And there was Lady Madeleine again, looking like a cat who’d finally caught her mouse.
About that time Gillard and his merry men arrived—Matheson, Moorcock, and Michael Ives. They halted just uphill of Abramm, Gillard’s eyes sweeping the crowd around him. He was smiling in that way Abramm had learned long ago meant he was angry.
“I understand you are giving a demonstration, sir,” he said to Abramm with a nod that again just satisfied protocol. “I should very much enjoy seeing the lethal aspects of a”—he glanced around as if bemused—“stone?”
“I’m afraid you’ve missed it,” Abramm said. “I’ve just finished.” He started up the hill to punctuate his remark.
“And was it a compelling argument for the use of stones as defense?” Gillard asked as Abramm came abreast of him and paused.
“It was, sir,” Foxton said, holding up the split cabbage, Abramm’s red sling stone still in place.
Gillard glanced at it and away as if it were a sight he had seen hundreds of times. “Well, if an army of cabbages awaits us in Graymeer’s, I suppose we can rest easy knowing our king will deal with them decisively.”
His own companions laughed at that, but it comforted Abramm to see the rest of the men did not—and that Gillard noted the lapse. He himself honed in on Gillard’s choice of pronoun: “Us, brother?” he asked. “You wish to go to Graymeer’s with me?”
Gillard’s white-blond brows flew up. “Well, of course, sir. Did you not say earlier we should work together? If you really do mean to go, I wouldn’t dream of letting you enter that dangerous place without my sword at your side.”
Or in my back? Abramm wondered, chilled by the sudden resurgence of dream memories. Maybe it had been prophetic, after all. Madeleine had already come itchingly close to revealing his secret. Now here was Gillard, insinuating himself into the procession to Graymeer’s, hurling Abramm’s own words back at him as justification.
A smirk played at Gillard’s lips as it grew clear that he had won. Again Abramm felt that dark current of rage arise in him, urging him to accept his brother’s challenge after all. To stop lying and hiding and pretending to a forgiveness he did not feel. To get it all out into the open, right here, right now, in front of everyone. That would wipe the smirk from that beardless, hawkish face, wouldn’t it?
His right hand came up to his belt and hung there, a gesture Gillard didn’t even notice, or if he did, discounted completely. Abramm, after all, was no threat to him. Abramm was nothing but a scrawny little loser who never should have come home in the first place.
CHAPTER
17
A shadow dropped over them as if a cloud passed before the sun. Except . . . the sky was cloudless today, was it not? The question and the concern it aroused, faint though it was, checked the momentum of Abramm’s dark intentions. At the same moment he felt someone standing close at his right elbow, and Trap’s familiar voice murmured, “Shall I have your horse readied, sir?” The combination brought him to his senses, the bitter current receding even as the sunlight returned, and a quick glance upward revealed there was a cloud there, the first of the morning. But likely not the last.
When he refocused on Gillard, he found his brother frowning at Trap, and stepped immediately to the right to block his view. Of everyone here, Gillard was most likely to recognize Trap, knowing, alone among the rest, just how and why he had not been executed six years ago. “Aye, Lieutenant,” Abramm said. “Ready him.” And now, having recaptured his brother’s attention, he added, “If you really mean to come with me, Gillard, you’d better hurry.”
Gillard took his words to heart, he and his merry men mounting even before Abramm himself and heading immediately for the track that led up to the fortress, obviously intending on leading the procession. Abramm sent Captain Channon over to tell him he’d be traveling at the back of the column.
“I doubt he’ll be much problem once we get up top,” Trap said, moving into Channon’s place at Abramm’s side. “The griiswurm auras are pretty strong. And he’ll be susceptible.”
“Aye, but with him around, so am I,” said Abramm.
“Then you’ve made him a weapon in the hands of your real enemies, sir.”
Abramm glanced at him sharply.
As usual Trap had drawn his perspective back to the big picture, reminding him there was more at stake here than petty, personal conflicts. If he continued to allow Gillard to provoke him, he would put himself under the Shadow’s mastery as surely as if he’d never known the Light. Which was the last thing he needed going into a place filled with spawn, traps, illusions, real physical dangers, and possibly even the threat of Command, should someone be hiding up there capable of invoking it. And while he doubted there was, he couldn’t rule it out.
