More shouts echoed up the corridor and Abramm responded, desperate they should get there before the man eluded them. He held up his rapier again, but Balmark wouldn’t take the bait. Instead he plunged straight into the nightsprol’s sticky lair. Abramm turned his head to watch him and saw now the passageway that led through the shrouds of silk, ablaze with the bright green light that emanated from somewhere deep within the web.
Understanding struck him with the force of a blow: it was an etherworld corridor! Protected by its location in Graymeer’s Shadow-cloaked, uncleared depths, and the nightsprol and its lair.
He felt a surge in the power crawling across his flesh and, howling his frustration, sought to free himself from the trap, trying to maneuver his rapier to cut the webbing that held him and losing hold of the blade in the process. As it clanked to the floor he flung himself forward in a desperate attempt to break free. But that only enwebbed him so firmly, his feet no longer touched the floor.
Finally, exhausted and frustrated, he made himself stop. As his own gasping breaths subsided, he sought to hear the approach of his men and thought bitterly of the humiliation of being found like this—how they would stop in the doorway, how their eyes would widen with horror at the sight of him, then go quickly to pity. They’d hurry forward in concern, asking if he were all right.
Of course he wasn’t all right! How could he possibly be all right? He’d just been bested at swordplay by a poxed barbarian, stabbed twice and wrapped up like a fly for the man’s beast! Everything he thought he’d gained these last six months had in a few moments’ time been revealed as nothing more than delusion. He was an idiot not to have realized Balmark would come at him from his weak side, a fool to have barged into the corridor without even stopping to look. Now, as he went back through the sequence of the fight, looking at every mistake, he saw clearly how it all came from thinking he was more than he was. And so he had paid the price.
The great killer of kraggin and morwhol, hung up in a nightsprol’s web, waiting for someone to come cut him down. Nausea crawled up into his throat.
Where are they? he wondered. Why don’t they hurry up and get it over with? His breathing was quieting enough now that he should hear voices echoing down the corridor and the slap of hurried footfalls. Maybe they were gathered in the darkness out there, laughing amongst themselves at his predicament, enjoying the sight of the great white pretender reduced to this.
The web convulsed violently, snapping him up and down as it snapped him out of the self-contempt into sudden fear and the recollection that Balmark hadn’t left him here alone. Now the nightsprol chittered not far behind him, its fetid smell strong enough to choke. Pain had bloomed along his left side, while his right thigh felt as if the blade were still sticking in it. He’d be hard-pressed to defend himself even if he wasn’t hanging here like a side of bullock.
The web bobbed and shivered as if the creature were skittering a little ways forward, then stopping to look before skittering even closer.
Where were his men?
“Ye’ve provoked the wrath o’ the Great Ones with yer blasphemies,” Balmark had told him. “Now ye’ll pay fer it.”
There were probably rhu’ema here, unseen but watching, savoring all of this. Waiting with eager anticipation for the beast to arrive and inject its poison into him.
That is your Shadow thinking, he told himself.
But that only launched a new round of self-recriminations. Not only was he a failure as a swordsman and king, not only was he an unqualified idiot to blunder into this predicament at all, but here he was again, letting the Shadow rule him, despite everything that had happened, all that he knew, everything Eidon had done for him. Here he was supposedly mature enough in the Light as to have entered his destiny, and he couldn’t keep himself in it for any length of time at all. Even if he could, what good would it do him? He had no idea how to wield it against such as this nightsprol, no idea how to destroy the corridor behind him, no idea how to make the regalia work, assuming they even did. . . .
But I do. Eidon’s words stopped the enumeration of his lacks but did not dispel the resentment.
So what am I supposed to do? Abramm asked. Hang here and let you do everything?
No, you are free to go ahead and keep trying for yourself.
But I’ve failed. All I do is fail. You’ve taken away the only strong thing about me. So what’s left? I’m scarred and crippled and worthless.
Hardly worthless, my son. But definitely helpless. And spending far too much time contemplating your situation and your failings. I put that shield on your chest for a reason, if you’ll recall.
To mark him indelibly as Eidon’s own. A brand of ownership, yes. But also a promise of security and blessing. There was no way to remove it, as there was no way to sever the relationship between them, even should Abramm desire it. Eidon was his father now. Forever. And as a father, he had promised never to abandon his children. The resentment shriveled into chagrin.
I’m insulting you. Again.
Yes.
He heard the nightsprol’s triumphant squeakings as the web shivered violently. He imagined the spawn lurking above him, dark fangs poised to sink into his neck. He kept a tight lid on the Shadow within him, even now seeking to flood his soul with fear. Why do you always have to let these things get so close?
It is part of conforming you. . . .
He was panting now, sweat beading his brow, his heart thumping a rapid staccato against his chest wall. Any moment now the Light would surely blast it away. Any moment—
He felt the wind of the creature’s movement an instant before it dropped upon him, dark legs piercing his arms and hips and legs, fangs sinking into the side of his neck. Its poison burned out from them across his shoulder and down his back and twisted left arm, awakening the residualized spore that dwelt in his flesh and reigniting the firestorm of doubts and accusations that had only just subsided.
