Return of the Guardian-King (66 page)

It was not a perfect plan by any means. Not one that had much chance of succeeding, nor one she liked at all, and she’d fought them on it fiercely. A queen should stay with her subjects to the end, she’d declared.

But she’d be with her subjects in Deveren Dol, her counselors had argued. And how much better to win the victory and force the invaders to give up even as they preserved not only the queen of Chesedh but also little Simon, rightful king of Kiriath. Such a victory would breathe new life and hope into all those who fought the Shadow.

And anyway, Trap had asked her—brutally—if she stayed and the city fell, could she sit behind her palace walls while Belthre’gar systematically killed every last person in the outer city trying to get her to surrender herself and her children? Better for them to flee and draw him away. . . .

Ultimately she’d agreed, and tonight she was to leave in utter secrecy, smuggled out of the city to the north along with her children, Carissa and Conal, and their combined retinue of retainers. Trap and a handful of men, meantime, would leave by a different route to destroy the corridor.

She walked slowly along the railing, eyes drifting across the sparkling kelistar lamps of her city—lit each night by her express order—intermingled with the red glow of innumerable refugee campfires. Anxiety simmered in her belly as the green on the eastern cloud flared brightly with another arrival of troops. So many threats, so many things to go wrong, so little potential for success . . .

Father Eidon, you are our only hope for victory. Please give those who remain
behind the wisdom and resolve to stay this course we have devised. Recall to their
minds—to all our minds—what we know of you, and do not let your enemies
prevail against us. I know when it is darkest, that is the time for true faith . . .
but, Father . . .
Her thoughts stuttered and veered off to the one thing that had twisted at the core of her being for months now:
Where is he? You promised.
He promised. . . .

She felt her pent-up emotion start to heave and shift, and she turned sharply from that line of thought before it swept her away. Tonight she must keep her head about her, and her emotions firmly in check, though it seemed she had been doing that for so very, very long. . . .

“Ma’am?” Jeyanne’s voice intruded into her thoughts. “Duke Eltrap is here.”

“Thank you, Jeyanne.”

She stopped, hand on the rail, eyes on the green flicker, and prayed for Trap, as well. And then for what she was about to do in the next few moments.
If this is not your will, Father Eidon . . . make it plain to me. But he
will need something, and if Abramm is not here . . .

As always, the conviction of what she was to do remained. With a sigh, she descended the stair to her apartments and entered her study. Trap stood beside the fireplace, clad in the dark woolen tunic of a soldier in the army of the Black Moon. Sword and dagger both hung at his hips, and he carried a rucksack in one hand. His expression was one of puzzlement and curiosity that she should have brought him here so late, when she’d be seeing him down in the wine cellar only half an hour hence.

“You’re sure you want to go through with this, Trap?”

He frowned slightly. “You’ve heard all the arguments, ma’am. All the reasons it must be done. All the reasons why I’m the one who has to do it.” Having helped Abramm on three separate occasions, he was the only one who had even a scrap of experience in carrying out such a mission.

“I know all the reasons.” She stopped beside the desk, laid her hand on Elayne’s old scratched valise where it sat beside her pile of books, then lifted her head to meet his gaze directly. “I also know you may not succeed. And your wife, sir, is but days from delivering your firstborn. You would desert her at a time like this?”

“He is not my firstborn, ma’am,” Trap corrected her gently. “My firstborn is Conal.”

“Of course. I didn’t mean . . .” She brushed her hand across the handle of the valise. “I know you’ll love both equally. But the fact remains—”

“The fact remains, madam,” he insisted, “they won’t let me into the birthing chamber, so there’s nothing I could do but fret, anyway.”

“What if she delivers on the road?”

At that his freckles came into sharp relief, betraying his concern about that very misfortune. She watched him shake it off and go on. “Elayne will be there. You will be there. Marta, too. And better she deliver the child on the road out in the fresh air than in this cesspool of sickness and death. Whatever happens, I must leave it in Eidon’s hands. Which I would have to do, anyway.” Some of the color came back into his face now and his brown eyes twinkled. “Who knows? If all goes well I might reach Deveren Dol before you do.”

