Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  It was a lovely story that had resonated with truth the moment she’d heard it. But that had been months ago. If it had truly been Abramm, if he’d had the scepter . . . why had he not yet come? Why had they still not heard from him?

  “Your faith in his return has kept us all, my lady,” Trap said softly. “You would abandon it now?”

  “I am not abandoning it,” she said sharply. “The simple fact is, he’s not here right now. And I must make a decision: Should I take this with me to Deveren Dol, or should I give it to you? For several days now I’ve believed I should give it to you. And after all my prayers for direction, that conviction has not changed.” She lifted a brow and smiled slightly. “Who knows? Maybe he’s out there trying to shut down that corridor himself and you’ll run into him, having just what he needs to complete the task.” She held out the robe with a smile.

  Reluctantly he took it, then lifted his rucksack to the desk and stowed the garment inside. “It’s not very flexible.”

  “Well, it wasn’t for Ian, either, but it worked.”

  He refastened the rucksack’s straps, then stood before her awkwardly. Impulsively, she stepped forward and embraced him. “You were his dearest friend, Trap Meridon,” she whispered in his ear. “And you are mine, as well. I know you will not disappoint us.”

  She stepped back then. And looking grim but resolved, he gave her a short bow. “Stay safe, then, madam. I will see you in Deveren Dol.”

  And for the first time he cracked her a smile. With that she dismissed him and went to finish her own preparations.

  After leaving the queen, Trap went directly to the wine cellar where the others were waiting and kissed his wife good-bye, horrified anew by how very pregnant she was but refusing to torment himself with all the dire possibilities they faced. He did, however, pray for her safety and deliverance. Again.

  From there he was rowed across the river to make his way alone through Fannath Rill’s crowded streets to the bolthole located midway between the river and the wall. Between the veren, the dragons, and the ubiquitous crows, he took great care not to be seen. A bolthole used to escape the city could also be used to enter it. Only once he was safely inside the tunnel did he relax.

  He’d told neither Carissa nor Maddie that he was going into the Esurhites’ encampment alone, for it would only have distressed them and started another argument. But he’d long since decided he’d have an easier time of this on his own. For one thing, he was the only one who spoke the Tahg fluently and was also a warrior. And one man was easier to conceal than two.

  For the first leg of his journey he walked with an exquisite awareness of what he carried in the rucksack on his back, amazed and unnerved that Maddie should have given it to him. On the one hand he was thrilled to have it. When Leyton’s men had come to take the regalia, Maddie said it must have made itself invisible somehow, for she had watched the man open the valise and rummage around in it without ever pulling the garment out. Afterward, she’d inspected the bag herself, surprised to find nothing there. Later Elayne had brought the bag back to her, astonished when the robe had reappeared in it. None of them had any explanation for its disappearance.

  Now, whether it helped him destroy the corridor or not, he was honored to wear it as a fitting salute to the greatness of his dearest friend.

  But he couldn’t stop thinking of those stories out of Elpis. Maddie herself had sent Katahn ul Manus to the southlands to rescue her brother and the regalia when she’d become queen. It was not unthinkable that he and Abramm might have converged on the Chesedhan king where he’d been the star of the Games in North Andol. Though the rhu’ema that had come with Leyton’s body when it had been delivered claimed he’d been killed by a common slave masquerading as King Abramm, it was very possible the thing had lied. What if the “slave” was Abramm? Then the two of them might reasonably have come ashore in Chesedh together, with the regalia in their possession. . . .

  One thing was sure: Whoever he was, the man had been able to raise a sizeable army in a very short period of time. It had moved across Chesedh to Fannath Rill seemingly unchallenged, and according to recent reports it had harassed the western flanks of Belthre’gar’s great army for weeks. And harassment tactics certainly fell in line with Abramm’s preferred method of conducting a war: Cut off the logistics, irritate, annoy, befuddle, and intimidate without ever really confronting, and you would drive your enemy mad enough that when you finally did confront him, he would be too rattled to put up a proper fight.

