Return of the Guardian-King

“Oh, they’re just unchaining the door.”

  “Unchaining the door?” She sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You’re a prisoner here?”

  “No. I suggested it.” He sat up behind her, moved the curtain of her hair aside, and kissed the side of her neck. “You have no idea how good you smell. And feel . . .” His hands slid up her arms and she leaned back against him.

  “We’re just going to sit here? Without anything on? Even in a dream, Abramm—”

  “We’ll wake up before they see us.”

  “I don’t—” She twisted round to face him, tears rising in her eyes. “Oh, my love, I don’t want to wake up.”

  “You must.”

  “I don’t want to leave you. I don’t want to be without you.” He silenced her with his mouth. When he pulled away again, she was breathless. And the chain was rattling off whatever loop of metal had held it.

  He dropped his forehead against hers. “You have Eidon always and first,” he said. “As soon as the passes are clear, I’ll come to you.”

  “Do you even have the power to make that promise?”

  “No. But Eidon does. And he has promised me. Wait. I will come.”

  He kissed her again, a quick, hungry embrace before the door banged open. She turned to it with a gasp, only to find it wasn’t a door anymore but a window looking out across a wide, snow-filled valley. She glimpsed ragged, snow-clad peaks looming above it all just before the sun broke through one of the passes and blazed into her eyes, blinding her with its brilliance.

  Trap paced back and forth across the green-and-gold carpeting of the First Daughter’s sitting chamber. Shale Channon sat on the chair before the fireplace, keeping watch over Simon and Ian asleep on quilted pallets beside him, while over in the corner little Abrielle cried in the cradle where Channon had just placed her. He said she’d been crying ever since Carissa had brought her from the birthing chamber—actually the First Daughter’s bedchamber— and thrust her into his arms. “Her name is Abrielle. Keep her safe,” she’d said before fleeing back to Maddie and closing the door. But not before Channon had heard the other women’s alarmed voices talking about too much blood.

  That had been hours ago. Trap, who’d been occupied with his own battles drawing the spore out of little Simon and instituting a purge for both of them, had awakened shortly after Carissa had brought in Abrielle, sometime in the middle of the night. Now the sky was beginning to lighten, yet still no one emerged from Maddie’s chamber, and the last sight he’d had of her had been frightening. Lying there on the stretcher, she’d writhed and screamed, turning slowly gray as the dark spore rushed through her body. The child, Abrielle, appeared untainted by it, but Maddie must still be fighting it.

  A distant wailing arose from out in the courtyard: a lament for the king’s passing. Hadrich’s body still lay on his bed, where his personal servants would mourn him with appropriate wailing for several more hours yet. And someone somewhere was playing a dirge on a Chesedhan bladderpipe. He supposed workers had been all night procuring and preparing the marble slab that would sit in the main entrance antechamber of the palace for the next week.

  Meanwhile, Ronesca fought her own battles in her own chamber. Channon said the Great Kohal himself, Minirth, and an army of his underlings were ministering to her, the crown princess who was now queen.

  He shuddered to think of all that had happened in the last day. How the king of Chesedh had been killed and had nearly taken his daughter, her three children, his daughter-in-law, and her sons with him. Nearly all the contenders for the Chesedhan crown. Or, seen another way . . . all of Abramm’s children and his wife. It was, he knew, the product of no human machination but of something far greater and more malevolent.

  “Why does she keep screaming like that?” he burst out.

  “She wants her mama, I’d say,” said Channon. “Probably hungry.”

  Then, why don’t they come and get her? But he did not voice the question, for the answer was too horrifying to contemplate.

  And little Abrielle—his heart had turned over when he’d heard her name, when he’d seen her little face—was fair as the boys, with the same blue eyes and long thin body. No jailer’s dark-pelted child, that was sure.

  As the day wore on, he began to think what would happen to them all if Maddie died. For her, it would be a release and a glorious reunion. She would be with Abramm. But she would leave three children orphaned in a realm that already saw them as a threat. Children whose grandfather had just died in a hideous manner and whose uncle’s concern for them was questionable. At best.

