Shadow Over Kiriath (2 page)
“Her guardian put up a strong fight, but we prevailed.”
The frequency of Vesprit’s essence intensified with admiration and approval.
“You called it perfectly, sir. We tapped something so strong it shocked her right out of the dream.”
A trill of amusement whirled through Vesprit’s vibrations as he added,
“Her aura was bluewhite when she awakened, then immediately turned to scarlet.”
“Did she tell anyone what she’d dreamt?”
“Not a word. But she sat there in the bed for at least twenty minutes, her face in her hands, before the color returned to normal.”
“Weeping?”
Hazmul sipped again from his cup.
“No. She was more horrified and confused. And still aroused, despite it all. . . . She seemed unable to settle that part down.”
Vesprit paused.
“How did you guess her feelings for him were so strong, sir? We’ve all noted their attraction to one another but . . . we had no idea hers was that powerful. She had to have been hiding it even from herself.”
Hazmul allowed himself a small smile.
“I’ve had a lot of experience with these creatures.”
He checked the tendril on Abramm again: still no change.
“You’re sure she’ll have no contact with the king this morning?”
“She may not even attend the ceremony, sir. When I left, she was still in bed, her maid worried she’d taken ill.”
“Good. Even a chance meeting in the hall could be disastrous. Her influence on him is too great.”
“Don’t worry, sir. We’ve got the double rank of guards on her as ordered, and her brother, that idiot Leyton, is on his way to her chambers as we speak. Though, truly, sir, I doubt she’ll be able to look Abramm in the eye for days—let alone speak to him. She is as rattled as I’ve ever seen her. It was a masterful blow.”
Again Hazmul nodded.
“Sounds like she’ll be no help to him during the ceremony, either, which is what I’d hoped. . . . What about the miniol? Has anyone noticed it yet?”
“No, sir. But even if they sensed something, it would never occur to them to inspect the stone.”
Captured by Alaric the Bold six hundred years ago, the border stone had been set beneath the coronation chair to symbolize Kiriathan authority over the borderlands. A benign participant in countless Kiriathan coronations, no one had any reason to suspect it harbored an ancient evil that might one day rise to take its revenge. . . .
Hazmul asked a few more questions, gave Vesprit his final instructions, then dismissed him. Below, the carriages continued to emerge from the fog to his right as others rolled away from the palace stairs to his left. About now they should be hitching up the king’s vehicle, unaware that an illicit nighttime jaunt across the Royal Preserve in the hands of two witless stable boys had cracked its front axle—a crack that would be made manifest to all in about an hour or so.
Hazmul smiled at the moving carriages. It never hurt to put redundancies into one’s plans.
He touched the tendril again and went alert with the change he sensed in it: sharp fear alternating with self-condemnation. The question of uncovering the bedchamber mirror had finally been asked.
Excellent. Are you going to look at them, Abramm?
he thought wryly.
Or are you too much of a coward?
He waited, but nothing happened.
“Sir?” The human voice, startlingly loud, intruded upon his mental surveillance. He turned to find his manservant standing in the bedchamber doorway holding a heavy overcloak. “It’s time,” the man said.
With a sigh, Hazmul set his teacup on an end table and strode toward the servant.
Well, you rarely get everything to go as you wish, no matter how brilliant and well executed the plan.
But just as the servant placed the cloak upon his master’s shoulders, a shock of dismay and anguish leaped through Hazmul’s connection with Abramm, the emotions so strong they made the rhu’ema’s borrowed body shudder in sympathetic vibration. And brought a smile to his lips.
Then again, sometimes you do
.
Earlier, as Hazmul had lingered in his east-wing apartment monitoring the king’s emotional state, the king himself stood in the royal bedchamber, gritting his teeth against the pain and bitter humiliation of having his left arm tugged like a sausage through the sleeve of his diamond-crusted doublet. Though his valets had had to work with the stiff and withered limb for almost six months now, and Abramm was well accustomed to the pain that accompanied the way they had to bend and stretch it to get it into his sleeves, it all seemed worse today. Partly because his doublet’s stiffness and tight cut made it especially difficult to don, and partly because the whole operation kept bringing to mind the bitter knowledge that his arm would never get any better. That he really
was
a cripple.
