The Shadow Within (5 page)
Before he’d even reached Captain Kinlock, however, Rhiad lurched forward, good eye flashing. “Abramm, is it?” he croaked, limping toward him. “Come back to claim the crown, they say.”
“Hello, Rhiad,” Abramm said as the man drew up in front of him. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize me earlier.”
By the look of confusion that flashed across the ruined face, Abramm knew the man hadn’t recognized him yet. Had the trauma that ruined his body also affected his memory? Or was he just pretending? Abramm, of all people, knew how very good he could be at that.
Whatever the explanation, Rhiad set the uncertainty aside and drove on with his mission. “Many have sought to kill this beast,” he said. “Sought and failed. Yet you come in knowing nothing of it and on your first engagement kill it outright! I would ask how that was accomplished, sir, for it is not an outcome expected from the mere power of men.”
“ ’Twas the power and mercy of Eidon,” Abramm said.
Rhiad’s one eye narrowed. “ ’Twas power all right. Whether it was Eidon’s is another matter.” He glared at Abramm triumphantly. “I demand that you remove your tunic and show us your bare chest.”
Abramm slammed down his sudden panic and made himself stand calmly, quietly, eyeing the holy man as if he’d asked if Abramm would like to take tea with him. He let his gaze flick over the sailors and armsmen who crowded the decks and rigging around him, ragged, exhausted men, riveted by the sudden conflict playing out before them. The sailors would have little understanding or real interest in any of it, but the armsmen, Abramm sensed, were very much involved—and already leaning toward him in their sympathies. With a slight smile, he met the Master Guardian’s half-mad gaze, lifted his chin, and said, “I’d rather not, thank you.”
The dark eye bulged. “Then I must assume—”
“That I am your rightful king,” Abramm interrupted. “And that you have no business demanding any such thing of me.”
“You
dare
to refuse the command of a servant of the Holy One!”
“It is by the Holy One’s power that I hold the office I do. An office whose authority, if I recall correctly, supersedes that of your own in matters like these. It is
you,
sir, who has been overbold this day. Given the circumstances, I will ignore it. But if you overstep again, you
will
regret it.”
Silence closed upon his words, filled with the creaking and dripping and groaning of the injured ship, but not a word from the men who rode her, and not a word from the man who had sought to dress Abramm down. A man who looked as if he might burst with the effort of restraining himself.
Abramm nodded. “You understand me, then. Good. Now we have work to do. You can either help us or retire to your prayers and meditations somewhere out of the way.”
He turned to Kinlock. “I want to haul the carcass into the harbor by dawn. So everyone can see the beast is really dead. Can we do that?”
“We can and we will, Sire,” the captain said, grinning again. His bellowed commands dispersed the crowd like a stick in an anthill. As men raced to attend to their various tasks, Abramm turned to find Trap favoring him with a half smile that was almost paternal.
“Well done, my lord,” he murmured. “Well done, indeed.”
Simon Kalladorne, Duke of Waverlan, Grand Marshall of the Armies of Kiriath, and uncle to the king, stood at the south balustrade of his private balcony, staring into the dark, woolly night. With a thick fog blotting out all sign of the dock and shipyards lying directly below him, he had no hope of detecting anything as far out in the bay as the kraggin’s two dismasted victims had been when twilight dropped its curtain on their struggle. Likely there was nothing to see anyway, the two vessels long since reduced to flotsam by the monster’s massive tentacles. It was well after eleven o’clock now, and there’d been no victory rockets fired from out on the bay, and no word from the shore watchers beyond reports of bodies and wreckage washed up by the tide.
He sighed and drew his woolen cloak more snugly about himself, the chill seeping into his aged bones. His hip ached where the sword had cut into it forty years ago, a dull pain reaching into the small of his back and down the front of his thigh. He should go in. There was nothing to see out here, nothing that would bring him any more assurance than he already had.
The boats were surely gone, all three of them—the Mataian barge, the whaler that had pulled it out to deep water, and the Andolen trademaster that had foolishly come to their rescue. Or had perhaps come for the kraggin all along, hoping to claim the ten-thousand-sovereign prize Gillard had offered for the monster’s carcass. Why else would any ship sail into Kalladorne Bay these days? Whatever her reason, the trademaster had paid for it with her life. And so had the Mataians, their ploy to gain favor and power in the realm defeated, for now. They would try again, but tonight Simon could relax, and mourn the men who were lost. . . .
