One of the demons picked something up from the ground as he ran, and turned to throw it into the air behind him, right in the path of the knights. It was a handful of fine, powdery silt, dried ocean-bottom sand, which spread on the wind. To her sick horror, Amara watched the tiny grains take on a glow, put there by a mage not far away. Before she could warn them, before they could stop, the knights had ridden through it.
Amara jumped to hear one side of the heavy weapon hit the ground ahead of her, the blood and hunks of demon flesh that clung to it making the deadly chains thud wetly rather than clang out a bright alarm. She could see bits of hair and flesh in it.
She could see it.
A slow scream of horror rose in her throat. Not only could she see the hideous bloodied chain and a peculiar shimmer around the rest of the knights. Around herself. And the demons were looking right at them.
A glow was coming from the silt that dusted their armor, their weapons, their horses. Dith’s magic was meant to bend any ambient light around them, not light emanating from the knights themselves. With no other light to blend with it, the twisting shimmer coming from the sand bent close about the knights, outlining and marking them in an almost liquid haze.
Her scalp prickled and she gritted her teeth. Her hand clenched around her sword. The demons crowding around them were no longer looking at the empty space around them. They were looking right into their eyes. The five knights were visible.
In the protracted seconds between when the knights had dropped the chain and when it finally came to rest, Renda and Qorlin were turning. Amara’s mind raced. Renda and Qorlin had dropped the battle chain. Dropped it on the ground. Discarded it. The only time they would do that is for speed. They would need speed to move. To run. To retreat. Retreat! Her mind screamed at her muscles to move.
The knights wheeled their mounts to run, but it was already too late. A moment later, the demons attacked.
Twenty-One
The Citadel
“Naturally we sent reinforcements.”
“Naturally.” The leader looked around at the silken tapestries and draperies of the stone chamber. Her gaze danced across the faces of the other three, first at the one who had spoken, the same who had awakened her, the one whose birth name was Nial, then at the other two. He was always the one charged with speaking to her when there was bad news to report. The others just stood by quietly, trying not to draw her attention. Cowards.
She was disappointed that her withering gaze was lost on them since they would not look up at her. She settled back against the rich cushions, smug satisfaction creeping into her voice in spite of the precariousness of the situation. “You cannot still believe he is dead, can you?” she purred. “Not now. Not after all this.”
“Have you listened to anything we’ve said, or are you still clinging to your obsession with your old lover?” Nial snapped.
“The one who raised the landbridge is mounted,” murmured the one who had once been called Kesastra. She was nearly as striking as the leader, but with unruly dark hair that she had a habit of tucking behind her ear. The leader peered at her intently waiting for her to go on. “That, and he has stayed invisible on the strands as if he uses no magic. Even we cannot see him. The only reason we know he comes this way is that the others have seen him on the landbridge. That, and the mage that was captured and killed…” Her voice bordered on shrill, and her eyes were wild. “Don’t you realize what that means?”
“Oh, calm yourself, Guardian,” the leader chided. “We all saw the landbridge raised and the power he used to do it. He is no Wittister.”
“Neither is he Galorin,” Nial snorted.
She glared at him, but continued speaking to the others. “You saw how he blanketed the entire landbridge in magic to blind us. Whoever he is, he is clever, I will give him that. He does not blind us with darkness; he blinds us with overmuch light. We see his power everywhere at once, but above all, we see that it has nothing of Wittister about it.”
“On the other hand, we must remember what was reported of the dead mage sent back to them as a warning.” The youngest of them, Dolik, templed his fingers and spoke in his monotonous pedantic tones that matched the middle aged appearance he affected. “His death was unmistakable in character. It seems obvious that at least one Wittister mage is somewhere on the landbridge. I think we are agreed that this one who raised the landbridge is not the Wittister, judging by the nature of his power, so the real question becomes whether the Wittister pursues him or aids him. That remains unknown.”
“In that case, he is not alone,” the dark-haired woman replied, her voice rising in pitch again. “Either way—”
“Guardian,” he said as if addressing a child, “the Wittisters may also pursue him for their own ends.”
The leader sneered. “Has it occurred to you to ask how even one Wittister mage could have made his way from their abbey––deep in the southern highlands––across the entire continent and even across the landbridge to join forces with this mage and attack your forces from the west, from Syon, all without using any magic lest we mark him? Had the Wittister left the moment the bridge was raised, he could not be but halfway across Byrandia by now, riding at full speed—that is, assuming you didn’t send him across yourself as part of your little invasion force. Unwittingly, of course. The way you do everything.” She hoped Nial would rise to her bait, but he ignored her. She raised a brow at the others. “That is, assuming there even is a Wittister mage. I’ve yet to see any real proof of it, your desiccated mage husk aside.”
“In any case, the reinforcements should have arrived by now. “ Nial looked across the strands. “We should have word back from them soon and gain a better understanding of what we face. Curse this blindness!”
The leader thought a moment then frowned. “Believing that you faced Wittister mages, you sent reinforcements. Is that what you just said?”
Nial nodded. “Yes.”
“More mages?”
