“You, however, are not Alaric the Second.”
All eyes shifted toward this new voice, whose owner stood now at the foot of the Shar Gallery, closest to the Lower Table, having just come onto the floor through the side door tucked into the paneled wall. Decked in gold satin doublet and blousing breeches encrusted with rubies and gold embroidery, he seemed to glow of his own light, more magnificent than Simon had ever seen him. The epitome of royal majesty—some would say excess—Gillard’s brilliance easily eclipsed Abramm’s subtler statement of strength and sober-mindedness.
After a moment of hesitation, the herald called out: “His Royal Highness, Gillard Simon Galbrath Aarol Kalladorne.”
“Hail King Gillard!” Michael Ives cried boldly.
Traditionally, everyone in the chamber should have stood, for the Crown had not yet passed from Gillard. But tonight the lines of loyalty were too tangled. Although Simon himself stood, and heard behind him the telltale rustling and creaking as some of his peers followed suit, their number was startlingly low. In the Nunn Gallery across the Table from him, not one man among them left his seat.
Abramm’s advent in this startling new guise had thrown them all off stride, challenging everything they thought they knew about him.
Even now as Gillard locked gazes with him, Abramm did not lose that unexpected poise, matching, perhaps for the first time in his life, his younger brother stare for stare. A world of unspoken communication seemed to pass between them, Gillard oddly defiant, Abramm hard-jawed and resolute. In the end, it was Gillard who looked away and Abramm who spoke first.
“You are right, brother,” he said in that deep, oddly accented voice of his. “I am not Alaric the Second. I am Abramm the Second. And I have killed the kraggin.”
A torrent of sound burst from the Lower Table, the men there on their feet and cheering. Simon could hardly believe what he had just witnessed: Abramm not only talking back to Gillard but taunting him. Right where it hurt the most.
Gillard went white-faced with fury, as the crowd’s uproar momentarily precluded speech. When it quieted, his voice came low and trembling. “Killed the kraggin, maybe. But you risked the lives of all the men you hired to help you. A madman’s gamble, I’d call it. It makes me wonder all the more . . .” He looked at the Lawreaders. “Isn’t it true there’s never been a man who failed the Test of the Flames and kept his sanity?”
“Not that we have on record, Si—er—Your Highness.”
“Madness would certainly be considered incapacitating,” Lord Michael declared.
Abramm turned a sharp gaze on Ives. “Do I appear a madman to you, Lord Michael? Do I appear incapacitated?”
To Simon’s amazement Ives wilted beneath Abramm’s regard. “No, Your Highness, you do not.”
“Madness is not always readily seen,” Gillard said.
Abramm wheeled on him. “In that case, how may we be assured you are not mad yourself, brother?”
“I did not run from the Flames.”
“Nor did I!” Abramm snapped. “I merely changed my mind about taking my final vows. A decision not all were happy with.”
“Then why did the Mataians say you ran?”
“You’ll have to ask them.” Abramm nodded to the contingent of Mataians standing front and center in the Lower Table. To a man they stared at him as if they could not believe their eyes.
“So why did you not come to Raynen? Why did you simply disappear?”
Abramm’s face became very hard, almost frighteningly cold. “Because I was waylaid and sold into slavery, brother.”
Gillard lifted his chin, lips twitching, and they locked gazes. It was Gillard who finally disengaged, shrugging and then walking along the front of the Shar Gallery toward the dais where Abramm stood. “Well, even if we can’t prove madness in a matter of moments, I submit to you that Prince Abramm remains ill-prepared to rule. I would not be here if I did not deem this lack to be of vital import.
“What does he know of the situation along our borders? Do you honestly believe he will be able to deal with the northern raiders that have recently plagued us? What do you think he will do about the Terstan problem?” He paused to rake the Council with his gaze. “My brother promises to make use of his advisors, but how will he know when a man is providing good counsel or bad? Speaking truth or lies?”