Wingbeats whispered in the mists coiling overhead, and he glanced upward uneasily. The nights were not safe these days. Especially not a night like this. The kraggin was not the only creature of the Veil to have moved into the realm of late, and only fools pretended otherwise. With a sigh, he turned from the balustrade.
The glass panes rattled in his study door as he closed it behind him and headed for the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. Despite the conclusions of logic, he knew he wouldn’t truly relax until he looked on the gray choppy water tomorrow and saw the litter of wood and fabric and rope that had once been vessels full of men. Even then the guilt would remain.
The liquor gurgled pleasantly out of its carafe, its pungent aroma burning his nostrils. Not since his wartime days had he felt an ambivalence of this intensity, hope and fear at odds even as they were the same. For the monster out there absolutely needed to be killed. It had shut down Kalladorne Bay for over six months, devastating the local economy. And since Springerlan was the largest port in Kiriath, accounting for nearly half her population, that translated into a significant amount of hardship and suffering. Suffering that would continue to escalate until the kraggin was removed.
Unless the Guardians did the removing. Then the suffering would merely change form and venue.
He replaced the glass stopper with a clink and shoved the carafe back into line with the others, sniffing the brandy with a frown.
Guardians of the
Realm, indeed!
Even the name they chose for themselves was arrogant! To think they alone knew what was best for everyone else, particularly in matters so personal as the spiritual, was not simply galling, it was terrifying. He’d lived this day dreading they would succeed in their effort to deliver the realm from the kraggin.
“A spawn of evil sent by Eidon to judge us!”
High Father Bonafil had declared when the barge was launched this morning. Visions of the demands they would make should they succeed haunted Simon still: a place on the royal council, a chapel in the palace, stringent enforcement of their Laity Laws upon the Court, including mandatory observance of Mataian rituals, bans on religious observances not to their liking, their vicious Gadrielite heretic hunters given more leeway than ever. . . . It was a road of increasing tyranny and oppression that would lead all the way to that unholy purge Mataian fanatics were already braying about.
The dread, justified as he considered it to be, nevertheless fueled a powerful self-reproach, for his fears were only fears, while the kraggin was real, and so was the suffering it inflicted. To want that to go on, for any reason, was unconscionable. And it wasn’t as if there had been no opportunity for others to act. Gillard had done nothing for all these six months, after all, still waiting, he said, for the development of an experimental harpoon with an exploding tip.
“No need to risk men and ships until we know we can kill it,”
he maintained. Meanwhile, the height of the trading season slipped away as more and more lives were ruined.
Absently he reached for a wilted rose blossom fallen from the flower arrangement at the sideboard’s end, catching himself just in time. With a muttered oath, he impaled the bloom with his dagger, uncaring that the blade point drove into the sideboard’s polished wood. It was by now one of many such point marks.
Immediately the staffid uncurled from its disguised position, reverting to its normal tricolor of blue, gray, and black. Suppressing a shudder of revulsion, he drew the point free of the wood, the staffid’s legs rippling wildly, its multisegmented carapace arching back and forth as it tried to free itself. The cursed things had invaded around the time the kraggin had taken up residence in the bay and were everywhere, disguising themselves as fallen flowers, wadded papers, balls of lint or string, rocks, jewelry, even morsels of food. They were disgusting and annoying, their bites producing itchy red welts that lasted weeks. People had taken to hanging swags of onions near their doors and windows to ward them, but the plague would take him before Simon stooped to that!
“Blasted vermin!” he muttered, casting the creature into the fire. It writhed frantically as the flames consumed it, flaring a harsh, bright blue amidst the gold and amber, and he watched it die with perverse satisfaction. Would that all his troubles could be so easily dispatched!
Snatching up his drink, he collapsed in the overstuffed chair before the hearth as the birdcage clock on the mantel struck the hour in tinny, chiming beats. Midnight already. No rockets. No word. The ships were dead.
