Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (35 page)

When Abramm had returned to his quarters following his impromptu
evening matches, his Sorite slave had stripped off his ruined costume, washed
away the blood, sweat, and paint, and dressed him in fine black woolen trousers with a silk undershirt and stiff, knee-length tunic of violet brocade. He was then brought up to Katahn’s quarters, where food and wine and nubile,
half-clad young women awaited his pleasure.

Left alone with them, he had nibbled the spiced meat and oranges they
offered, chewed soft bread, and sipped fine wine. He had listened to them
sing and watched them dance to the music of pipe, drum, and kit’el, their
curves sliding provocatively in and out of their veils, their dark eyes watching
him with seductive intensity.

Though the intent of it all seemed clear enough, it still left him baffled.
Brogai custom forbade the indulgence of one’s lusts on the eve of battle, and
tomorrow he faced the biggest battle of his life. He could not afford to be
sick or muzzy headed.

Few men untouched by the fire of Khrell had ever stood against a Broho
and lived. But there were those few-men who had resisted Broho magics,
who could not be Commanded, who had shaken off the Veil of Fear. He
intended to be one of them. Intended, if he had to die, at least to go out with
honor, fighting to his last breath…. Tonight, of all nights, then, he must
abstain.

And Katahn offers him his daughters?

The Brogai Gamer had arrived an hour ago with the uurka board and,
seeing the mostly untouched food, had reproved him mildly for his abstinence. Then they’d plunged into the game and the matter was forgotten.

The girls had removed the spiced meat and bread. Now all that remained
was a basket of fruit, a plate of golden, crescent pastries, and a bowl of green,
honeyed cumlaats. They had put away pipe and drum, and only the kit’el
player remained, plucking a mournful melody on the taut strings of her
gourd-shaped instrument. Her sisters lounged on bright blue and green pillows below the dais on which the men sat, their young faces scandalously
bared, their bodies clearly visible through the diaphanous material of their
gowns. They watched Abramm with a vulturine intensity.

As he looked at them now, they giggled and whispered and elbowed one
another, their dark eyes flashing with excitement. He felt his face flush again,
which only set them off the more.

Shettai, who’d come in with Katahn, sat a little way off from them, her
high-boned features sharp and dramatic in contrast to the others’ soft, girlish
faces. Her glorious hair fell unbound in a river of shimmering dark mahogany
down her back. Pearl teardrops gleamed in her ears and on her forehead, and her gown of blue, silver-flecked silk set off the deep honey-gold of her skin to
stunning advantage. Had he been in any other frame of mind, he’d be torturing himself with pangs of desire, and even now he wondered idly what
Katahn would do if he chose her over the Gamer’s own daughters. He was
fairly certain that she would not be pleased.

She alone did not giggle or smile in invitation, though she watched him
closely. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, which, he had learned
in their close association over the last year and a half, meant she was probably
annoyed. He knew for a fact that she had little love for Katahn’s gaggle of
silly girls and even less for being put on display alongside them, for being put
on display at all.

“That was very well done,” Katahn said, breaking into his thoughts. The
Gamer leaned back from the board, turning a grin of open admiration on
Abramm. “I am beginning to think I have created a player I am no longer able
to beat.”

`After tomorrow it shouldn’t be a problem,” Abramm said dryly.

Katahn’s dark brows arched in surprise. “That sounds undeniably defeatist, my golden prince. Most unlike you.”

“Unlike you as well, my master.” Abramm flicked his gaze significantly
around the room, indicating the girls, the pastries, the wine. “I can only conclude this offer of celebration before the fact of victory means that for me
you believe there will be no victory.”

Katahn held his gaze, the ironic smile still in place, though the dark eyes
had gone flat and hard. They seemed slightly less alert than normal, and
Abramm remembered the wine he’d smelled on the man’s breath when he’d
first arrived with the uurka board, remembered that he’d continued to drink
throughout the game-which was probably why he’d fallen so thoroughly for
that new gambit. But it was also starkly out of character.