“How would you know yourself?” Abramm demanded. “How does any man know? But I can tell you one thing—I would never have allowed that monster to prowl our bay for six months while trade stood still and our people lost their livelihoods!” His voice had lowered, almost grating with the emotion in it. “You stand on very unstable ground to argue competence with me, brother!”
A second outburst erupted from the Lower Table, deep-throated bellows, cheers, stomps, whistles, and clear and crisp over all of it, cries of “Hail, King Abramm.”
It clearly rattled Gillard. Simon had never seen him so pale, so completely beside himself. Normally he would already have begun breaking things in the outventing of his rage. Now he could only stand there and hold it all in.
Abramm raised a hand for quiet. “You all wonder, was I enslaved? Yes. How did I survive it? By Eidon’s hand alone, just as it is by His hand I have returned to claim what He decreed was mine before the dawn of time: the throne of Kiriath. I ask you again, my fellow peers and lords of the realm: Do you accept my claim—without extension of the regency—or not?”
His words died into a silence so profound, Simon could hear Harrady breathing beside him. There was a creak, a thud, and then a new voice burst upon them, a harsh, rasping croak erupting from the pale-robed man standing at the head of the Lower Table’s left side aisle. A man with a ruined face and barren scalp and eyes ablaze with hatred.
“How dare you speak of Eidon!” he shrieked. “You who by your very presence profane his name and power. I know the dark magic you used to slay the kraggin.” Rhiad pointed an accusatory finger at Abramm. “I remember you now! And what you did to me in the cistern. And I accuse you, sir, before these witnesses, of wearing the mark of heresy. Bare your chest and prove me wrong!”
The shrill words rasped into silence, where it seemed men no longer even breathed, all eyes flicking between Abramm and the mad Mataian.
Then Gillard’s voice purred. “I should like to see that, as well.”
“Fine,” said Abramm, and again there was that hard-jawed look of resolution, almost defiant now. He began to unfasten the buttons at the top of his doublet as a susurration of astonishment swept both Tables. Simon shifted uncomfortably, embarrassed and increasingly indignant that such a thing was being allowed. Abramm was the crown prince, after all.
Abramm’s fingers had worked down to the buttons over his heart when Blackwell stopped it. “No, Your Highness, please! That will not be necessary. Your action is proof enough, and we all know this man is mad. Guards, remove him!”
Having already moved quietly up the aisle behind the Mataian, the guards seized him on the instant. He did not go easily.
From then on the affair devolved into a surreal nightmare, made all the worse for Simon because he wasn’t even sure what his own feelings were in the matter. Part of him admitted that Abramm had taken them all by storm, that he’d done exactly what he’d needed to do tonight, with a finesse no neophyte could have mustered. He deserved a chance to prove himself.
The other part—the greater, stronger part—was horrified, crushed with the conviction that his worst fears were coming to pass, that the realm was crumbling before his very eyes. Everything he held dear, everything that had ever meant anything to him, the land and people for which he’d given his entire life, about to be gobbled up by the pious puppet masters who pulled Abramm’s strings.
Splintered images were all he’d ever recall of the remainder of that night. The endless calling of the vote, the final, dreadful tally favoring Abramm, seventy-six to twenty-six. The thunderous applause that greeted it. Gillard standing stunned and blank-eyed on the side, Ethan lurkin
g behind him with a death’s-head expression. And all too soon, Blackwell at the top of the dais, with Abramm kneeling before him, intoning the oath of kings in his strong, accented voice. And then the circlet of rule was gleaming on his brow as he stood to face his subjects.
Abramm Alaric Kesrin Galbrath Kalladorne, thirty-sixth king of Kiriath.
SHIELDANDDRAGON
PART TWO
CHAPTER
9
At the far northeast corner of Kiriath, on the same night the Table approved Abramm’s claim to the crown, a gale swept down from the high peaks of the Aranaak Mountains, the first after weeks of cold, windless days and flat, gray skies. It whistled down the barren narrows of Kolki Pass and around the crumbling fortress standing guard at its mouth. Invisible fingers tore at the keep’s roof tiles and shutters, rustled through bushes turned brittle with autumn, and rasped the dead vines against the stone. In centuries past, old Highmount Fortress had stood as a formidable barrier against marauders from the north, but it had been long since danger stalked the pass, and the fortress, seriously damaged in its last and greatest battle, had been abandoned to its successor, built farther down the mountain among the trees. When people spoke of Highmount Holding these days, they meant the new one, no fortress at all, but merely the manor of Lord Ethan Laramor and the village that attended it.
