Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1)

by Jordan MacLean

  “As you will, Eminence. Your Grace,” she breathed.

  Nestor followed her out and pulled the doors closed behind him.

  “How long has he been thus?” she asked once the doors were fully closed.

  Nestor shrugged. “Not long, truly. A few days, it’s been bad, is all.”

  “It cannot be the plague.”

  “Of course it is.” He shook his head at her shocked expression. “Not that he has it himself, no. Did you think that Brannagh was blessed somehow, protected by the grace of the gods? With B’radik bound, no less? No, his Grace, it is, shields us all.” Nestor shook his head. “But these last few days, it wears on him worse than before. Last night come this worst of it. The whole night I was at mopping his brow and changing his bed for all the sweating, feeding him water and fever remedies by the clock, and the Keepers was beside theirselves, aye, pacing and muttering. But for the urgency of his Honor’s message, the duke should have spent the day abed, and no mistake.”

  “Aye,” she said quietly, glancing at the door, “but his Eminence has urgent business.” She crossed her arms and paced across the floor. “The Keepers are with him, then?”

  “Aye.” Nestor nodded toward the audience chamber. “I seen no need to call the cardinal’s attention to them, for all his bother about confidences. None are more in the duke’s confidence than his Keepers.” He looked worriedly towards the door. “Once his Eminence takes his leave, they’ll tend the duke proper, see him through.”

  Renda nodded. Nestor himself was a Keeper and bound by their ancient oath of fealty to the House of Damerien, though of habit, he referred to the rest of the Keepers as “them.”

  “But should he grow too weak, their power will desert them, aye?”

  “No danger of that.” He touched the wall absently. “They’ve laid by a bit, just in case.” He saw the concern in her eyes and smiled. “Oh, but it’ll not come to that, Lady. A fine mess that would be, no bride, no means to an heir.” He looked toward the door. “Is an evil harsh business, this, is why I called them. I’m thinking they’ll see him through better than me alone. Besides,” he grinned, “best to have a full house of servants with company and all.” He squeezed her arm gently and quietly moved off down the hallway muttering under his breath about the darkness of the sudden storm. He took up several unlit candelabrum as he went.

  She watched the old Bremondine man amble away into the darkness, and by some peculiar twist of her thoughts, found herself once again thinking about Gikka. Her first thought, once they had seen the cardinal, had been to bid Gikka and Chul through the messenger to join her at Brannagh. Surely with Maddock and the rest subdued and beholden to Brannagh for their very lives, the villagers would forget their anger or at least hold their tongues, and Chatka’s death prophecy be damned.

  But instead, she had counseled Gikka and Chul to stay away and take no action against the villagers yet, knowing even as she spoke the words to the memory messenger what Gikka’s reaction would be. The messenger’s ears would ring the tenday for it. But Gikka would obey her. Once the cardinal and his priests had the plague well in hand, she would have Gikka and Chul join her at Brannagh, but until then they were best kept at arm’s length.

  Renda turned in the darkness and strode across the hallway to sit and wait. She had grown used to waiting.

  A scream rang through the corridor around her, a strange, high inhuman squeal of rage. The sudden shock of it had her on her feet with her sword drawn. In the silence following the scream, she heard only her own heartbeat. For a moment, she wondered if she’d imagined it, if she’d fallen asleep on the bench and been jolted awake by a bad dream. The hall was so quiet.

  She listened against the audience chamber door and heard only the deepest silence. Then she heard a shout and an extreme exhortation in the cardinal’s voice against…something. Something evil. The terror in his voice was clear even if the words he spoke were unfamiliar.

  Sword raised, she kicked open the door.

  Valmerous was backing away, warding, crying out and sputtering, cascades of prayers and protections whirling about him, his voice breaking under his terror. The duke sat slumped over in a faint, pale and drenched in cold sweat, ready to fall from his throne to the floor, and beside him, brazen and serenely confident, stood Pegrine holding her wooden sword.

  “Peg?” she breathed, not believing what she was seeing. Renda raced to the duke’s side, looking back and forth between Pegrine and the cardinal.