  According to the spies who had come in from among the Esurhites, Belthre’gar, at least, truly believed it was the real Abramm out there. Some said the reason Belthre’gar was so obsessed with Maddie was because he couldn’t get hold of her husband. . . .

  But if it was Abramm . . . why had he not sent word? More important— as Maddie had pointed out—why had he not used the scepter? Why waste months cutting tent stays and spooking horses when he could drive them all off and be done with it?

  On the other hand, that, too, echoed Abramm’s tactics. “Never let the enemy know your position or your intent until the time is right.” But if he was waiting for the right moment, Trap feared he’d waited too long.

  Emerging from the bolthole tunnel into a narrow gully, Trap soon found himself surrounded by Esurhites. Still cloaked and cowled, he had the darkness on his side—and the fact that most of the men sprawled snoring on the ground. As he walked by, one of the sentries asked how far he’d gone toward the wall.

  “All the way,” he said in the Tahg. “They’re all asleep up there.”

  The man laughed, and Trap walked on into the thick of them, praying Eidon would continue to blind their eyes. He estimated he’d have to walk about a league and a half through the encampment before he reached his destination, which should take him about an hour. It seemed, though, that he walked all night before the dark hulks of the ruin walls reared up against the brilliant green column of the corridor itself—a massive one, as it had to be. Its emerald glow bathed everything around him in green so bright it seemed like day.

  Not surprisingly, the closer he got to it, the more soldiers he had to contend with—Esurhites, yes, but also Thilosians, Draesians, Andolens, and men from beyond the eastern deserts . . . the shaven-headed, pigtailed Sorites and slope-eyed men the likes of which Trap had never seen before. There were also Broho prowling solitarily among the tents and sleeping men. He always turned aside the moment he saw one of those, veering off his course so they might not pass too closely, careful never to look one in the eye.

  Slowly he advanced upon the corridor, which he now saw rose from a depression in the terrain. Only the top portion of an ancient, decaying archway silhouetted against the green showed above the top of the rise ahead of him, but the unseen corona of the corridor’s power field crawled over his skin with increasing strength, confirming his fear that it was bigger even than the one on the Gull Islands.

  Only when he finally reached the hilltop could he see the column’s entire length, shooting up from a weed-lined circular pavement at the center of a once-elaborate arcade built at the low point of a wide, shallow depression. The crumbling remains of the arcade sported a foremost arch still largely intact and framing the cadre of bald-headed priests standing within, chanting their incantations as they channeled their power toward the corridor. An ancient paved walkway wound up the long slope away from it, and all around sprawled scores of bodies, men sleeping off the drugged stupor they’d been put under to survive the trip sane.

  A group of men were coming up that weed-grown lane now, heading straight toward him, their unsteady gaits marking them as recent arrivals. About three-quarters of the way up the slope, a voice commanded them in Kiriathan to stop and settle. Trap was close enough to hear them grumbling about how badly they felt. Some collapsed where they stood, while others broke from the ranks and staggered away as the dry heaves took them. The majority settled without incident and fell immediately to sleep.

  The commander,
who wore the trappings of a high-ranking nobleman, continued walking with his attending lieutenants up the hill toward Trap. He was a tall, muscular fellow, if somewhat soft looking, with white blond hair that flowed about his shoulders like a cape. He wore a beard similar to Abramm’s and also had two ragged pink scars slashing down the left side of his face. In fact, except for the hair and the soft look, he resembled Abramm a good deal. Deliberately, it would seem.

  They were ten strides apart when the Kiriathan looked straight into Trap’s eyes, and the latter’s heart stopped. It was Gillard Kalladorne, false king of Kiriath. Shock turned swiftly to alarm with Trap’s awareness that his own face was clearly visible, the cowl of his cloak useless since he was directly in line with the corridor’s green light. Though he saw no sign of recognition in the other’s eyes, he turned sharply aside to skirt the bowl’s perimeter, waiting for the uproar to begin.

