Return of the Guardian-King (10 page)

“It puzzles me you cannot find it in yourself to share our joy,” Laud said. “Your presence will save our lives this winter season.”

“Yours are not the only lives needing to be saved.”

The other man puffed on his pipe for a time, a cloud of fragrant smoke rising around him. Then, “You speak of the war to the south.”

Abramm turned to him sharply. “A war for the very survival of the Terstan faith! I should be down there helping to win it.”

“But instead you are here.” Laud shook his head, still staring at the storm. “Eidon simply must not understand how desperately he needs you to defend and protect him.”

Abramm frowned, smitten by his mocking words.

“From what your companions have told me of your actions the night of your arrival,” Laud went on, “I’d guess you’re well skilled in the Light. Rolland says you saw right through the trap that was set for you all in the way station. We at Caerna’tha saw for ourselves how you drew off the tanniym to give your companions time to enter our gates. Your courage is commendable, your strength and skill in the Light impressive.” He paused, drawing a puff from his pipe. “But her breath was in your face, Alaric. You must know her spore is in you now.”

“I’ve already purged it.”

“Not all of it. And even a little is enough to make you vulnerable. Especially when the Shadow has you.”

Abramm stared sulkily at the storm, resenting the man’s criticism.

The professor went on. “Do you know how the raiders got in last week?” When Abramm maintained silence, Laud answered for him. “One of our own opened the gate for them. A man who was approached by your tanniym friend on a wood-cutting expedition last fall. And inhaled the spore in her breath.”

“I won’t be opening the gates for her,” Abramm said stiffly. “You have no worry of that.”

“You think you’re strong enough to resist her?” Laud shook his head, gray hair rasping against his collar. “Your Light skills will be useless if you’re living in the Shadow. As you have been for days now, I’d guess. Normally I would not intrude upon a man’s privacy this way, but you endanger us all with this ongoing . . .
tantrum
of yours.”

Abramm ground his teeth and glared at the window, feeling the blood rush to his face. “You have no idea what I’ve lost, professor. What I’ve been through.”

Laud snorted softly. “Perhaps not.” He sighed. “I do know that I once felt as you do now: bitter, frustrated, angry. As if all my purpose had been stripped away. I had been surfeited with my suffering, and railed at Eidon for what I saw as excess.”

Abramm shifted away from the man, discomfited by how close Laud’s description was to his own reality.

The professor lifted the leather-bound stump at the end of his right arm. “They took my
hand,
Alaric. Do you know what it is like to go through life without your strong hand? The loss is impossible to forget—everything you try to do brings it back to mind.

“Bad enough that, I thought, but then I had to leave my books behind in the pass when the wagon broke—all I had left of my old life. We, too, came late to the monastery and were trapped for the winter. Suffering upon suffering, I thought. And none of it deserved. He was stripping everything away from me. My worldly possessions, my hand, my writing, my reputation, my job . . .”

Abramm turned to look at him, unnerved by his words. The older man smiled, his eyes blank with remembrance. “Oh yes, I was bitter and angry and wretched. And Eidon let me stay that way for a time. But finally I came to my senses and confessed to him my failings. And when I returned to the place of embracing his will over my own, that’s when I recalled that if one wants to know Eidon, one must come to know Tersius. And his sufferings. All of which were undeserved, yet borne without complaint.”

He fell silent. Outside the wind whistled, and the snowflakes ticked against the glass. From somewhere outside the Great Room, children’s voices echoed in laughter as overhead the roof creaked with its accumulating weight of snow.

“Undeserved, yet borne without complaint. . . .”
Laud’s words and story shamed Abramm out of his self-pity, truth tearing away the veils his disappointment, frustration, and selfishness had woven about his soul. His sufferings may have been undeserved, but he’d certainly not borne them without complaint. And compared to what Laud had endured, they were nothing. Even less when laid up against what Tersius went through.

So what if things had been difficult and uncomfortable for a time? So what if he would not see his wife as soon as he had hoped? At least he had hope of seeing her. And his sons. At least he had all his limbs..