  “Trocu?” She shook the duke gently. His face was white and bathed in cold sweat. “Trocu, can you hear me? What is happening here?”

  “There!” Valmerous cried, “there is your plague, there is your corruption! Demon, vampire, undead! She is the one, yes? The sheriff’s granddaughter, yes? As long as she walks, this plague will haunt you!”

  The little girl hissed at him and brandished her sword.

  Without thinking, Renda put herself between the cardinal and Pegrine. “No! She is not the cause of this! She cannot be the cause of this!”

  “Now you know,” Pegrine said.

  “Know what?” Renda asked.

  But already, the child’s form had begun to fade into the black clouds outside the window.

  “Pegrine, come back!” she called.

  “What, what is this!” Valmerous cried out, staring between Renda and the open space where Pegrine had been standing. “You, a Knight of Brannagh, sworn to B’radik, you call this vampire by name? You defend this creature of evil against my word as a cardinal!”

  “No, I…”

  “She would have killed the duke, had I not been here to protect him, and you dare protect her!”

  “I don’t understand.” Her sword drooped, uncertain. She looked back at the duke, where he slumped upon his throne. No. Pegrine would never harm Trocu. But Pegrine was dead, and who could say what drove the undead creature who wore her form?

  Vampire, he had said.

  Had she attacked Trocu? It made no sense.

  I also remember a child. At the end.

  Why would she attack the duke now, with a cardinal standing hard by, not to mention the Keepers? On the other hand, why had the Keepers done nothing to protect—

  Through the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement—she turned toward the cardinal. His eyes suddenly rolled up into his head, and he dropped to the stone floor like a dead thing. His cassock was damp and cold, and he shivered when she lifted his arm about her shoulder and carried him from the audience chamber.

  She turned at the door to see the Keepers stepping from the walls, silent, brooding, moving toward the unconscious duke. She wanted to talk to them, to ask them what they had seen, but at a glance from one of them, she shuddered and closed the door behind her.

  Nestor stood outside the door, a lit candelabrum in hand, and after only a moment’s hesitation, took the cardinal’s other arm to help Renda carry him. “A terrible storm, this,” whispered Nestor. “Rain and wind, lightning.” He gestured toward the staircase. “I’ve made up beds for you. Sure you’d not ride back tonight.”

  “We will,” spoke the cardinal weakly. “I’ll not spend another moment toward nightfall in this tainted place. It pulls the very life from me.” He turned his head up to Renda. “I can ride. Please take me from here at once.”

  She looked at Nestor a moment before she looked back at the cardinal. “But why—”

  “No, not another moment. How could I have been so...? We must see to the child’s grave at once.” With that, he drew himself away from her and stood, a bit unsteadily. “Else all may be lost.”

  Twenty-Two

  The Maze in Farras

  The messenger let his eyes take in the cracked mud-daubed walls of the house, the tattered cloth curtains whose colors had long gone to gray that cut the large central chamber into vacant stable-like stalls. The woman who owned the place let the stalls to whores and drunks by the clock or by the night, as it suited, but by daylight the whole of the place stood empty
. Empty save for himself and the two with him.

  He saw no belongings stacked against the walls, no sign that the woman had spent more than the present moment here; this was merely a meeting place, and he saw at once that moments after their business was concluded she would disappear deep into the Maze again, a place even he did not treat lightly.

  He glanced away, letting his gaze fall upon the boy whom she had called only Chul—an obvious alias, but that suited him fine. Knowing names was a curse, especially for one like him. The boy sat on the floor nibbling a cheese tart, turned lazily away as if oblivious to their conversation, but the messenger was not fooled. At the hip of the boy’s cloth breeches hung a forbidding Dhanani hunting knife, the hilt already smooth and well worn with use. This boy was no child, and he was no more ignorant of the message’s importance than Gikka herself.

  The messenger shifted uncomfortably in the silence and crossed his legs where he sat upon the straw strewn on the floor. “And of course, there’s the bag of tarts for the boy, there.”

