Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  Using the horses, uniforms, and weapons they’d acquired so far, he’d planned to disguise them all as a patrol rounding up runaway slaves in the earthquake’s aftermath. With the coastlands crawling with Esurhite soldiers, his plan remained viable, though it would surely be put to a far greater test than he had hoped.

  Going west, of course, also increased the potential for encountering Leyton—assuming he still lived—and the possibility of rescuing him. Borlain and his Chesedhans were certain they would, convinced it was why they had been brought here, even as the Kiriathans believed they’d been sent to rescue Abramm’s regalia. None of them had given any thought to how all that might be accomplished—in a hostile environment, crawling with enemy soldiers. They were just certain Eidon would make them a way.

  In any case, almost two months to the day from when they’d arrived, Abramm announced it was time to leave. They spent three days packing and preparing, and on the morning of their projected departure gathered in the valley’s yard. Abramm, who had gone up to the fortress’s watchtower to be alone with Eidon for a time, was returning down the narrow stair to the valley floor when he came upon Rolland and Trinley in quiet conversation.

  The only one of the Kiriathans who had refused to honor Abramm with his fealty, Trinley had continued to be a problem. Though he no longer openly criticized Abramm’s decisions, he continued to nurse his bitterness and find fault behind Abramm’s back. On occasion, Abramm had heard Rolland and Cedric talk about it, but he had deliberately not intruded to give them the chance to deal with it on their own.

  “We’ve all lost much, Oakes,” Rolland said now in a low voice. “Plagues, Abramm’s lost the most.”

  “Aye. Sure he has.” Trinley’s voice was mocking. “I can’t b’lieve the way ye’re all scrapin’ an’ bowin’ to a man who’s nothin’ more than any of us. Ye’re such a poor, gullible fool, Rollie!”

  Rolland sighed wearily. “How can ye still claim ye don’t believe he’s Abramm, Oakes?”

  “B’cause Abramm is dead. Ye saw him die yerself, and if this fella really is him, why’d it take a year fer ye t’ figure it out?” When Rolland had no answer for him, he added, “Even if he was Abramm, I’d not give him my fealty. He doesn’t deserve it.”

  “Blaming him fer what yer daughter did t’ ye isn’t fair. And it won’t bring anythin’ back. Only eat away at ye until yer soul is dark and bitter.”

  Trinley snorted. “What do ye know about bitterness, Rollie? What d’ ye know about loss? Nothin’.”

  For a moment Rolland was silent. When he finally did speak, irritation sharpened his voice. “Maybe I don’t know as much as ye do, but he’s our king, and whether ye believe that or not, ye’d better start treating him like it. ’Cause if ye don’t stop yer criticizin’ and mockery, I swear by Eidon’s throne, I’ll leave ye along the road with nothing but yer clothes and yer waterskin.”

  “Ye wouldn’t do—”

  “I would. An’ I will,” Rolland said firmly. “We’ll be headin’ down among the Esurhites here soon, and I’ll not let ye drag the rest of us down. Nor put our king in danger.”

  “Yer king,” Trinley sneered. “Maybe I’ll just leave on my own.”

  “Maybe ye should.”

  Rolland walked off, and soon after, Trinley followed him. Abramm went round another way, so they’d not guess he’d heard them, and as much as Rolland’s actions pleased him, it sobered him to think that after all this time, all Abramm had done and Trinley had seen, his heart seemed only to grow harder and more bitter toward Abramm. Rather like Gillard’s had. And like Gillard, there didn’t seem to be anything anyone could do to change it.

  They set out shortly after that, eighteen of them, six mounted, the other twelve on foot, most of them excited and filled with anticipation for what their future held. Two alone were sober: Trinley on foot and sullen as he brought up the rear, and Abramm astride the big gray he’d named Newbanner at the head. For Trinley’s unrelenting hostility had reminded him that he faced another enemy, one who was not only far more hostile but far more powerful: Moroq.

