The Shadow Within (15 page)
Elayne called him sharply from her chair: “Rolf, I’m over here.”
He whirled and hurried to her, the kitchen help now crowding around Carissa at the doorway. Elayne pried open the canister, then extracted the tiny tube of paper inside. Unrolling it, she stepped closer to the fire to read the tiny missive and seemed to turn to stone.
“Well, woman!” Rennalf cried at length. “Do na keep us in suspense. What news?”
She looked up, her gaze going not to Rennalf, but to Cooper standing just inside the door. “Prince Abramm’s come home,” she said faintly. “He’s in Springerlan now. He’s killed the kraggin and means to take the throne.”
A loud crack exploded in the ensuing silence as the rolling pin hit the wooden floor, dropped from Carissa’s suddenly nerveless fingers. Every face in the room whipped round to look at her and she cringed. Luckily Rennalf only glanced her way long enough to confirm the source of the sound as a servant’s clumsiness before returning his attention to Elayne.
“Abramm,” he said. “He who took religious vows and vanished six years past?”
“Yes, my lord. Some say he was kidnapped and sold into slavery.”
“And now he’s back.” Rennalf arched his brows at his companions and settled back in his chair. “T’ take the Crown, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that all it says, lady? Let me see.”
Elayne frowned her disapproval but relinquished the message without argument.
“I wonder how he killed it,” said one of the northmen.
“B’sure he’s only taking the credit,” Rennalf replied. “So he can get the Crown. Our friend Gillard will na like this.”
They exchanged sly, unpleasant looks.
“The gods smile on us today, m’friends,” Rennalf said. He looked around, skewering the gaggle of servants eavesdropping from the kitchen doorway. His men did likewise a half breath later, their combined glares sending the fortress menials scurrying back to their work. All except Carissa, held immobile by a state of shock so profound her mind had washed blank.
Elayne, grasping her mistress’s condition at once, intruded upon the men’s conversation to ask in what way their gods had smiled, and by that impertinence drew their startled eyes off Carissa. Rennalf told her to mind her own business, whereupon she begged his forgiveness and left, even as Maya tugged Carissa back into the kitchen.
Her last image was of Rennalf’s second, Ulgar, red haired and coarse featured, swiveling his head around for another look at her, his small eyes bright and shrewd with blooming suspicion. Regaining her wits by the kneading counter, she had almost convinced herself she had imagined that look of dawning recognition when Cooper seized her arm and steered her toward the back door. “Go back to your room at once, my lady,” he said, stopping to swath her in cloak and scarf and shove a basket in her hand. “Go round to the henhouse as if to check the eggs, then come up by the north stair.”
The screech of a chair stuttering across the wooden floor in the Great Room stilled the protest on her lips and spurred her outside into the winddriven snow. She’d just reached the outbuilding that served as stable, sty, and henhouse, when the kitchen door squealed open in her wake. Hurriedly she ducked into the stable, ran past the rows of stalls, then down a side aisle and out the rear door. Praying Ulgar would not immediately guess she was fleeing, she dashed up the open stair, then slogged and slid through the foot of snow that had already accumulated on the wallwalk. Afraid to look back—her tracks would be clear in the snow—she hurried around the walkway, alongside the cliff against which the compound was built, to a door in the keep’s top floor. Cringing at the shriek of its hinges, she pulled it shut after her and barred it.
Cooper waited in her room, white-faced and grim. “I think he’s only suspicious, my lady,” he said as she rushed past him and threw open her clothes chest. “I didn’t dare try to stop him.”
“You did right.” She pulled out a heavy woolen skirt and draped it over the edge of the chest, then shrugged out of the servant’s tunic she wore.
“Here, my lady!” Cooper protested. “What are you doing?”
“Give these clothes to one of the girls,” she said, pulling the skirt up under her cotte as he turned his back to shield his eyes. “Tell her to say she was meeting a boy or something. I’m sure Elayne can figure something out.” She stripped out of cotte and tunic, replacing them with a woolen undertunic.
“What do you mean to do, lass?”
“I’m going up the pass to the old watchtower the Mataians converted.” She layered an oversized leather jerkin atop the woolen tunic. “It’s windtight, fairly clean, the chimney’s working. I think there’s even wood there.”
“You can’t go up there, my lady. The place is haunted!”
