Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (49 page)

Neither of them suggested turning back.

An iron grate and railing had been constructed immediately outside the
slumping gate, extending over empty space to the narrow trail carved into
the cliffside of the SaHal. When the horses refused to walk over it, the men
had to dismount, cover the animals’ eyes with their headcloths, and lead
them across. From there, the road angled gently downward along the cliff,
protected by a three-foot-high wall of Ophiran construction.

As they descended, the temperature plunged and the mist thickened, cutting visibility to a mere five strides. The wall stopped at the first switchback,
and the trail deteriorated. Many of the paving stones were loose or missing.
Deep ruts, exposed roots, and huge rectangular stones laid crossways to prevent erosion made the going rough. It probably helped that they could see
nothing but mist. The dry, thick dust and scatterings of manure confirmed
Trap’s guess that the troop of Esurhites was at least a day ahead of them.

Time seemed to stand still as they rounded one switchback after another,
steadily descending. The cliff walls loomed forbiddingly barren, home to only
small grasses and occasional spiny cacti. Even when the switchbacks leveled
off to a meandering, downsloping trail, the surrounding rock remained bare
and dry.

Small crunches and crackles and whispers of movement sounded continuously around them, sounds Abramm repeatedly assured himself were just
echoes of his and Trap’s own passage. But with the mist making it impossible
to confirm that, the back of his neck crawled again and again. Though there
was a good chance the Dorsaddi had fallen to Beltha’adi’s two-sided attack
or were at least heavily occupied with fighting it off, he couldn’t shake the
feeling that they were out there, watching him. That at any moment a redfletched arrow would zing out of the mist and bury itself in his back.

A more reasonable fear would be that they would round a bend in the
rock and find themselves suddenly in the midst of the Esurhite patrol they
knew had preceded them, but he could not shake the sense that it was Dorsaddi who watched them.

The road dropped onto a barren, rocky shelf, then into a narrow, redwalled canyon. Swarms of blackand gray-striped staffid disguised as rocks
erupted to life before Trap’s horse, scuttling off into the cracks in the rock
around them. The clop and rustle of their passing echoed loudly off smooth
vertical walls close enough to touch, and Abramm’s feelings of claustrophobia mounted.

They found the first body at the canyon’s end, sprawled facedown on the
sand and attended by a pair of ravens. Clad in the gray tunic of the soldiers
of the Black Moon, the man was weaponless, armorless, and bootless. Though
his throat had been cut, it was the hole in his back that killed him-a bloody,
torn-up mess, most likely the result of an arrow. The arrow itself was nowhere
to be found.

Another body, similarly disposed, lay alongside the road farther up, the
third in another excruciatingly narrow ravine, the horses forced to step over
it. And the one after that.

In the mist it was difficult to judge distance or even time, but it seemed
the Dorsaddi were giving their visitors lots of opportunity to watch and worry
before they picked their next victim.

The fifth casualty lay at the point where the trail crossed a cactus-dotted
shelf and dropped into a narrow canyon. “Well,” Abramm said as they left
the body behind, “it seems the Dorsaddi are everything their reputation
claims them to be.”

The Terstan glanced back at him, the grizzle on his jaw showing distinctly
red, despite the dirt and lard that stained his skin. “Yet you’ll note we’re still
alive.”

“They’re playing with us.”

Trap cocked a brow. “Maybe they see we’re weaponless, bedraggled, and
riding obviously stolen horses. With no tack.”

“We don’t have the right coloring.”

“We don’t exactly look Esurhite, either.” He turned to nudge his horse
onward. “Maybe we’re just enough of an enigma to stay their hands.”

`And here I thought it was Eidon’s doing.”

“Oh, it is, my friend.” Trap grinned back at him.

They emerged from the second cleft and started across a mist-bound flat.
The trail climbed up over a rocky shelf, then descended around an old, dead
thronetree, long since toppled on its side. It was the first sign of real vegetation they’d seen, and there was a crow-sized red bird hidden in the depths of
its crown, obscured, but for its bright colors, by the gnarled tangle of dead
branches.

