Return of the Guardian-King (63 page)

She whirled from the window and fled through her apartments and down the stairs. The squad sent to alert her to the body’s presence met her as she crossed the Grand Salon on the ground floor, and when they told her it was Leyton—not Abramm—her first reaction was a shameful rush of thanksgiving.

He wasn’t dressed in white. He wasn’t dressed in anything, and his body had been sorely abused. Five broken-off arrow shafts buried in his chest showed the means of his death, after which his corpse had apparently been dragged about, and the eyes put out. Seeing her brother’s empty eye sockets filled her with a horror she had to swallow whole, lest it amplify the distress that already vibrated in the men around her.

Belthre’gar had already promised her this would be her own end . . . after she had watched her children die. That, however, was not going to happen. Even if she had to send them up to Caerna’tha—and she was seriously considering it—there was no way the Esurhites would get their hands on her children.

She straightened and pulled her gaze from her brother’s corpse. “Bind it up right here. I don’t want anyone seeing this. He only means to distress us by it, and I refuse to give him that advantage. We’ll entomb Leyton tomorrow in his place beside my father. With as many of the honors due him as we can muster.”

The squad’s commanding officer nodded, but the moment two of his men took hold of the body’s legs to straighten them out, a red light flowed from empty eyes and mouth and they jumped back. The light spiraled upward and hung there, turning like a tree bauble in the wind. Except there was no wind. In fact, somehow they had all come to be enfolded in a dark mist.

The rhu’ema now spoke, the sound of its voice sending the men cowering to the ground.

“King Leyton was killed in the arena,” it said to Maddie, “seeking to defend the regalia which he stole. Alas, he lost . . . slain by a common slave— one tall and blond with twin scars on his face.”

Maddie stared at the thing, gritting her teeth with revulsion.

“The slave is dead now, too, at Belthre’gar’s hand, and they threw the crown into the sea. Now they are searching for men to play the part of Queen Madeleine—to demonstrate how she will die, as well. . . .”

She conjured a kelistar, and the thing shriveled into itself, then shot up into the sky and away.

The men stood around her, staring upward, then at her, open fear in their faces. “It is gone,” she said abruptly. “Now see to my brother’s body. And do not spread this tale around. It was sent for one reason only—to frighten and demoralize us. But it needs our mouths and tongues to do that. Which means if you gossip about this, you will be helping them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, madam,” the commanding officer assured her.

She nodded and took her leave of them.

Trap came to her a little later, already informed about the dragon and the rhu’ema. “They say you will not talk of it, though.”

“I think . . . the dragon was Tiris,” she said softly, still shaken by that revelation herself.

He stared at her, struck speechless. “You’re saying Tiris is a dragon?” he asked when he found his tongue.

“Or at any rate it was Tiris’s voice I heard when it flew over.”

“Maybe he was riding it.”

“I don’t think so, Trap.”

CHAPTER

34

For weeks Abramm and his liegemen rowed westward along the coast of Chesedh. Their Chesedhan companions went with them only as far as the mouth of the Elpis inlet, where they split off, heading for the fortress of the same name at the inlet’s head. Alone, the Kiriathans continued on, eventually turning southward along the Chenen Peninsula toward the Narrows. Day after day their vessel cut through smooth, heavy swells beneath an unchanging ceiling of flat cloud cover, their rate of travel slowed dramatically as they fought the prevailing current. A slight breeze stirred the air from time to time, but there was no wind, no rain. Nor were there sun or stars to guide by. With the compass befuddled by the mist, they had to stay close enough to shore to navigate—as well as to put in to land from time to time for fresh food and water.

On the first day of the sixth week they rounded the end of the Chenen Peninsula and entered the Narrows, a network of channels threading their way through the archipelago that remained from the sinking of the Heartland centuries ago. Most of the islands were little more than rocky sentinels, but a few were large enough that people had settled on them—fishermen and traders mostly, for the Narrows was the quickest path from eastern Chesedh to both Thilos and Kiriath.

