The Shadow Within (29 page)

As they came even with the standards, Abramm was surprised to see that each bore the dragon and shield of his coat of arms, marking the place as his, in position, if not yet in actual function. Trap had probably done that, he thought as they turned into the remains of a formal gateway. The guardwall itself was of old-style sandwich construction, ten feet thick, the space between inner and outer walls filled with sand and rubble. As they rode through the gap into a world of stillness and mist, Abramm felt something stir awake inside him, a sense of something precious here, and personal.

At the same time his neck prickled with the awareness of a hundred eyes opening and fixing upon him. He thought at first it was just the result of being surrounded by a mist that blocked out sun and sky and the fortress walls he knew encircled them. But after a moment, as the sensation intensified, he knew otherwise.
Rhu’ema,
he thought as the prickle swept across his back and arms and scalp.
They know I have come. And they know what this
place is to me, even if I do not
.

The men Trap had brought up earlier had kindled a bonfire beside the old weed-grown pavement leading up to the inner ward, its guardwall mostly obscured by the mist at this distance. The shoulder-high blaze leaped and crackled, casting its amber glow across the fifteen men who had turned out to flank the road in acknowledgment of Abramm’s arrival. He pulled up to receive the squadron commander’s report of the day’s activities— happily routine—then instructed the man to continue with his work and dismounted, his companions doing likewise. Several of the armsmen took their horses as their fellows returned to their duties, two feeding the bonfire from piles of old lumber and dying griiswurm while the rest went in search of more spawn.

Abramm started off on a quick circuit of the eastern half of the yard, while Gillard, unwilling to follow in his wake, immediately climbed the ramp to the wallwalk, merry men in tow. Before long shouts rang out from above, as they hailed their friends down in the flat, making sure that everyone saw them standing up there on the wallwalk of the infamous Graymeer’s.

Abramm continued without comment around the barren yard, clumps of yellow grass crackling beneath his boots. It irked him that he hadn’t thought of going up there himself—especially since part of his intent was to show his lords he wasn’t afraid of this place. But it was too late now, and he was happy to have Gillard occupied elsewhere.

The outer ward had apparently served as little more than a barrier of protective space, and possibly as a training or storage facility. There wasn’t much here beyond griiswurm, staffid, and several large piles of stones resulting from Simon’s abortive efforts at clearing the inner-ward rubble years ago. As Gillard continued to engage in shouted conversation with the courtiers on the flat, Abramm moved on to the inner ward.

A ridged stonework ramp led up through the crumbling remains of the second gateway into mist so thick it reduced the world to a gray pocket less than ten feet wide. At its fringes a steeper ramp ascended to the left along the inner face of the inner curtain, heading for the mist-obscured eastern ramparts. A rusty cannon lay at the ramp’s foot, half buried in hard, dry ground.

“We lost control bringing it down the ramp,” Simon explained, noting Abramm looking at it. “We’d just learned they wouldn’t fire and were taking them down to the flat. This was the last. It crushed a man to death, right here.”

“And my father gave the order to abandon the place the next day,” Abramm said, recalling the accounts he had read.

“Yes, sir.”

“How’d it get buried so deep?” Abramm gestured toward their feet. “This ground looks like solid rock.”

“Probably dirt washed down from the terrace up above.”

They stood a moment more, staring at the cannon and listening to the echo of the men’s voices and the fire’s crackle drifting up from the lower yard. Then Abramm looked up, sweeping his gaze over the ghostly structures looming in the mist ahead of them, and finally fastening it upon Simon.

“We’re going to take it back, Uncle.”

“I hope you’re right, sir.”

“Let’s see what we have to do, then.”

Though they’d all memorized the inner ward’s layout, Simon was the only one to have actually lived and worked up here. Thus, he was elected to lead them through the crumbling maze of former barracks, eating halls, storage chambers, and stables that had once made up the heart of the fortress. Outside the wind picked up, hissing and hooting against the uneven stone in a way that sounded so much like murmuring voices Abramm thought he understood exactly where
that
rumor had come from. Until the words got a little too clear and personal:

You should not have come, Abramm Kalladorne. . . .Men will die because of
you . . . suffer and die. . . .

