Return of the Guardian-King (5 page)

Don’t look at their eyes!

Too late. The beast had skewered her gaze with his own and red fire roared around her.
“I have her!”
the creature crowed triumphantly.
“And now
nothing of his shall remain.”

She lifted the useless rope and screamed—

The rasping, hoarse croak that came from her throat jarred her from the nightmare, and reality eclipsed the phantom images. She lay gasping in her big canopied bed—alone, save for the maid who stirred on her pallet nearby, rolling over and going still again. The tiny kelistar on her bedside table cast a dim illumination through the great bedchamber. She could just make out the heavy sideboard against the wall to her left, laden with its three bowls of artistically arranged staffid-warding onions amidst sprays of wheat. Outside, a dog moaned a forlorn lament, and the wind chime on her balcony tinkled faintly, touched by an errant breeze. Beyond that she heard nothing. No wolves, no shrieking gale, no snow crystals.

She let out a long, low sigh that held as much regret as relief. It was just a dream. Of course—it rarely snowed in Fannath Rill, and any wolves that had once prowled the surrounding fields and forests had been pushed into the higher lands of the north centuries ago. And while the city had recently seen an influx of jackals on its eastern fringes, that was far from the palace itself.

He wasn’t really here. She slid her palm over the modest mound that was her womb, nowhere near the size she’d dreamed it but swelling daily with the seed her husband had sown there six months ago. The only thing she had left of him now.

Her throat tightened with grief and longing, for the sense of him had been so strong it seemed he was in the next room and would any moment burst through the door to take her in his arms. And oh, she wanted to feel those arms so very, very badly, to lay her head against the broad chest and listen to the powerful beat of his heart. . . .

And their boys . . . their beautiful boys . . .

Tears welled in her eyes as the tightening in her throat turned to a painful lump, and she began to weep—as she did so often these days, her dreams tormenting her with hope when she knew better than anyone that her boys were lost to her and her husband wasn’t coming back.

The night Abramm had been tortured, both she and Carissa had shared the experience in the fractured way of their linked dreams—that one ending in a terrible wave of agony and defeat, followed by an explosion of blinding light. After that they’d shared no more nighttime adventures, and Carissa was convinced that blaze of light meant he had died. Maddie had found it difficult to disagree, especially when she had no further contact. Nor did it help that she’d suffered from both seasickness and morning sickness on that dreadful journey to Chesedh. And when they’d reached port and learned he had been burned in Execution Square before a crowd of hundreds—including Gillard himself—she’d finally surrendered to the reality of his death. A conclusion that had only been strengthened as the months passed and no word came from Kiriath to challenge it.

Then, about six weeks ago, she’d started dreaming again—intermittently at first, but lately almost every night. Dreams of mist and rock and emptiness, where she wandered aimlessly. The sense of evil was always strong in them. But so had been the sense of her dead husband, as if he was on the verge of bursting into her presence and driving away the evil that threatened her.

Her granny, steeped in the old ways, would have said he was trying to reach her from the grave. Trap was convinced it was something else.

The wolf-thing’s crimson eyes flashed in her mind, too vivid for a dream, as if somehow the beast observed her even now. And, perhaps, encouraged her grief. She glanced at the ceiling shadows, wondering if rhu’ema floated there now, watching her. A chill shivered across her shoulders.

She shoved back the covers and padded barefoot into the adjoining chamber. Its wide, windowed doors looked out on the plain from which the palace of Fannath Rill arose, built atop a long rocky outcropping in the midst of the Ruk Ankrill, and as such the highest point in all the Fairiron Plain. Her window and balcony faced northeast to where the far edge of the river gleamed beyond the palace’s ancient crenellated battlements. Beyond its stone-worked banks, a sea of tile roofs interspersed with autumn-paled foliage stretched into lavender haze.

The sky glowed in the east, while the rest remained dark and star specked. A flock of geese arrowed south toward their winter feeding grounds. It was a beautiful, quiet dawn. A gift from Eidon she might enjoy, or ignore for the sake of lamenting her losses. . . .

But the dreams always stirred up the grief again, opening the many trails down which her thoughts might travel toward heartache, self-pity, and bitterness. And the smoldering sense of outrage at having been betrayed by Eidon himself.

But that is your Shadow talking, for you have not been betrayed, though that
is exactly what your enemies want you to think. They are the ones who did this,
hoping to make you turn your back on him. Hoping you will just sink down in
your sorrows and never get up again
.

Grimly she turned from the window to sidle around the nearby desk and sit before the open volume of the Second Word she’d left there last night. Conjuring a kelistar, she set it on the stand, recalling fiercely that Eidon had given her a beloved husband and beautiful sons in whom she had reveled for five glorious years. Was that not enough? Was that not far more than she had ever dreamed of having? If he had taken them back already, how could she complain?

Barely had she started to read, however, when her eyes strayed to the fold of parchment protruding from the pages. She slid it free and unfolded it. The creases were soft and supple, the paper tearstained. She touched the inked letters scrawled across it, imagining the long-fingered hand that had inscribed its precious words.

The tears returned in force now, and she let them flow until she couldn’t see the words. Not that she needed to anymore.

The truest love of all is when a man gives his life for those he loves. This is
what I believe Eidon has called me to do. And you must abide it, my heart
.

She’d seen the look in Abramm’s eyes that day on the mall outside Springerlan’s High Court Chamber, the heart-wrenching look of good-bye mingled with grim determination. She knew him well enough, understood the situation well enough to grasp what he’d intended even then, and it had appalled her. The moment she’d exited the coach and seen the galley ship he’d arranged to carry her and the others away, she’d turned to rush back to the city, determined to stop him. Trap had barred her way, his eyes wild with grief.
“He sacrificed all to get you away,”
he’d said fiercely.
“Don’t make it be
for nothing.”

