The Shadow Within

by Karen Hancock

  And still that fire burned upon her breast, illumining scenes from the lower, harder reality through which she now seemed to be walking, even as she floated among the colors in the sky. The door of her chamber swung open before her, revealing the shadow-swathed corridor beyond. Narrow stairs gave way to the dimly lit interior of the Great Room, scattered with the humps of sleeping servants, which gave way in turn to the cold silent space of the inner yard, and then the outer, with its pale clumps of weed and dead bramble. And finally, here was the old north gate looming before her, closed and recently fitted with brackets and a heavy bar, now in place.

  She reached for that bar and suddenly a man blocked her way, his scarred face and tender eyes as inexplicably familiar as the rest of this. For a moment he looked like Cooper, though Coop’s face was not scarred. Then, as in the way of dreams, he shifted into Abramm, whose face was not scarred, either. The man was neither of them, and yet, in some strange way, as close to her as both. Reality shifted—

  And she floated in the sky again, the veils of color swirling about her, welcoming her into their embrace as she watched a young woman robed in white far below, standing in the Holding’s dark and lonely outer yard before the north gate and a man whose body blazed with a hideous white light. Pale curls tumbled to the woman’s hips, and phosphorescent mist enfolded her. Why did she just stand there? Why didn’t she push around the blazing figure to lift the bar and open the gate? And—no! Now a second man with short gray hair and a salt-and-pepper goatee burst from the keep, clad only in jerkin and britches, his chest afire with the same ugly white light that shone on the figure blocking her way.

  “Hurry!” she yelled at the woman. “If you don’t get through that gate, they’ll catch you and take it all away!”

  Again she stood on the ground, facing the gate and the scar-faced man who’d stopped her. From this vantage, only his eyes flashed with the hideous light—a light she hated. And loved. He’d stopped her when she had sought to flee this prison before, she recalled—an evil being who would deny her all the warmth and comfort and companionship the Others wished to give her.

  Anger flared through her detachment. “Why do you hold me here!? Why do you hate me? Why won’t you leave me alone and let me pass!”

  “I do not hold you here, Carissa, daughter of Lissandra. Nor do I hate you. But I will let you go, if that is truly your wish.”

  “Yes! Get out of her life,” the voices whispered around the part of Carissa that drifted in the sky. “Let her pass! Free her to have what she has longed for all these years.” While to the woman at the gate, they said, “You must tell him these things yourself. Say the words, and you’ll never see him again.”

  Yet no sound came from the tiny woman far below. She simply stood there, facing the bright figure, its hideous light reflecting off the tear tracks on her face. Behind her, the tall man with the goatee finally reached the outer yard and started toward her, a small, dark-haired woman now hurrying in his wake.

  “Go!” the voices shrieked. “Do you want to belong to something? Do you want to be loved by someone? Then tell him to get out of your way and go through the gate! NOW!”

  But still Carissa stood, staring at the scar-faced man and weeping at her inability to speak the words that would grant her the freedom she craved.

  And suddenly here was Cooper pulling her into his warm, strong arms and hugging her to his chest like a rag doll, though she could hardly feel him at all . . . as she floated high above and watched the lights withdraw into the distance from which they’d come. Their weird song faded until all that remained was silence and a shifting mist suspended between the forest and the eternal darkness overhead.

  Abruptly she was back, returned to all the weight and wet of flesh chilled by a coldness such as she had never known, even though Cooper was holding her tightly, praying for Eidon to bring her back to them.

  The scar-faced man’s voice whispered in her heart, “Go to your brother, Carissa. He has what you desire, and he will need what you can give. I will make a way for you.”

  “Fire and Torment, lass!” Cooper muttered over her head. “You’re like ice!”

  “We’ve got to get her inside to the fire.” That was Elayne.

  Cooper was picking her up now, carrying her in his strong arms back up the yard toward the inner gate. Halfway to the keep, she found her voice. “Coop?”

  “What is it, lass?”

