Hallin was barely conscious, but he nodded.
“Come, we must fetch his head,” huffed the Hadrian, setting his shoulder under Hallin’s good arm, “and then it’ll be time we went our ways.” He put his back into lifting the mage to his feet and stumbled under the man’s weight.
“Hallin, is it?”
“Aye, Hallin of Graeme,” sighed the wounded mage in defeat. He took his own weight from Tawn’s shoulders and stood unsteadily. “Dith, I presume.” He looked around himself half-heartedly, as if he did not really expect to see anyone standing nearby. When he heard no answer, he spoke up impatiently. “Dith, also called the Merciless, the Impenitent—” He coughed.
“The same.” The voice seemed to come from somewhere to the right now. “I see you’ve heard of me.”
“Aye.” Hallin tried to step forward but stumbled. He would have fallen except that Tawn caught him. It was no use. He did not have the strength to face Dith, not now. One arm was burned and useless, and he had already spent almost every bit of energy he had. After years of hunting mages, of planning and plotting and driving them into traps, of forcing them to waste their power, now this one had finally drawn him out, trapped him here exhausted and injured, and now, this one would destroy him. Hallin cleared his throat. “Tracked you through the Range, I have, by order of the mayor of Montor.” He raised his good arm unsteadily toward Dith’s voice, not readying an attack but merely in defense. “I’m sent to fetch your head.”
Dith made no sound, no motion. A bounty hunter. Just another bounty hunter. He almost laughed. The thought struck him as ludicrous, standing here within clear view of the greatest treasure any mage had ever found. Standing here above the ruins of Galorin’s Keep. Above the footprints of an army. Was this bounty hunter blind or just terribly shortsighted?
“I see,” he murmured at last, letting a slight note of amused disappointment into his voice. “Forgive me; I mistook you for a mage.”
Hallin snarled at the insult and flexed his one good hand, and a ripple of heat split the air. His intended victim had already moved well away, and Hallin watched the rock wall absorb this last flare of his energy without buckling and melting away as it should have, as it would have if he had been any less exhausted. If he could have used both his hands to direct the power. He completed the gesture with a dismissive wave.
“You mistook nothing, and have your head I will, if not today...” He coughed again and fell gasping against Tawn’s shoulder.
Dith said nothing and watched the white-hot flames climb the bark of the old trees, crackling and popping in the green wood beneath it and right next to Hallin’s head, yet the hunter seemed oblivious even to the smoke and heat of it. Limbs high above him burned hot, ready to fall on him, but he did not move; neither did his Hadrian companion. Fascinating. Dith cast a quick glance down toward the keep’s ruins, then a few hundred feet nearer, toward where he had fallen back after Hallin’s attack. The stump of the great tree was still smoldering, and charred bits of wood scattered the ground. Beneath them, the tiny scrap of gold cloth he had torn from his robes and stuck to a branch still glimmered.
He raised his hand a moment, a storm of frozen rain and ice in his fingertips. Then he looked at the two men, the one pale with pain and depleted, the other struggling to support his weight, and he lowered his hand again. They would never survive the cold. Instead, he turned away.
“Hallin,” he called a few moments later from a spot well below them, and both men moved almost involuntarily toward his voice. A second later, a thick fiery limb fell where they had been standing, and the two men looked back. What they saw there, since they apparently did not see fire, Dith could only guess. “Hallin,” he called again, and slowed his words to be certain the man understood, “the forest burns behind you.” He expected to see perhaps a quizzical or befuddled look on the man’s face, or possibly a look of revelation. Instead, he saw two expressions of shock, of sheer terror, of frozen gasping fear, and not of the flames but of him, as if he had set the invisible woods afire himself to block their escape. Fools. Meanwhile, the fire spread above them on the mountain. “Best you see to it,” he prompted before he turned away.
At the charred stump that marked the forest edge, he heard a hideous cry of pain from high on the rim, a scream of such agony that he stopped, wondering whether Hallin and his companion had been swallowed by the flames. But the fire was gone to no more than steamy mist, and a moment later, as if in quiet confirmation, a rush of cool damp air swept down toward him and on toward the keep just below.
