Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Read online

  Gikka drew breath to answer, but then she turned away, her whole body taut against the silence. A second later, she was on her feet, signaling caution, and Renda understood why: behind her, the library door was creeping open. Doors either opened or they did not in honest company.

  Renda’s hand reached reflexively for her sword and found nothing there. Helpless, she watched as Gikka moved soundlessly toward the door. Through the gap, Renda saw a gnarled white hand curl into a painful fist to knock.

  “My lady Renda,” called a chilling voice as the door opened further, “Are you within?”

  “Yes, Nara,” said the knight, rubbing fatigue and perhaps a certain disappointment from her eyes. She motioned Gikka back to sit beside her at the table. “You may enter.”

  An ancient B’radikite nun pushed open the door to the chamber. Her starched habit glowed an eerie white in the late afternoon shadows, the white of the goddess of truth. A thin white veil of her hair grew from a narrow band across the crown of her head and billowed out behind her as she moved, the only hair not ceremonially removed as the signature tonsure of her order. The woman’s skin looked as it had since Renda’s earliest memories, thin and dry like the parchments on the table, stretched tight across the sharp bones of her face and distorted joints of her hands.

  How terrifying this nun had been to her, this harmless old governess of the House of Brannagh. Renda and her brother had spent night after night cowering under the furs of their nursery beds when Nara would come glowing at the door and leave them with terrors.

  Unlike Renda, Roquandor had learned to put down that fear with insolence, even open hostility, and not a day had passed that he and Nara did not have words. But a wonderful teacher Nara had been for them both, and years later, when Roquandor’s bride, Merina, had died in childbed, the young knight, in his grief, had taken his newborn daughter and placed her into the arms of his old nursemaid. Nothing more had remained to be said. The pain between them had fallen away, forgotten.

  In the four years since Roquandor’s death, Nara had taken her charge very seriously, raising his daughter with a firm hand and, no doubt, giving the little girl terrors by night. Pegrine, meanwhile, had grown into a feisty seven-year-old with her father’s love for mischief who held her governess in healthy disdain and hid from her at every opportunity.

  “Your pardon, my lady, Mistress Gikka,” the nun hissed, dipping her head in a quick bow. She was obviously distraught, and she wrung her arthritic hands miserably, peering from the doorway to the shelves and under the tables. “But have you seen Pegrine?”

  Renda stared at her a moment, then chuckled. “How now, Nara, has the child lost you again?” But her smile was sympathetic. This was not a rare occurrence at Brannagh. “You will not find her here. If she is not with the sheriff or my mother, look in the gallery above the great hall.”

  Nara was already shaking her head. “Nay, madam, I have already searched there, and neither did I find her with her grandparents.”

  Renda’s smile wavered. “Have you searched the wine cellars and the practice hall?”

  The old woman nodded.

  “The stable loft? The old garrison?” asked Gikka. Renda caught her worried glance. “The tunnel from out the old chapel?”

  “Leading to the crypt? The stone is yet sealed down.”

  “She might she have returned to the nursery,” offered Renda.

  “I have searched there thrice, madam. Likewise the kitchens, the armory, the smithy, the new chapel and the old.” She shuffled forward, fingering the stiff collar of her habit. “Some knights of yours I sent to search the castle and grounds,” wheezed Nara painfully, “even Master Roquandor’s hideaway in the oak beyond the old moat. When they failed, my last hope was that she might have found her way to you here.”

  “Last hope?” Renda glanced out the window. The sun was less than an hour from setting. She counseled herself to calm. “How long has she been missing, Nara?”

  “I cannot say how long, truly,” the nun answered, visibly upset. “She rose early from her nap and played for a time in the nursery whilst I attended other duties. When I looked in on her a while later, she was gone.”

  Renda rose and looked out into the corridor to find one of the maids. “Find His Lordship,” she told the girl, “and gather to the audience chamber everyone of able body, at once. The sheriff’s granddaughter has gone missing, and we lose our light.”

  Gikka breathed in sharply. “What game was it, Nara?”

