Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2)

by Jordan MacLean

  “All I know is that he was cutting himself with a piece of broken glass when I looked in on him.” Kerrick smiled ruefully. “Thus came I to be injured in trying to stop him.”

  Laniel shook his head. “This, I do not understand. I kept him sedated so he could not move. At all. The duke was able to question him, but I was certainly not going to leave him free to use his power.”

  Laniel counted the vials in his sac. He could not be certain until later when he emptied the pouch back into his saddlebag, but by feel, it seemed that all the vials he’d gathered were there. “Further,” he continued, “I do not know how he could have freed himself enough to do such a thing, nor why. To think that he might have been free to attack the duke.…”

  He took out one of the vials and held it up to the light, then shrugged and shook his head. The color looked right, and the juice was fresh. Without the ano, the mage should yet be paralyzed, even now, these many hours later. Yet he had run from the lean-to with his wits about him, aware, fully able to use his power. What had he forgotten? Was Bilkar right, that his time as abbot had dulled his mind and weakened his judgment? He felt a hot rush of shame in his face.

  Kerrick continued. “The oddest part was that even while he cut himself, he did not make a sound, not until I tried to stop him. So quiet was he that at first, so intent on his task, that I could not believe my eyes and it took me far too long to mark what he was doing. I still do not understand what would make him cut himself that way.”

  “Perhaps to enhance his magic since he knew he was weak.” Laniel returned the vial to his pouch. “I have heard of such things, though involving priests, not mages, and it’s seldom more than ritual. Rjeinar’s priests scar and tattoo themselves, and the torturer priests of Cuvien––”

  “Do you know what I think?” Kerrick stopped stitching and looked up at them. “I think he was trying to kill himself.”

  “Bah.” Gikka stared at the long nails on her little fingers. “He couldn’t have missed his death harder if he’d tried.”

  The priest nodded. No, the mage had been terrified at the last. He had not wanted to die. Or perhaps he had not wanted to die that way.

  “How do you mean?” Kerrick looked between them. “He was bleeding horribly. He had cuts all over his body. Surely he would have died!”

  “Face cuts always bleed to scare a mother blind, but the blood means nothing in the end.” Gikka stood and stretched. “Oh, perhaps, an we had no surgeon to see to him and he rubbed his own dung in the cuts, he might have died, but sure he knew Laniel would not let him perish so.”

  Kerrick shook his head. “If I had not looked in on him, who knows how far he might have gone.”

  “You’re yet the hero, Lord Kerrick, fear me not,” Gikka laughed. “But he’d not have got far ere we saw to him, regardless. His cuts, though…. Something in the lay of them gives me pause. Sure, I but seen them at a distance, but to my eye, they were not a one as would slow him or cripple him, and sure none for a quick death. Not one cut did I see at his throat, none at groin, none along his arms where the heart’s blood is close at hand. Sure he’d be wishing his death from the pain of it all, but on my life, he’d not have seen it.”

  “Perhaps not.” Kerrick resumed his stitching. “Then again, he had but a small sliver of glass. Mayhap it was the best he could manage.”

  Gikka cocked her head. “You think I could not kill a man in a trice with but your famous sliver of glass?”

  “Mistress,” he grinned at her, “you could kill a man with no more than your smile.”

  Instantly she was at his side, her unusually long fingernail lying gently against the side of his throat. “Just here, my Lord,” she whispered at his ear, biting the end of the nail into his skin just slightly, “and the lifeblood is but a nick away.” Laniel could see the heat rising into Kerrick’s face and hear his breath quickening as Gikka stepped away, point made. “Wee bit of glass or no, he could not have shot wider of the mark save not to cut himself at all.”

  The knight nodded, touching gently at his throat where her nail had been. She had not even left a mark, yet Laniel could tell that Kerrick had known in that moment exactly what it would be like to die at her hands.

  “Still,” he said, his voice cracking, “I can think of no better explanation of why he would cut himself that way.” He returned his attention to sewing closed the hole in his breeches.