  For the dragon was out there, somewhere, waiting to do his worst. And the last time Abramm had seen his wife, he’d chosen to abandon her to the care of Eidon. For all he knew she might be dead now. And Trap, as well. He’d been able to put such thoughts aside for the last two months, knowing he’d not have them answered, anyway, and refusing to torment himself with wondering. But now—very soon, perhaps—he would find out if either still lived.

  He would not take back his decision, but it was hard not to dread learning the outcome. Because at some deep level he was pretty sure what it was going to be and was still preparing himself to receive it with acceptance and thanksgiving. And the will to go on without his loved ones. For in the domed Hall of Records above Chena’ag Tor, the pillar showed his kingdom restored to him, but not necessarily his wife and friends. And even the kingdom was only potential—a future he could lose if he did not stay the course, if he allowed the Shadow to overcome him and forgot that central command scrawled across the hall’s entrance:

  No other shall come before me.

  Three months after Maddie became queen, Peregris’s defenses were still not even close to being restored. The walls that protected the palace and the city from invasion by both sea and hostile forces remained rife with gaps, only a quarter of the demolished retaining walls and quays had been replaced, and the breastwork that protected the mouth of the Ankrill was still less than half finished.

  Eidon’s grace had kept the winds active through the fall. Without them, the southlanders’ galleys would have been up the Ankrill to Fannath Rill in days. As it was, the Chesedhan gunships had had to scramble to guard both city and river, but so far they had succeeded. And now that the winter rainy season had come, they would have a few months’ reprieve from the war. Or so she hoped.

  But one didn’t have to venture far from the coast to find the winds dying, the rains drying up, and the seas lying calm beneath a thick, woolly layer of Shadow. Torneki still lay enfolded in it, and despite Chesedhan attempts to retake it over the last three months, the Esurhites had resisted their efforts. Chesedhan gunships were useless, and Chesedhan galleys were nowhere near as effective as those of the Esurhite forces. With thousands of years of experience in both constructing and sailing galleys, if it came down to a war at sea, the Esurhites would win.

  And war was coming. Chesedhan spies reported that the Esurhites had set up a corridor on occupied Torneki and were bringing in men and boats at a prodigious rate. More were being brought in at the Draesian capital of Zereda, due south across the strait from Peregris. Twin assaults would be launched against the Chesedhan coast. Most likely right after the winter rains ended some six weeks from now.

  Looking at the preparations her people had made thus far was disheartening, and she knew they needed help. Knew what form everyone thought that help should take, too: Tiris ul Sadek.

  She stopped now before the wide window of her Peregris apartments and stared again at the dozen sleek white galleys that had arrived in her harbor overnight. Standing at anchor behind a silvery curtain of rain, they were arrayed in ranks of four. Their prows were shaped in a rough backward semicircle, the bottom of which ended in a forward-pointing, iron-tipped ram designed to puncture the hulls of the enemy ships below the waterline. The forward line curved back from the ram and up into a crest that gleamed with gold gilt. Large open eyes had been painted on their hulls just beyond the ram, reminding her uneasily of Belthre’gar’s vessel and the night she nearly became his wife. Each vessel’s two square sails had been reefed, but the platforms that formed their upper decks had been rigged with canvas awnings so that the sailors might escape the rain.

  Tiris had brought them from Ropolis as a gift, presented to her in a formal ceremony a couple of hours ago.

  “Remarkable ships, madam,” her Grand Admiral had called them, beside himself with the prospect of adding them to his forces. “They have three tiers of o
ars, so they move like lightning through the water. And each has a full complement of sailors who know what they’re doing. With these we just might hold the river another summer after all!”

  The galleys were but a taste of the forces Tiris had at his disposal, and though he’d never be so blatant and uncultured as to offer them as an exchange for marrying Queen Madeleine, he’d dropped enough hints that everyone knew what they would gain should she accept his suit. It was the talk of all the salons and taverns and council meetings. In fact, yesterday her own cabinet had presented her with a resolution they had drawn up and signed, already approving any marriage offer he made her. It was, proclaimed her First Minister, a matter of national survival that they accept him. Even Trap, now instated in her cabinet as Special Counsel to the Queen, had signed. It had broken her heart to see his name there with the others.

