Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2)

by Jordan MacLean

  The two knights had shared something terrible in having had to kill Vonn as they did, and as was the way of warriors, that shared memory and shared guilt had forged a bond between them, a bond that, while deep, was not what they took it to be. Soon they would share what privacy they could find, most likely a makeshift lean-to of furs and clothing like the one Gikka and Dith shared. And, knowing Kerrick and Amara both as she did, soon afterward, they would stop. A while later, long enough not to seem churlish, Kerrick would press his suit with the sheriff again for Renda’s hand. She knew it, Kerrick knew it, and she supposed even Amara knew it. But they would all pretend they did not and let the sordid little drama play itself out.

  She sighed and continued on her way, feeling terribly old for her years.

  Beyond the sleeping knights and lit only by cloud-dulled moonlight, she saw Grayson stubbornly battling shadows with his sword. He was still awkward and slow with the blade, and his posture told her he was getting more and more frustrated at fighting against his pain. She looked away, saddened by his struggle and embarrassed for him. Grayson’s great pride as a swordsman had always been his grace and his reflexes. He always seemed to know what an opponent would do before the opponent himself knew. To see his body fail again and again to meet what his mind expected of it broke her heart, even over her pride at his perseverance.

  Laniel had assured both Renda and her father that Grayson would heal fully with time. His own body would have to do the work, and in so doing, he would need time to recover his ability. The trouble was, he was not yet fully healed, but coming as they were into what looked to be hostile lands, he could not afford to be helpless. So he practiced. And he raged against himself for his weakness, punishing himself with the pain.

  “Commander,” he gasped, and gave her a nod before resuming his battle.

  “Sir Grayson,” she nodded. “Much better tonight.”

  “Aye, just enough better each day to vex me, my Lady. The damp is no great help, either. But,” he added, slicing the air with his sword, “I reckon I could beat a demon or two now, an it came to it.”

  “Good man,” she said with a smile. “But do not neglect your bow. Until you have healed fully, I should rather have you at a distance than fighting close quarters.”

  “Aye, madam,” he answered quietly.

  She smiled. He hid his disappointment well.

  If only they had had they a proper healer along, one who could bring the power of the gods to bear…. She looked at Laniel where he toiled over Qorlin, encouraging the man to use his injured arm in spite of the pain, and she felt that flush of shame again, the same that she had felt at the abbey.

  A wonder, it is, that your weak bodies even remember how to heal themselves, what with the constant intervention of your gods ere you so much as sneeze!

  Almost a season later, Laniel’s words still stung. Of course she was grateful for everything Laniel and Amara had done to save Qorlin and Grayson. And to his credit, Laniel had saved Qorlin from the poison of the ha’guaka, something no other priest had ever been able to accomplish. Not even Nara. Bilkar had charged him to use everything he knew. She wondered if the old Dhanani power he had so long forbidden himself to use was how he had managed it. But she would never ask.

  She was grateful to Bilkar the Furred for sending Laniel with them. Otherwise, they would have had only Amara’s limited skills with bandages. But she did miss Nara’s skill even while she cursed her own impatience. She could not afford to have two of her knights injured, especially not after the terrible losses they took at the Lacework. Nor in a colder and more pragmatic light could she afford to have her entire camp dedicated to their care.

  The mystery of the missing vial and how it found its way to the prisoner had been at the back of her thoughts since Laniel first brought it to her attention, and she was no closer to having any answers now than she had been. With the heavy losses they had sustained at the Lacework, she supposed it might not matter now. The thief, assuming there was a thief, was likely among the dead, and if not… She looked over the camp. If not, if it was one of those still here, still fighting for their survival, then it was not someone she could afford to be without in the days ahead. She would have to be watchful even so.

  She had not seen the stars tonight, hidden as they were behind great thunderous clouds. Stars. She smiled sadly. After everything she’d seen, after fighting her way across land that no one had traversed in thousands of years, after making camp for the first time in Byrandia––Byrandia, of all things!––Why did the simple lack of stars in the night sky suddenly make her feel like she was horribly far from home?

