Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (30 page)

Abramm leapt to his feet.

The glow intensified, hurting his eyes, though he could not look away,
held by fascination as much as by fear. It thickened around the Terstan’s
form, a bright, white cloud, flashing with silver-and-gold coruscation.

Footfalls down the corridor broke the spell, and he snatched the blanket
from his own pallet, draping it over the other’s body, fearing the blaze might
burn through it as the stone had burned his tunic back in Qarkeshan. But
though the light was so strong it shone through the weave and blared up
under the folds, it did not harm the fabric itself

As the footfalls drew nearer, he dragged his own pallet around to the foot
of Trap’s and sat with his back against the barred door to block the view of
anyone standing behind him.

He had just settled when the guard reached him, pausing briefly at his
back, then moving on. Dropping his head back against the bars with relief,
Abramm became immediately aware again of the throbbing in his arm. He
was sure Trap’s Terstan magic was aggravating it, but to move would make
Meridon visible from the door. He could only sit and try to ignore his discomfort.

The night passed in a miasma of wakefulness and unpleasant half-dreams
until finally he lay awake for good, listening to the rising clatter of pans and
wooden bowls echoing from the kitchen. His arm had somehow come to rest against Meridon’s foot, which had strayed, along with half of the rest of him,
from under the blanket. He immediately noticed that his pain had subsided,
along with the nausea and fever, and that, despite his poor night’s sleep, he
felt rejuvenated. The second thing he noticed was that Meridon was
breathing evenly, that his flesh was cool and-

Abramm peered at the man’s back, face, and arms. The griiswurm welts
were no more than a network of threadlike scars, when they should’ve taken
days to heal.

A wave of gooseflesh spread up Abramm’s arms. He looked at his own
wounds. Not yet scars, they were well on their way toward healing, nonetheless. And the feyna scar was once more white and flat, when it, too, should
have taken days to subside….

Meridon stirred, then sat up groggily. “What is that awful smell?”

His gaze fixed on the relief bucket beside him, then flicked to Abramm
as memory returned. “You’re all right! I thought-since it was right over
you-they would think …” He rubbed his eyes. “I thought I heard someone
screaming, but I guess it was just me.”

Hurried footfalls echoed in the silence, and three men stopped outside
the cell, clanking chain and lock as they freed the door and swung it back.
Abramm drew his feet under him warily as they entered, startled to recognize
Katahn himself, clearly furious. When he saw the Terstan up and well, however, he stopped dead. Then he called for a torch, and when his underling
brought it, he stood staring at Meridon’s face and chest. Beside him Abdeel
gaped in even greater astonishment.

Katahn spoke to him sharply. Abdeel protested in a rapid stream of the
Tahg, and they left without another look at the northerners, Katahn’s voice
echoing angrily in their wake.

Nothing more came of the incident, though they did not see Zamath for
over a week, and when he returned he was sullen and reserved and never
worked with Meridon again. Nor, thankfully, with Abramm, either. Trap was
right about their new alliance. After that night, they were worked as a team,
back to back, shoulder to shoulder, facing at first three, then four, and sometimes even six assailants. With Trap’s added instruction, demonstration, and
encouragement, Abramm improved more rapidly than ever.

Katahn continued to summon him for games of uurka, which Abramm
won as often as his master. Every game was followed by an analysis of strategy and tactics, and he soon realized this was as much a part of his training as
what happened on the practice floor.

Shettai sat with them occasionally, and Abramm wondered if Katahn
noticed that Abramm always lost when she did. Despite her cool, condescending manner, his infatuation with her burned on. He’d learned to control
the outward evidences, at least, according her the same cool indifference she
accorded him. But always after he saw her, she haunted his dreams. Often
they woke him, and always they shocked and perplexed him. He wondered
if he was in love with her, only to remind himself that in her eyes he was but
a weak-willed, pigeon-hearted Kiriathan slave whose scrawny ribs she’d
knuckled and rejected back in Qarkeshan. He did himself no favors hoping
her opinion might change. Best to put all the raging desires back into their
box and concentrate on staying alive.

