Shadow Over Kiriath (34 page)
There was something else, too. She glanced down at the book Byron had returned to her. The rhu’ema who had come against Abramm at his coronation were still here, still working. She had no doubt they did not want this treaty ratified. And Briellen was not only a pivotal figure in the affair, but one that could be easily manipulated.
H
AZMUL STOOD ON
the darkened balcony of the royal gallery that evening overlooking the crowded King’s Court below him. He was letting his host do most of the talking tonight, something he often did of late, as the man’s thoughts had become more and more one with Hazmul’s. So often now he said and did exactly what the rhu’eman warhast would have directed him to do, the actual direction was not even needed.
It had been a masterful stroke to use this particular man. Hazmul had made the change four years ago, when the former High Father Saeral’s body had become useless—as much because hosting Hazmul’s powerful essence had worn it out as because the position it held had become functionally irrelevant. With Gillard on the throne and Abramm no longer a player, he’d wanted to be closer to the hand that held the reins of Kiriathan power. When Abramm returned, it had been an easy matter to manipulate his host into a position of influence.
He watched the vivacious First Daughter below, cutting a swath of light and life through the star-struck courtiers, promising so many, so much. . . .
“I see she’s wearing the bracelet we prepared,”
he said to Vesprit, who lurked in the deeper shadows at the back of the gallery.
“Has anyone commented on it?”
“No, sir.”
He smiled down at the young woman and shook his head. It had taken almost nothing to steer her onto this track. She was so ripe, so easily worked: emotional, self-absorbed, filled with gossamer dreams that had no chance of ever coming to fruition. And so very weak in the Light. She reminded him of Raynen in many ways.
It helped, too, that she and Abramm were so fundamentally incompatible. And that Abramm was in love with someone else.
His smile broadened. It was so amusing to insert one weak person on the verge of fragmenting into the midst of his enemies and watch them all go to pieces around her. He’d seen it happen over and over, just as it was happening now.
“The bracelet should do its job well,”
he said.
“Next will be to move the king and Madeleine back together.”
“She’s been adamant about avoiding him, sir.”
“Of course she has. He, on the other hand, is growing quite impatient. It won’t take much of a nudge to get him to break the ‘rules’ and summon her. When he does, be ready. I want them alone together long enough for them to act on all this heat they’re generating.”
“And then send in one of my people?”
“Yes, but keep it subtle. This is a very sensitive part of the plan. If they become suspicious it could ruin everything.”
“I understand, sir.”
Hazmul had no doubt Vesprit did, but he was still inexperienced in dealing with humans who carried the Light. It would probably be best if Hazmul took a more personal hand in things over the next few days. Just to be sure everything was managed as it should be.
Gillard did not want to wake up. At least, not into the nightmare in which he’d recently been living, shrunken by whatever power Abramm had brought to bear on him. It was too horrible, too impossible to believe. He didn’t want to believe it. Wouldn’t believe it. But he kept waking up and finding himself trapped in this unfamiliar body. Even the face wasn’t right. He’d insisted Prittleman—
No. It’s Brother Honarille. Must remember to call him Honarille
— bring him a piece of polished metal last night, certain that some sort of switch had occurred and he inhabited a body not his own while his own flesh was in turn inhabited by whoever owned this one. His first sight of the narrow face in that metal mirror had set his heart soaring.
It wasn’t him. He still had hope. He had only to find his own body and make them give it back. Make Abramm give it back. Or the Mataians, or whoever had stolen it. He’d dreamed of doing just that. . . .
But now he was waking up again, feeling the bed around him and loath to come back to consciousness where he realized the face he’d seen last night had been but a thinner, frailer version of the one to which he was accustomed.
Voices muttered nearby, pitched low as if they did not want to be heard.
“So can you help him?” said one. It sounded like Prittleman—
No! Honarille
.
Silence ensued, during which he heard the bird cries outside, the drip of water, the distant hollow clunk of buckets being dropped, and closer the crack and pop of a fire.
