He fell silent. Gillard stared at him, his uneasiness rising. The moments crawled by and finally, when Bonafil still did not speak, Gillard burst out, “I told Amicus from the beginning I believed none of this. He persuaded me to take the vows merely to protect himself and his Watch.”
“Is that what you think this is about?” Bonafil snorted and shook his head. “Your plan was idiotic, young man. To go after him with a sword? In your condition? After all these years, do you still refuse to acknowledge who your brother is?”
Gillard studied the carpet, shamed anew and fuming now. “I heard he was injured. That he had lost his skills. That he could not even stand against the Crown Prince of Chesedh.”
“And you, of course, could.” The tone was withering.
Gillard squirmed inwardly, his fury and frustration swelling almost past the point of containment. This wasn’t fair. None of it. And for this pompous, self-righteous fool to be reprimanding him was almost more than he could bear. He wanted to yell and hit things, but his hand throbbed a painful warning and he wrestled down his ire.
“You had your chance, man,” Bonafil said sternly, “on the front steps of the Temple of the Dragons in Tuk-Rhaal. When you lost there, you lost everything, and you’ll never get any of it back through your own efforts. The sooner you face that, the better.”
“I will never face that!” Gillard declared. “My day is far from over.”
“You think so?” He gestured to Amicus. “Break his other hand, brother.”
Immediately Amicus stepped toward Gillard, smiling so pleasantly one might have thought he offered aid and comfort. The amulet at his throat flickered with scarlet light. “Give me yer hand, Makepeace.”
Gillard was too stunned to even react, his mind struggling to get itself around Bonafil’s last words. “Break his hand”? Is that really what he said? Then to Gillard’s astonishment, his left hand come up and placed itself in Amicus’s open palm. In horror he watched the man’s fingers curl around it, felt the grip tighten and the bones begin to snap. The pain came afterward, sharp and nauseating, and he screamed, trying vainly to jerk his hand free. Amicus continued to grind away until Gillard was on his knees, weeping, begging him to stop.
Finally the holy man released him and stepped back, leaving Gillard hunched over his ruined limb, gasping and sobbing and cursing them all to Torments and back. Eventually he came to the end of his words and fell silent, huddling before them and shuddering with pain.
Only then did Bonafil speak again. “Amicus did not suggest you take holy vows simply to protect his Watch. We want exactly what you want . . . to remove Abramm and put one of our own in his place.”
“I would be king at your pleasure, you mean,” Gillard grated.
“I would never use so crude a way of phrasing it.”
“Elegant or crude, that’s what it would be.” He looked at them, the room spinning and sparkling around him. “I want no part of it.”
Bonafil lifted a brow. “Are you sure?”
“I will be no man’s puppet.”
At that the five men chuckled and once more exchanged amused glances, and as irritating as that was, it also sent a worm of uncertainty crawling through Gillard’s belly.
A moment later Bonafil regained his sober mien. “If you take your final vows now, Makepeace, you can become the true Guardian-King of Kiriath.”
“I don’t want to be a Guardian-King,” Gillard spat. “And anyway, don’t I have three years of my novitiate to serve before I can take final vows?”
“The eight-year span is only an advised time. If a man wishes to test the Flames early he will be allowed to do so.” He paused. “Because of the difficult times we face, I would give you a special dispensation to do that. A dispensation from Eidon that would not even be the lie you think it would. For in truth, Eidon does want you to be king of this land.”
Final vows, special dispensations . . . I don’t like it. If I’m going to be king, I want to be king . . . not beholden to these self-righteous bloodsuckers. . . . The only problem was, without them he did not see any way he was going to be king at all. And right now his hand was hurting so badly he could hardly think.
“I regret that you don’t have much time to make your decision, but the fact is, we are preparing to bring your brother down even now. You can participate in that or be cast aside and a new ruler put upon the throne.”
Gillard snorted. “What new ruler? I am the last of the Kalladorne line. No one is going to accept Carissa as ruler in her present mental state.”
