Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (36 page)

“Perhaps not.”  Kerrick resumed his stitching.  “Then again,
he had but a small sliver of glass.  Mayhap it was the best he could manage.”

Gikka cocked her head.  “You think I could not kill a man in
a trice with but your famous sliver of glass?”

“Mistress,” he grinned at her, “you could kill a man with no
more than your smile.”

Instantly she was at his side, her unusually long fingernail
lying gently against the side of his throat.  “Just here, my Lord,” she
whispered at his ear, biting the end of the nail into his skin just slightly, 
“and the lifeblood is but a nick away.”  Laniel could see the heat rising into
Kerrick’s face and hear his breath quickening as Gikka stepped away, point
made.  “Wee bit of glass or no, he could not have shot wider of the mark save
not to cut himself at all.”

The knight nodded, touching gently at his throat where her
nail had been.  She had not even left a mark, yet Laniel could tell that
Kerrick had known in that moment exactly what it would be like to die at her
hands. 

“Still,” he said, his voice cracking, “I can think of no
better explanation of why he would cut himself that way.”  He returned his
attention to sewing closed the hole in his breeches.

Laniel paused. Cuts all over his body, but with no intention
to kill himself.  He did not drink the blood or try to keep it.  She was
right.  The wounds were superficial, almost ritualistic.  He was certain they
were meant to enhance magical power, but in what precise way, he could not be
certain.  The use of power beyond himself and his own resourcefulness was alien
to him.  He almost chuckled at his realization that the Bilkarian refusal to
invoke their god’s power and the subsequent ignorance of how such power worked
had proved, in this case, to be something of a weakness.

A chill wind gusted through the tent, a wind that felt
curiously affectionate as it brushed over his face, and Laniel smiled.

But one thing he did know.  The product of any rite like
this was some kind of sacrifice.  If not his blood to be used in the rite,
what?  What was the bargain, and with whom?

“Laniel?” Gikka looked up at him.  “All is well?”

“When a man resolved to die hesitates in the act of killing
himself, tell me, what is it that gives him pause?”  Laniel looked up at Gikka.

“He might hesitate if he misses his family,” Kerrick
offered, not looking up, “or he’s struck by his duty.  Sometimes he simply
changes his mind and decides he would live instead.”

“No, I mean a man who has no intention of being stopped.  A
prisoner, say, with no hope of escape, as you will recall he was at the time. 
A man who truly desires his own end: what is it makes him cut a jagged line in
his throat instead of slicing right through?”

“Pain,” Gikka murmured, a disturbed frown crossing her
features.  “He flinches on account of…the pain.”

Laniel nodded.  “Indeed.” 

Pain.  That was the bargaining chip.  And with that
knowledge, he was sure of even less than he had been before.

“No.  We cannot risk it.”  Lord Daerwin set aside the flat
rock he’d used as a dinner plate with the bones of the fish still on it and
warmed his hands by the fire.  “I’ve not ridden with him tightly tethered to me
all this time just to send him to his death now, I’m sorry.”

“Father, we have to warn Dith, and I see no other way.” 
Renda hugged her mantle around herself against the cold and moved herself
closer to the small fire.  “That mage might have survived, and if he did––”

Lord Daerwin looked up at her from where he sat.  “If he did,
I have little doubt he and his colleagues will be more concerned with us than
with Dith.  After all, their man left their company hale and whole, and he went
back…as he did.”  Daerwin shuddered.

“If he did not survive to tell them of us, they may blame Dith
and redouble their efforts against him.  All the more reason.”

“No,” the sheriff breathed, “I think they know right well he
could not have done that.  So we have likely turned their heads our way, for
better or worse, and given Dith opportunity to slip away.  Is that not
enough?” 

“Is it?”

He stared into the fire.  “Renda, what you ask is not
unreasonable.  But we haven’t the first idea where he might be.  Ahead of us,
aye, but how far and where?  For all we know, he could be in Byrandia by now. 
No, I’d not risk my Colaris on a fool’s errand.”  He frowned over the fire into
the settling twilight.  “By Gikka’s count, we have a dozen mages or more at
the near edge, and we have no idea how many more cover the Lacework beyond––”

“Indeed, and he is but one man alone against them!”