  And yet, she was home. On a strange battlefield, fighting demons again, just as she had for nearly half her life, her knights beside her. This place, this land, was not her home, but the battlefield surely was. She could never be so at peace as she was at war.

  Sure you’d not take it all back.

  Would I not?

  No, she answered finally. Even if she had missed the excitement and glory of her former life, she had not caused this war merely by thinking it. Pegrine had already been sacrificed long before the thought had even formed in her mind or on her lips that she should rather be at war again. What superstitious rubbish for one who was otherwise so pragmatic. The mechanisms for the war’s beginning were in play long before that day in the library so long ago. Cilder had already been corrupted. Even the army of Byrandian mages had already arrived.

  The first blood had been drawn in this war not long after the last war ended. She mulled that thought over for a time as she walked. Then, rather suddenly, she laughed, and for the first time since the end of the last war, there was none of the darkness, none of the weariness or cynicism which had colored her heart. She had finally driven the responsibility for this war and its attendant guilt from her mind at last. As if a great fog lifted from her mind, she found her senses sharper, her mind clearer. Her purpose more tightly focused.

  As she passed near the horses, she felt Alandro’s warm breath in her hair, and she patted his muzzle reassuringly. The horse nickered softly and nuzzled her neck, in his own way reassuring her. He was the only being who could. A moment later, she felt him tense and move off, with a sense of alarm that caused her to reach for the sword at her belt.

  “Renda,” came a familiar voice from the misty darkness, a voice she had heard so little in the last year that it took her a moment to place it, and then she understood Alandro’s anxiety. The young man’s seamless gold robes reflected the tiny bit of light coming from Laniel’s fire, broken only by the familiar orange rucksack he carried slung over one shoulder. He smiled, a bit uncertainly. “Am I intruding?”

  “Never, Dith,” she chuckled. “Unless you ask Alandro.” She moved away from the horses and gestured for him to join her. “I have the watch.”

  “Ah,” he replied, and fell in beside her.

  They walked in silence for a time, both finding themselves looking toward the east more than was quite proper for a patrol, looking toward where Chul and Gikka had gone. But the silence had an expectation about it. This was not the companionable silence she’d come to expect from Dith during the war.

  “You seem troubled,” she said at last.

  “Renda, I…” he looked away into the darkness again, and she was afraid he would not continue. “You must have a thousand, thousand questions.”

  She did not speak right away. “Only one, truly.”

  “Only one,” he laughed, “but within it, no doubt layer upon layer to answer.”

  She shrugged.

  “Your question is why.”

  She nodded. “I suppose it is, an we boil it down to the bones.”

  “Why Byrandia, why the landbridge,” he chuckled uneasily. “Why in the name of all the gods did I leave Graymonde Hall and go in search of Galorin?”

  “Any of these,” she replied. “All of these…”

  He nodded. “At each decision, had you asked me why, my answer would have been the sam
e: I do not know.”

  “No, Dith, I know you,” she smiled. “Your answer would have been, ‘I have my reasons.’”

  He grinned. “You know me, indeed.” He stopped and opened the orange rucksack. From it, he took out the ugly piece of stone and showed it to her. “Renda, do you recall when Gikka gave this to me?”

  Renda nodded in surprise. She hadn’t thought about that stone since Gikka had first brought it back to the camp during the war. She’d always thought it strange that Gikka found the hideous thing so fetching. “Yes, of course. But why do you carry it now? For sentimental reasons?”

  He shook his head. “I carry it now because I have no choice.”

  No choice? That sounded rather ominous to her.

  “Because…” he trailed off, staring at the rock.

  “Dith?”

  “I could not read the writing on it when we were in Syon.” He pointed to the markings on it. “But now I can.”

