Return of the Guardian-King (50 page)

It must have been from going through the corridor. Even if he couldn’t tell he was sporesick, he should still do a purge. As soon as he found a suitable hiding place. . . .

He had no idea how he reached the bottom of the stair, but finally he stepped off it into a sandy-floored gully. Nearby he found a rocky overhang behind a screen of gray ratbush and crawled under it, lamenting its proximity to the stair but assuring himself that any searchers wouldn’t expect him to stop and sleep this close.

His thoughts wound off into darkness and light and dreams that were much more than dreams. He was back in the Hall of Record with the pillar and wall murals, though this time there was no adjoining room, no corridor of amber. . . . Only the great pillar itself, sometimes stone, sometimes light so pure and dense it seemed like stone.

His problem wasn’t sporesickness but profound exhaustion—mental, emotional, and physical. He had gone without food and sufficient water for months, it seemed, for time had been stretched in Chena’ag Tor. . . . And yes, the corridor
had
taken a lot out of him, for it was entirely alien to his flawed and mortal flesh, which did not tolerate it well. Which would not have tolerated it at all, had Eidon not . . .

He wasn’t sure what it was Eidon had done. Shielded him in some way he could not really understand. In any case, it would take him days to fully recuperate, days he did not have, and so for now the Light enfolding his flesh and penetrating into his soul and spirit would rejuvenate him enough to do what needed doing.

And what is that, my Lord?

For answer Eidon showed him a pen of men, bedraggled, half clothed, shaggy haired, and bearded, many of them blond, all of them relatively fair skinned, though some appeared to have been burned by the sun. Esurhites stood around them, and behind them gleamed the river. . . . The scene shifted to that of a great army beneath the combined banners of Abramm’s own dragon and shield and the Chesedhan white with gold crown.

I will gather you an army with which I will vanquish your enemies and
deliver your people. All that was lost will be restored. . . .

Abramm felt the hilt of a sword against his palm and the weight of a crown upon his brow, reached up with his left hand to touch the plaited metal—

A harsh cry shattered the dream like a rock hurled through glass. He grew aware of the sand beneath his cheek again, the hollowness of his belly, and the quivering of the ratbush shielding him from unwanted eyes. Air swirled around him; a brief stirring swiftly settled. The cry came again, earsplitting in its proximity as the bushes stirred anew. He heard the hiss of feathered wings on air, and his skin crawled with alarmed recognition. The priests had sent a veren to search for him.

Rhu’ema spawn made from the bodies of men who were so far gone in their self-willed bondage to Shadow they gave themselves willingly to be transformed into monsters, veren were huge, vulturine birds, renowned for their ability to scent their quarry from miles away. They were even more sensitive to Terstan power. Which meant the creature knew where he was.

Abramm heard the returning whisper of its wingbeats as the air stirred again and the ratbush quivered. Soon it would alert its masters to his location. He couldn’t stay here, but he had nothing with which to defend himself, and if he tried to move, the thing would surely attack.

I have the Light,
he told himself firmly.
And if Eidon could get me out of that
temple filled with priests and soldiers, he can handle one measly veren
.

A second cry followed the first, deeper and more resonant, obviously from a different beast.

Okay, two measly veren
. If he didn’t want it to be three, he’d best move now.

He stood and, having his wits about him now, saw the reason for the stair he had taken: Beyond the gully lay a practice yard on the shelf that extended out from the mountainside, a great stone barracks looming on its far side. The quake had stove in the barracks’ roof and collapsed its sidewall. Though he’d have expected guards to be on duty, or at least men moving about, the place stood eerily unattended.

Cautiously he climbed out of the gully and crept along the base of the slope from which the shelf extended. Passing the struts of a wooden water tower whose tank now lay shattered on the ground at its base, he dashed across the open yard to reach the barracks. Halfway across he felt one of the veren dive through the mist at him and threw himself sideways just when he judged it about to strike. It missed him entirely, and he rolled to his feet in time to see it shoot up into the mist.

