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

by Karen Hancock

  Dizzy with the pain and loss of breath, he held very still, gasping, shaking, his heart chattering in his chest. On the ledge before him Shettai huddled against the wall a good five strides up the trail, her dark hair in disarray. Her back was to him, and she appeared to be doing something to her chest. Blood was everywhere.

  Abramm?” Trap called. “Can you move?” Abramm heard a grit of stone behind him, a rattle of scabbarded steel, and realized Trap still clung to the cliff wall and that he himself lay in his way.

  Something dark passed behind him, just at the edge of vision. Clawing with legs and feet, he dragged himself onto the ledge and scrambled forward. Trap jumped the last few feet and Abramm caught him, the two of them twisting aside as a blast of air and the sense of the veren’s presence warned of attack.

  Abramm’s net had gone over the edge when he’d fallen, but now Trap was pulling his own free and handing it over as he drew both sword and dagger. Abramm whirled to snare the outstretched talons as Trap plunged his blade into the dark breast, showering them with black blood. A jerk of the net pulled the veren off course and the thing bowled into them, screaming, flapping wildly, then falling away, taking the net with it.

  “I hit it too low,” Trap said as Abramm peered over the edge after it. “It’ll be back.”

  Sure enough it twisted round as it plummeted toward the dark water, the wings righting themselves, gaining purchase on the air, pulling out of the dive. Abramm stepped back and tore off his overrobe, the garment spattered and streaked with red and black. A glance over his shoulder showed him Shettai had not moved but was no longer beating at her chest.

  “We’ve got to get to the tunnel,” Trap said.

  Abramm looked at him in alarm. “Hanoch said it was false. That we’d never get out if we entered.”

  “Better that than this. We need broadswords. Better yet, battle axes.”

  A great shriek erupted from the bridge, where many of the travelers had climbed up onto the girders for a better view of the contest, their pale forms cluttering its dark lines like an infestation of brinybug. More forms and faces crowded the top of the cliff wall across the way. Many were pointing as they shrieked warning, and Abramm turned to find the veren coming in for its third pass. This time, instead of diving and grabbing at them, it landed on the ledge in front of Shettai and ran toward them, beating at them with its free wing and jabbing its bare, knobby head, trying to spear them with its beak or drive them back off the edge.

  They had fought long enough together that they needed no words to communicate. Abramm snapped out with the robe to distract and confuse as Trap charged in, catching the flailing wing with his dagger and lunging in with the sword. But though the blade drove deep into the creature’s massive breast and loosed a stream of black blood, it seemed to have no effect beyond enraging the thing.

  Flinging the robe at the furiously jabbing head, Abramm leapt in and grabbed it, hands closing upon the hard, pointed beak. As the veren reared back, lifting him off his feet, white light flashed at the corner of his eye and he saw the steel of Trap’s blade-now buried nearly to its basketed hilt in the veren’s breast-ablaze with Terstan power. Screaming its rage, the veren shook Abramm off, freed itself of the blinding robe, and loomed up over them, wings half open, eyes burning with red fire, beak gaping, A steady stream of black blood poured onto the white blade, some sizzling into acrid smoke where it touched the fiery metal, most flowing on over the basket and down Trap’s arm.

  The veren’s eyes flared again, then suddenly dimmed as the vigor drained out of it all at once. Its wings sagged, its beak lurched drunkenly, and it reeled back off the blade to stand swaying and dazed, its narrow tongue fluttering in the gaping beak. The knobby head turned to fix them with a strangely human hazel eye, recalling to mind the legends that claimed veren were manufactured from men gone too far in Shadow to redeem. Then the whole beast shuddered, threw back its head, and fell face forward on the trail. It gave one last twitching convulsion, then lay still. Trap leapt to its side, plunging his blade into it one more time, just to be sure.

  It was well and truly dead.

  They heaved a simultaneous sigh of relief, looked at one another with the same sober satisfaction, then shoved the carcass off the trail, watching it plummet to the cove below. As the dark water swallowed it in a ring of white froth a triumphant roar arose from the bridge where the people waved their arms and cavorted in celebration.

