Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

by Jordan MacLean

  He felt the maid’s gaze travel lovingly over his face, his eyes, the hundreds of silken black braids that hung to the middle of his chest, his hard Dhanani body bound in skin-tight leathers, his bare arm bound by his gold leather storyskin which would one day be embroidered with tales of his adventures... He licked his lips, and the girl fairly swooned.

  “Sondra.”

  “Oh, aye, my lady.” The maid flushed deeply and took the message, not meeting Chul’s eye, not seeing the glint of puzzled amusement there. Then she curtseyed and fairly fled the room.

  Greta came into the dining chamber again with a stack of clean plates and knives. “Will his Honor and Her Ladyship be coming down for supper later on? The maids are wondering if they should be making up the trays again.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Greta,” came the sheriff’s voice from the doorway. Chul looked up to see a tall man who reminded him strongly of Chief Bakti. His hair was silver-gray and broke at his shoulders in thick waves, and his beard was neatly trimmed, unlike so many of the Invader men. His eyes were steel flecked with flint, the kind of eyes that could see everything in a man’s soul at once, and Chul felt the urge to look away, but he did not. The man was dressed for supper in a fine doublet of deep blue over deep gray and black breeches, and beside him stood a gracious woman in shimmering silvery gowns with platinum ribbons laced through the tiny intricate braids and cascades of her silvered copper hair. But for a score of years and eyes of the brightest blue, she could have been Lady Renda.

  “Chul,” said Renda, “may I present Lord Daerwin, the Sheriff of Brannagh, and Lady Glynnis. Father, Mother, Chul Ka-Dree.”

  The boy stood awkwardly, almost knocking his plate to the floor, and bowed as Aidan had taught him, wiping away the soufflé at the corners of his mouth as well as the cherry juice on his chin. “Chul Ka-Dree,” he repeated with a cracking voice, raising his hands to cross them over his forehead.

  The sheriff looked into the young man’s eyes, ignoring the child’s gesture and clasped his forearm as if Chul were already a warrior. “Welcome.”

  Chul saw Lady Glynnis take in the sight of the boy’s beaten face and the scabby patches of scalp that showed between his many braids, and he almost looked away, embarrassed not for himself but for his father, who was not here to defend his actions. But at once, the beautiful woman beamed at him and swept into the dining chamber as if she’d seen nothing at all.

  “Sit, Chul,” she said with a gracious smile. “We’re most pleased to make your acquaintance, but we did not mean to stop your meal, sit! Greta,” she called, “do let’s set aside formality and make of this our own private supper.” She lowered her voice. “I should think the whole thing rather overwhelming otherwise.”

  Greta nodded and instructed the maids to set up the great hall for the rest of the household. Then, with an insistent clap of her hands, she chased the giggling maids out, that she might serve the family herself this evening.

  Lady Glynnis picked up a plate and a knife for herself before she settled in a seat beside Chul, and the boy unconsciously stiffened. “Oh, come,” she smiled, leaning over her silk sleeves and taking in the whole table with her eyes, “tell me, which do you like best, hm?”

  Suddenly much more at ease, Chul pointed to an empty plate where only a few crumbs from the cheese tarts remained.

  “Quite so!” cried the sheriff. He took his own plate and knife and sat beside his daughter. “Greta, by all means, fetch along more cheese tarts! For my own part,” he said, picking up the plate of Amaranth St. Guiron and serving himself, “I rather like this the best.”

  Over the course of the meal, he’d not trusted his voice to more than single words in Syonese, not wanting to embarrass himself, but they had listened so intently to his stories of his father’s hunts and battles, stories that he’d learned by rote and kept sacred in his heart, that he had fought his way through. Lady Glynnis patiently helped him find the words he needed, and they’d all been so impressed when he spread his father’s embroidered gold storyskin on the table before them.

  Toward the end of the meal, the boy’s fatigue got the better of him, and he began to yawn and drowse visibly.

