Gikka’s gaze hardened. “Because these, they’ve had a hand in every war, every bit of defending Syon since the Liberation, is why.” She looked at Renda. “An you kill all the guardsmen, you can rob the vault at your pleasure and no one’s to stop you.”
“Do you mean to say,” Lord Daerwin swallowed hard. “Byrandia may be preparing for a full scale invasion? Now, after all this time? But how? How could they hope to invade? Surely they could not have anticipated that Dith would raise the landbridge.”
Damerien shrugged. “Perhaps they had other means to raise it if he did not. My sense of it is that this was not so well organized. We must have a care not to paint intention where there is none, or at least, where it is not nearly as organized as it seems. Otherwise, we may miss what is, while we look for what we assume. Remember, the attack on Brannagh was an afterthought, from what I could gather from our prisoner. It was not part of the original plan, which was solely to destroy Galorin.”
“So he says,” Renda gestured helplessly. “Are we to put so much on his word? After all, you said yourself he was but a foot soldier.”
Damerien templed his fingers. “From what I could gather, their afterthought went something along these lines: it seems they destroyed B’radik’s temple first, bearing in mind that their actual goal was to attack me––why, I do not know. This drew the attention of Wirthing and, in turn, the rebels. The decision to join the battle against Brannagh came from their now deceased captain––he decided on the moment, apparently, without consulting anyone. He had no idea what he set in motion by doing so. But that our forces had been so weakened, they should have been stopped there.”
“Bastards.” Gikka scowled. “Had the sheriff and Lady Renda but known, sure the knights might have stood in better stead to defend Brannagh. At least they might have had some warning.”
I recall noise, the strangely disordered energy of an entire army of beings, all of a single goal but of many minds. But I also remember a child. At the end.
Renda’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, by the gods, no.” She shook her head. “We did know, or should have known. Arnard tried to tell us.”
“Renda,” The duke squeezed her shoulder gently. “Even if we had known—”
She turned away from them in horror. “He told us. We did not hear, but he told us! We might have saved Brannagh if we’d listened!”
“No.” Damerien turned her to face him and looked into her eyes. “Hear me now, cousin. Even had we known exactly the nature of the attack, by that point, we had no means to fight them. The knights fell shortly after to the plague, and the priests were already destroyed. We might have been defeated utterly, had we tried. Yes!”
She looked into his eyes. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to accept that they had done all they could. They had been so occupied with Chatka and the farmers and Pegrine that they had assumed it was all part of the main, the attack against B’radik. They could have fought though. They could have pressed their advantage while they still had men. Had they been at the temple, had they stopped the mage army there…. But her blood slowed its angry race through her veins, and she knew Trocu was right. Had they been at the temple, even with full strength, they would likely have lost. She curled her lip bitterly. At least her knights would have died in battle and not in their beds of plague.
“Renda, you know I speak the truth. As it happened, we live, and while we live, we can still fight and win. Dead heroes do not win battles.”
At last, she nodded grudgingly.
“We must go forward now.”
“Aye,” she agreed. “There is no going back.”
“Which brings us back to this strange grass.” The sheriff glanced back toward the lean-to. “Laniel, do you suppose that the prisoner might have done this?”
“I think it unlikely, my Lord,” answered the priest. “I noticed the first shoots rising even while His Grace was in with him. Besides, with a stitched wound in his chest, something this large might well kill him, even assuming he has the power to accomplish it at all. His power would catch in the stitches.” He paused. “Besides, why would he do it? What would he gain?”
“Gain, aye. Sure there’s none for one trapped in a hole behind furs, but for one at large…” Gikka smiled where she crouched looking at the tiny plants. “Dith, it is, what raised this, most certainly, my Lords. These grasses, mark, they’re come straight from Syon, from the marshes up by Tremondy. They’re not some odd Byrandian weeds as we’ve never seen, aye? Makes me think it has to come from one of our own, one of Syon. And these, they grow fast and thick and high, and they leech salt out, besides. He chose them of a purpose.” When the others only looked at her, she stood and clapped Renda on the back. “Don’t you see? He’s grown cover, for to hide himself and us, if we want it! Sure no army of mages would set to grow grasses up as would slow their travel. As you say, there’s no gain to it, not for them. It’s a single spy maneuver and clever, at that. It must be he!”
Renda considered for only a moment. After all, what Gikka said rang true. She only hoped the mage was able to accomplish this great feat without bringing the entire army of mages down upon himself.
“Yes, well, we will assume for now that it is Dith’s doing since we see no ill effect from it, and we will hope that it serves him as intended,” the duke breathed at last. He squinted up toward the sun, which was now just past midday. “By my reckoning, were we to continue onward, we should reach the Lacework by nightfall.” He considered a moment, looking over the knights in the camp, and shook his head. “Better we approach that particular obstacle by daylight, grass or no. If there’s to be an ambush, it’s there. Renda, we make camp here tonight.”