No sooner had he resolved not to let Gillard distract him, however, than he had to deal with Prittleman, the man and his four gray-cloaked subordinates riding up in full expectation of leading the procession themselves. Having put off answering the man earlier, Abramm now had to inform him bluntly that his services would not be needed. And when shock drove Prittleman to the audacity of arguing, Abramm was forced to point out that since he no longer held with Mataian teachings, he did not believe the Flames would protect them, anyway. As the Gadrielite struggled to comprehend the sundering of his assumptions, Abramm thanked him for his concerns, asked him very coolly to move aside—he did so as one dazed—then trotted Warbanner through the resultant gap and onward, at last, to Graymeer’s.
No one knew for sure how the fortress had come to be in its present state, but the most pervasive legend said the bulk of the damage occurred in the second barbarian war, during which it was captured and held for six years. Kiriath won it back in the final battle of that war, only to discover that more than its walls and gates had been damaged. The bedrock on which it sat had been tunneled through—by obviously arcane means—and the dark, twisting passages infested with shadowspawn. Since that time, a mist had hung between its walls, mysteriously warding both wind and rain. Garrisons subsequently stationed there suffered frequent accidents and disappearances, and there were constant reports of mysterious floating lights, disembodied voices, and agonized screams rising from the new-carved warrens below. Gates would not stay closed, weapons would not stay shelved, and worst of all, cannon would not fire from the ramparts, though the weapons could be trans- ported just down the road onto the flat and work perfectly. No one had any explanation save that the place was cursed.
King Eberline had used it briefly as a prison, abandoning it when all the inmates went mad and died at their own or their guards’ hands—or no human hands at all. A few attempts to restore it had followed, the most recent being part of the Chesedhan wars before Abramm’s birth, which Simon himself had organized. But that attempt, like all the others, had ended in failure and death.
Abramm expected it to be much like the Dorsaddi capital of Hur, which had been cursed in a similar way and cleaned without too much problem. Though the warrens full of spawn would unquestionably add a complicating element, that was offset by the fact that the fortress stood in Kiriath, a land as yet unclaimed by the Shadow. The ghost stories he attributed to the effects of griiswurm auras and other spawn that those without the Light had been unable to withstand. The so-called disappearances were likely men who’d fled in terror, then deliberately vanished to avoid the punishment desertion merited.
As he zigzagged up the face of the rise, however, his optimism waned, and soon he was entertaining every misgiving anyone had ever raised about this expedition, from the potential distraction Gillard posed, to his need for a squad of Terstans experienced in dealing with shadowspawn, to Abramm’s own lack of skill in unleashing the Light. He couldn’t even kill a staffid without touching it, and was probably now rustier than ever, what with his lack of having found a Terst to learn with. What if there were feyna up there? What if there were rhu’ema up there? What if . . .
Halfway up the face of the rise he sheepishly realized hi
s fears were all griiswurm induced. Trap had said the shadowspawn not only abounded in the fortress’s yard, but likely filled all the passages underneath. It made him wonder just what they might be guarding. Unfortunately, as always, knowing the cause didn’t immediately remove its effects, and it wasn’t until they reached the final switchback that he finally secured a stable focus on the fact that the Light within him was more than sufficient to handle whatever might await him in the fortress.
At that point, Channon, who rode beside him now, and who, like Abramm, had not been up here yet, gave vent to his own inner turmoil. “You do know, don’t you, sir,” he said, “that Rhiad has disappeared?”
Abramm glanced at his companion. “You think he’s come up here, Captain?”
“He’s been exiled from the Keep. Where else can he go?” He paused. “They say he made the kraggin, sir. Or at least had a hand in it. That’d mean he can Command the spawn. An’ if that’s so, well, then, he’d be at home here.”
Abramm doubted none of Channon’s words. “You think I should fear him?”
“He hates you powerful bad, sir. There’s talk he’s sworn to bring you down.”
