Return of the Guardian-King (62 page)

“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, it’s healing.” A blatant lie. How easy it had been to tell it, too. That was not like him, either, but he didn’t need Rolland nosing around in all that. And what could Rolland do about it, anyway? Abramm had tried to purge it many times, without success.

“We’ll go through the Narrows,” he said. “Unless, of course, you want to rush back to Chesedh and see if you can all kill yourselves there.”

“We have sworn our lives to you, sir. We will go with you.”

Abramm stared at them all, wanting to lash out at them so that he could make them all go away. Except he knew it wouldn’t work. Which made him angrier than ever. So he went back to his cabin and sat there alone for most of the night, rubbing at the pain in his side.

————

Two months after she was supposed to have married Tiris ul Sadek, Queen Madeleine and her retainers arrived late one night at the palace in Fannath Rill, having fled the royal residence in Peregris just as Esurhite battering rams were crashing through its front gates. Now, after twenty-four hours straight in the saddle, they were safe, but exhausted—and still in a communal state of shock. No one spoke as the guards escorted the queen and her ladies to the royal apartments, where she dismissed them and sent Marta off to her own quarters, as well. She let Jeyanne take her smoke-impregnated travel cloak and gloves but waved aside any further ministrations and strolled to the great, multi-paneled window in her receiving chamber.

The eastern sectors of Fannath Rill sprawled before her, the dark lines of roofs and walls and trees limned by the twinkle of the kelistar streetlamps. Most of its citizens were asleep at this hour, and it was quiet, peaceful, and safe. But for how long?

Tired as she was, she was too agitated to even consider sleeping. And too sore. Her back, legs, and seat ached from having spent nearly all that time in the saddle—no comfortable coach for her. Even if they could have found one there at the end, it wouldn’t have been fast enough.

Peregris has fallen!
It seemed impossible to believe. And yet the images of the city’s burning docks and houses had been seared upon her memory, the flames leaping out the windows of the royal residence, smoke billowing skyward. It still clung to her clothes and hair, reminding her with every breath she took of the price she’d paid for refusing to marry Tiris ul Sadek.

The only thing that kept her sane was the absolute certainty it would have been worse had she not, and last week’s betrayal had shown her that beyond all doubt.

The very night before the wedding, she’d called him to her quarters and told him she wouldn’t marry him, despite her promise, despite the humiliation he would endure, despite the shock and anger she knew her decision would provoke amongst her own people. She’d trembled as she’d told him, fearing his reaction, but he’d received her decision with his customary poise.

He’d nodded, smiled ruefully, and confessed he’d suspected she might back out on him. Then he’d given her a gentle warning:
“You’ve thrown your
lot with Abramm, then. I hope for your sake he really is out there and will return
in time to save you. . . .”
With that he had taken his leave. In the morning, he was gone, his villa abandoned. But in the harbor at Peregris, twenty galley ships had remained to help defend the realm from the coming Esurhite plague—a gift of parting and affection, he’d claimed.

It was a gift that had filled her with terrible anguish and second thoughts at the time, making her doubt her own sanity more than ever.

Not long after that, the Esurhites had sent in their emissaries, and when she’d refused to receive them, they had launched their first attack on Peregris. For two months the Chesedhan navy had resisted them, helped immeasurably by Tiris’s galley ships. The skill, bravery, and tactical experience of their crews had made them the foundation of the Chesedhan commanders’ defensive strategy. But then, just when they were most needed, as the Esurhites prepared to launch their biggest assault yet, the galleys disappeared in the night without a word. Their former allies were left unprepared, out of position, and devastatingly vulnerable. Chesedh lost more than half her fleet the next morning.

Six days later the enemy’s battering ram had stove in gates at the royal residence in Peregris, even as Maddie and her company were fleeing north.

Having foreseen the inevitable, her generals had sent many of the troops northward, to establish defensive positions up the river and at other points along the southern edge of the Fairiron Plain, most notably at the locks on the Silver Cascades. They might have as much as a month before the enemy broke through there. But she didn’t want to think that far ahead. What point in that if it never happened?
Surely Abramm will have returned by then
.

