Shadow Over Kiriath (5 page)

They were supposed to burst out with a cheer of acclamation at this point. Instead, the herald’s voice faded into an accusatory silence that instantly returned Abramm’s attention to the crowd. The Mataians stood in the first rank across the forestage from him, closed-mouthed and smirking, their arms crossed upon their chests. His gaze drifted to the people beyond them, shock stealing his breath. Would they refuse to accept him? Would this crowning be over before it even started?

Then a single voice rang out: “I accept him.” A few echoed it, then more, the numbers gradually increasing until the majority of those present had approved. But it was a lukewarm acclamation, more dutiful than heartfelt, and it left him profoundly shaken. He turned to cross the granite toward the Robing Station just below the royal box, where the Keeper of the Regalia and his deputies waited. His train hissed loudly in the silence, and hostility pressed at him from every quarter, so that his stomach churned and his scars burned hotter than ever.

As he drew up before the Keeper of the Regalia, Lord Fortesque, the two deputies came round behind him to remove his scarlet cloak. Fortesque held a stiff floor-length garment supposed to represent Eidon’s Light, though it looked more like the wire mesh garment Abramm had suffered through the rehearsals with this last week. His cloak removed, Abramm turned toward the Robing Chair, seeing peripherally the nobles still standing in the royal box behind it. Muffled coughs and low creaks occasionally broke the silence as Fortesque slid the robe’s stiff sleeves up Abramm’s left arm first, then his right. At last it settled onto his shoulders, suddenly fluid and supple as if it were made of heavy silk. Startled and a little irked they’d made him use the awkward and uncomfortable practice garment, he turned his back to the chair and saw all three of the officials staring at the robe in open-mouthed surprise. Only then did he realize the wire practice robe really had borne a close approximation to the original. Until today.

He sat in the simple wooden chair and the robe swirled like water around him, sending a chill of wonder up his spine. Meanwhile those in the royal gallery sat down in a symphony of creaking and rustling, followed by the rest of the audience in a vast, extended susurration. Abramm did not think that any in the audience, save perhaps those nobles closest to the front of the box, had noticed the robe’s change.

He eyed the white gold weave draped over his thighs. What did it mean? Would he have Eidon’s special protection today?

Laughter erupted in his skull, high-pitched and mocking.
Eidon’s protection! How naïve. . . . How presumptuous. . . .

The voice drew his eye to the tall, narrow Coronation Chair, now forward of his position on the stage. On a shelf beneath the velvet-cushioned seat lay the slate-colored stone of the border lords, placed there to symbolize the crowned king’s authority over those lands as well as Kiriath. The chair’s solid wooden sides and back hid it from the main audience, but he could see it clearly. And the moment he focused upon it, a blue light chased across its surface, then coalesced into a fuzzy glow at the stone’s heart, alternately revealed and obscured by shifting veils of darkness. His chest constricted with shock: a rhu’ema lived in the Hasmal’uk stone!

How could no one have noticed that? True, the chair’s shelf had lain empty during rehearsals, the stone brought out from the Jewel House only this morning. But since then, at least a dozen of the Terstans who were part of his royal guard had been down here securing the place. How could they all have overlooked such a menace?

And menace it was, waiting for him to sink right into its lap.

Light’s grace! I can’t sit on that thing!

But to refuse would make it appear as though he had been chased off, the very sign his enemies had predicted. . . .

My Lord, what do I do?

The ceremony marched onward without regard for his concerns. Fortesque brought him the Coronation Ring, anointed him with the oil, and finally laid the jeweled sword upon his open, outstretched hands, none of which evidenced anything close to the change that had been wrought in the robe. By then fear had gained a hold again, churning like a restless serpent in his belly. He was so rattled he hardly heard Fortesque’s charging of the duties of the sword and uttered his own avowal purely by rote before sliding the sword straight into his empty sheath. Shocked faces betrayed the hideous breech of protocol—he was supposed to have handed the sword back immediately after his avowal. Suddenly it no longer mattered.

