Return of the Guardian-King (70 page)

He leaned toward the nexus of connections, heady with the possibilities before him, and as before, something held him back. A weak and tenuous thread, one that could easily be broken . . . A still, small voice of warning at the back of his head.

The downfall of the victor is that he lets the victory go to his head
.

Suddenly he grew aware of his own hubris. What was he thinking? Even with robe and crown and scepter—he could never claim the final victory. He still had Shadow in him, and it was not his place to tangle with Shadow. Not that way.

Tersius would be the one to destroy the Throne of Power. The only one.

And if Abramm tried to take upon himself that which was not his task . . . he would die. As would his wife and his children. It all came down to this one moment. This one decision.

And it appalled him that even after he had seen the truth and come to the clear conclusion, a part of him still wanted to try the corridor.

He stepped back, out of its green aura. “I will not do it, my Lord.”

As the words left his mouth something hit him from behind, forcing him to stagger forward, deeper into the field. The pavement wavered beneath him as a small, ratlike man scurried past him, white hair streaming in his wake.

The man vanished, the corridor vanished, and again he saw Maddie, on the ferry now, halfway across the river above the falls. She still held Abrielle. Captain Channon stood beside her holding Ian, Simon clutching his free hand. They were before and below him, far too close for comfort, zooming by beneath him: dragon sight again. It had reached them and was banking against the clouds for another pass. The initial temptation to go to them resurged.

Then he was pulled after the small man, hurtling through the column of green light, and crying out to Eidon as he went.

Queen Madeleine and her party reached the top of the Deveren cliffs three days after they’d fled Fannath Rill through the western bolthole. Passed from guide to guide through a series of wagons, barns, carriages, and ditches, they had escaped the city cleanly and met up with their grooms and horses in the foothills separating the plain from the escarpment. From then on they had made much better time.

Now, as they started up the last of the switchbacks scaling the face of the great cliff, Maddie eyed their destination eagerly. Deveren Dol loomed from the opposite bank, overlooking the Ankrill as it roared over the cliff’s edge in the magnificent Royal Falls. The castle followed the old-style architecture, all thick stone walls and windowless towers. Its few openings were high and narrow, made primarily for defense. Its highest towers stood atop a great upthrust of rock overlooking the plain below, the rest of it stairstepping down the incline toward the river that curled round its base before tumbling over the cliff. At one time those towers held a commanding view of the Fairiron Plain; now their tops plunged into the ceiling of mist that had blotted out the sky for months.

Seeing the fortress energized her. Once they reached the top of the cliff, they had only to ride down to the ferry, cross the river, and they’d be safe. Or as safe as they could be until Abramm returned.

They traveled on horseback, Ian riding with Captain Channon, and Simon with Lieutenant Pipping. Maddie carried Abrielle in a sling against her chest, and Elayne held Conal, since Carissa had enough to manage with her massive belly. They had hardly stopped since they’d left Fannath Rill, halting only briefly in a glen at the base of the cliff to sleep last night—until Maddie had been awakened by a bad dream and the overwhelming sense that they must leave.

As they approached the top of the cliff, the Light surged within her, and she looked instinctively across the plain to where the day was beginning to break, the clouds stained red on the horizon. Fannath Rill lay like a dark stain on the landscape, cut through by the gleaming silver of the Ankrill. The city walls showed up as thin white lines encircling darkness, even as darkness raged outside them. Motes of bright orange swirled above it—flaming pitch pots flung from the catapults of both sides. The battle had begun.

As she watched, the blood-red light on the distant horizon spread toward her, and her heart leaped as she realized the continuous cover was breaking up—for the first time in months. And there, north of the city, a white star appeared amidst the corridor’s green glow. A star that flickered, then strengthened, growing brighter and brighter.

Wonder swept through her, just before the first stirring of wind hit her. As she rounded the last switchback, she turned quickly in the saddle, reversing position so as not to miss anything. Shafts of sunlight poured through the widening rents, illumining a battlefield that looked like a mound of angry ants. The wind intensified, yanking at her cloak and pressing her and the horse toward the side of the trail as bushes bent flat before it.

“It’s Abramm!” she shouted at Carissa, who rode right behind her. She gestured toward the plain as her sister-in-law turned to look. “I told you he was out there! And sure as anything, Trap’s with him!”
Why else would I have
sent him out there with that robe?

She reined in her horse and turned it back to watch more easily as, beside her, Carissa did the same, and the others moved by them on the trail.

When Trap had not succeeded in destroying the corridor that first night, they had both teetered on the edge of soul-wrenching grief and despair, struggling not to believe the worst, when it seemed that was the only thing they could believe. Then she’d recalled giving him the robe and comforted Carissa with that information—for she did not believe it had been random or without purpose, and just because Trap had not done what he’d set out to do did not mean he was captured or killed. It could, in fact, mean he’d run into Abramm.

As she watched the dawn light spread and the clouds shred, exultation rose in her breast. Then a small, winged form dropped out of the misty ceiling far in the distance and soared low over the battling armies on the ground, looking as if it were spraying them with fire.
A dragon
. It vanished behind a gout of smoke, then burst into view a moment later, circling back for another pass, bright flame engulfing the field in its wake.

At first she focused on the small white light still bright and clear in the corridor’s green. Then she realized the dragon had banked away from the city to head north. Directly toward her. Abramm had won! The dragon had been defeated! Driven off. And now the only thing left to it was to come after Abramm’s loved ones.

Sick with sudden fear, she clutched Abby closer and faced forward in the saddle, yelling, “It’s coming for us! Hurry!”

