Her fingers closed around the talisman. The stone pressed hard against her hand, blazing hot, as if it were melting into her palm. Her heart fluttered. Voices rose in chorus around her, too beautiful for words. He smiled at her with eyes both young and impossibly ancient, and warmth flowed into the hole in her soul—warmth and light of purest gold. A vast presence enfolded her and she rode on wings of joy, transported for a moment beyond time, and flesh, and all the hurt and terror she’d endured to a place where none of that mattered, all the cursing turned to indescribable blessing.
She returned slowly to herself, the parting gentle but firm, the sense of presence withdrawing until she was only herself again, sitting on her mattress in a room gone dim with the dying fire. Elayne still lay on her side before it, snoring softly. Carissa looked down at her hand, the chain still looped around her palm. The orb had vanished.
CHAPTER
38
Tonight, my Golden Prince. We come tonight, and we will have our due from you. The voice was dry, inhuman, tauntingly familiar.
Abramm jerked awake with a gasp. Darkness enveloped him, tainted with the scent of musty age and a hint of woodsmoke. It took him a moment to remember where he was: in bed in his chambers on the second floor of the keep at Stormcroft, the night before he was to fight Gillard for the crown. The night candle must have gone out, but Trap and Jared slept nearby. He could hear the whisper of their breathing in the silence now that the rain had stopped outside.
It was only another dream.
Tonight . . . tonight we come. . . . The voice rasped again in his mind, as sharp and as clear as if he’d heard it with his ears. His breath caught and his nape hairs rose as he felt the sudden conviction that it was here in the room with him, creeping along the floor in the darkness, stalking him, drawing nearer and nearer. . . .
He sat up in horrified realization. This was no dream. The morwhol was close. He felt it now on the fringes of his awareness, somewhere to the northeast—
Loping up a long shallow ravine toward a dark gash in the pale cliffs ahead, beside which stood the clustered roofless pillars of the first of the many ancient shrines that lined the Pass of the Old Ones. Heavy cloud cover swallowed the clifftops and moisture hung in the air, condensing in a plume of white off his tongue, rising up in front of his face—
Abramm wrenched free of the vision, and panic seized him, demanding he rouse Trap and Channon and Kesrin and send them to face it, delay it, divert it while he fled. Or he could leave right now, steal away in the darkness without anyone’s knowledge.
Yes. Steal away. And then it would follow him and rip a bloody path through the armies encamped in this valley. It would like that. It would gain much power from that.
He didn’t care. His whole life was going to pieces around him, and he knew—absolutely knew—that if he tried to face that beast he would fail and die. Or worse, be left crippled and disfigured. Carissa had sat at that long table in the Great Room earlier and told him that was, in fact, Rhiad’s preferred end for him. “He’d rather see you ruined and abandoned than dead.”
But he’d already known that weeks before Carissa had ever come: “You will lose it all, Abramm Kalladorne,” Rhiad had promised him in Graymeer’s the day of the picnic. “Crown and people and station. Face and skill and body.I will take it all and no one can stop me!”
He sat there for some time, seriously considering treachery and an unspeakable act of cowardice, bile burning the back of his throat, his heart hammering against his chest. Then finally, grimly, he forced himself to breathe again and cast the craven notion aside, even as he cast aside the shadow-spawned fear that birthed it. Then he turned to the Light, recalling that the One he served had lived in the ultimate courage of becoming a man whom other men could seize and do unspeakable things to. Had, in fact, let them do those things, because it was Eidon’s will for him, and because it was the only way to bring the Light to all of them. Tersius had not run from that, so Abramm would not run from this. If it was Eidon’s will that he be crippled and disfigured for the rest of his life, so be it. But he had to believe it was not.
Gradually he began to feel himself again. Not calm, exactly, but in command of himself, at least, and ready now to act. Drawing a deep breath, he flung off the blanket and swung his legs over the side of the bed. As he reached for his breeches, Trap rose from his own pallet near the door with an alertness that said he had not been asleep. “Sire?”