Shortly after they’d sailed out the mouth of Kalladorne Bay, the galley ship captain had distributed Abramm’s letters, one for his First Minister, one for his sister, and the last for his beloved wife. Maddie had read hers in the privacy of the galley ship’s stern cabin, her heart breaking on words that erased all doubt of what he’d intended to do.

Abramm had been typically thorough in his arrangements. His wife and sister were each provided a small but comfortable cabin and a lady’s maid. Their galley was escorted by three attendant vessels, each loaded, as was their flagship, with trade goods—and ten iron-bound strongboxes of gold, still bearing the mark of the Briarcreek Garrison—to support them in Chesedh.

She suspected Abramm was also the impetus for Trap’s startling proposal of marriage to Carissa, and possibly even Carissa’s equally startling acceptance. The ship’s captain had performed the ceremony on the foredeck two days out from Kiriath, with Maddie, their maids, and the crew as witnesses. Baby Conal had been born a week later.

Abramm had also informed Maddie that he’d assigned Captain Channon to search for their sons, who he’d believed had escaped alive. Though she had long since resigned herself to Ian’s death, having seen Simon elude his captors, and knowing that Elayne had escaped in the fracas, as well, she’d clung to the hope Abramm was right. But when they reached Fannath Rill and neither Simon nor Channon were there to meet her, she saw the truth of the matter. If Simon lived at all, he was in the Gadrielites’ care, his name and heritage stripped from him as they worked to turn his young mind to their cause. Which was worse by far than believing him dead.

She had ordered Trap, who managed her finances and the personal guard he insisted she keep round her constantly, to send someone to find him, and of course he obliged. But he held little hope for success, and as time passed she’d been forced to accede he was right.

Abramm, Simon, Ian . . . They were all gone. The worst thing that could possibly happen had happened. Despite her desperate appeals, despite her fierce trust that Eidon, in his goodness, would never do such a thing to her . . . he had done it. The one thing she thought she could not live through she had—for each new day dawned and here she was, still alive. All the truth she had ever learned now became her only lifeline. And part of that truth was that those who served the Light would suffer as their Lord had suffered. And as he had endured, so could they, using the same power that had enabled him. When Eidon’s servants endured and kept on trusting, it spoke to rhu’ema and luima both, as no outpouring of blessing ever could.

Her husband had already done it. Tortured to recant his faith, he had refused to the point of giving up his life. Her calling was different. It was to bear up under this loss, not to wallow in self-pity nor be consumed by bitterness. To keep recalling what she knew to be true—that Eidon was worthy of her trust—and go on with her life.

And so she had—day by day, step by step—until one morning something had moved in her belly and she realized with a shiver of awe that she’d not had her monthly courses for some time. It was in that moment that she knew beyond any doubt that Eidon loved her. That he had not forgotten nor neglected nor abused her. He had taken away. But he had also given. . . .

And in that she had found her peace, still intermittent, to be sure, but a haven to which she always found her way back.

Outside, the morning had acquired a pinkish cast as fragile fingers of smoke reached for the sky from the ranks of tile roofs across the river. To the east, golden rays of light speared across the pale mauve as the sun’s first rays burst through the tattered edge of the cloud bank crouching on the eastern horizon. Not fog, but the Shadow itself, encroaching now on Chesedhan shores as it had not in six hundred years. Her father and brother, neither of whom she’d seen since she’d returned, were there now, leading the effort to hold back the invaders as everyone else prayed for an early advent of the winter winds that would drive back the Shadow for a few months.

“Ah, here you are, ma’am.” Jeyanne’s voice broke into her thoughts and drew her around. Her Kiriathan chambermaid stood in the bedchamber doorway. “You gave me quite a start when I woke to find your bed empty.” The auburn-haired girl stepped through the doorway. “I feared you’d gone for your morning ride and forgotten about breaking your fast with the Princess Ronesca.”

“Plagues!” Maddie cried, leaping to her feet. “I
had
forgotten! Oh, bless you, girl! Bad enough I turned down her invitation to that prayer service last night. Being late this morning would really set her off.”

“Shall I prepare you a bath, then?”

“That would be good, Jey. Thank you.”

But it was hard not to groan. The last thing Maddie felt like doing this morning was breaking her fast with her brother’s pious, prissy wife. Especially not after that dream. Especially since Ronesca was sure to bring up the baby, and Abramm’s death, and a host of other subjects Maddie was not interested in discussing.

On the other side of the palace, Carissa Kalladorne Meridon, Duchess of Northille and Crown Princess of Kiriath, sat in the chair of her chamber’s bay window, six-month-old Conal nursing at her breast as she stared southward across Fannath Rill’s interior grounds. A wide promenade stretched away westward between opposing rows of date palms, cutting a swath through the hilly waterpark to either side, all bathed in the morning’s golden haze. Beyond it marched the crenellated western wall, shrunken with distance against the gleaming west branch of the Ruk Ankrill and the city’s smokeobscured western sectors.

The multifarious creaking of the waterpark’s numerous waterwheels and the rumble of its fountain pumps mingled with the shouted cadence of the morning guard at their drills down in the central square—sounds she’d finally grown accustomed to. As she had grown accustomed to the dank, fishy river smell that permeated every wall and rug and piece of furniture in this great island palace. Today, in fact, she could almost ignore it under the spicy fragrance of the Chesedhans’ traditional morning
shae’a,
drifting in from the servants’ quarters.

It was a beautiful morning. The sunrise had been glorious and now she felt quietly content, marveling as she often did of late at how thoroughly Eidon had blessed when she so thoroughly did not deserve it. All that angst, all that fury and frustration and hopelessness . . . yet here she was at the end of it all with more than she ever could have imagined, just as Abramm had promised.