Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

by Jordan MacLean

  What could it mean, that the child changed it? Was it part of the binding that kept Nara from being able to speak with her goddess, or was it a deception? Nara swallowed hard and quickened her wobbling pace, suddenly anxious to throw the bolt of her chamber door and settle herself beside the warmth of the fire.

  The sheriff’s sword cut through the first seals and freed the large flat stone that blocked the tunnel to the mausoleum. After he and Renda lifted it from its niche and set it aside, they took up two torches and stepped down the stairway that led into the tunnel. The way was dark and low, but it was fully broad enough that a funeral procession could pass through without crowding. As they passed, they lit the sconced torches on the walls from their own, that their way might not be dark coming out.

  The tunnels. She shivered in spite of herself, just as she always did when she walked to the crypt. Years ago, her father had told her of the ten babes of ten months’ age who had been buried in the tunnel walls to serve as the crypt’s guardians, and she had never been quite sure why. Now, with a few more years behind her, she supposed he might have meant to caution her against thoughtless liaisons with his knights or bearing children out of wedlock, although he likely had had no such thought in mind. He probably thought it an interesting bit of castle history and nothing more. Either way, the gruesome knowledge had haunted Renda for months afterward.

  She had found herself staring at the farm wives in the villages and along the roads, wondering, as she watched them coo and smile over their pretty infants, which of these would be just as glad to let her child be buried alive for a bit of gold, to live in guilty comfort ever after.

  But the worst of her obsession had come by night, when she was alone, and her brother, who had moved to his own chamber outside the nursery, was no longer there to chide her out of her dark reveries. If she but closed her eyes, she could see the tiny bones within the tunnel walls, or the innocent, trusting eyes of the children disappearing behind the last bricks—bricks she herself was placing. Then, while she still lay gasping in cold sweat from the horror of it, then came the cries, the hysterical, hoarse cries. She could stifle her ears under a pillow, but still her heart sought out their voices through the castle walls until she could stand it no longer. She would dash in her bare feet to the chapel and pound against the sealed stone, but by then the only cries she heard were her own.

  Now, walking through the silent stone tunnel toward the sealed doors, she found herself shamefully grateful for their sacrifice, glad of their presence behind the walls, feeling that somehow the ten were protecting her Pegrine. She despised herself for her weakness and fear in those moments, that in the shadow of unknown terrors she should embrace the cruelty and superstition she condemned in the safe light of day.

  At last her father’s sword broke the seal on the crypt, and together they pushed the stone doors open. Renda drew a careful breath, hoping to be able to end their worries there without having to witness the destruction of Pegrine’s body, but to her sorrow she found only the faintest odor of death. Odor, no, just the closeness of the tomb itself, and she glanced at her father. His steel gauntlet clanked courageously against her own. They readied their swords.

  The two knights descended into the main chamber of the tomb, amid the dead of Brannagh for a hundred generations. Scattered in the walls nearest the entrance were some of the most ancient of the burial niches, many of which had never been sealed, and inside were tiny bits of bone and cloth dried and protected through the centuries by long forgotten prayers, with names engraved in gold plaques below them.

  In one, Renda saw two doll-sized skulls and some bits of lace, just as she had every time she had come into this place, and as always, she found her eye drawn to the plaque. The script was so ornate as to be nearly unreadable, but she had read it so many times: Twinne dohters, stilbourn of Ld Dilkon & Ly Cilva of Brannagh, 2667. Almost twelve hundred years, and she could still feel the heartbreak and defeat in those words, the long barbed tendrils of their anguish that yet lingered in the frontmost pews of the chapel above.

  As her father moved through the chambers of the crypt lighting and sconcing several more torches, Renda made her way between the great stone sarcophagi that held the remains of the sheriffs themselves, names famous in Syon’s history: Remiar, Cardon, Borowain. Dilkon, a hundred others. And Lexius, the first sheriff, whose tomb lay farthest back in the crypt and upon whose stones Pegrine’s unconsecrated bier rested on its black cloth. As Renda approached the bier, she glanced up at a single plaque on the wall behind it, another she did not need to read to know what it said: Roquandor, Knight of Brannagh, born of Ld Daerwin & Ly Glynnis of Brannagh 3836, departed this life in honor 3858.

