Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (27 page)

He felt a swift surge of satisfaction as Brugal gasped and swore and drew
back in defeat. Abdeel, the handler with the tag of chin hair and missing front
teeth, called a halt. Since the end of the first week of training, a killing blow
always brought the same result-the end of the match and punishment.
Already the diminutive Esurhite was turning for the griiswurm in its box,
tucked into a niche in the black slag wall.

It would be the first time for Brugal.

The barbarian’s pale eyes sank even farther into his skull. He backed a
step, then with a furious roar, threw himself at Abramm, striking with sword
and dagger both, again and again and again. Abramm parried frantically as he
backpedaled out of reach and sought to reestablish an offense.

Rage dulled the man’s already limited intellect. It did not take much to
disarm him: a feint left, right, and then committing left again, a flick of the
wrist and Abramm’s blade laid a cut across the meaty base of the barbarian’s
thumb. The tip caught behind the handguard, and with a grunt Abramm jerked up and away, flinging the weapon free of a grip loosened by cut tendon.

Abdeel strode up behind the barbarian, clucking disapproval, and kicked
his legs from under him. As the big man tumbled to the sand, the Esurhite
smacked him alongside the head with his training rod and snatched the dagger from his hand. Meanwhile, the other handler, an oafish fellow named
Dumah, disarmed Abramm. Together the two Esurhites dragged the reeling
barbarian to the wall where a pair of shackles dangled against glassy stone.

As they locked the metal bracelets around Brugal’s wrists, he snapped into
full awareness, the whites of his eyes encircling pale irises. Faint mewlings
forced their way up from his throat as Dumah smeared streaks of thick white
hamar on the barbarian’s face. Abdeel approached with the box. “Well, first
time for you, eh, Brugal?” He held the vessel atilt near Brugal’s cheekbone,
and a gray tentacle ringed with purple groped past the box’s lip, reaching for
the white streak of hamar. The big man panted, straining his head backward
against the wall to escape that probing arm. It touched the white streak gently, and Brugal screamed, his face gray, his whole frame shuddering. The tentacle grabbed hold and the rest of the griiswurm’s body rolled out of the box,
sucker arms slapping down one after the other across the man’s face, securing
a hold, muting the sound of his screams as it covered his mouth. Blood
limned the edges of its arms.

Abramm watched unmoving, keeping his eyes fixed upon the suffering
man, keeping his thoughts away from the fact that he had caused the man
this pain.

It could as easily be you, he told himself.

Indeed, it had been in days past. He remembered suffocating fire that
squeezed the screams from his throat until it was raw, then the debilitating
sickness afterward, the nausea, the fever, the bone-shaking weakness. It was
not as bad as what he’d known after the feyna, not so bad as to interfere with
his training, but it was certainly enough to give him a miserable night.

He had no desire to experience it again, and now, even though he had
won-and had done so twice-if he showed anything save cold, compassionless attention, he would wear those shackles himself, and it would be his body
that banged and shuddered against the wall, his voice that echoed off the
stone.

Brugal went limp, blood dripping from his beard to his chest. Abdeel came to collect the griiswurm, holding the box in which new hamar had been
placed up against the creature. The gray limbs groped for the edge and pulled
itself in, leaving Brugal’s face a web of bloodied welts.

Abdeel glanced at Abramm, then at Dumah, who grinned. Both men
turned to Abramm, and a sickness settled in his middle. They stood before
him, leering, box held near his face. Abdeel jabbered something he couldn’t
make out. It didn’t matter. He knew what they wanted-for him to try to
flee, to struggle, to show his fear…

Dumah fingered hamar onto Abramm’s cheekbone, and Abdeel presented
the box. The gray tentacle crept over the edge, waving inches from Abramm’s
nose, tiny, white, chitinous grippers lining its ventral surface.

He tore his gaze away and stared forward, keeping his face expressionless.

The box drifted closer as they teased him. But just before the gray finger
could touch him, Abdeel pulled the box away, and the two men laughed
heartily.

Abramm stood firm and unexpressive, though sweat popped out anew on
his brow.

Dumah painted another strip along the sensitive inner crease of his left
arm, and again Abdeel presented the box. This time, they let the tentacle
touch, his skin seeming to rip apart at the point of contact, the cry that left
his throat unstoppable.

At once the feyna scar began to throb.