Moments later he’d entered the barracks and made his way through piles of rubble interspersed with standing walls and clear spaces. The few men in the building when the earthquake struck lay dead in their beds, half-buried by debris. Their uniforms, which had apparently been hanging on wall hooks nearby, were now mixed with the rubble. Picking through it all, Abramm was able to find for himself a tunic, britches, cloak, and pair of boots. His own clothes, of course, had been shredded by the dragons, but he was surprised to find, caught in the remnants of his ruined rucksack, the speaking stone Laud had given him—his only possession to have escaped Chena’ag Tor and the trip through the corridor intact.

As the veren continued to circle the ruined building, he sought out the armory, belting on the best of the long blades and slinging another to his back. He also fastened a dagger to his hip, strapped another to his leg, and used a third to cut away the beard that had covered his face for well over a year. Its length shocked him, for it did not seem enough time had passed for it to have grown as long as it had. For that matter, his hair was nearly as long as it had been after his eight-year novitiate as a youth.

He had no idea how long he had been in Chena’ag Tor—or the Hall of Record room, for that matter—but clearly, it had been considerably longer than it had seemed.

He scraped his beard off as closely as he could without cutting himself too badly. The job was rough and uneven, but a little grizzle under the present conditions would surely go unremarked—and might even serve to camouflage the scars on his face. His hair he tied into a tail and stuffed down the back of the tunic, trusting the helm and the cloak to conceal its color from those who might note it with suspicion.

From the armory he hurried through the rubble-filled corridors until he found the dining hall and kitchen—happily undamaged—where he provisioned himself with food and water, and even found some fat and soot with which to darken his face. When he was done, however, he smelled so strongly of mutton, he wondered if he’d only traded one problem for another. Hopefully, whoever he encountered would chalk it up to a tunic too long unwashed. And maybe it would confuse the veren.

He’d decided he must go to the city first and find out where he was. If this was Aggosim, as he’d guessed, he had to decide whether to find a boat downriver, or cross over to head for the mountains he’d spotted earlier. First, though, he had to get past the veren.

The moment he left the protection of the barracks’ portico, one of them swooped out of the darkness, talons reaching for his face. He was ready, though, and its own momentum impaled it on his blade. As its claws scrabbled at his helmet, he let the Light flare, bursting out up his arms and into the sword and flinging the veren off him as if it were made of rags. As it arced limply through the air, the second veren dropped from the mist in its own dive and ran straight into its fellow. The two tumbled earthward together.

Dashing around the barracks into a second yard, Abramm skirted another heavily damaged stone building and came to a road that appeared to lead down to the city below. Sure enough, it wound through thronetrees and a shallow ravine to emerge on the flat below, where it headed straight into the army’s demolished tent camp. From the torches that had been lit, he guessed it was full dark, though for him the light was still more twilight. There were soldiers everywhere.

So, my Father?
Abramm thought dryly,
You mean to build me an army of
Esurhites?

He thought he sensed warm laughter and set off briskly toward the encampment. As distracted and frantic as everyone was, he suspected he could pass unhindered, and so he did. Every man he encountered immediately averted his eyes and stepped aside.

He was fast approaching the riverbank when he passed a pen of men: ragged, bearded, long-haired, hunch-shouldered men, many of them blond.

Memory of his recent dream stopped him cold. Though most of these were likely barbarians, there were surely some Kiriathans and Chesedhans among them, en route to the rowing benches of Esurhite galleys waiting at the river’s mouth. Without another thought, he turned aside and, as he drew up to the enclosure, saw the prisoners were already being moved out, filing down the sloping riverbank toward a lanternlit barge moored at the end of a short dock. Like sheep they were herded into the vessel’s hold, and every man among them wore a Terstan shield upon his chest. Abramm thought that odd until he realized that while other slaves could have been transported through the corridor, the Terstans would either have died in passage or left the corridor irreparably damaged. Or both. They had to be ferried to their posts in the normal way.