  “Writing?” She looked at the rock uncertainly. She could see only a few scratches, as if someone had tried to engrave it and found it too hard. “I do not see any writing.”

  He nodded. “I had not looked at it since I left Galorin’s Keep, not until a few nights ago. But now, at last, I see what it is.” He frowned down at it. “The language, I’m told, is Brymandyan, and the last strokes of it are in the threads…” He glanced at her, seeing that she only vaguely understood. “That is why you cannot read it. You cannot see the threads.”

  “Neither can I read Brymandyan,” she said evenly and continued her patrol. “But very well, you see writing there that I cannot. Someone told you it was Brymandyan? Who? And even an we assume it is, how is it that you can read it?”

  He laughed weakly. “You would not believe me if I told you.”

  Ah, she thought to herself, Trocu must have translated it for him. She had seen him wander away from the camp with the duke a few nights before to talk. But if that was the case, he must have been taken very much into Trocu’s confidence.

  “Indeed.” She nodded reluctantly. “I was not sure you…knew.” She looked over toward her cousin’s lean-to. “So Trocu translated it for you, then.”

  “What? No, I…”

  “It’s all right, Dith.” She smiled. He looked confused. “I saw you speaking with him. But never mind. Come, what does it say?”

  “Oh.” He blinked at her a moment. “Well, in fact,” he said, turning the strange stone over, “it is a map, of sorts.”

  “A map of Byrandia? That could prove useful.” She glanced at it, but to her eye, it was still just an ugly, scratched, misshapen bit of stone.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Well…yes, but it is not a map that you or the others could follow. It is not a map of mountains and rivers and roads, but of markers on the threads and strands of power. Trees of certainty. Compulsions…”

  “That sounds less of a map and more of a study of magic.”

  “No, it is certainly a map. It shows a place, with landmarks and directions. But by its nature, and by my nature, only I can use it. Not even other mages can use it.”

  She raised a brow, dreading where this train of thought led. “Are you saying you must leave us again and go on your own to this place on this map?”

  He tucked the strange rock back into the rucksack. “No, I do not believe so.” He smoothed his seamless robes carefully. “I should say, yes, I must go where the rock leads me, but nothing compels me to go alone. If we find that you must go another way, we may indeed need to part company again.”

  “I see.”

  “I sincerely hope we do not. I do not relish traversing the Byrandian badlands alone. But never mind that now. None of that answers your question, at least not directly.” His voice took on a more formal tone, as if he’d been rehearsing what he would say next. “Renda, you have been my friend and my commander for these last many years. Gikka told me that you have had to defend me and defend my actions even without knowing why I took them, which you have done without question. I owe you much gratitude for that, but for your patience, I also owe you an explanation. You deserve to know that your defense of my actions was not misplaced.”

  She waited, not speaking, watching him falter in his carefully rehearsed speech. She had never seen Dith at a loss for words before.

  After a moment, he drew a deep breath. “The answer to all the whys in your mind––why I left Gikka a year ago to seek Galorin, why I had to come to Byrandia, why I had no choice but to raise the landbridge, even why I carry this ugly rock…it all comes down to this: this stone is a map to the Citadel. The Guardian Citadel. It seems,” he said uncertainly “that I am to become a Guardian.”

  She stopped in surprise. A Guardian? He might as well have told her he was to become a god. Or a goblet.

  Her instructors at the academy had considered the Guardians the stuff of legend and treated them as characters more of literature than in reality. Then again, coming as she did from a family steeped in legend, she was not quick to dismiss such stories. She had heard little more of the Guardians but that they were originally a group of five extremely powerful mages who had taken responsibility for protecting reality from the excesses of magic. Galorin of legend had been a Guardian, as well.

  Galorin.

  Dith had been compelled to go in search of Galorin.

  Had he actually made it to the Keep, then?

  “Dith,” she breathed, “I… This only creates more questions, but the most important of these must be, are you certain?”

