Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  “Aye!” Kitrenna Trinley said sharply from across the circle. The shield around the women had dissipated as the men talked. “Shouldn’t ye be going after ’em? The longer ye wait, the harder it’ll be to get ’em back.”

  “Get them back?” Abramm cocked an amused brow. “There’s only four of us, Mistress Trinley. Even if we found them, what do you think we could do?”

  “Don’t count me in that four,” Janner cut in. “What’s lost is lost, and I’m not risking my own neck for a flock of idiot Kiriathans. They should’ve had more sense than to trust the likes of Dugla’is.”

  Kitrenna strode swiftly across the pavement to confront Abramm face-toface. “I expect such talk from a Chesedhan,” she said quietly. “But ye claim to have served our king.”

  Her glance shifted accusingly to Rolland, standing at Abramm’s side. He transferred his weight from one leg to the other. “Blast it, Kit!” he cried. “Ye’d have me abandon my own family to look for yers?”

  She only stared at them, and when after a time no one said anything, young Jania began to wail, her baby girl clutched to her breast. “Oh, sweet Eidon. Ye can’t just abandon ’em—give ’em over to be slaves! Ye can’t!”

  Kitrenna’s stare hardened into a glare, and she stepped even closer. “Ye would see that poor girl lost in a foreign land with her baby girl and no husband to care for ’em?” she demanded quietly. “Ye would see all of us bereft like this when ye could turn it all around?”

  “How?” Abramm demanded. “What would you have us do? Blunder out there without the vaguest idea where we’re going or what we face? Not even knowing how badly we’d be outnumbered?”

  “Eidon doesn’t care about numbers, Alaric!” Kitrenna snapped.

  Abramm recoiled before the intensity of her anger.

  “If ye will only go after ’em, perhaps He will show ye what to do.”

  It shocked him to be reproved by the likes of Kitrenna Trinley, whom he’d never thought of as being strong in the Light or versed in the Words, but reproved he was. Because as soon as the words left her lips, he knew that she was right. Of course he had to rescue them. And if it meant putting off his anticipated reunion with his own family a little while longer, what did that matter? His friends, his countrymen, his subjects needed rescuing. And wasn’t this part of the calling? To put aside one’s personal desires for the good of those one ruled? Even if they didn’t understand who you were or why you did it? And he of all people knew that Eidon had no need of numbers.

  He released a long breath of resignation. “Very well. I’ll do what I can.”

  Queen Ronesca remained closeted for an entire day with High Kohal Minirth before announcing that she would trust Eidon to deliver her husband and sons, and there would be no escalation of the war efforts Leyton’s generals were requesting. In addition, she echoed High Kohal Minirth’s call for a purification of the city and its people. All the faithful should join in a week of prayer and vigils, beseeching Eidon to deliver their king from the evil one.

  The Kiriathans, meanwhile, had been galvanized to action both by what had befallen Leyton—who had gotten exactly what he deserved, they said— and by Maddie’s song. All were utterly convinced now that Abramm was not only alive but would be returning any time. They told everyone the story of Maddie seeing him heading down the Ankrill at Obla—even though they knew as well as Carissa that she’d not actually seen him. Even Nott, who had made good on his desire to return to Tiris’s salon and look into the amber himself, had admitted to seeing only the ruins, though he claimed he, too, had felt the king’s presence. Since he and Abramm had never been close, Carissa found that hard to believe, but no one was interested in her gloomy refutations. Instead, they believed with all their hearts they would soon see a miracle, and it had emboldened them.

  Daily they complained of the unjust imprisonment of Trap Meridon, former First Minister of Kiriath, demanding to know the charges against him, which still had not been announced. They were incensed more than ever that Leyton had taken their regalia, and one speaker after another promised a dire fate at the hands of the Esurhites for the scoundrel, thief, and liar, that snake Leyton.

  Daily, men—or their wives—came to Carissa urging her to seek Trap’s release. She was Crown Princess of Kiriath—she had the right.

