Return of the Guardian-King

  Finally the intensity of his anxiety was so great he could bear it no longer.

  “I’m going to the study,” he told Rolland. The big man stared at him suspiciously.

  “Do you think that’s wise, Alaric?” Cedric asked, having overheard. “How do you know what you’ll find there?”

  “I’ll find books, Cedric.” Abramm smiled wanly. “I’m not going down to open the gate, if that’s what you fear. But if you want to make sure of it, why don’t you chain the doors leading out of the kitchen and keep the key in here under guard?”

  As Abramm reached the door, Rolland was right behind him. “I’ll come with you.”

  “What good’s that gonna do?” Trinley growled. “Better ye both just stay here.”

  Rolland glanced over his shoulder at the alderman and was about to reply when Jania let loose with another shriek. Abramm flinched so violently he was sure Rolland saw it, even if no one else did. He didn’t wait a moment more.

  Rolland caught up with him in the anteroom. “You’re white as a sheet, man. Didn’t you say you have two children?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did you almost lose her with one of them, then?”

  “No. It was a hard birth, but they both came out of it fine. This is . . . I told you earlier I feared for her, and now it seems somehow it’s her in there.” He paused, frowning. “Or maybe not there, but somewhere else. Where I can’t do a thing to help her.”

  “You couldn’t do anything anyway, friend. Except pray.” He paused, frowning. “Did you send her off to Chesedh with child, then?”

  “No. Of course not. I—” His voice died as panic washed over him again. Oh, my Lord Eidon . . . I didn’t, did I? That last night with her, though—and the four nights previous to it—could certainly have had such a result. How would he ever have known? Yes, the tanniym had told him she was with child, but he’d refused to believe that and had concentrated on not thinking about it at all. Now he counted back in his mind and realized with a growing horror that it was very close to nine months since they’d been together.

  “Plagues!” he whispered. “It is possible. . . . But how could I know anything about her from here?” He knew the answer before he’d finished his sentence. The mysterious link that had always connected them, even before they’d become man and wife. It was a link through which he’d felt nothing for years now. Not since they’d been on the Gull Islands when she’d been kidnapped by the Esurhites. And been in danger.

  His head swam. His stomach churned. For a moment he thought he might pass out.

  Rolland clapped his shoulder. “Ye can’t, friend,” he said in answer to Abramm’s question. “So ye must give her over to Eidon, as ye have been all along.” He gripped Abramm’s upper arm, leading him toward the hallway. “Come on. It’ll be easier out of earshot.”

  Abramm let himself be walked into the corridor and on to the study, which was deserted, Laud having gone to bed. Memorizing Old Tongue verb forms was not sufficiently distracting, however, and though Rolland was soon snoring in the hearth chair, Abramm could not follow his example. Every time he dozed off, a dark tide of terror rolled in to jerk him awake. Finally, as he snapped upright in the chair yet again, heart pounding in his throat, he heard a cry he could have sworn was Maddie’s.

  It had him out of the chair and across the room to the door before he caught himself. Where was he going? Back to the common room? The cry was certainly Jania’s, and it didn’t sound as if she’d had her baby yet. And since first deliveries were often lengthy, she might be crying out for hours yet.

  He went back to his desk and his verbs. Moments later a vision of Maddie choking in darkness blotted out sight of his books and papers. When it vanished, he found himself standing in the hallway outside the study. Colored ribbons of light coiled near the ceiling, and a small blond boy stood directly ahead of him.

  He frowned in disbelief. “Simon?”

  The lad turned, his blue eyes widening as they fixed upon Abramm. “Papa?” Simon shook his head. “You can’t be here. You’re dead.”

  “No. I’m just stuck in the mountains waiting for the snow to melt.” Abramm crouched down to look his son in the eye.

  Simon nodded gravely, then said, “Grandpapa had blackness in him. It spilled on Mama and me.”

  “Blackness?”

