Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (15 page)

“My fealty is to the king. He has charged me with this task, whether I
agree with it or not.”

`And do you agree?”

Meridon shrugged. “It is the price I pay for my life.”

“You have not answered my question.”

“It is not my place to agree or disagree. Only to obey. I am but a freeman’s
son, Your Highness.”

And a strange one, Captain Meridon. For now I’ll go with you. It seems
I have little choice.”

“May I have your word you’ll not try to escape?”

Eldrin paused, surprised again and vaguely flattered by the implications.
“Yes.”

Some time later they reached the river, stealing beneath the forest of pilings that supported the docks overhead until Meridon apparently reached the
site he was looking for. There was no one there, nor was there a boat waiting.
Only the dark water, lapping quietly at the muddy bank.

The Terstan looked up and down the bank.

“Is something-” Eldrin began.

The other gestured for quiet.

Eldrin’s neck prickled a warning the instant before a heavy, stinking net
dropped upon him and a hand clapped over his mouth. He was dragged,
struggling, back up the shore to the warehouse they had recently skirted and
shoved through a door, net and all. Meridon was thrown in atop him, and the
door clicked shut. Light filled the room as a foul-smelling man bent over him,
pulling away the net as another bound his hands.

Left alone after that, he risked pushing himself to a sitting position as his
eyes adjusted to the lantern light. Meridon sat beside him, also tied. Four
ragged hoodlums ranged the long, narrow room, one peeking around the canvas that covered the window.

“What is this?” Meridon demanded. “Who are you?”

But their captors only growled at them to be silent.

Shortly the door opened, and a tall, robed figure stepped in. Eldrin’s chest
constricted. How had Saeral caught up with them? Were even the ruffians in
Southdock under his influence?

Then the man in the robe thrust back his cowl, and Eldrin gaped in astonishment at his younger brother.

“Prince Gillard!” Meridon cried, leaping to his feet. “What is this about?
What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Gillard raised his blond brows and chuckled to himself as he swaggered forward. “I am saving the kingdom, of course.”

“Saving the… ? But I have the matter in hand, my lord. He has agreed
to go into exile willingly.”

“I never thought he wouldn’t.” Gillard’s pale eyes fixed on Eldrin. “But if
Ray were to die, my little brother here would still inherit the Crown, a position he is woefully unfit to fill.”

It was too much. From that deep place in Eldrin’s soul a door opened and
fury burst out of it. Wordlessly he exploded upward, smashing shoulder first
into his brother’s belly, his momentum carrying both of them backward to
the floor.

A flash of white briefly overlaid the warm lantern light as, with a roar,
Gillard flung Eldrin aside. He hit a wall, the air woofing out of him, stars
wheeling before him.

Somehow Meridon had gotten free. One of Gillard’s henchmen sprawled
on the floor, unconscious. A second slumped dazedly against the wall, while
a third clutched a bloody slash on his upper right arm. Knife in hand, Meridon crouched before Gillard, the point of Gillard’s rapier pressed to his
throat, just under the right ear.

Gillard grinned wolfishly, breathing through his mouth. “I could kill you
so easily, swine. The bare flick of my fingers would do it.” Blood welled at the
tip of his blade, trickling down the side of Meridon’s neck. “Drop the knife,”
Gillard barked.

Meridon’s blade clattered to the floor. The single uninjured henchman
scooped it up.

“Now, hands behind your back.”

Again Meridon complied.

“I told you to bind him with chain,” Gillard snarled at his men. “Why
didn’t you?”

“Well, er. …” said the one with the bloody arm. “It’s just that-“

“You didn’t think it mattered,” Gillard snapped. “Fools? Did you at least
bring them?”

“Aye, my lord.” The able-bodied man hurried to the back of the room,
rustled about, and returned with the chains. They clinked and rattled as he
locked the manacles around the Terstan’s wrists.

Gillard returned his attention to his brother, leering once again, and a
reckless contempt welled up in Eldrin. “You may have the rest of the world charmed, Gillard, but I know what you are: a scheming bully who doesn’t
know-“

Gillard’s free hand smacked open-palmed against Eldrin’s cheek, knocking him into the wall, blinded and breathless.

“You seem to have forgotten how to speak to me, brother,” Gillard said.
“I trust you will not forget again.”

Eldrin shook his head, gathered his faculties, and snorted, undaunted.
“What does it matter? I don’t have much longer to live anyway, do I?”

Gillard feigned hurt. “Kill my own flesh and blood? What do you take me
for? One of your Mataian hypocrites?” He slid his rapier into its scabbard,
then hooked his thumbs into the belt again. “I may hate to claim kinship with
you, but I’ll not commit fratricide. No, I act on orders of the king.”

“Liar?” Meridon cried.

Gillard looked at him quizzically. “Exile was never the plan, my Terstan
friend. It held too many risks. If either of you came back, Raynen would be
sorely embarrassed. He has helped a condemned murderer to escape, after
all. He’d be forced to abdicate. Personally I don’t think you’re worth the trouble, but he cares for you.” His voice hardened. “It is that alone which spares
your life. Be grateful.”

They glared at one another, but Meridon said nothing.

“So what do you mean to do with us?” Eldrin demanded.

Gillard glanced at him; his lips quirked. “There are those who can be
quite accommodating when one has need of disposing of live embarrassments. I’ll even make a little profit off of you.”

Meridon hissed, every freckle standing out on his suddenly pale face.
“He’s your own brother, my lord.”

