Return of the Guardian-King (2 page)

Rolland had become something of a friend on this journey. As the strongest of the men, he and Abramm were most often called upon to search for the lost, unstick the wagon, or carry extra loads—and the shared experience and responsibility had bound them together. Besides, Rolland had an easy temperament, a level head, and a strong sense of loyalty. He was a good man, and a good husband and father. If Abramm couldn’t have Trap here with him, he thought Rolland might be the next best thing.

Now Abramm turned to stare over the promontory into the stormy whiteness, relieved they had a place to escape the cold, but uneasy nonetheless. Caerna’tha was supposed to have been but a few hours’ hike once they’d left the pass. Wind gusted against his side, ice crystals stinging his cheekbones and making his eyes water as he searched for some sign of the monastery’s presence: the glint of a window, the straight line of a wall, even the dark bulk of a mountainside. But swirling white obliterated all beyond the small promontory on which they stood.

“See anything?” Rolland shouted from the other side of the horse.

Abramm shook his head. “It could be right there, for all we know.”

“An’ we could blunder off the trail and get hopelessly lost b’fore we found it,” Rolland said. As with every other man in the party, ice clotted his blond beard and brows, framing a small patch of wind-burned cheekbones beneath deep-set blue eyes. “Ye wanna help me get Pearl here up that stair now?” He slapped the mare’s flank, dislodging a mass of accumulated snow.

Abramm glanced back at the hut where the last of the women and children disappeared through the blanketed doorway. His uneasiness remained, but he could think of no reason why it should—other than the fact he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and deeply disappointed they’d not reach Caerna’tha after all. He was sick to death of snow and cold and wind and, truth be told, these people and their endless needs. If only he could—

His breath caught and he froze, listening hard. “Did you hear that?”

Rolland regarded him blankly.

“Sounded like someone screaming.” But he heard nothing more and clearly Rolland had not noticed it. Probably the wind. Or maybe another hallucination.

Though all the other huts on their journey through the pass had had linked to them a shelter for the animals, this one did not. Since the mare refused to climb the ice-slicked front stair, Abramm suggested they take her back up the trail and try leading her across the slope on a level closer to where the hut sat. But they could get her to go only a little way off the trail before she refused to go another step. Finally they had no choice but to tether her to a pile of rocks back at the foot of the front stair.

“I hate leaving her out here,” Rolland said, and Abramm marveled, not for the first time, that a man as big and strong and fearsome looking as Rolland Kemp could be so tenderhearted. He clapped his friend’s beefy shoulder. “She’ll be all right, Rollie. She’s weathered worse up in the pass.”

“I suppose . . .” Rolland shook out his own blanket and laid it over the mare as Abramm started up the stairway.

Fatigue was closing in hard on him by the time he gained the top of the slippery steps. He was reaching to push aside the blanket when again he heard the distant scream. Skin crawling, he cast back his cowl. But the sound did not repeat; instead he heard voices arguing inside the hut.

“Well, if yer friend Alaric hadn’t insisted on stoppin’ early yesterday, we’d have gone on and found the right place t’ camp.” That was Oakes Trinley, former tanner and city alderman, and the group’s self-appointed leader since long before Abramm had met them. “An’ if we’d camped in the right place—”

“He didn’t insist!” a female voice interrupted him. “You all agreed it was a good idea, so don’t go blaming Alaric for what was your decision.” Marta Brackleford, the widowed sister of Trinley’s wife, Kitrenna, was one of the few who had no compunctions about speaking her mind to him. Once married to a banker, and proprietor of her father’s printing business, she’d been an independent woman all her adult life. She’d also taken an unveiled interest in Abramm, which made him as uneasy as it warmed his heart.

Trinley, on the other hand, had disliked him from the moment he’d joined the group at Highmount.

Now, as the former alderman started to reply, Abramm forcefully stomped the snow from his boots, cutting him off. Pushing aside the blanket, Abramm stepped into the close, warm air of the dimly lit chamber beyond.

People sat or curled on the floor between piles of salvaged bedding and gear. A rope net full of murky kelistars hung from the ceiling timber. Others gleamed here and there throughout the company—most of them warmstars—while in the shadows at the back, old Totten Ashvelt picked his way through a rubble of fallen stones, filling the many chinks in the wall with dried grass from the floor. The three mothers in the group wrapped their crying children into blankets, promising they’d have all the food they wanted tomorrow when they reached the monastery.

