Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (3 page)

The Haverallan addressed him gravely. “Springerlan is in turmoil right now-warring factions, riots, worker uprisings. It’s been like this for weeks.
The river sectors have always been the worst for that, as you must know, and
the Procession cuts right through them. Granted, the king’s men are out in
force today, but given the size of the crowds and the rumors concerning the
political significance of your return … well, we thought it better to be discreet.”

Political significance of my return? What is going on?

Rhiad did not elaborate. Instead he held out a gray mantle similar to what
he and his Guardian companions wore. As Eldrin shrugged off his own mantle and replaced it with the gray one, the holy man continued. “We’ll have to
pass through the crowd to reach our coach. Make sure you keep your head
down.” He paused to study Eldrin intently, then added, “If anything does go
wrong, you must do precisely as I command. No questions, no hesitation. Can
you do that?”

Eldrin nodded.

Rhiad pulled up his cowl, his face disappearing into its depths. His companions did likewise, and the three of them herded Eldrin back out to the
bright afternoon. The fourth man-the too-old Novice-stayed behind.

As they stepped onto the gangplank Eldrin had his first clear look at the
square. Somber-tunicked commoners stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at
the barge. Others hung out windows or clung to the warehouse roofs. He saw
no women or children among them.

Thunder rumbled again, drawing his eye to the anvil of clouds now boiling over the escarpment rising beyond the city. It would rain before the afternoon ended. Not a good omen for the Procession.

Rhiad led him over the gangplank and onto the brick-paved bank. Bodies
jostled around him, resisting his passage. The air hung thick and close. Forgotten feelings of claustrophobia welled in him, and he breathed a prayer for
deliverance. Rhiad shoved ahead, calling for people to stand aside. Eldrin followed resolutely, staring at the Guardian’s heels. Then a red-haired man
lurched into the space between them, colliding with Eldrin and knocking him
off balance. In the moment of recovery, Eldrin found himself staring down
into a pair of shrewd brown eyes. They flicked across his features, then
returned to meet his own eyes with a significance that told him he had been
recognized.

Alarmed, Eldrin averted his face and pressed by the stranger, lengthening his stride to catch up with his guide as he braced for the cry that would
betray his presence.

His Light will be my protection….

Five steps. Ten. Twenty. Thunder growled again from over the escarpment. And still the cry did not go up. A stolen glance revealed they were
nearly across the square. Could it be the man hadn’t recognized him after all?

And then, ringing clearly over the muttering crowd, a voice cried, “There
he is?”

Eldrin flinched, sick with dread, awaiting the worst. The man went on.
“There on the bow. At the back of the group. It’s Prince Abramm?”

Bewilderment gave way to sudden comprehension-the too-old blond
“Novice” had come as a stand-in.

Other voices answered the first.

`No, it can’t be….”

“It is, I tell you. Look how tall he is.”

Eldrin plunged forward, wobbly-kneed.

More voices lifted around him, confirming or contesting the identification
as people pointed and elbowed each other. He was nearly to the coach when
someone yelled, “Go back to your Watch, pigeon? So long as Eidon lives,
you’ll never touch the throne?”

Eldrin’s step faltered. He looked around-in vain-for the speaker, then
remembered himself and ducked his head. The crowd appeared as startled at
the outburst as he was; dockworker and sightseer alike seemed held in a web
of silent astonishment. Then a rumbling arose from the front ranks, resolving
into cheering voices: “Hail Abramm? Hail Abramm?”

The rear of a dark, windowless coach loomed ahead. Rhiad made straight
for its open side door and swung up into the cab. As Eldrin scrambled awkwardly after him, he risked a glance back at the barge, now in clear line of
sight. Sure enough, the blond “Novice” stood on the foredeck with the other
Initiates.

As Eldrin’s momentum carried him into the coach his eye caught briefly
on something else-a sight that burned in his brain even after he had slid to
the far side of the thinly padded bench. The red-haired man who had
bumped into him had climbed one of the nearby hogsheads and from that
perch intently watched the holy men.

There could be no question of recognition.

The other Guardians climbed into the cab, one at Eldrin’s side, one at
Rhiad’s. The door shut with a click. Rhiad knocked on the partition behind
him, and the coach lurched into motion. The crowd’s cries swelled to a roar,
but whether angry or celebratory, Eldrin could not tell.