To Gikka, he added, “This will give you time to scout ahead. Go to, at your pleasure, you and Chul. When you return, we will discuss our approach.”
Sixteen
Below the overlook where Dith lay on his elbows watching, screams and hysteria ran rampant through the army below, and he smiled. Bodies flew apart into shapeless clouds of red mist, flames flared up white hot and vanished, sand congealed into glass and spiked through some of them as they ran…and he had done none of it. Not directly, at least.
“You could have engulfed them all in flames and been done with it.”
Flames, with an easy jump to the sea beneath the Lacework? No, this was at once more subtle and more devastating. Oh, it was more a parlor trick than anything else, and it would not fool them for long, not once they discovered what he’d done, but by then, their power and morale should be quite drained.
They’d established something of a camp here, with tents and supplies a bit of distance from the actual entrance to the Lacework where most of them had been involved in the mundane necessaries of establishing a winter camp. Some had been on watch, and no doubt some others had been patrolling the perimeter.
“Only two detachments. Disappointing, I suppose, but understandable, after Pyran. If they could surprise you, five score should be enough to stop you, but if not, they would not commit their entire force. One wonders where the rest might be.”
One wonders such things after one has dealt with the threat at hand. Dith ignored Galorin’s musings and concentrated on what he saw in the mage camp below.
Their world saturated by the constant haze of magic he’d created by blanketing the entire landbridge, the mages were essentially blind. More importantly, they knew they were blind, and it scared them, and they were jumping at shadows. Now all he’d needed was a noise, a startle in the darkness, to send them into abject panic. And such a noise he had given them.
The Thrum he’d created was no more than a low hum of a noise, too quiet to hear directly, all but undetectable. Within an hour, what had started for the mages as no more than the malaise of a child’s fear in a thunderstorm had become something far more. For some, the hysteria took no conscious form but only caused paranoia, but for most, it caused hallucinations and mumbling voices in their minds. They saw ghosts of the dead or demons, some
times living men and women they knew who were not actually there, as real and solid as any living man. For some few of them, more than he might have expected, it manifested as frank and probably permanent insanity. Naturally they’d turned on each other.
He was surprised he’d thought of it. The Thrum had been completely useless against Kadak’s demons who’d seemed to lack imagination or because their minds did not work like the minds of people, and it was of only limited use with Hadrians, so he’d never found occasion to use it during the war. Against these mages, however, it had worked spectacularly well. Better than he could have hoped, just like all his magic of late….
“This is reckless. We could be in Byrandia by now, well clear of them. Instead, you court disaster by teasing them with noises.”
Dith pointedly crept a bit further forward. If he had gone on to Byrandia and left this detachment intact behind him, he would have left himself no retreat. Given that he still had no idea what awaited him there, he would rather leave a real, physical and most importantly non-magical escape route open, which meant clearing these mages from the landbridge decisively, such that they would not be inclined to return. That meant terror far more than destruction.
Suddenly below him, the chaos stopped short. Something was not right. He sat up and watched them, a frown crossing his brow. They’d stopped chasing each other, stopped attacking each other. They stood perfectly still, as if the Thrum had stopped. Had someone discovered it and stopped it already? Except…no, he could still feel it surrounding them. What had changed?
Even from here, he could feel their terror rising silently, blistering their minds, driving them far beyond anything he had done to them. This worried him because this new terror was real, with a real cause, and the Thrum only compounded their very real fear. This he could not control, especially not without knowing what caused it, and he did not like what he could not control.
“Let it go. You got what you wanted––they are sufficiently terrorized. Take this opportunity to leave, and do not look back.”
He squinted, trying to see what it was that had them keening with horror and turning their magic inward, to creating protections for themselves rather than to outward in attack, but it was no use. He would have to get closer.
“What are you doing?”
He slipped down from the overlook and moved in, bending the light around him. He touched Glasada’s forehead reassuringly as he passed, and the horse did his best to take on silence, trusting that Dith would return for him from the darkness and the strange noises. Then they would leave this slippery salty place at last and go somewhere safe.
Such was his implicit promise in his touch. But he had to know what was so frightening to them suddenly that it had overpowered the Thrum. After all, it might mean he should be afraid, too. In the distance, he thought he heard a slow rumble of thunder, and he absently wondered if it might storm. Odd that there were no clouds.
Dith had taken only minutes to slip down the hillside, but getting nearer the mage army’s camp took hours. Residual protections lingered here and there about the land, but these seemed mostly forgotten pieces of magic. Still, he was not inclined to trip them and bring the whole lot of terrified mages down upon him with their protections and attacks readied.
“It strikes me odd that they should have reacted this way. They work best together, pooling their strength, not isolating it each one to himself. It’s obvious that they know this and they’ve been trained to it. But suddenly, they are each and severally seeking their own survival above all.”
Possibly it was a lingering effect of the Thrum, that they should turn their thoughts and their power entirely toward themselves. With a wave, Dith dismissed the Thrum. Eerily, he saw no change in the demeanor of the mages. They were terrified.
