The Shadow Within (30 page)
Gillard waved him off. “It’s just a little harmless fun, brother. Don’t work yourself into a lather.” He turned back to the parapet to laugh some more, and Abramm thought that something seemed wrong with him. His eyes held an uncharacteristic dullness, and his words were almost slurred. Was he drunk? The notion shocked, but after a moment he realized it probably wasn’t out of character for him, or any other lord, to have brought along a flask of special vintage for the occasion.
His irritation mounted. “People have disappeared by the hundreds up here! And died by the scores. Even if you care nothing for yourself, those men—your own friends—could have been next on the list.”
“Well, they’re not, so no harm done.” Gillard stood there a moment, staring down, then his face hardened, his mood shifting instantly from amused indifference to belligerence. He pushed back from the parapet, leaving a bloody palm print, and turned toward Abramm, his eyes narrow. “You’ve always been a little good-pants, haven’t you?” he sneered, and there was no smell of liquor on his breath. “Follow all the rules. Make sure everybody does everything right. When are you going to learn you aren’t the only person who knows a thing or two?” He cocked his head and smirked. “For someone who’s so worried about the dangers in these towers, I have to wonder what
you’re
doing up
here
. . . Sire.”
Still smirking, he gave Abramm a perfunctory bow and disappeared down the stairwell, chuckling as he went. Abramm stared in blank astonishment at the space he vacated.
Beside him Trap stirred and said, “That was blasted odd, sir. Even for Prince Gillard. I wonder—”
And then the rage hit, that black current surfacing yet again, but fully this time, carrying him down the stair in angry pursuit, his hand gripping the hilt of his rapier, his mind filled with black thoughts of finally putting things to right.
It was when he passed the opening to the wallwalk and kept descending that he had his first inkling things were not right. But it was just an inkling, too weak to stand against the storm now raging in him. After all he’d put up with today, all the taunting, all the subtle jabs and hints of incompetence, this was the spark that lit the growing pile of kindling. And it wasn’t just himself he defended, it was the office that he held. No one had the right to treat their king that way. No one.
Down the stairs he flew, moving lightly, quickly, ignoring the cries of alarm that reverberated behind him and the griiswurm brushing his arms as he passed, focused only on the echo of footsteps descending ahead of him. The stairs emptied into a corridor whose slick obsidian-surfaced walls should have alerted him to danger, but, like everything else, was lost in the shadows around the bright blaze of his anger. An opening gaped in the wall to his right—a short, vaulted stairway that descended to a domed cavern, lit with emerald light. The stairway had echoed loudly with his brother’s footfalls, but when Abramm reached the cavern, it was empty, and he himself stood in one of three openings in the curved, black-ice wall. Gillard could have taken either of the others, and there was now no sound to indicate which.
The indecision stopped him where other things had not, and now he stared around the strange chamber in confusion and growing alarm. The emerald glow arose from a central pit, ringed by a low wall and presided over by a stone platform, all carved out of the same black glass as the walls. He could not see the source of the light from where he stood, but a soft chittering filled the room, and the place reeked like a poorly tended barn. On the curving wall above the pit had been painted in glowing green lines a great hairy beast with massive chest, low-slung hindquarters, wickedly long claws, and a mouth full of pointed teeth. Tiny orbs had been fixed into the wall for its eyes, glinting almost lifelike in the green light. Just looking at it sent a shiver through Abramm’s rapidly waning anger.
He was backing toward the opening he’d just come out of, when the awareness of someone behind him set him whirling about, sword point up and ready to strike.
When did I draw my blade?
The question was lost in the shock of recognition: Rhiad stood before him, unnerving in the combination of his remarkable physical beauty married to the horror that had become the left side of his form. They stared at each other a moment, then the Mataian laughed. “Now what are you going to do, my prince? Run me through? Poor, crippled ruin that I am? What can
I
do to you—the great Pretender, the killer of kraggin, the hero of the people?”
“What do you want?” Abramm said, keeping the sword up.
“What do I want?” Rhiad’s one eyebrow arched. “Vengeance, brother.”
“I have renounced the Flames. I am not your brother.”
“Not yet. But you will be. My brother in pain. My brother in sorrow. My brother in loss.”
“Are you threatening me?” Abramm stepped toward him, the blade reflecting the green light of the pit.
The Haverallan backed away. “So straight and strong and confident.” His voice rasped harshly in the dark chamber. “Just as I once was. Before you took it from me.” He slashed the air with one hand. “Put down the sword. You won’t be needing it.”
To Abramm’s horrified astonishment, his rapier fell from suddenly nerveless fingers, and he found himself unable to move, his heart about to explode from his chest with alarm.
Command?! How can this be?
And then he realized what had happened: Gillard had knocked on the door to his anger, and Abramm, in opening it, had let the Shadow have him.
“Ah, my Golden Prince,” Rhiad croaked. “You’ve made it so easy for me. Coming right into my hand after all this time of fruitless seeking. A fitting repayment, after you let my dog out.” He turned to look at the monster glowing on the wall above them. “Do you like him? You will meet him soon. And what you took from me, he will take from you.” He stepped closer and drew a fingernail down the side of Abramm’s face, hard enough to hurt, hard enough to make him want to lurch back out of reach, yet still he could not move. His mind skittered wildly, caroming from fear to fear, for as in the battle against the griiswurm aura, knowing the Shadow had him did not always mean deliverance from it. The fear that it generated prevented the Light from freeing him, and even when he acknowledged that fear held him, that it was against the Words and the One he served and put it away, an instant later he was back in it, terrified to find himself so helpless as the doubts began to gather.
What if the Light really wasn’t strong enough to fight it? Moroq had conceived the Shadow from the very start as a shield against Eidon’s Light, so his own power might grow in its stead. Couldn’t that be happening now? He swallowed hard, his heart pounding against his ribs.
