Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) (25 page)

“Yes,” Dith answered calmly, watching relief flood over the
body of guards.  “Now answer
my
question.”

The guard who had accosted him at the gate spoke up.  “The
ones who came through before?  Those mages I told you of, as nearly destroyed
Pyran as they left?  They return, over the hills to the west.  Our men in the
towers spotted them coming this way, not three miles out.  Not as many as came
through before.  It seems they took casualties along the way.  But yet they come.”

“Indeed they did take casualties.  Not I, to go down
without a fight.  How fast are they coming?  Do they port from mark to mark, or
do they walk?”

“Do you get any sense of urgency from them?”

The guards shook their heads.  “They seem intent, but not hurried. 
They walk briskly but yet they walk.”

“As they were when they approached my keep.  It could be
they know we’re here, and they know we have no means of escape. Do you feel
them on the strands?”

Dith did not.  But all that meant was that they were not
using any magic at the moment.  He frowned.  “Perhaps they do not want
trouble.” 

“Only if they are oblivious.  Your presence alone should
give them pause, but combined with mine? Then again, you’ve not used any of
your power.  I suppose it is possible that they do not know we are here. 
Regardless, when they find us, they will do all they can to destroy us.”

“It could be that they have accomplished their mission and
simply return home the way they came,” he continued, “without a care to create
more strife.”

The guard captain’s eyes widened.  “You say this as if it
should give us comfort.” He gestured toward the closed shops and the burned out
homes around him.  “They passed through Pyran in haste on their way to whatever
their mission actually was and nearly destroyed us in the process!”  Suddenly
aware of the looks he was getting from passers-by, he dropped his voice. 
“Please.  We cannot survive another such onslaught!”

“Neither can we.  They were able to defeat my defenses
and myself, on my own ground. Granted, they caught me by surprise, but even
so.  You and I alone, with no fortifications and no help, cannot hope to hold
them off, and it might be worse for these people if we try. We must find a way
to escape.  The captain’s ship, perhaps…”

An arrow hit the ground in front of the guard captain’s
feet.

“They are no more than two miles out now,” he said, terror
creeping into his voice.  “Can you help us?  Will you help us?”

Dith considered.  West would take them right into the mage
army’s hands. A confrontation there would slow their entry into the city, but
not for long.  North or south would likewise only put off the inevitable if
they did know Dith was there.  And east lay the sea.  He could act preemptively,
but the moment he might do anything against them, he was sure they would bring
themselves right into the heart of the city to find him.

“Not necessarily.  Even if they are completely unaware of
us right now, as unlikely as that is, the moment we do anything, they should
become quite focused on our destruction, almost to the point of ignoring
Pyran.  Especially if we were not actually in the city…”

Us.  Dith frowned.  What did that “us” imply?  And what had
Galorin said only a moment ago?

“Your power alone would give them pause, but combined
with mine…”

“Can you help us?” the captain repeated.  “Will you help
us?”

“I think so, yes,” answered Dith, his mind spinning with the
implications of what Galorin had said, “but it involves you telling your men to
stand down.”

Barod blinked.  “I must not have heard you right.”

“Captain, you asked for my help, and I will give it, but you
must trust me and tell your men to stand down.  Do not engage, do not provoke
them.  Do not so much as draw their gaze as they pass.  Let them come straight
to me, past your city.  Only give me a signal when they enter the gate.”

Without waiting for a reply, Dith turned Glasada and rode
him toward the piers, toward where only a handful of ships were docked, their
skeleton crews readying them for voyage at the morning’s tide.  The sea bucked
against the docks irritably, smashing small waves against them with surprising
violence.

The horse slowed at the edge of the pier and took in Dith’s
vision of the water.  This was a sight he’d never seen, and gratitude flowed
from him into the mage.  But Dith barely noticed. He was also looking out over
the water, uncertain of his path now.

“What are you waiting for?”

