Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (14 page)

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, hands clasped over her father,
tears spilling down her face onto his bedclothes.  “I’m so, so sorry.”

An hour later, a young monk, more than a novice but not more
than a year past her final vows, slipped silently through the door.

“My Lady,” she whispered, not wanting to disturb the
knight’s prayers and not wanting to wake her if she slept.  Renda’s head rested
lightly on her father’s chest, her hand upon his wounded arm.  The knight made
no answer.

The monk watched her for a time from the darkness of the
surgery.  She knew who Renda of Brannagh was, of course, but this legendary
woman who had led the armies against the demon Kadak just two years before
seemed so strangely fragile and childlike in her repose that she could not help
but stare.

“Come, let me help you to your cot ere I check his dressings…” 
The monk, for all that she was slight of build, shouldered Renda’s weight
readily, lifted her and eased her to her cot.  Lady Renda stirred just enough
to let herself be led to the cot, but she did not speak, did not so much as
open her eyes. 

She seemed to fall right to sleep, but the monk could not
take the chance.  Just to be certain, she took from the crate the same vial
that Laniel had used to deepen Daerwin’s sleep and waved it under Renda’s
nose.  She was relieved to see the knight relax still further, her mouth falling
slightly open.  This was good.  She could not afford to have any witnesses to
what she was about to do.

From the pouch hanging from the chain belt about her waist,
she drew two tiny bottles as well as several long thin pine needles.  She
gently cut away the wrappings of Daerwin’s dressing and pressed apart the flesh
of the wound so she could see all the way to the bone where the strange energy
burned away the flesh.

A slow rumbling began in the very foundation of the abbey,
like the first warning growl of a wolf, and the temperature in the surgery
began to drop.  The monk did not look up, did not seem to notice, so engrossed
was she in watching the powers battling within the wound.  Were the Sheriff of
Brannagh any other man, he would have died by now.

She licked each of the pine needles and set them in a line
from one end to the other within the wound.  Then, before they could wither and
ignite, she poured swirls of the two liquids upon the needles, quietly chanting
the strange words she had learned, feeling for the first time a delicious rush
of power that surged through her, into the wound, into the bindings of the pine
needles where they drank up the deer’s blood and the maple sap.  First red,
then yellow, then red again––

––and felt a sword point at her back.

“Stop at once, or I will run you through, and damn the
consequences.”

“Be at peace!”  The monk set down the bottles carefully and
turned.  “I mean no harm, Lady!”

“Stop!  Do not move!  Do not so much as draw breath to speak
without my leave!”  Renda spared a quick look at her father.  “What have you
done to him?  Mind you answer properly.  A single word of Dhanani, and I will
cut you down where you stand.  By B’radik, I will.”

“I mean you no harm,” the monk repeated with a sigh.  “I
want only to help.”

“So much so that you tried to deepen my sleep so I could not
stop you?”

“I did.”  She looked away.  “I knew you would not
understand.”

Renda’s eyes narrowed.  “What, that you are corrupted and
drunk with Dhanani power?”

“What? I…do not…”

“How many here are corrupted like you?”  The sword point bit
in, and the monk winced.  “Does Bilkar lie bound by your hand?”

The young woman’s confusion twisted her features.  “What? 
No!  No power could bind Bilkar the Furred!”

“You do not convince me, monk.  Do not think I cannot
recognize the words you spoke.  They are Old Dhanani, and this, this ill power
you wield, it is the same power that harms my father!”

“I know nothing of Dhanani.  I know only…what I know, which
is naught but by rote.  This you must believe.  Indeed this power I wield is
like that which harmed him.  But don’t you see?  It is the only cure!”  The
monk nodded toward the sheriff.  “Look upon his wound.  See how it mends
itself.”

Renda edged closer to her father, keeping her sword trained
on the young monk, and looked at the wound. 

“An it does not,” the monk murmured, “kill me where I
stand.  You will only hasten the inevitable.”

She could guess what Renda saw looking into the wound.  By
now the pine needles she had dropped into the wound would be gone, but so too
would be the sliver of the cardinal’s power that had lodged in the bone.  The
muscle, nerve and sinew were rebuilding themselves, obscuring the bone,
knitting together as if the wound were being unmade exactly as it had been
made. 