  And there, just below her father’s plaque and resting in her veiled bier, lay Pegrine. The smell of decay was thick about her, and the two knights almost took comfort enough to turn away without lifting the veil. But the odor did not come from the child’s flesh.

  The gory wooden sword Renda had put into her hands at her funeral looked nearly white at its point until the sheriff brought his torch nearer and drew back the veil. Suddenly, the hemlock of the blade was awrithe with maggots and pale crypt beetles desperate to leave the alien light, and once these had made their escapes, the swollen furred muck about its point looked a foul black and gray, a sure sign of the corruption they should have expected to see. But worse, far worse. Folded serenely about the hilt of the gruesome thing were two plump, innocent little hands.

  Pegrine’s little body was perfectly filled out to the form of a seven-years child, and her cheeks glowed like miniature spring roses. In the torchlight, her lips looked moist enough to kiss.

  Renda stepped closer, unsure if she could believe what she saw. But her foot kicked aside something on the ground beside the bier. She turned at once and lowered her torch, there to see the bandages the maids had bound round the child’s torso beneath her gown. The knight looked up at her father. There could be no doubt.

  The sheriff raised his visor and blinked at the child there on her funeral bier. His hand clenched and unclenched about the hilt of his sword several times before it finally drooped to his side, useless. “Gods, why can I not feel the evil here?” he sobbed, and with a great effort, drew out his sword to raise it over the child. Then, faltering, he collapsed to his knees. “Have I no courage now to purge this thing from the world? So help me, show me some ugliness here to fight! Show me some darkness here!”

  Until her father spoke, she had thought only her own senses confounded in this place. The child was neither alive nor dead; in her uncorrupted state, there could be no doubt that she had become an undead thing who would feed upon the blood of men and keep to the dark and evil places of the world. But to their eyes, their beloved little girl showed not the slightest hint of such a taint.

  Renda narrowed her eyes once more over the child’s sweet face, over her white First Rites gown, her hands. She saw no trace of the bishop’s touch on her, none of the darkness of the glade. Renda’s eye was accustomed to seeing evil as a wispy black veil falling about the features of men, a darkening of the soul. Such was the peculiar gift of her bloodline, a gift from the goddess. But here, she could see none of it, nothing to quicken the blood and draw the two knights to fight.

  She drew her father up from where he had fallen and hurried him from beside the bier. “Come away,” she whispered, grasping his arm and leading him out of the crypt. “The sun sets soon, and we must speak together ere we face this crypt again.”

  Once the doors were closed, the sheriff drew out the wax to seal the crypt and softened it over his torch.

  “Father...” Renda breathed, tension building in her gut as she stood guarding his back.

  “Peace, child,” he whispered, fixing the wax across the door. “Else I shall have to start again.” Then he set his mark into it, the stylized form of a dragon’s claw. Both knights held their breaths, expecting the torches in the tunnels behind them to blow out and leave them in darkness. Somehow, the
y expected some grinning evil creature to have gotten past them to trap them in the tunnel. But the torches burned steadily until they had made their way out of the tunnel and into the chapel above. Then, much relieved, Renda and her father sealed the stone in the floor of the north chapel.

  An hour later, having seen to her armor, Renda met her father in his audience chamber as they had agreed. Before he had retired for the evening, Sedrik had stoked the fire well and left a jug of warm toddy and two mugs on the sideboard beside a plate of cold meats Greta had saved for them, and now the sheriff stood pouring the toddy for them both.

  Renda accepted her mug and sat beside him before the fire, staring into the coal bed. Their intention had been to discuss what they had seen, to agree upon a plan, but here, in the warmth and rational light of the fire, they found themselves sipping from their mugs and staring dumbly into the fire.

  Renda suddenly awoke with a start, having fallen asleep on her father’s shoulder. She had no idea what had awakened her until she heard the knocking again and saw Mika peek around the edge of the open door. Renda slipped from beneath her father’s arm, careful not to let it drop too heavily at his side lest it wake him, and moved quickly to the door.

  “Pegrine’s chamber?” she asked softly.