It was early afternoon as they turned into a wide bay encircled by humps of land, not an Esurhite galley in sight. Of course, there hadn’t been for weeks now, and all aboard knew why: The Esurhites were occupied elsewhere, and the rocky, cliff-lined Narrows offered few places to land—none that would be practical for the disembarkation of an army.

As they glided across the bay’s leaden surface, Abramm stood at the vessel’s prow, watching the rocky humps loom incrementally larger on their horizon. He stood there often these days, especially since he’d had to stop rowing. The captain’s cabin, which he’d made his own, was too stuffy and stifling to bear for very long. It stank, as well. Out here, even the small breeze that blew over the vessel’s prow helped to clear his head and cool his fever, and the hiss and slap of the waves parting before the bow soothed his agitation. If an attack of nausea came, he was standing right at the rail, no need for a pan that Rolland would have to empty. And out here he was free of the haunting images.

Of course, there were days the brightness and the sight of the waters passing alongside the ship were too much to bear. There were days he was too weak or sick to make it out of bed, but it was getting better.
I’m out here now,
he told himself.
We just need to get through the Narrows, away from it all, away
from him. And then his power over me will be less. . . .

He frowned at the humps before him, for though they were still a good ways off, they were disappearing behind a gathering gloom. He hadn’t thought it was that late yet . . . but perhaps he’d stood here longer than he knew. . . . That happened a lot. He’d come out at midday and would barely seem to get settled before Rolland was asking him to come in to supper. Which of course he never ate, so he didn’t know why Rolland kept asking him.

He watched the once clearly delineated channels disappear into the gloom and reflected how like his life that was—once well lit and clearly defined, now lost in gloom. He didn’t want to think about that, though, because thinking only made him hurt more than he already did. Whether it was the past or the future, nothing could be considered without pain. He’d come out on the prow to forget.

The swells were growing more pronounced, along with the increasing mist. That was odd, since usually the sea calmed as the mist dropped. In any case the boat had acquired a dismaying corkscrew roll that was not at all kind to the nausea simmering in his gut. And though he had been hot earlier, now he shivered with a sudden chill. Soon he was engaged in a serious debate over whether to stay here or return to his cabin. He wasn’t sure he could make it back before he needed the bedpan. On the other hand, the longer he stood in place the more pronounced his shivering became, and soon the everattentive Rolland, leaning now on the gunwale amidships, would be coming to ask if he was all right.

It annoyed him no end the way everyone was always asking how he was.

When it started to sprinkle and the tiny drops burned his skin so fiercely he expected them to sizzle, he hurried back to his cabin. He barely made it through the door before he began to retch. Only bile came up now, for he had nothing in his stomach. It burned his throat and nostrils, and when he was done, even repeated sips of water would not clean the burning away. As always the retching opened the wound in his side, the stench of it worse than that of the vomit. Shaking, weak and dizzy, he collapsed on his bunk, lying on his back and staring at the deck supports.

After a time, when he had regained his strength, he pulled up his shirt. Sure enough, the stained bandage had yet another dark spot at its midst as fresh spore leaked out of him. He sat up and unwound the long strips from around his midriff to reveal the black starfish living and growing under his flesh. If he didn’t get it out of his body soon, he knew he would die. But repeated purges hadn’t worked, and lately they’d left him so weak and drained, he’d given them up altogether. Now he probed gently about the edges and thought again about cutting it out.

He’d have to do it alone. Couldn’t ask anyone to help him and risk getting the blackness into them. More than that it shamed him that he should be so weak he’d not been able to remove this thing on his own. He was the White Pretender! He was the Guardian-King. He was the man who walked with Eidon. . . .

But Eidon had deserted him.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed. When the cabin stopped spinning about him, he stood and pulled his dagger from its sheath, where it hung with his sword belt from a peg on the wall. Then he sat again on the side of his bunk, knife in hand, fingers probing at the corruption as he wondered how deep the thing might go.

And all the while some part of his mind was shrieking at him.
You cannot
do this! You will kill yourself.

I’m already dead.

This is not Eidon’s will for you.

I don’t care about Eidon’s will for me.

Yes, you do. . . .

