Thunder rumbled again, drawing his eye to the anvil of clouds now boiling over the escarpment rising beyond the city. It would rain before the afternoon ended. Not a good omen for the Procession.
Rhiad led him over the gangplank and onto the brick-paved bank. Bodies jostled around him, resisting his passage. The air hung thick and close. Forgotten feelings of claustrophobia welled in him, and he breathed a prayer for deliverance. Rhiad shoved ahead, calling for people to stand aside. Eldrin followed resolutely, staring at the Guardian’s heels. Then a red-haired man lurched into the space between them, colliding with Eldrin and knocking him off balance. In the moment of recovery, Eldrin found himself staring down into a pair of shrewd brown eyes. They flicked across his features, then returned to meet his own eyes with a significance that told him he had been recognized.
Alarmed, Eldrin averted his face and pressed by the stranger, lengthening his stride to catch up with his guide as he braced for the cry that would betray his presence.
His Light will be my protection….
Five steps. Ten. Twenty. Thunder growled again from over the escarpment. And still the cry did not go up. A stolen glance revealed they were nearly across the square. Could it be the man hadn’t recognized him after all?
And then, ringing clearly over the muttering crowd, a voice cried, “There he is?”
Eldrin flinched, sick with dread, awaiting the worst. The man went on. “There on the bow. At the back of the group. It’s Prince Abramm?”
Bewilderment gave way to sudden comprehension-the too-old blond “Novice” had come as a stand-in.
Other voices answered the first.
`No, it can’t be….”
“It is, I tell you. Look how tall he is.”
Eldrin plunged forward, wobbly-kneed.
More voices lifted around him, confirming or contesting the identification as people pointed and elbowed each other. He was nearly to the coach when someone yelled, “Go back to your Watch, pigeon? So long as Eidon lives, you’ll never touch the throne?”
Eldrin’s step faltered. He looked around-in vain-for the speaker, then remembered himself and ducked his head. The crowd appeared as startled at the outburst as he was; dockworker and sightseer alike seemed held in a web of silent astonishment. Then a rumbling arose from the front ranks, resolving into cheering voices: “Hail Abramm? Hail Abramm?”
The rear of a dark, windowless coach loomed ahead. Rhiad made straight for its open side door and swung up into the cab. As Eldrin scrambled awkwardly after him, he risked a glance back at the barge, now in clear line of sight. Sure enough, the blond “Novice” stood on the foredeck with the other Initiates.
As Eldrin’s momentum carried him into the coach his eye caught briefly on something else-a sight that burned in his brain even after he had slid to the far side of the thinly padded bench. The red-haired man who had bumped into him had climbed one of the nearby hogsheads and from that perch intently watched the holy men.
There could be no question of recognition.
The other Guardians climbed into the cab, one at Eldrin’s side, one at Rhiad’s. The door shut with a click. Rhiad knocked on the partition behind him, and the coach lurched into motion. The crowd’s cries swelled to a roar, but whether angry or celebratory, Eldrin could not tell.
The coach moved slowly at first. A dim light poured through high, horizontal side slits, illumining the blank, tense faces of his companions. No one spoke.
Eldrin stared at the wooden partition behind Rhiad, reeling with the knowledge that something significant had just occurred, and he had not the faintest idea what it was.
“You’ll never touch the throne.”
It made no sense. Even if he had not renounced his titles, he was born fifth in the line of succession-no doubt further now, since his four older brothers must have sired sons in the last eight years. He owned no land, possessed no seat on the governing Table of Lords, and stood to inherit not one copper of his father’s wealth. To make anything of his life, he’d been expected to enter the military and progress through the ranks. But he’d been an inept swordsman and disinclined to pursue a life of violence. Instead he’d followed the call to higher things, choosing religious orders.
His family had been aghast, mortified that one of their own should ally himself with the pacifist Holy Brethren. His father had disinherited him, an irrational form of punishment to be sure: How did you disinherit someone who stood to inherit nothing in the first place? It did, however, remove him from the line of succession. Perhaps that had been the king’s true intent, though it seemed a paranoid one.
