Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (22 page)

With what must have been an oath in the Tahg, Whazel exploded beside him, slamming his sandaled foot upon the escaping insect and grinding it
dead. As he bent to examine his handiwork, Eldrin fought to stay standing,
his whole arm throbbing with an intensity that made him dizzy and breathless.

Muttering in the Tahg, Whazel hurried out of the shrine, returning with
a stick. Snatching the bag from Eldrin’s hands, he stabbed the carcass and
lifted it into the sack. Then stabbed the other flowers on the floor to bring
each into the sack. None appeared to be more than flowers, but as soon as
he’d collected them all, he seized Eldrin’s elbow and steered him out of the
shrine.

Casting the bag aside, he turned to Eldrin, frowning. “You ward staffid.
How do?”

Eldrin blinked at him. The initial pain was fading, leaving in its wake the
familiar throbbing and now a hot nausea in his gut, high up under his heart.
He had no idea what the man was talking about.

Whazel shook him slightly, then grabbed his hand, unfolded the fingers,
frowning at it. He rubbed a thumb over the ovoid scar, lifted his face to
Eldrin’s and said again, “How you ward staffid? Tell now.”

Eldrin shook his head, baffled. “I … I don’t know, Whazel. I didn’t even
know …”

Whazel’s eyes had dropped to Eldrin’s chest, and his frown deepened. He
burst into a stream of agitated Tahg, seemed to realize Eldrin couldn’t understand him, and backed up, gesturing at his chest. “What this eluka, eh? Burn
tunic, burn staffid?”

Eldrin glanced down in surprise. A charred hole gaped in his tunic, acornsized, positioned just over his heart where the …

He pulled the Terstan talisman out from under the tunic. It was unchanged, still looking like a common river pebble. Clearly it had not burned
his tunic.

“What is this staffid you talk about?” he asked, letting the stone drop with
a light thump against his chest.

Whazel stared at it. “Shadowspawn,” he said absently. “Staffid take other
faces. Bite. Make sick.” His tone shifted into a vibrating intensity. “How you
get eluka?” he asked, eyes never leaving the stone.

Eldrin glanced down again, puzzled. The talisman remained completely unremarkable. His nausea, however, was mounting. And his arm still ached
and crawled. A friend gave it to me.”

“It have many power.”

Before he knew it, Whazel had plucked the thing up to peer at it more
closely. He murmured in the Tahg, his tone growing puzzled. “Eluka inside.
Can’t see … too bright. You know what is?”

“Too bright? What are you talking about? It’s just a-“

Ayii!” Whazel jumped back, dropping the stone, his brown eyes so wide
the whites showed. “Kai sheleft,” he murmured, staring at it, shaking his head,
muttering on in his strange language. Finally he looked up at Eldrin. “This
eluka Dorsaddi.”

Taking a guess, Eldrin shook his head. “No. It’s a Terstan eluka. I got it in
Kiriath.”

“Dorsaddi,” Whazel insisted, supporting his claim with another run of
incomprehensible muttering. It seemed all he could do to make himself stop
and find the Thilosian words he needed. “Inside. Sheleft. Ah … er. …” He
stirred his hand as if that might call up the word. “Sheleft-shield. Gold
shield in eluka. Sheleft. Dorsaddi sheleft. You must give it me.”

He reached for the stone again, but this time his fingers hadn’t even
touched it when a current of energy leapt out of it, making them both flinch.

Whazel looked amazed. He stared at the stone as a starving man might
regard a ripe apple. He licked his lips, eyes climbing to meet Eldrin’s. “Please.
Give it me. I Dorsaddi. Mine.”

Eldrin shook his head, which was throbbing now along with his arm, as
much from confusion as from his reaction to that staffid. “I … it’s not Dorsaddi, Whazel. It’s Kiriathan.”

Whazel was reaching for the stone yet again, as if he couldn’t help himself, not aggressively now but in wonder. Eldrin braced for another shock, but
this time the stone permitted Whazel’s tentative touch. Its power flared gently, the warmth almost pleasurable. Whazel seemed not to notice, but when
he pulled his finger back, the stone clung to it, lifting away from Eldrin’s
chest.

