Return of the Guardian-King (37 page)

This time he didn’t turn to face her but charged down the last few steps to the central pavement and out into its center. When he turned back, Rolland was between him and the oncoming dragon, swinging his staff like a bat and slamming it into the side of her head, the force of his blow reeling her backward and onto her side. Trusting that Rolland had his back now, Abramm whirled and brained one of Dugla’is’s men with his staff, jabbed another in the stomach, and had no sooner thought of what he wanted to do next when a burst of white fire leaped off the staff’s end. It hissed through the air toward where the women and children clung together wide-eyed and there formed a dome of light around them.

Rolland’s grunt, followed by a heavy thud, turned him back to see his friend rolling away from him an instant before the dragon was on Abramm himself, driving the leading, bony edge of her wing into his temple. Whiteness erupted across the world, and he staggered backward, knees wobbling, fighting to keep conscious, praying for the strength to draw himself together. The amphitheater steadied around him again, but he’d lost his staff. His wooziness vanished as the tanniym came barreling at him from the ground, leaping across the pavement with the speed of a big cat, snapping and hissing and blowing gouts of poisonous breath.

Desperately Abramm dodged and rolled away from her, the Light flickering and flaring within him as the spore invaded his flesh repeatedly. Then he saw that Rolland was up again, stepping between him and his adversary and swinging his staff with a mighty wallop. She was ready for him this time, turning aside so that his blow just glanced her shoulder even as her heavy tail swept his legs out from under him and brought him down a second time.

With nothing to defend himself, Abramm scurried back from her. He stumbled over one of the men he’d downed earlier and tore the sword from the man’s nerveless grip. As he leaped up, he found himself shoulder to shoulder with Krele Janner.

His captured friends were fast disappearing into the cityside tunnel now, the Fermikians following after them, swords drawn in a rearguard action even as the dragon took to the air again and exhaled a fine, glistening mist over them all. Abramm was gasping too hard to hold his breath and inhaled the sweet-acrid poison in a great lungful, coughing and wheezing as it seared into his chest, wooziness taking him yet again. They couldn’t last much longer.
Please, my Lord Eidon. I need your strength. . . .

And again the Light flowed through him. Eyes still stinging and full of tears, he brought two hands to the hilt of his stolen sword and braced his feet apart. Behind him the shield of Light around the women and children sizzled as the dragon’s breath hit it, and they screamed in terror. From out of the tunnel somewhere in the blur to his right came the shouts of men, angry and fearful. He saw the vague shapes of the Fermikians backing into its darkness—

The dragon hit him hard from behind, and he fell forward onto his knees as fire bit deeply into his left shoulder and spore raced wildly through his bloodstream, setting his old wrist wound and the morwhol-caused scars on his arm and face into flames of their own. He saw his wife, dancing with a tall, handsome, dark-bearded man who smiled down at her with a look of possessiveness that provoked Abramm to a rage of jealousy and frustration. The dark-haired lord looked straight at him now, his dark eyes flashing as he smiled in taunting triumph.

Abramm slammed it all down, forcing the image away and calling on the Light yet again. He bent to retrieve his sword as Rolland stepped protectively in front of him, staff in hand, searching the mist above them, though Abramm knew he couldn’t see through the Shadow. “She’s clinging to the rightmost columns at the top of the ring,” he said. Rolland’s head turned in that direction as the dragon’s yellow eyes skewered Abramm’s own.

Her laughter sounded in his head.
“That one cannot help you, little pup. He
is too slow and stupid. . . .”

The spore raced through him hot and nauseating. His left arm burned as if it were plunged in fire, but he refused to consider it. One of Dugla’is’s men stirred, pulling Rolland’s gaze away, and Tapheina hurled herself off her column. She was almost on them when Abramm erupted from his crouch, knocking Rolland forward with his shoulder as he drove his sword at the creature’s silver-scaled breast. For a heartbeat the tip caught, refusing to penetrate. Then he shoved hard, the Light rushed wildly through him, and steel overcame scale and bone, plunging deep into the dragon’s heart.

