Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (59 page)

Dith looked at Nestor and Jath, then at Gikka.  With a dark
smile, he stepped forward into the light.

“This could be a mistake.  We do not know what we face
here.”

Dith wondered if they did not.

Before the creature noticed him, he summoned up his power
and rained a burning hail of darkness over it.  The dark stones, pulled from
the depths of the Verilion’s deep night, twisted the light around them and tore
and burned the dead creature’s flesh before vanishing back into the void.  The
dead thing itself felt nothing, but the being inside it howled in agony and
rage.

The monster’s body stretched to its full height, burned and
severed sinews crackling and breaking apart.  Around it, the threads glowed
rich with power, and he could see protections building heavily around it––magical
protections.

It sniffed the air and turned its great destroyed head
toward him.  He did not know if it could see with its ruined eyes, but he
assumed it could.  If it could move a dead body, he reasoned, it could see
through destroyed eyes.

“You are not
wyt’stra
,” it managed through its
mangled jaws.

“And you are not…whatever that is.”  His own protections
flared around him as the beast came closer.

“You are powerful.  You are he who raised the landbridge.” 
The beast shifted, and a great charred flap of its flesh fell open, slowly
tearing the skin on its way toward the ground.  “We could be allies.”

Dith said nothing.  He found it curious that he could
understand what the creature said, but he was certain it was not Syonese or
Hadric or Bremondine.  He supposed Galorin was translating it for him. 
Likewise, Galorin must be translating what he said before it reached his mouth––a
curious sensation.

“You are not the one I seek.  You may go in peace, only give
me the Wittister mage and Prince Damerien.”

Dith cocked his head and grinned.  “You are full of demands,
for one who has lost.”

“I have not lost!”

Dith waved dismissively and turned to walk away.

He felt a crackle on the threads, and his protections fired
so violently that the dead creature flew backward, scraping over the ground for
several hundred feet, crushed into a smoking heap of red and black mush.  Dith
did not miss a step.

“I can destroy you with a thought!  I can make you never to
have existed!”

This was a new voice, a human voice now unhindered by the
broken mandible of the monster, and the ugly rock was too bright to look upon.

“I know that voice.  Have a care.”

Dith turned, electricity crackling angrily about him in his
rage, and he stalked toward the disgusting lump of broken flesh.  “Here I
stand.  Go ahead, unmake me.”

Behind him, Nestor and Jath reached out again.  This time,
they did not stop.

The arrows were striking the creature’s throat, his jaw, his
foreleg, everything but his eyes.  In frustration, Renda gestured to Kerrick,
and together, they hacked and clawed their way up the creature’s shoulder,
setting foot on a foreleg and climbing.  The beast had long since abandoned its
ax as useless in close quarters with the knights, and now it tossed and scraped
at them, trying to get them away.  Its claws ripped through Renda’s mantle,
throwing it to the ground, but within only a moment, she and Kerrick were at
the beast’s throat.  The plunged their swords into the monster’s eyes….

Dith and the Other watched at a crucial nexus point in the
threads.  Laid out before them, invisible to those battling around them, were
the endless threads of probabilities and possibilities, some as thin as silk,
others as thick as the trunks of trees, all interwoven and knotted together….One
plucked at a single thread, pulling it slightly aside, a subtle tiny change
that began a maelstrom of chaos, and the other countered by plucking another,
and back and forth for what seemed an eternity, the one creating one chaos, the
other reversing it with his own.  The resulting vortex threatened to rip apart
the fabric of existence, with both creating violent storms of probabilities.

The two worked faster, and faster, deeper and deeper in the
threads, faster than any mind could follow save another Guardian…

The sheriff turned his sword point upward, put his body
under it and drove it with all his strength through the creature’s split
mandible and up into its brain.  As his blade sank into the monster’s mind, he understood
what Renda had been shouting to him.  “The eyes!” she had screamed to him. 
“Take its eyes first!” 

He turned the blade viciously and wrenched it free.

Then his whole world exploded.

Renda fell to the ground and covered her head as the demon
general’s withering, smoldering body gave way beneath her in a burst of liquid
fire.  Kerrick had fallen not far away from her.  He was not moving, and his
cape was burning.  She ripped it from him and threw it aside, and in so doing,
brought him back to consciousness.  The others were cut and bruised, but not
badly.

