Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  She stared at him blankly for a moment, then dragged her thoughts back to the present. “The king will want to meet them,” she said.

  “Indeed, he will, Your Highness.” Garival looked briefly troubled, then glanced about and said quietly, “May I speak with you privately, ma’am?”

  “Of course. We can talk in the study.” She tried to give Ian back over to Captain Channon, but he refused, tightening his little arms about her neck and making small panicked grunts as he buried his face on her shoulder. Deciding now was not the time to press it, she carried him into the study, where Garival awaited her alone.

  His dark eyes flicked to Ian in her arms, but he said only, “I wonder if it has occurred to you that, as First Daughter, all of Briellen’s holdings are now yours.”

  Maddie gaped at him. No, it had not occurred to her, though she realized now it should have. Disowned by Hadrich and deported from Kiriath for adultery, Briellen had disappeared into obscurity. Her holdings, however, continued to operate under the supervision of their immediate overseers, and all the revenues they generated now by right belonged to Maddie. She’d been more distracted by her woes than she had guessed, not to have remembered that.

  Garival nodded grimly. “I suspected Ronesca might not have brought this to your attention, nor to that of your finance secretary. . . .”

  “And I wonder now if she might also be responsible for the failure of all the deals Duke Eltrap has initiated to purchase property on my behalf,” Maddie murmured.

  “I wouldn’t put it past her, Highness. Not out of graft, mind you, but because she desires to bring you into line. Spiritually and politically.” He paused. “Was it your idea or hers that you go to Deveren Dol for your lying-in?”

  “Hers,” Maddie said, startled he’d even ask. “By Father’s order, so she said. I have a letter from him, as well.”

  He grimaced. “I did not read her letter, nor his, so I can’t be sure, but I can say your father has not been himself lately.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “We’re not sure exactly what the problem is, but his perception is not as clear as it once was. I would suggest you forgo the journey north.” He glanced down at her swollen belly and cocked a brow. “I can’t see the purpose for it at this late date, anyway. Especially now that your older children have been returned to you.” He sobered, his dark eyes meeting hers. “Know, as well, my lady, that there are many who support the House of Donavan—and appreciate what the Kiriathans have done for us. And we do not want to see Harvadan gain any more power than it already has. You have more allies than you know, if you will but cultivate them.”

  Giving her a nod, he left her to contemplate his words. After a time, she called for Trap to attend her. Ian fell asleep in her arms as she talked with her finance secretary late into the night. When finally she retired to her bedchamber, she found Elayne snoring in a chair by the sideboard, and Simon fast asleep in Maddie’s own big bed. She laid his little brother beside him, then stood gazing down on them, overcome with tenderness and wonder that Eidon should have blessed her so magnificently.

  Inevitably now, her thoughts returned to the rumor of Abramm’s survival. Though Trap had been quick to bring it up in dissuading the Kiriathans from swearing fealty to Simon, he’d been inconsistently churlish about it with her later, reminding her repeatedly that it had sprung from the lips of a tavern drunk and most likely wasn’t true.

  But the seed of possibility had been sown, and hope had grown from it, despite his words of caution. What if Abramm was alive? As Tiris ul Sadek had pointed out, it wouldn’t be the first time her husband was believed dead when he wasn’t. Trap himself had been the beneficiary of a secret, earlymorning, pre-execution rescue, so they both knew it was possible.

  She was just getting into bed herself when she noticed the battered valise sitting on the foot of it. At first she simply stared at it. Then, slowly, she sat on the bed tailor style and turned to face it. Loosing a weary breath, she conjured a kelistar, then opened the valise to remove the robe and orb and set them aside. Now, heart thumping against her breastbone, she withdrew the crown, a shiver of awe running through her. She held it before her, fingering the fine weave of the slick and shimmering strips of metal, this precious object that had once touched the brow of her beloved. She could almost touch him through it. . . .

  Then as memory flooded her like a consuming wave, she pressed it to her breast and wept, though whether for joy or grief or longing, she wasn’t sure.

  Perhaps it was all three.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Abramm saw the dragon while it was still afar, soaring beneath the starry night sky and up the canyon of the Ankrill to its headwaters. Spruce trees bowed and shivered in the wind of its passage, and animals large and small fled, terrified, from its presence.