  The nun looked up, not understanding. “Game, Mistress Gikka?”

  “She played in the nursery, you say.” Gikka peered into her eyes. “What game was she at that might lead her out? A game of pretend?”

  They could see the effort in Nara’s face as she tried to remember. “No, no, I think not. I recall that she was chasing her ball about within the chamber. But the ball remains; she did not take it.” Nara sniffed. “This hiding of hers, Mistress, ‘tis but sport; Roquandor, Renda, even my lord Sheriff himself as a boy at Damerien—all the children hid from Nara, as does Pegrine now.” She crossed her arms defensively. “But I see it as a phase, aye, and of no harm. The children were never in danger, even out of my sight, and if ever I had trouble finding them, I would call upon B’radik to show me where they hid.”

  Renda looked back from the doorway. “And now?”

  “I have tried, madam!” Nara cried, suddenly losing her composure. “But I call upon B’radik, and I see only darkness. To my terror, I know not whether the darkness is my answer or whether my goddess abandons me!”

  Gikka touched the old woman’s shoulder. “Not to worry,” she breathed, glancing out the library window. “Peg’s about, somewhere.”

  But at Nara’s answer, Renda had swept from the library in a whirl of urgent commands, and presently Gikka followed her, leaving the old woman alone in her fears to weep.

  * * *

  By the time the last of the twilight faded to darkness, all those of the household, servants and resident knights, had returned to the castle at least once for a fresh lantern. Some had taken out braces of the sheriff’s hunting hounds, but none had found the slightest trace of the missing child. They searched on foot through the farm fields to avoid trampling the little girl or the season’s crops under hoof, and the hunt was slow and exhausting. The shouts of “Pegrine” that sounded through the fields and the casting whines of the hounds circling for the trail grew ever more hoarse and hopeless.

  The nearest farmers had come out at sunset, alarmed to see noblemen and their servants walking through their fields on the eve of harvest. Some had joined the search, patrolling the roads and outlying fields and knocking at farmhouse doors to see if the child might have found her own way to shelter. But they found nothing, and within a few hours, they had gone home to their beds that they might arise early for the next morning’s harvest. Not long after that, the rest of the villagers had retired to their homes and taverns as well, leaving only those of Castle Brannagh afield.

  The men and women who combed the lands did not meet each other’s eye as they passed, and many returned to the castle for oil well after their lanterns had burned down, not wanting to report to the sheriff that they had still found nothing. With every sickening moment that passed while they searched, they grew more certain that the child was not to be found, at least not here. But still they continued. If they failed to find her by sunrise, they would not find her at all. The night animals rarely left a scrap.

  Having finished searching the castle itself once more, Renda and Gikka had taken two other knights, horses and a pack of hounds to the north to search the hilly meadowlands just above the cliff wall that edged the Bremondine forests.

  Beyond the scatter of wildflowers that filled the low strip of meadowland beyond the moat, the land leading to the cliff wall was overgrown with thorny brambles, uninviting and certainly too rugged for the child to have gone that way alone. But since no one farmed it, they could search it quickly on horseback. Then, having c
aught the cliff to the north, they would continue their sweep west from there through the Fraugham foothills as far as the city of Farras, if need be.

  After hearing yet another negative report, the sheriff rubbed his eyes, weary from the pain and hope that battled in his heart. Pain at every moment that passed that might be the last in which they might have found her alive, hope that the delay meant she was still moving ahead of them, still breathing, still alive.

  Behind him, his wife, Lady Glynnis, touched his shoulder for only a moment before she turned back to help the kitchen maids tap a new barrel of rendered oil to refill the empty lanterns. He marveled at the returning strength and calm in his wife. She had spent most of her adult life tending the affairs of Brannagh in her husband’s absence, withstanding one long siege and several small skirmishes with only a handful of knights and servants. Even her son’s death had not destroyed her. She had kept herself going by rising to her duties every morning and falling to bed in exhaustion each night. But at the war’s end, despite her joy at having her husband and daughter home again, that spirit and vigor had slowly left her until she spent her days roaming listlessly from one gallery to another. Only such a crisis as this could have brought her back, the sheriff . He only hoped she would be rewarded with Pegrine’s safe return.