Then something slammed into him from the front, and a blade of white fire plunged deep into the beast on his back. He felt its shock and agony as his own, the Shadow shuddering within him, overwhelmed by the sudden explosion of the Light. Like a drowning man who sees his deliverance, he seized that Light and clung, letting it race through him, forcing the Shadow within him back into captivity and burning away the newly injected spore along with the reawakened old.
And then his perception shifted. He saw the room, filled with black strands of webbing, two men, the bulbous, multilegged corpse of the nightsprol lying beside them, and beyond, the irritating emerald green of the etherworld corridor. His sight shifted again, so that for a moment he saw all the fortress at the same time—the Esurhites captured by Abramm’s men in the adjoining chamber, the men on the ramparts above, the miles of dark tunnels around him and far below, crawling with rhu’ema spawn, and here and there, the bright ribbons of the rhu’ema themselves, mostly glimmering in the lowest, darkest reaches, but also, as he’d guessed, in the same room with the two men and that hideous corridor, burning oddly as if it were in the side of his chest. For a moment, it seemed, he had, in some inexplicable way, become the fortress itself.
The corridor could not be tolerated. He sensed the evil that created it, the evil to which it was connected. Through it, more darkness would come, more spawn, more enemies. It was an abomination. It must be destroyed.
The Light exploded out of him and into the corridor. He sped across fields and mountains and rivers he knew to be in his own realm, at the same time glimpsing a cascade of images—objects and people, creatures that shouldn’t be—all rushing through his mind in one brief, overwhelming onslaught.
Then it was gone. As the Light faded from his eyes, he heard a strange peeping behind him, its frequency dropping off rapidly until it stopped altogether. Blinking away the afterimages, he found himself back in the underground chamber. An acrid stench burned his nostrils, and he sneezed, realizing then that, while the web still clung to him, it no longer bound him. He turned in its sudde
nly fragile grasp, watching in wonder as the motion rippled through layered curtains of silvery strands, collapsing them into dust as it passed. The pale, sparkling powder drifted downward, dusting the nightsprol’s dark, bulbous shape where it lay still in the chamber’s far corner. Not far from it stood a blackened, smoking depression in the stone, remnants of the destroyed corridor.
The man beside him sneezed, drawing Abramm’s attention. He already knew it was Trap and that he had come alone. Channon must have searched the opposite leg of the corridor when they’d left the slit. Though he had confidence Channon would be as tight-lipped as Trap when it came to speaking of the particulars of the incident, there was some deep part of Abramm that cringed at the thought of the other man seeing him enmeshed in that web. Bad enough Trap had seen it.
At least it was over. He was still alive and the corridor was destroyed. As relief cascaded over him, whatever had kept the pain of his wounds from registering in his awareness suddenly ceased to do so. He gasped with the sudden surge of agony, causing Trap to leap up, his brows drawing down with sudden suspicion.
“Are you all right, sir?”
“Not really.” Abramm staggered toward the nearest wall, hardly able to put any weight on his leg. “I ran into Balmark, as I’m sure you’ve guessed. He got past my guard. Twice.”
“He stuck you?” Trap’s brown eyes widened in alarm, then roved swiftly over Abramm’s torso. “Where?”
“Once in the leg. Once—” Abramm gestured vaguely at his left side where a small, red-stained slit in his tunic marked the sword’s entrance point—“around here somewhere.”
“Plagues!” Trap stepped to the doorway to shout for Shale.
————
Not long after that, Abramm was topside again, resting in the commander’s own bed, his wounds cleaned and dressed. Though the fortress physician had recommended he reschedule the foreign dignitaries’ tribute and spend the night in Graymeer’s resting, he had refused. It wasn’t like he’d never been stuck before, and he didn’t want to make the incident bigger than it was already sure to be by canceling all his commitments and going to bed. Pain was a familiar companion to him, and anyway, what difference was there between lying in bed and sitting in a chair?
The reports had all been made and the day’s incident discussed with his men while the physician had tended him. He’d given his orders for them to continue mapping and filling the warrens as best they could, then sent Laramor off to the north to keep a better eye on Balmark. The men, except for Trap, had left to see to their respective duties, and finally it was all winding down.
Waiting now for the commander’s carriage to be prepared, he lay propped on a mound of pillows, watching the sea gulls fighting to land on the large rock beside Commander Weston’s new quarters and offices. The rock had so long been a roosting spot for the gulls—at the moment crowding every inch of its surface—that it was covered with their guano. It didn’t seem a restful spot, for few birds ever got to roost very long, pushed off by the sheer numbers of the others that perpetually crowded in, knocking others from their footholds, or sometimes outright attacking them.
How different is that, he wondered wryly, from the way men act about their own areas of power? An endless cycle of comings and goings, thrown off gradually or suddenly, always having to be ready to defend their ground. . . .
Not so different at all, he supposed. And he was grateful for the knowledge that his own position was ultimately not his to defend. Eidon had put him here. Eidon would remove him, if that was his will. . . . But that didn’t take the edge off what had happened today.