  Though it exuded power and majesty, beauty and grace, Abramm watched with growing horror as the creature turned from the Ankrill into a small snowbound valley ringed with massive white peaks. The valley at whose end stood Caerna’tha, where Abramm lay on his cot in his dormitory cell, shivering beneath the fleece cloak.

  As the dragon drew near, Abramm’s awareness of it changed from sight to sound—sudden rushing of wind outside his window, a few quick wing flaps, then a wave of creaking through ancient roofs and walls as it settled on Caerna’tha’s uppermost tower. A moment later, the snow dislodged by the creature’s landing fell to the wallwalk beneath with a reverberating thud.

  A chill burrowed into Abramm’s heart, for he knew the dragon had come for him. He felt it slithering down the roof to the wallwalk, heard the click of its toenails on the stone as it descended through the monastery’s dark corridors. . . .

  His eyes snapped open, nape prickling, heart pounding fiercely as he blinked at the dense darkness pressing upon him. He must flee . . . but he couldn’t move. He gasped a deep, desperate breath, struggling to drag air through a suddenly constricted passageway.

  Too late. The door was opening and a tall man entered. He approached Abramm’s bedside. He wore a golden breastplate, his head shaved bald around a long, black, braided topknot. The dark recurved line of a longbow loomed over one shoulder and his handsome face gleamed as if, like the breastplate, it too were made of gold. His eyes bored into Abramm’s.

  “Hello, Alaric.” The voice was warm and friendly, yet Abramm trembled all the more.

  “Your king is dead, you know,” the voice said gently. “You fight a losing battle. No one remembers him now. Not even his wife. . . .”

  The man’s eyes drew him down into darkness, where he floated briefly before being assailed by blinding light. He stood blinking rapidly, hearing dance music as the brilliance resolved into a lavishly decorated ballroom. Elegantly dressed ladies and gentlemen whirled on the dance floor in a backdrop to a glorious vision of Maddie gowned in gold, her lovely hair caught up in a sparkling jeweled intricacy of tiny braids. He could see the piercing grayblue of her eyes, the flush of warm color in her cheeks and lips. Now she laughed, lifting her chin as she did, his eyes stroking the pale curved column of her neck as a hundred memories ignited.

  He could hardly breathe for the thrill of it, shaking violently now, feeling like a man who’d not eaten in months faced with a banquet. He wanted to sweep her into his arms and lose himself in her, but he could not move.

  And all the while she paid him no heed, though surely she must see him. He was well within her line of sight.

  At last his attention shifted to the man with whom she spoke. Darkbearded, poised, powerful, and handsome, he wore the silks and linens of eastern cut, a gold Sorite ring in his ear, and an expression entirely too predacious for Abramm’s comfort. Worse, Maddie seemed as unaware of it as she was of her own attractiveness. . . .

  Alarm crashed through him. Suddenly he found himself gasping on his cot again, swathed in darkness, the man in the golden breastplate looming beside him.

  “Her husband is dead, you see,” the pleasant voice said. “No one
remembers him. You should forget him, as well. And her.”

  “NO!”

  But his visitor turned away as if Abramm hadn’t spoken.

  “I will not forget,” Abramm said more forcefully. “I won’t.”

  The man was gone. Abramm felt a heaviness lift off the monastery, and then a trumpeting ululation screamed through the stone corridors, jerking him awake with a gasp.

  He blinked around a cell not nearly so dark as it had been in the dream.

  A dream! That’s all it was!

  He took another breath and pushed his hand from under the fleece cloak to conjure a kelistar. White light showed only the bare stone walls and wood floor of his cell, his rucksack and stick undisturbed in the far corner. No tracks of snow nor bits of mud marred the floor. The profound chill was hardly unusual, and though he’d never noticed that sharp, musky odor before, he couldn’t say it hadn’t been there.

  He sagged back onto the cot, shivering with the cold air that had rushed in around him. Thoughts of Maddie filled his head, a thousand memories of sight and sound and touch so that he ached for her presence more fiercely than he had in months. He watched her talking to that young lord again, and a horrible fear rose up in him, riding wings of sharp impatience. “She won’t wait,” Tapheina had said to him. The restless urgency to be off at once swelled in his heart. “Abramm is dead. No one remembers him . . . not even his wife.”

