“Cwara! Cwara!”
When she touched the blade, he shrieked in pain and fainted. Well enough, she thought. This way, my good Cwara Wyt’stra or whatever your name is, I’ll not have to bloody my knuckles to knock you senseless. The blade was set right where she’d wanted it, not too near anything important, not likely to nick a big blood vessel. As long as it stayed where it was and she rode carefully, with any luck at all, he’d still be alive when she brought him to the duke. It was a risk. Oh, not that she would shed a tear over a dead mage, no. The risk was of him getting away to warn the rest. Once he knew where they were, they would all know. Then again, since he’d seen her, it was possible they knew already, and this was a thing the duke should get out of him, so it were better to deliver him alive.
She bound the blade in place so it would not saw back and forth through the flesh, then hefted him up over Zinion’s back, calming Zinion’s objections as best she could, and rode for Chul and the knights.
“Cwara, he said.” Gikka shook the mud off her cloak and nodded back toward the makeshift lean-to where Laniel was tending the captured mage’s wounds. “Cwara wyt’stra, and cwara wyt’strachya.” She folded the cloak and bound it to Zinion’s saddle again. “Do you understand a word of it? I’m not knowing if he was telling me his name or…”
Nestor thought a moment, absently stroking Zinion’s head. “Brymandyan, it is, from the sound of it: a common dialect in part of Byrandia, and a very distant precursor to Bremondine, as makes sense.”
She nodded. But with millennia to separate the two languages, she could not hear even the slightest similarity of sound or even inflection between them. Even High Hadric bore more resemblance to Bremondine than this strange mix of sounds.
“Cwara simply commands a stop.” He grinned at her. “But you no doubt gathered as much. I’ve in mind that he wanted you to stop stabbing him.”
She shook her head. “Even before I stabbed him, he comes saying this.”
“Ah, then his meaning was more to the line of halt, like as if to take you prisoner.”
“Could be, I suppose. But not knowing vexes me.” She shrugged impatiently. “Proagh, a thing occurs to me, and it’s this: we’re all of us set out for Byrandia, but of us, there’s you and the duke as speak the tongue and no one else.”
“The boy, Jath,” Nestor said uncomfortably, “so that’s three as speak it.” Not far from him, Chul and Jath were washing the mage’s blood off Zinion’s flank with salt water, much to the horse’s relief in spite of the cold.
“Aye, that’s all well, but we’ll not be sending a one of you out to spy and scout, now, will we? So not speaking the tongue, the closer we get to Byrandia, the more I’m of only half use. I’ll not stand by to see lives lost because of my ignorance. So…I’d have you teach me. Me and the young master, there. I’ll not hear no. We’ve both good ears and quick minds.”
“What you ask…” Nestor frowned. “The duke should have a say.”
“In what tongues I speak?” Gikka snorted. “Not a jot. If any has a say but me, it’ll be my Lady Renda and no other, and sure I’d bet my life she’d say aye and dance with bells on to hear of it.” She crossed her arms. “I ask it for a favor, va’ar Proagh. A quiet favor, aye.”
Nestor looked at Jath who only shrugged. “I can’t see the harm in it,” he allowed.
“Very well, then. You say cwara means a command to stop.” She nodded to Chul. “Cwara.”
“Cwara,” Chul repeated where he scrubbed at the horse.
“But then what of the other? Wyt’stra, wyt’strachya…” She grinned mischievously. “Was he insulting my parentage, calling me foul names as I should put to good use whilst we trek about Byrandia?”
But Nestor did not laugh. “Words not to be repeated, not to anyone. Far more than an insult. A curse, indeed, and one he clearly takes quite seriously.” He shook his head. “Far be it from me to say why he would call you so, or think you so.”
“The cloak,” said Jath quietly. He looked up from where he was picking the muck out of Zinion’s hooves. “Sure that’s why. She was wearing it, aye?”
Nestor cocked his head. “Indeed.”