  The White Pretender and his Infidel live on, Abramm thought grimly.

  Then he remembered Shettai.

  She huddled in a fold of rock beside the cliff face. Blood soaked her robes and stained the wall behind her. A great puddle of it shimmered on the ledge around her, and she was very still, very pale.

  Abramm knelt in her blood and touched her gently. She turned her head to him, her dark eyes glazed. For a moment she struggled to focus, and when she succeeded, smiled slightly.

  “Deliverer,” she whispered. “Go … awaken the Heart….” Her gaze fixed on the Terstan orb he still wore. A crease formed between her brows. Staring intently, she lifted a blood-smeared hand to the talisman, the chain tugging against his neck as she grabbed it. He felt a flare of warmth, and her face went slack, her eyes widening. The surprise gave way to a joy and light so vibrant he thought the stone’s power was healing her.

  “So beautiful…” she whispered. “He’s so …”

  Then her hand fell away and she sagged against the cliff, her head listing sideways, eyes open but vacant, the little smile still on her lips. And on her chest, gleaming between the ravaged edges of her tunic, lay a bright golden shield, burnished into the skin over her heart.

  Abramm slumped back onto his heels. The mist had closed in all of a sudden, blotting out everything but the beautiful hair, the pale, regal face, the full lips…. The eyes looked wrong, though. Staring like that. He closed them gently. Now she was just sleeping. He felt like sleeping, too, but he was so cold. So bone-achingly cold.

  The mist crept closer, narrowing around her face and layering a thin veil across it.

  He drew a sudden gasping breath that was almost a sob and realized he was shivering and that his bruised shoulder throbbed with a hot agony matched only by the fire in his forearm. His chest ached so fiercely he could hardly breathe, and all over his arms and face little points of searing pain sang in counterpoint.

  The changing tenor of the cries from the bridge roused him-no longer celebration but warning again-and he turned in time to see a dark form slide out of sight into the misty ceiling.

  A second veren, of course. Beltha’adi had probably sent every one of his pets on the chase. He absolutely could not afford to let the northerners slip through his fingers. Bad enough they’d escaped the Val’Orda.

  He heard Trap speaking, but it was as if he were a long way off. “We’ve got to … the tunnel, my lord.”

  Yes. The tunnel.

  Why didn’t he care? He turned back to Shettai, suddenly immensely weary, almost hoping—

  Abramm?” Trap’s hand closed on his arm, jerked him around. Abramm blinked at the other man, and it dawned on him how bad the Terstan looked.

  His face was gray, his eyes glazed. His right arm, covered with blood and black ichor almost to the shoulder, was already hideously swollen. Now, as if the effort of rousing Abramm had cost him his last bit of strength, he swayed back against the wall, shaking his head as if he were dizzy.

  “What’s the matter with you?”

  “The veren’s blood is poison. Like griiswurm, only worse.” Trap shuddered violently. “I can’t heal it here. The tunnel is our only chance.”

  Abramm glanced toward the bridge behind-its occupants still screamed with excitement and fear-then ahead to where the cart path ran into the false tunnel.

  In their present condition, they could not go back the way they had come. And negotiating the iron-pegged slash was unthinkable. Trap was right-the false tunnel was their only hope, and not much of one. “Can you walk?”


  For answer the Terstan pushed himself upright, refusing Abramm’s help and cautioning him against touching the black slime. As he started off, Abramm paused beside Shettai, then snatched up his discarded cloak and bent to gather her up in it.

  Though Trap had looked barely able to move, the Terstan surprised him once again, seeming to have tapped into one last reserve of speed and agility. Abramm, burdened with Shettai, fell quickly behind. Her weight pulled savagely at his shoulder, his every breath sent knife cuts of agony through his chest, and his legs wobbled maddeningly. By the time Trap disappeared into the tunnel mouth, Abramm had only covered half the distance. But he wouldn’t leave her body to be picked at by the birds or, worse, collected by the soldiers and impaled beside the city gates. Somehow he, too, called on his last reserves and crossed the distance.

