Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1)

by Karen Hancock

  “Was that your idea, or Saeral’s?”

  Abramm looked at him, startled. “Mine.” But was it? There had been hints, allusion … He shrugged. “He would have, in any case.”

  Meridon regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure.”

  “You don’t know how it was between us.”

  “I know enough. And I’ve seen what you’ve done here.”

  “Barracks isn’t like here. It’s less controlled. Gillard would’ve risen to the top, gathered his little group of admirers, and come after me when no one was looking.”

  And you, with your back against the wall, would’ve folded?” One of Meridon’s red brows arched. “I think not, my lord. The matter would’ve come to a head. And once you stood up to him things would have changed.”

  The same way, Abramm realized, things changed when he’d stood up to his bullying cellmates.

  “You might have become friends.”

  “No,” Abramm said. “He hates me too much for that. He has from the day he was born, though why, I’ve never understood. He was always stronger, bigger, better. What was I to him, but an embarrassment? You’d think he’d just ignore me.”

  Trap set the now empty second bowl atop the first on the tray, then leaned back against the wall and clasped his hands upon his bare abdomen. “You were much more than an embarrassment, my lord. You were in some ways the bane of his life.”

  It was Abramm’s turn to lift a brow of disbelief.

  “Look at it from his viewpoint. You’re smart, handsome, artistically accomplished, genteel, and religious-the only son your mother considered worth anything. An opinion she expressed regularly and loudly, as I understand it. Even Raynen was jealous. As for Gillard-from the day he came into this world you were ahead of him, the bright and shining star in his mother’s eye.”

  `Aye, and he was the bright star in our father’s. And our uncle’s and our brothers’ … and most of their peers’, as well. Rightly so, given their standards.” The old bitterness rang in his tone.

  Meridon regarded him oddly. And that bothered you?”

  “Of course it bothered me? I was a Kalladorne and a miserable failure at the most valued characteristic of the line. I spent hours on the practice floor trying to improve-and never did. The day my baby brother defeated me…” He trailed off, feeling the humiliation as if it were yesterday, hearing the laughter and the vicious jibes. Old pain twisted in his belly, and he clenched his fists, his thoughts skittering forward over all the subsequent humiliations, both on the practice floor and off-the cruel jokes, the lies, the beatings threaded through his past like thorns on a string.

  Across from him Meridon sighed. “Yet it didn’t win him your mother’s regard, did it?”

  Abramm’s pain transmuted all at once into hot, wounded indignation. “What is this? You expect me to sympathize with him? After what he’s done??”

  Trap gestured dismissively. “I doubt it’s given him much pleasure. And anyway, it wasn’t he who put us here, nor even Raynen. It was Eidon.”

  “Eidon??” Abramm gaped at him.

  “We’re here for a reason, my lord.”

  A reason? Khrell’s fire, man? How can you still believe such a thing? Eidon, indeed! Isn’t it obvious he doesn’t exist?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I gave him eight years of my life?” Abramm said bitterly. `All I ever wanted in exchange was to know him. You have no idea how many times I begged him-begged him-to show me how to do that. But I never got an answer. All I got was betrayal and suffering and abandonment.”

  Aggravated by his passion, the pain in his arm flared with such intensity he gasped, then had to swallow down the bile rising in his gullet. Eyes shut, he dropped his head back again and gripped the hard muscles of his left forearm as if that might stop the flood of fire pulsing out of his wrist.

  For a few moments he poised on the brink of lurching for the relief bucket. Then the pain faded and he began to relax. Presently he heard Meridon’s straw bag crackle, heard the extended rasp as the tray of empty bowls was shoved toward the door, then another crackling as Meridon stretched out on the pallet. A long, low sigh gave way to silence, broken only by the distant thumps, clanks, and muffled voices of their keepers out in the service rooms.

  After a time Abramm lay down, too, reclining on his good side, with his back to his cellmate and his face to the wall. He’d lain there a few moments when Meridon spoke again, his voice quiet but firm with conviction.