“My cloak? But what of it? A special gift, it was, from His Grace to me.” She looked between them. “Sure I’m not understanding why it struck this mage into fits. And sure I’m not knowing how he saw the thing at all.”
“He could not see the cloak or you. What he saw was a shadow of its power.” Jath touched the cloak where it lay still bound across Zinion’s back, and the cloth danced beneath his hands. “He took the magic in it for Witcher.”
“Witcher, like the Witcher mages, as in the campfire stories? Them as suck up the blood of babes for their power?” She laughed. “Sure not. He’s no child, him, to go believing such things in earnest.”
Nestor lowered his voice. “Sure that’s what the word means. Witcher derives from Wittister, which in turn derives from wyt’stra.” He wrapped his cloak tightly around himself and ran his hand over Zinion’s flank to dry him. “Sure you surprised him, and with seeing the cloak’s power, his fancy ran wild and he panicked.”
“If he thought you a Witcher, it’s no doubt he feared for his very life,” Jath murmured, looking worriedly back at the lean-to. “Or foresaw his end.”
“Witcher mages. Sure that beats all,” she laughed. “So, come. What other words should we know, then?”
Fifteen
Dith’s first sensation upon taking form was a surge of panic. They had been waiting for him, watching for him, and they could be only seconds behind. Around him where he’d brought himself out onto the Lacework, the strands vibrated, the air shimmered, and bodies began to take shape close upon him, ahead on the roadway and behind.
In only a moment Dith was riding away over the ribbon of stone, dodging between great towers of coral reef. Those who had arrived and were readying their magic abandoned it and dove to either side as the frenzied horse pounded between them. A latecomer shimmered and started to take shape in the path. The woman turned, her eyes wide to see the huge animal bearing down upon her, and she tried to port herself again even before she had fully formed, but it was too late. She flew apart in a half coherent pulp as Glasada barreled through her. The horse never even slowed.
Of course. The elaborate line of illusions and traps and protections they’d set down had not been meant to catch him or even to weaken him. They’d been set there quite visibly as a bluff, to force him into using his power to get past them, to this very spot, where they had hoped to ambush him. And he’d fallen for it.
No, not fallen for it, he told himself. He hadn’t fallen for anything. No, he’d known they would have an attack ready for him no matter what he had chosen to do, and he’d chosen his ground as the area not blanketed in magic. He’d counted on being able to port in and ride away before they could get there, and while it had been a near thing––much nearer than he might have liked––so far, it seemed that he might just succeed. The few token attacks that came after him as he rode seemed almost perfunctory, as if they had no reason to think they would hit him.
“Someday you will learn patience, ideally before you manage to get us killed.”
Dith smiled grimly. Patience would have had them waiting on that hillock while Glasada starved to death.
“So the horse dies! You lived your whole life without a horse, but now you would risk your life for one?”
Dith swallowed his anger and rode harder. Galorin could not understand. Even apart from his sense of responsibility for having brought the creature along with him, as absurd and sentimental as Galorin might find it, his concern was not about the horse, at least, not entirely. The mages were not going to give up, not while they knew he was on the landbridge somewhere, and sooner or later, they would corner him. They wouldn’t even need to confront him directly. All they needed to do was outlast him. His only chance was to get across as quickly as he could, and that meant keeping Glasada alive. Here they were, making steady e
astward progress again, and over the very Lacework Galorin had so feared, all because Glasada yet lived––half starved and weakened, but yet he lived.
“So this was all part of your plan, was it?”
Getting past the main of their force, yes. He smiled. Part of the plan, at any rate.
“Tell me, did you mark how many mages were working and milling about so conspicuously at the western edge of the Lacework?”
Fifty, perhaps a few more than that, Dith thought. And they were hardly conspicuous.
“By my count, three and fifty. Do you recall how many surrounded you at Pyran? Just round numbers, and leave off those you smashed against the city wall. Count only those who remain. How many?”
Dith frowned.