  When no one shouted after him, he began to breathe again. Gillard had clearly come through without aid of any drugs, which meant he had to be indwelt by a rhu’ema—but that wouldn’t account for his failure to recognize Trap. Was he just so preoccupied with his own affairs he hadn’t seen what by all rights shouldn’t have been there anyway? Or perhaps it had something to do with the treasure Trap carried in the rucksack on his back. . . ?

  Not wanting to test his theories, he continued around the bowl’s perimeter, widening the distance between himself and the Kiriathans as his mind erupted with new questions. What was Gillard—or Makepeace, or whatever the plague his name was now—doing here? Didn’t he have weak bones? Or was that eased when he was made big again? Which was another thing. He looked as big as he’d always been. Yes, Trap had heard the rumors of his restoration, but he’d also seen the wasted waif Gillard had become after his encounter with the morwhol. It had to be rhu’eman magic, which meant the king of Kiriath was unquestionably in the Shadow’s grip now.

  North of the corridor’s basin, the land was cluttered with the random remains of an ancient complex of rooms. Walls rose out of the grass, ran along a ways, then ended. Others formed a grid of roofless chambers in which a few soldiers had laid out their bedrolls but which mostly stood empty, perhaps owing to the fact the place was infested with staffid. Beyond it, the terrain stepped up in a series of rocky ledges and steep slopes to the head of a long, low ridge heading north and east.

  Having put enough distance between himself and Gillard, and not wanting to stray too far from his objective, Trap turned down a narrow lane back through the ruin toward the corridor, turning into one of the roofless chambers at the last—

  And finding his way blocked by the dark form of a man. He looked up into a pair of pale eyes in a face limned with green and sensed the knife flashing low between them more than he saw it. As he twisted backward and blocked the blow, white light flared from their contact, brilliantly illuminating the wall, the big man before him, and two others.

  Simultaneously, the corridor in the basin below them stuttered and flared. Cries of alarm issued from the priests surrounding the corridor, all of which brought the combatants to a startled halt. Then a veren shrieked and they fled for cover. The big man grabbed Trap by the shoulder. As they fled for cover, Trap had enough sense not to fight him. He was almost certain these men were Abramm’s—or whoever the newly arrived field commander was.

  He was funneled down a narrow passage, then shoved forward on his belly and forced through a crawlway into a hollowed-out chamber not quite tall enough for him to stand up in, and impossible for the bigger man who’d brought him here. They sat in the dust and confronted him.

  “Ye’re Terstan, then? From Fannath Rill?” the big man asked him quietly.

  “From the queen,” Trap confirmed. “Are you some of Abramm’s men?”

  The big man frowned. “Why’d ye think that? Ever’one knows Abramm’s workin’ out t’ the west.”

  “No,” Trap said. “We don’t know it’s Abramm for sure. There’ve been many stories. Many imposters.” He paused as a sudden thought hit him. “If he’s out there, though, I have a message for him. From his wife.”

  The big man frowned at him, then glanced at one of the others, plainly doubtful.

  “We don’t have time fer this,” one of them said.

  The big man grimaced. “Gag him and tie him up fer now.”

  “No!” Trap said in sudden alarm, aghast to realize if he didn’t destroy the corridor, the queen would not have her distraction. “I need—” Caution stayed his words. He didn’t, in fact, know for sure who these men were. Best not reveal too much, especially not anything about Maddie. “I need to see him now,” Trap said as the men at his back seized him and bound his wrists securely.

  “Well, ye’re not gonna,” the big man told him. “Fer all we know ye’re one o’ those that just came through the corridor with ol’ King Makepeace.”

  “I’d be in a stupor if that were—” He was cut off as the gag wrapped around his mouth.

  “What d’ ya suppose is in that rucksack?” one of the other men asked, plucking at it.

  Oh, Eidon, please. Don’t let them open it here.

  “I dunno,” the big man said. “We’ll look later. Put ‘im here between us, where he can’t cause any harm.” He patted Trap’s arm. “If what ye’re sayin’ is true, we’ll let ye go in good time. Fer now, though, we’ve got work t’ do, and ye can’t be interruptin’.”

