The Shadow Within (6 page)
Hangover nearly eclipsed by his sudden, keen interest, Simon hurried from the bedchamber into his study, snatched up his spyglass, and stepped into the cool morning breeze on the balcony, uncaring that all the world might see a grizzled old soldier in his bedgown. He strode to the balustrade, snapped open the scope, and fixed it upon the monster trailing in the trademaster’s wake. Dark-mottled, rough-surfaced, it shone wetly in the sun, having a long tubular body with a flangelike tail from which the trademaster’s towline was fixed. From its other end a fan of long arms trailed through the waves, some dark, some gleaming pearl white, a few of them twice the length of the rest of it combined.
Some of the boats had come in close, and a few braver souls poked it with gaffs and spears. As he lowered the telescope to view the whole scene again, a puff of smoke erupted near the dock to his left and a rocket shrilled skyward, exploding in a burst of sparklers, its boom making him wince again. Two more followed, and he heard the distant cheers of the men on the docks and in the boats while those on the trademaster—he had the scope up again—waved from rail and rigging. He aimed the glass at the bow, picked out white painted letters spelling
Wanderer,
then swept the telescope sternward along the gunwale. At once he came to a cluster of white-tunicked men carrying a flattened oval of bronze and swore aloud.
Guardians. Their barge was gone—he’d seen the kraggin’s tentacles cleave and sink it himself—but somehow they’d survived. Looked like they had their pan of flames, as well.
Plagues! They’ll take all the credit sure as they’re
standing there
.
He continued his survey, stopping again when he came to a group of men in the tattered blue remnants of royal armsman uniforms standing near the boarding portal in the mangled gunwale. Several of the white-garbed Mataians stood among them, conversing with the man who appeared to be the trademaster’s captain. One of the group, a tall, bearded blond, snagged Simon’s eyes with a sense of the familiar, but then he spied the spare form and goateed face of his friend and one time protégé, Lieutenant Shale Channon, commander of the royal armsmen sent as escort, and joy superseded idle curiosity.
It was short-lived, itself superseded by the realization that no matter how greatly the royal armsmen had figured in the kraggin’s defeat, the Mataians would claim it was only because of the protective power of their Flames.
He snapped the scope shut and strode back through the study to the bedchamber, Edwin following him in. “Has the king been told?” Simon asked, throwing off his bedgown and pulling on the breeches Edwin handed him.
“They’re rousing him now, my lord.”
But the king had still not emerged from his apartments by the time Simon reached the main foyer, and since his own horse had been brought around, he decided not to wait. The quicker someone of rank gained control of the situation, the better.
The Avenue of the Keep thronged with people, and the closer he and his men drew to the dock, the heavier grew the traffic. As they fought their way through the congestion, he spied a cadre of Laine Harrady’s men afoot and hurrying back to the palace. Seeing Simon, one of them hailed him. “Have ye heard the news, my lord duke!?”
“O’ course ’e has,” Simon’s master armsman, Gerard, growled at him. “Why d’ye think he’s come?”
Simon gave the man a casual salute and pressed on, the crowd nearly shoulder to shoulder, even several streets back from the action. The Avenue ended in a square, brick-paved plaza overlooking the docks. From there the street turned sharply left and sloped down to the wharf proper. It was the first clear view Simon had had of the harbor, now directly below him, since he’d left his balcony. Already there were as many people here as had gathered to watch the Guardians set out yesterday. Striped tents and awnings of every hue floated over the multitude. Spectators lined warehouse roofs, hung out of windows, perched on barrels and hogsheads, and swarmed the masts and gunwales of all neighboring ships.
The frantic swirling of maritime traffic he’d noted earlier had ceased, vessels floating gunwale to gunwale along a narrow gauntlet formed between the Andolen trademaster and an empty berth on the royal dock. Every eye watched the longboat now threading that gauntlet to a chorus of thunderous cheering. Smartly painted in red and white with gold gilding its gunwales, it was none other than the launch reserved for royalty, broken out to honor the commanders of those who had killed the kraggin. Even with his naked eye, Simon could pick out the blue shoulders of the royal armsmen sitting among those in the boat, a great deal more of them than of the men in white. Which was odd. A glance back at the battered trademaster assured him most of the Guardians remained inexplicably on board.
