Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (31 page)

“Someday you will learn patience, ideally before you
manage to get us killed.”

Dith smiled grimly.  Patience would have had them waiting on
that hillock while Glasada starved to death. 

“So the horse dies!  You lived your whole life without a
horse, but now you would risk your life for one?”

Dith swallowed his anger and rode harder.  Galorin could not
understand.  Even apart from his sense of responsibility for having brought the
creature along with him, as absurd and sentimental as Galorin might find it,
his concern was not about the horse, at least, not entirely.  The mages were
not going to give up, not while they knew he was on the landbridge somewhere,
and sooner or later, they would corner him.  They wouldn’t even need to
confront him directly.  All they needed to do was outlast him.  His only chance
was to get across as quickly as he could, and that meant keeping Glasada
alive.  Here they were, making steady eastward progress again, and over the very
Lacework Galorin had so feared, all because Glasada yet lived––half starved and
weakened, but yet he lived.

“So this was all part of your plan, was it?”

Getting past the main of their force, yes.  He smiled.  Part
of the plan, at any rate.

“Tell me, did you mark how many mages were working and
milling about so conspicuously at the western edge of the Lacework?”

Fifty, perhaps a few more than that, Dith thought.  And they
were hardly conspicuous.

“By my count, three and fifty.  Do you recall how many
surrounded you at Pyran?  Just round numbers, and leave off those you smashed
against the city wall.  Count only those who remain.  How many?”

Dith frowned.

“Yes, you begin to understand.  Of the five hundred or so
who left Pyran alive, do you really suppose that only fifty can still be
bothered to try to stop you after the way you trounced them in Pyran? Those
behind us just now, another thirty or so, were not a sufficient number to face
us down, not really.  So odd and fifty, and now another thirty…instead of congratulating
yourself, you should be asking, where are the rest?”

Glasada’s step slowed.

“Your problem, boy, is that, in your mind, you still
fight one or two at a time.  You think in terms of independent agents, not
armies.  Oh, I know, you have watched battalions of soldiers and demons
maneuvering and fighting their battles head to head, and you think to apply
your experience of them to this fight.  But you have never seen armies of
mages, nor have you ever seen armies that hunted mages.  This that you face is
both.”

An army is an army.  They line up, they make attack, and as
they line up, they make a larger target.

“Not so.  Their entire school of strategy eludes you, and
your lack of experience lets you underestimate them at every turn.  The coarse
beacons, the amateurish traps they set at the entrance to the Lacework…these
played right into your arrogance and kept you from taking your time to evaluate
the situation tactically.  And now, you have put yourself exactly where they
want you.  Have no illusions on this point.  A single graetna or even a pair
could not take down a giant aurochs, but against a pack, the aurochs does not
stand a chance, especially an he is run down to exhaustion first.  Do not
forget that they came to Syon in force to destroy
me
.”

“They succeeded.”

“So it would seem.  And now they hunt you.”

Dith considered.  He had by now reached a relatively high
point on the stone lattice, and while the mottled pink towers of dying coral
still obscured his view in several directions, he could see another clear spot
a mile or two ahead.  By porting his way between such points, he could cross
the lattice quickly…. 

No.  No, that is what anyone in his position would do, and
as such, it was exactly what they were expecting him to do.  They had to know
he had very little food with him, so they knew time was their ally and not
his.  If Galorin was right, if this was an all an elaborate strategy to trap
him, then his leaping his way by ports to the far side, was exactly what they
were counting on him to do, which meant it was the one thing he could not do. 
But neither could he plod his slow course across the Lacework and meet them at
the other side.

“Now you’re beginning to understand.  From their point of
view, you have two possible ways off the Lacework, forward and backward, with
what amounts to a chute between the two: now wider, now narrower, but whether
you ride by a hundred yards more to the north or the south, ultimately, it is
always one path.  In large, the same is true of the entire landbridge.  And of
course we’re nearer the Byrandian side now than the Syonese side and you are
not well supplied, so your course is fairly clear. 

