Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (41 page)

She stared at him.

He shook her arm and pointed at the bodies. “They’re illusions.”

For a moment it seemed he was right. Suddenly the two sprawled forms
lost substance, becoming ghostly shapes laid over the rubble beyond them, as
if they were no more than mist.

“Eidon did make them a way?” he cried.

Cooper jerked her free of the boy, and the bodies grew solid again. She
blinked, confused, then looked up at Cooper, whose face was tight and pale
with worry.

“We’ve got to get out of here?” he yelled, gesturing at the chaos roiling
around them. In the arena below, the armies continued to fight, joined by
additional soldiers and even spectators. Four men hacked at the corpse of the
fallen Broho, while others-not soldiers-dragged away the bodies of the
Pretender and the Infidel. In the stands people screamed and threw rotten
fruit, cups, shoes, anything that came to hand. They tussled with each other
and with the gray-tunicked soldiers stationed to keep order.

“We’ve got to get out of here now?” Cooper yelled again and pushed her
past Philip into the crowded aisle after Eber.

Abramm sensed the approach of Beltha’adi’s fireball moments before it
hit-a prickly, pressure-at-the-chest feeling that only made him run harder.
Trap, just behind him, took the brunt of the blow in a deafening explosion
that sent curtains of light billowing around them and hurled them ten feet
forward.

Abramm landed on shards of wood, his weapons lost in the force of
impact. Gasping back the breath that had been driven out of him, he shook
the stars from his eyes and scrambled up again. With Trap at his heels, he
dodged an upthrust piece of wooden timber, then leaped a shard the size of
his own body. The gate loomed through the smoke ahead, rent with a jagged
hole and twisted back off its hinges. In the darkness beyond, people lay
pinned and bleeding beneath heavy timbers, some of them limp and still. Still
others were picking themselves up dazedly as Abramm and Trap stopped at
the top of the ramp leading down into the warrens.

A living sea filled the chamber below them, blocking their way-robed,
dark-eyed, dark-skinned Esurhites, who a moment ago had likely been cheering the Broho’s victory and eagerly awaiting the northerners’ death shrieks.

Abramm stared at them, panting. His left arm was weak and throbbing,
the feyna scar alive again. His chest burned beneath the Terstan stone, and
his broken ribs knifed him with every breath.

Crouching, he slid a dead man’s sword free of its scabbard.

“Kiriatha.” The word rose in a hushed murmur from the onlookers.
“Kiriatha … Sheleft’Ai…”

The people stared slack faced now toward the arena behind them. Glancing back, Abramm saw the smoke clearing over two bodies, one in white, the
other in green, sprawled on the sand where he and Trap had just fallen.

“It’s an illusion,” Trap murmured beside him. “To make them all think
we’re dead.”

From somewhere in the warrens beyond the crowd, urgent shouts arosesoldiers coming to ensure the illusion became reality. Immediately a one-eyed
man in a tan robe stepped forward, gesturing for them to follow him into the
path now opening in the crowd. They did not hesitate. As a flurry of hands
hurried them along, the soldiers’ voices sharpened with anger, and not far
away steel clashed against steel.

The robed man led them through a small door into dank darkness. From
somewhere he produced a lantern to light their way and they descended an
ancient, musty-smelling stairway so narrow they had to turn sideways in
places to pass.

They emerged into a large, dark, mildew-smelling drainage pipe, where
rats scurried from the light and water gleamed on the floor. A little way down
the pipe, a series of footholds led up to a crawlspace that opened into an
earthy-smelling grotto tucked under a massive oiled gear. Hanging the lantern
on a peg driven into what appeared to be a wall of bedrock, their one-eyed
rescuer turned to face them. In the flickering light Abramm could see a slit
in the rock at his back.

“We’re directly under the arena,” said the man. “You’ll be safe here for a
time. I am Hanoch.” He looked at them oddly. “You really are Kiriathan.”