A new uneasiness, whose source he could not identify, blew through him.
His good friend, Ethan Laramor, earl of the border fiefdom of Highmount, sat astride his brown horse near the brick retaining wall, and knowing his master well, Gerard carved a path through the spectators in that direction. Ethan, come south for the annual meeting of the Table of Lords, should be happy at least. The kraggin’s depredations had seriously hampered his efforts to gain the military and financial help he sought to stand against an increas- ingly aggressive barbarian presence along Kiriath’s northern borders. With the kraggin prowling the bay right in front of them, no one wanted to think about vague rumblings in the north. Now, perhaps, they would.
Except Ethan wasn’t cheering. Instead he had his spyglass out and trained upon the royal launch. With his gaunt, pockmarked face, straight strawy hair, and lanky frame, Laramor had a crude, homespun look, intensified by languid gray eyes and the gold ring of Borderer lordship dangling in his right ear. A barbaric custom, people said behind his back, but then the Borderers
were
only a step away from barbarians themselves. Beneath the bumpkin’s exterior, however, lurked an excellent swordsman, a horseman of renown, and an archer whose aim with the longbow was unrivaled in all the realm. Beyond that, Ethan Laramor had one of the most brilliant minds Simon had ever known when it came to waging war, both on the battlefield and off.
As Simon pulled up beside him, Laramor glanced aside, then lowered the glass with a grimace. “So. You’ve heard the news, then?”
Simon responded with a frown of his own. “Of course. The monster’s dead, and we can all rejoice as our pious deliverers seek to steal the credit.”
Laramor’s frown deepened. “I meant the news about Abramm.”
Simon stared at him, struggling to put the name into some kind of context and failing. Abramm was dead. Gone. Abducted six years ago after failing the Mataian test of the Flames and sold into a life of slavery he could not possibly have survived. What news of Abramm could be relevant? Perplexed, he shook his head. “News about Abramm?”
“He’s here. Now.” Ethan gestured with his chin at the
Wanderer
. “He’s the one commissioned that boat. They’re saying
he
killed the monster. And that he’s come back to claim the Crown. The Mataians are already hailing him as their Guardian-King.”
Simon could not have been more stunned had Ethan slapped him in the face.
“He’s just coming ashore in the king’s launch down there,” Laramor went on. “You can clearly see it’s him with the glass.”
He offered his spyglass to Simon, who continued to stare dumbly at him, cold now from his head to his feet. He saw again in his mind’s eye the tall, bearded blond he’d noted earlier on
Wanderer
’s deck. The one that had seemed familiar.
Abramm?
It can’t be
.
But somehow, even before Simon had the telescope focused on the man, he knew that it was, and the knowing turned his heart to icy stone. The boy had debarked and was now walking slowly up the dock, preceded and followed by the royal armsmen in their tattered uniforms—now Simon understood why they had come and the Guardians had stayed. And that older, birdlike Mataian at his side was on the Mataians’ High Council. Perhaps the two flanking them were, as well. Indeed, it likely would’ve been High Father Bonafil himself, if the stick wasn’t too holy to walk himself down to the docks through that press of unrighteous humanity. No doubt he watched from somewhere safe, farther back. Simon lowered the scope to scan the surroundings and saw at once the white canopy trimmed in red, set up just down the main road in a small outswelling that served as overlook.
The people through whom Abramm walked—thankfully Simon recognized few of Springerlan’s upper crust among them—grinned and cheered, some reaching out to touch him as he passed, an indignity he allowed. Occasionally he even stopped to speak to them and clasp their hands as if they were not commoners at all, but fellow highbloods. Even from a distance Simon saw that they loved him.
The boy moved stiffly, as if in pain, his height, his dark, level brows, deepset eyes, and narrow aristocratic features bearing the unmistakable stamp of the Kalladorne bloodline. A bloodline whose heritage he had once mocked with his pacifist Mataian robes and that long womanly hair tied now into a queue at his nape. The weakest, sickliest, most cowardly of King Meren’s sons, the one who had shamed the family by joining the Holy Brethren, then shamed them more by failing the final test of his Novitiate, the one everyone believed—and secretly hoped—was dead and forever forgotten, now stood before them, very much alive.
