Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (51 page)

“Right.” Trap was scrambling over the lip’s edge in tandem with Abramm
as the veren burst upon them yet again. Talons sliced Abramm’s shoulder as
he flung himself down the slope. Seizing the spear he had targeted, he rolled
to his feet. Trap came up simultaneously beside him, and they stood back to
back in the old arena stance, spears raised and ready. Torches scattered the
cleared plaza, providing a sputtering light.

The creature swooped out of the darkness, coming at Abramm, arrows
gleaming in its breast. He nearly impaled it before it veered away, slamming
him with a wing and knocking him back into Trap.

“You have a plan?” Meridon asked as they regained their balance.

Abramm wanted to run for the safety of the canyons like the Dorsaddi
were doing, but he knew that would only result in the eventual completion
of their execution as imposters. Since he hadn’t managed to ignite the Heart,
they needed to do something else to prove their worth. “I think we’d better
kill it,” he said, watching the misty ceiling and settling into a ready stance.
“How’s that shield of yours coming?”

“Unreliable at best.”

“Guess we’ll have to do it hand to hand, then.”

A flash of movement drew his eye, and he swung his spear in time to see
a round, wet object hit the pavement and bounce. Guessing the ploy, he was
already turning back, even as he sensed the massive body coming in from the
opposite side. It swooped in too fast for him to get his spear on target. All he
saw were gleaming talons reaching for his face, and he had to dive aside. He
hit the ground rolling as white light flared somewhere past his field of vision.
The creature squawked, a wing hit him, and the thing was gone again.

As he came to his feet Trap was rising as well, shaking his head. “I can’t
do it if I have to think about using the spear.”

“Then you just shield and I’ll spear.”

It was back, bursting out of the mist, talons gleaming, huge wings spread out to swallow him. Abramm drove his spear into the expanse of black before
him, helped by the beast’s own momentum, which drove him back into the
ground and ripped the spear from his hands. Then it was gone again, leaving
a line of fire across his left shoulder. He could feel blood trickling down his
chest and back as the scars on his wrist writhed with the new influx of poison.

Staggering upright, he glimpsed Trap gripping a broken spear shaft, then
dove aside again as a heavy timber crashed to the pavement where he’d stood.
Rolling away, he found another spear near the bottom of the mound and
came up ready, but the veren had already landed, striding now toward Trap,
its beak jabbing and stabbing.

Trap backed away, white faced, his right arm dangling oddly, his left held
out, glowing with the white of his power, which the veren ignored as if it
didn’t exist. Abramm hefted the spear and ran forward, driving its iron head
into the monster’s back with all his strength. The creature screamed and
whirled, slamming the spear’s shaft painfully into Abramm’s ribs. He
dropped and scrambled away as the thing came at him, Dorsaddi arrows and
his own first spear bobbing wildly in its breast. It beat him with its wings and
stabbed at him with its beak, grabbed for him with its talons. Crabbing frantically away, he could not hope to move fast enough, but just as the thing
loomed over him and he knew it was going to get him, a stone flew out of
the darkness and struck it in the eye. It staggered, shook its head, and turned
toward whoever had slung the stone.

Abramm rolled away, got his feet under him, and escaped, noting, as he
did, a line of Dorsaddi watching from the mist’s edge. As soon as he was clear,
their arms came up in unison, slings twirling, then flapping with the release.
A flight of stones shot through the night to batter the veren where it stood.
Reeling anew, the creature screamed and leapt skyward into cover of cloud.
The mist closed over it, and the sound of its wingbeats whispered into silence.

Panting, Abramm limped to Trap’s side. The Terstan’s right shoulder
appeared to be dislocated, the arm useless, but there was no time to fix it
now.

“Back to the mound!” Abramm said, grabbing up a third spear. No sooner
had they started than a pair of large blocks fell from the sky, crashing onto
the pavement in front of them. They whirled to face the veren as it swooped
in from behind to attack them on foot. Trap made his fire again, and for the
first time the thing flinched away. In the cover of that distraction, Abramm eluded the stabbing beak and drove a third spear into its body. A moment
later the beak impaled his shoulder. He gasped with the shocking pain of it
but did not let go, and then Trap was beside him, grabbing the spear with his
good hand. White fire blared across Abramm’s vision, blasting all else away.