A grit of leather on stone and a rustle of cloth heralded a second lantern
bearer, its glow preceding him through the slit. He drew up beside Hanoch
and pulled down his face-veil, staring at them with the same expression as
his companion.

“They are northerners,” he said finally.

“The prophecy doesn’t say the Deliverer is specifically Dorsaddi,” Hanoch
said. And you can’t argue Sheleft’Ai didn’t rescue them.”

“How’re your ribs?” Trap asked, close at Abramm’s side.

“Could be better.” In truth, though he could hardly breathe, he was more
concerned about the fire on his chest, terrified of what he might find there
after that eruption of Terstan power.

`And the spore?”

“I can fight if I have to.”

“You shouldn’t if things go as planned,” Hanoch said.

The other man was still staring at them, slack faced. They slew
Beltha’adi’s champion and lived,” he whispered. “It really is coming to pass.”

A slow chill slid up Abramm’s back, as the stone hanging from his neck
burned anew against his stinging chest.

“Yes, and they did not do it without injury,” said Hanoch pushing a barrel
forward from the shadows. “Here. Sit and let us tend your wounds.”

“What do you mean `planned’?” Trap asked. “How could you know we
would escape?”

Hanoch glanced reprovingly at his companion. “Some of us had more
faith than others. You won’t be the first slaves to disappear from the warrens
of the Val’Orda, merely the most famous. Sit.”

“We don’t have much time,” Trap said, sitting. “They’ll be able to sense
our power.”

“This won’t take long.”

A woman and another man slid through the opening, carrying a water
bag, bowl, and bundle of clothing. As they set about tending the wounds and
washing the paint from the northerners’ faces, Hanoch outlined the plan. In
the riot’s confusion they would slip out of the Val’Orda and across the city
to where an old bolthole tunneled beneath the outer wall.

“We haven’t used it in years,” Hanoch told them, “and the old cart path
in the cliff where it comes out is in bad shape. Part of it’s been blasted away
completely, but we drove iron pins into the rock so you can skirt it with
ropes. The greatest danger is the magic. There’s what looks like a tunnel
bypass right before you get to the blast. Enter that and you won’t get out.”

To Abramm the thought of negotiating the sheer cliffs outside Xorofin
with nothing more than iron pins and ropes was only slightly more appealing
than fighting his way free of the city by open confrontation. Despite what
he’d said to Trap, his right shoulder was already stiffening and his chest still
hurt like wildfire, even with the pain-dulling salve the woman had slathered
onto it.

They exchanged their fighting costumes for homespun tunics, britches,
and boots, then the rings were cut from their ears, their hair dusted with
powdered charcoal, and darkened lard smeared on their faces. Dark headcloths and overrobes completed the disguise, and soon they were wriggling back into the drainpipe where more Undergrounders awaited.

“We’ll take them out the east door,” one said. “Crowd’s moving fastest
there, and it’s fairly quiet.”

“What about the lioness?”

“Still free-roaming somewhere in the north sector.”

“Where’s Tola?”

“Here, sir.” A tall blond man raised his hand. With his pale skin, aquiline
features, and the three gold rings in his ear, he bore a fair resemblance to
Abramm.

Hanoch glanced round at the rest of them. “You all know what to do?”

Murmured assent echoed off the stone.

A moment, Hanoch,” came a familiar female voice from the rear of the
group.

Pressing through the gathering, she stopped before Abramm and threw
back her hood.

“Shettai?” Abramm cried.

“What are you doing here?” Hanoch demanded.

Shettai ignored him, her eyes on Abramm, looking up at him wonderingly. There was something uncomfortably close to worship in her expression.
She touched his cheek. “You are alive,” she whispered. “There were rumors,
but I saw your bodies in the arena….”

And then she was in his arms, embracing him fiercely. He reeled with the
feel of her, everything else momentarily lost in the wonder of rediscovering
what he thought he’d never have again.