  As the queen, it was her duty to sacrifice herself for the good of her realm, though all insisted that union with such a man as Tiris could hardly be considered a sacrifice. He was young, handsome, charming, and vastly powerful. What sane woman would turn down such a suitor?

  Yet all she felt was stubborn resistance. Even in the face of the almost irrefutable evidence Marta Brackleford had brought that Abramm was, indeed, dead. That he’d been on the Ankrill at Obla, had gone out from there into the desert and been swallowed by the great sandstorm. In both instances, precisely as the amber had shown. So maybe Maddie wasn’t sane. Maybe the grief and refusal to accept his loss really had unhinged her mind. Maybe it was time to let go of him and move on.

  She turned from the window to regard her two ladies-in-waiting sitting across the room from her, Carissa with her embroidery, Marta with her knitting. “You both think I’m crazy, then, don’t you?”

  “Abramm’s dead, Maddie,” said Carissa. She’d long since made it clear she supported her husband’s signing of the cabinet’s resolution.

  Maddie turned to the other woman. “You think so, too, Marta?”

  Marta glanced at Carissa, then sighed. “Ma’am, I feel certain if Abramm were alive, you would know it by now. He would have sent some word. He would know what we would think, the way he disappeared into the desert like that. The sandstorm and all.”

  “So you think I should marry Tiris.”

  Carissa answered first. “He dotes on you, Mad. Even knowing your heart still belongs to Abramm. He would be a safe harbor in this storm, maybe the salvation of us all.”

  “Marta?”

  Marta frowned, drew breath to speak, but said nothing.

  “You don’t think he would be a safe harbor?”

  Dark-haired Marta looked down at her half-knitted sweater. “I cannot say, ma’am,” she said finally. “He is all everyone says, and more. And he does dote on you.” She fell silent.

  “But?” Maddie prodded.

  “Please, madam, do not ask me what I think. My heart breaks for you, but I do not know the future, and there are so many other things that must be considered. I fear Eidon is the only one who can tell you what you want to know.”

  “And if I say yes to Tiris tonight? Will you still stand by me?”

  Marta looked stricken. But after a moment she said, “You know I will stand by you, madam. As your lady, as your subject, and as your friend.”

  Maddie sighed and said no more. After a time she dismissed them both and went to sit at her desk, where she pulled out the slim gray volume with the swirling letters of the Old Tongue glinting on its cover. She’d had no time to read more than snippets here and there, and that reading cursory at best. There’d simply been too much to do. It didn’t help that every time she sat down to do so, she read first the two letters Abramm had written her, which she kept behind its cover—the one he’d written in Springerlan before he’d given himself over to the Gadrielites to save her, and the one he’d written in Obla before he’d gone into the desert to rescue his friends.

  Oh, Abramm . . . are you really out there? Then why have you sent no word? What am I to do? I know you promised, but you are only a man. . . . And I don’t know what I saw that night before the wave. . . . You were so very sad. Was it truly the end?

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered, staring blindly out the window. “I don’t know what to do. . . .”

  “Madam?” Jeyanne’s voice broke gently into her thoughts. “Will you be preparing for your dinner engagement?”

  Maddie drew a deep breath of resignation and stood up. “Yes, of course.”

  Dinner with Tiris was, as always, a delightful affair. The man was fascinating. His mind was quick, sharp, and deeply penetrating. He was darkly attractive in a feral sort of way; not as tall as Abramm, but he possessed the same litheness and grace of movement. His long-lashed dark eyes mesmerized her almost as much as his conversation, which was, as always, intelligent, witty, and even biting at times. He had a way of flattering her without being obvious about it, and when she was in his presence she felt strangely alive, but in a way that was different from how Abramm made her feel. And not necessarily in a good way.