“It’s coming.” Abramm pulled on the soft wool. “It’ll be in the valley by dawn. I’m going to meet it.”
“Here? Now?” Trap sprang from his pallet—he was fully dressed—and groped for his boots.
Abramm slid his leather jerkin over his head. “You’re not coming with me.”
“Abramm—”
“No.” The king regarded his liegeman soberly. “We both have responsibilities. Mine is to meet the morwhol. Yours is to serve me as I will.”
Trap stared at him, his face so white every freckle stood out in sharp relief.
But he said nothing.
Abramm sat again and began to pull on his boots. “Wake my sister and Lady Madeleine,” he went on in a voice whose evenness belied his inner turmoil. “Get them mounted and out of here. Take Haldon and Jared with you. Go by the south route through Bright Falls Canyon as fast as you can. Jared—” he turned to the boy who had just now begun to rouse sleepily from his pallet—“see that Warbanner’s saddled and brought round to me.”
The boy stared at him blankly.
“NOW!” he barked. And Jared was gone like a flash.
“If you won’t take me, take Shale,” said Trap.
“No.” Abramm stood and reached for his weapons. “If it can’t get to me, it will only go after the others until it can.” The belt and scabbard jingled as he settled them into place on his hips. “Besides, there’s nothing any of you can do. I’m the only one who can kill it.”
“You don’t know that for sure, sir.”
Abramm paused and looked round at him. “Perhaps not for sure, but I’ll not gamble other men’s lives on the chance the records are wrong.” He pushed the end of the sword belt through its brass loop, attached the scabbarded dagger, and grabbed his mantle. “Oh, and send someone to find me a broadsword. Maybe a pike, as well.”
He started for the door, then turned back to rummage through his saddlebags for his sling and pouch of stones. Probably none of the weapons he carried would do any good against the thing he faced, but he could think of nothing else to do.
He ran into Madeleine in the hall, apparently having awakened already on her own, for she wore a nightgown of white gauzy material, her tawny hair, softly kinked from the braids, flowing in a long loose curtain about her shoulders. Her face was pale, her blue eyes very wide. “It’s here, isn’t it?” she said.
“Not quite, but coming fast.”
“And you’re going out to meet it.”
“I am.”
She nodded, hesitated a moment, then her mouth firmed and her chin came up. He cut her off before she could speak: “No.”
“Why not? It will only be after you and those you love.”
“Which is why it attacked that little girl on the headland? And why it’s ripping up every peasant it comes across?”
“Those are your people, whom you care about deeply. I am just the Second Daughter of Chesedh. And as clear as you’ve been about your feelings toward me, I know I’ll be perfectly safe.”
He stared down at her, recalling those moments in the Great Room last week when he’d said those unkind things about her. All of them true in one way or another, and yet . . . here was that strange catching of his heart again, a ghost of a feeling he’d thought lost to him forever, a quick flash of Shettai, and then a terrible, gut-wrenching fear that, as in the Great Room that day, transmuted instantly to anger.
“What is wrong with you that you want to have anything to do with this?” he demanded fiercely. “That thing is going to rip me to pieces, and if I do
n’t find a way to kill it in the process—Eidon alone knows how—who knows how many others it will get, as well. That’s something you want to sing about? Something you think people will want to hear?” He started to push past her.
“I will sing of sacrifice and devotion and courage,” she said softly, her voice gone husky and trembling. It stopped him in his tracks and drew his eye down to her, standing so close in the narrow corridor her shoulder almost brushed his chest. Her eyes glistened with tears as she added, “But I don’t believe it will end as you say.”
Another flash of memory hit him—Shettai on the balcony of that tiny room they’d shared the night before he fought in the Val’Orda. How Madeleine could remind him of Shettai, he did not know, for they were not at all alike. But she did, and it only squeezed his terror tighter. “You’re not going!” he said firmly and continued on down the corridor.