  Laniel paused. Cuts all over his body, but with no intention to kill himself. He did not drink the blood or try to keep it. She was right. The wounds were superficial, almost ritualistic. He was certain they were meant to enhance magical power, but in what precise way, he could not be certain. The use of power beyond himself and his own resourcefulness was alien to him. He almost chuckled at his realization that the Bilkarian refusal to invoke their god’s power and the subsequent ignorance of how such power worked had proved, in this case, to be something of a weakness.

  A chill wind gusted through the tent, a wind that felt curiously affectionate as it brushed over his face, and Laniel smiled.

  But one thing he did know. The product of any rite like this was some kind of sacrifice. If not his blood to be used in the rite, what? What was the bargain, and with whom?

  “Laniel?” Gikka looked up at him. “All is well?”

  “When a man resolved to die hesitates in the act of killing himself, tell me, what is it that gives him pause?” Laniel looked up at Gikka.

  “He might hesitate if he misses his family,” Kerrick offered, not looking up, “or he’s struck by his duty. Sometimes he simply changes his mind and decides he would live instead.”

  “No, I mean a man who has no intention of being stopped. A prisoner, say, with no hope of escape, as you will recall he was at the time. A man who truly desires his own end: what is it makes him cut a jagged line in his throat instead of slicing right through?”

  “Pain,” Gikka murmured, a disturbed frown crossing her features. “He flinches on account of…the pain.”

  Laniel nodded. “Indeed.”

  Pain. That was the bargaining chip. And with that knowledge, he was sure of even less than he had been before.

  Seventeen

  “No. We cannot risk it.” Lord Daerwin set aside the flat rock he’d used as a dinner plate with the bones of the fish still on it and warmed his hands by the fire. “I’ve not ridden with him tightly tethered to me all this time just to send him to his death now, I’m sorry.”

  “Father, we have to warn Dith, and I see no other way.” Renda hugged her mantle around herself against the cold and moved herself closer to the small fire. “That mage might have survived, and if he did––”

  Lord Daerwin looked up at her from where he sat. “If he did, I have little doubt he and his colleagues will be more concerned with us than with Dith. After all, their man left their company hale and whole, and he went back…as he did.” Daerwin shuddered.

  “If he did not survive to tell them of us, they may blame Dith and redouble their efforts against him. All the more reason.”

  “No,” the sheriff breathed, “I think they know right well he could not have done that. So we have likely turned their heads our way, for better or worse, and given Dith opportunity to slip away. Is that not enough?”

  “Is it?”

  He stared into the fire. “Renda, what you ask is not unreasonable. But we haven’t the first idea where he might be. Ahead of us, aye, but how far and where? For all we know, he could be in Byrandia by now. No, I’d not risk my Colaris on a fool’s errand.” He frowned over the fire into the settling twilight. “By Gikka’s count, we have a dozen mages or more at the near edge, and we have no idea how many more cover the Lacework beyond––”

  “Indeed, and he is but one man alone against them!”

  “––to say nothing of the rest of the road to Byrandia!” He looked up at her. “What’s to say they won’t fire upon Colaris before he can even reach Dith, just for sport? It would take but one of them.”

&nb
sp; “They might,” she allowed, “and I know the danger is real. Dith is out there against all of these mages, and only he can tell us why he raised this landbridge, and why he goes to Byrandia. Not to mention that we could use his strength just now, as he could use ours. At the very least, for his wellbeing and our own, he needs to know we are here, since not knowing, he may well set all manner of mischief in our path. Besides, we need to know that he is safe.”

  “Ah, you mean Gikka needs to know that he is safe.”

  Renda glared at him. “She is not alone in her concern. You cannot have forgotten all that Dith did in the war and all that he has suffered for our––”

  “Oh, enough.” He stood and met her glare. “Do not presume to remind me of Syon’s debts, knight, neither to Dith nor to Gikka. That she would have us get word to him,” he gestured dismissively, “very well. We are engaged. But mind what you ask of me. You would have me send my Colaris alone and undefended over the heads of more mages at once than anyone on Syon has seen in a lifetime. Those same who destroyed…everything…” He breathed heavily and turned to look at the owl-eyed bird watching them quietly from Revien’s saddle. “I would not have them take him from me as well. Understand. I have no priest now,” he said sadly, “nor even my old governess to set protections upon him.”