Whatever disasters he had envisioned for this day, none were as potentially devastating as this. And there was no way out, for now he must approach the Coronation Chair and take his seat to be crowned. Protocol already in shambles, Abramm risked a glance toward the audience. The white-robed Mataians sat stiffly along the front row, leaning toward him, eyes ablaze with the same baleful scarlet as their amulets. Above them darkness congealed in the intricate weavings of the ceiling beams. And in the stone beneath the Coronation Chair the blue fire burned brightly.

Reluctantly he crossed the stage to the chair, pausing before it to stare at the tall, dark-wood back with its carved images of Alaric’s coronation, its heavy side-pieces, its red velvet cushion, all gilt with the blue light. The rhu’ema laughed in his mind.
I have you! I have you!
it squealed like some vicious child at play.

You have to sit down,
he told himself.
Surely the change in the robe is Eidon’s promise of protection.

Just as he protected you from the morwhol?
He cut off the bitter question at once, uncertain whether it had originated with him or elsewhere.

A mutter swept the audience. No doubt Bonafil was on the verge of calling out his denunciation. A quick glance showed the lowering darkness had obliterated the ceiling above the dangling banners, boiling out of itself and flickering with multicolored ribbons of light.

Abramm made himself turn around, his back to the audience now, an uncontrollable tremor in his gut. Silence gripped the chamber.

I’m not ready for this,
he told himself. He could feel the people’s growing concern, the rhu’ema’s cackling triumph. The desire to flee swept over him— a wild, unthinking compulsion riding the memory of the morwhol’s claw dragging through his face when he’d trusted. He’d
trusted
! And what had it gotten him?

You have to sit down, Abramm. You have no other choice
.

And so he sat. And the darkness took him, as he’d feared it would. The great chamber dimmed to near invisibility as old terrors arose from the grave of his memory: being pinned to the stable floor by Gillard’s friends, helpless to stop them from smearing him with horses’ dung; standing enchained and naked on the Qarkeshan beach, helpless to stop himself from being sold into slavery; helpless to stop the morwhol’s claws from tearing through his cheek, or Shettai from bleeding out her life on that Xorofin ledge. . . . How could he protect a kingdom when he couldn’t even protect the woman he’d loved? When he couldn’t even protect himself?

A dark mist coiled around him, pinning his arms, squeezing his chest. Spangles of light twitched at the edges of his vision. Someone—it had to be Fortesque—loomed up before him, his form pulsating with the pale white glow of Terstan Light. The Keeper of the Regalia was Terstan? Abramm hadn’t known. . . . Could Fortesque sense what was happening? Could he help? And where was Maddie? Surely she must know what was happening. Why didn’t she help him?

The dark coils squeezed him tighter, leeching his strength so that he sat weak and shaking, fearful he would be unable to hold even the scepter in what was normally his strong right hand, while his ruined left quivered with the agony of reignited spawn spore. Bonafil and Prittleman were right. He really wasn’t Eidon’s choice, after all. What people would ever want a scarred and crippled weakling as their king? Or one as flawed in soul and spirit as he?

Despite all your attempts at devotion, you still can’t make yourself submit to him, can you? Still can’t make yourself really trust him
.

Distantly Fortesque intoned the litany for presenting the Scepter of Rule, a long thin rod now floating in front of Abramm, one end occluded by a lump of darkness.

You let the Shadow have you constantly,
the condemning inner voice went on.
You have no strength of will. No wonder your wounds festered. No wonder everything’s gone wrong. Why should he bless you when you’re so faithless? After all the time you’ve spent poring over his words, you should be strong in the Light. But look at you. You’re a disgrace and an embarrassment
.

Shame twisted within him. It was true. He failed constantly, was failing now, in fact, and surely after all this time he shouldn’t—

Fortesque laid the scepter into his weak and shaking hands, which somehow Abramm had raised from the chair’s armrests unaware. He stared at the official’s shimmering figure as disembodied voices buzzed in his ears. The cool rod thrummed against his palms, reminding him that he was supposed to transfer it to rest along his right arm. But the voices were strong upon him, deriding him, urging him to lower his fingers just enough to let the implement fall, for surely he was not worthy of carrying it.

Behind him he sensed a flare of triumph and a sudden hardening of decision. Bonafil was about to stand. . . .