  “Chul,” said Renda, and he jerked awake at the touch of her hand on his arm. She looked up at a tall wiry man who stood beside her. “This is Sedrik, my father’s valet.”

  The servant smiled easily and bowed.

  “He will see you to your bed.” Renda smiled and helped the groggy boy to stand. “Go with him, now.”

  Chul nodded gratefully and followed the servant away from the table and through the corridors.

  “Can you imagine such dedication to his father,” breathed Lady Glynnis once the boy was gone, “and while he still bears the marks of his last beating?”

  The sheriff sat back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. “How many times did he compare himself against his father, saying, ‘I will never be as great,’ or ‘He deserved a better son than me’? I do not envy Gikka this charge.” He shook his head sadly. “Vaccar’s evil will continue, I’m afraid, even after the last of these cuts has gone to scar.”

  “I had no idea…” Renda murmured quietly. “When Vaccar fought alongside us, I knew him only as a fierce warrior, just like Aidan or Chief Bakti. So I assumed that away from the battlefield, he was also like Aidan, quiet and kind.” She shook her head. “I never thought otherwise.”

  Daerwin smiled gently. “Why would you? Aidan was, until that time, the only Dhanani you had ever seen. But you must remember Aidan was not like the warriors, not even like the Chief. Bakti is a great man, but he is first of all a warrior. The day he is no longer a warrior is the day he no longer leads the tribes of the Kharkara Plains. Aidan is very different. Beyond that, in leaving the tribe as he did to fight alongside us, he changed. Few men are his equal.”

  “Aye,” she agreed. “Most men would be found wanting, measured against Aidan, even other Dhanani.”

  Lady Glynnis raised a brow. “Speaking of which, I trust you set a watch on the maids.”

  Renda nodded with a laugh. “It seems Greta remembered Aidan’s first visit to Brannagh quite vividly and had already arranged for a watch before I thought of it.”

  Aidan, for all that he was not even a warrior, had been quite the distraction. She wondered now as she had several times over the years how it was she had always kept aloof. But then, her whole spirit had been completely taken up with the discipline of battle, and by the time the war was over, other duties imposed upon her and Aidan had returned to the Plains. Besides, she supposed she loved him too well as a comrade-in-arms to be so easily infatuated. She hoped that was why.

  Her thoughts flickered over Kerrick, his proposal and the strange feelings of longing and emptiness in her heart.

  “In any case,” Glynnis smiled, “it is good that Gikka comes to fetch him tomorrow.”

  Daerwin sighed, looking after where Sedrik had led the drowsy boy away. “I only hope Gikka can help him find his way to a new life. Speaking of such things,” he said, rising to his feet, “I have petitioned to have a cardinal sent to us to cleanse the castle, the temple, the whole of our lands if need be.”

  “And to consecrate dear Pegrine’s grave,” added Lady Glynnis weakly, and the façade of cheer crumbled away from her features.

  “Of course, my dear.” The sheriff looked up at her. “That goes without saying. Another bishop might perhaps be strong enough, but a cardinal would make doubly sure. In any case, he should be able to heal the boy’s wounds, perhaps clear away those scars…the better to help him forget.” He sighed. “To our misfortune, the soonest the petition shall have voice is a score of days—”

  “Half a month?” gasped Renda.

  “Aye, and a full tenday or more beyond that before the cardinal arrives at our door. That, assuming he can leave forthwith. We may not see him until the Feast of Bilkar.” He rubbed his eyes. “Meanwhile, the woods grow restless, and I hear the servants whispering of voices and ch
ills in the castle. I suppose it’s inevitable. The child may lie innocently by, but while she remains unconsecrated, the superstitious will speak of ghosts and creatures of darkness.”

  “And they may try to take action,” Renda frowned.

  “By the gods,” breathed Lady Glynnis.