The cell door opened and a third handler stepped in. Red light reflected
off his freshly shaven head, and Abramm recognized his taut, spiderlike form
with dismay-Zamath.

Of all the handlers, he feared Zamath most. Though Katahn’s servants
were to a man cruel and capricious, Zamath was the worst. A member of the
infamous Broho, the elite personal guard of the Brogai caste, he was given to
unpredictable acts of viciousness toward associates and trainees alike.
Abramm had seen him slice off one trainee’s finger, watched him crush
another’s kneecap. The ear he wore on his chest was that of a Dorsaddi chieftain, he boasted, a trophy won in the Games years ago.

Now he stood just inside the door, taking in what was happening with a
slow leer that revealed his pointed teeth. When Abdeel and Dumah turned
to him, he waved them to continue.

Abramm controlled his rising alarm with iron will. As Abdeel stroked a line of hamar across his belly, just above the edge of the loincloth, Zamath
watched with a faint, expectant smile-watched Abramm’s face and eyes.
Especially his eyes. The Broho was more sensitive to expressions of fear and
pain than any of the others and took almost spiritual delight in manifestations
of either.

Four more times the griiswurm kissed him before the unique sibilance of
Zamath’s voice cut them off. Abramm understood enough of the Tahg by
now to get the gist-Katahn had sent for him. Or so Zamath said. Abramm
had been trained to never relax his guard. One never knew when a handler
might spring from some shadow or around a corner, pummeling the unsuspecting with his stout wooden rod. At mealtimes, on the morning group
run, in the middle of the night in his cell, even in the latrine, Abramm had
been attacked. Thus he did not wholly believe Zamath was bringing him to
Katahn until, bathed and robed in clean black silk, he was delivered to the
house guard waiting at the gate of the training complex. Even then he didn’t
relax, for the novelty of the situation still made it perfect for an ambush.

After the dark, cramped warrens of the training center, this upper enclave
seemed unnervingly bright and open, despite the foggy conditions. The various buildings were linked by breezeways, stairways, and soaring bridges, all
overlooking the broad, leaden sea stretching away beneath a leaden sky.

The house guard brought him to one of the uppermost buildings, a wide,
circular chamber with arched doorways opening along its outer half onto a
railed balcony. A split-level polished wooden floor sported Thilosian rugs in
bright blue and green. Low tables, tall potted ferns, and strategically placed
fabric screens comprised the room’s furnishings, and the tang of incense
sweetened the air.

Guards and servants stood discreetly about the lower level, where a bevy
of veiled women sat on pillows near one of the archways, busy with handwork involving lots of gold thread. The moment Abramm entered, they all
looked up, then fell to whispering and giggling behind their veils.

Katahn waited alone on the upper level, an elegant figure in midnight
blue, reclining before a low table set with a silver tea service. He had been
staring out to sea as Abramm entered but now turned briskly from his contemplation. Ah, you’re here,” he said in Kiriathan. “Come and sit.”

He gestured at the pillows across the table from him.

More ill at ease than ever, Abramm crossed the room, girls giggling energetically, though he was careful not to look at them. He settled onto the
pillows, still half expecting someone to jump from behind the nearest screen
and try to behead him. Or for Katahn himself to throw the table and tea
service in his face and whip a longsword from his nest of pillows.

But the Esurhite only snapped his fingers, and a servant woman stepped
from behind the screen to pour the tea. Abramm recognized her at once as
Katahn’s companion in Qarkeshan, though she seemed even more beautiful
than he remembered. She wore no man’s clothes now, but rather a sleeveless
white gown of layered silk, overlapping in front and tied at the waist with a
thin gold cord. Waist-length coffee-colored hair flowed loose around her
shoulders, framing those regal cheekbones. Her dark eyes, hid beneath long
lashes, focused down now upon her work, her long, slim fingers pouring green
tea into the silver cups.

Abramm found himself unable to breathe, mesmerized by all that silken
hair and honey-colored skin, the delicate jawline, the graceful neck, the
plunging expanse—

She was handing him his own cup now, jolting him back to himself, startling him with the realization of where his eyes and thoughts had gone. He
looked up into her cool gaze and saw a glint of amusement.

“She is beautiful, is she not?” Katahn said.

Abramm glanced at him, embarrassed that his expression had been so
easily read.