The Mataio had converted one of the old fortress’s outlying signal towers into a watch, and for a while—until they abandoned it—it was the farthest inhabited structure up the pass. Meanwhile old Highmount fell into ruin, its gates sundered, its walls battered and crumbling, its tower roofs stove in. A handful of villagers remained, descendents of those who had known it in its prime, along with the pigeons, mice, and foxes who called it home.
It was last spring that the reclusive and eccentric Lady Louisa, recently returned to Kiriath from abroad, had leased it from Laramor. Moving in with two score of retainers and laborers, she had immediately begun renovations. Though much of the place remained in ruins, six months later its guard walls were whole again, its main gates strong and solid, and its modest, four-story keep stout against the storm.
Now the wind rattled the shutters outside the sole window of the lady’s spacious bedchamber on the keep’s fourth floor. Its fingers slipped beneath the heavy woolen drapes drawn shut before them and whispered across the wooden floor to chill the feet of the lady herself. Seated at the battered, paint-chipped vanity, she brushed her hip-length blond hair with mindless, mechanical strokes and reproached herself for feeling bitter and melancholy when she should be rejoicing over the happiness of her beloved retainer and his bride. Bursts of laughter and the wheedle of instruments pierced the vagaries of the wind’s moaning, drawing her attention to the party still going on in the Great Room below. The bride and groom had long since retired to their own chambers, and the lady had lingered only until she could no longer pretend to joy, then escaped to her dark, drafty, and very empty chambers.
Her Esurhite maid, Peri, had turned back her bed, banked the fire, helped her into her nightclothes, and would have stayed to brush her rippling curls had not the lady sent her away. Peri had gone reluctantly, sensing her mistress was even more melancholy than usual but helpless to do anything but obey.
Outside, the wind howled with increasing force, gusting ice crystals against the shutters.
“You’re a wretch,” the lady whispered to the narrow, aristocratic face staring back at her from the vanity’s mirror. “A petty, jealous, miserable wretch.”
And yet, no matter how she berated herself for it, she could not stop feeling abandoned. Yes, she knew it was ridiculous to expect that Cooper’s position as her retainer would preclude for him a man’s normal interests. But he had been her guardian ever since she could remember, and a bachelor all that time, so she had assumed he would continue as such. Had, in fact, relied upon it.
He had been at her side through all the trials of her life—her brother Abramm joining the Mataio, her failed marriage to Rennalf of Balmark, her disastrous trip to the southland . . . the aimless travels afterward. Travels which were supposed to have brought fulfillment, but only intensified her sense of worthlessness and alienation. In the end, she’d come home, desperate for the language and culture she’d grown up in, even if she did have to hide up here in Highmount, pretending to be someone she was not.
Cooper had been the one constant in her miserable life. So when he had told her he wished to marry the widow Elayne, she was stunned. Only today, at the wedding itself, had it finally sunk in that he had transferred his affections to someone else, and that she, Carissa Louise Marielle Amelia Kalladorne Balmark, would never again be the sole object of his care and attention.
Seeing them go off together tonight, tiny, dark-haired Elayne tucked under Cooper’s strong arm, all smiles and hugs and golden hopes, it had hit her with a scope and finality that had overwhelmed. She was alone. Starkly and utterly alone, with no hopes of that changing, forced to live here on the fringes of the land her family had ruled for centuries, hiding behind a name that was not hers for fear her outraged husband would find her and force her back to him. There’d be no one to stop him if he did, certainly not Gillard.