  She might have the right, but her status was not recognized in Chesedh, and so far not even Maddie had been able to gain his release. Ronesca was perpetually praying or resting or otherwise too busy to see her. Carissa couldn’t even persuade the authorities to allow her to visit Trap, though he was her own husband.

  Every time she went down to see him, or bring him some clean clothing or soap or some notes from Terstmeet, they took the things but told her she could not see him.

  Finally she sought out Temmand Garival, who, having been dismissed from his post in the royal cabinet, had taken Trap’s place as Maddie’s finance secretary. He assured Carissa it was absolutely her right to see her husband and offered to accompany her on her next visit.

  Thus, two weeks after Maddie’s performance in Tiris’s Desert Salon, Carissa crossed the city for the fifth time to enter the prison and ask to see her husband. As always, the warden gave her egress to the level where her husband was housed, but she was forced to stop at the iron-bound door that guarded the entrance to his cell block. She banged on the door with the ladle that had been looped through the latch, grumbling at Eidon as she did it. For each time she came here it distressed her more and more that Trap should be reduced to this. And more that Eidon would have allowed him to be arrested just when she had come to her senses and was about to make things right between them. How could you do this to me? And worse, to him? Sometimes the old bitterness and self-pity seized her with a vengeance, and she wallowed into thoughts of how he never blessed her. . . . Always everyone else—never her. . . .

  Today she quenched those thoughts before they got entrenched. She had Conal. Trap had kissed her and insisted he had married her for love, not duty. If that was so—and she was coming to believe it was—she was sure that, if she could explain her ridiculous misconstruing of his actions that night and show him how much she truly loved him, he would understand. He’d forgiven so much else. Why would he not forgive that?

  The little metal faceplate grated aside in the top half of the door to reveal the mustached face of the guard on duty beyond. He had to know her by now, but always he asked what she wanted. “I’ve come to see my husband, Duke Eltrap Meridon.”

  The man glared at her. “You can’t see him.”

  This time Garival spoke up on her behalf. “She has every right to see the man. He is her husband.”

  The grate squealed back into place, and they heard the muffled footfalls of the guard. Please, my Lord. Let them say yes. I have to see him.

  Before long the guard returned: “He says you are not his wife, that he sent you papers of divorcement before he was imprisoned.”

  “Tell him I did not sign them. That they were lost the day the men came to search the apartment.” She paused, considering. “Tell him—”

  But the squealing faceplate cut her off and the guard was gone. Again he reappeared shortly. “He says you should have some more papers drawn up, ma’am. Send them to him and he will sign them here in the prison. He also said he would prefer that you not come down here to see him anymore.”

  The metal door closed in her face, and she stood there staring at it in shock.

  Garival touched her shoulder. “Maybe they’ll let me talk to him.”

  So he banged on the door again, the metal hatch squealed open, and the face reappeared. Garival requested audience with the same prisoner.

  Again the hatch was closed, but this time, to Carissa’s astonishment, the door immediately swung open and Garival was let in. It closed with a clang behind him, leaving her to stand there alone, grappling with the realization that Trap had turned her down cold. That it wasn’t the jailers, that it had never been the jailers. He had refused all a
long to see her.

  And as she got her mind around that truth, she felt as if something had been torn loose of her and lost. A gaping hole where for longer than she’d imagined had dwelt hope and light and something more wonderful than she’d ever guessed. Images and memories flashed through her mind—of Trap standing at the window in her sitting room, waiting for her to finish with Conal; sharing the cocoa with her; playing with her son in the nursery as if the boy were his own; the look of joy on his freckled face as he’d whirled her around the ballroom on the night of the coronation; the quiet soberness of his brown eyes as he’d told her he loved her. . . . Each image hurt worse than the one before it, until she sagged against the wall with a low groan and began to weep.

  Have I really killed it all for us? With my foolish doubts and pride? Oh, Eidon, please don’t let it be. Let Garival say something to change his mind. Please, let him see me.