He set his jaw and clenched his fist about the knife, but then his vision blurred and he had to wait for that to pass. When it had, and he was again nerving himself to plunge the end of the knife into his flesh, the door burst open. He looked up. Rollie stood in the opening, staring at him in horror. An instant later, the big man had crossed the deck and snatched the blade from his hand, Abramm too weak to resist him.

“Eidon’s mercy, sir!
What
are ye doing?” He stepped back from Abramm as he spoke, disgust on his face, his eyes on the growth in Abramm’s side.

“It has to be cut out, so I’m cutting it out,” Abramm told him.

“Are ye out of your mind?” But then, apparently, he could bear the stench no more for he turned and disappeared through the doorway, taking the knife with him.

Gone to get someone else,
Abramm guessed.
Now they’ll all know of it. . . .
Shame gripped him hard, and he bent over the pain in his middle.
Eidon,
where are you? Where have you gone?

Suddenly the bed lurched out from under him and he sprawled forward, hitting the deck hard on his uninjured side. He heard the rush of a sudden wind outside, and the deck shot up, then twisted in a sickening roll that brought the nausea back with a vengeance. And was that rain drumming on the deck overhead?

How could that be? They were under Shadow. There was neither wind nor rain under Shadow. . . .

Again the planking dropped out from under him, and he tumbled after it. His head slammed into something hard, and the next thing he knew he was waking up, wedged between the table and the bulkhead; the floor canted at a forty-five-degree angle and an awful roaring filled his ears. Then as he watched, the deck straightened out, only to rise up the other way before swooping back down again.

He shoved himself to his feet and dragged himself from table to bulkhead to doorpost, out of the cabin and into the storm.

Rain slanted past him in diagonal sheets and drove like daggers into his flesh as white-capped waves towered above the canted deck. Katahn came slithering down the companionway to grip his arm and shout, “We’ve got to get out of the bay. Every way we turn, the waves are driving us straight into rocks. Already the wind has broken the mast and we’ve lost several of the oars. Much more of this and we’ll be helpless before it. At least in the open sea we’ll have a chance.”

“How can there be rocks?” Abramm demanded. “We’re miles off from them. You must be seeing things, old friend.”

Katahn’s expression became one of disbelief. Abramm pushed past him and made his way to the prow, where he peered into the steadily darkening storm. The wind tore at him, lashing his hair across his face, and driving the rain into his eyes. Before the water had burned, but now it felt good. So did the wind.

And there
were
the rocks, just as Katahn had said—dark, ragged teeth stabbing upward from a froth of white, waiting to rip apart the unwary and unfortunate. They couldn’t possibly be there, though, so they must be illusion. And if Katahn just turned the prow a hair, the wind and waves would carry them on by. . . .

He blinked water out of his eyes. Rolland was gripping his arm, shouting in his ear that they must turn back to the open sea or they’d be shipwrecked. Abramm listened to him with gritted teeth, annoyed now because he could see that his earlier hopes would not come to pass: They would not miss the rocks after all.

“It’s just an illusion!” Abramm yelled back. “We’ll go right through it!”

Rolland gaped at him in horror.

Abramm turned to squint again at the rocks. Yes, he saw them wavering, solid one moment, insubstantial as mist the next. “I’ve been here before. Don’t worry.”

He gripped the gunwale and grinned at the approaching rocks, which looked more substantial than ever. Suddenly doubt assailed him. What was he talking about? He’d not been here before. This wasn’t the Gull Islands, it was the Narrows. Nothing was the same. He wasn’t in the Light—couldn’t even find the Light these days. His time-sense was so unreliable they very well could have come across the bay, for all he knew. And the rocks looked awfully real and solid.

Yet the desire to keep going would not let him say the words to turn them back.

There was a man standing on the rocks. Abramm blinked water and brushed hair from his eyes and stared hard.

No. Not standing. Sitting on a great golden throne.

Tersius?

“If you do not turn back, Abramm Kalladorne, you will die on these rocks.
Many of these men will die with you, but our Father will let you go no farther
with this. Is that truly what you want?”