Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

by Jordan MacLean

  Once the cardinal came, Renda’s writ had said, once the plague was gone and the crops were safely stored away against their hunger, the farmers would come to see the Sheriff of Brannagh as they had before, their lord and protector, and his daughter, their guardian and hero of the Five Hundred Years’ War. Gikka would be a hero among them again when they were back to themselves.

  Gikka chuckled softly. That was Renda, ever out to believe the best of people, that the good in men was sometimes set askew by adversity, to be set right again by grace. But for Gikka’s part, she was certain the reverse was true, that the farmers were set arights and at ease now; they were back to their distrustful, blameful selves again, back to the men they were before this alien peace set them awry with false charity and tolerance for the likes of her, war hero or no. And if ever that charity returned, she would not trust it again, having seen beneath its skirts.

  She nudged Zinion out the southern gate to the road with Chul behind her. They could not hope to stay to the shadows, not with Chul’s untrained and damnably luminous horse, but likewise, she could not lose the horse’s speed to have the boy afoot, not if they were seen. So they would do what they must and stay to the road. With any luck, they would pass the crossroads and be well on the way to Farras before the villagers saw them, with only the sealed city gates to slow them.

  But Gikka never trusted to luck.

  “Hold, there!” cried Maddock, and he galloped ahead to the signpost where the roads crossed. He took his sword from its sheath and slowed his horse to walk toward the shadow beneath the clump of trees at the road’s edge. Trap, his mind shrieked in panicked tones, she lies in wait for you, just ahead, and once you get close enough...

  He hesitated, conscious of the men behind him, watching him. He could turn back; in faith, he had seen no more than a darkness against darkness, and it might well have been his own fancy. Sure it was nothing more.

  But a horse shuffled its hooves up ahead, and he heard a sharp whispered curse, in the voice of a woman. Or a youth, he allowed grudgingly. Either way, someone was there, and he was already engaged to investigate. He could feel the eyes at his back, worried, wanting his courage and leadership. His exhausted mount stepped closer, and suddenly he could make out the white flank of a horse.

  What luck, he grinned, kicking his horse up, if indeed he had caught Gikka in guilty flight from her own hall, and what then of the sheriff’s refusal to see her as the murderer? Outside the safety of her manor, he assured himself, and away from the protections of Lady Renda, she was no more fearsome than any other lousy Bremondine bitch, and he well how to deal with her.

  He heard the hooves of the horse skitter over the rocks, as if to race away toward Farras. “Hold, I said, or by damn, you’ll ride less’n a mile ere we cut you down.”

  At his words, the nervy white horse drew up to a fitful stop. Behind it, somewhere in the darkness of the shadows, Maddock was certain he heard another set of hooves. He squinted, but he saw nothing.

  “Why do you stop me?” came a young man’s voice, full of challenge, and Maddock rode closer to see that indeed another horse was drawn up beside the first, dark and shadowy, but a horse all the same, and bearing a rider. Two riders, but who would ride with her? His mouth felt dry suddenly. Only one would ride with her, one away in the north, in the Hodrache Range. One he had hoped never to face in battle.

  “Our fight is with the Bremondine,” he growled, but his voice was shaking. “You other, ride away unharmed.”

  But as he feared they might, both horses stood their ground.

  “Who’s a bloody Bremondine?” This voice came from the one in the shadows, a gruff adolescent voice in the accent of Farras and still a bit unused to its new depth, so it seemed to him. This voice, too, crackled in challenge, but with a thinly disguised arrogance and even bitterness about it as well.

  Maddock stared at the two shadowy forms in confusion. Dith the Merciless was young, but Maddock had heard the mage’s voice once or twice during the war, enough to know that he was no milk-fed boy. Yet now he had heard both riders’ voices, and neither sounded the least of Dith or of Gikka. Then again, voices could be disguised, especially by one as cunning as Gikka. He held his lantern up to study their faces.

