Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (26 page)

“Spared?”  The captain’s eyes flashed between the three men
with anger.  “Do these wrecked ships say to you that we were spared?”

“Spared, aye!” thundered the duke, and the captain cringed
beneath the power of his presence.  “Brannford and the other coastal towns were
utterly destroyed, their homes and shops washed away, their citizens drowned
and crushed beneath the weight of the sea, while Pyran lost not a soul.  Count
your blessings!”

Trocu ignored the captain’s apologetic stammering.  His eyes
narrowed, looking out over the landbridge and over the ships’ crews scavenging
through the wreckage, then southward toward the devastation he and the others
had witnessed all up and down the coast.  Until they’d reached Pyran, he had
allowed that the wave had simply been an act of nature, but to see Pyran still
standing, virtually untouched, clearly shielded when the landbridge had been
raised right here left no doubt in his mind.  This had been a deliberate act. 
He had a good idea of who this blue eyed “velveted lordling” was, as well.

“If he raised the landbridge as you say and sent that wave
to scourge the coast,” the duke said, “then this man is responsible for the
deaths of thousands as well as the destruction of the entire Syonese fishing fleet,
and he will surely answer for it.  But it remains to be seen why he raised it,
assuming he did.  So let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”  The duke lowered his
voice.  “Now tell me, Captain.  Did you see him raise the landbridge yourself?”

The captain scratched his head.  “Well…not directly, no.  I
was in the tavern, finishing up a fine
jurfaele
, when I felt a great
tremor in the ground.  Of course I had been drinking most of day, so at first I
paid no attention, but it got worse.  So we all came out the tavern to see what
the rumble and toss was about, and instead of the sea, I saw us suddenly land
locked, and in the midst of it all, I saw this same boy that spoke with me,
only naked as the day he was born, riding away across muddy ground toward
Byrandia!  Meanwhile now, my
Jenna Calera
’s gone, along with my crew,
and the other ships you see wrecked or sunk in the mud.”

Daerwin crouched beside Gikka and saw where she traced the
edge of a hoof print in the sand.  She looked up at him, her eyes full of
confusion. 

“Riding,” murmured Nestor, looking between the Gikka and the
sheriff.  “Riding a…horse?”

“Yes, a horse,” growled the captain, “what else would he be
riding?”

“Begging your pardon, sirs, but he did raise the
landbridge.  I saw it.”  One of the Hadrians who stood guard over the wreckage
came closer and lowered his voice.  “Some of us were talking, wondering what
might have set Limigar off so––”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” snarled the captain.  “Limigar,
indeed.  Such a superstitious lot, these Hadrians.  Show them a blue eye or two,
and they’re off to fill the shrines and grovel.  Lad, were this boy a god,
surely he’d have no need of a ship to get where he would go.”

“You scoff, but the shrines are empty, and the town is
safe.  No one knows the ways of…” he lowered his voice, “the gods.”  The
Hadrian shrugged and turned back to Gikka and the others.  “The captain of the
guard asked this blue eyed one if he were a mage, and he said yes––”

The ship’s captain swore at the Hadrian.  “He wore a doublet
and had a sword at his belt when he talked to me!  You saw him, boy, he was
riding a horse!  My life upon it, but he could not be a mage…”

“Sure they’ll ask if he’s a mage, but not one thinks to ask
of him his name for all that his eyes are blue.”  Nestor quipped in Bremondine
to Gikka, and the duke cast them both a wry look.  “Stupid bloody Hadrians.”

Trocu breathed out slowly.  For all the world, this mage
sounded like Dith.  He could not be more certain of it, and he supposed he
should not be surprised.  But riding a horse, wearing clothing with seams and
buckles?  Not to mention raising the landbridge.  Dith was reckless at times,
yes, but the duke had never known him to be stupid.  He could not imagine him
risking the destruction of every coastal city on Syon on some sort of thoughtless
whim to go to Byrandia. Something must have driven him to it, but what?

“And naked, besides, for all the wind and storm as rose up.”

Nestor smiled.  “I thought you said he wore a doublet and
carried a sword.  Now you say he was naked?”

The captain scowled.  “He wore clothes when he came to speak
to me in the tavern, but as he rode away, he was naked.  And when I say he was
naked, I mean with not so much as a handkerchief on him.  Just his bloody
orange rucksack.”