“If you’re not careful, Sire, you could lose the Crown.”
“And who’s going to take it from me? You, Uncle?”
A stream of muttered blasphemies tumbled from Simon’s lips.
Fire and
Torment! Pox and plagues! How in all creation could this have happened?
He lowered the glass, telescoping it shut with trembling hands.
If I go
down there to meet him, I’ll have to ride with him. And if I ride with him, it’ll be
thought I support him
.
Simon drew a deep breath, nausea clenching his middle. What to do? What to do? He eyed the white-and-red canopy again, gray-mantled holy men clustered in its shadow, glanced again at Abramm just as the boy lifted his gaze to look right at Simon. Decision crystallized. Tight-lipped, Simon hauled his horse around, plunging heedlessly through the crowd until he broke free of it. Then he kicked the beast to a canter, racing back up the Avenue of the Keep to the palace.
Come to claim the Crown, indeed! What does he know of being king? A
scholar, a religious boy, and now a former slave? It’s madness
.
His horse was lathered and blowing hard when Simon pulled up to the palace’s main entrance and vaulted to the ground. Throwing the reins at the waiting footman, he took the steps two at a time, breathlessly asking the steward at the top if the king had left for the dock yet.
“No, my lord,” the steward stammered. “They’ve only just found him. He spent last night with Lady Amelia. She’s a new one. No one even thought to look for him in her—” The steward broke off and backed a pace as Simon realized he was sputtering blasphemies again.
When Abramm looked up and saw his uncle Simon sitting his big bay horse atop the ramp, his heart lurched with hope. But barely had he focused on the man when he saw him stiffen with that all-too-familiar hostility. Then he was handing off the telescope to his companion and wheeling his horse around, flying back to the palace and Gillard.
Disappointment curdled in Abramm’s middle, feeding the anxiety that had nagged him all morning. He suspected exhaustion was to blame—he hadn’t slept in over thirty-six hours, the last fourteen of which he’d spent engaged in some of the hardest, heaviest work he’d done since his days in Katahn’s galley ships. They’d passed the night patching
Wanderer
together enough to catch the wind again, and even then the kraggin’s weight required towlines. So this morning most everyone, him included, had taken a turn at the towboat oars.
Now his legs trembled, his back ached, his palms were blistered, and his hands were stiff and sore from too much pulling. He was getting a headache, too, and his stomach had become seriously uneasy thanks to the sharp, ammoniac stench of the kraggin permeating his clothes and hair and beard— even his skin. With all his extra clothing lost when the monster had splintered the stern cabin, he’d had nothing to change into, and the smell hadn’t seemed so bad out on the water. Ashore and in this crowd, however, it was strong enough to choke. Ahead, the people lining the dock wrinkled their noses as it first hit them, frowning, glancing at their neighbors, then realizing what it was and returning to their cheering. At least he was not the only one the kraggin had anointed with its stench. And no one could accuse him of not having been involved.
With Lieutenant Channon and two of his armsmen pressing a path through the crowd, Abramm walked a gauntlet of grateful citizens, his old discipler, Brother Belmir, beside him. He would have preferred it be Trap, but they’d agreed that was out of the question, given that Trap had supposedly been executed six years ago. Belmir had changed little. His gray guardian’s braid was whiter, his back more crooked, his face more wrinkled, but overall he was still the same bespectacled, birdlike man Abramm remembered. Except for the fact he was
Master
Belmir now, recently promoted to High Father Bonafil’s council of spiritual advisors. He and his two aides had been there to greet Abramm when he disembarked from the king’s launch, their warm, excited manner not what he’d expected after Rhiad had gone ashore earlier to present his suspicions to his superiors. Evidently they viewed him as mad as the royal armsmen did. Either that or they realized that in accusing Abramm they’d also have to admit it was Terstan power that slew the monster and not their precious Flames. In which case he figured they would not have shown up at all.
He walked slowly, as much because he was tired as because he honestly wanted to clasp the hands held out to him and look into the eyes of those whom he would rule, see the pain and relief and gratitude and know that what had been risked and sacrificed was worth it.