Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (9 page)

“With your permission?”

She looked at her father who was sleeping peacefully and
smiled to Laniel.  “With our gratitude, Abbot.”

The foothills of the Fraugham Mountains, East of Graymonde

The Dhanani drew his white horse up at the crossroads,
feeling fatigue, terror, and confusion rippling through the animal’s muscles. 
Since the night he stole the horse from a hitching post outside a roadside
tavern on his way to Castle Brannagh so very long ago, he’d only seen it the
way his father had seen him, always failing, always disappointing.  Then again,
before Chul had taken him from the post outside the tavern in Farras, he had
been a blacksmith’s horse, and for all that he was still young, he’d grown used
to no more than carrying his old master at a gentle pace from his home to the
tavern and back again each night, with grazing between.  No wonder, then, that
he spent so much of his time with Chul baffled and winded, and for the first
time, the boy reached a gentle hand down to stroke the horse’s lathered
shoulder.  He was not the only one who had been frightened and bewildered last
night.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I have failed you.  But stay a
while, and I will make you the finest Dhanani warhorse the world has ever seen,
and you will finally earn a name for yourself.  I promise.”

The horse’s eyes rolled in his head, and he snorted, unable
to take comfort even from the boy’s soothing tones, what with the smells of
smoke and blood that lingered on him from the glade.  Still, the boy patted his
shoulder while he rested.  It didn’t really matter if the horse understood or
not.  His promise was less to the horse than to himself.

Below his vantage point on the hilltop, mid-morning light
stretched across the foothill valley below, across a sprinkling of snow and the
fading orange of a few late changing trees.  In that cool sunlight, the horrors
of the glade seemed no more than a nightmare.

He laughed grimly.  Deliver a message. That had been his
charge.  Get inside the castle, just as they’d practiced in Farras.  Hand the
message to the Sheriff or Lady Renda.  Neither see nor be seen by the Hadrian
priests, and get back to Graymonde.  Such a task had seemed almost impossible
to him at the time, but now, after everything that had happened, would that it
had been so simple.

He had ended up following the sheriff and Lady Renda away
from the besieged castle to a glade where they were surrounded by the Hadrian
priests and by the ancient dead of his own race.  And then, as if that were not
enough, the gods of his people had appeared, right there in the glade:  Anado
of the Hunt and Nekraba…and then the terrifying giant, Mohoro of the
Underground.  And the other, the strange one he’d never heard of before…

Xorden.  Dhanani god of politics, a concept that until last
night had been impossible for him to grasp.

Stranger still, all of that now seemed almost mundane
compared with the spectacular visions his gods had shown him, so real he had
felt the ocean breeze on his skin and smelled the spices in the markets.  His
stomach still churned at the conflict he felt within himself, seeing at once
the cities and ports his people had once built contrasted with the proud
hardened people they’d become on the plains.  He’d felt rage against the
Invaders who had taken that luxury from them and pride that the tribes had
flourished in spite of them.  He was sure he would not completely understand
what he had seen or what it meant for quite some time.

“
Tedriadre
,” he murmured to himself, summoning first
the idea and then the word for it, testing to see if he could still speak in
the Old Voice.  He could.  Because the gods had needed him to understand what
he saw, They had granted him this knowledge so that he might understand what
They showed him.  But when it was over, apparently They had not revoked Their
gift.  Now he could do what the storykeepers of the tribes could never do, and
the knowledge both thrilled him and terrified him. 

He could tell new stories in the Old Voice. 

He could speak it as freely as he spoke Dhanani or
Bremondine or Syonese, and with the visions the gods had shown him, he could
tell the stories of what happened before the Before Time.

Tedriadre…
 

Along the road to the west and over two more hills lay
Graymonde, or what remained of it, where he and Gikka had agreed to meet once
he’d finished delivering his message to Castle Brannagh.  Along the other road,
much nearer and almost within sight, was one of the Hadrian mining towns.  The
streets were predictably quiet at mid-morning with all the miners already deep
in the ground.  A haze of smoke hung over the town from the fireplaces that
burned in the steeply built wooden houses, houses that looked as if they were
meant for a place with much more rain and snow.  Beyond the houses and brightly
painted shops, barely visible, were the mine entrances themselves.  Great
gaping maws in the side of the mountain, the mouths of Mohoro, entrances to the
underground where Dhanani could never go.