As comprehension dawned, Eldrin all but fainted.

His brother looked from one to the other of them and laughed. Ah. I
knew it would be worth coming down here. You should see the looks on your
faces?”

Still chuckling, he turned to one of his men. “Strip ‘em. And cut off that
miserable hair. I don’t want anyone to know he’s Mataian.”

“N&” Eldrin exploded. “You can’t-“

“I can do whatever I wish,” Gillard snapped.

His henchman gripped the front of Eldrin’s tunic and jerked downward, the ripping sound loud and obscene in the silence. Another man grabbed a
fistful of hair.

“You’ll pay for this, Gillard,” Eldrin gritted, fury rising again. “Sidon will
see that you pay.”

“Eidon?” Gillard looked mockingly skyward. “I don’t see any bolts out of
heaven, little brother. Perhaps your god does not care as much as you think.
If he exists at all.”

He motioned again. Something crashed into the back of Eldrin’s head,
and the boat room vanished into darkness.

The Princess Carissa, Lady of Balmark, waited in the royal gallery outside
the king’s apartments the next morning, staring at the gold-framed portrait
in front of her. Fog-softened light filtered through mullioned glass to her left.
A mumble of conversation and laughter from the king’s court drifted up the
stairs at the hall’s end, but here she was alone.

The boy in the portrait stared back at her-strikingly blue eyes in a pale
face framed by thick blond hair. Even at twelve Abramm had worn his hair
longer than Father liked, the straight locks curling up at the ends where they
fell against his lace collar. Mama had encouraged it-part of her ongoing battle against the Kiriathan heritage her husband revered and she detested. Over
the years she’d molded Abramm into her own private statement of defiance,
a weapon she sadly did not live to see deployed. It was only after her deathand perhaps in part because of it-that Abramm had entered the Mataio.

He looked so young, so naive … so fragile….

Carissa twined her fingers, her middle quivering. What has happened to
him?

Four evenings ago her twin had met with Raynen and refused his offer of
stipend and vessel. The following morning a blond Initiate from Fairfield
Watch was found murdered in the Keep garden, Trap Meridon’s ram-headed
dirk in his heart. Scandal swept the court as Meridon was arrested and
charged with murder, and that night fear stalked her dreams as she followed
Abramm down a dark corridor. Vague anxieties alternated with sharp premonitions of danger that shook her to trembling wakefulness, and by morning she knew he was in peril. When Raynen declared Meridon’s trial postponed
a day-pending acquisition of new evidence-she set off for the Keep, determined to speak to her twin.

Only to find he had disappeared.

“It may be,” confided the Guardian at the gate-they would not let her
onto the grounds themselves-“that he is in one of the meditation cubicles.”

He said they could not violate the sanctity of private meditation until her
brother had been missing several days at least. And it would have to be
approved by the High Father.

Frustrated, she went to the palace. But Raynen would not see her either,
cloistered with his law-readers and investigators as they prepared for Meridon’s trial. At last, frustrated and exhausted, she returned to her flat in Sprin-
gerlan-and a second night of dark rooms and nameless heart-pounding fears.

Meridon had been tried and convicted yesterday and was sentenced to die
this very morning. Indeed, his head had rolled at dawn, though the event had
been overshadowed by the riot of rumors that burst simultaneously from the
Keep. Supposedly Abramm had failed the test of the Flames two days ago
and trespassed into the innermost parts of the Sanctum to hide himself away.
Last night he’d emerged to attack the High Father himself, then fled in a
frenzy of violence no one had dared try to stop.

Several of the highest Haverallans wore bandages, including Saeral himself, who wept openly and proclaimed his consternation over this unexpected
betrayal. His chief aide and head of the Order of St. Haverall, Brother Rhiad,
had personally spoken with Carissa, sincerely distraught at the turn of affairs
but suggesting such madness was not unexpected when a man failed the test
of the Flames. She’d wanted to hit him, and she believed none of it. Not in
her wildest imagination could she conceive of her gentle, scholarly brother
doing such a thing, Flames or not. Nor did she believe he could have failed
the test of the Flames. No man had been more devoted-or worthy-than
Abramm. More convincing than anything, though, was the dream she’d had
last night, the third in as many nights and the worst of the lot. It was clearly
Abramm who’d been in danger, not Saeral, and she was determined to get to
the bottom of things.

Across the gallery behind her a door opened, and she turned as Prince
Gillard stepped from the king’s chambers. In the moment before he realized
she stood there, she glimpsed an expression of pain and helpless grief on his bold features. Then he looked up and it vanished.

“Riss?” One white-blond brow arched as he drew up in front of her.
“What are you doing here?”

“I should think it obvious,” she replied.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Ray’s not seeing anyone.”

“He saw you.”

“Aye, well…” His glance lifted to Abramm’s portrait behind her. The
corners of his lips twitched. “I missed you at Meridon’s execution.” His iceblue gaze came back to her.

“Why in the world would I wish to attend that?”

Gillard shrugged. “I thought you had a crush on him once.”

A crush? He is a Terstan, for Haverall’s sake.” She had to admit, though,
she did find it dismaying to think of Meridon dead, for he’d always been the
perfect gentleman, undeniably likeable, despite his distasteful religious persuasion. But a crush? Absurd. Raynen, on the other hand, loved him like a
brother, and she knew the necessity of ordering Meridon executed had to
have been devastating.