She looked up to see her father stagger to his feet beneath
the burning husk of the creature he had fought. 

Around them, the few demons who had survived the enormous
blast limped or crawled away, some still ablaze.  As the rest of the knights
regained themselves, they chased down the dying demons they could catch and
dispatched them until they area was secure.

Some distance away, she saw Dith kneeling on the ground. 
Gikka knelt beside him, and the duke stood not far away.  She assumed the mage
had had something to do with the massive explosion, and she was grateful.  The
duke was once again safe.

Renda saw Qorlin sitting on the ground, just staring at a
cut on his sleeve.

“How now, knight?” she said, approaching him.  “Are you
injured?” 

He looked up at her stupidly.  “They cut me again,” he
said.  He touched the edge of the cut in his sleeve and held up his fingers to
show her the gray-green resin of the
ha’guaka
poison mingled, as she
feared, with his blood.  The cut on his arm was not life threatening by itself,
but the poison had not missed the wound.  “Please, my Lady.  I cannot endure it
again.  I cannot.  Kill me and spare me the agony.”

Renda looked at him uncertainly and beckoned Laniel over. 
“Peace, Qorlin.  Perhaps it is not as bad as it looks.”

The priest looked at the wound, then looked at once in his
eyes and his mouth.

“Do you feel ill?”

“No” the knight answered quietly.  “I felt a bit queasy at
first, but now I feel nothing.  Am I dead, then?”

Laniel smiled reassuringly, a piece of healing he had
learned from Amara.  “If you are, we all are.”  On a hunch, he stripped off a
piece of Qorlin’s shirt and bade the knight touch it to the blood in the
wound.  Then he told him to set it against the poison on his sleeve. 

The poison turned black. 

Laniel’s eyes narrowed.  He ripped several more clean strips
from the knight’s shirt.  “Sop up the blood with these,” he told the knight,
“and give them all to me once the bleeding stops.”

“Laniel?”

“I do not want to raise your hopes,” he said to her, “but in
Qorlin’s blood, we may have a cure for their poison.”

The priest then looked at the back of Renda’s bloodsoaked
shirt and unceremoniously ripped the thin cloth away beneath the straps of her
breastplate.  The filthy cotton of her shirt, a poor substitute for Bremondine
silk, had begun clotting into the cuts made by the demon general’s claws, and
by ripping it away, it began bleeding anew, but not dangerously.  He took some
vials from his pouch and slathered the unguents on the cuts.

She grimaced with pain.  “That hurt more than the claws
themselves,” she breathed.

“You have no battle fury to steel you against the pain,” he
replied.  “Keep the cuts clean.  They are not deep, but they will leave fine
battle scars.”

“Battle scars, a trait not much prized in the women of Syon,
I’m afraid.”

He looked at her and smiled an enigmatic smile.  “But then
we are not on Syon anymore,” he murmured. 

She remembered their talk in the abbey and blushed in spite
of herself.

All would be well.  What had taken them five hundred years
to learn on Syon had proven invaluable in this battle.  Against one such
creature and its armies, Syon had thrown countless millions of her young men
over the centuries, never getting close enough to see Kadak, much less destroy
him.  Yet here, thanks to what they had learned and with the power of a
Guardian at their disposal, they had destroyed several of these creatures by
themselves.  Now that they knew their enemy and knew how to defeat them, they
might succeed in liberating Byrandia as they had Syon.  Surely such liberators
would be welcomed by the rulers of Byrandia and could forge a lasting peace. 
Perhaps this was the nature of the prophecy, but if that was the case, why did
her father dread it so?

Through the corner of her eye, she saw her father
approaching, staggering with his exhaustion as they all were.  She stood to
greet him, wincing at the pain on her back.  “I’ve good news, Father.  We had
no casualties and only minor injuries.”

“Renda,” the sheriff said, his voice broken and weak.  His
body was in spasms, as if it were fighting against itself, and he fell to the
ground.  “I…can’t…fight…”

“Father?” she ran to him, scanning him for injuries.  “No,
everyone stay back!  Where are you hurt?  Was it the ax?  I don’t see…Laniel! 
Come quickly!  My father may have been poisoned!”