“Nervous superstition, nothing more. I’ll only be there a few days, but you’ll need to send someone with food.”
“It’s an evil place. I’ve seen the ghost myself. You can’t go there.”
She pulled a heavy overcloak from the chest, then stood to face him, regarding him bemusedly. “Ghost, Cooper?”
He stiffened his spine. “It wasn’t a man, my lady, I can tell you that.”
“Well, whatever it was, it’s better than Rennalf right now, and I’ll be staying only until he’s gone.” When he would have protested further, she said, “What are you going to do? You’ve already admitted we can’t stop him.”
Someone started pounding on the wallwalk door. “I’ve got to go,” she said.
“There is another place you could hide. A better place.”
Carissa flipped the cowl of her cloak over her head. “With your Terstan friends?”
“It’s warm, dry, and well stocked. And you wouldn’t have to be alone.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. A perfect haven, she had no doubt. Except for the company. But then, both Cooper and Elayne wore shields. She’d known it for a long time, just didn’t like admitting it. Half her servants wore them, too.
The pounding intensified and Elayne rushed into the room, eyes wide. “They’re trying to break down the door, Felmen!”
Felmen Cooper stared evenly at his longtime ward.
“Very well,” Carissa said. “Take me where you will.”
In the late afternoon of his first full day as the new king of Kiriath, Abramm Kalladorne went riding in his royal preserve. A passionate horseman since youth, he’d spent much of the last seven weeks at sea longing for a good hard ride in open country. Now, as king, he not only had his pick of a stable full of fine horseflesh but a hundred acres of forest and field through which to ride.
Riding helped him relax and think, and after his triumph at the Table last night, and the uncertain results of his first official day as king—plus the celebratory burning of the kraggin’s corpse slated for this evening—he had much to think about. He’d won the Crown, yes. But could he keep it? Things had changed so radically and so fast, and he’d met so many people in such a short time, that already last night seemed like it had happened months ago. He needed to get away for a while, gain some perspective on what had been accomplished and what still lay before him. An afternoon ride, with only his armsmen for escort, was just the thing to clear his head.
Shale Channon, promoted today to Captain of Abramm’s Royal Guard, did not agree. Stretching north and east from the formal palace grounds, the royal preserve was bounded along its western border by the sheer-walled rim of the Keharnen Rise and by an impenetrable hedge everywhere else. It was a wild land, populated only by the royal foresters—a prime spot for an ambush, by men
or
spawn. Abramm was not about to live his life hiding in the wardrobe for fear of spawn attacks, however, and as for the men, though he knew he had enemies aplenty, he doubted they could orchestrate anything in time to take advantage of an unplanned ride whose route not even Abramm himself had decided.
Channon was not mollified. Nothing about this venture made him happy. Not the destination, not Abramm’s limitation of the escort, not the late hour—not even the horse Abramm chose to ride. Especially the horse, a feisty two-year-old dapple-gray stallion named Warbanner, whom everyone from the head groom to Channon himself warned Abramm off.
“He’ll
take you on a wild ride and dump you in a bramble bush somewhere,”
the groom had predicted.
“We’ll be lucky to find you with nothing but bruises
and wounded pride.”
Which only stiffened Abramm’s resolve to have
this
horse.
As they set off across the formal grounds, young Warbanner prancing and tossing his head, Channon rode as close as the colt’s ill temper allowed, positioning himself and his five men to cut off any attempts at bolting. Abramm hid his amusement and let the man alone. He and Warbanner had already reached an understanding as to who was in control, and as soon as they cleared the formal grounds and entered the preserve itself, he loosened the rein and nudged the young horse’s sides. It took only a nudge—Warbanner’s speed change was explosive, and his prodigious stride soon left Channon and the others in his dust.
Keeping a light hand on the reins, Abramm crouched over the animal’s neck, exulting in the wind on his face, the clatter of hooves on the hardpacked, dirt road, the golden glory of the grasslands flying past, and the exhilarating sense of
freedom
. He let the colt slow on his own, savoring the smell and feel of the horse as he reveled in the scenery. Copses of hickory and oak, leaves just starting to turn, stood interspersed amid a rolling expanse of grassland, all ashimmer in the afternoon light. By the time his escort finally caught up again—dust-cloaked, windblown, and breathing hard—he felt himself renewed already.