The ease with which he’d been overcome still shocked and humbled him. And, oh, it did gall to have to admit that the barbarian border lord had stuck him, not just once but twice. An inferno of raging self-condemnation yawned on one side of him, a swamp of self-pity on the other, while he clung grimly to the narrow path of knowledge that Eidon had allowed this for a reason. Part of the conforming process he’d mentioned during the coronation ceremony, and again just lately in the warrens.
Tersius had lost everything—even his life—before he’d finally won. Could the one who would follow him expect any less? He would die, too—to his old life, his old ways. Reliance on his fleshly strengths had to be stripped away, and it was not a pleasant process.
Abramm glanced at his new duke. “You’ve been holding back with me, haven’t you? In practice. You and the others.”
Trap had been watching the constant, mesmerizing shifting of the gulls on the rock, as well, and now Abramm’s words started him out of his trance. Immediately his expression drooped with chagrin. “Maybe a little.”
“Or maybe a lot?”
Trap shrugged and turned back to the multipaned window. “We didn’t see any reason to push it. You had enough to deal with. Besides, it’s not like you have to do that sort of thing anymore. That’s why you have a king’s guard.”
Stripped.
I liked being the White Pretender, Lord.
You would rather be the Pretender than the king?
The question made him realize how silly he was being, how much less stimulating and comfortable it had been to actually be the Pretender than it was to think about having been him.
No, Lord. You’ve made me what you want me to be. I will be content with that.
He sighed, then said to Trap, “Now I understand why you were so displeased by my acceptance of Leyton’s challenge match. He’ll probably wipe up the floor with me.”
Meridon turned to look at him, his expression sour. “Aye. He probably will.” He paused. “Are you changing your mind about that, then?”
“No. Just bringing my expectations down to reality.”
————
Besides taking far too long, the ride back to Springerlan was neither pleasant nor restful. Abramm sent messengers ahead to delay the start of the tribute, and still arrived with barely enough time to change. Because he knew he’d be unable to climb any steps at all, he had them bring him round to the west wing’s ground-level entrance, where Haldon awaited to escort him to a nearby suite where he could prepare for the ceremony. He’d barely stepped into the hallway when the problems began alighting on him, rather like those sea gulls on their rock at Graymeer’s.
Admiral Hamilton was there to report the discovery the princess and Lady Madeleine had made at Treasure Cove that morning—the wrecked vessel and the remains of one of its crew identified definitely as one of those deployed to explore the Gull Islands. The source of the ship’s demise remained unclear, however. And there was still no word from the vessels that had gone out with her.
As Abramm reached the suite he was to use, Hamilton was replaced by Byron Blackwell, making perfunctory inquiries as to His Majesty’s injuries while clutching a wrinkled typeset pamphlet that was clearly the focus of his attention. Indeed, as soon as the dictates of protocol were satisfied, Blackwell erupted with outrage over the new depths to which Prittleman had sunk, rattling off the man’s latest accusations as Abramm stripped off his gloves and a servant removed his cloak.
“I know you’re hurting, sir, but you’ve got to put a stop to this,” Blackwell concluded, muscles ticking at the corner of his left eye behind his spectacles. Like the fainting fits, he’d had the tick ever since he’d run himself into the tree branch the day Abramm faced the morwhol. Gray hairs threaded his lank brown locks, still shoulder length despite the growing trend among the courtiers to follow Abramm’s lead with shorter hair. “You can’t go on tolerating this increasingly outrageous criticism,” he added. “People will see you as weak.”
Abramm listened to him calmly, refusing to let his emotions rise to the outrage Blackwell seemed intent on kindling in him even as he refused the wrinkled pamphlet the count so obviously wanted him to take. Instead he handed his gloves over to Haldon and expressed his pleasure over Blackwell’s recovery from his fainting fit yesterday, a comment that caused the count’s pasty face to suffuse with red.
“Cou
ldn’t be better, sir. Although it would do much for my peace of mind if we could lay this matter of the pamphlets to rest.”
And so, finally, Abramm accepted the paper and skimmed it, finding it every bit as noxious as Blackwell claimed. The king was a servant of Shadow, its writer declared, and Gillard was the one who’d really slain the morwhol, credit denied him because he was unable to defend himself. This was proven by Abramm’s refusal to execute him for treason—because he knew Gillard had saved his life that day.
Abramm quit at that point and handed the paper to Jared to burn. “Draw up a proclamation,” he said to Blackwell. “Any tavern, inn, or other establishment in which these pamphlets or any like them are found will be shut down indefinitely. Any person found handing them out will be arrested for treason.”
He turned to Channon. “I want Prittleman found today. If he’s moving around, people will have seen him.” He addressed Blackwell again. “Add to the proclamation the assurance there’ll be no prosecution for any who give up information regarding him today, even if they’ve sheltered him in the past. . . .” He paused. “But only today. All who henceforth willfully give him aid—or contribute to the spread of his lies—will be prosecuted as traitors to the fullest extent of our laws.”
“Yes, sir.”
The king turned again to Captain Channon, considering his next words carefully. “I want you to start by searching the Keep.”