He glanced across the river toward the twinkle of lights on the far bank, aware for the first time of all the flotsam that floated downstream—bushes, branches, bodies, even trees, all from the earthquake, no doubt. Faint as the far lights were, he judged it was probably a good four or five hundred strides to the far bank. It had to be the Okaido. The only Esurhite river that wide— the only river south of the Strait of Terreo. Forming the border between Andol and what was formerly Eram, now officially Esurh, it flowed westward into the Salmancan Sea. Where the need for galley slaves would be great.

As the last of the slaves stepped aboard, he hastened down the bank, and again his uniform made the way for him. Seeing him coming, the soldiers held the gate open until he had leaped aboard. No one said a word to him, nor seemed to expect anything from him, and everyone avoided making eye contact.

He couldn’t have picked a better disguise.
So I see you have this whole thing
well in hand,
he said to Eidon.
But I still don’t understand what I’m doing here.
Or where I’m going. The few men on this boat are not going to make an army.
And besides that, they are in terrible shape. And probably not fighters at all. . . .

His eye was drawn to the ruined city and the gap-faced temple, lit now by a mass of torches, and he snorted, recalling all he’d been through of late.

Yes, my Lord. I am an idiot. And I will simply look forward with great
anticipation to seeing how you pull all this off, since it is obvious that you can
.

The barge swept out into the river and the current caught it, hurrying it along beside a leaf-crowned tree floating downstream. He stood at the stern beside several of the soldiers, who stared at the torchlit temple, murmuring to one another. At first he struggled to pick out the words, for he’d not heard the Tahg for years, and these men had an accent he was unaccustomed to. But after a few moments their words grew clearer, especially when he discerned the subject matter.

“They say it was the White Pretender who came through and destroyed the temple.”

“That’s impossible! The Pretender is dead. And he was never that strong anyway.”

“What if he has come back from the dead?” The voice was full of awe.

“Come back from the dead?”

“He served the Dying God. Surely of all the gods, Eidon would know how to restore the dead. It is said he brought back his own son. . . .”

“Gods do not die.”

“Well, something came through that corridor. Something that looked like a man, all blazing with white, at first. He was tall and blond, they say, with a gold shield on his chest and a red dragon on his arm.”

“Tall, blond Terstans with red dragons are everywhere.”

“Tall, blond Terstans are everywhere. The red dragon is increasingly rare.”

That stopped the conversation for a moment. Then the first man said, “He destroyed the corridor. They’re worried the damage might even have extended out from Aggos through the corridors to the temples at Oropos and Xorofin.”

They spoke on, but Abramm pulled away, pleased his conclusions about his location were correct, and even more pleased that his trip through the corridor might have affected the other temples. That would surely cause the Esurhites a major hindrance in their efforts to take Chesedh. Assuming Chesedh still stood, which it must or they wouldn’t have been planning to funnel all those soldiers through the corridor.

In any case, now he was heading downriver on the Okaido toward the Sea of Sharss and most likely the Esurhite naval base at Tortusa, which meant he must get himself and the slaves ashore before they arrived. To find the best place for that, he needed to look at a map.

In the wheelhouse, the captain was irritatingly solicitous. Abramm attempted to squelch him with a brusque manner and monosyllabic answers, refusing offers of tea or more light—surely the blaze in the captain’s wheelhouse was bright enough!—and finally convincing the man to leave him alone. Perusing the map, he committed to memory the towns, the distances, the streams that fed into the river, and the lay of the land on either side. Eventually they would need to cross the mountains he had seen earlier, but for now, he just had to get his countrymen off this barge and out of Esurhite hands, in the right place, at the right time.

The captain informed him they would arrive at the river town Abramm had selected as a likely point of debarkation around dawn, which gave him the night to prepare. He found a place to settle on a pile of rope foreward of the deckhouse and sat down, watching the poleman at the bow as he considered how he might gain access to the hold full of slaves. But he’d not sat there long before the silence, the fresh air on the river, and the boat’s gentle rocking opened the door for his exhaustion—barely dented by his earlier nap—and he dozed off.