Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (10 page)

Chul watched the god fumbling with the rings he’d carved
himself, rings he’d given to Gikka in Farras.  He could not begin to imagine
how Limigar had gotten them––had the Hadrians somehow gotten them from her and
put them in one of His shrines?  Chul thought it unlikely, but if so…  He cast
a worried glance over the horizon toward Graymonde.  Then again, if that were
the case, why was this Hadrian god so interested in him?

He watched uneasily as Limigar made the same mistake over
and over in trying to find the answer to the puzzle, and he wondered how long
it would be before the god became quite frustrated, perhaps even angry.  He
found it amusing that he did not expect Limigar to be able to solve it.  After
all, Limigar might be a god, but he was still Hadrian.  The puzzle seemed to
make the child-god happy for the moment, to distract Him, and from what little
Chul had learned of Limigar, that was good.  Distracting the god was…good.  But
distracting Him from what?

“Oh, but what dreadful manners.  Here I am, playing with my
present, when I mean to show you what I’ve done!  This is such a treat for Me,
you understand, because normally I have no contact with Dhanani at all.  By
decree from B’radik, We gods of the Invaders, as you call Us, are forbidden to
seek among the Dhanani for followers, and so on, and so forth.  If you seek Us…well,
that’s different, isn’t it? But come, I’ve teased Myself long enough.  Let Me
show you!” 

The Dhanani child with blue eyes shifted again and suddenly,
Chul lost his balance and tumbled to the ground.  When he stood, he found
himself deep underground, hidden in shadows between the lantern lights that
lined the path.  All around him, like vermin crawling in carrion, he saw pale
men and women digging into the ground, and he tried not to look at them too
closely.  Thankfully they all faced away from him, their attention completely
taken with the rock before them.  Almost obsessively so.

The air felt like it was closing in around him, and he
started scrabbling desperately at the rock, trying to climb out toward the
small patch of blue sky he could see far above him. 

“Be still.  You are under My protection.”

“Can’t…breathe…” he whispered.

“Oh, don’t be silly, of course you can breathe,” spoke a
soft voice at his side, and he saw Gikka there beside him. Gikka, with her hair
loose in the fashion of Invader men, as always, but with bright blue eyes in
the darkness. The echo of her voice in the mine was alarming, but the Hadrian miners
seemed not to hear it.

Chul turned away from her coldly.  “You are not Gikka.”

“Of course not.  My thought, it was, to give you a
comforting presence, is all,” the child-god said, mimicking her accent
exactly.  “Close your eyes and think of the sky above. Imagine that it’s that
air and not this mine air that fills your lungs.”

He obeyed, closing his eyes, remembering the open sky of the
Plains, filling his lungs with the brisk air of the Groggy Bear’s Moon. 
Instantly he felt better.  There was plenty of air, even underground, he told
himself, as long as he could see the sky.  He opened his eyes slowly, looking
out over the Hadrians.

Somehow, Chul was oriented so that they never faced him,
never looked into the corner where he stood.  He could feel the barest
beginnings of the blood rage waiting to take him over at the first sight of
that strange and unnatural shine in their eyes if any of them turned toward
him.  His heart pounded and he resisted the urge to draw his hunting knife.  He
stared at the ground knowing that he could not possibly survive against so many
Hadrians armed with shovels and axes, not if he lost control.

“I’m quite proud of Myself,” whispered Limigar, who was
again a Hadrian child beside Chul.  “Oh, I do hope you’ll be impressed.  I’ve
not bothered to be clever in a long time, not with this lot.  But your present
was so special, I wanted to outdo Myself.  You can see what I’ve done here,
can’t you?  Oh, just see if you can’t.”

Chul watched the minors toiling away at the walls, pulling
away great chunks of the rock without paying much attention to where they were
digging.  It seemed odd to Chul that they would be so haphazard and frantic,
considering that these were the same mines they’d been working for
generations.  Odder still, he thought, that they would fill their barrows so
high with worthless clods of dirt and leave gold and huge quartz crystals
behind.

“Very good.  You’ve noticed.  Those barrows must be horribly
heavy with all that treasure.  Why, they positively groan when they move!  Can
you hear the grinding of metal on metal?”

“Treasure?  It’s just dirt and rock!”

Limigar laughed a happy, childish, sparkling laugh. 
“Treasure is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it?”