“By now, they will have distributed their force between
the ends of the Lacework, and as you saw, they’ve already deployed their
chasers in the middle to keep you running, always running, to force you to use
your power until even your vast reserves are exhausted.  Every time you use
your power, they will see you, and every time they see you, you will have to
run again––you cannot wait to see whether they give chase or no.  So you deplete
yourself while they do not.  This is how they will wear you down.”

Dith’s mouth went dry.  He had never really known fear in
his entire life, not before this moment.  He was well and truly trapped.  He
could see no simple way out.

“Ah, this is, perhaps, a lesson for you then.”

“This is no time for lectures about humility,” he growled. 

“So you have at least grasped that humility is not your
strong suit.  This is progress.  Very well, no hypocritical lectures on
humility from me.  No, it is another lesson you must learn, one you are in a
unique position to use, in fact.  This is a time for you to set aside however
much you think you know, however much you are convinced you are smarter than
all the rest of the world combined, however much you count on all-that-is
always to bend in your favor, and understand:  this is not a situation a mage
can survive.”

Of course a mage can survive this. 
He
would survive
it, if for no other reason than to prove Galorin wrong.  And he would drag
Galorin’s spirit or essence or whatever it was along with him.

“I admire your spirit, but as is your wont, you take the
meaning you assume from my words and not the meaning that is there.  Apply
yourself.”

More stupid riddles.  He ignored Galorin and looked back the
way he came, considering.  He could undo it all by porting back to that first
hilltop, perhaps draw them completely off the Lacework after him, engage them
while they were disorganized again, and then port past them back at least to
this spot, or perhaps the next. 

While they ran about frantically trying to catch up to him….

“No, that’s no good.  You might draw off a few, but all
you would really accomplish is to signal to them that you know they control the
Lacework, which ultimately you will need to cross, regardless.  It were better
to keep them comfortably believing that they hold control than to drive them to
desperation.  This way, we know their likely plan.  Otherwise, they might well
destroy the Lacework and us along with it.”

He could still lead them a merry chase and gamble that their
reserves would run out before his would, but then again, they were many, and as
strong as he was, he was but one.  He remembered Galorin facing them down. 
Galorin, whose power was almost godlike. 

“Almost godlike.  You believe that in the same way a
child believes that his parents are giants.” 

And Galorin had lost to them.  They might destroy the Lacework,
Galorin had said.  Yes.  Perhaps if Dith were to destroy the Lacework himself,
preemptively, he could…he could….

“Now you’re going the wrong way again.  No, boy, think! 
Set aside your magic for a time and think about your Bremondine lass.  Where is
her strength?”

“Fear,” Dith said at once.

“I was thinking of stealth.”

So was I, thought Dith.  Why was Gikka so capable of
instilling fear into entire enemy armies during the war?  No one knew whom she
would strike next, or where she would strike, or when.  The mere thought that
she might be near was enough to send Kadak’s forces into a panic.  Interesting…

Dith watched her, an amused smile on his lips.  He’d been
proud of himself for keeping his mind on the mission and not letting himself be
knocked senseless with admiration for this living legend.  Or, he allowed, his
desire for her––a desire he knew was hopelessly out of place, so much so that
he’d avoided even speaking to her unnecessarily over the last few days while
they’d tracked this detachment of Kadak’s demons together.  He was grateful for
the chance to serve with her directly after months of watching her from a
distance, but he was just as terrified of disgracing himself in her eyes.  He
chuckled to himself.  For all his worry, he doubted she’d even notice if he did
disgrace himself, so far beneath her notice was he.

Not far from him, concealed as if by accident in the
mottled leafy shadows, Gikka perched on a large boulder stitching leaves, bark,
brush and even clumps of grass to a ragged bit of cloth she’d found, and his
curiosity was getting the better of him.