  One of the grooms from the stable was waiting to make his report and refill his lantern. With a courageous smile, Lord Daerwin listened while the man mumbled through his apology, even while his heart broke with every sad report. He took the empty lantern, gave the groom a fresh one and a joint of cold chicken from the baskets the maids had brought from the kitchens and sent him on his way, as he had done so many times. Then he allowed his own gaze to travel west again, wishing he had gone with Renda.

  “Lord Daerwin!” One of Renda’s knights ran to him through the gathered servants and sank to one knee. Her hasty braid of thick dark blonde hair was coming loose about the neck of her jerkin, and her face was flushed. She had found something, but Pegrine was not with her.

  “Dame Jadin,” spoke the sheriff over his pounding heart. “Have you found her? Speak.”

  The young woman shook her head. “No, my lord. My apologies. But I have found the bodies of two men not three miles away, to the east.” At his bidding, she stood and pointed toward a slight rise near the river. “Slain, my lord Sheriff. Stabbed to the heart, to my reckoning some two days past. It was a mighty battle.”

  “Men of station? Farmers?” He frowned. “Who might they be?” And what connection might these dead men have with Pegrine, he wondered. No, he cautioned himself. It might not have anything to do with Pegrine at all. Assuming the two were related might make him miss something crucial. Still, he could not help but think this was no good omen. “Well?”

  “I could not tell, sire; they were stripped of all clothing and possession.”

  “By the gods...” He did not want to take anyone away from the search, but neither could he leave the bodies to rot, especially so near the river. He raised his hand to gather some of the nearby servants to see to them.

  Suddenly, he stopped. He stood, motioning everyone standing nearby to silence, and he listened again. The low tone sounded again, followed by a higher note and a slight drop in the pitch as it faded, and it made the skin of his scalp crawl though it brought a cheer from the fields.

  It was the sound of a hunting horn, and it came from the west.

  Two

  To Renda’s relief, the horn’s last notes were Gikka’s signature. The call was genuine, and at that sound, a thousand worries were allayed at once. Pegrine, praise to B’radik, Gikka had found her!

  The sound had risen from a low thicket at the base of the second ridge, no more than a few hundred yards south, and the knight’s heart pounded, anxious to get to the child at once. But before she rode down, she looked back toward the castle. From her vantage point at the top of a rocky hill she could see tiny specks of lantern light flowing evenly toward the castle. Moving over the hillside below her, the lanterns of the two knights she had led this way milled about but moved mostly eastward, no doubt gathering and leashing the hounds on the way back to the castle and to bed. She fancied she could see relief in the way the two lanterns swung back and forth and she smiled.

  At Renda’s nudge, her horse stepped surefootedly down the incline and over a narrow fall of rock, then sped at full gallop along the broad ledge leading downward toward the thicket. She pushed the questions from her mind, not allowing herself to wonder how a seven-years child could have crossed the same craggy hills alone and on foot that had taken her hours on horseback. Then again, perhaps Pegrine had not stopped to search every grove and thicket as she passed. Besides, Gikka’s horn had to mean that any danger was past. Renda clung to that thought and drove out all others as she urged Alandro faster over the firm, flat ground.

  Before long, she caught sight of Gikka’s cloak over the bough of a scrubby tree. That cloak was a gift from Duke Trocu, heir to Duke Brada, woven half of parti-shaded Bremondine silk and half of something else, something arcane, so that when she wore it, she was smartly camouflaged against her surroundings, whatever they might be. But at a price. The cloak drew its power from her. Dormant and draped as it was over a dead tree limb, Renda saw it easily.

  The knight took up the cloak as she passed and tossed it across her saddle as she rode. She followed a trail of hoofprints as far as they led, but it was not until she had reined in Alandro and come down from the saddle that she made out Gikka’s horse, Zinion, standing silent and nearly invisible against the darkness and foliage, as still as if he were carved of wood. The hoofprints had stopped several yards short of where he stood, and had Renda not known he was there, she would not have seen him at all.

