Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (29 page)

“Really.” Abramm stared at the ceiling again, watching a tuft of cobweb
wave slowly back and forth with the vagaries of the air currents. He sighed.
“Well, I must say I’d welcome you covering my back, Captain.”

As I would you, my lord.”

It took a moment for those words to sink in. Another to acknowledge
their quiet sincerity.

Meridon met his surprised glance with a sober smile. “You have progressed beyond all …” He gestured helplessly. “Well, I can hardly believe it.
In fact, I didn’t believe it until I saw you fight yesterday.” He shook his head,
and … was that … approval in his eyes? “No question you’ve got the Kalladorne moves, my lord. My father was right about you.”

Abramm found himself abruptly flummoxed. In the first place he could
hardly believe the man was serious. And in the second, he had no idea how
to respond to it, no idea what to do with this sudden warm pleasure flooding
through him, save that he ought to conceal it. Just in case he really was reading the man wrongly.

Meridon, busy emptying the second bowl now, had pursued a different
line of thought. “Saeral came into your life when you were what?” he asked.
“Eleven? Twelve?”

“Ten.”

“About three years before you’d have entered Barracks, then. Years in
which you might have been expected to bloom.”

“Gillard started defeating me in the sword rooms long before Saeral came
along.”

“Still, Saeral clearly exploited the situation.”

Abramm went back to watching his cobweb, not much liking the direction in which the conversation was going.

“I wonder if he worked both sides,” Meridon went on. “Encouraging you to pacifism and helplessness while one of his minions urged Gillard toward
increasing belligerence. You must’ve been dreading the prospect of entering
Barracks with him.”

`And rightly so. He would’ve killed me.”

“Was that your idea, or Saeral’s?”

Abramm looked at him, startled. “Mine.” But was it? There had been
hints, allusion … He shrugged. “He would have, in any case.”

Meridon regarded him thoughtfully. “I’m not so sure.”

“You don’t know how it was between us.”

“I know enough. And I’ve seen what you’ve done here.”

“Barracks isn’t like here. It’s less controlled. Gillard would’ve risen to the
top, gathered his little group of admirers, and come after me when no one
was looking.”

And you, with your back against the wall, would’ve folded?” One of
Meridon’s red brows arched. “I think not, my lord. The matter would’ve
come to a head. And once you stood up to him things would have changed.”

The same way, Abramm realized, things changed when he’d stood up to
his bullying cellmates.

“You might have become friends.”

“No,” Abramm said. “He hates me too much for that. He has from the
day he was born, though why, I’ve never understood. He was always stronger,
bigger, better. What was I to him, but an embarrassment? You’d think he’d
just ignore me.”

Trap set the now empty second bowl atop the first on the tray, then
leaned back against the wall and clasped his hands upon his bare abdomen.
“You were much more than an embarrassment, my lord. You were in some
ways the bane of his life.”

It was Abramm’s turn to lift a brow of disbelief.

“Look at it from his viewpoint. You’re smart, handsome, artistically
accomplished, genteel, and religious-the only son your mother considered
worth anything. An opinion she expressed regularly and loudly, as I understand it. Even Raynen was jealous. As for Gillard-from the day he came into
this world you were ahead of him, the bright and shining star in his mother’s
eye.”

`Aye, and he was the bright star in our father’s. And our uncle’s and our
brothers’ … and most of their peers’, as well. Rightly so, given their standards.” The old bitterness rang in his tone.

Meridon regarded him oddly. And that bothered you?”

“Of course it bothered me? I was a Kalladorne and a miserable failure at
the most valued characteristic of the line. I spent hours on the practice floor
trying to improve-and never did. The day my baby brother defeated me…”
He trailed off, feeling the humiliation as if it were yesterday, hearing the
laughter and the vicious jibes. Old pain twisted in his belly, and he clenched
his fists, his thoughts skittering forward over all the subsequent humiliations,
both on the practice floor and off-the cruel jokes, the lies, the beatings
threaded through his past like thorns on a string.

Across from him Meridon sighed. “Yet it didn’t win him your mother’s
regard, did it?”

Abramm’s pain transmuted all at once into hot, wounded indignation.
“What is this? You expect me to sympathize with him? After what he’s
done??”

