Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) by Jordan MacLean Page B

masters?  What manner of
masters might those be, and what were they seeking?
    “Well, I should think it obvious that they were looking for
me.  Not just me, methinks.  Then again, I can’t be certain they knew…”
    Knew?  Knew what?
    “Oh, stop your prying. You will know what I know when you
need to know and not a moment before.  I’ll not have you distracted, not now. 
Pyran is our first goal and Byrandia beyond that.  Trust that Syon will take
care of itself.  All else, yes, even your lovely dancing Bremondine, is a
distraction.”
    Dith frowned slightly.  That the vision mark left an
impression of Galorin in his mind was strange and invasive enough, but for that
impression to invade his private thoughts, especially his thoughts of Gikka,
was a problem.
    “I could tell you to stop thinking about her, but I
learned long ago never to tell someone not to think of a sewer rat unless you
want him to think of exactly that.  So if I told you to stop thinking about her
lovely body…  Hah!  I touched a nerve.  Fear me not, boy.  Your private
thoughts are your own, and I will keep myself out of them even if you do not. 
We must work together, and I will do nothing to jeopardize that.”

Three
    The Abbey of Bilkar the Furred, Syon
Marketday’s Eve
    The smooth polished doors swept closed without a sound
behind the two cerulean blue mantled knights, pushed precisely into place by
several barefoot postulants.  In the stillness that settled over the vestibule
of the abbey, Lady Renda, Knight of Brannagh, found herself questioning yet
again the wisdom of her decision to come to the abbey.
    Cardinal Valmerous, late of the temple of Vilkadnazor the
Unshod, was well and truly dead.  He, his cadre of priests…all dead.  Of this
she had no doubt.  She’d stayed in the place she had come to think of as
Pegrine’s Glade, spending a few minutes she was not sure were hers to spend to
see his body reduced completely to ash and to kick those ashes into the wind
and scatter them for eternity.  She’d buried his fire-hardened white teeth
separately in the forest surrounding the glade––a superstitious rite, to be
sure, but she was taking no chances.  At last she’d been satisfied.  The evil
Hadrian cleric was obliterated and could never return.  At the same time, she
had no reason to believe that his mysterious god could be defeated so easily.
    Easily, indeed.  She recoiled at the word, and the measure
of her loss threatened to overwhelm her. 
    I only wish…it could be over for you, too.
    Her heart ached for her niece, Pegrine, a loss as fresh as
it had been just a season ago.  She’d watched helplessly as her family castle
was blasted to pieces before an army of knights and mages allied with Maddock
and his angry mob, and she’d had to ride away. Her mother, Nara, everyone who
had been counting on them to defeat the cardinal and return to lift the siege… 
They were all gone.  There was nothing easy about it.
    No.  The seasoned strategist in her heart clung cruelly to
the word, clung to the truth of it, used it to drive off her naked grief with
rage and focus her mind.  Objectively, their victory had been too easy.  Bishop
Cilder had bungled the sacrifice meant to free Xorden and had created Pegrine
undead, but in the process, he’d rendered Xorden’s own altar her sacred place
of death.  Between that and Valmerous’s failure to destroy her in either her
place of life or her place of repose, Xorden must have known He could not
possibly have prevailed in the glade, not against the knights, and certainly
not against B’radik once she was freed.  Perhaps even Valmerous had known, but
judging by the look on his face when he saw Pegrine transformed and B’radik
freed, she thought not.
    Still, while His cardinal may have been defeated by one
failed ritual in a glade, she doubted the god Himself would be, certainly not
with any permanence.  This Xorden, this strange Dhanani god, had waited
patiently