But at the corner of the stair, he glanced back. She stood where he had left her, looking after him, a fairy princess in the white gauzy bedgown and the mantle of long silken hair, her face shining with tears. It made his heart ache to leave her on such a harsh note, but he feared anything less would encourage her. Still, he could not help himself:
“This will be hard for my sister. She could use a friend. Will you stay with her until it’s over?”
She stared at him mutely, then wiped the tears from her face and nodded. After that he knew he had to go or he would undo all that his harshness had achieved.
Downstairs he rousted Blackwell from his couch and, with him, Haldon, and Lord Laramor serving as witnesses, signed and sealed the document that declared who was to succeed him—it wouldn’t be Gillard. Then he was ready to go—and here was Carissa, dressed to ride with Cooper, his wife and young Philip Meridon attending her. No longer the reserved, stone-faced beauty, she flew into his arms, weeping openly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have been such a fool, too blind and stubborn to see the truth.” She drew back from him and dropped her eyes to the shieldmark glittering in the V of his jerkin, then touched it almost reverently. “I see it now, though. Finally.” The Light stirred within him, and his breath hissed as her gaze came up to meet his.
He gaped at her. “Carissa, have you—”
She nodded, smiling ruefully as she laid her hand flat against his chest. “Just a few hours ago, in fact. I was going to tell you in the morning, but . . .” The smile gave way to trembling lips and more tears and she buried her face against him, hugging him fiercely. “Come back to us,” she murmured. “Eidon was with you in Jarnek. I am sure he will be with you now.”
And then, before he could say a word, she pushed away, gathering her reserve about her like a cloak and wiping the tears from her face, and headed for the door. Haldon and Cooper both gave him grim-faced nods and followed her.
By then Simon had arrived with Foxton and Whitethorne, armored and dressed to ride, and though Abramm had given no such order, he wasn’t surprised. Taking Simon aside, he told him of his arrangements for the women. “About an hour after I leave I want you to get the men up. Pull those on the northeast lines back to the center of the valley.”
“But—it’s nearly dawn. I thought the thing went to ground during the daylight.”
“Not when there’s clouds like these. And I don’t think it’s going to rain anymore.”
Simon looked gray. “Well, then, I will go with you.”
“No one’s coming with me. The men will need your command now more than any host has ever needed it. If I fail to kill this thing, it will continue to live on in the area of my death, and I do not know how far that area extends.”
He paused, then added, “I know you’ve never believed me about this thing, and I fear you don’t even now. Do not take it lightly, Uncle. It will carve a path of devastation through this army such as you have never seen. Don’t try to stop it, just get the men out.” He paused, considering, then sighed. “And you’d better send word to Gillard’s commanders, as well. Tell them to move their men back from around the mouth of the Pass of the Old Ones.”
“Pass of the Old Ones?” Simon’s brows drew down. “You’re not going there, are you?”
“That’s the way it’s coming.”
“How do you know that?”
Abramm turned his eyes to the east. “I can feel it, Uncle. And sometimes, I see things through its eyes. . . .” A dark forest, dripping with moisture, a narrow rutted trail, leading upward . . . He shook it off. “If all goes sour, get to Carissa as fast as you can. Blackwell is with her, and he has the documents you’ll need.”
“Documents?”
“I’ve made her my heir.”
“What?!”
“I know the succession usually passes to the man—but this is not without precedent. Queen Arielle ruled well and wisely. And I will not leave my people to Gillard, especially now that he’s allied with the Mataio.”
“And Carissa has agreed to this?” Simon demanded incredulously.
“She doesn’t know. But she understands more about all this than you know. She has done much in these last years, and she has seen the Esurhites.” And taken the Star, as well. Not fair, my Lord! To take me away from her even as we’re reunited.
Simon was scowling at him. “I do not like this talk of succession, sir.”
“Just promise me you will do these things.”