“––to say nothing of the rest of the road to Byrandia!”  He
looked up at her.  “What’s to say they won’t fire upon Colaris before he can
even reach Dith, just for sport?  It would take but one of them.”

“They might,” she allowed, “and I know the danger is real. 
Dith is out there against all of these mages, and only he can tell us why he
raised this landbridge, and why he goes to Byrandia.  Not to mention that we
could use his strength just now, as he could use ours.  At the very least, for
his wellbeing and our own, he needs to know we are here, since not knowing, he
may well set all manner of mischief in our path.  Besides, we need to know that
he is safe.”

“Ah, you mean Gikka needs to know that he is safe.”

Renda glared at him.  “She is not alone in her concern.  You
cannot have forgotten all that Dith did in the war and all that he has suffered
for our––”

“Oh, enough.”  He stood and met her glare.  “Do not presume
to remind me of Syon’s debts, knight, neither to Dith nor to Gikka.  That she
would have us get word to him,” he gestured dismissively, “very well.  We are
engaged.  But mind what you ask of me.  You would have me send my Colaris alone
and undefended over the heads of more mages at once than anyone on Syon has
seen in a lifetime.  Those same who destroyed…everything…”  He breathed heavily
and turned to look at the owl-eyed bird watching them quietly from Revien’s
saddle.  “I would not have them take him from me as well.  Understand.  I have
no priest now,” he said sadly, “nor even my old governess to set protections
upon him.”

Renda squeezed his hand.  “Aye, but mark, this same hawk
flew over armies and demons, even over Kadak himself afield, and dropped nary a
feather.” 

“Ever does he remind us of it, as well, come mealtimes.”

“Aye, indeed,” she smiled reassuringly.  “Come, if he flies
by night, well above them, he should pass unnoticed.  His flight is nearly
silent.  Bid him search no more than a mile beyond the Lacework ere he return,
and he can be safely back with us before the sun rises.  If he fails to find
Dith tonight, we send him to fly further tomorrow, once we have secured the Lacework.” 

“Above them…”  From his plate, the sheriff picked up the
intact spine of the fish he’d had for dinner, turning it in his hand,
considering.  “Hm.  Where is Chul?”

The boy had not gone far.  He was still alarmingly close to
the knights’ camp when he heard the first faint footfalls and chatter from the
mages, and he readied his hunting knife.  But of course mages had no grasp of
quiet, and they were actually a fair distance further away than he’d thought
them to be.  As he crept closer, he saw that even those who acted as sentries
and bent the light around themselves were so loud in their steps, even with
their soft and seamless boots, that he could close his eyes and track them
perfectly.  He half wondered if he could not make an easy run right past them
and reach Dith himself, but this was not a fancy he dared try.  Gikka had said
she saw them working their magic over the landbridge, and he would not dare set
foot on it himself.

Colaris gripped the leather of Chul’s bracer as the boy ran
lightly and silently through the strange blocks of coral and the stinking
clumps of dead fish and plants.  The bird bobbed his head to keep his vision
steady and study the terrain as they moved, and Chul had tried to learn from
him, to keep his own head steady as he ran.  He wondered at times what Colaris
thought or if he thought.  Jath had told him that Colaris was no average
hawkling, and having seen the bird obliterate the gulls chasing him, he
believed it.  But did he think like a person or was his mind very different? 
How did the world look through his eyes?  Right now, as they ran, was his mind
entirely taken his mission ahead, or was he watching for food out of habit? 
The small bird’s belly was full of dried meat and some sips of brackish water,
so he was not hungry, but that might not stop him from honing his skills.  The
scrollcase was strapped to his ankle with Gikka’s message inside, and he had
been given his mission, as well as the sheriff could convey it to him.  Danger,
the sheriff had signaled, extreme danger.  The worry in his eyes had been
clear, as had his love for the little bird.  Seeing deep care as Lord Daerwin
had released Colaris to him had put a lump in Chul’s throat.  He had lost so
much already.  Chul chittered reassuringly to the bird.  He would not let Colaris
fail.

Rather than have the bird fly directly from the camp, Lord
Daerwin had trusted Chul with sneaking him past the nearest camp of mages.  He
would be on his own when he reached the other side, but at least this far, he
would be protected.  Besides, it gave the boy an opportunity to scout on his
own.