The coach moved slowly at first. A dim light poured through high, horizontal side slits, illumining the blank, tense faces of his companions. No one
spoke.

Eldrin stared at the wooden partition behind Rhiad, reeling with the
knowledge that something significant had just occurred, and he had not the
faintest idea what it was.

“You’ll never touch the throne.”

It made no sense. Even if he had not renounced his titles, he was born
fifth in the line of succession-no doubt further now, since his four older
brothers must have sired sons in the last eight years. He owned no land, possessed no seat on the governing Table of Lords, and stood to inherit not one
copper of his father’s wealth. To make anything of his life, he’d been
expected to enter the military and progress through the ranks. But he’d been
an inept swordsman and disinclined to pursue a life of violence. Instead he’d
followed the call to higher things, choosing religious orders.

His family had been aghast, mortified that one of their own should ally
himself with the pacifist Holy Brethren. His father had disinherited him, an
irrational form of punishment to be sure: How did you disinherit someone
who stood to inherit nothing in the first place? It did, however, remove him
from the line of succession. Perhaps that had been the king’s true intent,
though it seemed a paranoid one.

In less than two days now, Eldrin would seal his decision, progressing
from the lowliest rank of Novice Initiate to the merely lowly rank of Initiate
Brother. With seven holy stations yet to attain, he would still be a nobody
and certainly no political threat to anyone.

As the coach gained speed, his companions relaxed, and soon Eldrin grew
aware of Rhiad’s appraisal, the cool, dispassionate gaze making him increasingly uncomfortable. He tried to ignore it, glad when the holy man finally
spoke.

“Seeing you now, I understand what the fuss is about. You’re not as
brawny as your brothers, but it’s obvious you’re a Kalladorne. Excuse mewere a Kalladorne.”

Since it was not Eldrin’s place to make idle comments to or ask questions
of his superiors, he said nothing.

The coach bumped, rumbling over a rough section of cobbles.

“Not that it matters, of course,” Rhiad went on. “It’s just that most folks
believed you only entered the Mataio because there was nothing better for
you outside. Now that that’s changed, well, they get ideas.”

“What do-” Eldrin choked off the impertinent question and stared into
his lap. “Forgive me, Brother.”

Inside he writhed with incomprehension, curiosity, frustration.

“No one’s told you, have they?” Rhiad sounded surprised. “I suppose you
had no need to know.”

Eldrin looked up.

“About your father? Your brothers?”

“My father is dead.” A cold nausea dropped into the pit of his stomach.
Surely they would have told me if my brothers had died, too. But the starkly
worded message that had brought him the news of his sire’s passing had given
no details. It had come at the start of his second year, totally unexpected, for
his father had been a strong man in the prime of life. There was no mention
of how he died, or where, the lack of detail making it all the more surreal.

Thereafter he’d received little word from home and the matter was forgotten, crowded out by the realities of life in the Watch. The few letters he
did receive were all censored, of course. It was the duty of the Watch elders
to protect him from distraction so he could concentrate on Eidon.

Aarol died in the same incident as your father,” Rhiad told him. “Elian
followed three years later, Stefan six months after that.”

Aarol? Elian? Stefan? All dead? Eldrin had never been close to his brothers,
but the news stunned him all the same.

“For the last two and a half years, your brother Raynen has been king.
And he is, as yet, childless. So you see”-Rhiad smiled briefly-“you are but
a heartbeat from the throne.”

Abruptly the coach slowed, stuttering over the bricks as it slued to one
side and stopped. The Guardians sat forward, exchanging uneasy glances. A
panel slid open in the wall behind Rhiad.

“We’ve got rioting ahead, Brothers,” the driver said. Only his lips showed
through the window.

Rhiad twisted to face the lips. “Can we go around?”

“We’ll have to backtrack a ways. Uh-oh. Looks like they’ve seen us.”

“Have we passed Ridge Street yet?” Rhiad asked.

“We’re at the intersection now.”

The Guardians looked at one another again, their concern escalating.

“Do you think it’s staged?” one of them asked.

“Of course it is,” Rhiad said softly. And then to the driver, “Get us out of
here. Now. Go back to the wharf if need be.”