Where he’d gone more than once.

Where
real
Dhanani could never go.

Chul sighed, frustrated with all the new thoughts that
filled his mind for which he’d never had words before, strange new gods with
new ideas that made him question everything he’d ever believed.  The dual sided
sword of battle, with Kadeta’s side that protects life and Pildaro’s that takes
it, the strange political realm of Xorden, and Noti’s odd inevitable decay of
everything.    And the Invaders…his feelings were so jumbled.  Gikka would
help.  She had a way of making things clear.

His path lay ahead, to Graymonde.  So why had he stopped? 
Why had he not moved on?  Why was his attention still drawn toward the shanty
town and the mines?

Hadrians.    He shivered.

At the tavern in Farras, he’d seen only the grim line of the
messenger’s mouth beneath his hood, and it had been enough to give him chills. 
After that, he’d seen them only from far away, their heads and bodies cloaked
from even the weak daylight of the Groggy Bear’s Moon, and he’d always
obediently turned and taken himself away, stifling his curiosity.  So between
Gikka’s warnings and Aidan’s stories from the war, he had never risked being
caught alone by the Hadrians, nor even catching a good look at one.

Aidan had tried to describe them to the tribe over the
fires, but he’d finally given up, saying no words could capture the horror of
seeing one of them in person.  To say that they were ugly was not quite right
since they were not misshapen or deformed.  To say that they were merely pale
with colorless hair and eyes evoked images of Mohoro and of His servants, the
grave beetles and maggots, but even that did not evoke the proper feeling of
revulsion.  During the war, a Hadrian scout had come into Lady Renda’s camp
unannounced, and the moment Aidan saw his face, he thought he’d simply blacked
out from the shock. 

When Aidan had come to himself again, coming up from dark,
hateful dreams of savaging the poor Hadrian, several of the Sheriff’s knights
were holding him down until he stopped swinging his fists and feet at them. 
From what he heard, the Hadrian barely escaped with his life, and only because
of the knights’ quick thinking.  Every part of Aidan’s body, even his voice,
had been sore, and he’d stayed to his tent for days afterward, feeling
bewildered and humiliated by his lack of self-control, to say nothing of his
complete lack of compassion for a fellow human being he had never met. 
Eventually, after the third or fourth time this happened, the scouts had
learned to warn him when they saw a Hadrian approaching.

Aidan had called it “blood rage,” for lack of a better term,
and he’d said there was no feeling like it, a feeling of intense passionate
hatred that could never be satisfied.  It was as if suddenly a fire in the
veins erupted and decreed that this creature must not live.  That sort of
merciless, mindless hate was absolutely at odds with Aidan’s training. and he
had prayed daily for Anado’s forgiveness and guidance for his failing even
after he returned to the Plains after the war.

Now that Chul had seen Hadrians in the clearing and felt
that same fire, that same imperative to kill the abomination, he understood
everything Aidan had been unable to put into words.  Strangely, he could
remember the Hadrian priest’s face quite clearly but the memory brought nothing
but a distant revulsion.  Even so, he did not believe for a moment that this
calm in memory would let him remain in control if he saw a Hadrian in the flesh
again.  If Aidan the healer, the gentle shaman in Anado’s service, could not
contain the blood rage no matter how many times he saw Hadrians, Chul knew it
was hopeless even to try.

“Still you linger, Dark Child.  Chul Ka-Dree of the
Dhanani.  What keeps you?”

The white horse nickered and danced restlessly beneath him. 
The voice he heard chiding him for staying at this place was not his father’s
voice, nor Gikka’s, nor those of the gods from the glade.  It was not a memory
but a voice he was really hearing.

“I don’t know,” he said aloud, looking round him.

“Don’t you?” came the same voice from behind him, now
somehow embodied and solid in the cold morning air.  He turned to see someone
standing in the road not far away.  “I think I do.”

Chul steadied his horse, who had cocked one leg to kick at
the stranger, and took that moment to study the person.  The cloak was
unremarkable but covered the stranger’s face completely.  The voice was young,
very young, like an adolescent boy or a young woman, and accented in a way he’d
never heard before.  The build was very slight and apparently male, and the
stance, the whole manner, was almost mocking.  Small.  Cloaked.  Mocking.

