The Shadow Within (61 page)

He had given Gillard the Eberline Gap, and he wondered if his brother had discovered yet that the only other out for him and his men—northeastward up and over the Pass of the Old Ones—was guarded by men who carried the banner of the shield and dragon. His eyes were drawn now toward that pass, hidden in the cloud cover, and anxiety rippled through him, clenching his gut again, worse now that darkness had fallen. More stories had come in about the Goodsprings Valley bear. It had killed a family at Aely, they said, and the men at Old Woman’s Well had mustered a group to hunt it down. All rumor. Nothing solid to tell him he must go. Except this dread gathering in his middle.

If it’s at OldWoman’sWell, it won’t be here for days. I’ll be done with Gillard
long before then. . . . But what’s the point of facing him, possibly even killing him
only to die myself the next day? Maybe I
should
call this whole thing off
.

The thought sickened him.
But if I’m going to die, anyway . . . Fire and
Torment! I should never have come back. All I’ve brought is trouble
.

He clenched one hand into a fist where it rested against the stone ledge.
My Lord, I am dust and I know it. And if I ever thought I was not, you have
brought me yet again to the place where it has become abundantly clear. What
am I to do? Stay here and face my brother, or try to find this monster before it
kills again? You have promised in your Words to guide us if we ask, and I am
asking. Show me the way I should go. . . .

A prickle of warning washed up his spine as his thoughts broke off, all his attention fixed upon the sound he had just heard. The rain had lessened, allowing him to hear what he had not been able to before. Maybe a sniff or the grit of a leather sole on the stone. That sixth sense of awareness, dulled and ignored by his inner turmoil, now bloomed into active seeking. His nape hairs lifted as he realized he was not alone.

Beneath his cloak, his right hand slid to the hilt of his rapier, and he turned his head just slightly. The rain cooperated, dying away almost entirely, until only a chorus of the water dripping off the turret roof remained. There—if not a sniff, then someone with breathing troubles.

He turned, flicking back his cloak with his left hand as he drew the blade free with his right and a kelistar bloomed into being. A woman huddled in the embrasure across from him, cloaked and cowled in dark blue, her blue- gray eyes wide in a pale face dusted with freckles.

Abramm frowned at her, suddenly befuddled. “Madeleine? What are you doing here?”

Her eyes left the tip of his sword and focused on his own. Their rims were red and her cheeks were shiny with tears. “I’m sorry, sir. I did not know you meant to come here. I’ll take my leave at once.” She started to move.

“No.” He slid the rapier back into its scabbard, then looked up at her. “You have not answered my question. Why are you up here? And—” He stepped toward her, conjuring another kelistar, since the first had drifted to the floor. “Are you
weeping
?”

She gave a start, then brushed her cheeks with a hand. “No! Why would I be?” But she could no longer meet his gaze and wiped at the tears again, turning partway back to her window. “I . . . I get homesick sometimes.”

She contemplated the floor, glanced at the view out her window, then made herself look at him again, a smile straining her lips. “Kiriath can be a lonely place for an outsider.”

He believed that was true, yet somehow he knew she was troubled by more than homesickness. Something warned him off pressing her, though—a light in her eyes that made his heart catch and a new anxiety stir in him.

“I know what you mean,” he said, turning back to his own window.

“But you are not an outsider. You are king.”

“Which may be the loneliest place of all.”

He stared at the camp and the clouds and the darkness. After a moment she came up beside him and for once said nothing, gazing out at the scene below. Her presence gave him an inexplicable comfort, for somehow he could feel the Light in her, buoying him against the dark weight that sought to press him down.

The rain started again, drumming lightly on the roof, and after a time he spoke. “The Words say all who bear the shield have a destiny, unique to each of us. A place prepared for us, in which we are privileged to serve. I thought being king of Kiriath was mine. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Not sure?” Astonishment raised the pitch of her voice. “How could you not be sure, my lord?”

“I may have forced it. I fear my own arrogance—”

“From the very start, has not Eidon made a way for you? Opened all the doors?”