For now only snow filled the kettle on the cooking tripod, heated by a fire ring heaped with warmstars. Trinley stood near the doorway, a stocky, broadshouldered man in an ice-caked leather greatcoat. Marta faced him from the far side of the ring of warmstars, her dark eyes flicking to Abramm as he entered. A blush deepened the pink of her wind-burned cheeks.

Trinley turned to glare at him, but Abramm made no mention of the recently terminated conversation, shrugging out of his rucksack as he informed them of the situation with the mare.

“And Rollie?” Mrs. Kemp inquired from Marta’s side. “He’s not going to stay down there with the beast all night, is he?”

Abramm smiled. The woman knew her husband well. “He’ll be up shortly, ma’am.”

She seemed content with that, but Marta gave Trinley a look of alarm.

“We’re not below the tree line yet, Marta,” the alderman said before she could speak.

Abramm had no idea what that was about and was too tired and discouraged to care. He picked his way through the clutter of people and belongings to a clear spot on the other side of the warmstar ring and settled tailor style before it. As he stripped off his ice-crusted mittens, Marta said quietly, “They told us specifically not to stop after we left the pass. To go straight to Caerna’tha.”

“And in good weather that would have been fine,” Trinley retorted. “But it’s not good weather, and anyway, if Caerna’tha was an easy walk away, why would anyone build this hut? Besides, if the wolves are rhu’ema spawn like they said, they won’t be out in this storm anyway. The horse will be fine. Stop worrying.”

Wolves . . . rhu’ema spawn . . .
Abramm stuffed the wet mittens into his rucksack and conjured his own warmstar to hold directly against his palms, thinking he should know what they were talking about but unable to make his mind focus on it. Instead, it wandered off into an exhausted haze that involved another reunion scenario with Maddie and the boys. . . .

The painful tingle of his hands returning to life brought him back to the moment. A sense of being watched and mocked swept over him. Probably with his head bent like this, the others felt freer to stare at him and exchange whispers. They’d all die now, and it would be his fault.

Not my fault. I wanted to move on
.

“But you didn’t move on, did you? And now you are stuck.”

He wasn’t sure who had said that. Were they speaking aloud? Why did everything sound so far away? He wanted to look around, but he couldn’t seem to lift his head.

“Stuck.”
Two voices taunted him in unison:
“You didn’t think you could
escape us, did you, loser?”

And suddenly he knew who they were. Rhu’ema had dogged him on the journey through the pass, knowing exactly who he was, even if the people he traveled with did not. They’d delighted in harassing him with a stream of subverbal insults and threats. He’d spent many nights maintaining the Lightshield he’d routinely conjured to protect everyone—a duty few of them knew he carried out.

Knowing they’d be forced to ground once the storm hit, the rhu’ema had come ahead to wait for him. And not just to wait . . .

He sensed other minds through theirs—dark, savage minds, full of bloodlust. Human, yet not human at all, feeling the wind and the snow as they ran toward the feast that awaited them in the heights. . . .

“NO!” The shout burst from him as he surged to his feet, drawing the startled gazes of those around him. The room whirled briefly as he stared back, struggling to understand what had just happened. He’d stood up too fast for one thing.

“Sit down, Alaric,” Trinley growled. “Ye were only dreamin’.”

Dreaming? He glanced around at the rough stone walls bathed with the warmstars’ orange glow, and at the back of the chamber he found two other lights—one purple, one green—pressed into the cracks between the stone and the slate roof, hiding from him, even as they laughed at him. For they knew as well as he did that the discovery was not one he could share.

Trinley laid a hand on Abramm’s shoulder, giving him a little shake. “Relax, man. We’re safe for now.”

But were they? Were those other minds he’d touched nothing but dream creatures? His disquiet intensified.

One of the children began to cry. Then Rolland shoved aside the blanket and stepped inside, a giant in the cramped quarters. He shoved back his icecrusted hood and looked about at them, his expression tense. “I think I just heard wolves,” he announced.

Abramm’s heart stopped. “Light’s grace!” he muttered. “That’s what I sensed!” He looked around at the people staring up at him. “This is a trap,” he cried loudly. “It’s probably not even a real hut.”