The Brogai looked away, the smile twisting at his lips, flaring just slightly
and vanishing. He picked up his goblet and, leaning back on his pillows, beckoned for one of the girls to refill it. As she rose to obey, another glided to
Abramm’s side, plucking a cluster of grapes from the basket as she passed it.
She pulled one free and held it to his mouth, pressing herself intimately
against his arm.

His pulse quickened, but he kept his eyes off her and accepted the fruit
stoically.

She seemed to interpret that as acceptance of her as well and leaned more
actively against him, toying now with the gold rings in his left ear. The ear
was still tender from the insertion of his third ring last week, an unprecedented honor he suspected sprang more from political and monetary considerations than any deservedness on his part. Though he and Trap had beaten
fairly the greatest non-Broho champions in the land, three rings were not
normally attained in less than five years. Katahn’s son Regar, having but two
rings of his own, had reacted to the promotion so hotly he’d joined the priesthood in protest the very next day-an irony only Abramm fully appreciated.

Katahn took a long swallow of wine, then wiped his mouth on the shimmering, gold-embroidered sleeve of his tunic. He gestured with the goblet.
“Drink, my prince. You must be thirsty after your exertions of the evening.”

“Wine steals the spirit and muddies the mind,” Abramm said flatly, quoting the Brogai proverb to the Brogai himself. “I have a battle tomorrow.”

The girl was kissing the corner of his jaw just under his ear, her breath a
light, fluttery tickle on his neck that inexplicably stimulated even as it
annoyed.

Katahn snorted. A battle which you’ve already admitted you’re going to
lose.” He took his own advice and drank again, then sat staring distractedly
into the vessel, his face seeming more wrinkled and weary than usual. It
finally occurred to Abramm that Katahn was no happier over the prospect of
tomorrow’s match than Abramm. And well he shouldn’t be. When it ended
he would have lost the two biggest money-makers he’d ever owned-with
little chance of replacing them.

Katahn’s daughter was becoming decidedly distracting. She had undone
the buttons and loops on his tunic’s high collar and was now kissing his
throat, the flowery scent of her hair oil making his head spin. Katahn said
something, but at the moment he could hardly breathe, much less think and
speak.

Shettai was staring at him, as were the other girls, as was Katahn himself.
Abramm’s face burned, and he knew it must be bright red. He shifted away
from her, but the girl only pressed at him more insistently. Some of her sisters
smirked, while Shettai’s lips tightened with disapproval. He knew what she
was thinking. “Men are goats,” she liked to say. “Only interested in one thing.”

He’d always taken pride in proving her wrong in that, but at the moment,
his treacherous body was hotly ignoring the dictates of pride.

Katahn alone seemed oblivious. He spoke again, irony heavy in his voice.

Grimly Abramm tried to wrench his mind to order. “I … I …”

Katahn frowned at the girl as if he had just noticed her. He waved a
beringed hand. “Sabine, that will do.”

She drew herself off Abramm and turned to pout at her father.

“Later you may have him if he chooses. For now, return to your place.
Your behavior is unseemly.”

She heaved a dramatic sigh and flounced back to her sisters.

Katahn smiled at Abramm. “She likes you. They all do. It’s that blond
hair and blue eyes. More than that, it would bring a woman great status to lie
with the White Pretender. Even greater should she conceive his child.”

Abramm’s flush spread down his neck and over his chest. He knew only
enough of Esurhite sexual mores to be appalled by them. Though great indignation would arise should a woman venture into public uncovered-and any
female caught in adultery would be summarily executed-within his own
home a man could loan his wives, mistresses, slaves, or daughters to whomever he wished. Still, Abramm thought loaning them to a slave must be
highly irregular.

“Did you know Beltha’adi is my cousin?” Katahn said, apparently returning to what he’d been saying when Sabine had been at her most distracting.
“He is my father’s father’s father’s father’s … brother.”

He set down the goblet and took up one of the crescent-shaped pastries.
“That makes us cousins. And, since he’s never in all his two-hundred-sixtysome-odd years managed to produce a son who lived, it also makes me his
heir.” He chuckled again, then bit off half the pastry.

Abramm regarded him sharply. Katahn might be just this side of drunk,
but Abramm did not believe it prevented the man from choosing his words
with care.