  And then, from out of the night’s stillness he heard the tanniym’s howl. . . . They were after him again.

  Irritation drove him from the cot. Shoving his feet into his boots and wrapping himself in the fleece cloak, he left his cell to prowl the monastery’s corridors and pray. Eventually he landed up in Laud’s study, building up the fire and settling into the chair before it. Paging through the little gray book Laud had given him, he found the picture he’d remembered: a man with the gold breastplate, long braided topknot, and tall black longbow. It was this, no doubt, that had fueled his nightmare. This and Tapheina’s howling combined with what was left of her spore still running through his flesh. There’d been no dragon. No man at his bedside, and that whole scene with Maddie—

  But he was better off not thinking of Maddie at all.

  Eventually he fell asleep, awakening to daylight and the first of the breakfast bells, the book open in his lap and the nightmare but a vague memory.

  Until he stepped into the dining hall and found nearly everyone talking of the dragon’s visit, sharing their dreams and trying to figure out if it was real. Old Wolmer had even taken a stroll around the wallwalk and claimed to have found footprints and snow dislodged from the uppermost tower.

  The footprints were not a dragon’s, however, but a man’s, and the snow could have easily dislodged yesterday under the day’s bright sun and clear sky. Wolmer was convinced it was the dragon, though. And he, like many of them, said it was looking for someone.

  Trinley claimed to have dreamt nothing, and scoffed at them for their foolishness. “Everyone knows dragons no longer exist,” he declared.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Laud said. “Legends say they’ve lived in the Aranaak for centuries. Driven here when Eidon loosed the great flood that took the plains and overran their cities.”

  “You speak of the tanniym,” Abramm said quietly. He’d not been able to decipher enough of his dragon book to have gained much from it yet, but he knew the legends of the tanniym, whose fathers were said to have been rhu’ema themselves. In those days the rhu’ema were able to manifest in physical bodily form—most often that of the dragon—though, like Moroq, they could appear as men if they chose. It was their union with human women that produced the half-breed tanniym, who were themselves shapeshifters, though on a much lesser scale. Because they were also vicious, violent, and increasingly destructive, Eidon had destroyed them, imprisoned the ones who had made them, and removed the rhu’ema’s ability to assume corporeal form.

  “Tanniym!?” Trinley exclaimed now, with an incredulous snort. “Ye mean those wolves out there?”

  “Did they look like any wolves you’ve ever seen before?” Laud asked.

  “They sure didn’t look like dragons,” Trinley said disdainfully. “Or men.” He shook his head. “Those are Hill People stories, pr’fessor! Surely ye of all people don’t b’lieve ’em!”

  “You’d be surprised what I believe,” said Laud.

  Cedric returned them to their original subject: “If the dragon wasn’t real, how d’ye explain us all havin’ the same dream?”

  “Ye didn’t all have the same dream,” Trinley pointed out. “Some of ye thought it was outside, some of ye heard it, an’ only a couple of ye actually saw it. Who was it lookin’ fer? Did it find ’im? Eh? It was probably the wolves howling that ye heard. And the wind blowin’.”

  Some of them glowered at him, while others studied their bowls with creases between their brows.

  “Ye’re all making something out o’ nothin’. Dragons!” He chuckled. I don’t believe in dragons anymore ’n I b’lieve in that conquering Esurhite army King Abramm was constantly scarin’ us with so he could get hold of our gold.”

  Abramm wasn’t the only one to stare at him open-mouthed. Rolland laughed outright.

  “Ye don’t b’lieve in dragons, and ye think the Esurhite army don’t exist?”

  “Not one that means t’ conquer Kiriath and all the world!” Trinley declared hotly. He looked around at them, passion rising. “Aye, an’ I know plenty others who think the same. Men who’ve been t’ Springerlan. Men who’ve lived there fer years and never saw sign o’ this army, though we were ferever sendin’ off our gold and goods so our king could build his own army t’ fight ’em.”

  “Daft, is what ye are!” Rolland sputtered. “The heights must’ve addled yer mind, man.”

  “Ye think I’m addled? Well, tell me, then. Have any of ye here ever seen this army? This invadin’ Esurhite army?”