Chul edged his way northward around the mages’ camp, past
their latrine pits and along a low bank that gradually dipped away into the sea
as the landbridge narrowed into the Lacework.  He kept well clear of the stony
edge of the lattice itself.  Damerien had said, and Nestor had agreed, that the
enemy would set their outermost protections and attacks against Dith just
inside the lip of the Lacework, not extending out into the land beyond, in an
effort to avoid their quarry setting it off while he could still escape or find
a way around it.

Chul slipped down the bank a bit further and eased his way
closer.  He had no especial eye for magic and was trusting entirely to the old
Bremondine’s expectation of how these mages might think.  So far, Nestor had
been exactly right, but a single mistake could be deadly.  Finally, he found
himself right below the edge of the Lacework.  Beneath him, the sea crushed and
fought its way around the spires of coral that jutted upward through the stone
lattice.  The roughness of the sea meant passage beneath was impossible, and
while each spire of coral was not impossible to climb, the idea of many such
climbs and of trying to move between them high above the churning water made
passage that way unthinkable.

The Lacework, for all that it looked like a fragile and
delicate ribbon from a distance, was quite thick and solid.  That was
reassuring.  The mages were that much less likely to notice him or the bird
with so much stone between them.  Chul let Colaris hop onto a bit of rock, then
picked up a small stone and tossed it against the underside of the stone
lattice, bracing himself.  Nothing happened.  As Lord Daerwin had hoped they
might, the mages had set their magic only over the part of the Lacework they
could see, which meant the top.  The bottom was unguarded and likely would be
all the way to the far end.

Colaris watched Chul carefully mimic the gestures Lord
Daerwin had taught him.  Chul had the uneasy suspicion that the bird already
knew his mission.  He had watched as the sheriff taught the gestures to the
boy, so Chul felt the fool when the bird turned his head upside down in
amusement and waited for the Dhanani boy to get through the series of quick motions:
stealth, low flight along the underside of the stone bridge, search a one mile
radius at the end, deliver the message, wait for a response, return the same
way.  Dith was the target.

Chul gestured one last time, a gesture he added on his own:
above all, extreme danger.  The bird kekked softly.  He flew off Chul’s arm,
along the column-like underside, hugging close into the space between the stone
lattice and the churning sea below.  In a moment, he had disappeared. 

“Glasada,” murmured Dith softly.  “Peace.  We will away
soon.”

The beast nickered softly, so softly that Dith did not so
much hear it as feel it.  Dith wondered how many of the images in his mind had
cast shadows into Glasada’s mind, thoughts put there by Galorin as they’d made
their way back up the hillside between the crusted coral reefs. 

“Easy.”  Dith patted the horse’s shoulder affectionately.

Witcher.  Wittister.
Wyt’stra
.  So they did exist,
these monsters who had peopled Dith’s nightmares as a child.  The thought
chilled him deep in his soul.  All the deep rooted superstition and horror he’d
safely walled off as childishness in his mind…the stories were real.

“Not exactly, not word for word, but in the main, yes.  A
lot of the stories grew from practices we’d adopted to hide ourselves from
them and the other mage hunters in Byrandia: do not use magic unnecessarily, do
not cluster together for long.  Precautions that have become part of what it is
to be a mage on Syon and which served to protect us when Kadak hunted us. 

“The Wittister Mages never achieved Syon:  I saw to
that.  So time and absence relegated these legendary terrors to the undignified
position of childhood enforcers.  The enterprising parents of Syon added “eat
your vegetables” and “get thee to bed on time” to the list of cautions,
probably about the time the name Wittister became bastardized to Witcher.  But
yes, they were at one time quite real.  It seems they still are.”

Dith intensified his protections unconsciously and mounted
his horse.  Intellectually, the idea of vampiric mages should not have been so
terrifying to him, not after everything he’d seen in the war against Kadak.  But
the fear was rooted so deep, deep in the trusting soul of a tiny blue-eyed
child-mage, that his terror of them defied all reason and would likely never be
dislodged, especially now that he knew they were real.  Part of him knew that
made of it a weakness, but the other part of him was too frightened to care.