“Yes, you begin to understand. Of the five hundred or so who left Pyran alive, do you really suppose that only fifty can still be bothered to try to stop you after the way you trounced them in Pyran? Those behind us just now, another thirty or so, were not a sufficient number to face us down, not really. So odd and fifty, and now another thirty…instead of congratulating yourself, you should be asking, where are the rest?”
Glasada’s step slowed.
“Your problem, boy, is that, in your mind, you still fight one or two at a time. You think in terms of independent agents, not armies. Oh, I know, you have watched battalions of soldiers and demons maneuvering and fighting their battles head to head, and you think to apply your experience of them to this fight. But you have never seen armies of mages, nor have you ever seen armies that hunted mages. This that you face is both.”
An army is an army. They line up, they make attack, and as they line up, they make a larger target.
“Not so. Their entire school of strategy eludes you, and your lack of experience lets you underestimate them at every turn. The coarse beacons, the amateurish traps they set at the entrance to the Lacework…these played right into your arrogance and kept you from taking your time to evaluate the situation tactically. And now, you have put yourself exactly where they want you. Have no illusions on this point. A single graetna or even a pair could not take down a giant aurochs, but against a pack, the aurochs does not stand a chance, especially an he is run down to exhaustion first. Do not forget that they came to Syon in force to destroy me.”
“They succeeded.”
“So it would seem. And now they hunt you.”
Dith considered. He had by now reached a relatively high point on the stone lattice, and while the mottled pink towers of dying coral still obscured his view in several directions, he could see another clear spot a mile or two ahead. By porting his way between such points, he could cross the lattice quickly….
No. No, that is what anyone in his position would do, and as such, it was exactly what they were expecting him to do. They had to know he had very little food with him, so they knew time was their ally and not his. If Galorin was right, if this was an all an elaborate strategy to trap him, then his leaping his way by ports to the far side, was exactly what they were counting on him to do, which meant it was the one thing he could not do. But neither could he plod his slow course across the Lacework and meet them at the other side.
“Now you’re beginning to understand. From their point of view, you have two possible ways off the Lacework, forward and backward, with what amounts to a chute between the two: now wider, now narrower, but whether you ride by a hundred yards more to the north or the south, ultimately, it is always one path. In large, the same is true of the entire landbridge. And of course we’re nearer the Byrandian side now than the Syonese side and you are not well supplied, so your course is fairly clear.
“By now, they will have distributed their force between the ends of the Lacework, and as you saw, they’ve already deployed their chasers in the middle to keep you running, always running, to force you to use your power until even your vast reserves are exhausted. Every time you use your power, they will see you, and every time they see you, you will have to run again––you cannot wait to see whether they give chase or no. So you deplete yourself while they do not. This is how they will wear you down.”
Dith’s mouth went dry. He had never really known fear in his entire life, not before this moment. He was well and truly trapped. He could see no simple way out.
“Ah, this is, perhaps, a lesson for you then.”
“This is no time for lectures about humility,” he growled.
“So you have at least grasped that humility is not your strong suit. This is progress. Very well, no hypocritical lectures on humility from me. No, it is another lesson you must learn, one you are in a unique position to use, in fact. This is a time for you to set aside however much you think you know, however much you are convinced you are smarter than all the rest of the world combined, however much you count on all-that-is always to bend in your favor, and understand: this is not a situation a mage can survive.”
Of course a mage can survive this. He would survive it, if for no other reason than to prove Galorin wrong. And he would drag Galorin’s spirit or essence or whatever it was along with him.
“I admire your spirit, but as is your wont, you take the meaning you assume from my words and not the meaning that is there. Apply yourself.”
More stupid riddles. He ignored Galorin and looked back the way he came, considering. He could undo it all by porting back to that first hilltop, perhaps draw them completely off the Lacework after him, engage them while they were disorganized again, and then port past them back at least to this spot, or perhaps the next.
While they ran about frantically trying to catch up to him….