By the time he reached the ruined glassy towers of the keep, he could make out the dusty gray of Hallin’s robes shambling off balance through the trees high on the crater wall, and the Hadrian dragging him along, supporting his weight. Whether by Hallin’s decision or no, they were no longer pursuing Dith, no longer even looking down into the valley after him, but were instead making their way up toward the rim, and most probably, back to Montor. There, once Hallin’s arm had been tended, they might set out after Dith again, but by that time he hoped to be well away from this place and with nothing left behind him but a cold trail.
Dith shifted his rucksack to his other shoulder as he moved past what remained of the high obsidian doorway and peered into the keep. What he had expected to see there, he could not say, but he was disappointed.
The keep had indeed been gutted. No charred bits of tapestries hung from the walls, no banners, no burnt wood of chairs or tables. Nothing but collapsed obsidian stone. He shrugged up the rucksack and stepped a bit reluctantly into the keep, half expecting the rest of the walls to come tumbling down around him. But they did not.
He supposed his feet crunched over what remained of the roof and the upper two floors; the ceiling above stood open to the sky, and what remained of the towers had only just crumbled down into the stairways at the four corners of the great hall. Thus, in only a moment, he had surveyed the whole of the ruins.
Any furnishings Galorin might have kept had been utterly destroyed or taken as spoils, so that the walls were barren but for their amazing weblike pattern of shattering, and of Galorin himself Dith found nothing but a small bit of metal cloth: gold cloth, like that of his own robes, and of an eerily perfect match with the strip he had torn away to fool Hallin.
In a few places, especially near the center of the great hall, the smooth obsidian floor shone through beneath thick piles of rubble, a flawless glassy floor that glowed a dark, distant blood red. He bent to touch it, to feel the comforting warmth that rose from it, and he understood why the floor was still intact. Far below, how many miles or leagues he could not know, but the whole of the floor reached down to the heart of the volcano.
Most of the floor glowed with only the barest glimmer of red light, no more than a hint under the deep black of the obsidian, but as he approached the center of the great hall, the place best guarded in the whole keep, the light grew brighter—ever so slightly brighter—barely enough that he should notice. Dith licked his lips and stashed the tiny bit of cloth in his rucksack.
He brushed aside what he could with his foot, clearing a path toward the center of the hall where the debris was heaped the highest. He kicked violently at the thick piles of stone that blocked his view of the floor, then got down on his knees to push it all aside, to rake it away until his hands bled with cuts. His mind only barely registered the burned black rug he pulled away at last.
Then he sat back. The name he had just called out still hung on the air. Galorin! But no; Galorin was not here. Just where the floor should have been hottest, just where it should have glowed bright red, it was cold and black. He was looking at a huge black bubble in the obsidian.
Dith laughed bitterly and fingered the burned rug he had cast away so hastily. A modest rug, he saw now, set down to cover the only flaw in the whole keep. Tears dribbled meanly down his face, and he brushed them away with an angry swipe to hear them sizzle over the hot obsidian. He had touched the illusion. He had touched the illus
ion and found it wanting, and now Galorin’s Keep fell cheap to his eye.
Sizzle.
The sound was gone now, but that stone had not been hot enough to... He rose suddenly, feeling a great heat beneath his feet. He backed away, watching the red glow rise, not over the whole floor, to his utter relief, but just around the blackness of the bubble. Thready white-hot veins wormed tiny delicate ways through the topmost layer above the bubble, vaporizing the stone in gentle puffs as they went until at last, the floor stood open. Then they subsided, and the red heat cooled away.
Below the open floor, obsidian stairs gleamed in the sunlight that fell through the open ceiling, a spiral of black glass untouched in the harrowing of the keep, and in the chamber below, bathed in the subsiding glow of the mountain’s lifeblood...
“Oh, my sweet Gikka.” Dith squeezed the strap of his rucksack and descended the stairway into the heart of Galorin’s Keep.
