Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  Her middle twisted, and panic flapped at the edges of her soul. Then she jerked up her chin and made herself take a deep breath. Find out what is really happening first, she counseled herself. If it’s real and true that you will never see him again in this life, then you may fall apart. She faced Umberley and said calmly, “I will see her now.”

  Marta Brackleford was a small, purposeful woman, with dark, expressive eyes and black hair caught into a bun on her nape. At once she handed over the book, which was wrapped in worn and wrinkled brown paper tied with string and stained with water spots.

  “You claim to have known my husband,” Maddie asked, turning it over in her hands.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The woman dropped her gaze respectfully to the floor.

  “You will not mind, I hope, if I ask you to describe him.”

  “He was taller by a head than most of the men in our party, ma’am. Only Rolland stood as tall. His hair was long and blond, and he wore a thick bushy beard, darker than his hair. He has twin scars running down the left side of his face.”

  “That’s a description anyone could give.”

  Marta nodded, pressed her lips together, and tried again. “His eyes are so blue they make your heart catch. His brows are dark and level, and the way he sometimes cocks one is utterly endearing. His hands are mesmerizing— beautifully shaped, long fingered, and strong, but callused and rough from the work. And his smile, which doesn’t come very often, is like the sun parting the clouds after a storm.”

  “I don’t think I much like your second description,” Maddie said, somewhat aghast.

  Marta smiled. “You’re right. I lost my heart to him, even knowing his belonged to another. And still does, I might add. You have no worries there. But I think perhaps from my description you believe me now.”

  “You have done much to advance your case,” Maddie said warily.

  The other woman nodded. She gestured at the book, now in Maddie’s hands. “He gave me that when he set out into the desert to rescue our friends from slavery. He instructed us to leave immediately for Fannath Rill, but we decided to wait a week, anyway, and then that great sandstorm blew in off the desert. When three weeks later they still had not returned, we headed south. Abramm arranged for a riverman to take us to Deveren Dol, but the man even went so far as to escort us to Fannath Rill. Your husband said you would see him rewarded for his time and generosity, but I fear he has returned to Ru’geruk disgruntled and disillusioned, since it has taken me so very long to finally meet with you.”

  Maddie raised her eyebrows at this gentle scolding, and Marta flushed. “Not that I expected to be allowed to see you at all, Your Majesty,” she added, her flush deepening. When Maddie still said nothing, the woman dropped her gaze to the floor and murmured, “Forgive me, madam. I meant no offense . . . .”

  “And I took none, Serra Brackleford. Please, be at ease.” Maddie turned her attention to the parcel in her hands, vaguely disappointed now that he’d not sent her something more personal. If it was truly from him.

  “It’s from the library at Caerna’tha, Your Majesty.”

  Caerna’tha. Warm memories of Maddie’s time there bloomed distractingly, and for a moment she forgot she had a guest. Reluctantly she shook it off.

  “We were snowed in all winter,” Marta was saying. “And when he wasn’t working, your husband—we called him Alaric—spent much time there.”

  “Alaric! So he’s going by that name again.”

  And when Marta looked at her in puzzlement, she added, “It’s his second name. Abramm Alaric Kesrin Galbrath . . . He’s used it before when he didn’t want anyone to know he was king.” She paused, realizing he’d probably started using it to get out of Kiriath undiscovered, and by then had cemented his alternate identity with the people he traveled with. “One last question . . . Where did my husband sleep in Caerna’tha?”

  “Where did he sleep?” Marta’s dark brows arched at this odd question. “He chose one of the unheated dormitory rooms rather than stay with the rest of us in the Great Room. For which he was gossiped about relentlessly. No one could quite figure out what he was about. He was always standoffish, except maybe with Rolland and Laud at the end. But given who he was, I understand it now.”

  “And the others. . . ? They didn’t know who he was?”

  Marta shook her head. “He was supposed to be dead, after all, and in many ways he seemed a normal man.” She nodded at the book in Maddie’s hands. “I saw him write a note and slip it under the front cover before he wrapped it up.”