The barrows sparkled and Chul saw great heaping chunks of gold
and piles of diamonds, opals, rubies, and other stones even he knew would never
be found in the same places together.  Great sheets of wealth fell into the
barrows that the greedy little maggots wheeled out of the way so they could
grab more, and somehow, they always managed to find an empty ore cart or barrow
nearby to catch more of the amazing wealth, even while overfull cart after
overfull cart filled up the paths behind them.  And then, with another laugh
from Limigar, to Chul’s eye, it all turned to dirt again.

“Now…do you see the fuzzy little voles in the cages behind
them?”

Chul nodded, casting a quick glance up at the reassuring
patch of sky and drawing a deep breath.

“But you’ve no idea why they have them down here, do you? 
Of course you don’t, you’re Dhanani.  So I’ll tell you.  The voles are here in
case the miners hit a pocket of poisonous or, worse, explosive gas.  The voles
will start squeaking, and the miners will have a chance to run away.  They have
to drop everything, of course, and run straight away if they want to live. 
That’s the idea, anyway.  The bad thing about voles, though, is that once one
of them starts squeaking, they all start.”  He laughed.  “Funny little mousy
creatures.  I always wondered what it would be like to be one of them.”

Chul nodded absently, uncertain what this had to do with him
or why he needed to be here.  But he was alone.  Limigar was no longer at his
side. 

Deep within the mine, a single squeak caused all the miners
to stop and listen.  Another squeak, then another…  Suddenly every vole in the
mine was screaming.

*          *          *

Gikka moved carefully and silently over the stones and
rubble at the entrance to the mine, pausing very briefly at intervals to let
her eyes adjust to the darkness, listening against the smoke and dust choked
silence in the mine for any sign of the boy.  The two horses stood a short
distance away, near enough that she could reach them but far enough away that
the animals could escape should the Hadrians try to capture them for ransom.  An
odd concern anywhere else on Syon, but here amongst the miners, a real worry. 
She kept to the walls, mindful that the sun was at her back, and resisted the
urge to call the boy’s name.  They could be spiteful, especially emboldened as
they were against her now, and she would not have them kill the boy out of hand
just to vex her.

She’d seen Chul’s white horse grazing at the crossroad as
soon as she’d crested the last ridge, and a thousand possibilities had gone
through her mind, all terrible, as she’d raced Zinion overland toward him. 
Very soon, the thousand possibilities became only one, and she spurred Zinion
harder: the boy had been taken by the Hadrians.  She had to find him and hope
she was not too late.

His horse had still been lathered with sweat when she
reached him, so whatever had happened had not happened long ago.  There was
still a chance to save Chul even if the Hadrians had taken him.  She had only
to find him.  The horse had shown no cuts, no marks, no sign of a fight, and
his eyes had been more or less clear and calm by the time Gikka approached
him.  This had to be a good sign.  Even as dull a horse as he would have
noticed if his rider had been snatched from his very back by a mob, especially
since she could not imagine Chul being taken without a fight, and the fright
would still show in his eyes.  Still, it was the only explanation that made any
sense.

Then she’d seen the plume of flame and smoke shoot from the
mine.

“Gikka.”

She stopped, squinting below into the darkness to see a bit
of light reflected weakly in dark leather, or perhaps sweaty skin, just inside
the deepest shadow below the mouth of the mine.

“Chul?”

The boy wiped his forearm across his brow and stepped into
the light before he stumbled and fell at her feet.  A thick layer of dust
covered him, streaked with sweat and possibly blood, and he smelled strongly of
smoke.  She would not know for certain whether he was injured until they were
in better light.

She looked past him into the darkness, making sure no army
of angry Hadrians was about to spill out over them, then slipped her arm under
his to lift him.  “We best not be staying, lad.  The Hadrians––”

“The Hadrians are all dead,” he murmured softly.  “All of
them, dead.  Those that weren’t trampled to death in the rush died when it all
exploded…  Metal wheels.  They scraped under the burden and sparked, and with
just a breath of gas…” 

“By the gods,” she breathed.  “All of them, then?”

The boy nodded.  “Limigar…”  He shrugged, as if that was all
that needed to be said.

Gikka nodded.  “It’s this favor I bought of Him with the toy
you made.  I told you I’d not be leaving this account unsettled long.”  She
raised her voice slightly, and Chul knew she wasn’t speaking to him.  “A clever
and righteous payment, this is, for their treasons and greed.  My thanks to You
for Your trouble.”

