Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2)

by Jordan MacLean

  Who would have put the duke at risk that way?

  She looked around at the riders.

  Damerien, Nestor and Jath were out of the question. Of the sheriff and the rest of the knights, only Amara would have enough understanding of sedatives and their anos, but she was likewise too clever to have done something that pointed so directly to herself. Besides, questioning Amara’s loyalty or that of any of the knights, for that matter, would be like questioning the rising of the sun.

  If Laniel had used it himself, she supposed he could have set up this elaborate scheme to hide his involvement, but why? No one suspected him of anything. Such a deception would waste effort, something a Bilkarian would not do. That left Gikka and Chul….

  Chul.

  Renda’s heart sank. Aidan had warned them that the boy had a penchant for thievery, having been caught stealing…. Renda sighed. Stealing healing salves from Aidan’s tent. Gikka had taken him in and trained that tendency to its proper use, but perhaps…

  No.

  He’d stolen those salves from Aidan to treat the wounds he had received at his father’s hand, to keep anyone from knowing that he’d been beaten. He had no reason to steal the ano to a sedative and even less reason to free the prisoner. Of all of them, the Dhanani boy had the least likelihood of making contact, much less alliance, with anyone from Byrandia, the land of the Invaders, especially not after the stories he’d told of what he’d seen in the glade.

  That he could have been corrupted by mages from Byrandia was unthinkable. Her mind raced in unreasonable circles trying to imagine any possible way this army of mages might have turned his loyalties, but nothing made sense.

  Perhaps at Brannagh, when he first spied Maddock’s army? But he had come to warn them about the cardinal, and then he had ridden with them to the glade. There was no time to strike up a bargain like that, and at that point, they had no idea of any landbridge…. No, that was not when it could have happened.

  Here on the landbridge, then, while he was out scouting? Perhaps if they had captured him and held this order of “see to it that our spy can escape” out as his term of release, but the scenario seemed unlikely since Gikka said she had him in sight almost constantly. With the boy having been raised by that monster, for better or worse, she did not see Chul giving in to pain quickly enough that Gikka would not have missed him and gone looking for him. Regardless, such a plan of action still required a lot of knowledge of the situation on his part, knowledge she was fairly sure he did not have. Besides, once he was safely back to the camp, they would be able to protect him from retaliation, and she doubted his sense of honor was so coarse as to believe an oath made in order to escape the enemy was binding.

  Still, who else could it be? Everyone else was accounted for during the time between when the duke was with him and when Kerrick began his watch. Had one of the other mages somehow tracked him to their camp and… She rubbed her forehead in frustration, wishing she knew how such things worked.

  She would have to assume Chul was involved, somehow, and watch him closely, without Gikka’s knowledge. Gikka was loyal to Renda, but she would not believe her ward capable of treachery like this. It were better not to involve her until no other option remained.

  Something about the assumption that Chul took the vial bothered her, something more than simply not wanting to believe it, but she could not grasp quite what it was. It hovered just out of reach.

  “I did not mean to worry you, my Lady,” said Laniel, breaking her train of thought.

  She smiled reassuringly. “Laniel, it is right that I should know. If there is a viper in our midst, we should be warned against it, yes?”

  Just ahead, Gikka and Chul came charging back into the knights’ midst at full gallop, riding so hard that the knights had to give way to let them approach the sheriff and the duke.

  “My Lords,” she said as she reined Zinion in, “we approach the end of the Lacework, but at its end, some six and ninety mages have lined up with their defenses. They’re all to a spot, divided by squad, but they’ve laid down heavy protections to mind the rest. Zinion fair scorched a hoof, setting one off, and we drew their notice, begging your pardon, so I’ve in mind that there’s a fight ahead to get us off this crumbly bit of rock.”

  “Six and ninety.” The duke sighed. “I suppose we knew we would face this at one end or the other.”

  Daerwin nodded. “I praise B’radik we did not face this at both ends.”

  “Indeed, though if we had, we might have gained a better sense of how to defeat them. My thought is that these are now the combined forces from the entire Lacework. They funneled us through.” Trocu looked over the men and women who were coming nearer to try to overhear the report and raised his voice so they could hear. “At least we have the advantage of cover while we hold the Lacework, but with a scant five score of them and mages all, and not quite a score of us, it is likely to be a near thing. Now to the planning.”

  During the night, Dith had moved himself and Glasada to the back of the hill overlooking the mage encampment, uncertain how exactly he would be able to ride with Colaris as fragile as he was. He’d made camp and spent the night with the bird held close to him for warmth, sleeping only an inch deep lest he roll over and crush him. Periodically, he woke to give the bird sips of water and offer him dried fish, but the harrier only drank. Even so, he was half certain he would wake beside a dead bird come morning.

  To his happy surprise, he woke to see Colaris standing unsteadily beside his head looking at him with his wings hanging low at his sides. The miserable bird looked a fright, with his charred wing feathers and the stripe of bare glistening smooth back where Dith was afraid the feathers would never grow back, but his eyes were clear and bright. The Bremondine silk had indeed done its work, and the damaged skin was healing already. Dith hoped that meant the pain was easing, as well. Apart from the silk and keeping the bird warm and fed and watered, for all his power, all he could do was watch and hope the sheriff’s harrier would survive.