  “Aye, the tarts,” Gikka nodded thoughtfully. She fingered the shabby curtain for a time, considering, before she turned to him again. “And full certain, you are, Marigan, there’s no more to it?” She smoothed her brow with the edge of a long nail and stared at the man intently. “You speak her words true, aye, and you seen nothing sideways, nothing as struck you odd on your way?”

  His brow wrinkled a bit, and his gaze dipped toward the floor.

  Gikka watched him, watched the nervous fidgeting of his hands. She smiled amiably and leaned against the wall. “Speak it, whatever it is; I’ll know soon enough an you don’t.”

  “No eye have I for what’d strike you odd, Mistress,” he said carefully, placing each word as brick and mortar between them, “but now, come to mind of it, as I come upon the castle, I did see something odd. A priest, a cardinal.”

  Gikka straightened.

  “Aye, and ten others besides, priests and temple dwellers all.” His eye narrowed. “Hadrians, the lot,” he added with distaste. “They rode into Brannagh upon my very heels.”

  She smiled as she turned away from him. “I’m thinking those of Brannagh’d take any cardinal just now. And eleven, at that; by the gods, the plague’s as much as done.” But almost at once, her smile faded into a frown. “But I’m wondering why she spoke no word of it.” She scowled over her shoulder at Marigan. “Or is that a bit you’re forgetting?”

  “No, you mark it right, she made no mention.” He looked away again, biting the inside of his cheek. He had answered a bit too quickly, a bit too handily, and so ready had his words been upon his tongue, he had let pass an insult hurled at his memory, the very heart of his being.

  Gikka’s eyes narrowed. “You know a bit more, then.”

  “Mistress.” He licked his lips almost painfully. “It’s not for me to spy...”

  “What spying,” she laughed quietly. “An they speak it before your ears, knowing full well you’re a memory messenger, they’d as much as have me know.” Her lips thinned to a line. “Tell me at last, afore I whet my daggers upon your skull.”

  He drew a deep breath and closed his eyes. “All right, then, but let it not get back to them as I spoke of it.” He thought a moment. “As I say, the cardinal was come fair upon my heels, aye. Now, at once, they spended time behind closed doors—this whilst their kitchen mum done set me at a full table so’s I’d not be listening at the keyhole—the Hadrian, my lord Sheriff and Lady Renda, they talked a bit, until at last out they come, and it’s off to the hospice.”

  “So the cardinal’s priests, they set straight to work, then.” Gikka crossed her arms impatiently. “Go on.”

  The messenger looked down. “But that’s just it, missus. They did not.” At her questioning look, he shrugged. “The cardinal retired right off, so it seemed to me, but I bent an ear at an open window, and heard, I did, bits of an altercation in the bailey twixt Her Ladyship and his Honorableness touching our cardinal, and ugly words at that.”

  “Twixt the sheriff and Renda.” Gikka cocked her head.

  Marigan licked his lips again and lowered his voice. “Seems the cardinal did naught in the hospice, even as a knight died at his feet, and this whilst the hospice priest says they lose ground against the plague, no less.”

  Gikka looked at him sharply. “Arnard said as much, truly?”

  He swallowed hard and nodded. “Is why they set to argument. Lady Renda took none too kind to yon cardinal, aye, and after she and her father had words, her to complain the cardinal did naught, him to call her ungrateful, he went within to slam his chamber doors, and she set to polishing her armor with teeth bared. For the consecration, it was to be, but to mine eye she took especial care at her blades.”

  Gikka shook her head and slammed her hand against the stone wall. “And yet she bids me stay away; why?” She drew herself up and turned to the messenger again. “Is there more?”

  The Bremondine stared up at her, neither nodding nor shaking his head, only staring.

  In a blur of motion, Gikka’s face was suddenly inches from his own. “I’ll not ask it again,” she seethed. “Speak what you know.”

  Marigan wrung his hands. “Please, missus, I’m not understanding what it is I saw, and if I speak of it, most like I’ll set you awrong.”

  But Gikka did not move, did not speak, only stared into his eyes from where she crouched before him until at last he looked away.