The garment settled onto his shoulders, its diamonds sparkling around him as Haldon tugged the front edges together and set to fastening the long line of buttons that held it close about Abramm’s torso. Barely had he begun when, behind the ring of older servants, young Jared cried out and began stomping the life from yet another of the many staffid that had come after the king that morning. As he picked up the smashed carcass and went to throw it in the fire, a page hurried into the bedchamber, stopping in the spot Jared had vacated and dropping a quick bow.
“They said Lady Madeleine has not come by yet, sir,” the blond lad reported breathlessly, speaking of the men on guard in the apartment’s anteroom.
“Thank you, Harry.” The intensity of his disappointment surprised him. After all, Maddie hadn’t said she was coming, and he had no reason to expect her, busy as she had to be on this coronation day. But he’d grown accustomed to her checking in with him each morning, and though she could still annoy him to distraction, he found her presence buoying. And today he felt keenly the need to be buoyed.
In the half year since his triumph over the morwhol at the Valley of the Seven Peaks, nothing had gone right: the Mataio remained a threat, Gillard’s supporters remained elusive, and every project Abramm had initiated to prepare for the coming Esurhite invasion was plagued with problems. While his nobles resented and sought to stymie his attempts to wrest aid from the Chesedhans on the one hand, fires, epidemics, food shortages, insane military commanders, shipyard accidents, and freak storms frustrated his efforts to build up Kiriathan defenses on the other.
Naturally, it hadn’t taken the Mataio long to capitalize on the situation. Borne by anonymous pamphlets, its leaders’ views flowed into Springerlan’s streets and taverns, continually rehashing his many problems as they denounced him as a fraud, attacked his motives and his character, and gave specific voice to the doubt on everyone’s mind these days: if Abramm
was
Eidon’s choice, why had his reign been so obviously cursed?
Today’s coronation was supposed to resolve the matter, the conferring of the regalia being a sign of divine anointing. Tradition required the ceremony be cleanly executed, however. Accidents, delays, embarrassing missteps, or bad weather would all be counted as ill omens. So would any fumbling with the regalia when they were bestowed, and Abramm had already dropped the practice Orb of Tersius several times during rehearsals. Those who wished him ill were predicting he would do it again today and thus provide “unequivocal proof” that Eidon’s hand was against him.
In addition, Abramm’s advisors believed Bonafil meant to denounce him openly during the ceremony itself, and all the Terstans on his cabinet were convinced he would come under direct rhu’ema attack, as well. To face all that, he must be strong and confident in the Light. But after the barrage of difficulties that had assaulted him in the last day or so, he was about as deep into the Shadow’s grip as he’d ever been.
Yesterday had begun as this one had: without Lady Madeleine’s morning appearance. That was followed by a nasty argument with his uncle over the Chesedhan treaty, then yet another practice wherein he dropped the orb, not once but three times. He’d spent the midday meal brooding over it all, fighting to break free of the Shadow’s increasingly protracted holds on him.
Then, as if timed to arrive precisely when it would do the most damage, a copy of the latest pamphlet was delivered to his hands. The most vitriolic yet, it pointed out that not only had Eidon failed to bless Abramm’s projects, he’d also declined to heal him of his wounds, leaving him hideously scarred and maimed for life.
Why,
the writer had asked,
would this be so when Eidon’s own Words of Revelation demand that his servants be without flaw?
Even before Abramm finished reading, he knew who had authored it: rhu’ema. Yes, the elusive Darak Prittleman was doubtless the human vector, but this was far too close to the mark to have come from anyone but the rhu’ema—both in the words and in the timing. Even knowing that, he’d been knocked solidly into the Shadow’s control, from which he’d initiated that misbegotten conversation with Trap Meridon and come face-to-face with a reality he’d long suspected but been unable to consider until now: that he was, indeed, permanently crippled. The thought still made his stomach churn and brought cold sweat to his brow.