  “I’m ready to go south now.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  Five nights after the episode at Graymeer’s, Trap pressed a spot on the paneling in the back of the royal bedchamber and a portion of wall swung silently inward. A musty stairway descended from there, so narrow its cold brick walls brushed Abramm’s shoulders as he followed his liegeman downward. Behind him, he left the partially sewn suit that was still not correctly fitted, the ever-changing guest list, the endless and picayune protocols, the dance steps, the unending meetings with peers, advisors, supplicants, hopeful young ladies, and his own servants. He could not believe all the fuss—and all the time consumed—for something that was little more than entertainment. One would think he was in the midst of planning some massive campaign on which the fate of the realm depended, and he’d been hard pressed not to express his irritation with it all.

  Now as they descended, with the light from Trap’s kelistar casting weird, jerking shadows around them, he felt like a boy again, hiding from his tutor. Trap led him to a locked room furnished with chest, cot, and chair beside a full-length mirror. They left it twenty minutes later, transformed from Kiriathan nobles to Southdock ruffians of Esurhite extraction. Stained and worn woolens hid beneath heavy full-length cloaks. His skin already deeply tanned from his weeks at sea, Abramm had only to blacken his beard with charcoal and pull a black curly wig over head. The wig, tied into the standard knot of an Esurhite warrior, was further secured by a floppy, wide-brimmed hat.

  “Just don’t let anyone get a good look at your eyes,” Trap had warned. Though he’d appended the disclaimer that even then it was unlikely they’d guess the truth. “No one will be looking for the king of Kiriath under all that!”

  “And certainly not in the company of one as rascally looking as you,” Abramm had retorted, for Trap’s disguise included a bushy black beard that Abramm thought looked obviously fake. Trap maintained it wouldn’t matter where they were going.

  If he was no more at ease with this endeavor than he’d been when Abramm first suggested it, at least he was resigned. And confident that he’d prepared, as much as it was possible to prepare, for the dangers that might meet them in the lawless warrens into which they ventured.

  A second long stairway dead-ended in a small stone chamber where Trap extinguished the orblight and they stood in silence, listening for any sounds that might betray a furtive follower. After a few moments, Abramm heard the rustle of his companion’s clothing, then a faint clank and muffled rattle. Moments later a breath of air washed across his face and stirred the edges of his robe as the heavy stone door swung outward. In utter darkness they stepped through the opening, waiting again to be sure they were alone before closing the door.

  The ground sloped steeply away from them now, and they descended through the barely visible support stilts of the building overhead, emerging onto a muddy track on the fringes of Portside. Moments later they strode among the bustle of men unloading one of the many newly arrived vessels lined up along the waterfront and from there made their way to the Avenue of the Keep and beyond into the maze of twisting stairways, narrow doglegged passages, and dank, muck-bottomed drainage tunnels that was Southdock. The air grew chill and so strong with the kraggin’s stench it was hard to breathe. Shreds of mist floated eerily around them, reflecting the feeble illumination of the occasional lantern or lighted second-story window. Communal fires started up in squares and alley ends by the homeless only added to its netherworld feel. The place literally crawled with staffid, scuttling into the street litter alongside the rats a
nd slinking cats, while feyna rustled in the eaves overhead, peering down with tiny, coal-like eyes.

  It seemed to Abramm that they walked forever—Trap was likely taking a circuitous route to lose any followers—but finally they reached a square on the riverbank, tucked at the foot of the dark, looming bulk of Bunman Bridge, first of the nine spanning the river. Lights winked along its top edge, curving in a line across the starlit sky, while beneath it, the first of its three supporting arches swept up in dark silhouette against the river’s gray gleam. A group of raggedy men and women congregated about a central fire pit, talking quietly, but Trap ignored them, skirting the gathering to head for a ramshackle threestory boardinghouse on the far side, and then around back to its rundown stable. Two men armed with rapiers stood guard, one of them nodding a greeting to Trap as he and Abramm entered.

  Inside, a narrow aisle led past the loft ladder and several stalls into a highceilinged room smelling of straw and grain and horse. Orblights clustered near the ceiling, illumining a clutter of crates and barrels and about ten roughly dressed attendees, most of them men. Others were coming in behind them as Abramm and his liegeman found seats on bales of straw stacked at the back.