“There’s no sense to that,” muttered Gikka.  She rose. 
“Sure he’d not go naked to ride about horsed and wreak havoc on Pyran.  Or
Byrandia.”  She considered.  “Not without righteous cause to provoke it.”

“He had righteous cause, Bremondine.”  The Hadrian guard
cleared his throat.  “He said he would draw off all the other mages––”

“All the…?”  The sheriff  advanced on the little Hadrian. 
“What other mages?  And why did no one mention this before?”

The guard retreated beneath his glare.  “The same ones who
came through a few months ago, sir.  The whole army of them that came through! 
I thought you knew.  I thought everyone knew.”

They looked at each other. 

“How many?”  Lord Daerwin barked, “Report!”

The Hadrian snapped to attention reflexively.  “Battalion
strength, sir, but about half as many as when they arrived the first time.”

Trocu watched Daerwin interrogate the Hadrian, drawing every
bit of information out of him, but the colorless little man knew very little:  the
mages had very nearly destroyed Pyran with their appetites and that the city
and its environs might well have been destroyed but that these mages seemed set
on some important mission and had left quickly.

Battalion strength.  Several hundred, maybe a thousand.  One
army of mages was unlikely enough.  There could not be two.  These had to be
the same that destroyed Castle Brannagh.

“These same,” Daerwin seethed.  “These had to be the same.”

Trocu grasped his shoulder and drew him away from the
others.  “Uncle, hear me.  Yes, they are almost assuredly the mages who
destroyed Brannagh, who killed your knights and your servants and––”

“And my Glynnis.”  Angry tears filled his eyes.

“Aye, Uncle,” Trocu said.  “Your loss is regrettable but it
was not unexpected.  I need you with me, not harboring some fantasy of petty
vengeance.  That way lies death and defeat.”  Damerien looked into Daerwin’s
eyes and saw there the agony of loss he himself had felt a thousand times.  But
it was different for him.  Daerwin would not live to see millennia pass and the
perennial bloom and fade of love and life.  His uncle––truly, his son––had just
lost his only love, the only love he likely would have in his existence, and
for this, even after so long life, Trocu had no remedy.  His tone softened “Time
enough for that later.”

Daerwin nodded, and Trocu watched his pain harden into
resolve, at least for now.

“An army of mages,” the sheriff said at last, turning back
to the Hadrian.  “Righteous cause, indeed.”

“Aye.  You have to understand.  Our city…our women…” the
Hadrian shook his head.  “Pyran could not withstand such another occupation as
when first they came through.  Worse, the enemy seemed at their ease coming
back, in no hurry to be anywhere particular, and Captain Barod feared we might
never be rid of them.  So he sucked up his courage and asked Limi––this mage to
help us fight them.  Begged, more like.  So this blue eyed mage, he said he’d
draw them off away from Pyran if we’d take care not to engage, so we trusted
and stood down and made ourselves just watch as they marched closer and
closer.  Standing down as they went by was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to
do.” 

“Go on,” prompted the duke.  “What happened next?”

“A lot of fire and smoke and explosions flew at him from the
mages, and we were sure he was done for.  Not little tosses of sparks, either. 
More like cannonfire but crackling and blue-white and heat I could feel where I
stood, all right at him.”  He was breathing fast with the excitement of the
memory.  “Nobody could survive that.  Our city walls could not have survived
that.  So Captain Barod bade us ready our weapons for when he fell because then
they’d surely turn on the city next and with spite.  But then we saw some of
those mages get flung against the battlements and crushed to jelly.”  He
pointed helpfully to where the city wall was blackened with burnt gore.

The sheriff looked at the wall and asked, “What did you do
with the mages’ bodies?”

“Well, sir, in the panic and disorder after all was done,
I’m afraid they lay where they fell until the stench was too great.  Then a detail
went out and buried them, or what was left once the sea birds were done with
them, anyway.”

“Ah, I see.”  Nestor did not hide his disappointment.  “Sure
I’d like to have seen anything the burial detail might have taken up––any
clothing or jewelry, anything to give answer to who they were.”

The Hadrian’s eyes grew wide.  “Only Bremondines rob the
dead!” he squeaked.