  After dinner they bundled up—she wore the fine woolen cloak he had given her for her untaken journey to Deveren Dol—and strolled along the palace wallwalk overlooking the harbor. The night was chill and damp but rainless, and thus pleasant in its own way. It wasn’t long before he spoke again of his proposal. “Consider how much better your realm will be for it, madam. It takes humility to recognize one’s weakness and seek help.”

  She sighed and nodded and watched the boats bobbing in the harbor, marked out by their deck lights.

  “You still believe Abramm will return.” His voice held no expression.

  “You know I do. You, more than anyone, know why.”

  She heard him release a soft breath. “I have never sought to gainsay you in this, my flower. I know your belief is strong and sincere . . . but . . . you do realize that both of the instances you claim as proof and evidence of his being alive occurred when you were under duress. The first when you were touched by the dark spore. The second when you had just been betrayed to the Esurhites and were about to meet the Supreme Commander. And perhaps even more than that, for strange powers were at work that night. I still wonder if that earthquake was not the product of some new experiment in power gone wrong.”

  All true. She had no words to offer, only this dead and dreary sense of inevitable disaster.

  When she did not speak, he pressed his case. “Yes, I’ll grant, the first vision you had of him seems to have been borne out as legitimate. But that doesn’t make anything of the second or third visions. Your second amber vision showed him dead. Your vision on the longboat showed him surrounded by light.” He paused. “Have you considered the possibility that the third one actually supports the second? That what you were seeing somehow was a glimpse of him in the eternal realm?”

  “Oh yes, of course I have. That’s why this is so abominably hard!”

  Beneath the cloak she hugged herself, trying to regain control of emotions that threatened to spiral out of control. For a time they strolled in silence, footsteps crisp on the damp stones beneath their feet, bells clanging down on the dock at the foot of the wall where they walked. Out on the harbor, the deck lamps of his twelve galleys illumined their forms and gleamed off the water. She drew and released a shaky breath, wishing she didn’t have to decide, knowing that she must.

  Finally Tiris cleared his throat and spoke, treading carefully. “Let’s say for the sake of argument that he did survive the desert. From which direction do you believe he will come? And how will he do so without your hearing of it? I know that your friend the duke has ears out everywhere and that so far all reports are of imposters. . . . Last of all, if he comes in secret he can’t be bringing an army, and we know the regalia are lost. . . . So what good can you imagine he will do you?

  She had no response to that. There was no response. All that he said was true, much as she wished to deny it.

  They reached the stair to the courtyard garden and de
scended, strolling through the damp greenery in silence, then returning to her chambers, where they sat before the fire sipping mulled wine and making small talk. Finally Tiris’s patience gave out.

  “I know your cabinet has drawn up a resolution to accept my suit should I offer it,” he said. “But I will not be publicly embarrassed. I will make no official offer until I have your personal guarantee of acceptance.” He paused. “Marry me, Madeleine. Become my queen, co-ruler of the three realms. Let your children become my official heirs. Simon will inherit all my holdings. Ian will be a great scholar, unlocking secrets of the ancients; or perhaps a warrior, a leader of men like his father. And as for beautiful Abrielle, she will be the princess of three realms, the apple of her father’s eye, and only the finest of men will dare to even ask for her hand. . . .” He chuckled. “I might even have to reinstate a trial-by-dragon ritual again.”

  She smiled, knowing he was trying to lift her spirits, but the horrible oppression only weighed more heavily. It was as if all her emotions had become flat and dull, to the point where she almost didn’t care.

  “You think I would not love you?” he asked gently.

  “Honestly?” She looked up at him. “I fear it is I who would not love you.”

  She saw the flash of disappointment in his eyes. “Abramm still holds your heart that tightly. . . ?”

  She could not answer, for her throat had swollen and she was teary-eyed again.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out. “Well, I am a patient man, and I believe time changes many things. I can wait for the fires of your love to kindle.”