Light rushed through his flesh, pain and purest pleasure, power and weakness, love and terrible loss. He saw a man, suspended between earth and sky
against a cloud of dark, ravening hunger that seemed to be gathering itself to
swallow him up. Terror loosened Abramm’s hold on the spear, and he fell
back, the vision lost.

He blinked, shook the spangles and blobs of darkness from his eyes, and
saw Trap still hanging one-handed to the spear, both he and the veren
enwrapped in the blaze of his power. The monster was thrashing and screaming, flinging its head madly, its beak thrust open, long red tongue fluttering.
Convulsions wracked its body, and Trap could hold no longer. He dropped to
the pavement and rolled away, coming up on his knees to watch as the creature’s convulsions quieted to shudders and shivers, and then the last few
twitches that gave way to stillness.

The Terstan backed away from it, gasping and sweat soaked and holding
his useless arm as Abramm came up beside him. Abramm himself was
already shivering in reaction to the spawn spore that streaked and spattered
his arms and torso. Tens of tiny blisters had reared up where each drop of
black blood touched him, tiny points of fire nearly lost in the pain now throbbing from the feyna scar in his wrist.

All around them Dorsaddi appeared out of the mist.

“You need to wash that stuff off,” Trap croaked. He was himself completely untouched by the veren’s blood, the wielding of his power having
burned it away as effectively as one of his healing sessions.

“Aye. And you need your arm put back.”

Meridon managed a half chuckle before his eyes caught on something past
Abramm’s shoulder and his brow creased. Abramm turned to find the king’s
party already upon them, gazes flicking from the dead veren to the two of
them, their expressions very close to worship. Indeed, a moment later, the
men surrounding the king-Japheth, the two priests, and all the others of his
coterie-dropped slowly to their knees. At once the rest of the Dorsaddi followed suit, leaving King Shemm standing alone, leather sling dangling from
one hand, longbow in the other. He stared at Trap with a stunned, fixed expression, his swarthy face pale, even in the torchlight. After a long moment
he spoke:

“Truly you are the one foretold by the Prophet Eameth. The Deliverer
who walks the road of death…. By him the Light will return to the people
of the Shield, and by him will kings arise to slay the armies of Darkness.’”

And then Shemm, too, sank to his knees and bowed his head to the pavement. “Holy One, have mercy on us. We have been tricked so many times,
suspicion has become our way of life. Any atonement you require we will
make.”

Around him his people pressed their heads to the ground in imitation.

Trap frowned. “I don’t want your sacrifices,” he said sharply. “I am only a
man like the rest of you. Stand and face me.”

At first Shemm did not move. Then, hesitantly, he raised his head and at
length got to his feet. “You may be a man,” the Dorsaddi said, “but you carry
the fire of Sheleft’Ai.”

As can any one of you who asks.”

Shemm frowned. “Your words dance the edge of blasphemy, Great One.
How can we obtain the power of a god?”

Trap raised his hand and a small white orb appeared on it.

Abramm flinched-his mouth went dry and sour. Fire and Torment! Not
this. Anything but this!

“‘I will grant you my Light by the blood of my Son,’” Trap quoted from
the Second Word. ” And it will dwell in your hearts and give you life. Reach
out, therefore, and close your hand about it that you may live and that my
power may become yours.’”

Torches hissed and sputtered in the breathless silence.

Shemm’s dark glance flicked up to Trap’s. Hesitantly he reached out and
plucked the glowing sphere from the air. He turned it round and round in his
fingertips, staring at it as if it held all the truths of life.

Abruptly his fingers wrapped around it, quenching its pale light. A rush
of tingling rode the air, and as with Whazel, as with Shettai, a golden shield
appeared on the Dorsaddi’s hairy chest, glittering between the edges of his
robe.

A susurration of astonishment arose from those around him, a rising murmur as word was passed to those who could not see.

Shemm stared at his now empty hand, then at his chest, and touched the shield with tentative fingers. He looked back up, his jaw slack beneath his
cropped beard. “I … I … it is a miracle,” he whispered.