And somehow the rod came to lie along Abramm’s arm, right where it was supposed to.

The Fortesque ghost disappeared, then wavered back into view carrying a thick clot of shadow. The orb! It must be the Orb of Tersius. The orb Abramm was going to drop the moment Fortesque laid it in his hand. That would roll off his palm and shatter on the granite beneath his feet.

Fortesque held out the clot. The buzzing increased and the shadow coils tightened further, so that Abramm’s breath came now in small pantings. Bizarre images flooded his mind—glowing spheres hanging in darkness, trees big as towers, strange, monstrous creatures walking among them. He felt the frenzied eagerness of the thing in the rock poised to invade his flesh and told himself that was not possible. The Words promised he could not be taken with the Light living inside him. . . .

Somehow through all the confusion, he saw his left hand extend, palm up as if nothing were amiss, felt something cool and slick and heavy settle into it. And stay there.

It began to dawn on him that Eidon
was
working here. That what he was doing, he did regardless of rhu’eman distractions and threats—and Abramm’s own failure to withstand them. . . . And rightly so. Neither his life nor his service had ever been about his own ability and strength. Whatever his failures, they’d all been dealt with on that Hill of Reckoning outside Xorofin, and Eidon was never the one who accused and condemned. Only his enemies did that. The rhu’ema. The Shadow within him. Eidon already knew what he was and had long since forgiven him.

As Abramm’s frame of thinking shifted, it was as if scales fell from his eyes. The clot of darkness dissolved, revealing the smooth milk-crystal sphere that was the orb lying in his palm. As he stared at it, its surface brightened steadily until it became a globe of brilliant white.
A kelistar?
he thought, squinting at it.
Why confer upon me a kelistar? And why is it so heavy?

He looked up. Fortesque had been replaced by a lean sober-faced man with close-cropped white hair and a face scarred even worse than Abramm’s. Abramm hardly noticed the scars, however, caught by the man’s eyes, which were dark as the night sky and every bit as deep. Familiar eyes.
My Lord Tersius?

He should not be sitting here, staring dumbfounded. He should be out of this chair and falling on his face. But he could not move—even though, he realized suddenly, the thing in the rock had released him, retracting its black coils down into the stone, where it huddled in abject terror, hoping to avoid notice.

Tersius vanished, and here was Fortesque again, holding the crown aloft between them as he intoned the litany of the crowning ritual. Light gleamed on its golden base and arches, reflected softly from the gigantic pearl at its top, and flickered in the myriad of precious stones. Abramm had seen his father crowned with this artifact and was now, incredibly, about to be crowned with it himself. His breath caught and his heart fluttered as Fortesque concluded his litany and called upon Abramm to take the Oath of Rule. Once he’d done so, Fortesque spoke the ritual’s final words:

“Remember always from whom you receive this crown: the King of kings and Lord of lords who grants all earthly power. You are but his hand. And you answer always to him. To whom much is given, from him shall much be expected.”

Abramm watched Fortesque’s arms lower toward him, felt the crown settle onto his head, pressing heavily into his brow. Suddenly the chair shuddered beneath him and a loud crack rent the silence. With a cry of rage, blue fire corkscrewed around him as the creature that had lived in the stone fled upward toward the shadowed ceiling. Fortesque stepped back, startled, and in the gallery spectators looked upward, murmuring in surprise, though Abramm doubted any had seen it as fully as he had.

And here was Tersius again, standing before him as Fortesque retreated to the back of the stage. Abramm felt the Light within him now, strong and warm and clear, though apparently none of the spectators could see that, either. He frowned.
If I truly am your choice, Lord, why won’t you make that clear to the people I’m supposed to rule?

“And why are you ever seeking to make your business that which is not your business?”

Abramm felt the blood rush to his face.
Forgive me, Lord.

“You’re supposed to stand and face them all now.”

Thoroughly befuddled, Abramm did so, dropping neither staff nor orb, though the crown bore heavily upon his brow. Leaving the chair, he strode around it to the front of the stage where for the first time all those in the audience would see their king crowned. The herald was supposed to announce his name and the multitude cheer their new king, but no one moved and the herald said nothing.