  “Aye.” Mika handed Renda her sword and scabbard and led her through the corridors of the castle to the nursery.

  “Did you wake Nara?”

  The maid shook her head. “I came to fetch you first. If you like—”

  “No,” spoke Renda as they approached Pegrine’s door, “let her rest. Hearing that rhyme once more will only upset her.”

  The maid touched her arm. “But, my lady, the voice only laughs and cavorts tonight. It speaks no rhyme, at least not to me.”

  Renda’s step slowed for only a moment before she cast a courageous smile at the frightened young woman. “Then perhaps B’radik will be with us in this.” Renda moved to listen against the door, but as her hand touched the handle, it turned, and the door came ajar. She drew back her hand at once to listen, half expecting the voice to have gone silent, but the laughter continued.

  Behind her, Mika stood frozen, eyes wide with terror. Renda drew her sword and pushed the door open.

  Sitting on her bed with a pretty new doll on her lap, was Pegrine. Her hair fell in shining ebony ringlets about her chin, just as it had in life. She wore her First Rite gown, just as she had when they buried her, a gown that should have been drenched and foul with the bishop’s blood from the sword, if not acrawl with vermin. But now it was bright and clean. Had it been so in the tomb just now? Renda could not recall.

  The child’s face looked a bit thin and pale to her, but not ghastly, with barely a touch of color to her cheeks and lips. No fire burned in the fireplace, and Renda shivered in the cold of the chamber, but the little girl did not appear to feel the chill at all.

  “Peg?” whispered Renda from the open door.

  “Auntie!” The little girl jumped from the bed and threw her arms around Renda’s waist, ignoring the sword in the knight’s hand. “Oh, but I’ve missed you so, and I’ve so much to tell you! Come, tell me you’ve missed me, too.”

  Renda smiled, feeling tears in her eyes in spite of herself. “I have, child. Gods, but I have missed you.” She ached to hold the child in her arms and stroke her soft hair, but she held herself back. This being wore Pegrine’s shape and manner, but it could only be a creature of evil, a drinker of gore and a feeder upon men’s souls. She must not let herself forget.

  Pegrine looked up into Renda’s eyes, and her smile faltered. “Don’t be cross with me.” The little girl’s lip trembled. “It wasn’t my fault. Those two knights said they were taking me to see Grandpapa, and they were knights, so I trusted them, but then...” She looked down, and tears spilled from her eyes.

  “No, Peg, shh...” soothed Renda. “No one is cross with you. It was not your fault, what happened, but all the same,” she said, turning away, “you were killed.” Renda drew a sharp breath before she looked back at the creature with a frown. “How is it you stand speaking to me when I am just come from seeing you on your bier?”

  Pegrine sniffed away her tears. Then she cocked her head a bit uncertainly. “She told me you were in the crypt today,” said the child, and she sat on her bed and stroked her doll’s hair. “You and Grandpapa.”

  “We were,” said Renda, clutching her sword.

  “With your armor.” She looked at the weapon in Renda’s hand and then into her eyes, and Pegrine’s gaze held a look of accusation. “She said you came to do away with me. She said—”

  “She, and again, she!” cried Renda in confusion. “Who is she, who knows so much? Is it Nara, speaks to you?”

  “Nara? No!” Pegrine looked up with a curious smile. “The pretty lady in white. She came to me after the bishop hurt me. She gave me this doll to keep me company since,” she looked around her chamber and sighed sadly, “all mine have gone away.”

  “May I see it? The doll?” With no more than a moment’s hesitation, Renda sheathed her sword, and Pegrine handed her the doll. It was a lovely graceful lady doll with long white-blonde hair, silver eyes and a full white gown trimmed in tiny white ribbons and shimmering stones that seemed to blaze with light. The tiny black pupils of the eyes narrowed to focus on Renda’s face, and the knight’s scalp prickled. “Peg,” she asked a bit worriedly, “who is she?” Renda remembered the voice from the bishop’s chamber and shuddered. “Did she speak her name to you?”

  Peg nodded smugly, tossing her curls. “She called Herself B’radik, Auntie. She said you knew Her.”