“No, that’s no good. You might draw off a few, but all you would really accomplish is to signal to them that you know they control the Lacework, which ultimately you will need to cross, regardless. It were better to keep them comfortably believing that they hold control than to drive them to desperation. This way, we know their likely plan. Otherwise, they might well destroy the Lacework and us along with it.”
He could still lead them a merry chase and gamble that their reserves would run out before his would, but then again, they were many, and as strong as he was, he was but one. He remembered Galorin facing them down. Galorin, whose power was almost godlike.
“Almost godlike. You believe that in the same way a child believes that his parents are giants.”
And Galorin had lost to them. They might destroy the Lacework, Galorin had said. Yes. Perhaps if Dith were to destroy the Lacework himself, preemptively, he could…he could….
“Now you’re going the wrong way again. No, boy, think! Set aside your magic for a time and think about your Bremondine lass. Where is her strength?”
“Fear,” Dith said at once.
“I was thinking of stealth.”
So was I, thought Dith. Why was Gikka so capable of instilling fear into entire enemy armies during the war? No one knew whom she would strike next, or where she would strike, or when. The mere thought that she might be near was enough to send Kadak’s forces into a panic. Interesting…
Dith watched her, an amused smile on his lips. He’d been proud of himself for keeping his mind on the mission and not letting himself be knocked senseless with admiration for this living legend. Or, he allowed, his desire for her––a desire he knew was hopelessly out of place, so much so that he’d avoided even speaking to her unnecessarily over the last few days while they’d tracked this detachment of Kadak’s demons together. He was grateful for the chance to serve with her directly after months of watching her from a distance, but he was just as terrified of disgracing himself in her eyes. He chuckled to himself. For all his worry, he doubted she’d even notice if he did disgrace himself, so far beneath her notice was he.
Not far from him, concealed as if by accident in the mottled leafy shadows, Gikka perched on a large boulder stitching leaves, bark, brush and even clumps of grass to a ragged bit of cloth she’d found, and his curiosity was getting the better of him.
The cloth itself, no more than
a discarded length of moth eaten wool, was not even serviceable as a blanket, and he’d wondered why she picked it up in the first place. Now she seemed to be making a sort of rug or cloak, no doubt to hide under as she moved. It was ridiculous. It would hinder her vision as much as it would conceal her.
“Mistress Gikka,” he offered at last, hating the lump in his throat, “You know I can bend the light around you as you move. No one will see you.”
“Just ‘Gikka’ to you,” she answered, “and aye.” She looked over the cloak with an expert eye. She picked at a bare spot with the unusually long nail on her little finger and tried several different leaves in that position before settling on a half-wilted dog-eared one, a leaf that was not artistic but absolutely random. “This I know.”
She sniffed at the air and glanced up across the grassy plain that extended beyond the edge of the trees. Less than a quarter mile away, a legion of Kadak’s demons milled impatiently while the slave-cooks lit the cooking fires. They were all waiting to eat, waiting for the signal that Lord Daerwin’s knights approached, waiting for anything. They’d been waiting for long enough that the boredom was starting to become anxiety.
It was nearly time. She went back to her work.
“’Aye, this I know,’ quoth she,” he rolled his eyes in frustration, “so knowing, why do you fret so over this bit of cloth? Why do you not let me see to your stealth? I confess, I have been of no use to you at all on this mission. I have no idea why Lord Daerwin set me to come with you since you have had no need of me.”
“I requested you.” She looked up at him for a moment, then back to her work. “If nothing else, you liven the scenery, and that’s a welcome change, begging their pardons all. Besides, by my reckoning, better you’re here when I’ve no frank need of you, than not an I do.”
His heart sank. This mission needed no magic, then. She’d merely requested him in case something went wrong. That was disappointing but understandable. He chided himself for being such a schoolboy. Clearly the mission was more important than his getting to show off for a woman. At least he got to be near her. “Very well, but let me at least make myself useful.” He grinned. “How else can I ever hope to prove my worth to you?”
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 23