“Say rather, collect souvenirs from them what won’t miss
‘em, if that makes it more palatable to your Hadrian sensibilities,” Gikka
glared at him.  “Soldiers are soldiers the world over.  Even Hadrians.  Or are
you so long away from war that you forget?  After a battle, the goods of the
dead are forfeit, taken as trophies.”  She looked him up and down.  “Especially
by them as had no real part in the battle, aye?”

The guard blinked, a guilty flush rising into his cheeks.  Trocu
could not help but smile within his cowl.  Gikka had read the Hadrian well.

“So now, stop wasting our time with your Hadrian nonsense,”
she snapped.  “We’ll not take their guilty trinkets from your men, but tell us,
what did they find?”

He stiffened, and the duke fancied he might be trying not to
shift from foot to foot under Gikka’s hard gaze.  “We did search the bodies,
it’s true, but for traps and exploding elixirs and such, not for gold or…”

“Such traps and exploding elixirs as would have blown up the
gulls already?”  Nestor smiled wryly.  “Those traps and elixirs?”

The Hadrian nodded weakly.

Gikka advanced on the Hadrian menacingly.  “What did you
find, at last?”

He looked down, defeated.  “They had next to nothing,
Bremondine.  A few had rings, a couple had medallions, some bits of this and
that they’d gathered along the way.  Souvenirs, as you say, of their own.”

“Medallions?”  Daerwin’s eyes narrowed.

The guard shook his head.  “I know what you’re wondering,
but no, they did not match or anything.  That’s what’s odd.  They had nothing
the same, not their clothing, not their rings or pendants.  They seemed by
their look just a collection of souls headed the same direction, not a proper
military.  But there was no mistaking them. They moved like a flock of birds,
all together.”

Trocu looked at the sheriff, but Daerwin stood with his eyes
closed, clearly dreading the answer to what he would ask next.

“Look now,” the knight said quietly, “and tell me, did they
find any medallions like this?”  He drew a chain out from behind his
breastplate with a gold emblem hanging from it.

The Hadrian looked at it for only a moment.

“No, not a one.”

Daerwin looked up, and the hope in his eyes broke Trocu’s
heart.  “Are you full certain?  You barely looked.”

He nodded.  “I’d know that medallion anywhere. It belongs
only to the House of Brannagh, to those who are…knights…”  His colorless eyes
went wide suddenly and he went to one knee, realizing to whom he spoke. 
“Knights of…  Forgive me, my Lord Sheriff, I did not recognize you…”

The ship’s captain also dropped to one knee.

The duke looked away in exasperation.  What was the point of
riding cowled if they were to be recognized everywhere they went?  Still, the
Hadrian and the ship’s captain had not yet discovered who he was.

“Rise, rise, we have no time for this,” Daerwin said to
them, his impatience barely hidden.  “You are certain that the medallions are
not this same?”  He held it up.  “Look once more, for my sake.  Please.”

The Hadrian rose, looked at it once more and nodded.  “As I
say, none matched this.”

Trocu looked at Gikka, and she understood.

“My Lord, this might be good news.”  Gikka touched the
sheriff’s arm.  “But it’s my part now to play the churl and remind you:  it’s
assurance only that these tiny few who fell here did not take from Brannagh
themselves.  Says nothing of the rest, and you saw…”  She glanced at the
Hadrian and the ship’s captain and lowered her voice.  “You saw what happened,
you and Renda both.  I pray you, my dearest Lord, don’t be feeding your
heartbreak with false hope.”

The duke could not bear to look at the anguish the sheriff
worked so hard to subdue.  Every instance like this, every time he came away
without proof of her death would feed his hope and at the same time feed his
despair.  He found himself coldly hoping they would find something to prove
Glynnis’s death soon, for all their sakes.

“Go on.”  Trocu folded his arms over his chest.  “You were describing
the battle.”

The guard nodded, clearly grateful to get back to his story. 
“Yes sir.  Explosions, fire, lightning, mayhem all around him, mages flying off
into the walls getting crushed.  Now, that was a mess.  I’d say we buried what
looked like over a hundred, though it was a bit hard to tell by then, what with
how they’d been pecked to bits and eaten.  We started out trying to bury each
one, but it was hard to tell where one body ended and another began, so in the
end, we had to make a big hole and then scrape and shovel the whole stinking
pulpy mess into it.”

“Alas,” breathed Nestor in disgust.