“Eidon is not the only one who can open doors. And as for a way, a way to where? Where am I, my lady? The morwhol is killing people out there because of me.” He nodded toward the dark window. “And even if I can take it down with me, I’ll still be dead. What’s the point in facing my brother tomorrow, knowing that? Yet if I abandon everyone now, I know Gillard will not be merciful to those who have stood with me. If I had not come back, none of this—”

“No.” She cut him off. “Stop there, sir. If you had not come back, the kraggin would still be prowling Kalladorne Bay. Kiriathan Terstans would still be hiding from the Gadrielites, fearful of declaring the truth, as if it were something shameful instead of something glorious.
You
have made it glorious. And those people you see in your dreams? They are not dying because of you.”

“How do you know about the people in my dreams?”

She turned her gaze toward the opening. “Because I have seen them, too.” Tears glittered upon her eyelashes as she pressed her lips together to keep them from trembling.

“You share my dreams?”

“Echoes of them, I think. I’m sure they are not as vivid as yours.”

How much does she see? Does she know how they always end? Is
that
why
she’s weeping?
“So you know it is coming.”

“I do not
know
anything. It was feeding you images of people dying back in Springerlan before it had done anything. It may be doing that still, for all you know.” She paused. “For it to be the Goodsprings Valley bear, it would have to have grown awfully fast.”

“Mushrooms sprout from the ground overnight. And who knows what ‘fast’ is when it comes to shadowspawn.”

“Well, even if it is,
Rhiad
made it, not you. Out of his own hatred and jealousy. And your brother is ready to spill the blood of hundreds here for the same reasons. Their sins are not your fault. All you’ve done is stand for what is right.” She laid a hand on his arm, her eyes bright with fervor. “I do not know how it will turn out. But I do not believe you will fail in what you have been called to do.”

Her gaze seized his own and held it, the Light flowing out of her touch on his arm, electrifying him with the force of what she had said—and something more. Something rising in her—and in himself—that he desperately did not want to acknowledge.

Footsteps pounding up the spiral stair behind them delivered him, bring- ing them both around as Trap, a kelistar in one hand, burst out of the stairwell into the turret room. He stopped in surprise, eyes tracking from one to the other of them, as Abramm realized he’d had no idea Madeleine was up here. Then, as always, he put his personal questions away and attended to the business at hand.

“Sire, a woman claiming to be your sister is at the northwest edge of camp. In the company of two Terstans—commoners, apparently.”

“My
sister
? How could she be here?” The last he knew, Carissa was living a life of freedom and adventure traveling the world, planning never to return to Kiriath.

“Lord Simon has gone to see if it’s really her. He’ll bring her back if it is, though the messenger said she looks too bedraggled to be a proper lady of any sort.” He paused. “She’s also claiming to have information about this bear that’s been marauding up north.”

Abramm felt a frisson of dread. “She specifically said it was a bear?”

“I only know what the messenger told me.” Trap paused. “Surely if she were living in Kiriath, though, you would have known. I mean, wouldn’t she have contacted you?”

“She’s a Kalladorne, Lieutenant,” Abramm said resignedly. “And as angry as she was with me, I could very well see her avoiding me. But let’s go see for ourselves. Whoever she is, if she has news of the beast, I’ll want to talk to her.”

__________

Carissa sat on a bench in the squadron captain’s tent at the northwest edge of Abramm’s camp, Elayne and Cooper seated beside her. She was shaking from cold, exhaustion, and bitter frustration. These men were just doing their jobs, but after all she’d endured to get here, their attitudes of unconcern and disbelief were as hard to tolerate as their slow, bureaucratic ways. And the more she’d let her urgency out, the more they’d dug in their heels. Thus she was forced again to sit and wait.

She and her companions had reached Brackleford shortly before dawn to find the Snowsong had flooded and taken out the bridge, leaving the old fording barge as the only means of crossing. As they had waited to board in the predawn light, the rain had stopped, and fear was reborn. No one else seemed inclined to hurry, and by some perverse fate an extraordinary number of travelers had turned out that morning to ride the first fording. The crowded barge had barely pushed away from the shore when the morwhol bounded up.