She stood there staring at him for some time before finally turning to the valise. “Very well, then.” She opened the latch and pulled out the stiff, wiry, white fabric of Abramm’s Robe of Light. “I want you to take this.”

His eyes widened, then moved from the glistening fabric in her fingers to her gaze. “Your Majesty, I can’t—”

“It saved Ian. You were Abramm’s best and closest friend. It might save you, as well . . . and even help you in the bargain.”

He was still shaking his head. “I can’t take it. It’s his, not mine. I’d be just like Leyton, and what he took didn’t help him.”

“Leyton stole the regalia for his own use. You are not stealing anything.” She paused. “Don’t you think Abramm would want you to take it?”

He considered her words with a frown that turned to an expression of open pain as he whispered, “Madam, what if the stories out of Elpis are true?”

Stories that said Abramm had come ashore there in an Esurhite galley, with Kiriathans at his side. That the vessel’s captain was an aged warrior of the Brogai caste. That barely had he arrived when an old fisherman came to him, having found the lost regalia in his nets—crown, orb, ring, and scepter— and that Abramm knelt before him. When the old man set the crown upon his head, it had blazed with light. . . .

It was a lovely story that had resonated with truth the moment she’d heard it. But that had been months ago. If it had truly been Abramm, if he’d had the scepter . . . why had he not yet come? Why had they still not heard from him?

“Your faith in his return has kept us all, my lady,” Trap said softly. “You would abandon it now?”

“I am not abandoning it,” she said sharply. “The simple fact is, he’s not here right now. And I must make a decision: Should I take this with me to Deveren Dol, or should I give it to you? For several days now I’ve believed I should give it to you. And after all my prayers for direction, that conviction has not changed.” She lifted a brow and smiled slightly. “Who knows? Maybe he’s out there trying to shut down that corridor himself and you’ll run into him, having just what he needs to complete the task.” She held out the robe with a smile.

Reluctantly he took it, then lifted his rucksack to the desk and stowed the garment inside. “It’s not very flexible.”

“Well, it wasn’t for Ian, either, but it worked.”

He refastened the rucksack’s straps, then stood before her awkwardly. Impulsively, she stepped forward and embraced him. “You were his dearest friend, Trap Meridon,” she whispered in his ear. “And you are mine, as well. I know you will not disappoint us.”

She stepped back then. And looking grim but resolved, he gave her a short bow. “Stay safe, then, madam. I will see you in Deveren Dol.”

And for the first time he cracked her a smile. With that she dismissed him and went to finish her own preparations.

After leaving the queen, Trap went directly to the wine cellar where the others were waiting and kissed his wife good-bye, horrified anew by how very pregnant she was but refusing to torment himself with all the dire possibilities they faced. He did, however, pray for her safety and deliverance. Again.

From there he was rowed across the river to make his way alone through Fannath Rill’s crowded streets to the bolthole located midway between the river and the wall. Between the veren, the dragons, and the ubiquitous crows, he took great care not to be seen. A bolthole used to escape the city could also be used to enter it. Only once he was safely inside the tunnel did he relax.

He’d told neither Carissa nor Maddie that he was going into the Esurhites’ encampment alone, for it would only have distressed them and started another argument. But he’d long since decided he’d have an easier time of this on his own. For one thing, he was the only one who spoke the Tahg fluently and was also a warrior. And one man was easier to conceal than two.

For the first leg of his journey he walked with an exquisite awareness of what he carried in the rucksack on his back, amazed and unnerved that Maddie should have given it to him. On the one hand he was thrilled to have it. When Leyton’s men had come to take the regalia, Maddie said it must have made itself invisible somehow, for she had watched the man open the valise and rummage around in it without ever pulling the garment out. Afterward, she’d inspected the bag herself, surprised to find nothing there. Later Elayne had brought the bag back to her, astonished when the robe had reappeared in it. None of them had any explanation for its disappearance.