“He’s already tried that several times.”
“He’ll try again, sir. And sure he’ll know you’re coming up here now. The day, the time, who’ll be with you.” Channon eyed the crumbling barbican guarding the entrance just ahead of them now, its opening flanked by a pair of white standards.
“He could ambush you himself, sir. Or send feyna. Or . . .” He shifted uncomfortably as the barbican drew nearer. “They say he has . . . powers, sir. Powers of Command. That’s when a man who has—”
“I know what it is, Channon.” He’d been the victim of Command more than once—twice at Rhiad’s behest, in fact—and knew he could easily resist it. At least as long as he didn’t let the Shadow have him.
“He might use it to lure you down into the warrens, sir. Take you by surprise.”
“With you and Lieutenant Merivale glued to my side?” Abramm raised a skeptical brow. “I think you’re letting the spawn auras get to you, Captain.”
“Spawn auras, sir?”
“Aye.” Doesn’t he know about this? “Griiswurm emanate a warding that stirs up all a man’s doubts and fears, particularly about proceeding into the place they’re seeking to keep him out of.” He glanced up at the walls towering above on the right, the mist shredding over and between the crenellations. “There’s probably thousands of them up here. That’s why you’re concocting these disaster scenarios. And why they seem completely reasonable.”
But why so many? he wondered again. Is it only to keep us from guarding the entrance to the bay and the river, or is there more at stake here we don’t know about?
As they came even with the standards, Abramm was surprised to see that each bore the dragon and shield of his coat of arms, marking the place as his, in position, if not yet in actual function. Trap had probably done that, he thought as they turned into the remains of a formal gateway. The guardwall itself was of old-style sandwich construction, ten feet thick, the space between inner and outer walls filled with sand and rubble. As they rode through the gap into a world of stillness and mist, Abramm felt something stir awake inside him, a sense of something precious here, and personal.
At the same time his neck prickled with the awareness of a hundred eyes opening and fixing upon him. He thought at first it was just the result of being surrounded by a mist that blocked out sun and sky and the fortress walls he knew encircled them. But after a moment, as the sensation intensified, he knew otherwise. Rhu’ema, he thought as the prickle swept across his back and arms and scalp. They know I have come. And they know what this place is to me, even if I do not.
The men Trap had brought up earlier had kindled a bonfire beside the old weed-grown pavement leading up to the inner ward, its guardwall mostly obscured by the mist at this distance. The shoulder-high blaze leaped and crackled, casting its amber glow across the fifteen men who had turned out to flank the road in acknowledgment of Abramm’s arrival. He pulled up to receive the squadron commander’s report of the day’s activities— happily routine—then instructed the man to continue with his work and dismounted, his companions doing likewise. Several of the armsmen took their horses as their fellows returned to their duties, two feeding the bonfire from piles of old lumber and dying griiswurm while the rest went in search of more spawn.
Abramm started off on a quick circuit of the eastern half of the yard, while Gillard, unwilling to follow in his wake, immediately climbed the ramp to the wallwalk, merry men in tow. Before long shouts rang out from above, as they hailed their friends down in the flat, making sure that everyone saw them standing up there on the wallwalk of the infamous Graymeer’s.
Abramm continued without comment around the barren yard, clumps of yellow grass crackling beneath his boots. It irked him that he hadn’t thought of going up there himself—especially since part of his intent was to show his lords he wasn’t afraid of this place. But it was too late now, and he was happy to have Gillard occupied elsewhere.
The outer ward had apparently served as little more than a barrier of protective space, and possibly as a training or storage facility. There wasn’t much here beyond griiswurm, staffid, and several large piles of stones resulting from Simon’s abortive efforts at clearing the inner-ward rubble years ago. As Gillard continued to engage in shouted conversation with the courtiers on the flat, Abramm moved on to the inner ward.
A ridged stonework ramp led up through the crumbling remains of the second gateway into mist so thick it reduced the world to a gray pocket less than ten feet wide. At its fringes a steeper ramp ascended to the left along the inner face of the inner curtain, heading for the mist-obscured eastern ramparts. A rusty cannon lay at the ramp’s foot, half buried in hard, dry ground.