Fire blasted up his arm into the blade as violet blood coursed down it, burning as it came. He felt the dark blue of this new, stronger spore creeping into skin and muscle but refused to let it have more of him than that. The Light shot through him, a current of energy and warmth and searing illumination. He glimpsed Tersius, hanging between heaven and earth, then robed in white and seated on a throne above a vast floor of gleaming crystal. Heavenly voices swelled in powerful chorus, and a sharp, invigorating fragrance buoyed him as he floated on air. . . .

He awakened to find himself lying on the central stage where he’d fallen, his clothing tattered and stained from the effects of the dragon’s blood. Beside him sprawled a dead woman, long silvery ropes of hair splayed about her head, a bloody hole in the front of her bright blue vest. He recognized her at once and, disbelieving, levered himself onto his elbows for a better look.

“It was a shapeshifter.” Rolland’s voice drew his attention around to his offside, where the big blacksmith crouched, staring at him white-faced. He glanced first at the dead woman, then at Abramm again, his expression compounded of dread and wonder.

“Shifted back to this right after the two of you fell,” Janner offered from where he stood at Abramm’s head. He, too, stared at Abramm oddly.

“She was Dugla’is’s old boatman,” Abramm said. “I never guessed.”

“Are you all right?” Rolland asked. “Your scars . . . on your face. They’re all red.”

Abramm sat up all the way and touched the twin tracks where they ran over his cheekbone, newly sensitized from the residual spore in them having been awakened. “It’ll fade,” he said, rocking forward to stand.

“What just happened to ya?” Janner asked tightly.

“I used the Light to purge the spore she put into me,” Abramm said.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Can all Terstans do that?”

“If they’ve cultivated the Light enough to know how to let it work . . .” He glanced at Rolland, nodding at the bloody slices on his shoulder. “Speaking of, you’d better do a purge yourself, my friend.”

Abramm bent to pick up the sword, then stood looking down at the dead shapeshifter, dismayed to find in himself something that felt entirely too close to sorrow. She’d tried to kill him, after all. . . . Tanniym. Dragon spawn. They’d fled to the Aranaak when the flood had come and there adapted their creature form to the environment—so Laud had speculated. But when she had come down out of the mountains, she’d drawn nearer her dragon roots. Had that prompted the transformation? He recalled now the hump in her wolf-form’s shoulders—wings?—and how the last time he’d seen her she’d been shedding gouts of skin and fur, a white film over her eyes like that over the boatman’s. . . .

She’d shed her old form and emerged in the new.

“What was she doing with Dugla’is?” Janner wondered aloud.

Abramm met the riverman’s blue eyes grimly. “Using him. She was a tanniym, first generation. He had little chance against her wiles. And once she’d won him, I’m sure it was easy to push him into working for the Fermikians.”

Rolland was staring at him white-faced. “Is this yer . . . Tapheina?”

Abramm nodded uncomfortably, then switched the subject. “You must do your purge now, Rolland.”

“But what if they come back?”

“They won’t,” Abramm said.

“Dugla’is is surely speeding down the river as we speak,” said Janner. “Trying to distance himself so he can deny it all. And the others . . .” He shrugged. “They have what they came for.”

“Aye!” Kitrenna Trinley said sharply from across the circle. The shield around the women had dissipated as the men talked. “Shouldn’t ye be going after ’em? The longer ye wait, the harder it’ll be to get ’em back.”

“Get them back?” Abramm cocked an amused brow. “There’s only four of us, Mistress Trinley. Even if we found them, what do you think we could do?”

“Don’t count me in that four,” Janner cut in. “What’s lost is lost, and I’m not risking my own neck for a flock of idiot Kiriathans. They should’ve had more sense than to trust the likes of Dugla’is.”

Kitrenna strode swiftly across the pavement to confront Abramm face-toface. “I expect such talk from a Chesedhan,” she said quietly. “But ye claim to have served our king.”

Her glance shifted accusingly to Rolland, standing at Abramm’s side. He transferred his weight from one leg to the other. “Blast it, Kit!” he cried. “Ye’d have me abandon my own family to look for yers?”

She only stared at them, and when after a time no one said anything, young Jania began to wail, her baby girl clutched to her breast. “Oh, sweet Eidon. Ye can’t just abandon ’em—give ’em over to be slaves! Ye can’t!”