In less than two days now, Eldrin would seal his decision, progressing from the lowliest rank of Novice Initiate to the merely lowly rank of Initiate Brother. With seven holy stations yet to attain, he would still be a nobody and certainly no political threat to anyone.
As the coach gained speed, his companions relaxed, and soon Eldrin grew aware of Rhiad’s appraisal, the cool, dispassionate gaze making him increasingly uncomfortable. He tried to ignore it, glad when the holy man finally spoke.
“Seeing you now, I understand what the fuss is about. You’re not as brawny as your brothers, but it’s obvious you’re a Kalladorne. Excuse mewere a Kalladorne.”
Since it was not Eldrin’s place to make idle comments to or ask questions of his superiors, he said nothing.
The coach bumped, rumbling over a rough section of cobbles.
“Not that it matters, of course,” Rhiad went on. “It’s just that most folks believed you only entered the Mataio because there was nothing better for you outside. Now that that’s changed, well, they get ideas.”
“What do-” Eldrin choked off the impertinent question and stared into his lap. “Forgive me, Brother.”
Inside he writhed with incomprehension, curiosity, frustration.
“No one’s told you, have they?” Rhiad sounded surprised. “I suppose you had no need to know.”
Eldrin looked up.
“About your father? Your brothers?”
“My father is dead.” A cold nausea dropped into the pit of his stomach. Surely they would have told me if my brothers had died, too. But the starkly worded message that had brought him the news of his sire’s passing had given no details. It had come at the start of his second year, totally unexpected, for his father had been a strong man in the prime of life. There was no mention of how he died, or where, the lack of detail making it all the more surreal.
Thereafter he’d received little word from home and the matter was forgotten, crowded out by the realities of life in the Watch. The few letters he did receive were all censored, of course. It was the duty of the Watch elders to protect him from distraction so he could concentrate on Eidon.
Aarol died in the same incident as your father,” Rhiad told him. “Elian followed three years later, Stefan six months after that.”
Aarol? Elian? Stefan? All dead? Eldrin had never been close to his brothers, but the news stunned him all the same.
“For the last two and a half years, your brother Raynen has been king. And he is, as yet, childless. So you see”-Rhiad smiled briefly-“you are but a heartbeat from the throne.”
Abruptly the coach slowed, stuttering over the bricks as it slued to one side and stopped. The Guardians sat forward, exchanging uneasy glances. A panel slid open in the wall behind Rhiad.
“We’ve got rioting ahead, Brothers,” the driver said. Only his lips showed through the window.
Rhiad twisted to face the lips. “Can we go around?”
“We’ll have to backtrack a ways. Uh-oh. Looks like they’ve seen us.”
“Have we passed Ridge Street yet?” Rhiad asked.
“We’re at the intersection now.”
The Guardians looked at one another again, their concern escalating.
“Do you think it’s staged?” one of them asked.
“Of course it is,” Rhiad said softly. And then to the driver, “Get us out of here. Now. Go back to the wharf i
f need be.”
Turning around was a tricky procedure-backing, going forward, backing again. They waited out the maneuvers in tense silence, flinching at the sudden cries that preceded a flurry of thumps against the side and top of the cab. More cries, more thumps, a scream of pain, another of rage. The coach finished its turning and started forward, only to stop again. A din of furious screaming rushed around them, accompanied by the crash of breaking glass and more thuds on the cab walls. It began to rock back and forth, gaining arc with every cycle.
“We’ll be trapped in here,” the Haverallan to Eldrin’s left murmured.
Rhiad nodded. As soon as it goes over, we’ll open the door. Eldrin, stay with me. Do exactly as I say.”
Eldrin nodded, heart pounding. He still had no idea what was happening-or why-but he knew it wasn’t good. The coach reached the end of an arc and rocked back violently, to teeter on the edge of falling. The cascade of sound outside intensified; more hands thumped along the cab’s wall, pushing it over with a crash. Eldrin’s seatmate pinned him to the wall, which was now the floor. As they struggled free of each other, daylight speared the dark interior, and the other three Guardians scrambled out the door.