“Haven’t ye been payin’ attention, Brother?” Amicus reproved. “Do ye na recall that I told ye Abramm has two sons?”
Gillard stared at him, stunned anew. No. I do not recall. And surely I would have. I might have gone to the nursery before I went to the royal bedchamber. . . . Two sons?
“His firstborn, Simon,” Bonafil said, “is an impressionable, uncorrupted lad of four.” He smiled. “Once removed from the evil influence of his parents and provided with solid teaching in the true ways of Eidon, he will be a willing and able servant on Eidon’s behalf.”
“If he’s only four it’s going to take you some time to groom him. You’ll have to instate a regency.”
“Of course.”
“And you have someone who could handle that?”
“Someone on the inside. Someone with a great deal of governing experience, who has worked closely with the king, and who has a heartfelt—if undeclared—reason to oppose him. Someone working even now to bring our plans to fruition.”
Gillard stared at them. Pain-induced sweat sheathed his brow, and his hand was a fiery torment, even as the rest of his body had grown chilled and shaky. I don’t want to be their Guardian-King!
“Everything is now in place. Abramm will leave for Sterlen tonight, all in a fury to gain his vengeance upon Rennalf. . . . Within five hours of his confirmed departure, we will strike. I ask you again, Gillard Kalladorne. Do you want to be part of this, or don’t you?”
They stood around him, staring down at him, their eyes flickering with that creepy red light, the same light that flickered in the amulets. He felt them pulling at him to agree, and yet . . . The pain was excruciating. He wanted it to stop, wanted a moment of freedom from agony so he could think, consider his options, see where this path they offered him really led.
“I can heal your hands, Gillard. . . .”
A shudder shot through him, for the voice had whispered audibly into his ear, yet no one stood near enough to do so.
“I can heal your bones, too. So they will no longer break at the slightest touch.”
Oh, to be free of this pain, to be free of this fragility! Yes! Yes, he wanted that!
Can you make me bigger? he wondered.
“Only so far as people perceive you . . . but in that, you will be very big indeed.”
Not quite the answer he’d hoped for.
“I can give you Abramm, too. To do with as you wish.” A stream of violent images flooded his mind—all the dreams he’d nursed for years. No more humiliating failures. Abramm would be at his mercy. To beat, to torture, to maim, to kill—whatever he desired.
“I’ll do it.” The words were out of his mouth before he even realized he’d meant to say them. And he didn’t much like the way the others sat back then and smiled.
It happened much faster than he had ever guessed it could. Within an hour the High Father’s council had been summoned, all crowded into his spacious office with a traveling brazier of the Holy Flames, which would be used to reseed the new Sanctum at the consecration ceremony. Stripped to his white inner tunic, the splint and bandages removed from his right hand, Gillard stood before the oval brazier as the holy men prayed around him. Their voices droned in a discomfiting harmonic that set the air vibrating and made the room increasingly hot.
Finally Eudace brought forth a black box and from it pulled a Guardian’s amulet, except this one’s stone was clear instead of red and it had no latch to fasten the t
wo ends together. The praying stopped abruptly when Eudace cast it into the Flames. Then he told Gillard to put both hands in the fire and pull it out.
Gillard thought he must be mad to even consider it, but the lure of gaining his revenge drove him on. Without a moment’s hesitation, he plunged his broken hands into the fire and it hurt every bit as badly as he had thought it would. He wanted to scream and jerk them out, but the Masters had told him that doing so would mean the Flames had rejected him, and would likely leave him addled for the rest of his life. So he clenched his teeth and, shaking and jerking as the sweat poured off him now, strove to make his shattered fingers move in search of the amulet. And to his surprise they obeyed. In moments he found the chain and pulled it free, the stone ablaze with the fire from which he’d drawn it. Noting it still had no end latches, he laid it about his neck as if it did. The moment the blazing stone touched his skin he gasped as a new agony shot through him and nearly passed out from the shock of it.