Dith frowned.  He had known what Galorin had thought they
should do since before their arrival in Pyran, but he had resisted.  Perhaps a
simple illusion would be better, extending the pier beyond where it actually
stood, so the mage army would port out too far and end up in the water instead…

“Are you daft?  Do you suppose them to be so many slow
witted children, that they should be so easily fooled into marching off into
the sea?”

A flush of embarrassment filled his cheek.  The idea was
ridiculous, of course.  But the alternative….  Such an extravagant display went
against every instinct that had kept Dith alive during Kadak’s pogrom against
mages.  To say nothing of the destruction it would wreak up and down the
coast.  Was he supposed to sacrifice thousands to save a single city?

“No.  Not to save one city.  Far more is at stake than
just one city. Do you think I know nothing of evading hunters, of hiding my
power from those who would kill me?  Do you suppose I, Galorin, know nothing of
mages being massacred by the millions?  Boy, you are about to be beset with an
army of mages who will have no compunctions against using every shred of their
combined power to annihilate us both, even if it destroys this world.  Stop
sipping at your power and use it or all is lost!”

Dith shook his head, uncertain.  As overwhelming and
unpredictable as his power had become, he wondered if he could direct so much
of it so finely, especially under pressure.  Every time he’d tried to use his
power since Gikka gave him the strange stone, the outcome had been far beyond
what he’d intended, sometimes dangerously so, and he’d found more and more
reasons not to use it.

“Oh for pity’s sake.  We do not have time for your
tiresome self-doubt now.  You have the power to do this.  And it is the only
way.  Why do you hesitate?  It is the most elegant solution.”

“I am afraid!” Dith shouted, the agony of the admission
washing over him.  “I am afraid of this power!”

“Fine.  Be afraid.  That’s right and proper, given the
amount of power you hold now.  But do not let your fear paralyze you into doing
nothing when the ability to save these people and this land lies in your
hands.  Do as I once did.  Do what you must.  Save them, and worry about the
consequences later.”

Dith looked down and saw his hands shaking.  Galorin was
right, of course.  There was no other way.  Millennia ago, Galorin might have
been able to guide him to port to Byrandia safely, but not now.  So much could
have changed.  No, if they would achieve Byrandia, this was the only way.

He looked out over the ships at dock, his gaze lighting on
one in particular, the
Jenna Calera
.  He saw strands surrounding it,
strands that a year ago he might not have seen, strands he would not have been
able to touch.  Now they seemed so obvious, so simple.  He raised a gloved
hand.

“Bah.  Since when are you so soft?  First the horse, now
this.  Very well, but if you do this little act of charity for your new friend,
know that they will be upon you at once.  If you must risk martyrdom, at least
prepare yourself first.”

He nodded imperceptibly.

The ship at dock vanished, followed a few seconds later by a
pop.  Dith cried out in pain.  The fingers of his glove smoldered where they
had trapped some of his power.  He ripped the glove off and threw it to the
ground.

Suddenly, he felt dizzy, and Glasada reared.

“Do you feel that?  They’re trying to find you.  You
startled them, and they are disorganized.  They were not expecting such a surge
on the strands.  Good.  But it won’t take them long to discover where we are,
not if they can restore any discipline.”

Now he could feel the mages pulling at the strands, trying
to find the source of the power that had just blasted outward across the sea. 
Another few seconds, and they’d port in upon him.

He stripped off his other glove.  Then he started to
unfasten his clothing, but already the air was shimmering around them.  The
mages had found them.

“No time!”

Behind him, around him, even down the beach in front of him
near the waterline, several hundred pops filled the air as the army of mages
came into existence around him.  Fire surged around him, but it did not touch,
surrounded and protected as he was by his own power.  Yet even as the fire
reached for him, his latent defenses hurled those who had attacked him against
the sea wall, crushing them right through their own defenses.

Glasada bucked his head and screamed with terror, kicking
furiously at the writhing crackle of magic power around him.