Thus the weeks passed until finally, inevitably, the morning came when
he and Meridon were taken not to the practice floors but to the beach. There
they and a handful of their fellows boarded a trio of galley ships that immediately set sail for the site of their first official competition.

The training period was over.

The razor flicked along the side of Abramm’s jaw, Zamath’s hand quick
and sure as it cut the beard from his face. Abramm stared up at the red canvas
awning suspended directly in front of his line of vision and clenched his teeth,
trying not to think of who held the blade, trying not to consider just how
helpless he was before it.

They’d arrived here in Vorta yesterday, just in time to take part in the
opening procession of warriors last night. Dressed only in their loincloths,
they had, with the other slaves who would participate in the coming contests,
been marched in a long line around the sand-packed oblong floor of the Ul
Manus Arena for the crowd to inspect. It had been a long, humiliating evening, after which they’d returned to the galleys for the night. Katahn had
slept in, but his fighters had been wakened early and already put through
their practice routines. A few had even been taken off to the arena for their
matches.

It wasn’t until after the midday meal that Katahn gave orders for Abramm
and Trap to be prepared. The guards had fallen upon them with glee.
Abramm did not know what had become of Trap but surmised it was a fate
similar to his own, for a second group of guards clustered on the far side of
the foredeck’s covered area.

Abramm sat in a straight-backed chair, his hands tied to its arms, his feet
to its legs. The whole had been tipped against a barrel, forcing his head back
and exposing his throat to Zamath’s blade.

The Broho was entertaining his audience, handling the razor with elaborate flourishes, always just in control. Abramm knew full well the man
was trying to scare him, knew also that he had succeeded. But he was not
about to show it.

“That’s a long nose he’s got there,” one of the onlookers called. “Maybe
you should give it a trim.”

By now Abramm’s command of the Tahg was good enough he could
catch nearly all the meaning-and wished he couldn’t.

A muttered comment at the back of the group sparked them all to laughter. Zamath laid his fingers to opposite undersides of Abramm’s jaw and
flashed the blade before him, close to his nose. “It is long,” he agreed. “But
without it he wouldn’t be as pretty. And Katahn wants him pretty.”

He lifted Abramm’s chin and slid the razor up his throat. Abramm
gripped the chair’s arms and fought the compulsion to swallow.

‘Am I making you nervous, your highness?” Zamath mocked. He pulled
the blade back, then drew it along Abramm’s brow, scraping away the beads
of perspiration and shaking the moisture free. The guards laughed again.

“Yelaki!” they called. “Yelaki hashta.”

Yelaki-coward. He’d heard a lot of that last night.

Zamath leaned over him and laid the razor along his other cheek. A few
swift strokes and it was clean, the blade coming to rest disarmingly against
the lobe of his left ear.

“Aye, Zamath!” one of the men called. “He could fight as well without
the ear, and it’ll be hidden anyway. Cut it off.”

“Aye, Zamath. Add the Kiriathan prince to your Dorsaddi chieftain!”

“Cut him, Zamath. Let us see him squirm.”

The razor pressed upward. Abramm kept his eyes fixed upon the planes
of pink-and-red canvas overhead, his arms aching from the death grip he had
on the chair. With effort he forced himself to breathe regularly.

Pressure mounted against the point of his earlobe’s attachment, and then
a tracery of pain laced outward along neck and scalp and cheek. Something
hot dripped down the side of his neck.

Zamath leaned close, putting his face eye to eye with Abramm, his filed
teeth gleaming against the darkness of his mouth. His eyes flashed with madness.

“Your life is in my hands, yelaki Kiriatha,” he whispered. “You are weak,
and I am strong.” His voice had grown harsher, oddly resonanced. “With a twitch I could take your ear. Or cut the vessel beneath it and watch your
life’s blood spurt across the deck.”

His breath was fetid, his lips close enough to kiss. “Have you ever seen
it?” he rasped. “I can make it shoot like wine from a barrel, rich and red with
elak’a.”