  But Simon was shrinking, pulling off into the distance until he was swallowed by the darkness at the hallway’s end. The hairs on the back of Abramm’s neck stood up. It must have been a dream. . . .

  I need to wake up. . . . Blackness spilled on Mama?

  He was walking again, trying to figure out what it could mean, even as he argued with himself that it meant nothing. Grandpapa had blackness in him? Hadrich was a Terstan. He could not have blackness in him. Unless it was spawn spore. He would have been in battle. He could have been injured.

  I have to get to them. I have to—

  He stopped dead, chilled to realize he stood in front of the outer gate, his hand on the bar. The wind rushed strongly outside, blustering and blowing against the walls, whistling across the crenellations of the wallwalk overhead, rattling the gate beneath his hands. He jerked them away and staggered backward. “Pox!”

  The need to go to his family pressed at him insistently. The observation that they weren’t out there and this was a ploy to get him to open the gate changed nothing. He could even sense the tanniym waiting for him outside, yet some irrational part of him remained convinced that all he had to do was throw back that bar and wrench open the gate, and there his loved ones would be.

  “No!” he cried, taking another step back. “You know it’s a lie!”

  His voice rang in the darkness, the sound giving strength to the words so he was able to force himself to turn away and stride back up the tunnel. He exited into the gate yard and stopped, his way blocked by a semicircle of five men. He recognized their leader at once.

  “Trinley?” he grated. “What the plague are you all doing down here?”

  “We’d ask the same o’ you, Alaric,” Trinley said. “Didn’t ye tell us ye’d be in the study?”

  A kelistar bloomed into the blackness, its clear light casting weird shadows up Oake’s bearded face.

  “I was in the study,” said Abramm. Red, green, and blue ribbons of light undulated in the shadows around them, watching avidly.

  “But now ye’re down here, opening the gate.”

  “I didn’t open the gate.”

  Trinley’s brows, drawn down angrily, blazed in the kelistar’s light. “Go back and close it, Alaric.”

  “I didn’t open it.”

  “Fine, then, we’ll go and see.”

  Turning, Abramm strode quickly back down the tunnel to the small gate, the others on his heels. Several strides away he stopped and conjured a star of his own. Its white light washed over the rough wooden portal, shivering and rattling against hinges and bar. “There. It’s closed. Satisfied now?”

  But Trinley only scowled the more. “Ye knew we were here, didn’t ye?

  That’s why ye turned away.”

  Abramm sighed wearily. “I think we should all go back to the common room.”

  “You lead,” said Trinley.

  Abramm returned them quickly to the Great Hall, but he’d barely entered the flagstone anteroom outside it when another of Jania’s shrieks stopped him in his tracks. Her deep, rasping gasps grated like metal on slate. “I think I’ll go up to my cell.”

  Trinley laughed outright. “I think ye won’t.”

  “Lock me in, if it’ll make you feel better. I can’t go in there.”

  “Ye’d rather be locked in yer cell this night than be in there with the rest of us?” Trinley’s voice was both incredulous and disapproving.

  “With Jania still screaming like that?” Abramm nodded. “Aye.”

  Trinley exchanged glances with his companions. “Fine, then.”

  He sent Cedric to find chains and a lock while the rest of them escorted Abramm to his cel
l at the top of the stair. He entered it freely and shut the door behind him, the others muttering nervously among themselves outside. How it was poxed odd that Alaric would ask to be chained up in his own cell, that he’d want to be in the cell at all, and that he’d ever chosen to sleep up here in the first place. What was wrong with him, anyway? And did anyone notice how he’d recognized Trinley right off when they were standing in deep darkness?

  Cedric’s arrival with the lock and chain ended the gossip. As soon as the door was secured, they trooped back down the stairs, leaving Abramm to the wind and the tanniym’s howling and the dark fear beating at his soul. For a time he paced restlessly, repeatedly confessing his fears and failure to trust, and seeking Eidon’s help to overcome his weaknesses. When that did not work, and the visions of darkness sweeping wife and son away rose up to catch him, too, he dropped to his knees beside the cot and plunged himself into Eidon’s Light, beseeching him to deliver his loved ones from whatever it was that held them.