Katahn waved the remaining pastry half. “But then, he doesn’t need one,
I guess, with Khrell keeping him forever young. The priests say even if he’s
slain, he’ll live again. That Laevion will breathe life into him just as she did
Khrell after Ret hacked him up.”

Ret, consumed with jealousy, had laid a trap for his brother Khrell, and
afterward called the winds to blow the pieces of ruined body to the far corners of the world, never to return. The birds told Laevion of it, and she sent
them after the remains, which she then sewed back together with her own hands. It was a gruesome story, typically Esurhite.

“I understand you northerners have your own resurrection mythology,”
Katahn said. “Wasn’t your Eidon killed and then resurrected?”

“‘Twas not Eidon,” Abramm said. “Eidon cannot die. It was his son Tersius. And he wasn’t resurrected-he gave his blood and body to form the
Holy Flames that stand against the Veil and burn at the heart of Mataian
temples.”

“Mmm. Your Terstan friend tells a different version.”

“The Terstan serves a different god.”

“He claims it is the same. That he uses the same books.”

“Some of the same books,” Abramm pointed out.

“I have copies of all your sacred texts, if you’d like to show me where you
differ.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Mmm.” Katahn fell silent, watching his hand finger the goblet, his face
once more closed and unreadable. The girls murmured and shifted upon their
pillows, their bright, birdlike gazes peppering Abramm with almost physical
force. He refused to look at them, blushing all over again and wishing Katahn
would get this over with.

“I’ve heard some believe Beltha’adi is Khrell himself in human form,”
Abramm said finally. “That he cannot be slain at all.” He smiled slightly. “I
think it’s a claim that certainly ought to be tested.”

Katahn looked up sharply, his gaze reproving. “You are a fool, Pretender.
You cannot beat him. This Dorsaddi madness of your slaying him-it will not
happen.”

“I’ve beaten Zamath.”

“Zamath is an excommunicate, a has-been, destroyed by his own madness. You may just as well say you’ve beaten a gnat. He is nothing of what
Beltha’adi is. And you certainly didn’t kill Zamath, which is what we’re talking about. In any case you won’t be facing Beltha’adi tomorrow, so the question is moot.”

“I may win tomorrow and so have another chance.”

“You won’t.”

Abramm glanced around. “Some few have resisted Broho magics.”

A few perhaps, but it doesn’t matter, because either way, you will die
tomorrow. The people may hope you’ll prevail, and the Underground may talk of rescue, but it won’t happen. In fact, it won’t even be a contest-it’ll
be an execution. This Dorsaddi Deliverer nonsense must be stopped.”

“If Beltha’adi thinks my death will stop that-“

“He’s got a full complement of city guardsmen ready to shut down the
city and squash any rioting that erupts tomorrow. And two full Hundreds are
returning from the Andolen front as we speak. They’ll drive into the SaHal
and clear out all the rebel nests that have sprung up in the last decade. My
cousin is a ruthless man, Pretender. He’ll do what he must to hold his power.
And it all begins with your death.

A death that will be neither swift nor clean. You must not merely be
defeated in battle, you understand…. You must be humiliated, crushed …
thoroughly broken.” He paused to let his words sink in. “The last thing they’ll
hear from you will be your screams for mercy.”

He paused again, selecting another pastry and examining it closely before
dipping it into the bowl. “There is, however, another way. One much preferable for all, I think.” He bit the crescent in half. His dark eyes flicked up to
meet Abramm’s. “You could change sides.”

“Change sides?”

“I have persuaded my cousin that it would be more gainful to offer you
beneficence than execution.” He stuffed the rest of the pastry into his mouth,
then licked the sticky green syrup from his fingers. “If you swear allegiance to
him and to Khrell, that would solve everything. And if you participated in
the raid on the SaHal, why, clearly you could not be the Deliverer. Indeed, I
believe just giving your allegiance would be enough to take the wind out of
the whole bloody movement.”

He smiled. “Which would be in all ways the best solution. My cousin has
already decreed that you may seek Brogai status at the temple and that he
will afterward grant you the privilege of joining the Army of the Black Moon.
You would be the first of your northerner race to wear the Shadow’s colors.
An unprecedented honor.”

Abramm sat very still, stunned to speechlessness.