He nodded again. “We thought––”
“You sent them a fresh army of mages upon which to feed!”
His face felt hot. “I am not stupid. I warned the reinforcements before they left, and they did not go unguarded.” He looked to Kesastra and Dolik, who nodded supportively. “I sent draemondrae with them, the draemondrae who just took Hadar’s Port.”
“I see,” she said, a bit uneasily. “Terribly involved in this, aren’t you?” She looked around at them. “You and your draemondrae and your army of mages. My, but you all have your fingers right in the pie, sending one army after another. You should know by now that this is the trouble with taking such an active hand: once you take action, you find you must keep taking action to right what you upset with your last action. Especially if you are inept, and your actions tend to fail so catastrophically.”
“Galorin is dead!” he blurted suddenly. “I saw it myself––”
“You saw what, Guardian?” she laughed, enjoying his discomfort, but her laugh was a bit brittle. “A blurred vision mark, cobbled together in haste, of a beaten old man’s corpse being dragged from his home and burned? Did you see his face? Would you even know it after all this time?” She leveled her gaze at him, a smirk curving her lip.
He spoke evenly, but still she marked the petulance in his tone. “They said they were certain it was he.”
“Oh, of this I have no doubt.” She smiled irritatingly. Had he not considered that this grand force of mages he had sent could not possibly have ever seen Galorin and would be easily fooled? And Galorin would have seen to it that they had no reason to question. He would have given them exactly what they expected to see, an ancient wizard in seamless platinum robes who for some reason was easy to take from his keep and kill. They would never even question how a Guardian fell so readily to them. “You saw what you wanted to see. Tell me, did they recover anything?”
Nial glared at her.
“Any of the documents he stole? His own vision mark? Surely he had time to create o
ne as they besieged him, once he knew he had no escape.”
Nial looked down and shook his head.
Ah, so her suspicions were true.
“I see. All was ruin, and they found nothing but an old man whom they promptly killed and burned. And now they––and you––see Wittister Mages on the landbridge.” She laughed again, more confidently now, and a kind of warmth crept into her words. “Galorin surely lives,” she declared. “I can see his sense of humor in all this.”
The other two Guardians cast veiled looks between themselves. Dolik scratched his balding head and considered carefully. “The B’radikites’ portion of the prophecy does say that the fifth Guardian will return and raise the landbridge––”
“No, that is not what it says at all.” Kesastra shook her head. “You are bending the prophecy to fit circumstance and then calling it fulfilled. The actual words are, ‘Four thousand years the five are four’––”
“Obviously,” snapped the leader, irritated that they had preempted Nial’s squirming by changing the subject, “except that we weren’t reduced to four until you three had the brilliant idea to kill Galorin. It would seem the calendar only just began on this prophesied four thousand years. Assuming he is even dead.” What a jumble. It confounded her spirit.
“Not necessarily,” the other woman said. “He destroyed the landbridge and severed all contact with us, so for about four thousand years, we have been the only ones who have served as Guardians. It only says ‘the five are four,’ not why the five are four. In that case, if he is not dead…”
Something changed.
They all stood, their minds racing together and separately along the threads. The blanket of magic covering the landbridge had quite suddenly weakened to almost nothing, but only for a moment, a moment they watched in horrifyingly slow detail.
A single horseman, armored and surcoated in deep green and gold, had ridden out of the Lacework on a black horse and had drawn his horse to a stop before the scrambling chaos of battle. The audacity of his manner gave the attacking mages pause even while the draemondrae continued their battles with a handful of knights further away.
Damerien. It could only be the prince.
One of the knights, a woman with deep auburn hair and bright gold eyes, looked up through the blood and gore streaking her face and the draemondrae falling beneath her blade to see the horseman, and her eyes went wide. She drew breath to shout to him, riding toward him at all speed.
The woman. The savior of Syon, the hero of the Five Hundred Years War. The woman of the prophecy. The leader had to swallow her anger at the others to keep it from touching the threads. How could they have been so stupid?
Then all was lost in a flare of light. A surge of energy rippled through the strands so powerful that the guardians were forced to use their power to damp it before it could disrupt time and space. When they looked again, the complexion of the battlefield had changed.
Their army was destroyed. The survivors stampeded away in terror, trampling each other in their panic. But worse, much worse: they watched the injured mages, the ones who had been too slow to run away, withering and falling away, their lives and their power drained. The energy signature was unmistakable.
“Wittisters,” hissed Kesastra. “Feeding on the mages you sent. I told you!”
“Wittisters be damned, find me that horseman.” Nial shut his eyes hard, searching the threads even as he felt the blanket of magic thicken and cover the landbridge again. “He is the real danger.”
“Damerien,” Dolik gasped, looking up at the other guardians. “It must be. And he returns to Byrandia.” He looked around at the others. “You know what this means. It is the prophecy.”
The leader ignored them. While the others had peered through the deepening haze at the destruction of their army and sought in vain for Damerien, she had reached further, deeper, and just before the magical haze clouded her vision again, she’d found a hastily erected shield within the strands, one whose signature she knew. Intimately.