“Nay,” said the second voice, deeper and rougher than the first, but also vaguely familiar. . . . “He was bound t’ the beast. What it took from him, it took fer good.”
“So you’re saying . . . he’ll be like this for the rest of his life?”
“Unless yer Eidon has powers I dunno about.” Irony sharpened the rough brogue.
Gillard considered whether he should open his eyes and reveal that he had heard them . . . but didn’t. For fear he might start pleading. Already he was feeling ill again.
“We should leave before he wakes,” Honarille said.
“Afraid he’ll learn the truth ’fore ye can ply him with yer empty promises?”
“They are not empty, sir.”
“Well, time’ll tell, I wager.”
Gillard heard the rustle of their clothing and the clink of spurs—unlikely apparel for a Mataian—and opened his eyes a slit as they were turning away. Honarille’s companion was a tall, heavily muscled man in border-lord fur and leather with a mane of blond frizzy hair falling halfway down his back. He wore it brushed back from his forehead, mostly loose except for a braid at each temple. His jaw was covered with a dark blond grizzle, sprinkled with gray, and like his voice, his form rang bells of familiarity.
Gillard waited for the door to close, for the latch to fasten, for the sounds of their footsteps to descend out of earshot, then sat up and shoved back the blanket. The room whirled momentarily. When it settled, he swung his legs over the bedside and stood up, waited for another wave of dizziness to subside, then shuffled to the window. Only the fear of falling and being unable to get up restrained his steps. As it was, he reached the opening barely in time to see the mysterious visitor riding away on a large bay horse.
Horsemen, likewise in furs and leathers, awaited him in the fringe of a leafless wood beyond the bridge, and they all galloped away together, their horses’ breaths steaming in a cloud around them. Border lords. Now he knew who his visitor was: Rennalf of Balmark.
Gillard stared at the gray skeletons of the trees into which the men had disappeared, grinding his teeth as something close to panic rose within him.
Not long after that the door opened and Honarille stepped in with a tray of porridge and tea. As Gillard turned from the window, he stopped. “Oh. You’re up.” He did not look pleased.
“That was Rennalf of Balmark, wasn’t it?”
Honarille’s expression became guarded. “Who?”
Gillard made a face at him. “I heard you talking. I know who he is.”
Honarille came around the bed to set his tray on the table. “I asked him to come because he has knowledge of the dark ways. I thought he might be of help, but I was wrong.”
“He said I was bound to the beast, that it was responsible for my condition, not Abramm.”
A crease formed on Honarille’s brow beneath his stubbled pate. “In truth no one knows save you and Abramm. And from what you said, you don’t recall either way. There’s a tale that it sucked Master Rhiad right into itself, though, so I thought, maybe . . .” He trailed off.
“I do remember it biting me,” Gillard said, staring blindly at the green hills. “I remember it sucking away my strength. . . .” He fell briefly into the memory, then pulled out of it with a shudder. “He said I’ll be like this for the rest of my life.”
Honarille stepped up behind him. “He knows nothing of Eidon, as he admitted.”
Gillard snorted. “Eidon. Right.” He felt as if he teetered on a gulf of despair. To be like this for the rest of his life . . .
Oh, can’t it be a dream? A nightmare? Surely it’s too impossible to be true. People don’t just shrink
.
Honarille came around to face him beside the window, his narrow face grave. “Truly, sir, all is not lost.”
“Yes it is.”
“Eidon
can
restore you. You must believe that.”
“Well, I do
not
believe it, Prittleman!” He glared at the other man, slamming the window embrasure with his fist for emphasis—then gasped as he both heard and felt the bones in his hand snap like dry sticks. He gasped again as the pain took him, sharp and nauseating, bending him over the window ledge as Prittleman fluttered behind him, tormenting him further with alarmed and repeated inquiries as to what was wrong.
————
Nine days before their wedding, Abramm took his midday meal alone with Briellen on the terrace. At least as alone as a king and princess could be with bodyguards and servants on every hand and a quartet of musicians playing back by the orange trees near the palace doors.