The drip down Abramm’s neck now trickled over his shoulder and chest.
Sweat beaded his brow again, and the pain was making him sick. He wanted
to look anywhere save into Zamath’s face, but that was what the Broho
wanted-cringing submission. So he stared unblinking into those mad eyes
and refused to be cowed.

“Zamath!” Katahn’s voice cut into the spell. `Aren’t you finished with
him yet?”

The slow upward cut of the knife halted, and then with a sudden final
jerk, Zamath pulled away, cursing under his breath. Abramm swallowed
hard, feeling faint, the side of his head shrieking its agony. The maniac must
have cut off half my ear, he thought. But he could not move his hands to find
out, could only sit and endure as the blood ran down his neck and over his
chest.

Katahn pressed through the dark-clad men, took one look at Abramm,
and turned on Zamath in a furious tirade. The Broho stiffened, lips skinning
back from his teeth as the light flashed off the razor in his hands. Katahn
halted. In that moment they reminded Abramm of two vicious dogs, faced
off, not quite sure who was the stronger.

Katahn stood stiff and straight, silent now, staring hard. The air crackled
with challenge, and Abramm recalled that Katahn had been a famous arena
warrior himself. There was more than the weight of past glories in that stare,
however, for suddenly the Broho deflated. Wheeling wordlessly, he flung
aside the razor, pushed between two guards, and stepped out of sight.

Katahn turned to Abramm, grabbed his jaw and swung his face sideways
to examine the ear. He fingered it gently, sending white starbursts tumbling
past Abramm’s vision.

“It’ll heal,” the Brogai lord pronounced finally. “Sew it up and get him
dressed.” He glanced in the direction Zamath had taken and muttered, “I
should cage that madman.”

Abramm breathed a sigh of relief.

Abdeel sewed up his ear and shortly released him from the chair. But the humiliation was not over. With much laughter and jeering, the guards dressed
him in white doublet and stiff, puffy breeches that ended at midthigh. An
only slightly exaggerated rendition of the latest trends in Kiriathan fashion, it
was so copiously trimmed with ribbons and lace he felt like a cloth merchant’s notions rack. High-heeled white ankle boots and a faded purple cloak
completed the ensemble.

Next he was tied down again and a short, slender man-one of Katahn’s
personal servants?-came to paint his face. White lard-textured pigment provided a mask over which the man drew thin red lips in a wide jester’s smile
and long black lines radiating from his eyes. A curly white wig secured with
a golden headband-his crown?-completed the costume.

All the while, the guards roared with laughter, mocking him with mincing
gestures and high-pitched voices and falling upon each other in their mirthmade infirmity.

Beneath the paint, Abramm’s face burned. Rage and frustration knotted
in his chest, twisting his stomach painfully. It had been like this in the arena
last night, marching before that jeering crowd, pelted with rotten fruit and
old sausages, the anger and bitterness simmering higher and higher until he
was actually looking forward to the chance to silence their laughter.

He joined Meridon by the railing outside the canopy, and if it were not
for knowing it had to be Meridon, Abramm would not have recognized him.
He also wore a dandified doublet and ballooning breeches, both emerald
hued. The doublet and under blouse were unbuttoned at the chest to reveal
his shieldmark. Like Abramm he wore a long curly wig-his was black-and
face paint, all white, with a red sad-mouth brushed in over his lips, drooping
black brows, and a small black tear inked in on one cheek.

As they eyed each other Abramm muttered, “I suppose I look as ridiculous as you do?”

“We’ll have our vindication, my lord.”

Katahn strode from the stern cabin, wrapped in furs against the day’s
dank chill, his Brogai amulet gleaming on his chest. Shettai followed, swathed
in black today with a sheer half-veil covering her lovely face. At the sight of
his Kiriathans, the Brogai lord grinned widely and nodded. “Perfect. Get them
cloaked, and take them over as soon as my boat returns.” He pulled a large
gold watch from the pocket in his tunic, glanced at it, and nodded again. “The timing should be perfect. Remember-be discreet. If you draw a crowd,
you’ll be late.”