  “Must we wait for a cardinal of B’radik, then?” Renda looked anxiously from her father to her mother. “Her bishop was corrupt; how can we know whether we might trust Her cardinal? And if Her cardinal should be likewise corrupted.” Renda suppressed a shiver. “Assuming he yet lives…”

  The sheriff smiled sadly. “My thought exactly. Thus I have sent my message not only to B’radik’s High Temple in Brannford but to every basilica and temple, every metropolitan, every seat of every wholesome god, that the nearest may come to our aid forthwith. Well, not the nearest. That would be the Bilkarian Abbey, and as powerful as the Bilkarians are, I’m afraid Abbot Laniel will be of little use in this.”

  Renda nodded. “Of course, B’radik’s High Temple is the next nearest.” If they must wait almost a month for B’radik’s cardinal, they would wait much longer for any other.

  The sheriff chuckled darkly. “We may well find ourselves host to a grand convention of clergy, but better that than none at all.”

  Some hours later, Renda sat in the dark gallery above the great hall and closed her eyes, letting her mind go where it would in the darkness.

  She had developed this habit over the years of taking time to reflect once the camp had quieted and the fires had burned down. During the war, she’d used the time to plan the coming day’s battle or to review intelligence.

  These days, lacking any other purpose, she used the time to grieve.

  Not just Pegrine. The sharp pain of her niece’s death was still fresh and bleeding, yes, but she had lost so much more over the years, so much of herself, so much of her heart. During the war, she had not had time enough to bury the countless men and women she’d watched fall to the armies of demons, much less time to mourn them. She had not cried when her brother died. She had told herself at the time that she had not the luxury of such indulgence, not when she had an army to lead. The idea of a woman leading them, and really no more than a girl at that—she had turned seventeen only the month before she’d been named their commander—had been difficult enough for her men, even as she’d started recruiting more women into their ranks. She could not show them any reason to think she was not strong enough to lead, and mourning openly showed too much softness of spirit and weakness. She had told herself she could not allow herself the admission of defeat that came with mourning.

  But now, six years later, safe within the castle with nothing else to take up her thoughts, she had to admit to herself, just as she had night after night as she sat in silence, that somewhere in all those battles and all those losses she had turned that refusal to show emotion into a refusal to feel emotion. She had hidden away that softness of spirit deep within herself, but now when she went looking for it, it was gone. Now that she had time to grieve the dead, she had no tears stored up waiting to spill for them.

  Oh, tears she had in plenty, tonight of all nights, but they were selfish tears for the cold, heartless weapon she had become in order to win the war. As she’d wondered already several times that day, was there any more to her than that? Would there ever be more to her than that?

  Her thoughts wandered to Aidan, to the kitchen maids’ giggling over Chul, finally to Kerrick. A quiet bark of laughter escaped between her tears. A beautiful man whose company she enjoyed, a Knight of Brannagh and future Viscount, had just asked her to marry him. This was the dream of every young noblewoman in Syon. It was supposed to be her dream now. But her dreams…

  Could she allow herself the luxury of such simple humanity? Luxury… The silliness of girlish infatuation was luxury indeed, but if she included the agony of losing her brother and little Pegrine and all the countless others who lay dead and unburied in the killing fields of Syon, luxury seemed the wrong word.

  Perhaps she was better off feeling nothing.

  “M–my lady.”

  She turned to see one of the nursery maids beckoning to her from the corridor, terrified and trembling. “How now, Mika,” she whispered to the girl, but the girl only sobbed. In her hand, she held the knight’s sword belt.

  “I hear it again,” the maid whispered, moving away along the corridor. “The laughing I spoke of, by the gods, I hear it again. Please, my lady, please!”

  Renda followed, taking the sword from her. “And you’re certain of what you heard,” she asked when they rounded the corner toward the nursery.

  “Aye, Lady,” breathed Mika. “It’s a child’s voice in the nursery, laughing and babbling, as children do.” Tears welled in the maid’s eyes. “First few nights, I heard it, and it didn’t strike me odd. I mean, I heard the same night upon night these many years,” she sobbed, and her voice rose with her panic. “Except that she’s gone to the stars, now, and her voice remains!”