The whisper of footsteps behind her alerted her to Lord Garival’s arrival. She’d been expecting him and turned from the window to face him.

Seeing her, he stopped. “So,” he said. “Peregris has fallen.”

“Yes.”

“And Tiris’s ships abandoned you.”

“At the worst possible time. I believe it was deliberate.”

Garival snorted and came farther into the room. “Could you expect any differently after what you did to him?”

“For a man who professed to love me? Yes. He knew my struggles.”

“Abramm is not coming back, madam,” Garival said flatly.

She stared at him, refusing to engage, a flush of anger rising in her breast.

He shook his head. “I can only give thanks you told him the night before the ceremony rather than leaving him to stand alone at the altar in front of everyone.”

His expression still bore traces of the hurt and confusion he and all the other courtiers had felt when the news had come out that day. The Kirikhal swathed in its ribbons and flowers, the people who had camped in the streets overnight for a good spot all standing there as the most minor members of the wedding party proceeded up the route . . . and that was all. Guards had ridden behind them to announce there would be no wedding after all and everyone should go home.

No one understood. Even now, almost two months later.

No one but herself. And Tiris.

The desertion by Tiris’s ships had shocked and dismayed her, but not nearly so much as it had the Chesedhan generals who were counting on him. They had believed him true to the core and that Maddie was a fool for turning him down. Even now they wanted to blame it all on her, not seeing that he’d never been true. Not even close to guessing what she feared he really was.

A far greater enemy even than Belthre’gar.

“I’m surprised he didn’t fire on us himself,” Garival said after a few moments of silence.

Maddie sighed and began to strip off her gloves. “We’ve been through this, sir. You have expressed your disappointment in my decision with splendid clarity—as has everyone else of note—and I do not need to hear it again.”

“I fear he will retaliate, madam.”

“I feared it, too, sir. But now I think he’s left the Esurhites to do the work for him.”

He grimaced. “You should head up to Deveren Dol, madam. With your sons. Before they come.”

“We have some time yet. And it will be hard to besiege Fannath Rill with the river providing a constant water source. Call a cabinet meeting for tomorrow morning. Late. We’ll discuss what can be done then.”

“Yes, madam.”

He left her. After a time she went and sat in the chair beside her travel bags, piled where the servants had left them, and pulled from them the small gray book of the Red Dragon, Abramm’s beloved letters behind its cover. The night she’d agreed to marry Tiris, she had cried herself to sleep, certain she had made the worst mistake of her life, but having no idea how she might get out of it. And no real reason why she should, except for want of Abramm. The next morning she sought out the gray book for the letter it contained, and for no reason she could clearly recall, she had finally begun to read it. As the days passed, her conviction that marrying Tiris would be a mistake had only deepened, like a suppurating wound buried within her, turning all her life sick with its poisons. . . .

The Red Dragon, she learned, was one of the forms Moroq chose when he went about the earth. And a beautiful form it was—lean, lithe, covered with gleaming scarlet scales that reflected the light in a glory of iridescence. It was powerful beyond imagining, keen-eyed, its sense of smell so sensitive it could detect prey leagues away. And though its breath could spew poison or fire, its conversation was the most dangerous thing about it. For like its brother the serpent, the dragon could be quiet and slippery and subtle. It could wait for long periods to get whatever it wanted, could beguile and befuddle and bewitch. . . .

It wasn’t until she saw the picture of the warrior with the breastplate and the long black braid that she thought about Tiris. For the man in the picture looked very much like him. From then on, she had begun to think of just how much the dragon motif permeated Tiris’s home and life. And when, one day in a cabinet meeting, Duke Elsingor happened to mention that the name “ul Sadek” had at one time meant “the dragon,” she had reverberated at the statement as if she were one of the great bells in the Kirikhal. It had not let her go, and she had returned to her chambers and read the rest of the book— about the dragon’s wiles, about the way he sought out power, and how he so many times came at the man through his woman. More than that, when he appeared as a man, he was—as he had been created—the most beautiful, the most talented, the most intelligent and charming of all Eidon’s creatures. Once he had been Tersius’s trusted retainer, his closest friend, his most reliable defender. . . . And in the world he could still walk about as that, if he chose. . . .