But instead of throwing a shield around himself as the mages
anticipated, Dith turned Glasada away and reached out to grasp the great cords
of power that led downward into the sea.  Ancient, ropy vines of bound strands
that lay just where Galorin had dropped them, unseen and untouched for nearly
four thousand years, cords these mages could not see, much less touch without
destroying themselves, but could only feel at the periphery of their
perception.

Dith closed his eyes and released the tremendous seductive
rush of his power, freed it to flow through his body, barely aware of the
fragile resistance of his clothing giving way beneath his power.  A tiny corner
of his mind continued to watch the mages around him on the strands.  He felt
their power massing around him, then felt it fall away in panic as they watched
the strands writhe under the massive surge of energy he’d put through them.  He
felt the collapse of the mages’ power as they saw what he held and what it
meant.  Most ported away in terror, but as the last few left, he could feel
order returning to their ranks.  They had not given up.  They were merely
protecting themselves for now, regrouping somewhere else, and they would come
after him again.

He drew the strands upward, bringing with them a gigantic
mass of land that spanned the reach between Syon and Byrandia, a great bridge
hundreds of miles across, covered with remnants of sea plants, those that
didn’t get swept off with the sea water, as well as coral reefs hundreds of
feet high and a few sea animals that clung to the ground stubbornly, refusing
to be swept away.  The ground rumbled menacingly beneath his feet, but his own
protections stabilized it and kept the tremendous violence from destroying him
or the city behind him.

The sea churned angrily, at first filling in the vacuum
created where the landbridge had rested on the sea floor, sucking water in violently
and dropping the sea level around it.  Rumbling beneath the landbridge as it rose,
bursts of fiery rock, the world’s own heartsblood, surged and hissed angrily
where it met sea water, filling the void.

Dith sweated with the exertion of lifting the land, not
because of its weight but because he battled against the ancient certainties of
its place at the bottom of the sea.  Slowly, painfully slowly, the tortured
land twisted and writhed its way upward, supported by the new rock beneath it.  Vast
spills of water poured off the surface as it rose, which, combined with the
tremendous energy of the landbridge’s rise, sent a pair of great waves racing
away from the newly raised landbridge, a strong one that moved southward,
gaining in size and power as it went, and a weaker one that surged to the
north. 

The docks were mostly crushed as it rose.  They were within
Dith’s protections, but the ends that were moored in the water rose with the
landbridge and broke to bits under the stress.  The ships that were tied down
stood grounded and smashed on the landbridge.  Those that were not were swept
off the sides. This narrowest part of the landbridge, no more than perhaps a
mile across where it met Pyran’s shore.

“They will return in a moment hoping to catch you while
you’re weakened.  Do not wait for the ground to settle!  Ride, ride, ride!”

Glasada did not hesitate but ran across the newly raised
land, racing over the ancient stone roadway that emerged beneath his hooves.

Pyran
Ten and Seventh Day of the Feast of Bilkar

“Now, I’m not saying the boy’s involved, mark you,” the
ship’s captain said, stalking angrily along what was left of the quay where his
ship had been tethered, “but I find it interesting that I go near the whole of
my life without hearing a single word about Byrandia, then along he comes, this
velveted lordling with the bright blue eyes, insisting that he must get there
at once…and then this happens.”  He glanced at the small band of horsemen
beside him and gestured out over the ruined docks and shattered remains of the
fleet scattered over the newly raised ground.  “This bloody happens.  Passes
twice a tenday since, and I’m still in Pyran wondering what I’m to do now.”

Trocu nodded sympathetically beneath his cowl.  Only Lord
Daerwin and Nestor were at his side.  Not far from him, Jath was calming their
horses, a few of whom were still skittish in spite of their training because of
the residual energy that lingered from the use of such power. Farther off,
Gikka crouched down where the landbridge had knit with the old Pyran beach,
examining the tale of battle and its aftermath tamped into the drying silt. 

The duke turned and made his way up the former beach toward
Gikka with the captain and the others following.  “I am relieved, at least,
that Pyran was spared.”