So why did he feel this sense of growing doom? And how could Gillard be so oblivious to it? Even after the Mataians’ almost-success today, the young king had waved off Simon’s concern with that annoying, limp-wristed gesture of disdain he’d recently acquired. Sipping his brandy with an amused smile, he’d even suggested the Mataio was right, that it
was
all the Terstans’ fault and a purge wouldn’t be so bad. His three little lordlings, without whom he never went anywhere, had laughed, but Simon was long past being intimidated by ignorant young louts. He told Gillard sternly that if he did not get serious about the responsibilities of his station, he could very well lose it. To which Gillard had only huffed.
“And who’s going to take it from me? You,
Uncle?”
Which his louts thought even funnier than his earlier remark. They’d gone off to the gaming tables after that, singing and laughing as if twenty good men had not died today, as if a monster didn’t still prowl the bay outside their windows and there were no religious fanatics drooling to seize control of the realm.
The brandy’s warm fire chased down Simon’s gullet, driving away the chill he’d gained from being outside but doing little to alleviate the chill that gripped his heart. He stared gloomily at the life-sized portrait of his grandfather, Ravelin Kalladorne, glowering down at him from above the mantel. Tall and lean and blond with the dark Kalladorne brows and hawkish nose, Ravelin was a man’s man, the last real warrior-king in Kiriath. He’d worn his blond hair short, with a close-trimmed beard edging mouth and jaw. No courtly frippery for him—he’d been painted in his hunting leathers astride his favorite stallion, a huge, ill-tempered bay that had terrified Simon as a boy. Those were the days of the Chesedhan wars, and Ravelin was a strong, decisive leader, ruthless, stern, courageous to a fault.
But even Ravelin would not be able to put things to right these days. His personality and methods were for another time, another generation. No, the only one who could do anything was Gillard. But Simon was cursed if he could figure out how to motivate the lad anymore. Dropping his chin onto his chest, he inhaled the brandy’s aroma and thought that if he were a praying man, he’d ask that something be sent to startle the boy awake before it was too late.
He didn’t remember getting into bed, but the window-rattling booms of what he first thought was cannon fire awakened him there. When it was not repeated, he deemed it his imagination and slipped back into slumber, only to be assaulted anew by his manservant’s shrill voice and a blinding light. As he rose up on his elbows, groaning and cursing, the servant, Edwin, turned from where he’d flung wide the velvet draperies to reveal the first glimpse of sun Kiriath had seen in two months.
“My lord Simon!” the man repeated, far too loudly. “They’ve slain the monster! They’re bringing it right into port! Come and see the size of it!”
At first Simon couldn’t think what he was talking about, so intrusive was the light and the pain jabbing his skull. His stomach felt queasy, too, and his mouth tasted like the inside of a horse trough.
Did I drink
that
much brandy
last night?
“My lord?”
What had Edwin said?
“They’ve slain the monster.”
It all connected in a flash and Simon leaped out of bed, staggered badly, and caught himself on the bed table before he fell. There followed an irritating moment of waiting for his head to settle, but finally he was at the window, fighting the pain from squinting into the bright morning light.
The fog had not yet surrendered fully to the day, a ragged train of gray puffs sailing across the sky and shredding low over the water. The bay stretched southward in a great blue swath, on which two of the many tallships stranded in Springerlan now sailed halfway to the distant gold-crowned headlands that marked the verge of open sea. So desperate were they to begin recouping their losses, the tallships’ captains hadn’t even stayed for the celebration.
And celebration there was.
The harbor teemed with boats as it had not for six months. Mostly small to medium sized, their masts and bows fluttered with the brightly colored pennants reserved for festival days, and they raced about at great speed, a swirling crowd of attendants for the battered Andolen trademaster and her equally battered whaling companion, now limping into port. In the night the trademaster’s crew had juryrigged a new main mast and replaced or stitched up enough of her torn rigging and sails to get her under way. But even with the bright, stiff wind—unfortunately a land breeze she had to tack into—and the advantage of most of her sails, she still needed the help of the five smaller vessels arrayed before her, towlines taut as they pulled her into port. It was not her injuries that slowed her, however, but the carcass she dragged behind her, a creature half again as long as she was.