The cloth itself, no more than a discarded length of moth
eaten wool, was not even serviceable as a blanket, and he’d wondered why she
picked it up in the first place.  Now she seemed to be making a sort of rug or
cloak, no doubt to hide under as she moved.  It was ridiculous.  It would
hinder her vision as much as it would conceal her. 

“Mistress Gikka,” he offered at last, hating the lump in
his throat, “You know I can bend the light around you as you move.  No one will
see you.”

“Just ‘Gikka’ to you,” she answered, “and aye.” She
looked over the cloak with an expert eye.  She picked at a bare spot with the
unusually long nail on her little finger and tried several different leaves in
that position before settling on a half-wilted dog-eared one, a leaf that was
not artistic but absolutely random.  “This I know.”

She sniffed at the air and glanced up across the grassy
plain that extended beyond the edge of the trees.  Less than a quarter mile
away, a legion of Kadak’s demons milled impatiently while the slave-cooks lit
the cooking fires.  They were all waiting to eat, waiting for the signal that
Lord Daerwin’s knights approached, waiting for anything.  They’d been waiting
for long enough that the boredom was starting to become anxiety. 

It was nearly time.  She went back to her work.

“’Aye, this I know,’ quoth she,” he rolled his eyes in
frustration, “so knowing, why do you fret so over this bit of cloth? Why do you
not let me see to your stealth? I confess, I have been of no use to you at all
on this mission.  I have no idea why Lord Daerwin set me to come with you since
you have had no need of me.”

“I requested you.”  She looked up at him for a moment,
then back to her work.  “If nothing else, you liven the scenery, and that’s a
welcome change, begging their pardons all.  Besides, by my reckoning, better
you’re here when I’ve no frank need of you, than not an I do.”

His heart sank.  This mission needed no magic, then. 
She’d merely requested him in case something went wrong.  That was
disappointing but understandable.  He chided himself for being such a
schoolboy.  Clearly the mission was more important than his getting to show off
for a woman.  At least he got to be near her.  “Very well, but let me at least
make myself useful.”  He grinned.  “How else can I ever hope to prove my worth
to you?” 

She looked up at him, and for a moment, he was afraid she
might be angry.  But to his amazement, she smiled back, a beautiful smile that
was worth the entire journey.  “Simply be.  Mark, I go without you using your
power to hide me, not for lack of trusting you,” she said, rubbing dirt and
horse dung into the cloth, “but for needing control of the ins and outs of it
myself.  I’d have you know that to your heart and not take it hard.  This,” she
said, holding up the grassy blanket, “this, I can shed and take up again at my
will.  Your light bending, I cannot, not without you stand right at my side and
take my commands, and done that way, we hide neither of us.  Cripples us both,
you see, and puts us both at risk.”

“Shed and take up again…?”

“It’s not my way to watch and report.”  She laughed
quietly, wrapping the makeshift cloak about herself.  “Sure you don’t think I’m
just playing at sneak in sneak out, do you?  I mean to see this threat done in
entirely.”

“By yourself?”  He looked out over the camp.

“For your part, save your power in case I fail.”  She
slipped down from the boulder.  “But I won’t fail.” She smiled that smile
again, her dark eyes flashing, locking on the bright blue of his.

Then she kissed him.

“Watch me work, such as you can,” she whispered, wrapping
the nasty grass cloak about herself, “and let me prove my worth to you.”

Stealth was not his friend, not natively, not the way it
clung about Gikka, and certainly not here in the Lacework, but then, this was a
different sort of army.  Stealth meant something completely different here. 

This is not a situation a mage can survive.

No, not a mage.  Now he understood what Galorin meant.  He
squinted up at the great coral towers surrounding him and considered.

*          *          *

“Thirsty work, it is, minding that lean-to.” 

Renda looked up to see Kerrick offering her one of two
tankards he’d brought over.  He nodded toward the line of the knights’ furs and
mantles stretched across the hollow in the reef where they’d secured the
injured mage Gikka had brought back.  “The duke has been with him for an hour
and more.”