After a time Laud removed his pipe. “Nothing that happens in this life is beyond Eidon’s reach. I’m sure you know that. . . .” He turned now, meeting Abramm’s gaze. “The question is, do you live in it?”

Abramm had no answer to that. For Laud was right—though it took effort to admit it. If he lived in what he claimed to believe, then he had no reason for all this misery he was piling upon himself. Even now, he felt the tenuousness of his thoughts—how he could sincerely believe and yet see how, with a simple twisting of perception, he would not. He shook his head. “I want to, though,” he whispered.

“The more you learn of him, the more you’ll understand him,” said Laud. “The more you know and understand, the easier it will be to trust him. In all things.” He tilted his head, the spectacles’ lenses flashing with reflected light. “Perhaps that is why you are here: to learn of him.”

“Surely I could learn as well in Fannath Rill.”

“No. There you would be busy fighting, your mind filled with the distractions of battle. But up here . . .”

Up here Abramm was cut off from everything. He had few responsibilities, no one knew who he was, and even the jobs were menial, allowing plenty of time to think.

“How many times in the old stories do we read of men taken off to a solitary time of learning and preparation before they can fulfill the calling Eidon has placed upon their lives? You are in such a hurry to join in the fighting. But perhaps Eidon has something greater for you, something that can only be carried out with greater knowledge and confidence. . . .”

A current of Light tingled over Abramm’s flesh, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck.
Is that what you’re doing here, my Lord? Preparing me?
He had only to form the question before he knew the answer.
Yes
.

Apparently Laud noted a change, for he smiled, stuck his pipe back into his mouth, and giving him a nod, turned again to the window. After a moment he added, “You might consider taking advantage of our baths. They’re free. And they’re quite rejuvenating. If you need some clothes ask Alia. She keeps a supply of ’em clean and mended for folk without a lot of spares, and she’ll see your own are washed and mended, as well.”

He left Abramm standing at the window, bemused and chastened yet again.

CHAPTER

6

After her fiasco with the esteemed gentleman, Maddie never returned to the Inn of the Gilded Ram, partly for fear of running into the man again, and partly because, after walking out without a word, going back would draw more attention to herself than her little charade as Molly could bear without unraveling entirely.

She’d already done the tavern-girl gambit years ago, at the very same inn, with Serr Penchott’s now-senile father. Ignorance, immaturity, and her overweening delight in becoming the commoners’ singing sensation had led to her unmasking. King Hadrich had been so furious he’d sent her to a convent for a year in hopes of instilling some sense of responsibility and decorum in her.

The punishment would be far worse now, with Ronesca part of the triumvirate that commanded her life. And now she had others who relied upon her for their livelihoods, and they would suffer along with her should she bring even more dishonor upon herself than had already come with her pregnancy. It had taken an effort of will for her to stop trying to analyze what had happened and how the eccentric behavior of some Sorian lord she didn’t even know could have unhinged her as much as they had, but she was determined to leave it all behind.

So “Molly” had vanished, and Trap was relieved not to have to worry about Maddie walking unescorted through the streets of Fannath Rill after dark anymore.

In any case, the wind that night had brought in the storm clouds, and the next day the rains had begun. It was still raining over a week later when she dreamed of Abramm again.

As always she sensed him nearby, his strong, sustaining presence filling her soul in almost the same way Eidon’s Light did. A great storm raged outside, wind howling, snowflakes ticking against roof and shutter as she followed him through dark rooms and twisting drafty corridors, calling for him to wait. But the wind drowned out her voice so he didn’t hear her. Time and again she would round one corner only to glimpse him disappearing around the next, until finally she heard a door shut, and the next turn brought her face-to-face with it. When she opened it, she found only a field of white blowing snow and he was gone, never knowing she was there. She’d awakened bereft, consumed by the terrible longing such dreams always birthed in her, and once again the tears came.

After a while, she rolled over, turning her thoughts to Eidon . . . and words flowed into her mind on a haunting melody. Words of sorrow and loss that compelled her to arise and hurry to her music room, where she took up her lirret and began to work out the song. Some time later, Jeyanne interrupted her, reminding her she was to ride with Princess Ronesca to the reception at Tiris ul Sadek’s villa, and they were already nearly an hour past the time she’d planned to arise.

