Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) by Jordan MacLean

spoke.  The knight whispered a prayer to B’radik under
her breath, and the squire cursed roundly under hers. 
    “Ha!” choked the bishop.  He looked into the air and smiled
like an obedient hound before its master.  “I knew You would not fail me!  I
have fulfilled Your command!”
    The voice growled, dark and terrifying, but not, as it
seemed, toward the two women.  When Renda ventured to look toward the bishop,
she saw dark swirls of fury circling the bishop wildly under the raging howl of
his god.
    “How dare you profane My altar with the blood of Mine
enemy!” the voice shrieked.
    The whirls of black circled the bishop’s body faster and
faster, and he was buffeted back and forth as he tried to rise. Cilder managed
to get himself to his knees before the blood began burbling over his lips.
    “No!” he wheezed, staring in horror first at the knight,
then at her squire. She saw the realization in his eyes.  “Enemy…the verinara. 
The child, oh mercy!  Tell me it is not true!  Tell me they did not take…!”  He
threw himself upon the ground, clawing at Renda’s boots, grasping at her tunic
and begging for mercy in his wretchedness. “What have I done?  I have
sacrificed a child of Damerien!  The prophecy!  What have I done?”
    Prophecy again.  First Nara, now Cilder.  Renda looked at
Gikka.  What prophecy?  But the squire only shook her head in bafflement.
    Then, at each joint of bone to bone, Cilder’s body began to
unravel itself with dull sickening pops that counterpointed the angry slamming
of the bolt against Gikka’s dagger.  Aghast, wooden sword in hand, Renda
watched the madness grow in his eyes as he watched his body be devoured by
sulfurous flame, slowly, inevitably, bit by bit.  The bishop shrieked with
terror and pain, breaking his voice and bringing his servants to come pounding
at the sealed door.
    With infinite cruelty, the god had somehow kept him alive
during this last of his dissolution, when his body was reduced to no more than
a wretched trunk and head, and now she could see his eyes bulging and his
tongue swelling within his mouth, yet somehow, cruelly, he was still conscious.
 The horrible mouth continued to scream until the tongue choked off the sound
and the bishop lay flopping absurdly and gasping on the floor.
    “For Pegrine and B’radik!” Renda leaped forward and plunged
the wooden sword into his heart with all her strength and pulled it free.  What
remained of the bishop, a bloodied piece of his cassock over his absurd,
limbless trunk, quivered weakly for a moment before it relaxed at Renda’s feet,
silent and still.
    In the sudden silence of the room, Renda stared at the dead bishop’s
body, numb, cold.  Then she knelt to offer a prayer to B’radik for the soul of
the man she had known all her life, her father’s gentle priest who had come so
far from B’radik’s light.  But then she stood and raised Pegrine’s bloody
wooden sword above the body of the evil creature who had murdered her niece. 
“Praise to Rjeinar, vengeance is done,” she muttered, and dropped the verinara
leaf on his body.  Then she stripped off a piece of the bishop’s cassock to
wrap around the gory sword.
    Behind them the servants and some priests from the temple
stood at the door where it had suddenly come open, staring in shock and horror
at the scene before them.  The beautiful white walls of the bishop’s chamber
ran black with burned and spattered blood, the largest part of Cilder’s body
lying just beneath the table with its grisly bowls.  The smell of burned flesh
and blood tang filled the room.  The knight and squire faced the pale and
menacing faces of the household, wondering whether anyone would leave the manse
alive.
    “It is over,” spoke a quiet voice from behind the crowd. 
“Get back to your duties.”
    Renda’s hand went to her sword. 
    The servants nodded quickly, not looking at each other nor
seeking the source of the voice but dispersing