Twenty
Castle Brannagh
Besides the sheriff and herself, only a dozen knights remained now who still showed no signs of the plague, and Renda had brought these last few out into the fields once more, perhaps for the last time before the frosts, to gather as much of the remaining grain as they could. Field after field remained unharvested and likely would. They would continue the harvest as long as they could after the Feast of Bilkar, but once the fields froze, the remaining grain would not be worth gathering.
She smiled coldly to think how much she sounded like her father now, worrying after the grain. But this was a battle she could win, or at least fight. She could do nothing about the plague.
The grim truth was that with so many dead or dying, they likely already had enough grain gathered, or near enough. They might have a lean year, but Brannagh would not starve. And while they would not have any grain to sell, the other noble houses should be able to manage without Brannagh grain, assuming the plague was kept just to Brannagh lands. Syon would not starve.
Once again, Brannagh’s knights were dying for Syon.
Watching them die under the impotent touch of the priests had been hard enough, but now she felt each loss all the more keenly because of the handful of cures the priests had worked. When there was no cure, there had been no hope to dash.
Two of the five cured, the two worst stricken, were kept asleep until their wounds could be finally healed, and the other three bore wicked scars, but they were alive. As far as anyone could tell, no single trait marked these five, no peculiar strength or virtue, save that each was a knight and not a villager, and so their cures had had to be kept secret. The cures had come hard upon each other, all within the space of two days, but near a month had passed since the priests had managed to cure anyone else. So no one, not even her father who had witnessed each miracle as it happened, was fool enough to take hope from the cures, not even enough to hope for one more.
She hoped that the plague had not reached as far as Windale, but she had heard no word from Sir Kerrick or the knights who had accompanied him, and she feared the worst.
She swung her scythe viciously through the wheat, wondering as she often did of late whether she was standing in yet another field cutting through another row of grain or whether she lay in bed dreaming it. Not that it mattered. She was certain she hewed her way through as much grain in her dreams as she did in the fields, and, as exhausted as she was right now, she might be doing both, for all of her. She stopped a moment to wipe her blade and found herself looking once again toward the west, toward Farras.
“Renda.” The sheriff set down his scythe and mopped the sweat from his face in spite of the cold air, and though his voice was quiet, she could not miss the weary tone. “You were there when Colaris returned. The scrollcase was empty. You gave her warning and well in advance; what more did she need?” He smiled encouragingly.
She looked up at him. “I tell myself so,” she frowned, turning again toward Farras, “but I cannot help but recall the sneer on Maddock’s face. He had her sword, Father. Gikka would never part with that sword.”
“Which is precisely why they believe she is dead.”
“But I wonder that she has yet to reclaim it or send word to us.” She almost could not form the thought, much less speak it aloud. “Is it possible he actually killed her, Father?”
“He did not bring back her body, Renda.” Lord Daerwin touched her torn tunic sleeve. “Take courage from that simple truth. Had he killed her, he would have carried her on his own back, if need be, to hang her upon our gates. As to why she has not yet reclaimed it,” he shrugged. “I could name a score of reasons, as could you, were you any less worried for her.”
“Perhaps,” she sighed and looked toward the field ahead of her. Suddenly the two knights who stood sentry in the fields reached for their swords.
“Peace, peace!” cried the Bremondine man, raising his hands above his head. He waved back over his shoulder to where Matow was following behind him. “Can’t keep up, that one, on account of his poor legs, but it’s him as sends me this way, lads.” He spied Lady Renda and moved toward her, but the two sentry knights held him back with their swords. “I bring news from Farras.”
“No, it’s all right.” At Renda’s word, the sentries backed away. “What news?” she asked, almost breathlessly.
The messenger smiled gamely. “Sent, I was, and with the message whole in my mind, but in the coming,” he said, turning to the sheriff, “I seen something as might be of interest to His Honorship, as well.”
“Speak,” ordered the sheriff when, a few moments later, the audience chamber doors closed behind him.