It was slow in coming, but it came. His uncle exhaled deeply, then said, “I will see to her, sir.”
Abramm held his gaze a moment, struck by the sudden incredible realization that the commitment he saw there was real. That the old revulsion and disdain had given way to admiration and even affection. His uncle had given him his liege almost two weeks ago in the cave beside the Hennepen. But he was giving it now by the look in his eye and the tone of his voice. For a moment it was hard to speak, and when Abramm did, his voice was low and husky. “Thank you.”
He started for the door, and behind him, Simon said softly. “May your Eidon protect you, boy. Do the job and come back to us whole.”
Abramm glanced back at him, startled. But there was no mockery in Simon’s face, only grim resolution. After a moment Abramm gave him a nod, “I’ll try, sir.”
Then he turned to the other men—Laramor, Whitethorn, Foxton, and Kesrin, just having arrived—telling them that he would not be taking an escort and that until he returned they were to treat Simon’s commands as if they were Abramm’s own. With that he bid them all good-bye and strode for the door.
Warbanner awaited him outside, prancing restlessly, his pale coat gleaming in the night. Everything shimmered with moisture in the lantern light, and the scent of wet stock pens rose up in a great blanket of aroma. Water still dripped from tent edges and outbuilding roofs, ran down the spouts off the castle walls, but beyond that, the camp lay silent and still, most of the men asleep in accordance with his orders. Only after he was well away were they to be wakened—he didn’t want some half-cocked commander taking it into his head to go with him. It had been hard enough to convince Trap and the others to let him alone.
He jogged down the high porch’s steps, sword harness jingling, then slowed as a cloaked figure emerged from the shadows at the foot of the stairway. It was Madeleine again, dressed to ride, her hair pulled back from her face and hidden by the cowl of her cloak.
She was still pale, but calm now, her eyes dry as she looked up at him. “I am not here to try to change your mind,” she said quickly, diverting the protest that had come to his lips. “And I will do all that you have asked of me. I only came because—” She glanced at the white folds of gauzy fabric he saw she held in her gloved hands. “Because in Chesedh it is traditional to send our men to war with a token of home—a glove, a necklet, a scarf.” Her gaze came back to his. “For luck.”
He frowned at her. “I don’t believe in luck,” he said. “I didn’t think you did, either.”
She bit her lip and looked down again, her face flushing. A moment she hesitated, then thrust the soft
folds into his hands. “So take it for love, then.”
And with that she fled, leaving him standing there, staring after her in astonishment, the white scarf dangling from his fingers.
“Take it for love?” Surely he’d not heard that right. And yet the memory of her words sent a warm rush of emotion tingling through him. It lasted but an instant, overtaken by that chilling sense of being watched and stalked. He didn’t have much time.
He looked down at the scarf, not knowing what to do with it. Should he stuff it in his sack? Tie it about his waist, where it might get in his way? Finally he gave up and stuffed it into his jerkin, aware of a faint scent of sage and lemongrass as he did.
Then he was striding for his horse and his destiny.
An armorer awaited at Warbanner’s side with the broadsword and pike Abramm had asked for. The man helped him fasten the sword harness over his chest and shoulders, adjusting it so he could easily reach back and pull it free of its scabbard. The pike was secured in a sheath tucked out of the way under his right stirrup leather.
“You know how to use these, sir?” the man asked after Abramm had swung into the saddle.
“The sword, yes. The pike. . . ?” Abramm gave him a grin. “I’m sure I can figure it out.” And then he was off, trotting through the sleeping camp, down the steepening slope to the gate in the inner wall and on across the larger outer yard to the main gate. He was surprised not to have seen Trap again, and a little disappointed not to have the chance to say good-bye. But it was all happening too fast. He had given the man quite a list of tasks to complete, and no doubt he’d had to argue Shale Channon into complying. At least he appeared to have been successful. Although Abramm wouldn’t be entirely confident of that until he cleared the camp without seeing them.
The Shadow Within Page 49