  The one who rode the dark horse wore his brown hair back in a womanish sort of tail over the lowered hood of his cloak and glared at Maddock with black rebellious eyes, far too dark and far too young to be the mage Dith. His thick brows met in the arch above his nose, and he had a scattering of pimply scars over his babyish cheeks. The first of his beard had come in along his chin, and he had a pitiful little mustache over the disdainful curl of his lips. Though dark of hair and eye, the boy’s skin looked flaccid and pale in the glare of the lantern and his build was far too stocky for Maddock to take him for Bremondine. With rough, smudgy features like his, there was no mistaking this one for a lass, and sure not for one as handsome as Gikka of Graymonde. This could not be she, much as he might want it so. Reluctantly, he turned his attention to the one on the white horse.

  That one sat hood up, and Maddock took the hood down with a violent, triumphant jerk, his dirk held ready to cut a Bremondine throat. But then he could only stare in surprise. This boy was dark, at least part Dhanani, smooth-skinned with his black hair in long thin braids down about his shoulders. Without a word, Maddock swiped rudely at Chul’s face and looked at his fingers. No, no maquille, no mud. The coloring was his own.

  Maddock ignored the outrage in the boy’s eyes and turned his horse away. “Away with you, lads,” he grumbled in dismissal, not even bothering to look back at them. “See you’re well away ere the fighting starts.”

  “Fighting?”

  At the cold amusement in the arrogant boy’s voice, Maddock shuddered. Then he turned back to see the boy glaring at him coldly, and in that gaze he felt a murderous wrath. Such a glare as he might expect from the Bremondine if she knew what they were about. He blinked his eyes, and once again, he saw only two sullen adolescent boys whose horses shuffled impatiently by the roadside. In any case, they bore no swords; they were harmless enough. “Away, by the gods, or you’ll come to harm.”

  Then Maddock rode back to where the men stood waiting to storm Graymonde Hall. When he turned to glare back at them, when he looked as if he might come toward them again, they very carefully and deliberately turned their horses out of the shadows and walked them down the road toward Farras.

  He watched the boys ride out of his sight, the dark horse disappearing against the night and then the white one. Odd that he had seen the dark horse as the better animal when now it danced and bucked almost angrily, much more than the white one. No horse for Gikka of Graymonde, either of those; the filthy Bremondine thief’s horse was as well trained as the sheriff’s own while the knights’ farmers had to ride beasts no better than mules. But not for long. He would ride the assassin’s mount back to the village himself, and right past the gates of Castle Brannagh. And once there? He laughed grimly and led his men up the northern road toward the hall. Once there, he would ride against the sheriff and take Castle Brannagh for his own.

  Gikka watched Chul bare his teeth when the lantern light left him, watched him raise his hunting knife to throw into the man’s back, but she touched his arm. Wait, her signal said. She saw the frustration in the boy’s eyes. But if she let him have his satisfaction against Maddock, they would never escape with their lives. Her eyes met his. He would obey her, if just this once.

  She tapped her two long nails on the saddle. Patience.

  By the time the villagers had ridden through the gates to dismount outside the manor house, Gikka and Chul had stopped just below a hilltop to watch. Chul had led his horse to stand and graze above a thick stand of trees where its white coat would not be seen before he joined Gikka and Zinion a few yards away to see where the villagers had just broken through the doors of the manor house.

  The shouts of vengeance when they rode through the Graymonde gate did not carry this far
from the hall, not over the little brook or the thick grasses and low trees of the foothills below. Neither did the death screams of her livestock in the barn nor the breaking and splintering of each of her few belongings that remained within.

  “We could have killed them,” he offered quietly. When she made no answer, he looked up at her. “We still can.”

  “Nay, lad,” she sighed at last, peeling away the strips of false beard and brow, the thin mustache. “We cannot.” Her eyes narrowed to see the men drag her sheep and pigs out into the green to slaughter them. “We cannot.”

  “Honor again?” he asked quietly, but Gikka could hear the mocking undertone in his voice. “Is this what your precious honor buys you?”