They both stared, breathless, astonished, watching as the marble swelled,
its perfect orb malforming into an oblong, then dividing slowly in the middle
until there were two stones. One on the end of Eldrin’s chain-and falling
back now to thump against his breastbone-the other balanced on Whazel’s fingertip, swelling steadily. The Dorsaddi stared enrapt, like a man gazing into
paradise, his face aglow, his eyes radiant.

He rolled the stone-clearly as solid as the one Eldrin still wore-between
his fingertips, murmuring in the Tahg something that sounded like a litany,
something that repeated the words “sheleft” and “Sheleft’Ai,” the god he
claimed he no longer served.

Eldrin swallowed uneasily and massaged his throbbing arm, completely at
a loss.

Whazel fell silent, letting the stone roll into his upturned palm. Slowly he
closed his hand upon it and stood stock-still, blank eyed, a strange smile on
his face.

Then, right in front of Eldrin’s eyes, so clearly seen there could be no
doubt, a golden shieldmark appeared in the red-brown skin over the man’s
heart, gleaming softly between the neck edges of his tunic.

Horrified realization doused Eldrin like a wave of icy water. Yanking the
amulet over his head, he flung it away as if it were a viper. It skidded across
the tile to fetch up against the side of the Holy Pool, and immediately a crow
swooped from the trees to snatch it up. As it flapped back into the shadows,
Eldrin rubbed the skin on his chest, dizzy with relief at finding no golden
shield.

Whazel still wore that silly, blank-eyed smile.

A Terstan. By all that’s holy! I’ve just witnessed the making of a Terstan.

He backed another step. Then as Whazel finally stirred, as his eyes began
to blink, Eldrin turned and fled up the path to the servants’ compound. He
had worn that stone for over four weeks now; it was a miracle he was not
himself corrupted. He’d been a fool-a fool!-to have taken anything from a
Terstan.

They are devious, clever, cunning…

He didn’t see the man in the path ahead of him until they nearly collided.
As he back-stepped madly, renewed alarm swept through him.

At your ease, Abramm,” a rough voice murmured in Kiriathan. “I mean
you no harm.”

Eldrin stopped dead. “Who are you?”

A friend. Come to rescue you.” The stranger pressed a wad of dark fabric
into Eldrin’s hands. “Put this on.”

Beneath the robe’s dark cowl, light glinted off a swarthy face, long of nose,
too hidden in shadow to see clearly. The man read his question before he could ask it. “Your sister sent me. The Lady Carissa. Just sailed into Qarkeshan today.” The man directed Eldrin’s attention to the bay stretched out
below them. “You can see her merchantman there, just north of the point.”

Eldrin turned to study the tall ship, one he had watched sail into the bay
that very morning, before his encounter with the Vaissana. Carissa had
owned a merchantman. The one on which he was to sail with her to Thilos.
The one that would have been his own had he taken Raynen’s offer.

The man held out a pair of sapphire earrings. “She gave me these to prove
my claim.”

Eldrin stared, reality pinwheeling around him. Is it true? Is she really here?

Hope rode the back of his astonishment as he looked again at the
merchantman, topsails treble-reefed and glowing golden pink in the sun’s
lowering rays.

“There you are, you miserable rockworm?” Ghoyel’s voice shrilled in the
gathering twilight, echoing across the compound. Eldrin whirled to find his
mysterious deliverer vanished and in his place the advancing majordomo, rapping his rattan against his thigh in sharp, jerky chops.

“You dare to soil the Vaissana’s purity, dare to thrust your filthy presence
before his face and speak to him? You have known nothing of my wrath as
yet, worm. And if you run-“

A swirling, swooping of shadow descended upon him from behind, collapsing him senseless onto the path. Eldrin gaped in dismay as blood welled
from a temple, dark as pitch against the dusky skin. He looked up. The
stranger stood before him again-dark cloak swaying around dark boots, his
face still no more than glints of light off nose and chin.

“Hurry now,” the man said. “He’ll have drawn someone’s attention.”

“Did you kill him?”

The stranger seized the fabric from Eldrin’s idle hands and shook out a
cowled cloak much like his own. “No. Now are you coming? Or would you
prefer to stay here and face the consequences of that?” His head jerked
toward Ghoyel’s too-still form.