Hadrian.

His hand went almost reflexively to his knife, and he looked
around carefully, studying the brush, watching the roads in all directions.  In
his confusion and exhaustion after the battle, he’d allowed himself to relax as
he’d approached Graymonde, the only home he’d known since he’d left the
Kharkara Plains, and he’d stupidly let down his guard.  He’d expected Gikka to
be here.  She would not let anything happen to him, he’d told himself.  So the
closer he got, the safer he felt.  But Gikka might still be two hours’ ride ahead,
and here he was, exhausted from battle, standing at the crossroads on a white
horse like a beacon. 

After everything he’d been through, he’d let himself be
ambushed by Hadrians.

“How funny,” laughed the other.  “You’ve got it all wrong. 
No, no, you’re not ambushed, although such a thing might have been amusing to
watch, were I of a different mind…”

The horse shied again, and Chul steadied him.  When he
looked up, the cloaked one was gone.  He scanned the brush, scanned the road in
every direction.  Nothing.

“Dark Child, you stopped here because I wanted you to
stop here.”

Chul looked around him.  Yes, it was the same voice, but
this time coming from the brush, the rocks, the sky…  Perhaps from his own
mind.

The Hadrian was gone. 

Now was his chance.  Without a word, he nudged his horse to
gallop away, but the horse bucked his head and skittered in a circle without
leaving the center of the road.

“Yes,
I
wanted you to stop here,” the voice spoke
again at his side, this time with less amusement.  “And I always get what I
want.  Just ask the miners.”  The cloaked one was suddenly in front of him,
lowering his hood.  Chul looked away automatically.

“No, no, Dark Child.”  The hood settled around the other’s
shoulders.  “Look at Me and know Who it is Who stands before you.”

Chul fought not to look at the being before him, but found
himself unable not to look.  As he feared, a Hadrian child on the verge of
adolescence stood staring at him with very blue eyes, and he steeled himself. 
But nothing happened.  The child was still repulsive to him, as pale and
squirmy as a maggot in a dead javelin dog, as vile as his memory of the priest
in the glade, and yet he felt no compulsion to attack.  Blue eyes.  The child
god.  The trickster.

“Limigar,” he said, letting out his held breath.  His head
was spinning.  Was he to see the entire pantheon of Syon before midday?  “I…”

“Oh, bless you, you’ve heard of Me!  That’s wonderful!  Most
Dhanani have not, you know.  Not lately, at any rate.”  The child laughed.  It
was a sparkling sweet laugh that Chul could imagine turning vicious without
warning.  “But you seem scared. Chul Ka-Dree.  Don’t be.  If I’d meant to scare
you…”

Suddenly the Hadrian child became a giant snarling black
wolf the size of Chul’s horse, with blazing blue eyes and blood dripping fangs.

Chul’s eyes widened only for a moment before his hunting
knife was out of its sheath.

Just as suddenly, the Hadrian child stood before him again,
looking just a bit smaller and meeker than before.  He smiled beautifully for a
Hadrian, his blue eyes twinkling.  “But I did not.  As I said, I stopped you. 
Your horse needed to rest, and besides, I wanted to show you what I’ve done as
a sort of thank you for your wonderful gift.”

“What you’ve…done?”  He almost added, “What gift?” but
thought better of it.

Limigar pulled the set of wooden rings from his cloak and
began fidgeting with them.  “Oh, this is so much fun!  I’ve not been so
entertained in ages.  It’s a welcome consolation after all my other offerings
were somehow broken.”  He let that hang in the air for a moment.  “Honestly,
had I known the Dhanani had such a gift for puzzles…”  The child-god chuckled
quietly while he continued to work the puzzle, shifting his coloring and his
features, his size, his build, even the cloth of his cloak, until he looked
like one of the tribe’s children––except, of course, for the strange blue eyes.

“But,” Limigar sighed, his attention still on the rings,
“well, there’s no helping it, I suppose.  I should wonder what Mohoro would
think, to have Dhanani following a Hadrian god after His little tantrum.”