  The birth pangs were the most savage Maddie had ever known, as if some giant hand squeezed and pulled at her until she thought her insides would be torn out. How was it she always forgot this? It was the third time and yet was every bit as awful as it had ever been. Worse now, with the spore that had come out of her father, dark and virulently bitter, coursing through her veins. It had gone at once for the child in her womb, and she’d had no time to start a purge, instantly forming the light into a shield around the baby to keep out the dark. A shield inside her own body, not outside, something she’d never done before. Something that in the best of times would have taken all her concentration, yet here she was holding it together by a thread. The upheaval of her body as the contractions grew more and more powerful broke into her thoughts time and again, terror waiting at each interval to seize her. She heard Simon screaming somewhere, terrified and in pain, but she could not go to him, for she could not leave the little girl in her womb lest the darkness take her.

  She had thought at first that the shield would be enough. Once stabilized she would let the Light flow out to purge her own body. But this spore was different. Mindful. It shrank back, waiting. Then attacked when she faltered. And too often the pain was so intense it commanded all her attention. Coils of light undulated in the shadows around her, and she sensed other beings watching avidly, hoping for her death. Hoping for the child’s death.

  No. Not hoping—waiting.

  And all the while that horrid voice kept repeating over and over: “You will all be taken. All . . . nothing of his can remain.”

  Then, finally, a prodigious push, the fire of her flesh ripping to give the babe room, and the release of terrible pressure. She lay gasping, head swimming with the pain, blackness clouding her vision . . . and heard a cry. Someone held her daughter up for her to see, blond-haired, pink-skinned, bloody but crying lustily.

  “Abrielle,” she gasped. “Her name is Abrielle. After her father.”

  Thank Eidon. No blackness. The spore hadn’t gotten to her child. Relief flooded Maddie in a great tingling wave. Then she felt a strange heaviness in her womb, a sudden flash and the sense of something tearing again where it should not be tearing. . . . And now someone was crying out at the foot of the bed about the blood. Too much blood.

  She felt it pouring out of her . . . and realized suddenly that it was not the child the spore had been after but Maddie herself. It had congregated on the womb so she would think it wanted her baby, but it didn’t. Couldn’t have gotten through anyway, for all the water. . . . They just wanted her to think that so she would not defend herself, would not do the purge until it was too late.

  “And now you are ours. All that was his must be taken—especially you.”

  “Why? Why must I be taken?”

  She fell into deep darkness, into the nausea and dizziness brought on by the poison of the spore in her veins. Guilt and despair overwhelmed her. She would die now, and who would care for her children? Who would protect them? Why had she been so foolish? Why hadn’t she guessed what it was doing?

  She deserved to die, wanted to die. . . .

  For now at last she would see Abramm.

  She felt her life bleeding away, her body growing light and empty.

  “Soon,” said a warm, friendly voice. “Come to me, child. See your husband who has died and waits for you with me.”

  It made no sense that she should mourn that statement. He was dead?

  “And never coming back to this mortal life. But you can come to him.”

  Yes. She could go to him. . . .

  But then she heard her husband’s voice, and it held her back. He was praying, and she sensed his spirit knit somehow with hers again. She felt his horror at what was happening to her, his anguish at the life fading swiftly now from her flesh, felt his deep, powerful love for her.

  Why would he feel anguish if he knew she was coming to him?

  Why was he praying?

  Though it was like moving a millstone across the floor, she shifted her attention from the friendly voice to the deep, smooth tones of her husband and forced herself to hear the words:

  “Father, open her eyes. Tear away the veil her enemies have woven before them. Remind her of who she is and who you are. That nothing can stand against your might, that she has only to rest in that and stop her striving. Draw her out of this darkness, my Father; don’t let them do this. Her children need her. Her realm needs her. And you know how much I need her. . . .”