  He stopped pacing and stood still, eyes shut, seeking to master the rush of grief that threatened to sweep him into an abyss from which he wasn’t certain he would escape. Bad enough to lose Abramm—even now he struggled to believe it was so. Even now he found himself asking himself what Abramm would think about their situation or what he would do when he returned . . . only to recall there would be no return.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out. The tightness in his throat eased. He drew another and exhaled again.

  Then abruptly he went to the bassinette and picked up the infant, whose faint, reedy cry was driving him crazy. He cradled the tiny girl to his chest and continued to pace, more slowly now.

  Shortly thereafter a new girl came into the room, stopped, looked around at all of them, then came toward him to drop a tentative curtsey. “I’ve come for the babe,” she said.

  He frowned in suspicion. “Why?”

  “Lady Iolande said the princess would be needing a wet nurse, sir.”

  “And you are that?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What happened to your own child?”

  “Died, sir. Two days ago.”

  “Died of what?”

  She looked up at him, dark eyes wide. “A fall, sir.”

  Maddie, he knew, had made no such arrangement because she preferred to nurse her own children, as was the custom in Kiriath. She’d do the same with Abrielle. If she lived. If her milk was not tainted. So what should he say to this poor, poor girl, already eying the babe in his arms with a disconcerting hunger?

  The door opened and Carissa stepped out. Seeing the girl, she frowned and came to Trap’s side. “Who is this?”

  When he told her, her frown deepened. “I’m sorry,” she told girl. “There was a mistake. We won’t be needing you.”

  Though the girl looked crestfallen to the point of tears, she bobbed a curtsey and left without a word.

  Trap turned to his wife. Her face was pale and haggard, dark circles of her sleepless night cupping her eyes. She smiled gently and touched his hand where he cradled Abrielle. “She’s awake. And she’s well. More than well, actually. The Light came upon her around midnight. It just lifted.”

  “It’s been on her all night and you didn’t tell us?” He made no attempt to hide his outrage.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried, obviously chagrinned. “I didn’t think . . . You were asleep when I came out the first time.”

  “And you thought I would sleep all night?”

  She looked as distressed as the poor spurned nursemaid, but he couldn’t seem to corral his anger. “Can I see her now?”

  “Yes. She’s asking for you, in fact.”

  Maddie was indeed awake. She sat against a mountain of white pillows, looking weak and tired but healthy. More than healthy: she glowed. He breathed a prayer of thanks and crossed the room to present her with her daughter.

  For the first time in hours, Abrielle fell quiet, the two of them staring at each other, tears welling up in the mother’s eyes. Maddie stroked the fair hair and fingered the tiny hand, then looked up at Trap. “I need to feed her. Do you mind?”

  “Not at all, Highness.” He started to leave.

  “No. I meant just turn your back for a moment. I . . . need to know what happened.”

  Who survived? she meant. He glanced at Carissa, who had come in with him and now watched the preparations going on behind hi
s back. “Ian is fine. A bit shook up, but overall the spore didn’t get to him. Simon is well, too.”

  “But he was closer than I was, and has no shield—”

  “Nevertheless . . .” He trailed off, listening to the rustle of linens and noting Elayne now, standing quietly by the door.

  “You can turn around,” Maddie said. “We’re covered.”

  When he turned back she was looking at him very seriously, her gray-blue eyes wide, her fawn-colored hair flowing around her shoulders like a cloak. “You saved him, didn’t you? Purged him of it.”

  “I did, my lady. He is resting, but truly he is fine.”

  “And my father?”

  He drew a deep breath and released it. “With Eidon now, Your Highness.”

  Her grief was sharp and swift but not surprised. “Yes. That was how I remembered it. . . . And is the dirge for him alone?”

  “It is. Though the queen . . .” His voice faltered a bit on that word and he saw Maddie flinch. “The queen still struggles with the spore.” He paused. “They sent a wet nurse up.”