  “Very well, then,” he said shakily, “very well. Happened much later, it did, aye. By night, they put me up in the servants’ wing, clean bed, a fire. But afore the sun leaves the top towers of the keep, I’m at the stairway and up to the guest wing, there to learn what I may, in case—”

  “You might sell it to the sheriff later, aye, get on with it.” She stood again. “What did you hear?”

  “At first, I heard nothing at all, not a word, not a prayer.” When she only stared at him, he shrugged. “Well, that’s queer, ain’t it, that priests as would consecrate a tomb on the morrow’d not be setting themselves at prayer and such?” She nodded at last, and he relaxed. “Queer, as I say, so I listened, I did, at each and every door, but not a sound come forth.”

  Gikka frowned. “They slept, then.”

  Marigan raised his chin. “They did not! It wasn’t until I reached the cardinal’s own chambers, I heard their voices, but quiet like, that they’d not be heard without. At first, they spoke together, chanting as priests will, but in no language I ever heard.”

  “Hadric?”

  The man laughed bitterly. “I’d know Hadric grunting an I heard it, missus, nay, that, it weren’t. Set the very chill along my spine, like no chant I heard before, and I made out of it just two names: B’radik and Damerien. Now, I’d have you understand, I know not whether they spoke for a blessing or a curse.”

  Gikka watched him, watched the sweat bead upon his brow. The man was truly frightened. “Go on,” she said softly.

  “You’ll not believe it, missus.”

  “Go on.”

  He nodded and licked his lips once more. “As I stood at the door, I set mine ear and then mine eye against the keyhole, back and forth, listening to mumbling and planning within, not hearing but a word here, a word there, seeing only the backcloth of their cassocks and such and thinking to myself I’d not a jot worth the sheriff’s ear.”

  “Nor mine,” she observed impatiently.

  “Aye, mistress, but attend, I come to it.” He glanced at the boy, who had just now closed the bag of tarts and stood to stretch his legs. “Listening, looking, as I say, but I seen naught. Presently, I hear the door come open, and away I crept, not back to the stairs, as was my mistake, but deeper toward the heart of the keep, and to mine ear, them just behind. It was all I could do not to be seen.”

  “They see you, then?”

  He smiled proudly. “Nay, not I, not Marigan, to be seen by Hadrians. Holed up, I did, in a doorway, there to watch them pass. But then they stopped outside what looke
d to me a marked off wing—”

  Gikka drew breath suddenly. “From the guest wing, did you say, and away from the stairs?” At his nod, she bit her lip. “The nursery.” She turned to him sharply. “Tell me, and no matter how it sounds to you, but did you hear anything from within the nursery just then?”

  “Before they went inside, nay, not the least. But then in they marched, free as you please, and out of mine eye. Now there I was in a ‘nundrum, do I stay and miss all, or do I move ahead as might get me seen?” He grinned again. “Ahead, aye, and right into the door of the...nursery, as you say; the damned Hadrians has not an ear between them, nor eye for aught but the door, so there I seen clear and free what they was about.”

  “And?”

  The messenger’s grin faded. “They was fast about getting into the one chamber, like it were of all importance to them, and ignoring the other like it weren’t there.” He shook his head in confusion. “The cardinal worked his charms and whatnot over the door, but for all that, it stood locked to his touch. Tasked, they was, to a one, and I’d in mind they’d be wanting to go back and think some more at it.” He rubbed his forehead nervously. “But now here is the part what makes no sense at all. As I say, I’d moved within the very nursery itself, there to crouch before the shut door as stood at their backs, but as I sat, I seen a bright whiteness come up from behind me.”

  Gikka nodded. “Setting in the nursemaid’s door, were you?”

  Marigan shrugged. “I suppose so, aye. But soon enough, says I to myself, even a Hadrian’d notice the light, and then is when I made my run back for the stairway.”

  Gikka flexed the muscles of her hands absently. “Sure I wonder what Nara was about.” The young woman turned away from him to hide her expression. “A memory messenger, you are, sure you recall a word or two. Of their chanting?”