“I think,” coughed Chul quietly behind her, “that He enjoyed
it.  In fact, I know right well He did.”

A soft rumble emerged from the mine followed by another
belch of dust and death smells from the depths, a sound not unlike a laugh.

“Well,” Gikka said, looking at Chul a bit uncertainly, “I
suppose everyone’s the happier for it, then.  All but the Hadrians, of course. 
But come, and let’s have a look at you.  I’ll not have you bleeding to your
death while we ride.  And you can tell me how it is you came to be in the mine
at just the wrong time.”

She led him out to the horses and helped him to his saddle. 
As she’d hoped, Chul’s wounds were no more than cuts and scrapes, probably from
scrambling over the rocks.  But some of them looked like they were already
scabbed over, like they’d happened hours ago.  A sick feeling filled her gut.

“Did you get my message to the sheriff?”

Chul sighed.  “After a fashion, Mistress.”

“After a fashion?  Lad, you did or you did not.”

“I did, but…by then, it didn’t matter.”  He saw the
questions lining up in her eyes, and he shook his head.  “It’s not so simple. 
I’ve so much to tell you.  The castle was surrounded when I got there, and the
Hadrians had already left, but the knights followed them, so I followed the
knights, and then there was a battle and—”

“Peace, lad.”  Gikka closed her eyes a moment, willing her
heart to slow its panic as she swung up to Zinion’s back.  “The rest you can
give me as we ride, but tell me this at once, and only if you know for certain,
not as you go guessing at it, but certain with your own eyes:  do the sheriff
and Lady Renda yet live?”

He nodded.  “They live, though the sheriff is injured. 
Badly.  After Brannagh fell––”

“Brannagh fell?”  Gikka’s hands shook with rage.  “And me,
sitting the stoop at Graymonde like a schoolgirl, not there to fight?  Why did
you not ride to fetch me?  I could have…”  Her voice broke.  “I would have…”

“You could not have stopped it.  Nothing could have.  I saw
it.”  He looked into her eyes, and the horror she saw there said more than he
could have.  “Yes, Brannagh fell, but the sheriff, Lady Renda, the knights… 
They were not there to fight, either.”

Gikka only stared at him, unsure which question to ask
first. 

“Gikka, I’ve so much to tell you, so much I need you to help
me understand, and tell you I will, but above all, know that I saw them safely
away to Brannford ere I came to fetch you.”

She blinked away her tears and nodded.  “They are safe.” 
She nudged Zinion up toward the eastern road.  “All else falls aside, and we
cling to that.  They are safe.  Brannford it is, then.  Durlindale tonight, and
I’ll have this tale from you end to end, as we ride, lad.  Brannagh…fallen.” 
She shook her head in disbelief.

Moncliff

The three riders were still the better part of a day’s ride
outside Durlindale, which itself stood a day’s ride from Brannford, when they
were forced to slow their horses.  They had ridden hard through the night,
almost to exhaustion for man and horse, and they’d had to cut overland to avoid
being seen by Maddock’s spies on the roads surrounding Castle Damerien, which
had slowed their travel.  As they’d cleared the east gate, they had of course
seen the distant glow of battle over the far western hills, over Castle
Brannagh, but their path lay east.  So they had not stopped, had not slowed
their pace, riding on into the night in resolved silence and leaving Brannagh
to its fate.

This close to Durlindale and Brannford, and with the morning
about to dawn, they would need caution more than speed.  The roads here saw heavy
traffic by day, between the farmers and the town, but also between various
monasteries and temples, many of which––most of which, the duke feared––were
likely in the hands of their enemies.

Colaris, the sheriff’s harrier, circled high above the
trees.  The duke had watched the little hawk dodging and hunting between the
trees, happily filling his little belly on warm, fresh field mouse, a luxury the
bird had likely not enjoyed since the war.  By now, Colaris had no doubt
wearied of terrorizing squirrels and rabbits on the ground as he scouted ahead
of the riders and just glided lazily between the trees, matching the riders’
pace and watching the ground below.  It seemed Daerwin had tasked Colaris with
staying with Damerien since Castle Brannagh was no longer safe for him, which
suited the duke.  Already the bird had more than earned his keep.