As overhead a few gulls wheeled on the updrafts, their raucous cries sounding grace notes alongside the jingle of the horses’ tack and the
thud-clop
of their hooves, Abramm turned his mind to the day’s events. This morning he’d delivered his first official address to the combined Upper and Lower Tables. Recalling Shemm’s advice to speak from the heart and get to the point, he’d told them of Esurh.
How he’d seen the shipyards at Qasok and Usul, and the armies of the Black Moon and the new Supreme Commander, heir to the slain Beltha’adi.
“I have watched their Games and listened to their boastings of Destiny,”
he’d said.
“The Taking of Springerlan, The Rending of the Northland, The Surrender
of the King of Kiriath—those are the names of their Game-tales. They mock us as
a race of womanish comfort-seekers without the backbone to fight, worthy only to
be conquered. And conquer us they will if we do not prepare.”
The force of his conviction must have come through, because when he had finished, his listeners sat in stricken silence, staring at him with pale faces. He gave them only a moment to digest it all before outlining what he meant to do: first, to increase the numbers in both army and navy to allow adequate patrolling of the borders and, second, to repair and rebuild the realm’s crumbling fortresses—starting with the one at the mouth of Kalladorne Bay, whose languishing had left the very heart of Kiriath open to attack. Yes, a tax would be required to fund all this, and though the projects would provide jobs and business opportunities for those suffering from the effects of the kraggin’s blockade, that wouldn’t preclude the fact that sacrifices would be required. Starting with Abramm himself. To conserve needed funds, the lavishness and number of palace entertainments would be sharply reduced, and all work on palace additions would be suspended. Furthermore, ambassadors to both Thilos and Chesedh would soon receive authorization to proceed with alliance negotiations—even though the Chesedhans had insisted the only way they’d ally with Kiriath was on condition of a royal marriage.
When he was finished, Abramm summoned Simon Kalladorne, Grand Marshall of his army, and Walter Hamilton, Grand Admiral of his navy, to a private meeting, instructing each to prepare for him a report of the status of their respective forces. While Hamilton displayed an open enthusiasm for Abramm’s plan, Simon had been merely professional, according the new king all the deference protocol demanded, but not one flicker of genuine approval. Which Abramm could not deny was bitterly disappointing, though the number of lords who approached him afterward eager to echo Hamilton’s endorsement was something of a balm. Byron Blackwell was so enthusiastic, in fact, he had offered to serve as royal secretary until Abramm could appoint someone to the position permanently.
Overall it went well,
Abramm admitted.
I just have to give Uncle Simon
time
. It was unrealistic, after all, to suppose that a changed appearance and a few well-delivered words would revise opinions held for over twenty years. But it was still difficult to take.
As they followed the road into a fragrant grove of oak, hickory, and evergreen, Abramm’s armsmen closed ranks around him, nervously eyeing the close-growing trees. Since human ambushers were highly unlikely to strike this early in the ride, Abramm concluded it must be spawn they feared. Feyna could be deadly in sufficient numbers, after all, as the attack on Abramm’s own father fourteen year ago had shown. That that attack had come in the deep forest on a dark and cloudy night—not a clear afternoon in a sun-dappled grove of trees—might have given them comfort, he supposed, had they not believed themselves to be guarding a man who was helpless to defend himself. But maybe that was just as well, for their paranoia freed him to turn his thoughts to the very issues he’d come out here to consider.
Like selecting a cabinet of advisors. And getting the Terstans to quit fighting him—a score of them had been arrested for rioting just last night, in fact. Though he’d questioned them personally this afternoon in hopes of demonstrating he was not their enemy, they had responded with sullen silence, forcing him to cast them into his dungeons. Then there were the Gadrielites to be dealt with, and— But no, he had to take things one at a time or he’d never accomplish anything. And right now he had his cabinet to consider.
Emerging from the shadowed copse into brightness again, he watched his growing escort of sea gulls circle overhead in hopes of a picnicker’s handout and thought of the men he had met. Though he’d learned much about Blackwell today, he still didn’t trust the man. Arik Foxton, Lord of Summerall, had presented himself as a possible ally after Abramm’s address. Rich, athletic, conservative, and quietly sensible, Foxton might be a good choice. The border lord Ethan Laramor had a quick mind and a sense of hard-won man-savvy, but something about him set Abramm on edge. Even apart from his undisguised and undiminished hostility. Then there was—