  He despised feeling helpless. He did not have this much power in the world to go about helpless.

  Beside him, the little curl of a message lay on the ground. Gikka’s message, after all these months apart, had been necessarily short: Stay. We follow. Love. Reply. G

  The message filled him with worry because it meant that she––

  Wait, she had said “we”––we, meaning she, Renda, the sheriff…? Who else might be with them? Surely not all the Brannagh knights, though such an army arrayed against them would certainly give the mages below pause and might mean a clear victory.

  It more likely meant that she and whoever rode with her were in grave danger, both from the army of mages below and from the Wittisters who came the same way they did, either ahead of them or behind. And now, with Colaris injured, he had no way to reply, no way to warn them.

  “I see two possibilities. Either the Wittisters are ahead of them and will be caught between your lady and her companions and the mage army below or they are behind, in which case with any luck in the timing, she will be caught in a crossfire between the mage army and the Wittisters. Either scenario is good for them.”

  Good?

  “Aye, good, since the Wittisters will likely focus their attention on the mage army, and the mage army will certainly focus their attention on the Wittisters. Your allies, if they have any sense, should be able to slip through almost unscathed in that case.”

  Unless the Wittisters catch up to them before they engage the mages.

  “Exactly. Knights are powerful. Let us hope they are no more than knights, and they might escape the Wittisters’ notice.”

  Dith cradled the bird carefully and poured a bit of water into the palm of his hand to let him drink, then offered him a bit of fish. To his delight, the bird ate with gusto, reaching for more faster than Dith could get it out of the ugly orange rucksack where he’d stored it next to the strange ugly rock.

  “Easy, little one,” he soothed. “You can
have more later, but you don’t want to be ill. I don’t think your body has the strength for it.”

  Colaris lifted his wings slightly to show that he was ever so much better, enough so that he might enjoy one more bite, but he lowered them again quickly, no doubt from the pain. Good, thought Dith, watching the muscle bunch beneath the dangerously thin and damaged skin. At least he had not lost the control or the motion of his wings. The damage to the wing feathers and skin would take time to heal, and his back might be scarred but Dith was fairly certain Colaris’s muscles were fine. He would not be crippled. He stroked the bird’s head, again taken with the sounds of thunder rising from the valley beyond the hill.

  He squinted up at the early morning sky where he could still count a few stars and frowned. No clouds in sight in the crisp morning air, but he was quite certain he had heard thunder.

  He rose, settled the bird on the bedroll tied to Glasada’s saddle where he could sink his talons in for a solid footing, and crept up the hillock through the grass to where he could crouch and see the army below. Then he understood what he was hearing. In the distance on the Lacework, he saw one of the great coral reefs on the southern horizon teeter and crumble slowly but inexorably under its own weight, slipping backward off the edge of the landbridge to the sea. A few seconds later, the rumble reached his ears.

  He looked with horror at the Lacework, seeing as he did so, that indeed the same was happening there. And somehow, he knew, Gikka would have to cross through that. How much of his power would it take to shore up every reef along the entire length of the landbridge?

  “Too much, even for you, given the enemies you face.”

  He saw a flash through the corner of his eye and turned just in time to see a dark shape disappear into the reefs on the Lacework. Suddenly, the mage army came alive, with about one third stepping forward of the line they’d set, breaking into smaller groups, and moving with immunity across the defenses they’d set down, a glow of power about them radiating across the strands toward him. They’d intensified their protections, and they were moving closer in, taking cover behind the nearer rises and bits of reef near the edge. The others arranged themselves in clusters, somewhat apart so a single attack would not destroy them all but near enough to increase the entire group’s power.

  They did not get near the place where the flash had happened, instead massing near another opening in the coral. Of course. Whoever had set off that defense would not go that way again. They would likely seek another way. His assumption, given their movements and confidence in the way they massed there, indicated that this was the most likely way they would come.

  This was what would be so devastating about them, should he ever face them head on. While the near ones came in close and used smaller magic faster, possibly killing some of their enemy outright with their protections when the enemy attacked and immobilizing the enemy with these tiny stabs of attacks, the further ones would blast entire groups with fire or lightning, or pull at the strands beneath several of those unsteady towers of coral to bring them crashing down. After all, the mages had no need to cross this way again.

  “They have forgotten about you. Or they believe you have ridden on to Byrandia.”

  And well I should have by now, he growled to himself. But circumstance, it seemed, had conspired to keep him here. It had thrown everything at him, even an army of mages, now Colaris and Gikka.

  “But that you are a mage, I should think you an Anatayan. Do not blame circumstance or fate or even the gods for the choices you make. You are above that.”

  “Why, because I have magic?” he growled aloud. “Because I have you in my head and an ugly rock compelling me to go to Byrandia for no reason of my own? Tell me, how should I not blame circumstance?”