“Her name is Shettai,” the Esurhite went on. “She is Dorsaddi. You’ve
heard of them?”

“Of course.” Legendary merchant-warriors who traced their ancestry to
pre-Ophiran times, the Dorsaddi had for centuries maintained a thriving civilization within a maze of gold-rich canyons called the SaHal. For five hundred years after the fall of Ophir, the SaHal had stood closed to outsiders,
except for the well-guarded trade route through its middle. No one passed
along it without Dorsaddi permission, an edict enforced, it was said, by the
power of the Dorsaddi’s god, Sheleft’Ai.

“Their defenses were believed to be unbreachable,” Katahn said. “Hundreds of armies destroyed themselves trying, so when Beltha’adi proposed his
expedition, many said he was mad. He was not the first to have gone against
them for the sake of or’dai-blood vengeance. But he was the only one with
the power of Khrell to help him.”

Khrell was one of the Esurhite gods-son of Aggos, brother of Ret, husband of Laevion-and sponsor of war, death, and order.

“I heard Beltha’adi had human help,” Abramm said. “Working on the
inside.” Immediately he wondered why he’d spoken. Was he deliberately trying to provoke the man?

Katahn only raised an ironic brow. “Dorsaddi greed and a woman
scorned? True. But it was Khrell who showed him how to stir that up. And
Sheleft’Ai who let it happen-either because he abandoned them or was too
weak to help them.” He sipped his tea, regarding Abramm over the cup’s
silver lip. “Much the same as it was for you, I think.”

It was as if a current leapt from his eyes to Abramm’s, rushing through
his body, prickling all his skin. His heart suddenly pounded, his stomach
twisting with forgotten pain.

“Eidon. Is that not the god you Kiriathans serve?” Katahn continued.

“Some do, yes,” Abramm said.

“The Dying God, he’s called?”

“We call him Almighty. Lord of Light. Creator of the world.”

`Ah. Like Sheleft’Ai. Perhaps he was exhausted, then, from all of his
work.”

Abramm scowled at him. He had not thought of Eidon for months, and
the reawakening of the memory was painful in the extreme.

“Strange, though. There can’t be two creators. So one of you must be
wrong. Unless both of you are.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Abramm said tonelessly, finally managing to drag his
gaze from his captor’s and apply it to the cup in his hands.

“He marched all the way to Hur,” Katahn said after a moment. “Sent
more than five hundred thousand of the blasphemers to the Dark Abode and
took many more for slaves.”

Belatedly Abramm realized he was talking of Beltha’adi again, recounting
now the infamous March of Death-retribution for the centuries of abuse the
Esurhites and their ancestors had suffered at Dorsaddi hands and also for
their long years of prosperity and supremacy. Having breeched SaHallan
defenses, Beltha’adi had shown no mercy. The Dorsaddi paid with their lifeblood, their families, and their lands. Those not killed were taken as slaves,
and Hur was fouled beyond redemption.

“They were not weaklings, the Dorsaddi,” Katahn went on, “for all their blasphemous ways. Many have refused to bend to servitude, choosing suicide
over slavery. There are few left.” He glanced at the woman. “Shettai, you see,
is quite rare. A true princess of the line of Hur. Sister, in fact, to their current
king. If you can call a man king who rules so little and so provisionally.”

“But the March of Death was over two hundred years ago!” Abramm protested. “Surely she is-“

“The SaHal is too vast and convoluted for even Beltha’adi to have gotten
all of them the first time around. Even today survivors remain among the
rocks-little bands nursing delusions of rebellion. Our Supreme Commander
conducts periodic forays to round them up. I was on one such foray when I
found her, as tough and courageous a warrior as any of them and only fourteen. That was ten years ago, and she hasn’t changed a whit.”

He traced the edge of her chin, drawing Abramm’s attention back to her
incredible beauty. She looked at her master askance, not as one subservient
but as one only pretending to serve. On the beach, Abramm remembered,
she had not even pretended much.

“Perhaps it was her youth that persuaded her not to take her own life,”
Katahn mused. “Or my charm.” He chuckled, letting his finger drop along
the slender neck and drift to the edge of her robe. With a grimace she
knocked the hand aside, delivering what sounded like a rebuke. Katahn
answered her sharply, and for some moments they engaged in a verbal duel,
their meanings hidden in the Tahg but an inexplicable respect for one another
evident in their manner.