  Renda squeezed his hand. “Aye, but mark, this same hawk flew over armies and demons, even over Kadak himself afield, and dropped nary a feather.”

  “Ever does he remind us of it, as well, come mealtimes.”

  “Aye, indeed,” she smiled reassuringly. “Come, if he flies by night, well above them, he should pass unnoticed. His flight is nearly silent. Bid him search no more than a mile beyond the Lacework ere he return, and he can be safely back with us before the sun rises. If he fails to find Dith tonight, we send him to fly further tomorrow, once we have secured the Lacework.”

  “Above them…” From his plate, the sheriff picked up the intact spine of the fish he’d had for dinner, turning it in his hand, considering. “Hm. Where is Chul?”

  The boy had not gone far. He was still alarmingly close to the knights’ camp when he heard the first faint footfalls and chatter from the mages, and he readied his hunting knife. But of course mages had no grasp of quiet, and they were actually a fair distance further away than he’d thought them to be. As he crept closer, he saw that even those who acted as sentries and bent the light around themselves were so loud in their steps, even with their soft and seamless boots, that he could close his eyes and track them perfectly. He half wondered if he could not make an easy run right past them and reach Dith himself, but this was not a fancy he dared try. Gikka had said she saw them working their magic over the landbridge, and he would not dare set foot on it himself.

  Colaris gripped the leather of Chul’s bracer as the boy ran lightly and silently through the strange blocks of coral and the stinking clumps of dead fish and plants. The bird bobbed his head to keep his vision steady and study the terrain as they moved, and Chul had tried to learn from him, to keep his own head steady as he ran. He wondered at times what Colaris thought or if he thought. Jath had told him that Colaris was no average hawkling, and having seen the bird obliterate the gulls chasing him, he believed it. But did he think like a person or was his mind very different? How did the world look through his eyes? Right now, as they ran, was his mind entirely taken his mission ahead, or was he watching for food out of habit? The small bird’s belly was full of dried meat and some sips of brackish water, so he was not hungry, but that might not stop him from honing his skills. The scrollcase was strapped to his ankle with Gikka’s message inside, and he had been given his mission, as well as the sheriff could convey it to him. Danger, the sheriff had signaled, extreme danger. The worry in his eyes had been clear, as had his love for the little bird. Seeing deep care as Lord Daerwin had released Colaris to him had put a lump in Chul’s throat. He had lost so much already. Chul chittered reassuringly to the bird. He would not let Colaris fail.

  Rather than have the bird fly directly from the camp, Lord Daerwin had trusted Chul with sneaking him past the nearest camp of mages. He would be on his own when he reached the other side, but at least this far, he would be protected. Besides, it gave the boy an opportunity to scout on his own.

  Chul edged his way northward around the mages’ camp, past their latrine pits and along a low bank that gradually dipped away into the sea as the landbridge narrowed into the Lacework. He kept well clear of the stony edge of the lattice itself. Damerien had said, and Nestor had agreed, that the enemy would set their outermost protections and attacks against Dith just inside the lip of the Lacework, not extending out into the land beyond, in an effort to avoid their quarry setting it off while he could still escape or find a way around it.

  Chul slipped down the bank a bit further and eased his way closer. He had no especial eye for magic and was trusting entirely to the old Bremondine’s expectation of how these mages might think. So far, Nestor had been exactly right, but a single mistake could be deadly. Finally, he found himself right below the edge of the Lacework. Beneath him, the sea crushed and fought its way around the spires of coral that jutted upward through the stone lattice. The roughness of the sea meant passage beneath was impossible, and while each spire of coral was not impossible to climb, the idea of many such climbs and of trying to move between them high above the churning water made passage that way unthinkable.