“We have no time for this,” Hanoch said sharply. “Why are you here,
Shettai?”

She drew back, tears shining on her face, and stepped out of Abramm’s
embrace to face the Underground leader. “I will go with them.”

Stillness overtook the gathering.

Hanoch’s dark brows beetled. `Are you sure?”

“They will need a guide.”

“Yes, but you-“

“I have not forgotten the way.” She smiled wistfully. `And I have been
with Katahn too long. It is time for me to face my past.”

Hanoch looked at her long and hard, then nodded. “They could have no
better guide than you, my lady. Let us go.”

The corridor outside the east gate was clogged with people waiting to get
out, forced by the guards to bare their heads and faces as they exited by twos.
The guards looked tired and bored, eager to get the crowd on its way and not
looking very closely.

Nevertheless, when Abramm stepped up and pulled off his headcloth, his
heart pounded a frantic rhythm. The guard glanced at him, passed him on—

Then called him back, looking intently into his eyes.

Balanced on the edge of the puzzlement in the man’s expression,
Abramm debated whether he should make a run for it or hope the guard
would pass it off. But before either man’s uncertainty crystallized into decision, someone shoved him hard from behind, knocking him into the guard
and running past them both.

“The Kiriathan?” the other guard yelled, pointing at the runner. “He’s getting away?”

Abramm was shoved frantically aside as the two chased the fugitive
down, wrestled him to the pavement, and ripped off his robe. Abramm
glimpsed blond hair and the flash of honor rings as the crowd, left unrestrained, surged forward on its own, blocking his view. Not knowing how to
redon the veil and headcloth, he didn’t. Struggling to stay with Shettai and
Trap, he let the crowd carry him out into the plaza. A series of covert connections followed-a narrow alley, a trapdoor in a cobbler’s shop, and a
cramped, bone-crunching ride across town in the false bottom of a cartending an hour later in a cellar near the city’s north wall, where they would
wait until dusk to use the bolthole.

During that time, the city had grown increasingly quiescent under tightening martial law. A curfew was imposed, the city gates were barred, and a
systematic search of houses begun, ostensibly for rebel agitators, though their
hosts assured them they would be gone long before any soldiers showed up
at their cellar.

Now Abramm sat with his back braced against an earthen wall, knees
drawn up, eyes closed, trying to ignore his many aches and pains, of which
the feyna scar had become paramount-a hot, writhing presence in his arm.
He caught himself fingering the Terstan stone again and made himself stop,
dropping his hand to his lap. In the hours since his escape from the arena he
had developed a fascination for touching it, obsessed with its oily-slick surface
and faint vibration. Memory of the power that had come out of it, that had saved his life and delivered him from the Broho, still unnerved him. He’d
been weak-kneed-even nauseated-with relief to find no Terstan shield
burned into his flesh when it was over. Even now he wanted to fling the thing
away, lest he end up marked yet. But the potential of being Commanded
remained too great. He must wait until they escaped Xorofin. Then it was
coming off. No question.

The door at the top of the stair creaked open, and Shettai descended with
a round loaf and a wedge of white cheese. Settling beside him, she divvied
up the bread.

“The woman said we can drink from the barrel there,” she said.

“When do we leave?” Trap pulled out his dagger to carve slices from the
cheese.

“Soon.” Shettai handed Abramm a piece of dense, dark bread. “We’ll need
time to make it across the blast area before it’s full dark. They say there was
a rockfall last spring that may cause trouble, too, but once we’re past that,
the rest is easy.”

“Except for the veren.” Trap balanced a slice of cheese on his blade tip
and handed it to her.

`And a countryside crawling with soldiers,” Abramm added. “To say nothing of Beltha’adi’s infamous intelligence system, assuming the rumors about
that are true.”

It was said the Supreme Commander commanded the forces of nature,
that he used the birds for ears and eyes and had conjured corridors through
the etherworld to transfer agents, even whole squadrons, across great distances of land or sea in moments.