Trap gestured dismissively. “I doubt it’s given him much pleasure. And
anyway, it wasn’t he who put us here, nor even Raynen. It was Eidon.”

“Eidon??” Abramm gaped at him.

“We’re here for a reason, my lord.”

A reason? Khrell’s fire, man? How can you still believe such a thing?
Eidon, indeed! Isn’t it obvious he doesn’t exist?”

“Not at all.”

“I gave him eight years of my life?” Abramm said bitterly. `All I ever
wanted in exchange was to know him. You have no idea how many times I
begged him-begged him-to show me how to do that. But I never got an
answer. All I got was betrayal and suffering and abandonment.”

Aggravated by his passion, the pain in his arm flared with such intensity
he gasped, then had to swallow down the bile rising in his gullet. Eyes shut,
he dropped his head back again and gripped the hard muscles of his left forearm as if that might stop the flood of fire pulsing out of his wrist.

For a few moments he poised on the brink of lurching for the relief
bucket. Then the pain faded and he began to relax. Presently he heard Meridon’s straw bag crackle, heard the extended rasp as the tray of empty bowls
was shoved toward the door, then another crackling as Meridon stretched out
on the pallet. A long, low sigh gave way to silence, broken only by the distant
thumps, clanks, and muffled voices of their keepers out in the service rooms.

After a time Abramm lay down, too, reclining on his good side, with his
back to his cellmate and his face to the wall. He’d lain there a few moments
when Meridon spoke again, his voice quiet but firm with conviction.

“You’re wrong, my lord. Eidon does exist. And he hasn’t abandoned you
or your request. It’s just that his answers don’t always come the way we
expect.”

Abramm gritted his teeth and said nothing. Years ago his mother and
uncle had argued religion in front of him. His mother had condemned the
arrogance of unbelief, while Simon railed against religious delusion and supplicants participating in their own deception. Faith, he’d said, was the
absence of thought. It was believing the impossible, despite all sense and solid
evidence to the contrary.

Abramm had expected an outraged rejoinder from his mother. She’d surprised him with her quiet, almost condescending confidence. Simon, she’d
said, would do better to confine his arguments to subjects about which he
had some knowledge.

He’d had no answer to that, and Abramm had been terribly impressed.
That calm conviction had inspired him for years afterward. Now he knew it
to be misplaced. She’d been deceived, as he himself had been, and in the end
Simon was right.

The corridor echoed with the clatter and rasp of the dinner trays being
removed by the cleanup detail. The sounds grew louder as they approached,
faded as they moved away, and once more near-silence reigned.

By then the shoulder on which Abramm lay had begun to ache, so he
rolled over. That was worse, so he sat up and wedged himself into the corner
again. His head felt like a melon ready to burst, and the stone was cold against
his bare back and shoulder. He suspected it wouldn’t be long before he
needed that bucket after all.

“May I see your arm?” Trap’s voice jarred through his agony, surprisingly
close.

He opened his eyes but did not lift his head. Meridon crouched on one
knee beside him, regarding him gravely.

Abramm let his eyes rest on the ceiling with its shivering cobwebs. He
swallowed on a dry mouth, then turned his wrist, lifting it so Meridon could
look. He heard a faint hum, felt a sudden warmth, and a clear, fist-sized globe
of light flared to life in front of him, floating above his knees. He gasped and flinched against the wall, but it only bobbed benignly, delicate as a soap bubble.

Terstan evil. It had to be. And yet-it was beautiful. Bright and clean and
pure. It had been too long since he had seen light like that. He could almost
feel the warm sun beating down upon him, see the blue sky arcing overhead,
smell the summer grass. For the first time since he’d come to this dark, mistbound land, he realized how deeply he craved the light of a clear day.

“I could ease this if you’d let me.”

Abramm tore his gaze from the orb. Meridon gestured at the scar on his
wrist, the purple, ovoid mark, moist now and raised, throbbing visibly like
some misplaced heart under red, tender skin.

He met Meridon’s sober gaze. “How do you mean?”

“It’s the feyna spore that’s making you sick. The griiswurm’s activated it.
I can put it back to dormancy-can even burn some of it off in the process.
You’ll feel better right away.”