  “You’re wrong, my lord. Eidon does exist. And he hasn’t abandoned you or your request. It’s just that his answers don’t always come the way we expect.”

  Abramm gritted his teeth and said nothing. Years ago his mother and uncle had argued religion in front of him. His mother had condemned the arrogance of unbelief, while Simon railed against religious delusion and supplicants participating in their own deception. Faith, he’d said, was the absence of thought. It was believing the impossible, despite all sense and solid evidence to the contrary.

  Abramm had expected an outraged rejoinder from his mother. She’d surprised him with her quiet, almost condescending confidence. Simon, she’d said, would do better to confine his arguments to subjects about which he had some knowledge.

  He’d had no answer to that, and Abramm had been terribly impressed. That calm conviction had inspired him for years afterward. Now he knew it to be misplaced. She’d been deceived, as he himself had been, and in the end Simon was right.

  The corridor echoed with the clatter and rasp of the dinner trays being removed by the cleanup detail. The sounds grew louder as they approached, faded as they moved away, and once more near-silence reigned.

  By then the shoulder on which Abramm lay had begun to ache, so he rolled over. That was worse, so he sat up and wedged himself into the corner again. His head felt like a melon ready to burst, and the stone was cold against his bare back and shoulder. He suspected it wouldn’t be long before he needed that bucket after all.

  “May I see your arm?” Trap’s voice jarred through his agony, surprisingly close.

  He opened his eyes but did not lift his head. Meridon crouched on one knee beside him, regarding him gravely.

  Abramm let his eyes rest on the ceiling with its shivering cobwebs. He swallowed on a dry mouth, then turned his wrist, lifting it so Meridon could look. He heard a faint hum, felt a sudden warmth, and a clear, fist-sized globe of light flared to life in front of him, floating above his knees. He gasped and flinched against the wall, but it only bobbed benignly, delicate as a soap bubble.

  Terstan evil. It had to be. And yet-it was beautiful. Bright and clean and pure. It had been too long since he had seen light like that. He could almost feel the warm sun beating down upon him, see the blue sky arcing overhead, smell the summer grass. For the first time since he’d come to this dark, mistbound land, he realized how deeply he craved the light of a clear day.

  “I could ease this if you’d let me.”

  Abramm tore his gaze from the orb. Meridon gestured at the scar on his wrist, the purple, ovoid mark, moist now and raised, throbbing visibly like some misplaced heart under red, tender skin.

  He met Meridon’s sober gaze. “How do you mean?”

  “It’s the feyna spore that’s making you sick. The griiswurm’s activated it. I can put it back to dormancy-can even burn some of it off in the process. You’ll feel better right away.”

  Abramm glanced at the bubble of light, drifting slowly toward the wall at his side. His eyes flicked to the shield on Meridon’s chest. He remembered the protective talisman this man had given him in Kiriath-how the round gray stone had replicated itself under his own chin in the teppuh. He stifled a shudder as he remembered Whazel carrying away the replication on his finger and then the shield burning into his fat chest.

  “It’d just be your arm,” the Terstan said, guessing his thoughts. “It won’t change you.”

  Abramm shook his head, swallowing down new nausea. “I’ll be all right.”
>
  It was a moment before Meridon shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He flicked the orb with a finger, and it vanished, shadow enfolding them once again.

  “N&” The word sprang from Abramm’s mouth all unexpected, so full of dismay it shocked him.

  Immediately another orb blossomed in its place. Meridon stared at him questioningly.

  Abramm blushed. “I … uh … does it cost you to leave it?”

  “Not at all.” He settled back on his own pallet.

  Abramm feigned indifference. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen-“

  He was interrupted by a snarl and a sharp babble of Tahg as a dark figure loomed outside the cell and violet fire burst the lock. The man jerked open the door and leaped in.

  As Abramm dove instinctively aside, he recognized the gleam of Zamath’s head, the filed teeth, the long-nailed fingers coming at him, dark against the flare of violet light at his chest. But the Broho wasn’t after him. Though the sphere had winked out the moment Abramm first moved, Zamath swatted at the place it had hovered as if in a frenzy, then turned upon the Terstan.