Galorin.
She smiled quietly to herself.
Twenty-Two
The Lacework
She was fighting. She had been fighting for a long time, mindlessly hacking away at enemies that ran at her, fighting for so long that she could not remember when the fight began or even quite where she was or why. Such things did not seem important. All that mattered was defeating the enemy and defending Syon. She had to keep fighting.
Just now, however, it came to her that her sword was never quite in the right place, always just a little late for a killing stroke, just a little slow. She needed to calm herself and concentrate. She needed to make herself move with more speed and cunning. She had to be more efficient. She had to drive herself harder.
But she was so very tired.
Finesse had long since abandoned her, and in her fatigue, sometimes it was all she could manage, to push away the enemy’s attacks, and always, someone else would get the killing stroke.
Not I, threatened by army, by sword, Brannagh!
Her sword had not killed Kadak.
“Don’t cry, Auntie,” Pegrine’s hoarse voice rasped, “I told you. It was only for a little while.”
“You won,” Renda smiled through her tears. “You protected Damerien, freed B’radik.”
Her sword had not killed Valmerous.
The war hero lowered her bloodied battered sword, watching the demons around her continue to fall anyway as if she continued to fight. Watching Kadak’s eyes explode within his skull right before she severed his head, his life already all but dispatched before her sword connected. Watching Pegrine rip through Valmerous’ throat with her talons while she stood helpless outside the barrier. Watching the demons bleed from their eyes in terror under the impossible brightness.
She had not defeated these demons. She had not saved her knights. She had not saved Syon. All her life she had been trained as a warrior. She had given up so much to live in a world which had had no place for a living weapon like her, a world for which she’d had only contempt, only to be praised as a hero for victories that she knew in her very core were not really hers.
She had killed more than her share of demons, but so had all of her knights. In the end, when the last stroke mattered, it had never been hers. She could as easily not be here at all, and the outcome would be the same. The same could be said of her entire life. And yet she knew nothing else.
As the enemy gathered itself for a final charge, she lay herself down on the hard ground of the landbridge and closed her eyes, ignoring the sounds and smells of death around her, knowing that once again, what she did would not matter. The battle was not hers to win, and yet, if the prophecy held, she would emerge alive and victorious because of the prophecy.
Always the prophecy.
With only a sharp intake of breath, she was suddenly awake, returned entirely to herself with cold wet ground at her back and a smell of smoke and death stinging her nostrils. She had no idea where she was. When had she fallen asleep? She drove the remnants of the disturbing dream from her mind and listened to her surroundings to orient herself before she moved. Nothing stirred around her.
She opened her eyes slowly in the still gray dawning light and looked as far in every direction as she could without moving her head. The crumbling coral towers of the Lacework were a few hundred yards off her right hand––
The Lacework. Battle. Demons. Dropping the chain. Light burning her eyes––too much light.
Her heart jumped, but she forced herself to stay still and listen.
The demons were gone. So were the mages. Around her she saw only broken and withered bodies amid shattered rubble in every direction. All was silence.
She felt for her fingers and toes, inventoried her body for injuries beyond the bruising on her back where she’d fallen to the ground. Finding none, she rose carefully, watching around herself for movement and taking up her sword and helmet from the ground where they’d fallen. The helmet had take
n some damage which would certainly explain the ache in her head and why she could not remember what happened. Her sword had mats of demon hair and blood on it. So she had managed to kill a few. She smiled coldly. At least that part of the dream had been false.
Around her and extending outward toward the eastern horizon, she saw dead demons and dead mages scattered over the landscape. Not enough of them, she saw. Truly, not but a tenth of the army she’d faced lay dead. At best a quarter.
So where were the rest? And where were her knights?
She looked behind her at the Lacework, which was ominously silent, and she feared the worst, that the rest had swept past her knights and past the archers on the stone bridge and had gone on to Syon.
Light, too much light.
She looked down at her sword again, desperately wishing to know what had happened. How could it be sunrise already? The sun had barely set when they engaged the demons. Was that why it had grown so bright? Her head ached.
The duke.
“Damerien!” she shouted. Alandro swung around and raced toward the lone mounted figure that rode out to face the army of demons and mages.
The duke raised his sword toward the demon army.
With a great roar, the demons charged toward him while the mages readied magical attacks.
“No!” she shrieked, driving Alandro harder, knocking aside demons as she went. She would not reach him in time, could not reach him––
Her head ached.
She made a silent signal with her hands and listened. She heard nothing and saw no movement, looking out across the blasted ground and heaps of coral rubble where the reefs had stood. If any of her knights remained here among the stillness, they must surely be dead.
She signaled again, and this time she was rewarded with a quiet nicker from a stand of coral not far away. A moment later, Alandro put his muzzle into her hand, and she rubbed his chin. His armor was badly dented in places, and he had a few frightening gashes, one above his eye and another at his withers but fortunately she saw no sign of poison. He walked slowly and carefully, like he’d taken a bit of a spill himself, but the cuts were not deep, and he had not broken any bones. He would mend with a bit of rest.
Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) Page 34