  “I hope you sent her away.”

  “Carissa did.”

  She nodded. “Tell me about the spore.”

  And so he told her what he had gleaned—that it was virulent, unknown, powerful, and also strangely knowing. “I don’t know any other way to put it. It links with the Shadow within and goes for all your worst fears and doubts . . . almost like another mind taking over. . . . And it residualized fast. I’m going to be fighting with it for months, most likely. I suspect you will be, too.”

  “Oh . . . I don’t know . . .” She got a funny little smile on her face, then peeked beneath the blanket with which she had covered Abrielle. “I guess she wore herself out with all the crying.”

  She sat there awhile, staring at her daughter almost without seeing her, that dreamy smile curving her lips. When finally she looked up, she was still smiling, but incongruously, tears glittered in her eyes. She held out her hand to him and, when he took it, squeezed it in her own, the tears spilling down her cheeks. “I don’t know any other way to tell you this than to just come out with it,” she murmured. “Abramm’s alive, Trap. I’ve seen him. All last night. He’s come through the Aranaak and is snowed in at Caerna’tha. But he’s alive and he’s coming just as soon as he can.”

  He stared at her, rocked to his toes by an emotion he could not identify— save that it was closer to shock and horror than to joy.

  CHENA’AG TOR

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER

  14

  Simon Kalladorne, former Duke of Waverlan and uncle to King Makepeace, stood with his friend Seth Harker in the spectator-packed square on the King’s Avenue in Springerlan. It was midday, and all awaited the advent of their newly crowned king on this, the first anniversary of Abramm’s supposed execution. Simon had no doubt the correlation was deliberate. At least on the Mataio’s part. Gillard had wanted his official coronation to occur six months earlier, but Mataian leaders had demurred. A new crown had to be made after the original had gone missing—popular theory held that Madeleine had stolen it when she’d left the palace and entrusted it to servants who’d not been caught. The new crown was to be forged in the Holy Flames themselves and could not be made until the Keep was repaired of the damages it had suffered during the Purge. Thus the Mataian leaders were able to make sure the process took as long as they desired.

  Simon wondered at the wisdom of scheduling the new king’s coronation on the anniversary of the former king’s death. He knew he wasn’t the only person to make the connection, and that meant people were remembering what the Mataians had worked so hard to make them forget: that not so long ago they’d had another king, a better one by far than the one they had now, and they’d rejected him.

  Perhaps the Mataians hoped the new event would obliterate the old in people’s memory, but with the level of oppression suffered by anyone who dared to challenge the majority viewpoint these days, he wasn’t so sure. Abramm’s name might have vanished from public discourse, but the Underground had made sure it was far from forgotten. Like today, for example.

  In the wee hours of last night, Simon had joined two dozen others hurrying among the spectators camped along the king’s route, some staging distractions on one side of the road while their counterparts swiftly painted a stylized version of Abramm’s coat of arms on the other—two swipes of the broad flat brush with the yellow paint for the shield and a squiggle of red with the small round for the dragon rampant. It took no more than thirty seconds to complete, and they’d put the device on stone walls, pillars, wooden sidings—anything upright. It didn’t even have to be visible from the route itself. They weren’t for Gillard or for the Mataians to see, but for the people. And the people had seen them.

  It amazed him that none of them had been caught. Seth said it was Eidon protecting them, but Simon thought it more likely that more people secretly agreed with what they stood for than would publicly admit.

  The marks were found at first light, and immediately Mataian lackeys hurried to paint over them. But Simon’s Terstan friends had done something to the paint so that the Mataians’ newly applied pigment refused to stick, leaving the shield-and-dragon devices more eye-catching than ever. Scraping worked best, which they’d eventually figured out, in addition to covering them with panels leaned against the wall, or guards repositioned, or even banners hailing the new king, reslung—lower and out of sight—to hide the offending marks.