  “You’d not understand,” she breathed, taking the thick wads of silk from her cheeks and using them to wipe the pallid gritty maquille from her face. “And even if you might, I’ve not the will to try you. Yes, honor it is, that I let them take what’s mine and leave them to live for a time while it serves. Honor, that I’d not be killing off the sheriff’s men just now when the plague takes more than its share. But honor it is, too, lad, that I’ll not be leaving this account unsettled.” She glanced at him, then loosed her hair from the thong that bound it. “Them as owe will pay, and no mistake.”

  Chul nodded and they watched the villagers’ lanterns and torches move past the windows of the manor house for a time, past the window that had been his own chamber. A few moments later, he looked up at her a bit uncertainly. “If that, that mage, the one you told me about, if he were here...”

  But Gikka closed her eyes and raised her fingers just slightly from the saddle in a gesture of such pain and weariness that Chul fell to silence and turned his gaze back across the valley toward the hall.

  Below them, the villagers had come together in the central square before the manor house, some from the house itself, another from the empty stables, some from the barn, a few from the mews, and even one from the mine road. Not one had come from the crypt.

  The large one, the man who had spoken to them, came from the house carrying something—a weapon, it seemed, and suddenly, the villagers renewed their search. Having spoken only a word or two between themselves, they moved now to search the grounds again, careful to sweep their weapons through the shadows before they moved, but when they came together again at the center square, they were even more frustrated. Their anger was obvious. By now, they had figured out that she had known they were coming. They would know she had escaped them.

  “Ah,” breathed Gikka. “They’ve found the sword. Thinking, they are, that I’d not have left it behind, and they’ll be searching for me anew.”

  “Your sword?” Chul’s eyes grew wide. “But why did you...”

  “Peace, lad,” she whispered, engrossed by the tableau before her. “See, they’ve not a wit between them where to look. I could have stood just there, look you, right betwixt the mews and the stables, and they’d not have seen me yet.” She ground her teeth together. “Best we go now.”

  Chul was still staring, watching them light torches. “Gikka...?”

  “They’ll be setting it afire, now,” said Gikka with strange resignation. She patted Zinion’s shoulder and turned him away. “Their hope, to drive me out of hiding an I’m still within or to draw me down out of the hills to fight an I watch.” She shook her head sadly. “Best we not stay, or they might have their way, aye?”

  Chul said nothing and she watched him climb into his saddle to follow her.

  Black smoke poured from the house, now, and in a few of the windows. Flames crept up the draperies and filled the windows. She glanced back only once, to see a stream of lantern light pouring in along the southern road. The road from the mines. The miners were coming to protect what was theirs. She had expected no less from them. She watched the foreman stop for just a moment at the crypt and disappear down to the gate. A moment later, he came out again and routed the villagers back toward the house. She smiled.

  The seal had fooled the miners well enough; they would be keeping fire out of the crypt, now, and the sundry writs and papers and miscellany she had stored there would likewise be safe, at least until Marketday. By then, she should have had ample time to reclaim it, and Graymonde, as well, so she hoped.

  Her eyes flickered over the boy worriedly. She had gone to great lengths to keep him away from the miners, to keep him from so much as seeing one of them. The Dhanani hatred for Hadrians was visceral, deep and uncontrollable. She had seen Aidan, the merciful shaman of Anado, foam at the mouth and claw his way through a band of knights to get to a Hadrian. If Chul were to look back, if he were to see one of them even at this distance, she would lose him.

  But he did not. His attention was fully engaged in guiding his horse up the rocks.

  Gikka turned away, trusting that she had sacrificed everything she ever had for good reason. They rode in silence for some moments until at last Gikka broke the silence.

  “Tell me, lad.” She managed a smile and gestured him forward to ride beside her. “Have you given a thought to passing the gates of Farras?”

  Eighteen

  Hodrache Range

  The whole cliff was rotten, veined and crumbly like an old cheese, and even without touching it Dith knew his fingers could gain no purchase on it, nor could his boots. Curdled clumps of the strange orange rock lay in a slump against the foot of the cliff where sheets of it had fallen the few hundred feet and smashed to bits, and protruding here and there from that pile, he found rotting bits of rope and cloth, crushed tools, even some broken bones. He squinted up toward the top of the stone wall once more and shook his head in amazement. The world was full of fools.