  The opening loomed just ahead when another screech bounced off the stone, so close and loud it made his ears ring. He didn’t look back, just drove himself on, only four more steps, only three, only two….

  He heard the hiss of the veren’s wingbeats, felt its bulk close upon him as he dove through the opening, startled by a sharp, sluicing coldness, as if he had passed through a waterfall. Barely maintaining his balance, he stopped in his tracks as he found himself in complete darkness. Gasping and wheezemoaning, he turned back. The opening was gone.

  Unnerved, he squatted to lay Shettai on the ground, then put out a hand, feeling for the emptiness that must be there-and knocked his knuckles against cold, unyielding stone.

  Careful to keep contact with Shettai, he launched a wider exploration. Trap lay unmoving not far ahead, his skin hot and slick with sweat and blood and the veren’s awful ichor, which in here smelled strongly of burning flesh. The tunnel was indeed a trap, a small prisonlike chamber, bounded on all six sides by solid rock, its floor cluttered with rocks and many, many bones.

  He groped around the entire chamber twice more before he finally sat down, knees crowded to his chest, Shettai on his left, Trap on his right, the Terstan’s shoulder, already hot with fever, digging into his calf. Fingers pressed to his friend’s throat found a rapid, fluttering pulse. Trap was not doing very well.

  Nor was Abramm, for that matter. The veren’s blood is poison.” In addition to his other injuries, he realized he was now growing sick himself Soon he would be little better off than Trap.

  He leaned his head back against the stone and exhaled a bitter sigh. To have come this far, fighting free of the Broho, escaping Xorofin, killing the veren-all that only to die like trapped rats? It was not fair. There was no sense in it.

  No sense.

  And Shettai was dead.

  He grew aware of her cooling flesh against his elbow and hip, and suddenly the cold ache of horrible loss lashed him with an intensity that made all his other ills seem as nothing.

  Memory flailed at him: Her dark eyes fierce as she flung herself between him and the veren’s talons; her soft kiss this morning; the tearful joy with which she’d met him in the drainage pipe after his escape from the Val’Orda; the afternoon, months ago now, when she had so seriously and carefully explained the difference in usage between two very similar forms of greeting, as if understanding that was the most important thing in all the world. He heard again the soft, startling melody of her laugh, saw the regal, bemused smile with which she’d so consistently regarded him-until last night, when she’d told him she loved him.

  Like an avalanche it swept upon him, carrying him over the edge of that inner precipice of grief and sorrow. Suddenly he was weeping, his voice ripping from his throat in harsh, wracking sobs that lanced fire through his chest.

  Ah, sweet Fires, Eidon! If you live, why have you done this to me? After everything else! Why this? I don’t understand. I don’t understand at all.

  He dropped his head into his hands, digging his fingers into his scalp as if they might drive away the anguish.

  “She is with me. And you, Abramm, son of Meren, remain alive to choose.”

  He stiffened, the soft hiss of his indrawn breath sharp in the silence around him.

  Slowly he looked up. Trap still lay unconscious, but already his flesh glowed faintly with the power of his healing. Barely visible in the darkness beyond him stood a man of average height, dressed in linen tunic and a heavy robe scrolled with interwoven vines. His face, which Abramm saw clearly, when the lack of light should have prevented it, was scarred and misshapen, but his brown eyes-How can I tell they’re brown?-gazed at him with an expression of heart-melting tenderness.

  He blinked, and the man vanished, leaving a track of tingles up the back of his spine. He blinked again but saw nothing more, aware now that he had become very warm, that sweat slicked his brow and chest, and his arm throbbed a tooth-jarring rhythm that overlaid all his other pains.

  Plagues! he thought. I’m hallucinating already.

  And then his stomach tore at his middle as if it had claws, and he doubled over, groaning, lurching across the chamber to find a place to be sick without befouling Trap.

  C H A P T E R

  27

  The line of people seeking exit from Xorofin the next morning shuffled forward toward the gatehouse, bringing Carissa alongside the two bodies which had been impaled there. Morbidly she looked up at them, pulling at her face mask to align the eye holes.

