Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (10 page)

“I believe he’s evil because he is. I saw him kill our Father, Abramm. And
Aarol. I was there.”

That gave Eldrin pause. “I thought they were mauled.”

“Yes, but not by creatures of this world.” He whirled to pace alongside
the table again, stopping halfway back to glare out the window, arms once
more folded across his chest, features reflected in the glass. For a long time
he stared into the darkness, and just when Eldrin had decided he was not
going to continue, he spoke. “Shaped like night herons, but not herons. Not
birds of any kind.”

In the reflection his face grew vacant with remembered horror. “Black as
ravens, with needle-sharp beaks and white-hot eyes. Tens of them, stabbing
at him, at his face and arms and chest. When he went down, Aarol tried to
drag him to safety, but they turned on Aarol, too … both of them screaming
and screaming, and I …” He braced a trembling hand on the window frame.

Eldrin stood rigidly, chilled to the core. Black as ravens, needle-sharp
beaks, white-hot eyes. “Feyna.” The word whispered out of him.

Raynen’s head snapped around. “They are not myth.”

Perhaps not, but Eldrin had never seen one, had never known anyone who
had. The First Word warned of them frequently, creatures spawned by
Moroq’s rhu’ema. Born of the passions and blood of human flesh, they had
flesh themselves and thus the power to strike directly, blow for blow in the
physical world, something the rhu’ema themselves could no longer do. The
Flames supposedly kept Kiriath clean of such things.

Uneasily, Eldrin glanced at Meridon, still standing beside the hearth,
watching them closely.

“I was hiding in the bushes,” the king said, looking back into the night. “I
couldn’t move, though I wanted to run for my life. When the screaming
stopped, I watched the creatures fight over their bodies. Suddenly they all
took wing. I thought they had sensed me, that I would be next, but then a
man came out of the wood, cloaked and cowled. Several came and perched
on his shoulders. The others just kept flying. He stood over the bodies for a
long time before he began to laugh. And there was nothing human in it. As
he left he walked past where I crouched, and I saw his face clearly.” Raynen’s
gaze came back to Eldrin’s. “It was Saeral.”

His words plunged into silence. Eldrin stared at him, rooted to the floor, shaken by the conviction in his brother’s voice, the certainty in his eyes, but
unable to accept this final, damning accusation. At length he forced a laugh.
“But, of course, there’s no proof, is there? And no one but you saw this awful
thing.”

“No.” Raynen turned from the window. “No one but me.”

“Well then …” Eldrin gestured vaguely. “It’s your word against his.”

Not to mention all common sense.

Frustration darkened Raynen’s face. “You think I’m lying?”

“No.” He believed his brother was telling him the truth so far as he understood it. But it was night, and he’d just witnessed a monstrous evil. He could
have seen anything. “I just don’t believe it was Saeral you saw.” He wondered
if his brother had been a Terstan as long ago as when their sire had died.

Something in his face must have given his thoughts away, for Raynen’s
expression soured. “You think I’m mad. The crazy Terstan king.” He shook
his head, turned again to Meridon. “You were right. He’s beyond hope.”

“Maybe not, Sire. May I have leave to speak?”

Raynen gestured for him to proceed. The Terstan turned to Eldrin. “You
asked for proof, Your Highness-that Saeral is not who he seems to be, that
you are being used…. There is a chamber below the vesting rooms that
encircle the Well of Flames. A secret chamber, reached only by a hidden passage.”

Eldrin cocked an ironic brow. “I’m just a Novice Initiate, Captain. I’m not
allowed into the vesting rooms.”

“Take the south opening, go down three doors. You’ll find the panel in
the wardrobe at the back of the room. Make sure you go during the day.”

And how is it that you know about this place?”

“I have been there in my service to your brother. More than once, in fact.”

Eldrin started. A Terstan in the heart of the Holy Keep? Impossible.

“It’s very important that you go during the day,” Raynen reiterated
soberly.

Eldrin scowled at him. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to violate Eidon’s
rules of sanctity just to prove this madness wrong. I already know it’s wrong.”

“Not Eidon’s rules, my lord,” Meridon corrected, drawing his gaze. “The
Mataio’s.” The Terstan paused, his brown eyes deep and strangely piercing.
“When you were touched this morning-did it really feel like Eidon? You’ve
studied the Words for eight years, and I am told you’ve longed to know him all your life. Do you really believe revulsion and terror would be your
strongest feelings if you were truly meeting him?”

Eldrin’s heart suddenly thundered in his ears. How did he know? How
could he possibly know?

“Go to the room, my lord. Then you’ll know for sure, one way or the
other.” He glanced questioningly at Raynen and, when the king nodded,
stepped to the door and pulled it open. Clearly the interview was over, but
for a long moment Eldrin couldn’t move, unnerved, still, by the way the man
had hit so precisely on the discomfiting elements of this morning’s touch.
Elements he had refused to identify until now. But how had this man, this
Terstan, known that?

“Highness?”

With a scowl, Eldrin broke free of his thoughts, bowed his good-bye to
the king, then strode past the captain into the weapons-lined antechamber
and back to Brother Rhiad.

The Midnight Hymn crescendoed as the Flames surged upward in the
midst of the bowl-shaped Sanctum, a scarlet column reaching for the high,
domed window. On the third and highest tier, standing among the other Novices, Eldrin gripped the railing before him and stared in awe, his skin prickling
with its power. He had never seen the Flames burn so brightly. From the
lower levels they must be breathtaking, a beacon of hope that chased away
the darkness.