Haldon finished buttoning the doublet, adjusted the cravat, then pulled sharply at the cuffs of Abramm’s underblouse while Smyth fastened the five golden chains of Abramm’s kingly rank across his chest and Durstan belted on the empty sword harness. As they laid the red velvet cloak across his shoulders, a staffid that had infiltrated its folds scurried down his arm. Haldon immediately knocked the vermin away, and this time young Harry had the honor of stomping it to death as Abramm’s valets stood by looking pale, chagrinned, and frustrated. They had searched his bedchamber numerous times this morning but failed to find nest or sack. Bowls of onions had been placed throughout Abramm’s apartments, yet still the things came, as if materializing from the air itself.
“It’s all right,” Abramm said, wrist tingling with the spawn’s proximity. “We’ll solve this mystery later. For now, let’s proceed.”
And so they did, Haldon tying the cloak across Abramm’s chest as the others pulled and straightened the garment’s train around his feet. When all was properly arranged and no more staffid had appeared, they stepped back to assess the results of their efforts, studying him with silent, grave expressions.
Finally, he frowned at his grand chamberlain. “That bad, is it?”
Haldon gave a start, then a ghost of a smile. “Hardly, sir. You look magnificent.” He gestured to the full-length mirror draped in heavy white linen. “Would you like to see for yourself?”
Every man in the room gasped, gazes flying to the chamberlain in alarm, while Haldon himself paled and gulped with astonishment as if he, too, couldn’t believe what he’d said. It was only then that Abramm acknowledged the mirror had been covered for months and he’d never once commented on it. Nor had he told anyone to uncover it.
“Was it your idea to drape the mirror, Hal?” he asked, nodding at it.
A red flush replaced the pallor in Haldon’s weathered cheeks.
“ ’Twas Count Blackwell’s idea, sir,” Smyth volunteered, when Haldon couldn’t find his tongue. “Though we all agreed he was right in not wanting to add to your distress. We planned to wait until you asked.” He flicked a glance at the chamberlain, whose gaze was now fixed upon a point beyond Abramm’s shoulder.
“But I didn’t ask, did I?” Abramm said.
Haldon’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “No, sir. I don’t know what I was thinking to suggest we unveil it now.”
And after Trap’s revelation last night, I certainly don’t need to have my nose rubbed in any more of my losses. My mood is foul enough as it is
.
Good advice, and he almost took it. Until he realized what a coward he must look to these men—afraid even to look at his own face!—and ordered it uncovered after all.
Haldon’s eyes darted to his own, his long, wrinkled face frowning. But he only said, “Yes, sir,” before grasping a fold of the linen and stepping back. The pale fabric rippled free to reveal the wooden-framed reflection of a tall, blond, straight-backed man dressed in white, his diamond-covered doublet glittering in the lamplight beneath the crimson robe flowing from his shoulders. The diamonds and velvet and golden chains of rank, the powerful shoulders and commanding stance, the stern brow and determined set of the jaw all hit him in a half-heartbeat of time, bearing a sense of strength and regality that hardly registered as his eyes focused on the face and horrified shock swept away all else.
Twin tracks of shiny red scar tissue, the inner one thicker and more ragged than the outer, slashed the familiar features from brow to jaw, in no way “barely noticeable.” Discomfort writhed within him, pressing him to turn away. Disbelief held him steady as his left hand lifted to awkwardly stroke the scars, fingertips rough along their tight and tender length.
“They’re so wide,” he murmured, “and red.”
I never should have let them shave the beard. At least I’d have something to mask them with, even if Maddie doesn’t think the wild mountain look appropriate. Better that than this
.
“It’s only been six months, sir,” Haldon said quietly.
“They’ll draw every eye like filings to a lodestone. The Mataio will have the happiest day of its history.” His arm fell back to his side.
No wonder they’re saying I can’t be Eidon’s. . . . And when I go out there today, when they all finally see me for themselves, they’ll be more convinced than ever the lies are true
.
He found himself struggling to breathe, hands trembling, knees weak and wobbling. Anguish wailed through him.
Why have you done this, my Lord? I trusted you!
A thumping of footfalls preceded the arrival of Shale Channon, captain of Abramm’s Royal Guard. He burst into the bedchamber full of trouble to report, but the moment he saw Abramm standing among his valets he stopped to stare, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Another wave of painful selfconsciousness seared through Abramm’s soul. Then he took hold of himself, the effort sharpening his voice as he asked Channon why he was there.