As they rode past, Abramm’s neck suddenly crawled with a fierce, sixthsense knowledge of impending attack, and he whirled to find the bird-a
small red heron?-launching itself out of the tree at him. Arena-bred instincts
had him kicking his horse forward half a heartbeat before the realization that
it was only a bird caught up with him. But as he knocked the creature aside
with his free arm, something struck the other arm, jerking at his sleeve and
pulling him off balance, even as his mount staggered and threw up her head
with a snort. He glimpsed a red-fletched arrow bouncing on the stone beside
her, and his alarm resurged with a vengeance. Moving with the momentum
the arrow had imparted, he was sliding off the horse when she shuddered and
collapsed with a groan, dead of the arrow in her heart. Crouched behind her
now, Abramm frantically scanned the mist for signs of his assailants and wondered if the bird was coming back and why it had attacked at all. Then he
saw it, lying where he’d knocked it, a third arrow buried in is breast. And it
was not a heron, but a needle-beaked, long-necked feyna.

Which confused him more than ever.

Trap had wheeled his own mount back, still unaware they were under
attack, when the Dorsaddi emerged from the mist, ghosts in salmon- and
ochre-tinged robes, too numerous to count. They held longbows, raised and
drawn, their gleaming broadheads all aimed at the northerners.

They were seized and stripped of robes and tunics, the dragon brands on
their arms and the holes in their ears seemingly something the Dorsaddi
expected. They exclaimed over the talisman Abramm wore about his neck,
however, and the golden shield on Trap’s chest brought them to a standstill.
They all had to examine it, fingering it as they exchanged soft urgent murmurs in oddly accented Tahg, but their interest did not stop them from binding both captives and loading them belly down across the backs of their
horses.

Undignified and uncomfortable as the position was, Abramm counted it
better than being shot and endured the subsequent passage of time stoically,
trying not to think of what lay ahead. By the time they stopped, it was dark
and his legs were so numb they wouldn’t support him unaided. He had to
lean dizzily against the horse that had borne him here until the blood flowed
back into them. When he was recovered enough to walk again, he found
himself in a narrow, steep-walled canyon, facing a huge-pillared edifice carved
out of the red stone walls. A crowd of dark-faced, pale-robed Dorsaddi stood
shoulder to shoulder around the newcomers, watching in ominous silenceuntil Trap straightened and his shieldmark flashed in the torchlight. Those
nearest flinched back and began muttering among themselves, the tone angry
and questioning all at once.

Hands still bound behind them, the prisoners were guided up the stairs
and through the tall doorway into a massive torchlit chamber thick with
smoke and packed with more hostile figures. Originally a natural formation, the chamber’s floor had been paved with small square tiles of lapis lazuli and
red agate. Two tiers of iron-railed balconies protruded from the walls above,
their railings lined with silent, watching Dorsaddi.

The crowd on the floor parted before the new arrivals like water before a
ship’s bow. A good head taller than any of them, Abramm could easily see
the dais at the chamber’s far end, where a group of men waited. Two wore
white turbans and white robes twined with purple-and-gold embroidery, gold
medallions gleaming on their chests. The rest wore salmon- or ochre-tinted
robes that were no different from any others, though Abramm figured one of
them must be the Dorsaddi king, Shemm, Shettai’s brother.

As Abramm approached and climbed the low stair to meet them, their
hard, lean faces acquired detail. The white-turbaned men were clean-shaven,
almond eyed, and grim lipped, and the medallions of each were different.
One was a jeweled shield of solid gold with Tahg symbols engraved upon its
face; the other was a glass sphere as big as a man’s palm. Seeing them,
Abramm understood why their captors had been so intrigued by Trap’s
shieldmark and his own Terstan orb.