Kitrenna’s stare hardened into a glare, and she stepped even closer. “Ye would see that poor girl lost in a foreign land with her baby girl and no husband to care for ’em?” she demanded quietly. “Ye would see all of us bereft like this when ye could turn it all around?”

“How?” Abramm demanded. “What would you have us do? Blunder out there without the vaguest idea where we’re going or what we face? Not even knowing how badly we’d be outnumbered?”

“Eidon doesn’t care about numbers, Alaric!” Kitrenna snapped.

Abramm recoiled before the intensity of her anger.

“If ye will only go after ’em, perhaps
He
will show ye what to do.”

It shocked him to be reproved by the likes of Kitrenna Trinley, whom he’d never thought of as being strong in the Light or versed in the Words, but reproved he was. Because as soon as the words left her lips, he knew that she was right. Of course he had to rescue them. And if it meant putting off his anticipated reunion with his own family a little while longer, what did that matter? His friends, his countrymen, his subjects needed rescuing. And wasn’t this part of the calling? To put aside one’s personal desires for the good of those one ruled? Even if they didn’t understand who you were or why you did it? And he of all people knew that Eidon had no need of numbers.

He released a long breath of resignation. “Very well. I’ll do what I can.”

Queen Ronesca remained closeted for an entire day with High Kohal Minirth before announcing that she would trust Eidon to deliver her husband and sons, and there would be no escalation of the war efforts Leyton’s generals were requesting. In addition, she echoed High Kohal Minirth’s call for a purification of the city and its people. All the faithful should join in a week of prayer and vigils, beseeching Eidon to deliver their king from the evil one.

The Kiriathans, meanwhile, had been galvanized to action both by what had befallen Leyton—who had gotten exactly what he deserved, they said— and by Maddie’s song. All were utterly convinced now that Abramm was not only alive but would be returning any time. They told everyone the story of Maddie seeing him heading down the Ankrill at Obla—even though they knew as well as Carissa that she’d not actually seen him. Even Nott, who had made good on his desire to return to Tiris’s salon and look into the amber himself, had admitted to seeing only the ruins, though he claimed he, too, had felt the king’s presence. Since he and Abramm had never been close, Carissa found that hard to believe, but no one was interested in her gloomy refutations. Instead, they believed with all their hearts they would soon see a miracle, and it had emboldened them.

Daily they complained of the unjust imprisonment of Trap Meridon, former First Minister of Kiriath, demanding to know the charges against him, which still had not been announced. They were incensed more than ever that Leyton had taken their regalia, and one speaker after another promised a dire fate at the hands of the Esurhites for the scoundrel, thief, and liar,
that snake
Leyton
.

Daily, men—or their wives—came to Carissa urging her to seek Trap’s release. She was Crown Princess of Kiriath—she had the right.

She might have the right, but her status was not recognized in Chesedh, and so far not even Maddie had been able to gain his release. Ronesca was perpetually praying or resting or otherwise too busy to see her. Carissa couldn’t even persuade the authorities to allow her to visit Trap, though he was her own husband.

Every time she went down to see him, or bring him some clean clothing or soap or some notes from Terstmeet, they took the things but told her she could not see him.

Finally she sought out Temmand Garival, who, having been dismissed from his post in the royal cabinet, had taken Trap’s place as Maddie’s finance secretary. He assured Carissa it was absolutely her right to see her husband and offered to accompany her on her next visit.

Thus, two weeks after Maddie’s performance in Tiris’s Desert Salon, Carissa crossed the city for the fifth time to enter the prison and ask to see her husband. As always, the warden gave her egress to the level where her husband was housed, but she was forced to stop at the iron-bound door that guarded the entrance to his cell block. She banged on the door with the ladle that had been looped through the latch, grumbling at Eidon as she did it. For each time she came here it distressed her more and more that Trap should be reduced to this. And more that Eidon would have allowed him to be arrested just when she had come to her senses and was about to make things right between them.
How could you do this to me? And worse, to him?
Sometimes the old bitterness and self-pity seized her with a vengeance, and she wallowed into thoughts of how he never blessed her. . . . Always everyone else—never her. . . .