It stopped at the water’s edge, its green eyes gone strangely dark. Even so, she’d felt the compulsion of its Command, willing her to throw herself into the water and come back to it. Cooper had held her fast even as the orb flared in opposition at her waist, and so, abandoning its efforts with her, the beast turned to the men pulling the ropes. Their action had almost stopped when Cooper sprang to take the place of one, and Elayne went to stand at the back of the barge, blocking them from the beast’s line of sight. Roaring mightily, it had wheeled away, attacked a nearby cart, savaged a gold-leafed sapling, and finally bounded into the darkness heading east.

“
It’ll go upstream to find a narrow place to cross,”
she’d told her companions. Which might just give them time to reach Abramm first. Especially if the rain started again. It had fallen intermittently, then more steadily as they neared the Valley of the Seven Peaks. By the time they were climbing the final stretch of switchbacks, they were soaked, their horses drenched, and the trail submerged under a glistening stream. But at least they were assured the morwhol had not beaten them.

When at last they’d reached the top, she’d all but crowed her joy—only to run into these uncooperative soldiers who seemed to think that noble blood somehow conferred upon one a resistance to rain and mud and exhaustion. That a princess would never, by some impossibility of constitution, show up at the edge of a military camp in the middle of the night, and certainly not as ill clad and disheveled as she. At least they had brought her to their lieutenant, who brought her to his captain, who was finally persuaded to send someone to the keep with her message, though it was her mention of the Goodsprings sheep-killer that swayed him more than anything.

Thus she sat with her companions in this tent, the rain drumming on the canvas and trickling to the ground all round them, while the captain sat behind his camp table and regarded them narrowly. Carissa had learned from the guards that Gillard and his army had arrived this afternoon, and that he had accepted Abramm’s challenge to a trial by combat for the crown. A perfectly reasonable solution for the man who had been the White Pretender, she thought. Amusement flickered at the notion, then died before the sudden, gut-clenching realization that this would be no simple who’s-best match. One or both of them could die tomorrow.

Assuming either lived long enough to even face each other.

It felt like an eternity before she heard the sound of hoofbeats and the jingle of tack, a snort or two, then the wet, smacking footfalls of riders dismounting into the mud. Two men pushed through the tent’s hanging flaps and stopped.

Carissa leaped to her feet, astonished, delighted, overwhelmed. “Uncle Simon! Lord Ethan! Surely Eidon does live!”

Simon was staring at her as if he could not believe his eyes. “Fire and Torment, lass!” he said finally. “What horrors have befallen you? And how is it you can be here and none of us have any word?”

“It is a long story, Uncle.” She stepped toward him. “I must talk to Abramm. He cannot stay here. Nor can we.”

“They said you have news of the renegade bear?”

“Bear?! It is no bear! It is a beast of the Shadow, made for Abramm, to hunt him down and kill him. And all his kin besides.”

She expected her words to surprise, expected to have to explain and defend them. And though her uncle was surprised, she didn’t think it was because he did not know what she was talking about. He glanced uneasily at Laramor, who murmured, “Perhaps we should discuss this up at the keep, Simon.”

Simon agreed they should, and soon were all trotting upward through the camp, passing innumerable tents and awnings stretched from carts, all gleaming wetly in the lamplight. Carissa was amazed at the number that had gathered here. Through Stormcroft’s outer gate they went, then the inner one, finally stopping at the keep itself, where they dismounted.

The first thing she saw when she emerged into the Great Room was the silk banner hanging from the rafters—white background beneath a golden shield surmounted by a red dragon. The sight gave her a start, for while she knew at once that it must be Abramm’s device, she also knew a man’s coat of arms was designed before he was born. That these matched so perfectly the very symbols Abramm bore on his body could hardly be coincidence.

A great blaze had been built up on the hearth, and the room had been cleared of servants and all armsmen except Abramm’s personal guard. Abramm himself stood with several lords, bent over a pile of curling maps on the long table. He straightened as she entered, and the sight of him made her breath catch, for there was no failure to recognize him this time. And they were right, he did look like Great-grandfather Ravelin.