By the time she was done she could hardly breathe, horrified by the conclusions that were forcing themselves upon her.

But the next day she reviled herself as a fanatic, told herself she was just making up wild stories to justify her reluctance to marry the man when the real reason was that she wanted to wait for Abramm, as crazy and irresponsible as that was. Then Tiris had told her she was spending too much time in Terstmeet. . . .

That one remark had been the turning point, though it was not until the eve of their wedding that she’d gathered the courage to call him to her audience chamber and inform him she would not marry him after all. And in that, unleashed disaster upon her people.

Now she held the book with its precious letters to her breast and let the tears blur the room around her.
Where are you, my love? Why have we not
heard? Why have you not returned? You must know what desperate straits we
are in. . . .

It hit her then that if he did not know—or if he did know but had not yet returned—it could only be because he was in desperate straits himself. For if the rhu’ema were her enemies, how much more were they his? And how much would they oppose his return?

The compulsion to pray for him swept over her, and she fell to her knees, pleading for his protection, for his safety, for his healing—at that thought she recalled the dark thing that had lived in her father’s side, and a terrible fear overtook her. What if Abramm had been shot by the same sort of arrow that had killed her father? For a moment she almost fainted at the horror of it. Then she fought her way free, and took that to Eidon, as well.
Open his eyes,
my Father. Remind him of who you are, and who he is in you. Remind him of all
you have done and have yet to do. Of how much you care for him and us all.
Help him to see whatever it is he needs to see to be victorious. . . .

The words ran out, but she continued on, praying now for herself, for her children and those she loved, for all who wore the Terstan shield, and for the very freedom of her land and her people.

She felt the evil one’s approach before she saw it. The cold sense of it intruded into her prayers, until she lifted her head and went to the window. In the darkened city below, kelistar streetlamps gleamed amidst the yellow glow of homefires through the myriad windows of homes and inns—not so many of them now as once. A good portion of Fannath Rill’s population had already fled to the northern plateau, though soon there would be an influx of refugees as the Esurhite army moved inland.

Her eye caught on something out above the plain, a great bird, only not a bird. A veren? No. It was too big, and the wings were long, flexible . . . and featherless. She gasped. It was a dragon! Solid black, without any flicker of reflection, as if it were made of empty space winging its way to consume the entire city. She stood slowly, her mouth open behind her hands as she watched it approach, and the terror grew. So huge it was! She was but a worm before it. A helpless grub, worthy only to serve and grovel at such glory.

Though everything in her wanted to cringe back against the floor, something held her upright. The Light within her, the renewed hope that Abramm
was
out there somewhere, and the knowledge that nothing in this world was stronger than the one she served. . . .

It had something in its talons, which she did not notice until it was nearly upon her, flying low now, coming in at her at eye level. It let go its small burden as it swooped over the yard below her, where the soldiers all stood in a group staring up in silence. The burden was a man, dressed all in white, his arms and legs flailing as he fell, and she let out a cry as the great beast came right at her, the golden eyes catching her own.
“You should have gone with me
when you had the chance, my little iblis. . . .”

The wings flapped downward hard, lifting the creature’s bulk up over the tower and away. She stood there, hands clenched, shocked to her toes as the wind of its passage rushed against the window.

Tiris
.

For a moment she thought she might throw up as the realization gripped her of how close she had come to wedding him.

The ultimate betrayal. In all ways. Abramm and Eidon, both. Oh, thank you,
my Lord, that you did not let me do that. . . .

Her eyes fixed upon the men in the yard below, the soldiers clustered about the body where it had sprawled, hardly visible as white upon the white tiles. They shouted to one another in alarm, and as the torchlight glinted off the fallen man’s blond hair, new terror overtook her.