Suddenly, smoothly, the sheriff’s hands were wrapped around
her throat, a leering grin on his face, a sickly yellow glow in his eyes as he
scrutinized her.  “New blood,” a strange voice hissed at her from his mouth, a
voice unused to speaking Syonese, a voice unused to working a human jaw.  He
sniffed at her, then vexed with the limited senses of this body, he snarled. 
“Blood of kings, but not of this land…
Wyt’stra
… ”

Renda clutched at the hand at her throat, barely able to
breathe.  “Father…no…”

The hand released her, and his eyes closed so tightly, she
saw blood well at the corners. 

The rest of the knights had come toward them, but Renda
waved them back.  She could not afford to have this creature’s spirit jump to
one of them.

“Renda,” her father’s voice breathed, “You must not…”  He
fell to his knees, all strength suddenly gone from his body.  “I carry…the soul
of… ”  He looked toward the withered carcass behind him.

“Father,” she cried, bewildered, then strangely hopeful,
then terrified.  “You can fight against it?  Then you must!  Listen to me, you
must.  You must drive it out.”  Her eyes filled with tears.

“Listen to me, child.  We were wrong about Kadak.  These do
not command.”  He looked over at Dith, then back at Renda.  “Something else…creates
them, commands them…even Kadak, even on Syon.  I see inside…its mind.  The
battle is bigger than…”

“Never mind that now,” she sobbed.  “We will take you to the
duke.  He will know what to do––”

“No!” the sheriff bellowed, and the strange glow flickered
in and out of his eyes again, “I must not go near the duke.”  He looked around
him fearfully, but his fear was clearly not for himself.  It was for them.  “I
must not be near you or the others.  Listen, come with me now, away from the
others.  While I still have control, you must destroy my eyes, and then…”

She shook her head adamantly.  “I will not hear it.  I will
not!”

“Knight, I gave you an order––”

“No.”

“Renda, you must.  And soon.  I can barely keep…myself…”

“Father.”  She looked into his glassy eyes.  “Lord Daerwin of
Brannagh, son of Vilmar, Duke of Damerien, hear me, you will fight this!  And
you will win.  And you will live.  Do you hear, knight?  By the gods, you will
live!”  She turned and shouted again, choking back her tears.  “Laniel!  Come
quickly, my father is gravely injured!”

“Why must I live?  What binds me here?”  Daerwin touched her
hand gently.  “You must do this, Renda.  Do not let me become an abomination. 
Do not let me dishonor myself.  Please.”

“Do not give me such an order, I beg you,” she sobbed,
clutching his hand.  “Fight against it, father.  It has not defeated you yet.”

“We cannot wait until it does.  If you cannot do this,” he
gasped, clenching his teeth, veins pounding in his temples, “No, by B’radik,
this body is yet mine, demon!  If you cannot, my child,” he continued, “ask it
of…Gikka.”  His muscles twitched violently, as if the muscles fought against
each other.  “She will…for me…”

The yellow cast filled his eyes again, and with sudden
speed, he reached to grab her. 

Laniel’s staff cracked him on the back of his head, and he
crumpled to the ground.  “Forgive me, my friend,” he said, “but you are not
yourself.” 

“Bilkarian.”  Renda’s voice nearly failed her.  “You did not
kill him.”

Laniel shook his head.

She was not sure whether she felt relief or disappointment,
and the ambiguity filled her with guilt.  “Is it because you think he can win?”
Having asked, she was not certain she wanted to hear the answer.

He picked the sheriff up easily, like a sleeping child. 
“Say rather, I hope he can win.  We have seen Qorlin defeat the poison of the
ha’guaka
. 
Perhaps Lord Daerwin can defeat…this.  But I admit, I am not hopeful.”

She nodded and dried her tears.  With her father no longer
able to command, the duty to keep the duke safe and finish their mission fell
to her.  She drew herself up and breathed out a shaky sigh.

“We have much to consider, my Lady.  In the meantime, I will
keep your father safely asleep, and hope it likewise keeps the demonic essence
within him asleep. ”