Her vision blurred with tears, and a sharp pain stabbed her throat. The methodical brushing slowed, then ceased altogether, her hand dropping to her lap. This was like Abramm all over again. She swallowed and blinked, and the tears slid down her cheeks. Never would she forget that day in Jarnek when she had watched him practice the sword with Captain Meridon, shocked at how good he was, how wonderfully he moved, how strong and sure and fluid. She’d wanted so badly for him to come home with her, to put Gillard in his place, and repay Rennalf for his humiliations, to show them all how wrong they’d been about him.
But he wouldn’t do it. Whatever his old life had been, whatever it could offer him in the future—even the promise of a kingship—he’d turned his back on it for the sake of that hideous shield he’d let be burned into his chest. Not even for Carissa would he bend. Standing in that practice room staring up at him, she’d felt as if she no longer knew him. As if a stranger had taken over her brother’s body, hiding the real Abramm away from her until she, too, surrendered to the power behind the shield.
Devastated, she’d left without him and for four years had nursed something very close to hatred for him. And outright loathing for the shield that had taken him from her. If time had softened the edge of her bitterness toward him, it had only intensified what she felt for that shield. All the more when she had learned what it had done to Raynen.
Perversely her gaze dropped to the small gray pebble she still wore round her neck. The pebble Philip Meridon had given her in Jarnek. The one that was supposed to ward off the staffid for her. The one, she knew now, that had burned the shield into Abramm’s chest when she was trapped inside that cistern with him, believing there wasn’t a Terstan for miles. She’d brought it to him herself, completely unknowing, and the thought still sickened her.
It lay low upon her breastbone, a perfect orb of pearlescent gray suspended on a golden chain, glowing softly against the white linen of her undergown. She did not know why she kept it after the heartbreak it had brought her. Because it truly did work against the staffid? Because it was, in its own strange way, her last connection with the brother she had loved more than anyone in the world? Because, in some part of her soul there lived the irrational desire to find what he had found in it, even though she knew it was impossible?
And it was impossible. That was the worst part.
Shortly before she’d left Abramm, in hopes of breeching the gulf that had opened between them, she had actually tried to take it. Even knowing it would cripple her, drive her mad, and make her despised in Kiriathan society, she had set her will and closed her hand upon it, waiting with clenched eyes, gritted teeth, and fluttering heart for the hated power to sear through her and claim her soul forever. But nothing had happened. No power had stirred in her. No voice had spoken. The stone had
remained only a stone, cool and hard in her fist. Her flesh had remained unmarked, and she remained . . . outside. Denied, even by Eidon himself.
But how absurd to expect otherwise from someone who did not exist.
So why do you still wear his orb?
She stared into her own eyes and began to weep again—tears of bitterness and frustration and the deep aching need for someone somewhere to care whether she lived or died. Once the torrent was loosed, it could not be called back until it ran its course. Outside the storm blustered and raged, driving snow against the shutters, which banged and rattled under its fury, obscuring the sound of her weeping to all but herself. In time the sobs subsided and she regained herself, sniffing and snuffling with her head on folded arms and her eyes closed as she listened to the wind. Presently she heard footsteps, quick on the stair, slowing as they approached her door. A light tap preceded its creaking open. Peri peeked around its edge. Seeing Carissa was awake, she slid into the room and pressed the door shut behind her. Her glance flicked over her lady’s tearstained face and reddened eyes, and her brow creased. But all she said was, “We have visitors, ma’am.”
“Another pack of refugees?” Carissa turned back to the vanity for a kerchief to wipe her face. She recalled now what she’d heard only dimly through her turmoil—the dogs barking, voices in the wind, the boom of the fortress’s main gates closing. Visitors arrived often in the night, an occurrence she’d learned long ago to ignore, seeing as it didn’t concern her.
She found it ironic that of all the places she could have settled, she’d chosen one of the main rest stops on the underground smuggling route by which Kiriathan Terstans escaped the rising persecutions. Nearly all the holding’s original inhabitants were part of it. Had she known, she’d never have agreed to lease the place, but Laramor had said nothing. He probably didn’t know. Fortunately the smugglers themselves were as happy to have Carissa look the other way as she was to do so.