“How may I receive this power?” Japheth asked, stepping forward, his
yellow eyes pale in the ruddy light.

`And I?” the priest Mephid echoed.

“I as well,” pleaded the other, Nahal.

Men and women crowded forward, jostling against Abramm, nudging
him back out of their way.

Shemm looked to Meridon. “Will you conjure the little orbs for them?”

Meridon smiled. “You can conjure them yourself, my king. Merely
remember and call them to life.”

The Dorsaddi glanced at his fellows. Silence fell once more upon the
gathering. Shemm’s gaze left Trap and unfocused as he concentrated.
Moments later a single white globe appeared, floating in the air above him.
Others followed quickly, hovering over the group, tens of them, their soft
white light reflecting off the wildly churning mists.

Out in the city somewhere, the roar-moan sounded again, more distant
than before and almost mournful. None of the Dorsaddi seemed to notice.

Japheth reached up first; the others followed suit. Golden shields sprang
into being right and left, glittering against flesh that moments earlier had been
unmarked. Power crackled in the air, thick and heady, raising the hairs on
Abramm’s neck, the feyna scars writhing like liquid fire in his wrist.

He withdrew, trembling, an icy claw pulling at his gut. People surged forward around him, and more orbs bloomed overhead. He staggered free of the
press to join the ring of those who watched in astonishment from the fringes,
drew back even from them, until he found himself with the mound between
him and the spectacle unfolding in the plaza.

Yet still that white light washed over him, close, as close as his own—

He looked down, saw the stone blazing against his breastbone, right
where that golden shield would lie should he desire it. Suddenly panicked,
he yanked it over his head and held it away from him with pounding heart.
With his free hand he groped at his chest to be sure there was no shield.

What was happening? Why was it glowing like that? Was it the proximity
to the others? It must be. He certainly wanted nothing to do with it! What
he had just seen proved it was not of Eidon. That all those people could just … just receive it like that with no regard for their worth or righteousness.
It was clearly evil.

He should throw it away now. The protection it offered him was not
worth the risk.

And yet he did not move. Already it had him in its spell. How could
something evil be so beautiful? How could it seem so right and true, so full
of goodness and light and life? How could it pull at him like this, remind him
so much of what blazed through that woven wall in his dreams, beyond
which Shettai lived and laughed and talked … with Eidon?

Suddenly he realized that even after all that had happened, he still
wanted to believe that Eidon lived, that he was good and true and gracious,
that he was indeed the ruler of all, that he still held Abramm’s life in his
hands. For a moment he glimpsed that mysterious man with the scarred face
and gentle eyes watching him, waiting for him to respond, to take the gift
that was offered….

His wrist wrenched hard, as if the worms of spore had suddenly expanded
to twice their size. He realized then that he was touching the orb with his
free hand, stroking the blazing surface with a finger, exactly as Whazel had
done, exactly as Shettai had done. Cold horror blasted through him as he
jerked it away.

Get rid of this! Get rid of it now, before it enspels you even further!

Without a second thought he slung the chain hard, the orb carving an arc
of light across the darkness and vanishing.

He stared after it, shaking and panting, aghast at what he had almost
done-and even so, fighting the irrational urge to run after it. Reeling from
the waves of grinding pain that throbbed out of his left side, he swallowed
down bile and fought to stay standing, his limbs wobbling like gelatin. He
still hadn’t washed off the veren’s poison, and there was the wound the beast
had dealt his shoulder, as well, festering already. He needed help, needed
Trap, who was the last man on earth he wanted to see now.

Maybe if he just got away, just found a place to wash himself or maybe
just to lie down for a time….

He staggered around the mound, back among the Dorsaddi again, all of
them jabbering excitedly. Golden shields glimmered on every chest, everywhere he looked.

Suddenly they all stopped talking and looked at him. He stared back through a haze of pain and confusion. Why were they staring at him like
that? And why was there suddenly all this light? Surely it wasn’t dawn
already.

He saw the eyes of those nearest him widen, saw their faces pale and their
mouths drop open as they stepped back, still staring, though not at him.