  With only a glance back toward the river, he turned westward along the cliff’s base to look for another way up this peak. By turning west, he was taking himself farther and farther from the river, his only sure connection to the keep, but he had no choice. The cliff was too treacherous, the falls themselves too violent and slick. He would have to trust that he could regain the river once he reached the top.

  He had made no mistakes in his path; he was sure of that. Path, indeed. The way seemed to him nearly a trail laid out for his benefit and so clearly that he could not have gone astray if he had sleepwalked the whole way. The trek had been by no means an easy one, cutting through the occasional thick clots of forest, but neither had it been the harrowing gauntlet the legend had led him to expect. He had met nothing more sinister than a field of nettles the whole way from Montor. Except for this cliff.

  A year ago, he would have ported himself to the top of that cliff without a thought. No. A year ago, he would have ported straight to Galorin’s Keep as soon as he found the River Stone instead of wasting so much time trekking and climbing through these mountains afoot. He moved a low tree branch aside, feeling the sack slip on his shoulder again.

  His scalp prickled with a chilling realization. A year ago, he was such another fool, like the poor souls lying buried under that crumbling rock. Did he think he was the first sorcerer to think of porting? Even if he were, Galorin was no simpleton. Dith shrugged the sack up irritably. How many others had ported themselves right into the bottom of a glacier, or right over a thousand foot chasm, and with no strength left to haul themselves out again? He swallowed hard. Or right into the heart of a volcano? A year ago, he would have failed.

  No more than a mile to the west, the high cliff relented at last and grudgingly sloped downward to meet a bed of rocks and boulders that lay nestled against its flank, just where a landslide had dropped them eons ago. Dith stopped, a bit unsettled to have found so ready a climb so near the cliff, so near the falls. If those others had but taken the time to look...

  He crouched beside the lowest rocks and studied the fall of the boulders carefully, planning his way up the hillside. This would not be easy, but it was survivable. With only a glance back the way he had come, he began his climb.

  He walked easily over the lowest of the rocks to step and scramble her
e and there to the higher ones. For a good part of the way, the stones and smaller boulders fell neatly so that he could find a way up to the next larger boulder without too much effort, having only to lift his robes a bit to test his footing, but about halfway up the large boulders became even larger, and he found himself having to find toeholds and heave himself up the sides. It was strenuous work, but not particularly dangerous. Were he to fall, he could not fall far. Besides, the stones were well settled and so far he had found them trustworthy.

  Then he paused a moment, listening. What had he heard?

  He crouched on the stone and closed his eyes, listening to the forest around him. Birds called to one another in unharried tones and hopped from branch to branch, the trees moved in the breeze, but that was all...

  No, he heard it again.

  It was the sound of a horse’s hooves, the quiet crunch of leaves and pine needles on the forest floor. Dith opened his eyes and looked down from his perch high in the rocks, down into the forest, but the trees shaded the forest floor below him. He saw nothing but tree limbs and shadows beyond the edge of the boulder field. A moment later, he heard the horse turn and lope slowly eastward toward the river.

  He frowned up at the next boulder. The legends never spoke of whether another mage might follow his path to the keep. He set his boot against a notch in the stone and clawed himself up with a grunt. To follow another’s path, especially through the legend of Galorin’s Keep, is to accept his folly as your own. If, on the other hand, the man you choose to follow should be the one mage in almost four thousand years to reach Galorin, then you were one lucky sod. Dith scowled down at the forest. One lucky, undeserving sod.

  Foolish. That was just foolish. The hunter whispered curses and reined his horse in behind a tree. The mage had followed the river for nigh on a month, never straying more than fifty yards from it, and the hunter had grown careless. Now, high on the hillside above him, his quarry hung suspended like a gold spider against a sheer glassy wall, frozen, listening. Dith had heard the hunter’s horse; now he knew they were there.