Rhiad’s eyes filled his vision. “Your boy already gave me quite a sufficient amount of your hair.” He held up a length of blond braid bound into a circle, and dimly Abramm comprehended that it must have been the queue he had cut off the first day he’d arrived in Springerlan. “I couldn’t think how I was going to get the blood, though. And here you’ve delivered it to me yourself.” He paused. “Take off your glove.”
Now for the first time Abramm balked, fighting the compulsion not with the Light but with his own anger and strength of will. He had thrown off more obvious Commands before, when he’d been the White Pretender back in Esurh. Why not now?
Rhiad’s eyes flashed up to his as the voices returned.
You cannot win,
Abramm Kalladorne,
they whispered.
You do not have the skill to stand against
us . . . and you never will
.
No wind now, only the voices and a cold, inhuman presence he recognized as rhu’ema. Anger once more transmuted to fear as Rhiad repeated, more emphatically this time, “Take off your glove.”
Numbly, Abramm watched his hands obey, then closed his eyes, seeking the Light and the thoughts that would free him from this bondage. “Now give me your hand.” But again Abramm did not obey, both his arms hanging immobile at his side. He glanced up at Rhiad. Light pulsed briefly in him as he saw the other man’s good eye flick to something past Abramm’s shoulder. Too late he realized someone stood behind him. As he started to turn, something crashed into his head, and the strange room spun up away from him.
He hit the ground on his right side, gasping for breath. Dimly he felt himself rolled over and his hand seized. His eyes fluttered open in sluggish alarm. His palm lay in Rhiad’s grasp, limp as a rag. A knife flashed, and dark blood welled in a thin diagonal line across his skin as he recalled an identical cut on Gillard’s palm.
What is he doing? It must have been Gillard who hit me, but
why?
As if in answer, Rhiad laid the plaited hair against Abramm’s palm, soaking up the blood, first one side then the other, finally wrapping it in a cloth and tucking it inside his robe. “Thank you, my lord,” he said, dropping Abramm’s hand and standing upright. “You may go. Don’t forget your sword.”
He moved out of Abramm’s field of vision and spoke softly to his accomplice. “Go back the way you came. When you step onto the wallwalk, you’ll remember none of this. You cut your hand on a piece of metal and you do not know where your brother has gone.”
There was a rustle of fabric, a jingle of sword harness, and the grit of boot soles on stone. Then all was silent. It took a few minutes for Abramm to regather his wits, but it was the increasing volume of the chittering from the pit that really motivated him to get up. Thankfully, Rhiad had cut his left hand, not his right, so he picked up his sword easily, then climbed back up the stair.
He was never really sure how he found his way out, but he did so without much trouble, winding his way up the watchtower stair, past the griiswurm to the wallwalk level above the mist, stepping out through the doorway this time. Channon was over by the other guard tower questioning Gillard and the men with him, Trap staying prudently in the background. Thus Trap was the first to see Abramm emerge, and the first at his side. Then the others were there, too, exclaiming about his bloodied hand—
“Just like Gillard’s, my
lord!”
—and asking him what had happened. Once Channon heard the tale, he was determined Abramm should leave at once, and Abramm was content to oblige him. He’d seen what he’d come to see and learned far more than he’d expected.
You will fail. You do not have the skill to stand against us . . . and you never
will
.
As they returned to the outer ward for their horses, Abramm drew Trap aside.
“You have to get me to that Terstmeet in Southdock,” he said fiercely. “As soon as possible. No more arguments.”
Trap regarded him evenly for a long moment, then dropped a nod. “I’ll need some time to arrange it.”
“I’m talking days, Lieutenant, not weeks.”
A frown creased Trap’s brow. “Very well, my lord.”
I’m not ready to go south yet. Why can’t he see that? Why does he have to
keep at me all the time?
Carissa stood on Highmount’s south wallwalk, frowning at the featureless gray clouds that blanketed the sky. This high on the mountain, they hung low and close, but from the distant hills and valleys tumbling away below her, she knew they would look high and flat and unpromising. And even though they were spitting snow now, the small, hard flakes held precious little moisture, certainly not enough to heal the woes of the lowland crofters and herdsman so desperately in need of it. Not enough to block the high roads and passes southward, either. And all that had been laid down by the last storm two weeks ago had already melted off. Even the Kolki Pass was clear. It wasn’t too late to change her mind, and though Cooper had already sent Rolf and Jamison south with the pigeons, he reminded her daily that she need only give the word and they’d follow in a heartbeat.
A gust of snow crystals ticked against the flat face of the stone beneath her hands and stung her cheeks. Her fingers were starting to ache with the cold despite her woolen gloves, but she didn’t want to go back inside. She’d spent too much time inside these last weeks, what with the cold and the mysterious men lately lurking around the fortress. Her gaze dropped to the steep, grassy slope at the foot of the Holding’s high walls, a hundred yards of cleared ground tumbling down to the front line of the spruce forest that extended south and west and north as far as she could see. Berry pickers, mushroom hunters, messengers up from New Holding, even the wall guards had spotted them during the last week—cloaked riders who’d vanished into the shadows the moment they were seen. Cooper liked it not a bit, certain the men were Rennalf’s henchmen. This morning he’d pressed Carissa more strongly than ever to use some sense for once and go south. She’d refused. He’d lost his temper. She’d lost hers. They were no longer speaking.
So here she was, standing on the wallwalk between two guard stations whose men carefully avoided looking her way, alone, estranged from her friends and miserable, as always. More and more her gaze drifted northwestward to the distant shimmer of the Ruk Pul—the “River of Tears”—and the great northern plain beyond. Balmark lay just this side of that river. She could almost pick it out from here.