  Trap leaned close and spoke quietly in the Tahg, “The nobles usually gather up in the loft, where it’s darker and folk leave them alone. I thought it best not to draw undue attention, but if you’d be more comfortable—”

  “This is fine,” Abramm said, studying their surroundings with interest. Trap kept his expression neutral and said no more. Not long after they had settled, a black-haired, thick-bodied man in a green woolen jerkin and dark trousers approached and introduced himself. “Seth Tarker. I don’t believe I’ve seen you here before.” His beard, Abramm noted, was nearly as bushy and wild as Trap’s fake one.

  “I’m called Anahdi,” Trap said, his Kiriathan suddenly heavier with the Tahg lilt than Abramm had ever heard it. “I’ve been coming for about a week.”

  “Anahdi, huh? What kind of name is that?”

  “Esurhite.”

  The man’s brows drew slightly downward. “We don’t get many Esurhites here.”

  “The name is Esurhite, but I’m actually Kiriathan. I was night-shipped as a boy.”

  “Ahh.” Tarker’s gaze drifted to Abramm, and Trap took his cue.

  “This is my friend Alaric, and no, that is not an Esurhite name. His mother was Kiriathan.”

  “And her night-shipped, too, then?” Tarker guessed.

  “Aye.”

  He nodded. “So you’ve just come in then, on one of the new ships.”

  “We did,” Abramm said, increasing the Tahg lilt in his own speech. Trap glanced at him blandly, but Abramm read the warning in his eyes.

  Too late. Tarker was already on the trail. “Wouldn’t have been Wanderer, would it?”

  “Aye. It was,” Abramm admitted. Trap was now focused on the folk surrounding them, clearly displeased. In their turn, the other attendees had broken off their own conversations to listen with sudden interest.

  “You were there?” Tarker said. “You saw what happened?”

  “We were there,” Abramm allowed. And it seemed now that every eye in the room was upon him.

  “So”—Tarker squinted at him—“did he do it? Did he really kill that monster?”

  “It wasn’t exactly a sporting event with everyone standing alongside the gunwale watching.”

  “So you didn’t actually see him do it.”

  “No.” Was it lying to speak the literal truth and still give a false impression?

  The answer served him well, though, for immediately the others went back to their own conversations and the energy drained from Tarker like water from a broken jug. He asked where they were staying, more for something to say than for interest, and then one of his fellows approached to mutter something about Gadrielites and both went off to confer with their confederates at the back of the stable. After that the newcomers were left alone, save for occasional furtive looks darted their way. New arrivals continued to pour in, among whom the topics of conversation centered still on the unjust imprisonment of the rioters last week and the fiasco of the king’s project up at Graymeer’s.

  “The mist’s gotten thicker up there since his visit, have ye noticed?” a woman sitting in front of them remarked. “Spilling out the gate and down the walls. Those as live closest say they’ve got more spawn than ever before.”

  “Aye,” said her companion. “Vermin’ll be all over the headland afore long cause o’ him. Mark me on it.”

  It went without saying that Abramm was evil. Just as with Belmir, it didn’t matter that he’d renounced his vows, refused to attend Mataian services, and been about as cool toward Mataian leaders as protocol allowed. The Terstans considered it all an act, and had the stories to prove it, all passed on from “a friend” or “my brother,” who had gotten the tale from someone else, who’d heard the tale from someone else. And none of the reports were even questioned, no matter how absurd, preposterous, or downright impossible the stories were.

  He’d known he wasn’t popular with these people, but seeing the antagonism, hearing it on every side, so dogmatic, so imbued with the passion born of wrongs suffered over years, brought it home in a profoundly discouraging way. Trap’s right, he thought. Even if I stood up right now and told them everything, they would think it a trick.

  At length the rumble of conversation quieted as a grizzled older man in a leather jerkin and dark woolen breeches stepped out of the shadows into the center of the gathering. His steel gray hair was cropped close around craggy, coarse features, pale and age-wrinkled, though his brown eyes snapped with life, piercing as crossbolts. Abramm recognized him with a jolt: Everitt Kesrin, the Terstan he had met when he’d first arrived in Springerlan. The man who owned the Westland Shipping Company and strode about with his mark bared and had a penchant for baiting high-ranking Mataians.