The Flames subsided as the hymn’s last notes faded to a hum, and Guardians from the lower tiers poured into the aisles, descending to the Sanctum’s
central floor. Encircling the dais, the holy men formed into lines at the four
compass points and converged on the Flames, each quartet casting their sinladen oaken slats down the slope of the white marble moat toward the central
Flame.

Eldrin watched from the lofty tier, his eye held by the cross-shaped pattern of light and shadow moving both toward and away from the leaping
Flames, the slats fluttering through the air as they were cast into the well.
Visually mesmerized, he found his thoughts returning to the inner turmoil
that had kept him awake since he had returned from the palace over three
hours ago.

Brother Rhiad, still smarting from the way he had been treated and
incensed that a dangerous heretic like Meridon should be so close to the king,
had questioned Eldrin closely on the ride back. It had taken Eldrin’s full powers of wit and self-control to keep the man from guessing just how much the meeting had distressed him-and how much of it Eldrin kept to himself. He
said nothing of Raynen’s probing with regard to his being touched by Eidon,
nor of Meridon’s uncannily precise description of that troubling experience.

His conscience pricked him for that. Were not sins of omission as bad as
flat-out lying? And yet he would have told the Haverallan everything had the
man asked. He just hadn’t asked, being more concerned with debunking the
king’s tale of their father’s death. And with whether they had given Eldrin
anything. That seemed a particular concern. “You’re saying they gave you
nothing, then?” he’d asked for the third time in a row. “No trinket? No gift?
No family heirloom?”

“No, sir.”

“How about a brooch or a signet? Or … or a good-luck stone.”

A good-luck stone? “No, sir, they gave me nothing at all.”

“Nothing. You’re sure?”

Of course I’m sure, Eldrin thought. How could I not be sure? What’s the
matter with him? But he only said, “Yes, sir.”

Rhiad had stared into his eyes as if searching for the lie in his words. But
truly they’d given him nothing. Only an uncannily accurate description of his
troubles with Eidon’s touch and an admonition to search for a secret chamber
beyond the vesting rooms. An admonition he had kept to himself, as wellwhich troubled him more than any of the rest. For why would he hold that
back, unless some part of him believed the room was real?

As the last four Guardians cast their slats into the moat, the humming
silenced, leaving the great chamber filled only with rustlings and an occasional cough as the lines of holy men withdrew up the aisles. The bell of
dismissal tolled and Eldrin’s companions began to slip away, back to their
pallets. Eldrin let them move past him, shoulders bumping him slightly from
time to time, until all had gone and he alone remained.

Even then he stood listening and waiting-for what he did not know.
Thunder rumbled outside, remnants of another evening storm. The Flames
barely flickered above the lip of the brazier now, and shadows hung heavily
over the Sanctum. Silently he slipped along the tier to one of the eight aisles
that stair-stepped down to the marble moat. At the bottom he stood again
before the brass railing, staring into the Flames, recalling how he’d started the
day here, full of the anticipation of reaching his goal….

The dancing, throbbing colors pulled at his eye and mind, inviting him to enter. He held back, aversion shivering through him. It was possible another
touch would put all his fears to rest, but somehow he could not make himself
seek it.

“You’ve studied the Words for eight years … longed to know him all your life.
Do you really believe revulsion and terror would be your strongest feelings if you
were truly meeting him?”

He swallowed hard. His gaze fixed upon the tier above the moat where
the curtained doorways led into the vesting rooms. The south one lay directly
across the Flames from him.

This is madness, he told himself. You can’t go in there. The man must’ve put
a spell on you. Go back to your cell and read the scriptures if you cannot sleep.

Thunder rumbled again. He drew a long breath and let it out, then turned
from the rail to climb back up the stair. And stopped, startled. From the corner of his eye he was sure he had glimpsed someone retreating suddenly
behind the curtain covering the alcove just behind him, as if whoever it was
hadn’t wanted to be seen.

He thought at once of Brother Rhiad, watching him, suspecting he had
held back during the interview in the coach….

Nothing moved. Darkness pressed around him, its silence filled only with
the soft staccato throb of the Flames and his own beating heart. Slowly he let
out his breath, and then annoyance eclipsed the subsiding fear. What was
wrong with him? Did he honestly believe Brother Rhiad, right hand to the
High Father himself, had nothing better to do than follow an insignificant
Novice Initiate around in the middle of the night? It was as ridiculous as all
the rest of the suspicions he had entertained this day. He’d become altogether
too paranoid. He absolutely must retire to his pallet and cease this uselessdangerous-mental labor.

He awoke the next morning to the predawn bells calling the faithful to
worship, feeling unexpectedly refreshed. Time and sleep had so dulled the
seeming significance of the previous day’s events that he could almost discount them. After all, one day’s happenings could hardly overturn the accumulated power of eight years of days’ happenings.

Sunpraise was especially poignant. The dimly lit Sanctum held a peaceful
air that presaged the gentle break of dawn. And Saeral himself conducted the ceremony, offering the golden oil of Spirit that sent the crimson Flames leaping skyward. The Morning Song filled the air with sweetness as their united
voices anticipated the ultimate return of Eidon’s Light in full power, chasing
away the darkness and establishing his rule forever.