Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (67 page)

He raised himself on his elbows to see her better, grunting with the pain
it caused the wound in his side-the only one that had been bandaged. She
looked haggard, and her face was lined with grief Had she come to terms
with what he was now? Or was that part of her grief?

Not wanting her to know he had been watching her, he slumped back
into the bed, then gave a groan and a big yawn and rolled onto his side as if
he had just awakened. She jerked upright. Her blue eyes fixed upon him,
wide with surprise. Then she bolted from the room.

Not the reaction he had hoped for.

With a sigh he pushed himself back to a sitting position. After the first
wave of dizziness settled and the worst of his discomfort had passed, he began to think about how he might get up. He was still sitting there when
Trap came in, followed by Katahn, and for several moments it was smiles all
around as they congratulated one another for surviving. Then his visitors settled on the floor beside his mattress and brought him up-to-date. He had
been unconscious and fevered for nearly a week, thanks to the festering
wound in his side. During that time the rain had continued to fall, the wadis
had turned into raging torrents, and Jarnek was closed down. The Esurhite
army had been decimated, those not slain by the Dorsaddi having been
washed away in the floods. A few, Trap said, were no doubt being harbored
by the citizens of Jarnek, but for the most part the threat was gone.

`And your son?” Abramm asked Katahn. “Do you know if he survived?”

The Gamer shrugged. “In truth, I pray he did not. Yes, I know he does
not wear the shield. But Beltha’adi’s death will leave a hole in the Brogai
hierarchy, and my son …”

“Is heir to the position,” Abramm said.

Katahn nodded.

For a moment they all sat in silence, contemplating the repercussions of
that reality. Then Trap said, “Well, I’ve learned one thing these last two years,
and that’s that you never know when a man will change his mind about the
truth.” His glance darted to the shield on Abramm’s chest, and his grin
returned. “I’ve stared at that thing for five days now, and I still can’t believe
you actually did it. And these tales I’ve been hearing about your great faceoff with Beltha’adi-“

“It wasn’t my face-off,” Abramm interrupted. “It was Eidon’s. All I did
was watch.”

Trap cocked a brow as his gaze slid over Abramm’s bared and battered
torso. “I’d say you did a little more than watch.”

“I have never seen a man fight like he did,” Katahn said gravely.

“Nor I,” came a new voice from the doorway. King Shemm stood in the
arch, smiling at him. “It is good to see you awake, my friend.”

The other two scrambled to their feet, but when Abramm started to do
likewise Shemm waved him down. ‘As king of Kiriath, are you not my
equal?”

“I am not the king of Kiriath, Great One,” Abramm said. “Nor am I ever
likely to be.”

“I have heard differently.” Shemm settled on a pillow, waving the other men back down beside him. He fixed his dark eyes upon Abramm. “We
always thought the three kings would be Dorsaddi. But Sheleft’Ai proves
time and again that he will not be constrained by our narrow ways of thinking.” He paused, still studying Abramm, then returned to the conversation
his arrival had interrupted. “My friend, you fought as if the hand of Sheleft’Ai
was on you.”

“It was,” Abramm said firmly. “I would never have succeeded otherwise.”

“I believe you. But…” Shemm turned to Trap. “Did you not say one
newly changed could not use the power?”

Trap cocked a brow at them, then turned to Abramm. “Conjure us a
kelistar, my friend.”

A kelistar?”

Trap lifted a hand, and the familiar palm-sized orb floated at his fingertips.

Abramm frowned, looking from one to the other of them. He tried thinking of it, as he had done to produce the Star of Life for Cooper, but nothing
happened. Finally he shook his head and shrugged. “I give up. What do I do?”

“I don’t understand,” Shemm said.

Trap laughed softly. As you just pointed out, my friend, Sheleft’Ai is not
bound by our beliefs of what he can and cannot do, what he will and will not
do. Generally it is true that one cannot use the power without knowledge
and practice. But that does not mean he cannot use us-any time and any
way he wishes. In fact, I think sometimes he enjoys using those we least
expect him to.”

“‘He uses the simple to shame the wise,’” Abramm quoted.

“Exactly.” Trap grinned. “So don’t let it go to your head. I daresay it’ll be
a long time before you experience anything like that again-if ever.”

After that there was a great deal of catching up to do, each man with his
own part of the story to relate. Of course, the others were all familiar with
their side of things, but none knew just how Abramm had been turned in his
headlong flight from truth. It was in the telling of that story that he realized
Carissa had not returned.

Not until the next day, when he insisted he was sufficiently mended to be
up and walking-and proceeded to prove it-did he see her again, seated by
one of the windows of the upper gallery along the Wadi Juba. She was staring
at the rain, a look of unutterable sorrow on her face. He started toward her,
but the moment she saw him, she leaped up and fled.

Trap told him later that she’d kept rigidly to herself since her arrival,
speaking to no one save the king, and that only because she had to. Her sole
confidant was her retainer, Cooper, likely because she did not know he, too,
wore a shield, since he had kept his conversion to himself and continued
wearing his tunic laced up.

Over the next few days Abramm tried to catch up with her, but she
always evaded him. Finally he summoned Cooper in frustration, and the old
guardian only confirmed-miserably-what was already obvious.

“She hates the world right now, Sire. And you, I’m afraid, most of all.”

“But if she would just talk to me, I-“

“She won’t.” A bitter smile quirked his lips. “She’s a Kalladorne, m’lord.
And you know how stubborn they are.”