  Kesrin welcomed them all, made some announcements regarding the apparently safe escape of some of their number to Chesedh, then paused, sweeping the audience with his gaze. “Many of you have been asking me a question over the last few days that I have been reluctant to answer. A question I remain reluctant to answer, not only because I do not have all the facts, but because I feel it borders on slander and violates the admonition that we respect those whom Eidon has put into authority over us.”

  With that sentence he had Abramm’s full attention.

  “Yes. King Abramm rules at Eidon’s behest and we must not forget that. But if it is for the cursing or blessing of our people, I cannot say. Abramm may well be what we all suspect—a spineless puppet of the Mataio, possessed by a servant of Moroq. Then again, he may not. After all, when Master Rhiad accused him of wearing a shield, he could have bared his chest as demanded and proven the charge false then and there. But he did not.”

  His audience erupted into a paroxysm of muttering as Abramm kept his face expressionless and flicked a glance at Trap. When the outburst died away, Kesrin continued. “I know half of you are ready to lynch him. Yet for every alleged grievance he’s committed, I could offer a reasonable explanation in support of his innocence.” He held out his hands to stay another outburst. “I’m not saying he is innocent, only that we don’t know for sure. Since we have no real information, we have no business making any judgments about the matter. And to take action based on mere speculation is completely out of line.

  “Worse, in all this worry about where this man’s loyalties lie, we’ve forgotten he is the man Eidon has given to rule over us and that through him we’ve been delivered from the kraggin. We should be grateful for that above all else.” He paused, raking them with a gaze that snagged briefly on the two Esurhites at the back before going on. “That is all I have to say on the matter for now, so please don’t ask me any more.”

  With that, he changed the subject, pointing out the various exits to the newcomers and assuring them that should the meeting be interrupted, the Terst had men assigned to stand in
the gap while the others slipped away. Then he surveyed them all in silence, and when they had settled, said, “Let us seek the Light.”

  It took Abramm but a moment’s reflection to realize Kesrin’s recent speech had provoked the Shadow within him to project a fog of fear, worry, and discouragement into his soul, none of them compatible with the fact that he bore the very Light of Eidon in his flesh. But it was hard to let them go all the same. Still, even if he couldn’t quite dismiss them as irrelevant falsehoods, he could refuse to consider them further, especially when he had something else to concentrate on. And thankfully, Kesrin was soon speaking again, asking the One who’d given them the Light for guidance and understanding and protection during their meeting.

  “Now, to return to where we left off last night.” He pointed casually at the empty air to his left and a crystal tablet formed out of nothing, floating shoulder height above the straw. Trap, who’d been the Dorsaddi’s primary teacher, and thus Abramm’s, as well, had told him of kohali who possessed this skill but that he had never seen one. Now he was surprised and fascinated by the tablet, which seemed to project the kohal’s thoughts as either images or words as he progressed through his lesson.

  The lesson itself was on a passage he had apparently been teaching for some days, which told the story of Shadiel and the Black Heron. Abramm had memorized it as an acolyte of the Mataio, though he had never heard it taught in the context Kesrin was now teaching it—that is, that Shadiel was a Light bearer and the heron a feyna. It made a good deal more sense than it ever had when Brother Belmir had taught it. Even so, Abramm found his mind straying back to his troubles.

  He had hoped to find a way to connect with someone here, preferably the kohal of the Terst. That was before he learned it was Everitt Kesrin, however, who he recalled all too vividly from the night of the reception when Prittleman pronounced the need for a Terstan purge, and Abramm had been too wool-witted to call him on it. Thus giving Kesrin more reason than most to be suspicious, no matter how convincingly Abramm might plead the case of his break with the Mataio. Even the sight of the shield on his chest might not do it, and Abramm had heard some rhu’ema would even counterfeit kelistars, which was at this point about the only Lightskill he possessed.