  “Anahdi!” he growled, jerking the man up by the throat and slamming him against the wall. Meridon kicked him and wriggled free as Abramm rammed a shoulder into the southlander’s back, driving him against the wall-only to be flung across the cell a moment later. He crashed into the wall and sagged onto his pallet, violet splashing across his vision. Through a haze of purple he saw Zamath fall upon Trap like a madman, striking him again and again, faster than humanly possible, all the while cursing softly. `Anahdi! Beshad!”

  Suddenly the other handlers crowded into the cell, jabbering excitedly. Abramm saw nothing but legs and feet, could pick out only a few words in the babble. Then they were gone, Meridon with them. One paused to fasten a chain around bar and frame so the door held, and then Abramm was alone, stunned by the viciousness of the attack.

  The room whirled again, and he spent the next few moments bent over the relief bucket. When at last he was released from his agony, Meridon was screaming somewhere down the hall.

  But they can’t kill him, he assured himself. He has to be able to fight.

  After a seeming eternity, the screams grew hoarse, then fell silent. Abramm sat clutching his arm and was very near to praying, though to whom he would have prayed he did not know. He only knew he did not want Meridon to die.

  Finally the slap of footfalls heralded the handlers’ return. The chain rattled, the door swung open, and Meridon was thrust into the cell.

  Abramm caught him as he fell, his hands slipping over hot, wet skin. The handlers laughed, said something about angering the gods, and departed. Gently Abramm lowered the man onto his pallet.

  Even in the poor light he could see the angry, bleeding griiswurm welts crisscrossing the Terstan’s face, arms, and chest, each lined with pale, bubbling blisters. There were so many it was hard to find a clear patch of skin, and already Meridon was burning with fever and shaking violently.

  He coiled inward on the straw bag with a moan, doubling around his stomach and struggling to his knees. Abramm shoved the relief bucket in front of him just as he began to vomit. Once started, the tide did not turn for some time. Meridon’s convulsions wracked him with a power and savagery that was frightening.

  Abramm could do no more than hold him up until the spasms passed and he sagged against Abramm’s side, as cold now as he had been hot before. He dragged a quivering hand across his polluted beard and swallowed. `Are they gone?”

  “Yes.”

  Meridon pushed weakly against his ribs. “Let me go, then. And get back.”

  “But…” Abramm swallowed his protest and complied. The other man crawled onto his pallet and collapsed face down in the crackling straw. A faint buzzing filled the chamber, building to a mellow hum. At the same time Abramm’s skin prickled as of lightning about to strike, and Trap’s body began to glow.

  Abramm leapt to his feet.

  The glow intensified, hurting his eyes, though he could not look away, held by fascination as much as by fear. It thickened around the Terstan’s form, a bright, white cloud, flashing with silver-and-gold coruscation.

  Footfalls down the corridor broke the spell, and he snatched the blanket from his own pallet, draping it over the other’s body, fearing the blaze might burn through it as the stone had burned his tunic back in Qarkeshan. But though the light was so strong it shone through the weave and blared up under the folds, it did not harm the fabric itself

  As the footfalls drew nearer, he dragged his own pallet around to the foot of Trap’s and sat with his back against the barred door to block the view of anyone standing behind him.

  He had just settled when the guard reached him, pausing briefly at his back, then moving on. Dropping his head back against the bars with relief, Abramm became immediately aware again of the throbbing in his arm. He was sure Trap’s Terstan magic was aggravating it, but to move would make Meridon visible from the door. He could only sit and try to ignore his discomfort.

  The night passed in a miasma of wakefulness and unpleasant half-dreams until finally he lay awake for good, listening to the rising clatter of pans and wooden bowls echoing from the kitchen. His arm had somehow come to rest against Meridon’s foot, which had strayed, along with half of the rest of him, from under the blanket. He immediately noticed that his pain had subsided, along with the nausea and fever, and that, despite his poor night’s sleep, he felt rejuvenated. The second thing he noticed was that Meridon was breathing evenly, that his flesh was cool and-

  Abramm peered at the man’s back, face, and arms. The griiswurm welts were no more than a network of threadlike scars, when they should’ve taken days to heal.