“He will be hale and ready to ride by morning.  You cannot
help but see.”  She smiled enigmatically.  “Now everyone will see.”

“Gaed?” 

Renda looked up to see Laniel standing in the doorway.  “Child,
what brings you to the surgery?”  He waved a hand and dismissed the rest of the
monks who, wakened by the rumbling, had come down into the corridors, some with
weapons in hand.  When they were gone, he looked at the sheriff’s arm and saw
that it was nearly healed.  He looked between Renda and Gaed, his face twisted
into a masque of disbelief.  “Oh, Gaed, what have you done?”

The monk fell prostrate before him.  “No evil, my Lord Abbot,
only good.  I have met my challenge today, on the Feast of Bilkar!” she cried
with a forced cheerfulness.  “I cured the sheriff’s wounds with the same means
that created it.” She had no doubt rehearsed these words for hours.

“That is not possible!”  

Renda saw the horror in Laniel’s eyes as he looked between
her and Gaed.  He took an abortive step toward the sheriff, but the monk
clutched at his leg.

“I know my life is forfeit,” Gaed continued.  “Only please,
let me be remembered well for the sacrifice I’ve made.”

“But how?”  Laniel crouched beside her.  “How could you have
come by this knowledge?”

She looked away, refusing to answer. 

“How are we come to this turn of events, Gaed?”

“The sheriff’s arm is healed, and my life is forfeit in the
saving of it.  Does the how of it matter?”

“Yes,” Laniel said simply, brushing his fingers softly
through the young woman’s thin brown hair.  He looked up at Renda, tears
brimming in his eyes.  “It matters to us.”

The monk lay at his feet in silence for a long time.

“Then by betrayal,” she said at last.  She rose to her feet
and looked into his eyes, not letting herself look away from the pain in the
older priest’s face.  “By theft and subterfuge.”

Laniel shook his head.  “We do not understand.”

“You do not want to understand!  That night, you remember,”
she continued, glancing at Renda, and in her soft brown eyes, the knight saw a
wistfulness and a longing she had never known.  So bare was the monk’s soul
that Renda had to look away, embarrassed.  “Afterward, you went to the big
chest, and I watched you take a great ancient book bound in hide from it.  It
was one of several in the chest.”

“We remember,” Laniel frowned uneasily, as if he was
beginning to understand what had happened.  “You asked what the books contained
and if we would share them with you.  We told you we could not.  You seemed
satisfied by this.”

“Satisfied.”  The younger monk laughed bitterly.  “Who could
be satisfied with such an answer?  In truth, I was not pleased by your answer, my
Lord, not at all, as you should have known I could not be.”

“Not pleased by our answer?  That we said no should have
been sufficient, Gaed.”  His voice rose in anger and resounded with the rumble
in the floor.  “Not pleased?  We are your abbot!”

“And I was your lover!”  Angry tears filled the woman’s
eyes.  “You trusted me at once with too much and not enough!  You lay for me a
challenge I was too weak to withstand.”  She thought a moment.  “No.  To
dismiss it as weakness would be incorrect.  Anger drove me, anger and jealousy,
that you should keep secrets from me, and right before my very eyes.  And so,”
she breathed, “whilst you slept, I lifted your key ever so gently as it rested
upon your chest, heated it just so with my candle flame and pressed into the
side of my candle to make myself a copy. ”

Laniel’s eyes grew wide.

Renda shook her head.  “You betrayed the very trust you
thought you deserved.”

“I betrayed nothing!  Once I had the key, I spent every
spare moment studying the books, learning the lost ways.  I coveted the
knowledge only to have, not to use, not to share.  Don’t you see?”  She turned
to Laniel.  “I told myself I could share your challenge, as a…wife might, to be
closer to you.”

“A wife?  Gaed…”  The abbot shook his head. 

“Do not say it.”  At last the tears spilled from her eyes. 
“Please, I cannot bear the words upon your lips.  I know we shared but a single
night.”  She smiled sadly.  “I knew, in my plainness and lack of skill, I could
expect no more than that.  But this knowledge, you see…this was something I
knew I could share with you, however secretly, for a lifetime.  Then maybe you
would learn to love me as I love you.”