Eldrin was pulled up and shoved over the lip of the opening. He slid upright off the cab’s edge to stand behind Rhiad. The three guards who had accompanied the coach had formed a wall against the mob, brandishing long, gleaming swords at men armed with clubs and rocks. Shielding Eldrin with his own body, Rhiad edged along the side of the fallen coach. A tomato hit the side of Eldrin’s head, and then the swords were overcome by the sheer force of the crowd, bodies forcing the guards back in hand-to-hand struggle.
Rhiad shoved Eldrin sideways, then threw something small and white at the feet of the ruffians surging around the swordsmen. A column of lemoncolored smoke erupted from the cobbles where it hit, and the front-runners collapsed in apparent swoon a heartbeat later. As their companions recoiled in astonishment and alarm, Rhiad grabbed Eldrin and dashed for an alleyway looming between the brick buildings on the side away from the mob.
Seeing their prey escaping, the mob surged forward again. Another egg plumed yellow smoke, and three more men dropped. Eldrin inhaled a whiff of sulfur, and a wave of wooziness washed over him. Rhiad jerked him onward. He caught a glimpse of the Guardian’s amulet flaring red with Eidon’s protective light, saw men leaping toward the alleyway to cut off their escape-and then inexplicably slowing and stopping well short of the opening, staring at Rhiad as if they were enspelled.
A chill of awe rushed up Eldrin’s spine.
His Light will be my protection….
They were going to make it!
Then a rock bounced off the back of Rhiad’s head, collapsing him to his knees, and the frozen men surged forward again, blocking off the alleyway. As Eldrin stepped to the Guardian’s side, something slammed into the back of his own shoulder. He staggered forward, the rush of pain stealing his breath and loosing a sudden, furious aggression.
A rod struck him across the back, the new pain stoking the fire. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d grabbed the weapon on the second downswing, twisted it from his attacker’s hands, and cocked it back, ready to swing. Only to find himself looking into a ring of shocked and frozen faces.
Their shock became his own.
I will touch no weapon of warfare. His Light will be my protection.
Horrified, he dropped the club. Holy Eidon, what have I done?
His tormentors leapt forward in a tide of stinking, filthy bodies; hands punched him, jerked him, shoved him. The furious clamor of their voices assaulted his ears. Nearby a horseman pressed his mount in Eldrin’s direction, beating the rioters off with his quirt.
Then something crashed into the side of Eldrin’s head and the world spun. His ears rang, his knees collapsed, and white light exploded in his brain, enveloping him as the ground flew up to jar the wind from him. Sucking air, he struggled to hands and knees, fighting to stay conscious. His hair slid forward around his face and arms like a veil, hot blood flowing down the side of his neck and dripping onto the cobbles. Bands of fire wrapped his chest as he braced for more blows.
Instead hard hands dug into his shoulders and closed round his legs, lifting him upward as someone stuffed a rag in his mouth. He struggled to breathe past the obstruction and the smothering veil of his own hair, seeking vainly to free himself as the light in his brain flared, burning everything away.
C H A P T E R
2
Eldrin awoke as a deafening crack of thunder rolled across the city, rattling windows and shingles. He lay on his side, wrists bound behind him and pressed between his back and a cold stone wall. Wet cobbles dug into his shoulder and head, and the pungence of smoke and damp wool was all but suffocating. His head pounded rhythms of outrage; beneath that pulsed various lesser aches from shoulder, back, and ribs.
He stared at the backs of his eyelids, breathing slowly, trying to move his awareness past the symphony of pain to his surroundings.
Where was he? What had happened? Had they left him for dead?
A faint rhythmic clicking answered the unvoiced questions.
He cracked his eyelids.
Stone walls soared around him, reaching up to narrow clerestories that let in the dim light of an afternoon darkened by storm. Bales of cream-colored wool stacked ten high filled the main space and formed the fourth wall of the ten-foot pocket in which he lay, clearly the back end of some Southdock warehouse. A veil of smoke hung in the air.