  Would she never be free of the curse of her former husband? Would Rennalf always turn up to ruin everything for her? Would she never—

  She cut off the thought train abruptly, knowing exactly where it would lead and determined not to go there. It was time she stopped blaming Rennalf for what was her own doing. She was the one who had let what he’d done fill her with insecurity. She was the one who’d asked Trap for the divorce. After all he had done for her, she was the one who’d pushed him away.

  The thought of it wrung another moan from her lips, and she hugged herself miserably, praying Eidon would give her another chance.

  She wrestled with her agony for what seemed an eternity before the door clanged open again and Garival rejoined her. The guard did not invite her to enter in his stead, either, but slammed the door shut on his heels and clanged the locking bar into place.

  One look at Garival’s face told her everything. “He really won’t see me.”

  Maddie’s new finance secretary frowned. “He’s not well, Carissa. I fear he’s struggling with some of that spore he picked up from Hadrich.”

  “But he said he’d purged that.”

  “A lot of it residualized before he could. And it is a virulent spore. He knows he’s wrestling with it, but . . .” He trailed off.

  She stood there, horror piled upon horror. She had not seen old Hadrich herself before he died, but she’d heard the tales. To think of that happening to Trap—

  Garival patted her shoulder. “It would not be like with Hadrich. Trap’s a strong man, and the spore is not a primary source.” He paused, cocking a questioning brow at her. “He said you were the one who requested the divorce.”

  “Oh, I was, I was.” Her voice throttled off as tears welled in her eyes. “But . . . it was foolish,” she said when she could talk again. “I didn’t know what I was doing. I just want to tell him how wrong I was, how much I love him. . . .”

  “Well, he says it is better you have nothing to do with him for now. Given the situation, I’m inclined to agree. He’s become something of a lightning rod.” He shook his head. “You might want to take his advice about the divorce papers. If the Kiriathans do riot, it could all come back on you.”

  “Let it, then. For I’ll not be sending him any divorce papers,” Carissa said firmly.

  Garival gave her another thoughtful frown, then rubbed his nose and turned toward the outer door. “This is really outrageous, given who he is. Leyton would have released him long ago, I’m sure. But Ronesca is just too caught up in her own problems and worries to see what is happening. It’ll come back to bite her. Mark my words.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  Abramm lay belly down on the crest of a dune overlooking the oasis where the Fermikians’ caravan had arrived yesterday. With swift and practiced ease they’d unpacked their camels and thrown up the black-and-white goatskin tents that now scattered the grassy floor of the palm grove. At their midst gleamed a spring-fed pond fringed with cattails. A hand-cranked waterwheel lifted the water into a series of troughs for the camels, while a smaller secondary trough served the slaves.

  With free roam of the oasis and virtually ignored by their masters, the hundred or so captives now sprawled about the grass, resting in the shade of the trees, the tents, and even the camels. Smoke from the fire pits wafted from ventilation holes in the tops of the tents, but the pale blue clouds that hung waist-high around the doorways were from the fermikia pipes. A number of the turbaned Fermikians lay up against the bases of the palms, conscious but stupefied. Those within the tents would be no better, and it was the same every day.

  He understood now why that route was called the Road of the Unchained. The captives walked unbound because there was no need to chain them. Surrounded by seas of forbidding dunes and endless sunbaked gravel playas, it would take but moments for one unfamiliar with the area to get lost. Even if one knew the way, the sun and the rocks, the frigid nights, and the bone-dry air could and did claim weaker men. As in the Kolki Pass, the bones of those who’d gone before lined the shoulders of the ancient route.

  Lifting his eyes from the shining water and the deep purple shade of the trees, Abramm turned to squint westward, where a ridge of hazy blue mountains floated above the sea of undulating dunes that now entirely surrounded him. Those mountains were his point of reference, and every day they grew smaller and fainter while he grew more impatient to win his people free before they pressed any deeper into the wretched sand sea. Already they’d been in it a week, which was far longer than he’d ever intended.

  Back in Ru’geruk, townspeople had suggested no one could cross this wasteland and live, but obviously people did. For there lay the road directly ahead of him, its faded gray and iron-red tiles rising from the oasis on the far side and plunging eastward between curving slopes of sand.