Now, whether it helped him destroy the corridor or not, he was honored to wear it as a fitting salute to the greatness of his dearest friend.

But he couldn’t stop thinking of those stories out of Elpis. Maddie herself had sent Katahn ul Manus to the southlands to rescue her brother and the regalia when she’d become queen. It was not unthinkable that he and Abramm might have converged on the Chesedhan king where he’d been the star of the Games in North Andol. Though the rhu’ema that had come with Leyton’s body when it had been delivered claimed he’d been killed by a common slave masquerading as King Abramm, it was very possible the thing had lied. What if the “slave” was Abramm? Then the two of them might reasonably have come ashore in Chesedh together, with the regalia in their possession. . . .

One thing was sure: Whoever he was, the man had been able to raise a sizeable army in a very short period of time. It had moved across Chesedh to Fannath Rill seemingly unchallenged, and according to recent reports it had harassed the western flanks of Belthre’gar’s great army for weeks. And harassment tactics certainly fell in line with Abramm’s preferred method of conducting a war: Cut off the logistics, irritate, annoy, befuddle, and intimidate without ever really confronting, and you would drive your enemy mad enough that when you finally did confront him, he would be too rattled to put up a proper fight.

According to the spies who had come in from among the Esurhites, Belthre’gar, at least, truly believed it was the real Abramm out there. Some said the reason Belthre’gar was so obsessed with Maddie was because he couldn’t get hold of her husband. . . .

But if it was Abramm . . . why had he not sent word? More important— as Maddie had pointed out—why had he not used the scepter? Why waste months cutting tent stays and spooking horses when he could drive them all off and be done with it?

On the other hand, that, too, echoed Abramm’s tactics.
“Never let the
enemy know your position or your intent until the time is right.”
But if he was waiting for the right moment, Trap feared he’d waited too long.

Emerging from the bolthole tunnel into a narrow gully, Trap soon found himself surrounded by Esurhites. Still cloaked and cowled, he had the darkness on his side—and the fact that most of the men sprawled snoring on the ground. As he walked by, one of the sentries asked how far he’d gone toward the wall.

“All the way,” he said in the Tahg. “They’re all asleep up there.”

The man laughed, and Trap walked on into the thick of them, praying Eidon would continue to blind their eyes. He estimated he’d have to walk about a league and a half through the encampment before he reached his destination, which should take him about an hour. It seemed, though, that he walked all night before the dark hulks of the ruin walls reared up against the brilliant green column of the corridor itself—a massive one, as it had to be. Its emerald glow bathed everything around him in green so bright it seemed like day.

Not surprisingly, the closer he got to it, the more soldiers he had to contend with—Esurhites, yes, but also Thilosians, Draesians, Andolens, and men from beyond the eastern deserts . . . the shaven-headed, pigtailed Sorites and slope-eyed men the likes of which Trap had never seen before. There were also Broho prowling solitarily among the tents and sleeping men. He always turned aside the moment he saw one of those, veering off his course so they might not pass too closely, careful never to look one in the eye.

Slowly he advanced upon the corridor, which he now saw rose from a depression in the terrain. Only the top portion of an ancient, decaying archway silhouetted against the green showed above the top of the rise ahead of him, but the unseen corona of the corridor’s power field crawled over his skin with increasing strength, confirming his fear that it was bigger even than the one on the Gull Islands.

Only when he finally reached the hilltop could he see the column’s entire length, shooting up from a weed-lined circular pavement at the center of a once-elaborate arcade built at the low point of a wide, shallow depression. The crumbling remains of the arcade sported a foremost arch still largely intact and framing the cadre of bald-headed priests standing within, chanting their incantations as they channeled their power toward the corridor. An ancient paved walkway wound up the long slope away from it, and all around sprawled scores of bodies, men sleeping off the drugged stupor they’d been put under to survive the trip sane.