Turning around was a tricky procedure-backing, going forward, backing
again. They waited out the maneuvers in tense silence, flinching at the sudden cries that preceded a flurry of thumps against the side and top of the cab.
More cries, more thumps, a scream of pain, another of rage. The coach finished its turning and started forward, only to stop again. A din of furious
screaming rushed around them, accompanied by the crash of breaking glass
and more thuds on the cab walls. It began to rock back and forth, gaining arc
with every cycle.

“We’ll be trapped in here,” the Haverallan to Eldrin’s left murmured.

Rhiad nodded. As soon as it goes over, we’ll open the door. Eldrin, stay
with me. Do exactly as I say.”

Eldrin nodded, heart pounding. He still had no idea what was happening-or why-but he knew it wasn’t good. The coach reached the end of an
arc and rocked back violently, to teeter on the edge of falling. The cascade of
sound outside intensified; more hands thumped along the cab’s wall, pushing
it over with a crash. Eldrin’s seatmate pinned him to the wall, which was
now the floor. As they struggled free of each other, daylight speared the dark
interior, and the other three Guardians scrambled out the door.

Eldrin was pulled up and shoved over the lip of the opening. He slid
upright off the cab’s edge to stand behind Rhiad. The three guards who had
accompanied the coach had formed a wall against the mob, brandishing long,
gleaming swords at men armed with clubs and rocks. Shielding Eldrin with
his own body, Rhiad edged along the side of the fallen coach. A tomato hit
the side of Eldrin’s head, and then the swords were overcome by the sheer
force of the crowd, bodies forcing the guards back in hand-to-hand struggle.

Rhiad shoved Eldrin sideways, then threw something small and white at
the feet of the ruffians surging around the swordsmen. A column of lemoncolored smoke erupted from the cobbles where it hit, and the front-runners
collapsed in apparent swoon a heartbeat later. As their companions recoiled in astonishment and alarm, Rhiad grabbed Eldrin and dashed for an alleyway
looming between the brick buildings on the side away from the mob.

Seeing their prey escaping, the mob surged forward again. Another egg
plumed yellow smoke, and three more men dropped. Eldrin inhaled a whiff
of sulfur, and a wave of wooziness washed over him. Rhiad jerked him
onward. He caught a glimpse of the Guardian’s amulet flaring red with
Eidon’s protective light, saw men leaping toward the alleyway to cut off their
escape-and then inexplicably slowing and stopping well short of the opening, staring at Rhiad as if they were enspelled.

A chill of awe rushed up Eldrin’s spine.

His Light will be my protection….

They were going to make it!

Then a rock bounced off the back of Rhiad’s head, collapsing him to his
knees, and the frozen men surged forward again, blocking off the alleyway.
As Eldrin stepped to the Guardian’s side, something slammed into the back
of his own shoulder. He staggered forward, the rush of pain stealing his breath
and loosing a sudden, furious aggression.

A rod struck him across the back, the new pain stoking the fire. Before he
knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed the weapon on the second downswing, twisted it from his attacker’s hands, and cocked it back, ready to
swing. Only to find himself looking into a ring of shocked and frozen faces.

Their shock became his own.

I will touch no weapon of warfare. His Light will be my protection.

Horrified, he dropped the club. Holy Eidon, what have I done?

His tormentors leapt forward in a tide of stinking, filthy bodies; hands
punched him, jerked him, shoved him. The furious clamor of their voices
assaulted his ears. Nearby a horseman pressed his mount in Eldrin’s direction,
beating the rioters off with his quirt.

Then something crashed into the side of Eldrin’s head and the world
spun. His ears rang, his knees collapsed, and white light exploded in his brain,
enveloping him as the ground flew up to jar the wind from him. Sucking air,
he struggled to hands and knees, fighting to stay conscious. His hair slid forward around his face and arms like a veil, hot blood flowing down the side of
his neck and dripping onto the cobbles. Bands of fire wrapped his chest as he
braced for more blows.

Instead hard hands dug into his shoulders and closed round his legs, lifting
him upward as someone stuffed a rag in his mouth. He struggled to breathe
past the obstruction and the smothering veil of his own hair, seeking vainly
to free himself as the light in his brain flared, burning everything away.