  Nara’s chamber was just inside the nursery with the children’s bedchamber beyond the edge of the large play area—the bedchamber Renda and Roquandor had shared as children. With only one child in the castle, Pegrine had had the whole huge room to herself, a bright room by day, full of light and cheer with plenty of room for her toys. Now that same door stood closed, forbidding, and beyond it, if she listened even from this distance, Renda thought she could hear—something.

  When they entered the nursery, Renda stopped at Nara’s door first, but she hesitated before she knocked. Nara had not recovered completely, not yet, and she still would not speak of what had so frightened her on the night of Pegrine’s murder. To ask for her help now might be too much of a strain on the old woman. But Renda had no choice.

  “Nara,” called Renda, tapping against the door with the hilt of her sword. “Nara!”

  The old woman opened the door slowly and peered out, casting a gloomy white light over the knight. “My lady?”

  “Nara, the maids are hearing voices in the nursery,” Renda told her. “If Pegrine...” she began, but her voice broke.

  But Nara had already stepped away from the door to take up her shawl. “If my little one’s spirit walks,” hissed Nara when she came back to the door, “I shall do my best to put her to rest, and thank B’radik that I may yet be of service to this house.”

  Renda nodded gratefully. Then she led the way across the empty play area to Pegrine’s door.

  Almost at once, the hair on the back of her neck bristled. Indeed, she could hear the sound of childish giggling and play, sounds she had heard often from Pegrine’s chamber while the child lived. But at her approach, the voice fell into the heavy rhythms of a child’s rhyme. Even with her ear pressed against the wooden door, Renda could not quite hear it well enough to make out the words.

  “Ano, ano, poison’s bane,

  Sword of hemlock, godless stain,

  Sovereign’s secret whim she tells,

  The child among the doucetels.”

  The voice Renda heard now was Nara’s, falling in perfect rhythm to the child’s chant inside the chamber.

  “The pith, the blood, the heart, the glow,

  To free Her hand and guard the throne.

  Four thousand years the Five are four,

  The fifth is found and binds the shores.”

  “Nara, what rhyme is this that you speak?” She turned in horror and peered into the old woman’s eyes. “Is this some nursery song you taught to Pegrine?”

  “Nay,” she wheezed, looking away in terror. “I called upon B’radik to cleanse the chamber, my lady, and I hear only this cursed rhyme in mine ear!

  “Of dragon’s line, doth legend spin

  Brannagh from Damerien,

  Truth to guard and light to shed,

  Dread the coming banishèd.”

  “Dread the coming banishèd?” Mika’s voice trembled, and she looked from Renda to Nara and back. “What means it, my lady? Are we to dread t
he ghost, the banished soul?” She turned to Nara. “Is there more to it?”

  Renda frowned and gestured the girl to silence, ignoring her own thoughts that perhaps by taking in Chul, somehow the house was in danger. But if so, the warning was a bit late.

  “Ano, ano, poison’s bane,

  Sword of hemlock, godless stain,

  Sovereign’s secret whim she tells,

  The child among the doucetels.”

  She pursed her lips in exasperation. The pith, the blood, the heart, the glow. The four bloods, and by extension the four knightly virtues. All right, then, the knights would be the ones to guard the throne. But that was no great revelation. The Knights of Brannagh had always guarded Damerien’s throne. As to the Five being Four and binding shores, she only shook her head.

  The rhyme could mean any of a thousand things, but only one for certain: B’radik would not, or could not, drive out the child’s ghost. Or possibly, they faced more than just a spirit in Pegrine’s chamber. Either way, the duty now fell upon Renda to destroy it. She shut her eyes tightly. To destroy Pegrine’s soul, if need be.

  “Enough,” shouted Renda, opening her eyes again. She took the door handle to turn it. But the door was locked. She turned to the maid. “Who locked this door?”

  “Locked? No one, my lady.” The young woman sobbed again. “It stood open when we took her things out, and no one has been inside since.”

  Renda turned to Nara.

  “Aye, my lady, the door stands open by daylight.” She looked nervously at the closed door. “I’ve not seen it by dark, not since Peg’s death.”