Trinley shook him again, harder. “Stop it, now! That’s enough of yer nightmares.”

Abramm turned sharply, knocking the other man’s grip loose with his forearm and forcing him back a step. “It
wasn’t
a nightmare!”

Trinley gaped at him, his long gray hair straggling over the cast-back fleece-lined hood.

“There are rhu’ema here,” Abramm said, scanning the back wall. “Ells.

They’ve worked some sort of spell.” An errant draft from the back chilled his face.

In the corner the baby whose crying had been temporarily silenced by Rolland’s entrance started up again, while the adults muttered one to another.

Trinley stepped close to Abramm again. “What the plague is wrong with ye, man?” he growled. “Are ye tryin’ to set us all apanic?”

“Of course not!”

When Abramm didn’t back down, Trinley turned to scowl at the shadows in the drafty rear of the hut. The others followed his lead, twisting round in a rustling of fabric and leather. For a moment the babe cried and the wind shrieked and the rope-slung kelistars rocked gently back and forth in the draft.

Then someone grunted dismissively. “It looks fine to me.”

More voices echoed him, and Trinley nodded. “Ye’ve done a lot for us, Alaric, but ye know ye’ve been hallucinatin’ for days.”

“I’m not hallucinating,” Abramm said. “If we stay here, we’ll die.”

Trinley’s grizzled brows drew downward. “We can’t go blundering out into that storm again. If ye fear t’ stay with us, leave. No one’ll stop ye. But I’ll cock ye on the head m’self if ye don’t stop this wild talk.”

Abramm quelled a flare of irritation, wondering what would happen if he did leave. Which of the two of them would the others follow? He snorted inwardly. As if there was any doubt. Besides, he knew he wouldn’t be able to abandon the children, and anyway, Trinley was right as far as he understood things.

My Lord Eidon . . . they won’t follow if they don’t believe me. But how can I
persuade them to believe me if they can’t see the truth? Open their eyes. . . .

More children started to cry, frightened by his mention of the ells. Their mothers assured them there were no ells, and shot angry glances at Abramm while the men glowered at him. Across the ring of warmstars, though, the widowed Marta Brackleford spoke softly to her sister. “Surely if this hut was a safe place, the Highmounters would have mentioned it.”

“So d’
you
see these ells o’ his, then?” Kitrenna Trinley asked her sourly. She brushed a wet strand of gray hair from her wind-reddened face and glanced at the rafters.

“No,” Marta admitted, looking up, as well. “But I sense something here. A crawling up the back of my neck, as if unfriendly eyes are watching us.”

Kitrenna huffed. “Stop it, Marti! Ye’ll just encourage him.”

“What if he’s right?”

“What are the ells goin’ t’ do t’ us, anyway?” Kitrenna demanded.

“Hold us until the wolves get here,” Abramm answered grimly.

Kitrenna looked up at him. “We don’t even know there
are
any wolves.”

“Rolland heard them—and so did I, earlier.”

“Rhu’ema spawn can’t travel through falling snow,” Oakes Trinley pointed out.

“I don’t think they’re rhu’ema spawn,” Abramm said. “I think they’re something else.”

“And how would ye know that?” Kitrenna sniffed disdainfully and turned back to her sister. “He just wants to get t’ the monastery as fast as he can so he can lose the rest of us and strike out fer Trakas on his own. Ye heard him the other night—he doesn’t care a pin what happens t’ us.”

The accusation stung precisely because of its element of truth.

“Indeed!?”
the ells sniggered.
“You can hardly wait to leave them behind.”

Abramm ignored them and kept his focus on the issue at hand. “How is it you even saw this place?” he asked of Trinley. “Given how far it sits above the trail, hidden by all the snow . . . I’d think we’d all have walked right past it. What drew your eye?”

“What the plague difference does that make?” the stocky alderman snapped. “I happened t’ notice it. Ye’re not the only one with sharp eyes in this group, ye know.” With a snort of disgust he raised his voice and assured everyone they’d be safe here for the night and better able because of it to tackle the forest in the morning.

Abramm glanced back at the two rhu’ema, smug and malevolent in the shadows.

“Ye know, ells bein’ here would explain poor Pearl’s refusal t’ come up here,” Rolland mused from where he stood before the blanketed doorway.