The other men sported close-clipped black beards and dark hair pulled
back into warrior’s knots. Several wore the gold rings of fighting prowess up
the sides of their ears, and one wore the wide gold neckband of royalty.

It was this one that drew Abramm’s immediate attention, but not because
of the gold band. Dark bushy brows met over the bridge of a long, strong
nose, sheltering dark, almond-shaped eyes, his features a masculine image of
Shettai’s. The resemblance was so strong Abramm couldn’t help but stare, a
sudden catch in his throat. No question this was King Shemm.

He had no sooner reached that conclusion than he was jerked to a stop
and shoved to his knees. Trap was forced down likewise as the patrol’s leader
slid the orb and it’s chain over Abramm’s head and stepped forward. He
bowed deeply to the king, then handed him the talisman. Shemm glanced at
it expressionlessly and passed it to one of the priests, who received it with a
scowl. Slowly then, the king circled his prisoners, pausing to stroke the brands
on their arms, to inspect the holes in their ears, finger the dust from their hair,
and rub at the edges of Trap’s shieldmark.

Finally he drew back and addressed the patrol leader. “How is it you bring
them to us alive, Japheth?”

The man straightened. “I believe they may be the ones foretold, my Lord
King.”

“That is not for you to say?” snapped the priest who wore the shield
medallion. A stout, thick-bodied man, he crackled with latent energy, a coiled
spring ready to explode. “You know no outlander may violate the sanctity of
the SaHal and live.”

“We had them in our hands, Holy One,” Japheth protested. “Three of us
shot-none more than ten strides away-yet here he stands, unscathed.”

An excited mutter spread out through the crowd, and the second priest,
the one who wore the glass sphere, was staring at them with a sort of wondrous joy. “Sheleft’Ai made them a way,” he said, turning to his cohort. “It
truly is them, Mephid!”

“Bah!” Mephid slashed the air. “It was chance and no more. Save perhaps
the delaying influence of wishful thinking.”

All three of them?” the second priest demanded. At the same moment?”

“We treated these no differently than the others, Holy One,” Japheth said.

“Aye, we shot the tall one’s horse right out from under him?” one of the
other men added.

Mephid was not convinced. “They are imposters?” He turned to the king.
“More of Beltha’adi’s tricks, Great One. I say kill them at once, and post their
bodies with the others?”

“But, Mephid,” said his fellow priest, “the others did not come with orb
and shield. And that one’s eyes-blue as Andolen silk, just like the Pretender’s.” He, too, turned to the king. “I say it is them, Great One, brought
to us by Sheleft’Ai himself”

“The Pretender was lost in the warrens outside Xorofin?” Mephid
exclaimed, glaring at his cohort. “Was that not how Chael reported it?”

They turned to one of the men standing at the back of the dais, and the
king spoke. “Chael, is it so? Are these the men?”

Chael stepped forward, regarded them closely, then shrugged. “I cannot
say. I saw them only from a distance.”

“But you saw them go in.” Mephid turned back to the king. “We all know
no one comes out of the warrens alive.”

“That is true, Holy One,” Chael said. “But it is also true that no one can
kill the Horror with a sword, yet the two I saw did.”

“Nor stand against the Broho and live,” the second priest said, “yet they
did that as well.”

Mephid slashed the air again. Ast! You do not know that, Nahal! It is
only a tale-and likely untrue.”

King Shemm, who had watched all this without comment, now turned
to his prisoners. For a long moment he studied them thoughtfully, wearing
that same stony look Shettai had been so good at. Finally he spoke. “So who
do you say you are?”

Abramm glanced at Trap and by unvoiced agreement assumed the role of
spokesman. “I am Abramm Kalladorne, Prince of Kiriath, and this is my
retainer, Captain Meridon of the Kiriathan Royal Guard.”

The murmuring started up at once, as his words were passed back to the
others and conclusions eagerly reached.

“We have been lately in the possession of one Katahn ul Manus, until we
escaped the Games at Xorofin some days ago.”