He stopped abruptly, heart slamming against his chest as he scanned the walls of mist. “Did you hear that?” he asked Trap, already close at his side.

“I hear only the wind, sir.”

“It was
in
the wind.” He had Channon’s attention now, and that of Simon and Ethan Laramor right behind him. None appeared to have heard a voice.

Go back, Abramm Kalladorne. . . . You do not belong here
.

Abramm held up a hand, stopping their talk. “There!”

Their blood will be on your hands. . . .

He looked around at the others. But Trap was shaking his head, Channon had heard nothing, either, and Simon watched his nephew with worried eyes.
It was only for me,
Abramm thought.
Rhu’ema . . . trying to scare me off
.

“Do you want to go back now, sir?” asked Simon.

Abramm glanced at him in surprise. “Go back? We’ve only just started.”

His uncle’s brows drew together, but he said no more and they continued on. The voices dogged Abramm off and on for the entire hour they walked the ruin, which wouldn’t have been pleasant in any event. Staffid virtually carpeted the ground, unfolding before their booted feet and scurrying away in constant rolling waves, crawling around and over the numerous griiswurm that lay among them. More griiswurm clung to the inner surface of every structure that still had a roof, the combined pressure of their auras so thick it was hard to breathe. Though no one else heard voices, they were all plagued by something—a rustle of fabric here, the quick, gritty rasp of a footstep there, the sough of someone breathing just beyond a gaping doorway when there was no one there. At one time or another all of them felt the napecrawling touch of unseen eyes. Weirdest of all, though, was the dog they found caged at the back of the old powder magazine. Small, gray, and shaggy, the creature made no sound until they approached it, and then it yowled and scratched frantically at the cage door, only to back away as they got close. It barked ferociously all the while Laramor worked the latch free and opened the door, then wouldn’t move until they’d stepped well away. Finally it burst from its prison and fled like a streak. No one had any idea what it was doing there, but all agreed its presence gave new credibility to their feelings of having been stalked: likely by whoever had been filling the dog’s water bowl.

By the time they returned to Simon’s half-buried cannon, all were thoroughly spooked and lost no time ascending the ramp to the wallwalk above. Free of mist, the world returned in a breathtaking vista and the bizarre sensation of the air growing lighter. As Abramm walked south toward the main watchtower rising from the fortress’s most seaward point, he affirmed his earlier supposition that Terstans would have to form the bulk of the crew who worked here—and that his own hand would have to be among them. What form that hand would take he had no idea—beyond the fact that he would have to learn how to throw the Light very soon. Impaling and burning were simply too inefficient. And too dangerous.

The watchtower would be his last stop on this tour. He’d wanted to enter it from below, but seeing it was part of the guardwall, and by that linked to the warrens underneath the fortress, both Channon and Trap had warned him off. Plus it was filled near bursting with griiswurm. Better, they said, to enter from the wallwalk, above the mist.

Simon had had enough climbing for one day and stayed on the guardwall with Laramor while Abramm ascended the crumbling spiral stairway with his two armsmen. At the top, a makeshift landing provided opportunity to take in the spectacular view of Kalladorne Bay stretching northward on the right and the headland paralleling it somewhat left of front. Most of the latter lay now beneath dark and shifting clouds, and he could see that, while the picnic pavilions had not yet been taken down, dark blots on the track leading north showed at least some of the courtiers heading for home.

Up here, beyond the range of the mist’s wind-damping effects, a stiff breeze ruffled Abramm’s hair and beard and lifted his cloak around him. Out on the bay, it had whipped up whitecaps, sending the ships scurrying for port. From this point he clearly saw the dark coloration of the deep western channel leading to the mouth of River Kalladorne. He’d known from the maps and simple logic that Graymeer’s was crucial to guarding that channel, but seeing just how much territory the fortress guns could command hardened his resolve to gain it back, no matter how difficult the battle.