Trap also counseled patience, and so Abramm let her alone. Fortunately
he had much to occupy him. Being the hero of Jarnek-however reluctanthe found himself drawn into Dorsaddi life and culture as if they were his
own. There was much to be done in preparation for consolidating their conquest of Jarnek once the rains stopped, and he had as much of a knack for
directing large and complicated projects as for guerrilla maneuverings. His
advice was constantly sought, his opinion solicited, his company courted.
And when he wasn’t busy with planning, he was practicing with sword or
sling or longbow, or attending Trap’s lectures on how to live in the power of
Eidon’s Light, or helping translate Katahn’s copy of the Second Word into
the Tahg.

He saw Carissa only now and then, and he tried to assure her by manner
alone that he was open to her approach, but she was well and truly a Kalla-
dome when it came to stubbornness, and she did not seek him out.

Six weeks after the rains started, the clouds rolled away, leaving a vault of
blue sky arcing over a land laced with streamlets and waterfalls. As the floodwaters receded, Jarnek opened its doors and the people emerged, reveling in
the fresh air and glorious light.

Abramm was hard at sword practice with Trap one morning when he
noticed Carissa standing at the back of the ring of spectators that always gathered to watch them. As usual, he pretended not to notice and finished the
workout as if nothing had changed. Afterward, wiping away the sweat as he
mingled with the onlookers, he made his way casually in her direction. For
once she held her ground, looking up at him expressionlessly when he stopped in front of her. Her face had grown thinner, older looking.

“You are very good, brother,” she said softly.

“Thank you.”

“Maybe as good as Gillard.” Her eyes caught on his mark and flinched
away.

Someone whistled low to him, and when he looked, Trap tossed him a
linen tunic.

“But of course, you don’t really care, do you?” she said as he shrugged
into it.

“Care?”

“About Gillard.”

He pulled the tunic down around his hips. “No. I guess I don’t.”

Her lips made a moue of distaste, and she studied the room behind him,
letting the silence stretch out uncomfortably. Finally she drew a breath and
said firmly, “I’ve come to say good-bye.”

“Good-bye?”

“The roads opened yesterday. I leave in half an hour.”

“I see.” He wiped his face again where new sweat had beaded, stealing
sidelong glimpses of her. “Where will you go?”

“Thilos, I think.”

`And then?”

“I don’t know yet.” She stared across the empty room and fiddled absently
with the rings on her fingers.

“You don’t have to do this,” he murmured.

“Yes. I do.” She stilled her hands and let them fall to her sides. “I don’t
belong here.”

“You could.”

“I don’t want to? I hate this place. I hate the land, the culture, the people…”

“These people have been nothing but kind to you since the day you
arrived.”

“Only because they hope one day to convert me? I can feel it in their eyes,
the way they look at me.”

“Carissa, half of them don’t even wear shields.”

She folded her arms and frowned at the floor. Then shrugged. “It’s what
you want, though, isn’t it? For me to join you?”

He couldn’t deny it.

“Well, I can’t, Abramm.” And now, finally, she met his gaze. `And because
of that there’s a huge wall grown up between us. A big, bright, golden wall
shaped like a shield. A wall I will never break through!” She fell silent. Then
wiped her eyes and looked away. “I feel like I’ve lost you as surely as if you’d
died.”

“Carissa, you haven’t lost me at all. Nothing has changed.”

“Everything has changed! It’s all you talk about. It’s all you think about.
It’s all you live for.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then, come home with me.”

He frowned at her.

“See? You’re enslaved as surely as you ever were.”

There was nothing he could say to that, and finally he sighed. “What
would be the purpose of my going? Gillard is king now, and he’ll not give
that up without a fight. Not to me. People would die, and for what? I have
no desire to rule. I am happy here.”

She looked at him long and hard, then turned away and wrapped her
arms about herself. “Well, I am not. I don’t belong here, and I don’t believe
you do, either, but it’s plain you’re never going to see that. So I am going.
Good-bye, Abramm.”

And before he could say another word, she walked away.

He and Trap went up to the cliff top to watch her leave, the camels snaking alongside the stream, now gleaming in the wash at the base of the cliffs.
The sky was very blue, the sun so bright they had to squint, and a hot breeze
ruffled their headcloths and beards.

“You were like her once,” Trap said presently. “Not so long ago it seems
to me.”

“But she doesn’t even want to listen.”

“Did you?”

“More than her, surely.”

“Less, I’d say.”

The head of the caravan was nearly across the arizza now. He could still
pick out his sister, swathed from head to toe in gray and covered by a blue
shade with gold fringe. Cooper rode behind her, wrapped in pale Dorsaddi
russet, oathbound, as he’d been nearly all his adult life, to keep her safe.

Abramm loosed a long, regretful sigh. “I shouldn’t have let her go.”

“She must make her choice before him just as you have, my friend. And
you must give her the freedom to do so.”

“But-“

“Do you think he will pursue her with any less vigor than he did you?”

No. Of course not. Squinting out across the arizza, Abramm watched the
caravan move into the narrow opening of the wadi that would lead them up
out of the SaHal.

“It’s frustrating, isn’t it?” he said after a time. “Knowing the truth but
being helpless to make others see it.”

“Yes.” Hand raised to shield his eyes, Trap, too, watched as the last of the
camels disappeared. Then he turned to Abramm with an ironic smile. “Sometimes, though, they surprise you in the end.”