  A wave of gooseflesh spread up Abramm’s arms. He looked at his own wounds. Not yet scars, they were well on their way toward healing, nonetheless. And the feyna scar was once more white and flat, when it, too, should have taken days to subside….

  Meridon stirred, then sat up groggily. “What is that awful smell?”

  His gaze fixed on the relief bucket beside him, then flicked to Abramm as memory returned. “You’re all right! I thought-since it was right over you-they would think …” He rubbed his eyes. “I thought I heard someone screaming, but I guess it was just me.”

  Hurried footfalls echoed in the silence, and three men stopped outside the cell, clanking chain and lock as they freed the door and swung it back. Abramm drew his feet under him warily as they entered, startled to recognize Katahn himself, clearly furious. When he saw the Terstan up and well, however, he stopped dead. Then he called for a torch, and when his underling brought it, he stood staring at Meridon’s face and chest. Beside him Abdeel gaped in even greater astonishment.

  Katahn spoke to him sharply. Abdeel protested in a rapid stream of the Tahg, and they left without another look at the northerners, Katahn’s voice echoing angrily in their wake.

  Nothing more came of the incident, though they did not see Zamath for over a week, and when he returned he was sullen and reserved and never worked with Meridon again. Nor, thankfully, with Abramm, either. Trap was right about their new alliance. After that night, they were worked as a team, back to back, shoulder to shoulder, facing at first three, then four, and sometimes even six assailants. With Trap’s added instruction, demonstration, and encouragement, Abramm improved more rapidly than ever.

  Katahn continued to summon him for games of uurka, which Abramm won as often as his master. Every game was followed by an analysis of strategy and tactics, and he soon realized this was as much a part of his training as what happened on the practice floor.

  Shettai sat with them occasionally, and Abramm wondered if Katahn noticed that Abramm always lost when she did. Despite her cool, condescending manner, his infatuation with her burned on. He’d learned to control the outward evidences, at least, according her the same cool indifference she accorded him. But always after he saw her, she haunted his dreams. Often they woke him, and always they shocked and perplexed him.
He wondered if he was in love with her, only to remind himself that in her eyes he was but a weak-willed, pigeon-hearted Kiriathan slave whose scrawny ribs she’d knuckled and rejected back in Qarkeshan. He did himself no favors hoping her opinion might change. Best to put all the raging desires back into their box and concentrate on staying alive.

  Thus the weeks passed until finally, inevitably, the morning came when he and Meridon were taken not to the practice floors but to the beach. There they and a handful of their fellows boarded a trio of galley ships that immediately set sail for the site of their first official competition.

  The training period was over.

  C H A P T E R

  18

  The razor flicked along the side of Abramm’s jaw, Zamath’s hand quick and sure as it cut the beard from his face. Abramm stared up at the red canvas awning suspended directly in front of his line of vision and clenched his teeth, trying not to think of who held the blade, trying not to consider just how helpless he was before it.

  They’d arrived here in Vorta yesterday, just in time to take part in the opening procession of warriors last night. Dressed only in their loincloths, they had, with the other slaves who would participate in the coming contests, been marched in a long line around the sand-packed oblong floor of the Ul Manus Arena for the crowd to inspect. It had been a long, humiliating evening, after which they’d returned to the galleys for the night. Katahn had slept in, but his fighters had been wakened early and already put through their practice routines. A few had even been taken off to the arena for their matches.

  It wasn’t until after the midday meal that Katahn gave orders for Abramm and Trap to be prepared. The guards had fallen upon them with glee. Abramm did not know what had become of Trap but surmised it was a fate similar to his own, for a second group of guards clustered on the far side of the foredeck’s covered area.

  Abramm sat in a straight-backed chair, his hands tied to its arms, his feet to its legs. The whole had been tipped against a barrel, forcing his head back and exposing his throat to Zamath’s blade.