In that moment of disorientation, he felt a coldness spread out from the amulet to enwrap his body, squeezing him ever tighter until he feared he would suffocate. Then, like a snake striking from a bush, a sharp tongue of inhuman presence darted into his soul and took hold. A brief but terrified struggle ensued. Then it was over.
The coldness faded along with the terror. The amulet lay heavy and hot against the base of his throat, its latchless chain having fastened itself around his neck by magic. But he hardly gave it a thought as he held up his hands before him, still thin and spidery, but no longer crushed and broken. He opened and closed the left, then did the same with his right. It too was completely healed.
More than that he felt wonderful. It seemed like years since he had felt this good, this strong, this confident. He looked at the men surrounding him.
Bonafil smiled. “Welcome to the Brotherhood of the Flames, Makepeace. Soon you will have your crown back and we will make good on your holy name.”
————
Abramm rode out of Springerlan at midnight, having spent the day involved in the parade, the opening of the fair, the Spring Dance on the green, and the feast that evening. He brought the scepter with him, though he knew little more now than he had when he’d used it to drive the Shadow from the Gull Islands five years ago. With no subsequent need of using it, and the passages in the Words more figurative than practical, the mystery of how it worked remained out of his reach. Kesrin had suggested enlightenment might come along as he grew closer to Eidon. Still, the implement had served him well in the past, and he hoped it would do so now.
He traveled with a troop of seventy-five—all he dared pull out of the standing forces ready to defend Springerlan against surprise attack. He’d not made his commanders happy with that move, though all conceded that with no fog to hide in and no Esurhites sighted in Kiriathan waters since their illfated attempt to take the Gull Islands five years ago, the chance of attack was slim.
He’d sent word ahead for more troops to be readied at Briarcreek, which he would pick up on his way north—fifty horsemen and a hundred foot soldiers. With that many men to move, he wanted to be well clear of the royal city before the fair ended, day after tomorrow. Once the celebrants started for home, the roads would be hopelessly clogged.
Trap had surprised him by asking to stay behind, unwilling to leave Carissa alone in her present state, now that all the world knew of it. Besides, he feared Rennalf might still find time to make a visit.
“The child she’s carrying is his heir,” he’d pointed out. “I have no doubt he’ll come by eventually to collect, if he can. And she could deliver any day.”
His point was valid, and as much as Abramm regretted not having Trap to fight at his side, there was no one he’d rather leave the care and safety of his loved ones to than “Uncle” Trap.
Even so, leaving was hard. Somehow Ian sensed the change afoot and refused to let go of Abramm when he’d tried to say good-night in the nursery. Screaming desperately, tears streaming down his face, the boy had to be peeled out of his father’s arms, a scene as embarrassing as it was heartwrenching. Little Simon watched the proceedings with wide, startled eyes, and after Ian was carried off to his bed and it was time for his own good-night hug, he wrapped his arms tightly around his father’s neck and asked in a tiny voice, “Are you really going away again, Papa?”
“For a little while, Simon. I’ll be back soon, though, I promise.”
But it wouldn’t be soon. Only four months, he hoped, but that was an eternity for a little boy like Simon. He figured it would take him all summer to finish the job. Ian would be almost two then, and there was no telling how tall Simon would have gotten by that time.
“I’ll expect you to be riding your Warbanner all by yourself when I get back,” he said, attempting a cheerful mien. “And don’t forget to look out for your brother. I’m counting on you for that.”
Simon nodded soberly. “I will, Papa.”
Then Abramm had to stand and turn away lest Simon see the moisture springing up in his eyes. He left the nursery with a lump in his throat.
Saying good-bye to Maddie was the worst. She didn’t cry, didn’t protest, didn’t offer advice, for she had seen and talked with Carissa and knew he had to do what he did. Instead, she put on her brave face and treated it all lightly, teasing him and making jokes about it. But her eyes betrayed the anguish in her soul. And the fear.