  The Lacework, for all that it looked like a fragile and delicate ribbon from a distance, was quite thick and solid. That was reassuring. The mages were that much less likely to notice him or the bird with so much stone between them. Chul let Colaris hop onto a bit of rock, then picked up a small stone and tossed it against the underside of the stone lattice, bracing himself. Nothing happened. As Lord Daerwin had hoped they might, the mages had set their magic only over the part of the Lacework they could see, which meant the top. The bottom was unguarded and likely would be all the way to the far end.

  Colaris watched Chul carefully mimic the gestures Lord Daerwin had taught him. Chul had the uneasy suspicion that the bird already knew his mission. He had watched as the sheriff taught the gestures to the boy, so Chul felt the fool when the bird turned his head upside down in amusement and waited for the Dhanani boy to get through the series of quick motions: stealth, low flight along the underside of the stone bridge, search a one mile radius at the end, deliver the message, wait for a response, return the same way. Dith was the target.

  Chul gestured one last time, a gesture he added on his own: above all, extreme danger. The bird kekked softly. He flew off Chul’s arm, along the column-like underside, hugging close into the space between the stone lattice and the churning sea below. In a moment, he had disappeared.

  “Glasada,” murmured Dith softly. “Peace. We will away soon.”

  The beast nickered softly, so softly that Dith did not so much hear it as feel it. Dith wondered how many of the images in his mind had cast shadows into Glasada’s mind, thoughts put there by Galorin as they’d made their way back up the hillside between the crusted coral reefs.

  “Easy.” Dith patted the horse’s shoulder affectionately.

  Witcher. Wittister. Wyt’stra. So they did exist, these monsters who had peopled Dith’s nightmares as a child. The thought chilled him deep in his soul. All the deep rooted superstition and horror he’d safely walled off as childishness in his mind…the stories were real.

  “Not exactly, not word for word, but in the main, yes. A lot of the stories grew from practices we’d adopted to hide ourselves from them and the other mage hunters in Byrandia: do not use magic unnecessarily, do not cluster together for long. Precautions that have become part of what it is to be a mage on Syon and which served to protect us when Kadak hunted us.

  “The Wittister Mages never achieved Syon: I saw to that. So time and absence relegated these legendary terrors to the undignified position of childhood enforcers. The enterprising parents of Syon added “eat your vegetables” and
“get thee to bed on time” to the list of cautions, probably about the time the name Wittister became bastardized to Witcher. But yes, they were at one time quite real. It seems they still are.”

  Dith intensified his protections unconsciously and mounted his horse. Intellectually, the idea of vampiric mages should not have been so terrifying to him, not after everything he’d seen in the war against Kadak. But the fear was rooted so deep, deep in the trusting soul of a tiny blue-eyed child-mage, that his terror of them defied all reason and would likely never be dislodged, especially now that he knew they were real. Part of him knew that made of it a weakness, but the other part of him was too frightened to care.

  “Oh, the Wittister mages are not vampires or cannibals, not in the sense you were led to believe. They do not eat naughty children, and they do not drink blood. They do, however, take life energy to fuel their magic. It is the basis of their power, and it is indeed formidable.”

  A sort of blood magic, then.

  “Not blood magic. That’s a different thing entirely. No, this is what one might call vivemancy, for lack of a better word.”

  In his mind, Galorin showed him trees, plants, animals, people, crowds…and moving among them, figures in seamless robes sipping at the energy these beings expended voluntarily, storing it away and using it for their own. Fascinating, thought Dith. He’d never considered the vast stores of energy expended all around him as accessible. But these gentle souls did no harm. They were surely not the Wittister mages.

  “No, alas. These were the Wittisters’ first victims, in fact––their fellow vivemancers.”

  The images in his mind, memories that were not his own, showed him these same people, drained, withered away like the husk he’d found below, and their bones heaped like so much cordwood.

  “Somewhere along the line, one of them or another learned, probably by accident, that they could actively draw energy from a living being rather than passively accepting only what was expended freely. The knowledge spread rapidly between those who were so inclined, and not long after, they discovered they could take all of a being’s life energy at a shot, killing him in the process. They further learned that the more powerful the being, of course, the more power they could get. Whether the power itself becomes addictive or whether the killing becomes so, who can say, but their appetites grew.”