“Tyi, hechami,” Whazel said quietly behind him, the voice bringing him
around yet again. His eyes went at once to the new-made shield gleaming on
the old man’s chest.

“I lie them. They say you do, but no matter if gone.”

The stranger was already settling the cloak over Eldrin’s shoulders.

“Find free life, hechami,” Whazel said. As I find mine, eh? Sheleft’Ai, he
not leave afterward, I think.”

His dark eyes flashed, and for a moment Eldrin saw in them the man he’d
once been-lean and strong and proud.

Voices echoed now from the servants’ compound, and the thud of
approaching footfalls warned that time was short.

Eldrin nodded at the old servant. “Thank you, Whazel. I’ll not forget
this.”

A heavy hand settled on his shoulder, pulling him around and into the
foliage beside the path. They scrambled over the wall as an eruption of outraged voices shattered the evening quiet. Eldrin’s rescuer led him briefly
along the road that skirted the villa, crossed it in a pool of shadow, then skidded down an embankment planted with succulents. Running now, Eldrin followed his guide across another road, through more wet foliage, down an alley,
over a wall….

The loud, clear note of a horn sounded over the city as the last of the
sun’s rays faded. “They’ve raised the alarm,” Eldrin’s rescuer observed quietly.
“Now we’ll have to step carefully.”

Out of breath and still feeling nauseated, Eldrin welcomed the slower
pace. They moved in bursts, creeping through the shadows, darting across the
light spots, keeping an eye on all who shared the way with them.

They spent a number of hours crouched beneath the branches of a
pungent-smelling bush in someone’s garden, then hunkering in a brokendown stable farther on, and finally pressed against the damp, fishy-smelling
stonework of an alcove in a blind alley while a search party poked through
the shadows not three strides away from them. It was deep into the night
when they finally reached the waterfront, passing numerous quays before
Eldrin’s rescuer led him out along one to a moored dinghy. Directly across
the water from them, a little over a double stone’s throw, Carissa’s merchantman floated at anchor, veiled in a light mist and dimly illumined by its night
lanterns. The scallops running lengthwise down her hull and the snake-haired
goddess at her bowsprit-Ekonissima, he knew now-betrayed her Thilosian
heritage.

Hope exploded within him, strong and fierce and redemptive. Oh, Eidon,
forgive me for doubting, and thank you. Thank you!

Tears blurred the world as his throat tightened with emotion. All the fears and doubts and empty despair-all for nothing. If only he had trusted, he
could have saved himself so much misery. If only he had believed …

On the waterfront behind them a dog began to bay. Eldrin only laughed
to himself. Even if the search dogs were on to him, they’d never catch him
now. As his rescuer climbed down into the dinghy, songs of thanksgiving rang
through Eldrin’s head.

Wonderful are his ways! Who can know them?

Oh, Eidon, I will never doubt you again! I will serve you with all my might
and make myself pure and never turn from your ways.

His rescuer moved into the stern sheets as one of the four oarsmen aboard
joined Eldrin on the quay to help him down. The oarsman looked familiar,
but Eldrin was too ecstatic to do more than grin back.

Ashore, the baying hound drew nearer.

The oarsman seized Eldrin’s arm, suddenly impatient, and Eldrin looked
up, annoyed. Light from the boat’s lantern gleamed off a young mustachioed,
parrot-nosed face, a crescent cheek scar, and two gold ear hoops. Eldrin
gasped with recognition.

The man grinned at him, nothing friendly in his expression.

Eldrin looked to Windbird again and saw now the curve-sterned silhouettes of a gaggle of galleys anchored just this side of her, shrouded in the misty
darkness.

“No,” he breathed.

Down in the boat, his rescuer threw back the cowl of his cloak, revealing
that bold hatchet face with its pulled-back hair and multitude of gold earrings.

The Esurhite Garners.

In a heartbeat he twisted free of his captor and fled up the quay, dashing
toward shore as the baying hound drew nearer, its voice frantic, ear-piercing.
Eldrin angled left as it burst upon him. It was a big brown hound, towing a
boy on a leash, its nose to the ground, its tail slashing the air.