  “You are human. The choice to stay or not to stay is still yours. It is always yours.”

  “How can I leave? Gikka is somewhere on this monstrosity of my creation looking for me, caught between two groups of hostile mages, and without me––“

  “Without you!”

  “Yes, without me, the only way she might survive it is that the mages are more hostile toward each other than anyone else. And Colaris…he is injured and cannot fly, much less ride.”

  “He is a bird.”

  “He is a war hero! That bird has saved as many lives as you have, and he nearly died to get this message to me!”

  “But can you not see that you still have choices? You could ride away at once and abandon both the bird and Gikka.”

  “I could no more abandon them than I could––”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you could, and you’ve done worse things in your time! You and I both know it. But in this case, you choose not to. You are making the choice yourself. Perhaps it makes you a better person that you so choose, perhaps it makes you a fool, but never believe for a moment that you remain here by anything but your own choice.”

  His own choice. He turned that idea over in his mind.

  Suddenly the valley beneath him erupted in chaos.

  Twenty

  Magical shields and protections fizzled and sparked, and the first arrows fell harmless at the mages’ feet, some still burning or blasted to pieces from having touched their protections, but most merely broke as if they’d hit stone. The Byrandians looked at each other in confusion, uncertain what they should do. This was not what they had been expecting, not at all. But once the first of the arrows broke through their magical protections and tasted blood, once the first of the mages fell, their paralysis broke, and the battle was joined in earnest. They took physical cover and began their siege.

  Almost at once, a bewildering dance of the most powerful explosions and corrosive energies the knights had ever seen lit the coral around them where they crouched behind cover, compromising the integrity of the spires and crumbling some of them.

  The enemy army had not caught sight of the knights as they moved into position since, thanks to Gikka and Nestor, Brannagh’s men had avoided setting off the hidden beacons and other magical protections that rimmed the coral lip of the Lacework, but the mages had scouted the edge of the Lacework well and had positioned themselves to guard the only likely exits from the coral labyrinth, so even their vaguely directed attacks were dangerous.

  The only advantage the knights had at all was that the sun would set behind them, rendering the enemy all but blind for a very brief time––a fleeting advantage to be sure, and one that, while it might matter against any other army, would avail them little here. Still, it was an advantage and one they might be able to press should they survive that long.

  The enemy had organized themselves into loose clusters spread across the nearly open plain that broke away from the Lacework in a strategy Renda found interesting, if a bit blind. At first, they seemed to have paid almost no mind at all to physical cover, minding only their spacing and their line of sight to the labyrinth, the expected strategy of mages who think to fight mages. They stayed close enough to each other to augment their power but still separate enough to avoid all being killed by a single blow, most likely a magical one. Had the enemy thought they would only be fighting Dith? She could hardly believe they were that lucky, but on the off chance they were, she wondered how she could press that advantage. At the very least, the Byrandians would be disorganized for a time while they reevaluated their enemy.

  The more distant of the mages predictably fired tightly focused, intense bursts of energy meant to bring the fragile reefs down upon their heads or heat the stone beneath their feet to move them from cover. The nearer groups watched for the knights themselves, attacking only when they caught a glimpse of them rising from cover to fire arrows. The Byrandians did not take long to discover they could move the knights about like pieces on a game board by placing their magic carefully.

  “No!” the sheriff called to his knights as they ran just ahead of a barrage. “Do not let them herd you like cattle! They move you south, but move southeastward instead and spread yourselves back
to the north behind cover as you can. We must not be squeezed into a small area or all is lost!”

  Beneath them, they could hear the ocean roiling and crashing menacingly against the coral and stone underpinnings of the Lacework, but so far, that was all it had done. Perhaps, Renda hoped, it had not yet occurred to the mages that they could use the sea to wash the knights away at a sweep. With how many of them there were and with what Nestor had said of their strength being amplified by numbers, such a thing would be devastating. With any luck, they would not have time to think of it.

  Behind them as they fought, a brace of enemy mages shimmered into ghostlike existence behind the knights, one here, one there. They took two of the knights by surprise, killing one knight outright and severely wounding another. They were fast and not terribly powerful nuisance attacks, but they had caught the two knights unawares and had blasted through them, vanishing before they could react.

  Dame Mida was dead as she fell, with half her head and helmet gone. As was their way in battle, they let her lie as she fell, to be looked after once the day was won or lost. Not far away, Laniel set about stripping away Sir Benn’s armor to try to stop the bleeding, but the look on the priest’s face was quite grave. The man was losing too much blood. He would not survive.

  Coldly in the chaos, as she had a hundred times before in battle, Amara took up the dead knights’ weapons to carry them forward to the line. Someone else would make more use of the bow and makeshift bundle of arrows now than the dead. A quick look of appraisal at Benn, and she took his up as well.

  “So free they are with their porting,” Nestor pointed out, “and not the slightest misstep. They know right where we are, down to where we stand and where we do not.” He looked about him in the rocks above, wondering if they’d left one there to scout for them, but he saw no one.