  A letter . . . With suddenly trembling hands, Maddie pulled off the string and unfolded the wrapping from around the leather-bound book. Its title, inscribed in the Old Tongue, caught her eye at once: The Red Dragon.

  She nearly gasped. Even without the letter, she would have known by this that Marta’s tale was true. For who but Abramm would select such a title for her? The book was obviously very old, a treasure that would normally make her tremble with awe. Today she cared only for the wrinkled rectangle of brown paper she found behind its cover. That it was filled with the script of the Old Tongue gave her a start. He’s learned to write the Old Tongue now. . . ?

  She closed the book and laid the note flat against its cover to read:

  My heart, my life, my dearest love—

  Marta will have told you why you are reading this note and not feeling my arms about you, though the latter is what I most long to do. I do not know why Eidon is taking so long to bring me back to you, but it has become clear to me that he is not in nearly so much of a hurry as I am. The one advantage of staying in Caerna’tha through the winter you’ve already seen. I have learned to read the Old Tongue. There were many wonderful books there to learn it with, and I have gleaned much about the regalia and the guardstars and what is going on in realms we cannot see. You would love it, though I think I would become insanely jealous with such an unending line of ink and paper suitors clamoring for your attention. You will have heard about my promise to Krele Janner, the boatman who brought us down. Reward him well. He was a faithful servant. And I hope you can give Marta a position on your staff. She is a good woman. A widow, thanks to the Gadrielites. I believe you can trust her. Finally, I do not know by what route Eidon will bring me back to you, only that he will. Have faith, my love. I will come. He has promised me that.

  I remain forever yours,

  Abramm

  Tears blurred her vision by the time she got to the end, having no doubt now that he had written it. She read it again, then set both book and letter on her desk and broke down completely. Tears ran down her face as she wept into her hands for want of him. Sometime in the midst of it, Marta came and put her arms around her, and the queen of Chesedh wept against her shoulder as if they had known each other all their lives.

  CHAPTER

  29

  Abramm and his companions left the banks of the Okaido River the same morning as the barge sank, eager to escape the scene of their deliverance and any Esurhites who might happen down the river. They’d come ashore east of the town Abramm had selected, which had been flattened by the earthquake. Finding no survivors, the northerners helped themselves to what weapons and provisions they could find—including six live chickens and a kettle to cook them in—and moved on. Trinley, of course, had to debate and dispute everything Abramm said, demanding the most silly and time-wasting things be done, but Abramm held his tongue and let it go. It wouldn’t matter in the end.

  The map he’d taken from the wheelhouse showed that the road running north out of the town eventually cut through mountains into North Andol. Following it was a gamble, since, being the only one on the map, there was a good chance the road would be used by other travelers. Worse, the map indicated that near the mountains, the road wound past a location marked with an Andolen beehive crown—possibly a former monarch’s residence—which could be problematic if they had to pass too near it.

  They were a troop of eighteen men, on foot, most of them blond o
r brunette and half naked, none of them Esurhite. Back at the river they had stripped the Esurhite uniforms from three drowned soldiers and gave them to the men they best fit: Galen, Cedric, and Borlain. Even so, they were sure to draw the notice of anyone they passed, particularly soldiers. And palatial residences tended to have many of those around. But in this land of mistveiled sun, they would surely get lost without the road, so Abramm insisted, despite Trinley’s vigorous objections, that they should keep to it. All the possibilities for disaster he would leave in Eidon’s hands.

  Of course, once Abramm determined what he would do, Trinley sought to undermine his leadership by trying to get the others to return to the river. When that failed, he wanted to lead the troop himself, a demand Abramm dismissed with the observation that Trinley did not speak the Tahg and thus was ill suited to conversing with anyone they might meet. Abramm, on the other hand, was fluent in the local language and could easily be taken as one of the Darian, who often held positions in the Esurhite army. Defeated and sulking, Trinley dropped back to the middle of their procession and said no more.