  “B’radik.” The goddess of truth and light. A moment later, Renda nodded. “Aye, my sweet, well do I know Her. She has answered many a prayer for me.” She crouched and pulled the child into her arms and held her for several minutes, sobbing gracelessly against her musty gown, so grateful to her goddess, relieved of so many fears. “But did She tell you why?”

  The little girl nodded and drew breath. Peg only drew breath to speak, to Renda's dull horror. The rest of the time, her chest was still. Pegrine looked somberly into her aunt’s eyes. “I was all bound up when She found me, Auntie. Not my body, not so I couldn’t move. More so I couldn’t think.” The child looked up at her to see if she understood. “The bishop did that so he could eat my spirit.” Her nose wrinkled. “He locked it away whilst he cut my body to bits. He was supposed to eat my spirit when he drank—”

  Renda nodded weakly. “Gikka and I were there.”

  Pegrine tossed her head and sat back on the bed. “So my body was killed and my spirit was trapped with no place to go when She found me.” She laughed. “It was smashing good luck for us both, you see. She told me She could fix my body for a little while if I would be Her helper here. But only for a while since it drains Her so.” The little girl shrugged and swung her feet back and forth on the bed. “Then I shall be finally, truly dead, but I suppose I shan’t mind so much.” She smiled bravely at Renda and ran a childish finger along the sword hilt. “I guess I shall never be a knight now.”

  Renda swallowed a sob and touched the little girl’s hair. After a time, she spoke.

  “Child, why have you locked the door if you’ve wanted to see me? I’ve come to the door each night; why did you not speak to me sooner? And why did you stay away when I was here alone?”

  “I wanted to. Talk to you, I mean.” Pegrine looked away. “But you would not have understood. B’radik told me to say that rhyme over and over in hopes that you might understand it whilst someone else, someone very bad, might not.” She sighed and looked away, and Renda thought she saw fear in the child’s eyes. “But now...”

  “Who? Did She say who the someone very bad might be?”

  After a moment, Pegrine shook her head. “But it vexes Her terribly. She cries, Auntie. Her priests beg for Her help, and She can do so little for them now. And then they turn away...”

  The woman took her hand gently. “Peg, look at me. Can yo
u help us fight this disease that kills the priests?”

  “No, Auntie, no.” She stood suddenly, wringing her hands. “The sickness is only a very small part of what you fight; it’s meant to keep you from the real battle.”

  “Real battle?” Renda stood in alarm. “But I know no enemy! Where do I begin?”

  Pegrine took the doll from Renda and fussed with it for a time, looking into its eyes and murmuring softly to it. “She understands, now,” came a quiet whisper, and for a chilling moment, Renda’s ears were not sure whether the voice was the child’s or not.

  Renda paced across the chamber. “Understand? I understand nothing!” She knelt suddenly beside the child where she still played with the doll. “Pegrine, please. Please!” She gently took the doll and held it on the bed beside the girl, drawing a frown from her. “What is it that keeps B’radik from helping Her priests? Perhaps if I start there.”

  But Pegrine took the doll again, taking it from beneath Renda’s hand with surprising ease. “She tells me that for now it is enough that you have seen me, and that you understand.” Her voice was cold, and her eyes gleamed with determination and power, enough that Renda stood back and touched the hilt of her sword in its scabbard. But then the little girl’s eyes brightened again, and she smiled. “But come, I’ve been away nearly half again a month. Tell me what news!”

  Pegrine would say no more about B’radik or the priests’ illness, no matter how Renda coaxed her. They talked on until nearly sunrise, mostly of childish things and of her frightening life in the crypt. She was pleased that her frocks and toys had gone to help the war orphans in Farras, although now her chamber looked sadly bare.

  She asked after her favorite knights and servants by name, especially Gikka and Nara. More than anything else, the child was desperate to see her Grandmama and Grandpapa again, but she promised to wait until Renda could speak with them. The sheriff, having been in the crypt with Renda, might well understand, but Lady Glynnis was still a bit fragile; she had good days when she seemed herself, but she still had frighteningly bad days, dark, despairing days when the maids were afraid to leave her alone. Who could know how news of Pegrine’s revenant might affect her?