She surprised him by bringing out her token—their wedding scarf—for the occasion, winding it about his bare midriff with her own hands before he’d dressed.
“And I don’t want any blood on it this time,” she’d said sternly as she’d tied it off.
He’d caught her to him and kissed her. “I’ll do my best, love.”
It gave him comfort to feel it now, snug about his middle, beneath the scepter harness, reminding him of her touch and her eyes and the final kiss she’d given him—long and sensuous and full of passion. Reminding him how desperately he wanted to go home again.
They crossed the Hennepen without incident and reached the Briarcreek Garrison around four in the morning, where they stopped to eat and get a couple hours’ sleep before setting off again at seven. By then the troops were already moving out, as Abramm had instructed they do, so at first he and his party rode alongside the great dust-making column of cavalry, footmen, and supply wagons until they reached the head of the line.
It took them a day to reach the Snowsong and another to ford it. From there they traveled easily northward on a wide, smooth road virtually devoid of local traffic. Even the river traffic was unusually sparse. Attributing it to the fact that everyone was in Springerlan—or on the road behind them—he rejoiced in this boon. In the same way he excused the unexpected quietness of the new Holy Keep of the Heartland, thinking that more of the brethren must have gone to Springerlan for the consecration than he’d expected.
But as land and water traffic continued to dwindle, and when that afternoon they came under a high, flat overcast spreading out of the north, he began to have second thoughts. Shadow over the highlands had been an increasing problem over the last few years, one he’d not known how to solve but which had for the most part stayed where it was. Of greater concern was the very real division that had occurred within his realm as those who wore shields migrated southward and those who worshipped the Flames stayed in the Heartland. The new Keep built north of the Snowsong had only encouraged and hastened this division, and despite his insistence that all his subjects have the freedom to choose how they would worship, he had had a hard time enforcing that. The two factions did not get along, and he knew many of the Heartlanders nursed an irrational hatred for him.
It seemed hard to believe that a Terstan king who was just and fair and whose reign had so far seen peace and increasing prosperity, as well as the relighting of two ancient guardstars, could be hated by his subjects and have parts of his realm under Shadow. And yet, the farther north they pressed, the more the clouds thickened. By the next afternoon,
a massive thunderhead towered above the rising land ahead, its belly blackest above where Sterlen lay, still out of sight beyond the rolling hills.
He slept poorly that night, beset with doubts and second-guessing—and the increasing fear this was all a setup for a Heartlander ambush. When he finally did doze off, his sleep was plagued by a repeating nightmare in which he ran through the ruins of Hur searching frantically for Ian amidst the invasion of Beltha’adi’s forces, the boom of supernatural fireballs echoing around him. Only to find at the end he was not in Hur at all, but in Springerlan.
Finally he woke up gasping, filled with the sense of a light going out and something terrible having happened. For a moment he could hardly move, could hardly breathe, Kesrin’s words echoing through his soul: “They will all be lost. . . .”
He made himself take a deep breath, forced himself to concentrate on what he knew—that no matter what else, Eidon had not loosed his hand on any of the details of Abramm’s life. Abramm had come here because he believed it was where his responsibility lay. . . . But even if he’d made the wrong decision—and he didn’t think he had—Eidon was still in control.
Outside, the horses on the picket line stamped and snorted restlessly, drawing his attention to the very real booming that had been sounding in the distance for some time. As he strove to listen more closely, he heard low voices talking outside his tent door, then a rasping rustle as someone pushed back the canvas flap and stepped inside. “Sir?” Channon asked quietly. “Are you awake?”
“What is it, Captain?”
“I think you’ll want to see this, sir.”
Abramm pulled on boots and cloak and stepped outside into a cold, black night, where Channon stood with a number of the officers and conscripts staring northward toward the massive cloud that had built up yesterday. Multi-colored lights flickered in its belly, the intensity of the powers being unleashed within it sometimes strong enough to illumine the whole of the cloud’s towering bulk. A continuous booming, loud enough to shake the ground, accompanied the light show.