you a great potential, more than you might imagine.” Kano nodded back toward the court building, where people were beginning to come out into the daylight. “You put two guards to sleep within, yes?”
Dith nodded, wondering how the cleric could have known since he had not been in the chamber. Then remembering that Kano was blind, he answered, “Yes.”
Kano clasped his hands behind his back. “They will never come awake.”
“Nonsense,” said Dith. “They will wake any time now.” He had used so little energy he wondered that they had fallen asleep at all. They would never come awake—of course they would; what was Kano saying?
Kano smiled again and looked back over his shoulder to where several townsmen carried the two guards outside into the sunlight and knelt to splash their faces with cold water. “Perhaps among the stars.” The cleric continued his apparently solitary walk away from the court, passing once more the tavern where Dalthaz had hired Dith the tenday before, glancing in his blind way toward the brand new door on the charred doorframe. “And what of the temple?”
Dith laughed and ran to catch up with the priest. Ah, now they would finally get to the meat of the conversation. “If you can read my heart so well, then you know ‘what of the temple.’”
“Yes,” he murmured. “But do you?”
Dith stared at him sideways a moment, sure that he was missing the old man’s meaning. “Just like a priest, to speak in riddles. No love is lost between Rjeinar and me. You know this as well as anyone could. You and the rest of his priests have dogged me since the war’s end.” His voice sounded uncertain, even in his own ears. “Destroying the temple was my revenge against him.”
“Revenge.” Kano smiled. “So it had nothing to do with the...bandits?”
“Nothing.”
“I see.” Kano stroked his chin. “But this revenge of yours,�
�� murmured the cleric with veiled amusement. “Revenge for what?”
“For two years spent under his death sentence, dodging every green-robed cleric that crossed my path.” Then Dith laughed. “I suppose He might even find that amusing if He has the wit to see it.”
The whites of Kano’s eyes flared red, and a strange low voice erupted from deep within his chest. “Beware, Dith the Blasphemer, lest you raise My wrath against you again.”
Dith stood back and lowered his hands from the straps of his rucksack to his sides. Strange how much the red-eyed face of Kano resembled the image he had created in Kadak’s stronghold. “What do you mean, again?”
But the strange voice only laughed. Then, just as quickly, the red of Kano’s eyes faded to white.
“Rjeinar,” Dith called, setting his rucksack on the ground and raising his arms to the heavens. “Face me! Do not hide behind an old blind man’s skirts!”
Kano shook his head. He bent to lift Dith’s rucksack and handed it to him before he hurried the young sorcerer along the road. “They will expect you to stay to the roads, since they think you ill equipped for climbing. Instead, trek eastward two miles, to the lake I mentioned. A spring feeds the stream that fills that lake, and it flows through a deep ravine up the mountain to the north; you will have to climb up and then down and then up again to cross it as there is no bridge. From there, turn north and run parallel to the goat path. The way is hard, but I believe you will find what you seek there.”
“Galorin’s Keep?” Dith looked that way but saw only forestlands and the rise into the Hodrache Range.
“If that is what you seek.” The cleric touched Dith’s shoulder and somehow managed not to burn his hand.
“Why do you help me?” Dith looked suspiciously along the path the priest indicated, wondering if he should trust the Rjeinarian.
“Because you did what no priest could do. What I could not do. You freed Rjeinar.”
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 22