A shout below drew his eyes to the men cavorting on the wallwalk near the guard tower joining the inner curtain and the outer guardwall. Gillard and his merry men dodged and thrust playfully at one another, long-legged griiswurm impaled on the ends of their blades. One man darted into the wallwalk entrance of the guard tower, then leaped out to surprise his fellow, who chased him back inside. Moments later both emerged, cackling with laughter as they tossed the griiswurm off their blades into the mist beside them.

Abramm rested gloved hands on the crumbling parapet before him and frowned at them. Then irritation turned to understanding as for the first time it dawned on him that Gillard had never grown up. His negligence as a ruler hadn’t arisen from malevolence as much as from immaturity. From not really understanding the situation, or even the way acts committed in the present— or not committed—could have profound effects on the future. He’d just gone along, day to day, reveling in his power without understanding the responsibility that went with it. Selling Abramm to the slavers had been one such act of power, and Abramm was sure his brother even now had not the least inkling of its ramifications. He wasn’t sure he understood them all himself.

Now, as Gillard played, Abramm’s gaze tracked again to the bay, to the city at its far end, shining in the sunlight, and finally to that deep channel running toward it. He glanced aside at Trap standing not far off his right hand. “I mean to take this place back, Trap,” he said quietly.

Lieutenant “Merivale” eyed him soberly and spoke no word of argument.

“There’s no way I’ll do it without Terstans, though. The job’s too big. Somehow I have to get them to volunteer without telling them openly I’m one of them.”

“I know a few people down in Southdock,” Trap said. He leaned against the parapet and glanced downward. “Maybe I can talk to them.”

“They won’t believe you. They hardly know you.” Abramm glanced down, as well. Gillard and his friends were now engaged in a contest to determine who could fling their impaled griiswurm the farthest into the mist, unmindful of the men working out of sight below them. Worse, they appeared to be using the nearby guard tower as their source of griiswurm. Frowning, Abramm told Channon to go down and put a stop to it before someone got hurt or lost.

As the captain left, Abramm returned to his earlier subject. “I have to go to Southdock myself. Attend the Terstmeet. Get to know the leaders, at least.”

Now it was Trap’s turn to frown. “My lord—you can’t.”

“I don’t have a choice. Besides, I need it for myself. Studying old notes and reading the Words again isn’t enough. I’m stagnating when I should be growing. I still can’t even kill a staffid without touching it, and . . . and I’m not getting the answers I need.”

“The Gadrielites prowl Southdock at will, sir. Much as you may hate to admit it, they are the law there. If you were to run into them . . .”

“It’s the only option I have right now.” He watched absently as Channon engaged two of Gillard’s men in conversation. “You said yourself I’d be opposed. I never took you to mean I should just back down.”

Trap released a long, reluctant sigh. “I suppose I can see if there might be some way to work it out. But—”

A ruckus erupted from the wallwalk, voices rising on the wind, loud and sharp, their words unclear, their alarm not. Channon and the other two were heading for the guard tower as several soldiers appeared out of the mist at the head of the ramp near the front wall, running along the wallwalk toward them. Simon and Laramor converged from the opposite direction, and Gillard was nowhere to be seen.

Abramm spat an oath. “He’s gone and done it, hasn’t he? Got himself lost, or Eidon knows what, and now I’ll have to risk the men to find him. I should have known better than to let him wander about on his own.”

He was about to call down that no one else was to enter the tower under any circumstances when a grit of leather on stone brought him around. And there was Gillard, standing at the top of the stairwall, grinning at them. “I didn’t know you cared, brother,” he said.

“How long have you been there?” Abramm demanded.

“Long enough.” His blue eyes drifted to the parapet now at Abramm’s back and he strode forward. “They’re such idiots,” he said, stopping before the wall to whistle and wave at his friends. He had a cut on his palm, a clean slice, bleeding freely, though he seemed not to notice it. On the wallwalk below, his men looked up in obvious astonishment and Gillard dissolved into cackles of amusement. One of them—Ives?—called up, “How did you get up
there,
my lord?”

Which only made the cackling louder.

Abramm scowled, irritated all over again. “They’re not the idiots, Gillard. You are. What in the world were you thinking to go down there like that?”