  Now at midday, Simon and Seth had taken a position several ranks back from the gauntlet down which the king would ride, close enough to see, not so close they might be recognized. Seth was not happy the older Kalladorne had insisted on coming out today, but Simon was determined to see his nephew with his own eyes—the first time in seven years.

  Gillard—or Makepeace as he was now known, though Simon refused to call him that—would be coming up from the square’s lower southeastern end, hidden now behind the heavy fog that veiled this momentous day. It also hid the ruins of Southdock—burned to the ground during the Purge and never rebuilt—and the bay beyond it, where sailing ships stood becalmed by too many windless months, and smaller oar-powered vessels were the norm.

  Behind him a man said, “Can you believe there are still people who would put up his device?” He meant Abramm’s device, of course, but dared not speak his name. “What do they think they’re accomplishing?”

  “They’re just stubborn old fools who can’t abide the loss of their power,” the man’s companion grumbled. “Still living in the past.”

  “We need another purge.”

  Simon scowled at the people-clogged buildings across from him where figures perched on the roofs and hung out the windows, many of the latter with banners slung between them. Maybe he had overestimated the numbers who supported his viewpoint.

  Sometimes the sense of loss and hopelessness gripped him with such strength it all but disemboweled him. It broke his heart to stand amidst all these people, knowing how few of them saw their loss, how few even wanted the better man back. They boasted in the streets of how their purity had delivered them, for the Esurhites still had not approached them. No emissaries, no galley ships. Nothing. It was as if Kiriath did not exist. Maybe, some suggested, they’d be entirely ignored, the Armies of the Black Moon realizing they could never prevail against the Holy Flames of Eidon.

  If Abramm came back now, Simon wasn’t sure what kind of reception he’d get. Maybe it would be best to simply abandon Kiriath and head over to Chesedh, where they at least had armies engaged in fighting those of the Black Moon. Here it was all purity and sacrifice and trusting the Flames to protect. Here the tyranny was almost as bad as what Belthre’gar would dole out.

  A deep susurrus crept in under the mutter of conversation, gradually growing louder until he realized it was the roar of the spectators lining the streets down the hill. Immediately his gut tightened, his mouth went dry, and his heartbeat accelerated. He’d last seen his
nephew when Gillard had been imprisoned in the Chancellor’s Tower, a shrunken waif buried in the bed linens, his flaxen hair and beard grown long with months of inattention.

  Thanks to “Eidon,” he had supposedly overcome the effects of the morwhol’s spell and regained his former stature, though it came at the price of a strange bone malady that caused him constant pain and had led to an overdependence on laudanum.

  The roar swelled around Simon, as the first pair of the king’s six flag bearers appeared, riding abreast on black horses. The king appeared next, astride a gray horse—not Abramm’s Warbanner, though, thanks to Simon himself, who’d seen the horse spirited out of the realm lest Gillard get his hands on him.

  As for Gillard, the tales were true: He was, indeed, big again, as broadshouldered and powerful-looking as ever, even with that pale womanish hair frothing about his shoulders. He wore the gray robes of his Guardian-King station now, and beneath the rubies and diamonds flashing from his newlymade crown, the gold still glowed with the scarlet of the Holy Flames that had birthed it.

  Up the gauntlet he came, waving to the crowd on this side and that, astonishing Simon with his size. Was it truly magic? How could he have submitted to such a thing? Closer now, he looked pale and inexplicably fragile— perhaps a result of his bone malady.

  Suddenly the king’s pale blue eyes looked right into Simon’s own. Their gazes held just long enough to send a flood of panicked heat through Simon’s body, and then Gillard’s focus tracked on across the crowd and over to the other side of the road as all the while he waved. Simon was shaken enough to pull up his cowl, and none too soon, as the king looked back over his shoulder, scanning the crowd again, this time with intent. Simon turned his face toward the Mataians who were coming up the road in Gillard’s wake: High Father Bonafil, Master Eudace, and Master Belmir—the latter living a dangerous double life these days.

  From the corner of his eye Simon saw his nephew return to his rote acknowledgment of the people’s acclaim as he rode on.