  Once on the road, Abramm eased their pace and was finally able to learn what had befallen his friends since last he’d seen them—a heart-dropping four and a half months ago by their reckoning. After the sandstorm, they had found their way out of the dunes to a small southern-edge settlement, where they’d run afoul of a friendly innkeeper who offered them food, drink, and beds, only to drug them and sell them back into slavery. Passing from master to master, they’d finally arrived in Aggosim, where the Esurhites bought them for galley slaves.

  Of Abramm’s own journey, he said only that he had found an ancient ruin where he’d stayed for a much longer time than it had seemed. . . . At which point he’d changed the subject, still rattled by the realization that he’d been in Chena’ag Tor over four months.

  Regarding Borlain, the one-eyed Chesedhan who’d led the attack on him after the sinking of the barge, his friends knew little, though all had noticed how intently he watched Abramm. He appeared to be the leader of the Chesedhans in their party, and from the way his men treated him, Abramm guessed they were captured soldiers.

  That evening, after they’d made camp a little way off the road and the chickens had been cut up and were cooking in a big kettle, Abramm drew the Chesedhan leader away from his friends.

  “Those men I killed were yours, I’m guessing,” he said, stopping at the edge of the ring of firelight.

  The one-eyed man seemed surprised but didn’t deny it. “My best. Good fighters. Good friends.”

  “I’m sorry.” More sorry than you know.

  Borlain shrugged. “As you said, come at a man with a bared blade, you have to expect to meet some steel yourself.” He paused. “I underestimated you.”

  “I’d take it back if I could.”

  Again the Chesedhan shrugged. “It was their time. We all have one. It comes, and the world moves on.” His one eye came up to catch Abramm’s gaze. “I’ve never seen anyone wield a blade as well as you do.”

  “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

  Borlain’s eye drifted to the men laughing now where they sat and sprawled around the fire. “These others, though, your friends. They’re not soldiers.”

  “No,” Abramm agreed, looking at them. “Not yet, anyway.” He glanced again at Borlain. “I really do wish I could take back what I did.”

  “Ah. But then perhaps you would be the one dead.” The man flashed a gap-toothed grin. “And if I had acted less rashly, waited to learn more of what was going on, then maybe . . .” He trailed off and shook his head. “What’s done is done, and it serves no purpose to chase after ‘what if.’ I don’t hold it against you, Alaric, if that’s what you fear. We’re soldiers, you and I. That’s how it is.”

  Abramm had nothing to say to that, and soon they returned to the fire, where the chicken stewed with rice and beans that had also come from the town was doled out into the men’s scavenged cups and bowls. Then, as they ate, Abramm asked Borlain how he and his companions had been enslaved. Thus they all learned of King Leyton’s ill-fated attempt to win back the island of Tornecki using the Kiriathan regalia his sister, former queen of Kiriath, had given him.

  “She gave him the regalia?” Abramm exclaimed.

  Borlain swore she had, but Abramm didn’t believe him. Having long suspected his Chesedhan brother-in-law of stealing his scepter, Abramm had no reason to think the man wouldn’t similarly violate Maddie—his own sister and subject—if it meant getting his hands on the rest of the regalia. That none of it had aided him and instead had only gotten him captured by his enemies was only just.

  In any case, Borlain had seen the king in enemy hands himself—seen him mocked, beaten, spat upon, and humiliated before all the jeering Esurhite soldiers who had participated in his capture. Belthre’gar had personally taken the regalia from the king and secreted them away.

  “That was just at the beginning of last summer.”

  “They will have put him in the Games by now,” Abramm said, scooping more stew and a chicken leg into his wooden bowl.

  “Aye. And now that we’ve been freed deep behind enemy lines, we’re thinking maybe we’re supposed to rescue him.”

  “Awful big order for seven men,” Abramm said.

  “We were thinking you and yours might want to help.”