  He returned his gaze to the gleaming water and licked chapped lips with a dry tongue, looking forward impatiently to Cedric’s return with the water bags.

  Rolland crept up beside him. “They’re at the upper end—there by th’ cattails.”

  Abramm looked in that direction, but with all the captives robed and turbaned like the Fermikians, it was impossible to tell them apart. “Did you show yourself?”

  “Aye. But I dunno if they’ll cooperate. The road’s influence doesn’t seem to have lifted much.”

  Abramm glanced at his friend. The big man, like everyone else, wore the desert men’s robes and turbans that they removed from some of the fresher corpses they’d encountered at the start of their journey. The sun had burned his face dark brown and had bleached streaks of white into his blond beard. It made his blue eyes stand out brightly, even squinting as he was in the constant glare. “Maybe it’s because they’re not really off it out there,” Abramm said, fighting down a squall of dismay.

  The road, they’d discovered shortly after they’d started traveling it, was a construct of shadowspawn. At the outset, Abramm could not walk on it for more than an hour before suffering the symptoms of spore sickness—headache, nausea, weakness. Worse, he’d also been beset with an unrelenting pall of anxiety and the sense of some vast, unseen, malevolent being waiting beyond the dunes to seize and devour him. The road alone, he’d believed— irrationally—protected him. But after his second bout with spore sickness confirmed the road as the source of his struggles, he had refused to set foot on it, and had instead walked beside it the whole way.

  It was clear that most men did not react to the spore as he did, though, and the slaves trod it willingly, afraid to do anything but what their new masters commanded. That those masters felt their own anxiety was obvious. The road’s reputation did not help, for legend said it had a habit of betraying those it did not favor. One might awaken in the morning to find it vanished. Or follow it deep into the desert only to have it plunge over a cliff or into a bed of sand. It was the reason, he believed, every one of the desert men was addicted to the fermikia pipe, and why they spent their nights stupefied by its pleasures.

  “Their captors at least know where they are going,” Rolland said presently, harkening
back to Abramm’s prediction.

  “I know where we’re going, Rollie.”

  “I know that. And I trust ye.” Rolland glanced toward the line of mountains in the west, then shook his head. “But I do na see how we’ll convince Trinley and the others when none of us can see those mountains but you.”

  Abramm felt a familiar frustration. It was an undeniable blessing that Eidon had honed his visual acuity beyond the normal . . . and a cursing that the things he saw were forever being doubted.

  The rasp of fabric on sand heralded Cedric’s arrival. His narrow face was burned even darker than Rolland’s. With his dark brown eyes, he could pass for a slaver and already had performed the role without rousing suspicion.

  “I talked to them,” Cedric said, handing two newly filled water bags to Abramm. “Told ’em the plan. They might balk, but I think if I hurry them along the road like I’m one of the slavers, they’ll do as I say.” He paused. “None of them are thinking well. And Galen is doing really poorly.”

  Abramm eyed the near-motionless camp again. “Eidon will help us,” he said firmly. “You best get back to your post, Cedric. We’ll do it all as planned.”

  Cedric slithered off the way he’d come, and Abramm and Rolland backed down the dune. Returning to the makeshift canopy they had constructed in a nearby trough using their staffs and an extra outer robe, they settled down to wait for evening.

  Abramm lay back on the warm sand. As Rolland’s breathing deepened into rhythmic soughs, he reflected on the fact that Janner and the women should have left Trakas by now. . . .

  At Kitrenna’s urging, Abramm and the others had gone after the Fermikians in Obla, hoping to free the men they’d taken. The desert men had locked their captives into a barred wooden wagon not far from the amphitheater and rapidly outdistanced those who followed on foot. Wagon tracks led them to the city’s edge, where the hard-packed surface of the plains defeated their tracking ability. Janner had speculated their quarry was headed east to an ancient ruin that predated even the Ophiran Obla and from which the Road of the Unchained originated. It wasn’t far, he’d told them, and given the fact that the slaves were not bound, along with the strong possibility there’d be a horde of them with relatively few guards, Abramm decided to give the rescue a try.