The idea had been Blackwell’s, whom he’d come a breath from dismissing permanently as Royal Secretary after the fencing-match debacle. That he hadn’t was testament to his memory of how the man had stood by him when he’d first come to Kiriath and his conviction that Byron had truly thought he was doing what was best the other day, even if he had disobeyed a direct order. Which of them was right remained undetermined.
In any case, the next day Byron had gathered his courage and approached him regarding the matter of Briellen. “I would suggest you spend some time alone with her, sir. Try to establish at least some measure of rapport with her before your . . . well . . . before you have to face each other on your wedding night.”
The thought filled Abramm with such cold panic he knew his secretary was right.
The day was bright, mild, and beautiful. He had ordered the linencovered table to be set up at the terrace’s edge where the view was best, the indigo bay with its scattering of white sails framed between the opposing stands of dark green cedars. She, fearing a breeze might disturb her coiffure or give her a chill—not unreasonable considering the depth of her décolletage— had requested the table be moved back to a more sheltered, though less pleasing, aspect.
As always, she was an easy conversationalist, chattering away quite charmingly. He had only to smile and nod and interject an “uh-huh” or an “mmm” here and there. Unfortunately, not having to work for something to talk about left his mind free to wander, and wander it did—to the most inappropriate subject possible: Madeleine. She had Briellen’s same way of bouncing from subject to subject when she was excited, although Maddie’s conversation was enormously more interesting to him than Briellen’s. There were other differences, as well.
Briellen sat before him perfectly coifed, and Abramm did not think he’d ever seen Maddie without that errant tendril dangling against her cheek. Briellen’s porcelain-white complexion made him think fondly of the freckles that spattered Maddie’s, often over a flush raised by wind or cold. Briellen’s pink satin gown could not contrast more with the muted tapestry weaves and sturdy blue-gray woolens Maddie preferred. As Briellen smiled and batted her lashes, Abramm saw Maddie’s solemn intensity, eyes flaring with the strength of her will or flashing with the quickness of her wit, all of it lit by the warm steady glow of Eidon’s Light dwelling within her heart.
Then Briellen would say something requiring an answer and break him from the spell to wonder what in Eidon’s wide world was wrong with him. He was supposed to be getting to know his bride better, putting all his focus upon her. Supposed to be probing beneath that veneer of sparkling beauty to see who she really was, what her dreams and fears were, what mattered most to her. . . .
Not thinking about her sister. Who never intended to marry at all. And certainly not a Kiriathan. Nor a king. He almost smiled, thinking of the way she’d said that to him so primly the night they’d first met. Almost the first thing out of her mouth. . . .
He caught himself again, and finally forced himself to take greater part in Briellen’s conversation, questioning her more actively on the details of her discourse, why she preferred this fabric to that one, where she thought the best lace could be found, who was her favorite composer, what was her favorite ballad. . . .
It seemed she was not a lot deeper than what she appeared. A person consumed with entertainment, with the stimulation of social life, with herself and her appearance, with the gossip regarding the doings of other people. She lived one day at a time for no more than that, apparently, and he got the impression that, under the charm, she harbored no more feeling for him than he did for her.
At one point he brought up Eidon, asking when she’d first taken the Star. She couldn’t recall and showed little interest in pursuing that line of conversation, save as it applied to her demands for her own chapel. Which he told her he was still arranging and which she informed him now would not be acceptable. “The East Salon is simply not large enough,” she said.
He frowned, holding his temper and counseling himself to make an effort to understand. “My lady, truly, I wish I could accommodate you. But . . . we are preparing for war and have neither the time nor resources to start new building projects. Tell me why your chapel
has
to have all the things you’ve requested right now.”
She looked at him as if he were a simpleton. “Because that’s how Eidon wants it.”
“And why do you believe that?”
“Because . . . What do you mean, why do I believe that?” She frowned at him. “That’s the way it’s done.”
“Says who?”
She stared at him. “Why, the kohali, of course!”
“Well, here it is the Mataian brethren who would most agree with you.”
She frowned uneasily for a moment, then her brow cleared and she shrugged. “Well, just because they do doesn’t make me wrong.”
