Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (32 page)

The courtiers postured and bowed and fluttered, the men directed here
and there by the women, tripping and reeling exaggeratedly as they slopped
wine down the fronts of their doublets. The crowd laughed contemptuously.

“Drunken and dissipated …” said the Taleteller as the men grabbed at
the women and tore at their gowns. “Indecent and immoral…” The women
welcomed the advances with embarrassing writhings. “They are unable to
control their lusts, unable to make themselves worthy of any real god’s attention. Only the Dying God will have them. Serving such a god, they
know not how to fight or die like men, nor will Eidon be able to defend them.
They are fit only to be conquered and ruled by their betters?”

The Taleteller’s voice rang stridently, igniting the crowd. The roaring,
screaming voices filled the arena like a living thing that pulsed and quivered,
tearing at ear and heart and belly.

Light bloomed on the far side, illuminating a door in the arena’s wall, now
trundling open to admit a troop of black-and-gray-garbed soldiers. Amidst
them strode one clad and cloaked in gold, a black crescent moon standing
atop the crown of his helmet. Impossibly, the crowd’s passion rose another
notch, screaming Beltha’adi’s name.

With a wail the courtiers scurried to a corner of the set, crowding
together like frightened hens. As the newcomers reached the main court most
of the soldiers stopped near the courtiers and only the substitute Beltha’adi
and one other drew their swords. Advancing casually toward the foot of the
stair atop which Abramm sat on his throne, they waved to the audience,
exchanged jokes with their followers, and barely glanced at their opponents.

Abramm stood up, feeling a strangely familiar rage.

The crowd began to chant. “Yelaki! Yelaki! Dormod anahdi!”

From Abramm’s side came the hissing rasp of Meridon’s blade as he drew
it free of its scabbard. Abramm’s hand closed upon the hilt of his own sword,
hesitated.

I will touch no weapon of warfare.

Violence feeds the Shadow.

He swallowed. Could he really kill another man? And if he did, was he
any better than his opponent?

He watched the men laughing up at him, listened to the crowd calling for
his blood, remembered the Dorsaddi just before him, heart blasted out of his
chest. And knew the answers to both questions.

Yes. And Yes.

As he pulled his blades free, something changed within him-his pent-up
frustration finally found release. Suddenly he was no longer helpless. Alloying
with all he had endured and seen this day, his anger forged a fierce determination to deflate their self-righteous assumptions of superiority.

He glanced at Trap, received a barely perceptible nod, and together they
leaped down to meet the two who would challenge them, closing with them in a burst of aggressive parries. The two fell back, made awkward and desperate by surprise.

Abramm’s opponent overparried one time too many. Before Abramm
even realized what he had done, his own blade had slid under the southlander’s weapon and up through the man’s ribs. Blood blossomed on the
golden tunic as Abramm pulled the blade free. He glimpsed a dark, surprised
face as the Esurhite fell to his knees.

Meridon’s man sagged to the marble floor an instant afterward, the battle
over almost before it had begun.

But even as Abramm drew a shaky breath, hardly daring to believe it was
over, a flash of metal caught his eye and he turned, lifting his weapon instinctively, deflecting the blow of one of the soldiers who had spontaneously
assumed the role of backups for the first two.

Another was closing from the side, and he felt Meridon step around
behind him back to back as they battled the four who had taken up arms at
the fall of their comrades.

Blood pounded in Abramm’s ears as he parried, lunged, and ran his opponent through the forearm, drawing a howl of pain as the man’s weapon
clanged to the marble floor. The disarmed Esurhite flung himself at Abramm
with bare hands, and Abramm’s dagger slipped between the side slits in his
armor, just as he had practiced a thousand times. The soldier fell forward, and
Abramm jumped back, jerking his weapon free and slamming into Meridon.
He twisted left, blocked an incoming thrust with the dagger, and whipped his
longblade around, slashing his opponent’s arm.

A reddish haze had sprung up around him, blotting out all but the new
antagonist in front of him, whom he saw with exquisite clarity-the hatefilled eyes, the clenched teeth, the rivulets of sweat streaming down the dark
face. He could hear the Esurhite’s breathless muttered curses and could see
that the man was caught in the grip of a self-righteous fury that did not allow
him to acknowledge that he faced a superior opponent.

Abramm was surprised at the man’s sluggishness, at the way he seemed
to telegraph his every move and struggled to keep his blade in time with
Abramm’s. It was a simple matter to parry his slow thrusts, to ignore his awkward feints and pay him for the failure with a stab to the leg, the arm, the
waist. The man grew angrier by the moment, and before long he fell for a
double feint that left him open to Abramm’s killing stroke, in and out in an instant. The wild eyes widened, then rolled back as he toppled to the floor.

It was over. Six southlanders lay dead or wounded on the tile, surrounded
by a rapidly dissipating haze. The distant roaring had stopped, replaced by
the pitiful cries of the injured. Blood streaked and spattered the tile, and
there was far more of it than he’d expected. He felt suddenly cold and weak,
a great shudder staggering him.

Then Trap was at his side, gripping his arm, pulling him up and around.
When he tried to resist, tried to look back over his shoulder, his friend shook
his arm. “You did what you had to do, my lord.”

Abramm swallowed and stared at him, heartsick and bitter. “Is that how
you deal with it? Just ignore it?”

“Be thankful it’s not you lying on that floor. Because it easily could have
been.”

