Read Online Guardian Last (Lords of Syon Saga Book 2) by Jordan MacLean - Free Book Online

in exile since the end of the Gods’ Rebellion, somehow, somewhere,
gathering tiny sips of power where He could until He could bind B’radik,
Vilkadnazor and, she feared, many of the other gods besides.  His few priests
had been strong enough to conceal their natures from her and her father, even
under scrutiny, which was no mean feat, although in retrospect, she could not
recall having seen them do much else.  They certainly hadn’t saved the lives of
any of her knights in hospice, she recalled bitterly, not even as part of their
ruse.  So perhaps they were not as powerful as she’d thought. 
    In retrospect, of course, it was so obvious.  The battle in
the glade was no more than a diversion––a diversion which had brought five gods
to bear and destroyed the last of the fighting force which had vanquished the
demon Kadak but two years before.  Still…  She swallowed hard.  It was only a
diversion, just like the plague which had left the land bare of hands to farm
it and knights to defend it. 
    It had been too easy.
    The sickness is only a very small part of what you fight;
it’s meant to keep you from the real battle.
    Strategically, she had no choice but to consider Xorden’s
departure a retreat and nothing more, which meant two things.  The first was
that the danger to herself, her father, and what few of their allies remained
grew by the hour, and those allies were now scattered to the winds.  They were
at war again, as surely as they had been when they fought Kadak, and now their
enemy knew the measure of their weakness.  He would wait only as long to bring
the battle to them as it would take to regain His strength and find them. 
Better He should confront them all together than pick them off one by one. 
Second, she was mindful that many of the other gods were likely still weakened
or bound.  How many or which ones, she had no way of knowing, and the thought
sickened her.  She could not count on their help.
    B’radik was free, but without Her priests, She would be of
little use.  Renda had to hope that Bilkar, the god to whom this abbey was
consecrated, was free as well.  If somehow the incorruptible Bilkarian monks
had been corrupted after all and the fearsome Bremondine god of winter was
bound, Renda may well have marched her father and herself, two of B’radik’s
only remaining protectors, right into their enemy’s hands. 
    The only question was whether she would know before it was
too late.  She hoped so.  She could not afford to be wrong.
    Precision, efficiency, simplicity…  Even without His being
bound, the hallmarks of this particular god could work for or against the
knights.  The intolerance for weakness and waste was clear enough, given their
god’s harsh demeanor and demand for self-discipline and strength above all, but
one could never know what they would perceive thus.  Bilkarian priests might
stop to pet a three legged dog but just as calmly snap the neck of a slow
witted child.  Misunderstandings had led to deaths in the past, leading the
Bilkarians to restrict themselves to their abbey for most of the year, which of
course only served to feed the mystery surrounding their order.
    Gikka had shared many stories from her youth of all the time
spent living in the temples of various gods, and while she still held a certain
fondness for the followers of Bilkar, even she stepped carefully around them.
    In the patchy snow surrounding the abbey, Renda had seen a
few places where the monks had taken what must have been a small deer, where
even the bloodstained snow beneath the fallen animal had been scraped up and
carried inside, not a bit to be wasted.  Other than the tracks of animals in
the snow, she saw nothing, certainly nothing that led her to think anything was
amiss. No stray light, no curls of smoke or sloppily placed footprints betrayed
any obvious corruption.
    Then again, Cilder had been B’radik’s bishop long before he
was corrupted by Xorden, and all the