“But it’s pouring rain,” Maddie protested.

“Indeed, and yet Princess Ronesca has just sent over your gown and jewels along with very complex and specific instructions as to how it should all be arranged.”

“So she’s not canceling,” Maddie said.

“I don’t think so, Your Highness.”

Jeyanne wasn’t exaggerating about the specificity of Ronesca’s instructions, nor their complexity. Maddie’s hair alone took over an hour to work into the jeweled and braided patterns Ronesca wanted. And the gown was a nightmare of buttons and ties and sashes, most of them fastening in the back. The waist was too tight to accommodate her steadily swelling womb, so Jeyanne left some of the buttons undone and covered the breach with an artful rearrangement of scarf and gold-braiding. When all was in place—the hair, the jewels, the cosmetics, and the sashes—Jeyanne floated a white silk veil reminiscent of the Sorian style over Maddie’s head and laid a heavy cloak of satin-lined wool over that.

Maddie reached the front foyer shortly before Ronesca and her other attendant for the day, Lady Iolande. Together they stepped out under the covered portico and hurried to the waiting coach as the rain sheeted down beyond the overhang. Gathering her cloak firmly about her, Maddie boarded the coach after her sister-in-law, Iolande entering last. Then the door closed and the coach rolled away. Within moments rain drummed on the vehicle’s wooden ceiling and water splashed around the wheels.

The three women sat in silence, swaying in unison as the coach wheeled around the circular drive and started up over the bridge to the mainland. Maddie eyed her sister-in-law covertly.

Ronesca was in her middle thirties, her features sharp and clean, not particularly pretty, but arresting nonetheless. Beneath her cloak’s loosely fitting satin hood, her dark hair had been pulled up into an elaborate coiffure of tiny interwoven braids, set off with a sparkling net of rubies and topaz. A single dark curl dangled beside her long, pale neck.

She was intelligent, powerful, and persistent. And she was definitely up to something, for normally she wouldn’t think of going out in her finery on a day like this.

But Draek Tiris ul Sadek was the new sensation in town. His men had arrived months ago to buy the old Portelas villa on the eastern edge of town and had been renovating it ever since. Today was the first time anyone other than workmen had been allowed inside since the renovations began.

He was a high
draek
of one of the old Sorite dynasties, a fabulously wealthy warlord from the east, whose holdings were said to include a palace with archways cast of gold and halls paneled in the same, furnished with plates and goblets and utensils of gold. Even the breastplates of his royal guard were golden. His mythical holdings supposedly lay somewhere out beyond the Mahishi—the harsh, high deserts and the Great Sand Sea few deigned to cross, save on the trade routes which had made men like ul Sadek their fortunes.

In addition to sponsoring the arts, he was also patron of the weak. Having been an orphan himself, he maintained a great orphanage back in his kingdom. He also had armies that numbered in the hundreds of thousands under his command. He would be a valuable ally should Ronesca somehow manage to acquire him.

That she had insisted Maddie attend with her, then taken the trouble to select her gown and accessories for the occasion, complete with meticulous instruction as to how they should be arranged, argued strongly that Maddie was a part of whatever she was planning. And it didn’t take too great a leap of logic to guess what that part was.

Since the morning when Maddie had admitted her pregnancy to the woman, they had not spoken of it at all. But Maddie had been careful to attend as many of Ronesca’s social functions and religious observances as she could bear—and as did not interfere with her own. Not being concerned with showing up at the Gilded Ram had helped, though for a time she’d refused to eat anything prepared on palace grounds, except that which her own people specifically purchased and prepared. It had, she’d heard, raised a bit of turmoil in the kitchens, but so be it. Ronesca had said nothing, and rumors credited her strange cravings to being with child. Eventually she’d talked herself out of the horrible suspicion, for as much at odds as she was with Ronesca, she couldn’t believe the woman would stoop to killing her baby.

“I am pleased to see you have respected my wishes and have adorned yourself properly.” Ronesca’s prim voice intruded into Maddie’s musings.