“We lost control bringing it down the ramp,” Simon explained, noting Abramm looking at it. “We’d just learned they wouldn’t fire and were taking them down to the flat. This was the last. It crushed a man to death, right here.”
“And my father gave the order to abandon the place the next day,” Abramm said, recalling the accounts he had read.
“Yes, sir.”
“How’d it get buried so deep?” Abramm gestured toward their feet. “This ground looks like solid rock.”
“Probably dirt washed down from the terrace up above.”
They stood a moment more, staring at the cannon and listening to the echo of the men’s voices and the fire’s crackle drifting up from the lower yard. Then Abramm looked up, sweeping his gaze over the ghostly structures looming in the mist ahead of them, and finally fastening it upon Simon.
“We’re going to take it back, Uncle.”
“I hope you’re right, sir.”
“Let’s see what we have to do, then.”
Though they’d all memorized the inner ward’s layout, Simon was the only one to have actually lived and worked up here. Thus, he was elected to lead them through the crumbling maze of former barracks, eating halls, storage chambers, and stables that had once made up the heart of the fortress. Outside the wind picked up, hissing and hooting against the uneven stone in a way that sounded so much like murmuring voices Abramm thought he understood exactly where that rumor had come from. Until the words got a little too clear and personal:
You should not have come, Abramm Kalladorne. . . .Men will die because of you . . . suffer and die. . . .
He stopped abruptly, heart slamming against his chest as he scanned the walls of mist. “Did you hear that?” he asked Trap, already close at his side.
“I hear only the wind, sir.”
“It was in the wind.” He had Channon’s attention now, and that of Simon and Ethan Laramor right behind him. None appeared to have heard a voice.
Go back, Abramm Kalladorne. . . . You do not belong here.
Abramm held up a hand, stopping their talk. “There!”
Their blood will be on your hands. . .
.
He looked around at the others. But Trap was shaking his head, Channon had heard nothing, either, and Simon watched his nephew with worried eyes. It was only for me, Abramm thought. Rhu’ema . . . trying to scare me off.
“Do you want to go back now, sir?” asked Simon.
Abramm glanced at him in surprise. “Go back? We’ve only just started.”
His uncle’s brows drew together, but he said no more and they continued on. The voices dogged Abramm off and on for the entire hour they walked the ruin, which wouldn’t have been pleasant in any event. Staffid virtually carpeted the ground, unfolding before their booted feet and scurrying away in constant rolling waves, crawling around and over the numerous griiswurm that lay among them. More griiswurm clung to the inner surface of every structure that still had a roof, the combined pressure of their auras so thick it was hard to breathe. Though no one else heard voices, they were all plagued by something—a rustle of fabric here, the quick, gritty rasp of a footstep there, the sough of someone breathing just beyond a gaping doorway when there was no one there. At one time or another all of them felt the napecrawling touch of unseen eyes. Weirdest of all, though, was the dog they found caged at the back of the old powder magazine. Small, gray, and shaggy, the creature made no sound until they approached it, and then it yowled and scratched frantically at the cage door, only to back away as they got close. It barked ferociously all the while Laramor worked the latch free and opened the door, then wouldn’t move until they’d stepped well away. Finally it burst from its prison and fled like a streak. No one had any idea what it was doing there, but all agreed its presence gave new credibility to their feelings of having been stalked: likely by whoever had been filling the dog’s water bowl.
By the time they returned to Simon’s half-buried cannon, all were thoroughly spooked and lost no time ascending the ramp to the wallwalk above. Free of mist, the world returned in a breathtaking vista and the bizarre sensation of the air growing lighter. As Abramm walked south toward the main watchtower rising from the fortress’s most seaward point, he affirmed his earlier supposition that Terstans would have to form the bulk of the crew who worked here—and that his own hand would have to be among them. What form that hand would take he had no idea—beyond the fact that he would have to learn how to throw the Light very soon. Impaling and burning were simply too inefficient. And too dangerous.