“Eh, not so fast, there,” grinned the Bremondine. He settled himself into a chair and crossed his legs. “Now, I done been paid, and handsome well, too, to fetch along this message for Mistress Renda, aye, and to take back a reply, but I ain’t seen no coin as to pay for my news, not yet.”
The sheriff’s expression darkened.
“Then again,” the Bremondine offered hastily, “I’d be just as happy to take what you think it worth after I speak it.”
The sheriff slowly lowered himself into his own chair behind the huge desk.
“Fine, then.” The messenger cleared his throat and edged forward in his seat. “Fine. First, the message for my lady.” He closed his eyes a moment and spoke in an expressionless voice. “It’s not much. ‘We’s safe and sound, the boy and me, our mounts and what we could carry, by your design. The scoundrels burnt out the Hall, slaughtered the animals and took my sword—the very one you gave me. An the plague were none, I’d have got it back twice by now. Makes me wish I had kilt the old witch.’”
Lord Daerwin glanced at Renda but he said nothing.
After a moment of uncomfortable silence, the messenger shrugged. “Is all she had to say.”
Renda nodded with relief. “By way of reply,” she began, taking a parchment from her father’s desk.
“You could write it, you could,” interrupted the Bremondine, “an you would keep it all confidence-like, you could, and I’d be all too happy to set it in her hand, aye. But I’m a memory messenger, me, and no message is safer kept than in mine own head.”
She looked up at him briefly before she put the parchment back in the drawer. “Very well, then,” she said agreeably. “Tell her—”
They heard a knock at the audience chamber door, and Sir Matow stood outside, leaning painfully against the wall. “Begging your pardon, my lord,” he said, bowing his head, “but I see something at the northeastern horizon—”
“Blast,” snarled the Bremondine. “So much for my news.”
“Something?” Lord Daerwin stood.
“Apologies, my lord.” The sentry looked down. “My eyes are not as sharp...”
“Of motley, and spread along the roadway, is it?” asked the Bremondine.
“No,” spoke Sir Matow uncertainly. “I saw but a mere speck of blue on the horizon ere I came to report, of a shade just darker than the sky. But sire, the villagers have seen it, as well, an
d they approach the gates.” He would have said more, but instead, he stood aside to let the sheriff pass.
The villagers. Maddock. Renda looked at the Bremondine a moment before asking, “You know what it is that brings the villagers, then?”
“Aye,” breathed the Bremondine dejectedly. “The blue is a Hadrian all bedecked and canopied and sitting astride a horse. If you can imagine it. Behind him comes some ten more or so of varied hue and creed, likewise of power and prestige, aye.” Renda’s eyes widened and she rushed after her father. She heard the messenger behind her telling the confused Matow, “It’s your cardinal, lad, and a bloody decury more of his ilk, come to call at Brannagh!”
For the first time since Chatka’s death, the remaining villagers had come along the road to stand at the far side of the dry moat. Until now, they had been careful to hide their numbers since Maddock’s attack on Graymonde Keep, to hide their meetings and their plotting against the House of Brannagh. Renda and her father, looking out at them from the castle gate, wondered if even they could see how depleted in number they had been by the plague. But while they had been careful to hide their numbers from the knights, so she and her father had not let it be known how many remained of his knights. Moments from now, they would see that even as they stood, they still outnumbered those of the castle. Maddock would see.
Of the two thousand common men and women of Brannagh who had returned from the war, no more than a hundred remained, and of those, only a few still had their families with them at roadside beyond the dry moat. None bore obvious weapons, and on the whole, they seemed far less concerned with the castle itself than with those who peeked above the rise half a mile to the east.
Her father raised his hand, and two of his knights drew up the portcullis and lowered the drawbridge. Once the gates were open, Renda led nine fully armored knights out to escort the cardinal and his retinue within the castle walls. The other three, having just come in from the fields, were at once taken with fits of coughing and had to be sent to the hospice. Once the last of the ten mounted knights had ridden out, the gate closed behind him, leaving them alone to make their way past the surly clump of villagers to where the assemblage of clerics rode toward them.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 31