  “Help that lying, thieving Chesedhan?” Trinley erupted. “I knew Madeleine wasn’t to be trusted! First chance she gets, what does she do? Gives away our regalia.”

  “Stow it, Oakes!” Abramm barked. “She’s the queen of Kiriath. She’d never have given them up freely.” He turned his attention back to Borlain. “I don’t think you’ll find us much interested in helping Leyton.”

  “I do like the idea of trying to get the regalia back, though,” Cedric mused.

  Trinley agreed. “They probably took them to Xorofin. If we went back to the river, we could follow it to the coast and then south.”

  Abramm smiled to himself at the thought of these men trying to travel south through Esurh without being caught. He pulled the chicken leg out of his bowl and chewed off the soft meat as the others offered support for and elaboration of Trinley’s idea.

  As they came to a lull in their plotting, he said, “Suppose they are in Xorofin. . . . And suppose somehow you were to rescue them. . . . And then further suppose you could escape. . . . All of which are highly doubtful—”

  “Not if Eidon is with us!” Trinley protested. “And it’s so clear he is. It cannot be coincidence that we have been brought all this way only to be set free. And then to run into you here, as well? Our one real soldier? It is a clear sign.”

  “Aye, it is that, indeed.” Abramm smiled slightly. “But humor me. Supposing all of what I said happened . . . and we got away free with them . . . what would you do with them? Bring them to Gillard?”

  “No!” Trinley flashed him a disgusted look. “Bring’em t’ Simon, o’ course.”

  “Simon.” My uncle? It made a certain amount of sense. “Is anyone sure Duke Simon still lives?”

  “Simon Alaric,” Trinley corrected. “The crown prince. Borlain here was tellin’ us earlier he and his little brother were smuggled out by the nanny.”

  Hearing his son’s name spoken by someone other than himself for the first time since he’d left Kiriath hit Abramm like a kick in the chest. His heart seemed to turn itself inside out, twisting with a pain he could not identify. It took all his self-control to keep his voice stable and audible. “So they both do live?”

  “Didn’t I just say that?” Trinley asked witheringly.

  Abramm hardly heard him. So it wasn’t my imagination conjuring Simon up that night in Caerna’tha. Oh, my Father . . . you did hold them. You knew all the time. . . . Emotion welled up so strongly he thought he might burst with it, and as tears stung his eyes he had to stand and walk away.

  He heard the men’s puzzled voices in his wake but could not discern their words. It was as if his inne
r landscape was being shaken as violently as the outer landscape of the Temple of Aggos had been yesterday. Once alone, he fell to his knees in the darkness and wept in gratitude and longing and a tangle of other emotions too deep to be identified. He had come so far, lost so much, waited so long. The experiences in Chena’ag Tor had stretched and drained him to the limit of his endurance. But though it had ended in glorious assurance, now that he was back in the world, the memory of it had faded rapidly until it seemed as unreal as his encounter with little Simon in that dark hallway the night Maddie had come to him in Caerna’tha. Though he’d been sure of what he’d experienced with his wife, he’d never been totally convinced that Simon had been anything more than a figment of his imagination.

  To hear the boy’s name spoken in the real world, to hear others affirming that his boys lived had unlocked a cascade of assurances that Eidon would deliver what he had promised. And that the deliverance was even now beginning.

  The rustle of another’s approach roused him from his thoughts moments before Rolland spoke cautiously from behind. “Alaric? Are ye well?”

  “Aye, Rolland. I’m fine.” He rolled his weight back squarely onto his feet and stood.

  Rolland watched him in the light of a kelistar. “Trinley’s got ’em all talked into heading back t’ the river tomorrow. I thought ye’d want to know.”

  “Heading back to the river?” Abramm struggled to put meaning in the words.

  “He’s convinced them we should go after the regalia. That seeking them must be why Eidon brought us down here. I tried t’ argue him out of it, but . . . he always talks rings around me.”

  “So you’re going with him, too, then?”

  “I’m going with ye.”