  “Here comes another batch of ’em,” said one of the others as the annoying tingle of the corridor’s power field intensified and the green light flared all around them.

  CHAPTER

  36

  That night, lying between the two men, gagged and bound, Trap endured some of the most frustrating hours of his existence. He had to lift his head back at an uncomfortable angle to see anything, and he spent most of the time with his cheek to the smoke-tainted ground, staring at the small, darkhaired man beside him. And moment by moment his opportunity to destroy the corridor slipped away. He could only pray Maddie and the others had escaped despite the loss of his distraction—and try not to think about the effect his apparent failure would have upon his wife.

  At least no one had mentioned looking into his rucksack again, though the thought of that, too, weighed upon him. Now that he’d had time to think, he couldn’t imagine why he had let these men take him. The slimmest promise that they might bring him to Abramm had clouded his mind. Now here he was, completely taken out of action because of something that probably wouldn’t even pan out. He’d compromised the queen’s escape and worse, for eventually someone would open the rucksack. And then . . .

  Another thought that didn’t bear pursuing.

  From their position on the side of the basin they could see the great throng of robed, bald priests around the corridor, their red robes turned brown in the green light. They had chanted and hummed and moaned all night long, bringing in troop after troop of men, interspersed with yet another catapult or battering ram or load of food—tubers and grain, half cooked by their journey.

  Trap dozed in and out of sleep, awakened finally when the corridor’s tooth-gritting buzz softened and lowered its pitch. Looking up, he found the column of emerald light had shrunk, the priests collapsing where they stood. Burly men in dark uniforms carried them away as new priests replaced them, though in a quarter of the original number.

  “Looks like they’re finishin’ up,” said the big man. From his conversations with the others, Trap had figured out his name was Rollie. “Prob’bly brought a thousand men through tonight.”

  “Aye, but they’re havin’ t’ drug ’em more,” said the small, dark-haired one. “Look how fast they’re fallin’ now after they come through an’ how long it takes ’em to wake up again. The king’s right. Things are breakin’ down.”

  Rollie turned Trap over then and freed him of bindings and gag. “Ye want to deliver yer message t’ the king, friend,” he warned, “ye’d best keep silent and move along with us. If ye do anythin’ else, we’ll kill ye wher
e ye stand.”

  They stole out of the camp in the same manner as Trap had entered it— they simply walked, four out of a multitude of soldiers. There were so many different races and languages, had anyone stopped them they’d only need claim to be looking for their home company and they’d have been left alone.

  Eventually they strode away through the loosely guarded rear line and up the low, rocky rise beyond, the overcast already lightening with the dawn. Once out of sight of the camp, they stopped to discuss whether Trap should be blindfolded—the two subordinates for, Rollie against. “It’ll take too much time to lead him along blind. If he’s lyin’, Abramm’ll deal with him.”

  The name spoken sent a tingle up Trap’s spine, for it was the first admission from these men that they were indeed Abramm’s. Not that the man they called Abramm was necessarily the real thing, but Trap was eager to meet him, nevertheless. Maybe tonight hadn’t been as much of a disaster as he’d feared.

  From a distance, the Fairiron Plain looked flat as a board, but on foot, especially as it approached the Deveren Rim to the northwest, one learned it abounded with deep, steep-walled channels and rocky outcroppings, many of them riddled with caves. It was here that the harassing army had encamped, virtually unseen until one was in the middle of it.

  Abramm—or whoever he was—was not where Rollie expected him to be, but the men he talked to sent him out of the cave that appeared to be their command center and along a second steep-walled gully to a sketchy path switchbacking up a rocky, weed-grown slope. They came out on a broad shelf extending from the slope’s side, forty feet above the plain now.

  At the shelf’s far end, one man had squatted to draw in the dust with a stick as a group of others clustered about him, watching. Telling Trap to wait where he was, Rollie strode rapidly across the flat to join the others.