“Perhaps, but we will know more once we see what this is that worries them so.”
Dith moved closer, using as little power as he could to bend the light around himself. He refused to let his thoughts linger on a disturbing detail he had noticed that apparently Galorin had not: the grass he had set to grow as cover for himself had withered away and died in a single spot. The dead spot did not expand, but try as he might, he could not cover it again. No doubt the source of their fear was there, just beyond the rise ahead. It was not that it withered away and died from the energy. It simply ceased to be. In fact, in that one area, he saw––
“––nothing. Do you see it? No strands touch it. It is as if they’ve been…”
There was more here. Galorin was deliberately hiding something. Dith prodded. It’s as if they’ve been what?
“No. If you would know what is there, then you must see it for yourself. I will not fill your mind with notions.”
Dith almost laughed. Not fill his mind with notions? Galorin had done nothing else since they’d left the keep! In any case, he could see the area fairly well now, but he was really no nearer understanding what had happened than when he started. The other mages skirted the area widely, probably because they, too, could see that no strands could touch it.
At the center looked to be an unkempt stack of dried sticks and furry looking moss, like what they might have brought along to start fires.
A smile crossed his face. He’d discovered the mages’ kindling pile. Terrifying, truly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why would they need kindling? And why don’t any strands of power touch it? You must get closer. I hope it is not as I fear…”
He looked around him carefully, watching the patterns the mages walked, finding a break in them that would let him slip through. He would not risk porting in. Never mind that such a localized spark of power, they were sure to notice, and while he could bend light around himself, he could not hide the port’s shimmer if someone was looking at him directly. Besides, with the strange dead spot around that pile of rubbish, not knowing what caused it, he could not know what effect it would have on a port. So he had no choice but to walk.
But this presented a different problem. While he could bend the light around himself, he could not keep the fact of his passage from showing in the dried kelp vines and crackling frozen seaweed beneath his feet once he’d passed over them. Not easily, at any rate, and certainly not without drawing attention to himself. The grasses were only a few inches high now, not high enough to conceal all but high enough that one might notice movement or crushed stalks in it. So once more, he found himself relying on what he’d picked up in passing about stealth––actual, physical concealment––from Gikka.
The kindling pile, or what he’d thought was a kindling pile…the sticks weren’t sticks, he saw as he approached. Not splayed out the way they were. For all that they seemed covered in thin peeling bark, they were ancient bones, bones gone almost to powder. The moss was dark hair, long, crackling dry and curling toward the ends, attached to what was left of the curls of barklike flesh. And finally, to leave no doubt, he saw the withered face. This had been human once.
It was as if they’d stolen an Anatayan frost mummy. If they had done, they had good reason to fear. The Anatayans had no real concept of death, just as they had no real concept of past or future, so their dead were as alive to them as the living. Steal their dead, and you might as well be stealing their brides or their children. More than that, the only thing Anatayans hated more than a grave robber was a mage.
But it could not be a frost mummy. Where would they have acquired such a thing, out here on the landbridge? Surely not from the Anatayans. Not to mention what possible use they could have for it.
“No frost mummy, this. See how this area was cleared of debris and made quite flat and featureless? I imagine we might have noticed that they do not walk through it, had we been paying closer attention. It is their designated porting place. When you have more than one mage in a group, you must establish such things to avoid accidents.”
Dith edged closer.
“This is one of their own. They know him. They were expecting him, but not like this.”
G
alorin was right, of course. Even as wizened as his features were over his skull, he bore more resemblance to the other Byrandians than to any Anatayan. His hair was too dark, his build too slight. The splits in the skin could be what frightened the other mages away, but…
“Look closely at the body. Look at the cuts. But more importantly, note the stitching of one large cut, there, over his ribs, and the burned flesh around it. This man used magic after that stitching was in place. That took desperation or extreme courage.”
Dith remembered the painful way his power had bound up in the clothing he’d worn in Pyran and how that clothing had burned away when he’d let free his full power to raise the landbridge. This mage had not had nearly that level of power or control, so whatever magic he cast had burned his chest badly at the stitches.
“Whatever magic? It was the port! He was trying to escape from them, but he did not get away in time. Someone captured this mage and killed him with a kind of magic that… “
What magic? Who are “they?”
“Who they are doesn’t matter. We must get you away from here and safely into Byrandia or all is lost.”
Dith crossed his arms. “It matters to me.”
* * *
“To your mounts and away, for your lives!” Renda called to the knights, “Take up all you can, but take no pains to hide that we were here. Be quick, and it will not matter. Now go your ways!”
At once, they were all in motion. Only Chul saw the look that passed between Nestor and Jath before Jath went to see to the spare horses, and Nestor went to the duke’s side.
“What was that?” Chul looked back toward the lean-to and toward where the knights had stood, weapons drawn, only moments before. He ran behind Jath. “What just happened?”
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 25