His brown eyes bored into Abramm’s, bearing the truth deep into his
soul. Yes. It was supposed to have been his blood that stained the tiles.

The haze was gone now, and finally he noticed the crowd. Its shocked
silence filled the arena with palpable force. He realized then that the man in
the golden tunic, the one with the black crescent moon helmet, lay among
the dead. The portents in that event-coming on the heels of the Dorsaddi’s
prophesying-struck even him, raising the hairs up the back of his neck.

He stepped back, his gaze falling at last upon his courtiers. To a person,
they gaped at him with wonder and outright worship in their eyes.

He looked back at them, wiping the sweat from his upper lip on his
sleeve, smearing red paint on the fabric. He was surprised to find himself
panting.

Suddenly, to his utter astonishment, each of the courtiers went down on
one knee. “Hail Eidon?” they cried. “Hail Abramm, King of Kiriath!”

A rumble arose from the spectators as, in the Broho’s box across the ring,
a man stood and stretched wide his arms. As the Kiriathan courtiers screamed
and cowered, the king’s court disappeared, and Abramm found himself
standing on packed sand.

The man’s chest swelled as he drew breath, then opened his mouth in a
bellow that flung forth a gout of violet fire. Abramm toppled backward as it
slammed into his sword, sending it sailing through the air to land with Trap’s
in a twisted, smoking heap on the sand some ten yards away.

At Beltha’adi’s side, Katahn had leaped up, jabbering and gesticulating furiously. Already Zamath and the others were rushing in, interposing their
bodies between their charges and the box and hurrying them out of the ring.

Katahn met them in the corridor not long afterward, bursting with excitement. “Wonderful” he crowed. And that bit with the courtiers at the end?
They’ll be falling all over themselves to get at you next time.”

Shettai, who had trailed in his wake, looked at Abramm as if she’d never
seen him before, while Abdeel and Dumah swirled out cloaks with which to
enfold them. The chamber throbbed with excited babble as news of the Kiriathans’ victory spread….

Until a familiar high-pitched voice cut through it all, producing an instant
shocked silence.

Katahn’s priest, Master Peig, stood in the aisle, shaven dome gleaming,
dark eyes glaring, Regar at his elbow in silent support.

“You must kill them both, Lord Katahn?” the man said again, his voice
hard and condemning. It echoed away to silence, every eye in the packed
chamber suddenly fixed upon the two men.

Katahn laughed. “Do you have any idea how much money these men will
make me in a single season?”

“Greed brought down the Dorsaddi, Katahn.” Peig paused, narrowed his
eyes. “I told you not to make a warrior of him. I told you this would happen.
But you paid no heed, and so your task is harder. I tell you these two carry
the mark of destruction. If you do not destroy them, Katahn ul Manus, you
will lose everything. Everything.”

The silence could not have been more absolute. Even Katahn seemed
momentarily taken aback by the intensity of the holy man’s warning. For a
long, horrible moment Abramm feared all his grasping after survival, all he
had sacrificed and endured, would come to nothing after all.

Then Katahn smiled. “How many of your prophecies have come true in
the last year, Master Peig? Half of them? That’s probably too generous. A
quarter, then? And if we consider the last handful of years, how many times,
then?”

The priest jerked up his chin. “They have all come true, sir; it is only the
interpretation-“

A prophecy is useless if not properly interpreted before its execution, sir.
And considering your record, why should I believe that this time you’ve done
it correctly?”

Master Peig ignited in a flaming rage, loosing a volley of words Abramm
had no hope of following. When Katahn clearly still resisted, his son Regar
jumped in, but he, too, argued in vain. Finally Peig surrendered with a bitter
epithet and strode away. A moment longer the son regarded the father, tightlipped, clearly distraught. Then he too took his leave.

Katahn watched them go, smirking openly. He made some irreverent
comments to his men, then gave orders concerning his slaves’ treatment and
rewards and departed.

Shettai lingered, her gaze once more on Abramm. Their eyes met for a
long, fierce moment, as if she searched for something of vital importance, and
he thought again of the slain Dorsaddi’s earlier prophecy to Beltha’adi. “Even
now the Deliverer is coming to slay you.”

She turned away finally, and it seemed to him there was something very
like a secret smile upon her lips.

Scratching the staffid bites on the back of her hand, Carissa stepped from
the tunnel onto the iron bridge spanning the inlet between New Xorofin and
Old. It shivered under the weight and movement of the people thronging
about her, the spaces between its iron gridwork allowing a dizzying view of
the depth over which she trod. From this height, the dilapidated houseboats
lining the inlet’s steep shores were reduced to small ragged boxes, and the
fisherfolk who lived on them, mere dots in the distance.

With an uneasy gulp, she lifted her gaze skyward, having to tug and push
at her face-veil to align the eyeholes enough to see. Through the bridge’s
ranks of iron girders, Old Xorofin’s dark, lichen-encrusted guardwalls loomed
forbiddingly atop the opposing cliff, its ramparts bristling with guards barely
glimpsed past the crenellations. Nervous guards. Suspicious guards. Guards
ready to quash the slightest twitch of rebellion, should it come.

More of them stood at the bridge’s end ahead of her, checking travel documents and baggage, their gray tunics stark against the dark maw of Old Xorofin’s entrance tunnel. The anxiety that had smoldered in her belly all afternoon twisted restlessly, and she drew a deep breath to settle it. There was no
going back now.