  “I’ve seen it!” Rolland insisted. “Saw ’em try to take Kalladorne Bay with my own eyes six years ago. Saw their purple firebolts destroy the Hall of Kings in the blink of an eye. I even helped put out the fires it started.”

  “You saw the actual attack?” Abramm asked in astonishment. “You were in Springerlan then?”

  Still glaring at Trinley, Rolland said, “I saw the parade on the bay after Abramm took back the Gull Islands, too—all the galleys and soldiers they captured. . . . So don’t tell me there’s no army.”

  Trinley scowled at him, suddenly suspicious. “I thought ye said ye were born and raised in Sterlen. That ye’d spent yer whole life there.”

  Rolland gave a start. “I was . . . and I did . . . mostly. But fer a time we lived in Springerlan.” His ire vanished and his gaze dropped uneasily to his big hands, all but engulfing the crockery mug he held.

  “Fer a time,” Cedric prodded.

  “We came down when the kraggin held Kalladorne Bay, jest before Abramm returned t’ take the crown. When things were so bad up north. I’d had t’ shut down my forge. . . .”

  “I can’t imagine things would’ve been better in Springerlan,” said Trinley.

  “Oh, it worked out well, actually. I couldn’t afford to open my own place, but I found work at the . . . at a large stable.”

  “Pox!” Trinley burst out. “Ye worked fer the king, didn’t ye? That’s why ye’ve always been so defensive about him.” He pushed back from the table. “Plagues! All this time ye’ve been a traitor in our midst.”

  Rolland’s blue eyes flashed. “If anyone’s the traitor, it’s you, Oakes! With all yer ignorant and spiteful faultfinding of a man ye’ve never even met.”

  “Oh, and ye have? Workin’ down at the stables . . . a lowly blacksmith? Aye, an’ I’m sure ye’ve had many a heart-to-heart talk with His Majesty.”

  Rolland glanced at Daesi, who gave him a warning look he didn’t heed. His expression hardened. “I saw him from time t’ time, and he did speak t’ me on occasion. Just day-t’-day courtesies, but he always treate
d me kindly, like I was a person.”

  Abramm stared at Rolland, aghast. I spoke to him? He wracked his brain, trying to recall the man. He’d had more than twenty groomsmen and ten blacksmiths working in his stables, and truth be told, he was as guilty as the next man of not seeing what he supposed did not matter.

  “He kept a fine stable, too,” Rolland added.

  Trinley snorted. “Now, there’s the measure of a king’s quality: He keeps a fine stable!”

  “He was a good man, Oakes. He didn’t deserve to die like he did.”

  “No? Then why did Eidon let him fall?”

  Rolland frowned at him and said nothing.

  “Some say it was so he might be tested,” Professor Laud remarked mildly. “So that all might see he did not serve Eidon for what he had received. That no matter what they did to him, he would not break.”

  “Some say he did break,” Trinley said.

  “He died with the shield on his chest. Everyone saw it. And they say that a number of the men involved in his torture have since taken the Star themselves.”

  That was something Abramm had not known. Was old Belmir one of them?

  The professor arched his brows at Trinley. “Why do you think men are forbidden to speak Abramm’s name in Kiriath these days?”

  “ ’Cause he was cursed by Eidon,” Trinley said. “He lied to us, abandoned us, thought more of his foreign wife than of his own people and paid fer it. All that gold we sent t’ support his efforts to build his army, yet when the time came we really needed deliverance, where was he? Where were the forces that should’ve been there to throw back Rennalf and his barbarians? Why didn’t our great king at least come with his magical scepter to stop it all?!”

  “Because he didn’t know,” said Rolland fiercely. “Ye’ve heard the tales as well as I have: He was betrayed. His scepter stolen and replaced by a powerless copy.”

  And now, for a moment Abramm was back on that knoll outside Springerlan, reliving his hour of greatest need, when he’d swung the scepter over his head and nothing happened. He’d thought first that it was being contrary again, for he had never fully understood how it worked. Only when the Light had illumined all its length and still not stirred the slightest breeze had he stopped to examine it more closely. And realized it was not the real scepter, not made of Light but of gold, with a thick glass orb. The work of man and not of Eidon. Even now in recollection, he found it hard to breathe through that moment of terrible realization.