  He chuckled. “As certain as one can be about such things, I suppose.” He hefted the rock and smiled darkly. “Let me just say that I have strong reason to believe it to be true.”

  Her heart raced. Unbidden, part of the prophecy came to her:

  Four thousand years the Five are four,

  The fifth is found and binds the shores.

  Well, he had certainly bound the shores when he raised the landbridge. Another piece of the prophecy had fallen into place, the prophecy which had cost her niece’s life and the prophecy of which her father had always spoken with such dread. That damnable prophecy.

  He saw the anxiety in her expression. “Renda,” he said softly. “I am still Dith. It is important to me that you know this. Even as a Guardian, I will still be Dith, and I will still hold the same loyalties I’ve always held.”

  “I would never doubt it,” she smiled. “Come, I have so many more questions.”

  Twenty-Six

  He took off his seamless boots and slipped beneath the furs in the low lean-to he shared with Gikka. She was not there, of course, and would not be for a few hours yet, so the lumpy pile of saddle blankets and furs felt desolate and cold. He found it odd that he missed her more now, knowing he would see her again in only a matter of hours, than he had during the two seasons he’d spent traveling the Hodrache Range, and he laughed to think how quickly he’d settled into his old habit of leaving space for her even when she wasn’t there.

  He lay on his back listening to the near silence of the camp around him, thinking about his conversation with Renda. She had accepted his strange news better than he had expected. She had listened to what he said, no matter how far-fetched it sounded even in his own ears, and she seemed to take what he said without much doubt. She had not even questioned particularly how he had come to be able to read the stone. Perhaps she was only patronizing him.

  “Or perhaps she draws her conclusions based on information you do not have. I believe she thinks Damerien translated for you.”

  Dith considered. He had wondered about that at the time. But after what the duke had told him, he supposed it was not that surprising.

  “I am almost jealous. For all that I was his boon companion for decades, he never confided so much to me.”

  To be fair, he hadn’t told Dith much, either, beyond what he’d all but deduced for himself: Trocu was not like other men of this world. He was the same Damerien who had liberated Syon, the same who had fought through countless batt
les over the generations, the same who had freed Durlindale, the same who had fought by his side as Brada and as Trocu. He recreated himself with each generation, living as a man, taking a bride, bearing a single son who would become the Sheriff of Brannagh. Then at the Succession, through the arcane magics of his Keepers, he would be remade and introduced as his own elder son, raised in secret for his protection. So had Brada emerged upon Vilmar’s death at Durlindale, and so Trocu had emerged as Brada’s son upon his death.

  He remembered wondering at the time where Brada had found time to marry and have a son during the war, but the story given out was that Trocu’s mother had died long since, while Brada was still in hiding and before he assumed the throne of Syon. No one had ever thought to question it, just as they never thought to question why for four thousand years, the Sheriffs of Brannagh only sired daughters. That fact certainly had made any questions of succession to the Brannagh title simple.

  “Ah, but what of this sheriff who bore a son and a daughter?”

  Dith shook his head. Roquandor had died before any question of succession at Brannagh had been raised, of course, but he must have lived for a reason. After all, his birth was part of the mysterious prophecy that foretold the war’s end. And of course it had been his daughter who had acted as B’radik’s avatar in the glade.

  He felt wry amusement from Galorin, but he was too tired to get involved in one of his coy word games now. He shrugged, feeling his eyelids drooping. He could worry about it in the morning. Maybe, he thought sleepily, he could ask Gikka about it when she got back.

  “Did you think I would not be able to find you?”

  He was surrounded by darkness with no ground, no sky. He had no way to orient himself, and he felt dizzy and off balance. Below him, impossibly, the strange ugly rock had come free of its rucksack prison and was floating just out of his reach, the bright lines on it glowing, combining with the threads. Along one of the threads came a gentle pulse of power that, like the flex of a great cat’s paw, implied a sinuous deadly reserve of power just below the surface.