“No, this is not possible.”  He took the monk’s hands in
his.  “We know you, Gaed.  This strangeness is not your own.  This weak talk of
wives and of love…  You must have been misled by this other god, driven to this
betrayal by––”

Gaed shook her head.  “No, truly!  Since I were a child, I
have served only Bilkar.  And you.”

Renda scowled.  “A curious way to serve them, is it not? 
With betrayal and lies?”

“Yes, perhaps.”  Gaed looked at her coldly.  “You would not
understand.  How could you?  I see it in your eyes.  You have never loved.  You
are too weak.”

Renda recoiled as if struck.  The words cut her to her very
soul.

“Gaed!”  Laniel roared at her.  “You forget yourself!”

She turned back to him.  “Like you, I was content to hold
this knowledge and never to use it.  But then, I saw the sheriff’s wound and
recognized it, and as I looked within, I knew that I had the knowledge to save
his arm and perhaps even his life from the power that infected him.  I hoped
that even as you killed me, you would be proud of what I’d done.”

The roar that shook the abbey deepened, and a great cold
wind circled through the monks, a wind that came from no direction and every
direction at once.  Laniel drew Gaed to him and moved in front of her to
protect her as the swirls of cold wind drew frost from the very air itself and
crystallized it into thin strands, almost hairs, all whirling and binding
themselves, resolving into the shape of a giant Bremondine man, almost
completely obscured in thick white furs, whether worn as clothing or growing
from his own skin.

Bilkar the Furred.

And He was screaming with fury.

His face, had it not been entirely formed of ice, would have
been red with His anger, and the sound He made was not so much a word as a pure
and perfect expression of rage. 

Renda shivered in the deepening cold and cast a worried look
over her father, but he still slept, bundled beneath several blankets, all but
his arm which now looked as it had when he’d strapped his vambrace on the night
before, with only a red and angry scar to mark his injury.  She could not help
but feel gratitude for what the young monk had done for him, even though it
might now cost all of them their lives.

Laniel immediately prostrated himself upon the ground before
Bilkar, and Gaed did likewise.  Renda placed herself between the god and her
father and bowed her head, dropping to one knee.

“Weakness!” bellowed the god, looking over the priests and
the knights.  “Why is there such weakness in this place?”

She looked up and met the god’s icy gaze with her own and
set her hand on her hilt, a show of strength, a threat if He chose to take it
as such.  Absurdly, it crossed her mind that He would not be the first god she
had confronted today.

“Peace, child of Damerien, protector of B’radik,” he said
more softly.  “Have I not witnessed your strength today in the Dark Glade?  What
could I find wanting in your actions there?”

After a moment, Renda bowed her head again and stood.

“No, I smell weakness amongst Mine own, and I would see it
purged!”

“The weakness is ours, Lord,” spoke Laniel from where he lay
upon the floor.

“Aye, so it is,” the god roared over him.  “But is it truly
where you believe it to be?  Where is the child who stole the forbidden
knowledge?”

“No child, but a monk of Bilkar.”  Gaed replied without
looking up.  “I broke Your law, and for that, I am ready to die.”

“You!” His growl rumbled through the very walls, and had
they not been so solidly built they might have crumbled.  “Have you not done
enough without presuming to tell Me My judgment?  Be still.”

“The child is innocent.  We are abbot of this house. The
lapse in judgment was ours,” said Laniel.  “We should have known she could not
withstand such temptation, and as abbot, we should have protected her from it.”

Bilkar growled.  “Would you coddle weakness by hiding
temptation, Laniel?  In My very abbey? Amongst My priests?”

“She is still young.”

“She is still
Bilkarian
!”  The god’s words rang in
the silence of the surgery.  “Would you know your failing, Abbot?”

Laniel stared at the floor.  “In all humility, Lord Bilkar,
we would.”

“Consider.  Were you not told to guard that knowledge and
keep it safe?”

“We were.”

“Did you fail in this simple task?”

He sighed.  “We did.”

“Nonsense.  You guarded the knowledge as well as any abbot
ever has.  But did you wonder
why
you guarded it?”