  The meaning in his words registered slowly, tearing the veils of Shadow and spore from the eyes of her soul as she realized she had been deceived. The warm voice was not that of a friend at all. She didn’t have to die. Nor did she want to. And Eidon’s Light was right there, waiting for her to call upon it, stronger than any darkness, even this horrible spore. The moment of realization unleashed it.

  Blinding, instant heat sizzled away the black oil that had stained both flesh and spirit, and a strong but gentle hand took hers. She looked up into Tersius’s eyes. No reproach, no disappointment there at her gullibility. He always knew. He always accepted anyway. Come, my daughter. I have something to give you.

  He led her up a short stair into a small white room where an even brighter window blazed in the wall at his back. She tried to see through the brightness, but it only blinded her. And when she looked back at him, she could hardly see him for its flashing afterimage.

  Slowly she made him out again, smiling down at her, love personified. But as the light faded further, she saw it wasn’t Tersius after all but her husband standing before her, holding her hands in his.

  His thick blond hair fell about his shoulders, and his beard was long and full—scruffy looking, she’d have termed it once. It didn’t diminish his appeal in the slightest. Those incredible blue eyes stared down at her from beneath his level brows, igniting fire in her chest. She ran her fingers down the twin scars on the left side of his face, then over to his lips.

  “I’d forgotten how astonishingly handsome you are,” she murmured.

  He smiled at her, shaking his head as he stroked back her hair, then bent to kiss her. His lips were warm and soft, the length of his body hard against hers as he pressed her to him, the sensation so strong, so solid, she guessed she’d died and entered Eidon’s eternal realm of Light after all. . . .

  CHAPTER

  13

  It had to be the eternal realm, for it was not like any dream she’d ever had—vivid, intimate, and lasting all night. Drifting in and out of sleep, she felt again and again the sheer delight of his body against hers, warm and strong, the familiar smell of it, the languid warmth of his arms around her, making her feel safe, secure, and loved as only he could.

  As the light began to sift through the shuttered window above their cot, she saw her surroundings for the first time: a small, bare, stonewalled cell, with cobwebby wooden rafters and an endlessly blowing wind outside. Not what she’d expected. He shifted beside her and an icy draft chilled her shoulder. She rolled onto her
back, not surprised to find him looking at her, propped up on one elbow as he lay beside her.

  “I didn’t expect Eidon’s realm to be so cold,” she said. “Or to have all this wind.”

  Abramm chuckled softly. “That’s because we’re not in Eidon’s realm, my love. We’re in Caerna’tha.” He stroked the fall of her hair beside her face, then tucked it behind her ear. “Though how you got here I cannot imagine.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ve come by coach. . . .”

  He lifted a dark brow. “Coach?”

  “Lately, it’s the only way I’ve been able to go anywhere since—” She broke off as a new thought struck her, one she was amazed she’d forgotten. “You have a daughter, sir.”

  “A daughter?”

  “Born this very night.”

  The dark brow lifted again. “And after giving birth, you took a coach to Caerna’tha.”

  “I must have.”

  “You’ve not heard of Caerna’tha, I take it.”

  “I have, I just . . .”

  “We’re in the Aranaak, love. In the dead of winter. There’s fifteen feet of snow on the ground. You couldn’t have come by coach.”

  “Oh. Well . . . we must be dreaming, then.”

  “Yes.” He smiled. “Though it would be very nice to have a daughter.”

  “Why are we in the Aranaak?”

  “Well, I’m here because it’s as far as I got before the winter set in. It takes a while when you have to walk everywhere. I guess from the remark about the coach, you’ve forgotten that. As for why you’re here—”

  The distant thunder of footfalls accompanied by voices broke into the wind-glazed silence. She looked round at the door, which had begun to rattle and clank. “What’s that?”