  “Under silence, are you?” she soothed quietly, leading her own horse to stand beside him, but Zinion was a well-trained Brannagh Horse-at-Arms. He would sooner die than break the command of silence, even enough to risk the eyeshine from a glance at Renda’s familiar face. The knight patted the horse’s flank affectionately as she passed, wondering why Gikka had hidden him. Silence demanded an extraordinary measure of discipline—he could not graze, snort, empty his bladder or bowel, nor shuffle his aching hooves in the dust—surely more than was called for now that they had found Pegrine. But then Gikka seldom did anything without reason.

  Renda commanded Alandro to silence as well and moved cautiously between the trees toward a larger clearing just ahead where a single lantern—Gikka’s lantern—sat strangely tilted on the ground, as if it had been dropped. The flame flickered bravely to the uphill side, but it foundered and gasped in the welling oil.

  Moving tree limbs aside, Renda drew a cheerful breath to call to Pegrine, but right away her smile faded. From the glade ahead, from just beyond the lantern, she felt cold, dark, a sense of disorder, something badly out of place. She had not felt that sort of unnatural chill on her spine since her battle against Kadak. No, it was impossible. Kadak was vanquished; she had killed the creature, watched terror fill those strange yellow eyes right as the life leaked out of them at last. Kadak was dead, there could be no doubt. Duke Brada himself had assured them of it before he died of his wounds. This could not be Kadak. This darkness was too deep, too cold, even for him. This was something else, something at once much more ancient and powerful than Kadak and yet somehow asleep, or...she could not be sure, and for the first time since the war’s end, she felt real fear. She sent up a silent prayer to B’radik and rested one hand lightly on the hilt of her sword as she moved, listening to the sounds of the forest as Gikka had taught her.

  “Peace, no,” spoke a weak voice from the woods beside her. The slender form stepped a bit unsteadily from the shadows, and Renda felt a strong hand with a single long nail take her elbow and draw her back.

  “Gikka,” she whispered, stumbling in her squire’s grasp. “What in the name of—”

  Gikka was not bleeding visibly, but her eyes were swollen and red, and Renda could feel her hand shaking.
Thoughts of poison, of a dagger stuck in Gikka’s back came into Renda’s mind.

  Renda reached out to grab an arm as the Bremondine woman sank to her knees. “Gikka? How now?”

  But Gikka shook her head stubbornly. “Let me tend to this.” Renda could smell the acid odor of vomit on her breath, and the knight’s brow furrowed in confusion and worry. Gikka clutched her arm and said, “Don’t see it, Renda.”

  “Speak sense. I heard your horn, Gikka. Where is Pegrine?” Renda pulled her elbow free and stood staring at the squire. Don’t see it, Renda. Don’t see what? She could not help the shout of panic that crept into her voice. “Where is she?”

  “Renda—”

  But the knight stepped closer to the glade. She would not be stopped. “Come, did you find her, or no?”

  At this, Gikka collapsed to her knees, defeated. She nodded weakly and gestured toward the clearing, unable to meet Renda’s gaze. “No sight is it for your eyes, please...”

  Renda’s pulse pounded in her temples, and she stifled the slow scream that rose in her throat.

  Don’t see it, Renda.

  The lantern Gikka had left in the clearing was nearly out, and Renda could see nothing in the dim circle of wavering light.

  No sight is it for your eyes.

  She stilled her dread and drew her sword. No moon shone tonight, leaving only thick darkness beyond the edge of her lantern light. Soft black soil clutched at her boot heels, and new young trees bent reluctantly against the flat of her sword, seemingly unwilling to let her pass.

  Don’t see it, Renda.

  She could see something ahead, something deathly still at the center of the clearing, at the center of the icy blackness. The shape was so odd, the outline so vague against the darkness of the forest that her eye could not bring it into focus. It was so still. So very still. It could not be Pegrine. Please, let it not be Pegrine. With more courage than she had ever called upon in her life, she stepped forward again and brought her own lantern up.