Two men crouched near the base of the stacked bales, gambling at kadfli, the gold-tipped black wands clicking softly as they were tossed onto the cobbles. The men bent to study the fall, murmuring over the results. Then one of them laughed and scooped up the wands with a scab-covered arm to begin another round.
Outside thunder rumbled again and raindrops briefly spattered the roof.
From this vantage Eldrin could not see his captors’ faces. They were rough, working-class men clad in dirty homespun tunics and britches. Their hair was long and tangled, their beards unkempt. Sheathed short-blades dangled at their belts beside scarred coin pouches, the latter hanging in empty folds.
Not far from them a rat emerged from a pile of loose wool and stopped to watch them, its whiskered nose working, eyes shining like ebony stickpins. When they ignored it, it scurried forward, keeping to the shadows along the wall until it left Eldrin’s field of sight.
One of his captors loosed a crow of victory, recapturing Eldrin’s attention. As the other man leaned back in apparent disgust, light flashed off something on his chest, and Eldrin stared, slowly going cold with recognition. It was a golden shield, fused into the man’s flesh by the power of no man. The mark was an indelible visible sign of the evil to which its bearer had sold his soul, the mark of those called Terstans.
Servants of the Adversary, Terstans hated the Flames above all else. If they had their way, there would be no Flames, no Brotherhood, no Mataio at all. They blasphemed the tenets of Holy Writ, ridiculed the work of the Guardians, and scoffed at the power of the Flames to protect. Only their own power, they claimed, would save Kiriath.
But all their power did was drive them mad, corrupt their bodies, and eventually kill them.
These two already sported the telltale boils on arms and faces, and even from where he lay, Eldrin saw the ring of white curd encircling the irises of the man facing him. Eventually that curd would fill his eye sockets; his spine would twist and bend; his hands would stiffen into claws. Then his organs would fail, passing his suffering soul straight to the arms of his Master in Torments.
Though this was the closest Eldrin had ever come to these servants of evil, he had long been warned of their guile, their perversity, their tenacious antagonism to the truth. Terstans had been a blight to the realm for centuries. Some Mataians considered them the cause of all Kiriath’s troubles, wanted them cast out-even killed-if they wouldn’t renounce their heresy. Of all the sects in Springerlan, the Ter
stans had most reason to fear Eldrin.
“Your brothers are dead … you stand but a heartbeat from the throne.”
Wearing the crown, he could easily revoke the laws protecting freedom of faith and see the Terstans destroyed or driven from the realm. No wonder they’d kidnapped him. He was surprised they hadn’t killed him. Did they hope to convert him? To ensnare him in their evil and brand their mark upon his chest against his will?
He shut his eyes, shuddering. His Light will be my refuge.
Click, click.
Please, my Lord Eidon. You know my heart. I only want to serve you, however that may be.
Even, he asked himself grimly, if it’s to give your life for your faith?
He shuddered again, praying he would find the will to endure if it came to that.
A faint, frantic scritch-scritch-scritch erupted from somewhere beyond the top of his head. Fluffs of wool floated out into his field of vision. The rat again. It paused in its rustlings as thunder rumbled and the rain spatter increased. Then a flurry of tiny clicks raced toward Eldrin, and the creature burst into sight, inches from his face. It stopped to sniff and lick a dark bloodstain on the cobbles. His blood.
The rodent drew closer, eyes bright, whiskers quivering. Fat, gray, smelling of sewage, it seemed bigger close up. Its nose touched his brow, his eye; a delicate paw rested on his nose.
With a cry of revulsion Eldrin lurched backward, slamming his head into the wall behind him. Stars wheeled past his vision as across the floor the Terstans’ heads swiveled round.
“He’s awake,” one muttered.
The other started toward him, and the rat scurried away. In a moment the two men stood over him. Both had the curd in their eyes. Eldrin watched them warily, expecting to be kicked or spat upon.
“Guess he’s gonna make it,” the older one said in a deep, time-roughened voice.
“He doesn’t look dangerous,” the younger one commented.
“Looks mean nothing, Jafeth,” his companion said. He had a bulbous nose and piglike eyes. “This skinny idiot could bring down the whole realm.”
Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) Page 2