Abramm glanced at the bubble of light, drifting slowly toward the wall at
his side. His eyes flicked to the shield on Meridon’s chest. He remembered
the protective talisman this man had given him in Kiriath-how the round
gray stone had replicated itself under his own chin in the teppuh. He stifled
a shudder as he remembered Whazel carrying away the replication on his
finger and then the shield burning into his fat chest.

“It’d just be your arm,” the Terstan said, guessing his thoughts. “It won’t
change you.”

Abramm shook his head, swallowing down new nausea. “I’ll be all right.”

It was a moment before Meridon shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He flicked the
orb with a finger, and it vanished, shadow enfolding them once again.

“N&” The word sprang from Abramm’s mouth all unexpected, so full of
dismay it shocked him.

Immediately another orb blossomed in its place. Meridon stared at him
questioningly.

Abramm blushed. “I … uh … does it cost you to leave it?”

“Not at all.” He settled back on his own pallet.

Abramm feigned indifference. “It’s been so long since I’ve seen-“

He was interrupted by a snarl and a sharp babble of Tahg as a dark figure
loomed outside the cell and violet fire burst the lock. The man jerked open
the door and leaped in.

As Abramm dove instinctively aside, he recognized the gleam of Zamath’s
head, the filed teeth, the long-nailed fingers coming at him, dark against the
flare of violet light at his chest. But the Broho wasn’t after him. Though the
sphere had winked out the moment Abramm first moved, Zamath swatted at
the place it had hovered as if in a frenzy, then turned upon the Terstan.

“Anahdi!” he growled, jerking the man up by the throat and slamming
him against the wall. Meridon kicked him and wriggled free as Abramm
rammed a shoulder into the southlander’s back, driving him against the
wall-only to be flung across the cell a moment later. He crashed into the
wall and sagged onto his pallet, violet splashing across his vision. Through a
haze of purple he saw Zamath fall upon Trap like a madman, striking him
again and again, faster than humanly possible, all the while cursing softly.
`Anahdi! Beshad!”

Suddenly the other handlers crowded into the cell, jabbering excitedly.
Abramm saw nothing but legs and feet, could pick out only a few words in
the babble. Then they were gone, Meridon with them. One paused to fasten
a chain around bar and frame so the door held, and then Abramm was alone,
stunned by the viciousness of the attack.

The room whirled again, and he spent the next few moments bent over
the relief bucket. When at last he was released from his agony, Meridon was
screaming somewhere down the hall.

But they can’t kill him, he assured himself. He has to be able to fight.

After a seeming eternity, the screams grew hoarse, then fell silent.
Abramm sat clutching his arm and was very near to praying, though to whom
he would have prayed he did not know. He only knew he did not want Meridon to die.

Finally the slap of footfalls heralded the handlers’ return. The chain rattled, the door swung open, and Meridon was thrust into the cell.

Abramm caught him as he fell, his hands slipping over hot, wet skin. The
handlers laughed, said something about angering the gods, and departed.
Gently Abramm lowered the man onto his pallet.

Even in the poor light he could see the angry, bleeding griiswurm welts
crisscrossing the Terstan’s face, arms, and chest, each lined with pale, bubbling blisters. There were so many it was hard to find a clear patch of skin,
and already Meridon was burning with fever and shaking violently.

He coiled inward on the straw bag with a moan, doubling around his stomach and struggling to his knees. Abramm shoved the relief bucket in
front of him just as he began to vomit. Once started, the tide did not turn for
some time. Meridon’s convulsions wracked him with a power and savagery
that was frightening.

Abramm could do no more than hold him up until the spasms passed and
he sagged against Abramm’s side, as cold now as he had been hot before. He
dragged a quivering hand across his polluted beard and swallowed. `Are they
gone?”

“Yes.”

Meridon pushed weakly against his ribs. “Let me go, then. And get back.”

“But…” Abramm swallowed his protest and complied. The other man
crawled onto his pallet and collapsed face down in the crackling straw. A faint
buzzing filled the chamber, building to a mellow hum. At the same time
Abramm’s skin prickled as of lightning about to strike, and Trap’s body began
to glow.