Everyone else had seen it by now, and whipped their horses up the last switchback to burst over the top of the cliff and race toward the ferry. A mass of people from the town opposite the castle crowded the bank, and Maddie wondered how they could know of the dragon when she’d just seen it herself. Then someone answered her question: The Esurhites had taken Trakas several days ago and were headed downriver toward Deveren Dol.

The mist drifted around them as they forced their horses through the crowd and onto the landing, Channon shouting for the others to “make way for the queen!” When it finally registered that the queen was indeed among them, the townspeople backed away, shocked and flustered, and she dismounted. They left the horses there on the landing and hurried aboard the flat-bottomed craft, crowding on with as many of the others as could fit. There were still far too many on the landing. “Go back!” Maddie called to them as the gate came down. “Get out of sight; take cover if you can. There’s a dragon coming!”

They looked at her with incomprehension as the gate shut and the ferry moved out into the river.

“A dragon,” she yelled back at them. “A dragon is coming. Take cover.”

The ferry lurched as the current gripped it, pulling at its guide rope, as the water urged it toward the falls. They were more than halfway across when the dragon burst over the cliff top, flying so low over the river its wingtips touched the water on the downflap. As it passed over them, it lashed down with its tail, splintering the ferry’s forward railing as if it were straw, and sparking unrestrained hysterics on both boat and shore.

Screaming in full-blown panic, people dove into the river after the ferry, while others raced back toward the town buildings. Maddie kept her eyes on the dragon as it reached the bend in the river and flapped upward into the churning, shifting mist. Those around her jibbered in terror. Some threw themselves overboard to swim ashore, forgetting the current, which promptly seized them and carried them over the falls. Ian clutched Captain Channon’s neck, his face buried in the man’s shoulder, and she thought he was crying, but it was hard to tell with all the other shrieking. Lieutenant Pipping held Simon now, the boy pale-faced but stoic, looking more like his father than ever.

They were almost to the far bank when a raft of mist obscured it completely. Other shreds sailed past them, all moving in the same direction, and as she noticed the wind had lessened and shifted, she looked around to find the dragon hovering above the bend in the river. Facing southward, it flapped its great wings in powerful, deliberate movements, holding its place as it watched her. Even from a distance, its golden eyes pierced her, and she felt its hatred, sensing some of what it meant to do to her. Fear rolled into her, and she turned her back on the beast, determined not to give in to it, and even more determined not to show the slightest quiver of distress. Eidon was with them, the Light was in them, and Abramm was coming. That was what she would focus on.

Suddenly the ferry was bumping against the opposite landing, where its gate was torn from its hinges in the people’s haste to get away. She hurried along with them, the castle’s arched entrance gate appearing out of the mist ahead of them. Carissa disappeared into it first, then Elayne and Conal, Pipping and Simon, and then she stepped beneath the stonework, Channon close on her heels. The moment she did, a deafening roar exploded above them. Channon flung her, Abby, and Ian against the wall, covering all of them with his own body, as flame enveloped the ferry and its dock, severing the ropes that worked it. Even if those on the far bank could work up the courage to try, there would be no more crossings this day.

As Channon pulled himself off her she felt his trembling, heard the quick in and out of his breath as he stood back and faced the flaming boat and dock while burning embers rained upon them. Ian lifted his head, face tearstreaked, and stared wide-eyed at the destruction. Carissa returned to gather Abby in her arms. And as Maddie watched her sister-in-law hurry through the entrance gate with her children, she touched Channon’s arm and, catching his eye, gave him a small smile.

“I’d like you to note, Captain, that its attack came only after we were safe. It really cannot touch us. Not here, anyway. Not so long as we are in the Light.”

The townspeople who had earlier made the trip across the river packed the fortress’s main keep and halls. Many were children, crying as they caught their parents’ fear, which in the last half hour had increased dramatically. Few of them had actually seen the dragon, but the rumors were as bad as the reality.

Anger welled up in her that the thing would do this, but she squelched that, too. In the dragon’s eyes, anger was almost as good as fear. It was better, knowing his strategy, simply to ignore him for the impotent threat she knew him to be. To show no fear, no concern, no complaint, but rather to wait in confidence, knowing he had already been defeated. And that soon Abramm would arrive to drive him off for good.

Eager to see what was happening on the plain below, she went up at once to one of the lookout towers, despite Channon’s plea that she stay below out of the dragon’s range. “If it’s going to flame the fortress, you’d be right in the line of fire.”

“It won’t,” she said. “It can’t.”

He didn’t believe her, but she didn’t care. She went up anyway, thinking she’d stop at the first arrow slit she came to, but the mist was thicker than ever, and even at the lowest level, her view was obscured. The winds had died almost completely, just enough to keep the Shadow mist moving past the slit. She closed her eyes and sought Eidon, praying for protection and for deliverance and for understanding. She prayed for Abramm and felt him, somehow, out there, suddenly confused and in inexplicable danger, some great force of evil pulling at him, tempting him. She prayed for him to be strengthened. . . .

The Light swelled within her; then a bright flash seemed to shoot out from the plain and wash over her. A moment later the fortress shook so hard she clutched the ledge of the slit to stay upright. And as the shivering passed away, she rejoiced, for she knew exactly what it meant: He had destroyed the corridor. Any doubt she’d had that Abramm was down there evaporated.

But to her consternation and considerable annoyance, when she went back down to tell the others, they were all screaming and weeping and holding to one another as if something terrible had happened.

“What is wrong with them?” she asked of Channon as they stood on the walled landing at the top of the stair leading down into the Great Room.