  One wore green, the other white, the silk charred, the bodies themselves hacked and burned. Meridon’s face was swollen, his eyes burned out. All that remained to identify him clearly were the freckles and curly red hair.

  The Pretender’s face they had left intact, aside from burning out his eyes. Smudged still with paint, its handsome aquiline features looked strangely peaceful in death, despite the flies that crawled across it. It was most definitely not Abramm.

  But then, she’d known it wouldn’t be.

  They’d been unable to leave last night as Cooper had hoped. The city gates were sealed long before they ever managed to fight their way through the chaos to the nearest of them. There’d been nothing to do but return to their room at the inn to wait for morning and pray somehow the place would be spared a thorough search.

  Philip had wanted to go out alone with the dog, until Cooper had pointed out that if he were caught, the Esurhites could use Newbold themselves to find his brother. Or worse, Philip might inadvertently lead them to their quarry himself.

  The boy had seen reason, but he hadn’t liked it, certain as he was that Meridon had escaped. Nor was that the only certainty he embraced. “I believe the Pretender is your brother,” he’d said firmly, almost the moment they had resolved the matter of his going back out.

  She’d stared at him blankly, the words hardly registering at first. After the torture and excitement of what had been a very long night and day, she was reeling with exhaustion. When she finally did understand what he meant, her brain didn’t know what to make of it, so she just continued staring at him.

  “I think he was down there today,” the youth went on. “That the man they say is a prince of Kiriath really is.”

  Abramm was a scholar, not a warrior, boy,” Cooper said gruffly.

  “He is a Kalladorne,” Philip retorted. `And the way Trap went to him, protected him when he was down-I don’t think he would have done that if it wasn’t the prince under all that paint.”

  “He’s been partnered with the Pretender for eighteen months,” Cooper countered. “They’re probably friends. Why wouldn’t he go to his aid?”

  Philip frowned at him. “Why are you so eager to deny it could be him?”

  “Because I knew him. And he was weak and sickly.”

  “He could have changed-“

  “He would have died long before.”

  “But-“

  Cooper slammed a palm on the low table. “Enough, boy? The Pretender is not Prince Abramm, and we will have no more talk of it.”

  Philip’s smoldering resentment had flared to flame. “Why are you so determined to keep us from finding him, Master Cooper? Did you
swear an oath to the king that you’d not let us succeed?”

  Cooper went dead white, an expression Carissa recognized as one of deep fury.

  “Philip, you’re overstepping here,” she interjected.

  Am I? All the while he’s been in charge, we haven’t gotten close enough to even glimpse the most famous men in Esurh until now. You expect me to believe it was nothing more than bad luck?”

  “Oh, Philip, what possible reason could he have for doing any such thing?”

  “I already told you-he’s the king’s man.”

  “Nonsense.”

  And what about that business back in Vorta with Danarin? You never did explain that, Master.” His gaze shifted back to Cooper. “What did you pay him for on the eve of the contest?”

  “I paid him for his services as our guide and interpreter. You don’t think he came with us for free, do you?”

  And the next day he tells us the wrong time, tells us it wasn’t Abramm or Trap at all when obviously it was.”

  “If anyone was the king’s man,” Carissa broke in wearily, “it was Danarin. I didn’t trust him from the moment I met him. That’s why we fired him.”

  “Yet still things went wrong, my lady. And it’s not Danarin trying to convince you that the man we saw escape tonight is not your brother. Yet Master Cooper has fought us all the way. Always presenting some reason why we shouldn’t go, why we can’t do something, why-“

  “Have you no thoughts for anyone but yourself, boy?” Cooper burst out, as angry now as Carissa had ever seen him. “Can you think of nothing but finding your own brother? Who has, according to you, escaped his slavery without your help. You should be rejoicing, and instead you torment this poor woman by raising false hopes that even you must see have no substance. And for what? Because you know that once she’s convinced her brother is dead she’ll go home, and you’ll have no one to subsidize your own interests?”