Shadow Over Kiriath (71 page)

It was during this time that he learned that his efforts had not been in vain. So far as Simon knew, Maddie, Carissa, and Trap had all escaped cleanly. The prisoner’s coach had stopped near the river and they’d been hustled out the unlocked back door to a barge that had taken them to a waiting galley, which had then rowed out of the bay under cover of the rain, heading for Chesedh.

Not the slightest hint had been leaked that Abramm had escaped— though Gillard had been made king upon his “death”—which argued for the fact that no admission would be made with respect to his sons, either. His enemies claimed the princes had been killed when taken from the palace, but Abramm was certain that if it were so, his tormentors would have shown him their small, lifeless bodies in their attempts to break him. And likely would have succeeded.

Thus, he chose to believe the boys still lived and, further, that they would soon be—if they were not already—reunited with their mother. As much as it tore at him not to be with them, and not to know for sure, even this much was a comfort.

When he was strong enough, they had set off again through tunnels and caves long compromised to the authorities, but which they managed to negotiate safely nonetheless, eluding the many guards that patrolled those dark reaches and coming at last to the city’s edge. From there they’d traveled by night, on foot, to a place just north of the Hennepen, where a horse and cart awaited them, and once more Abramm was forced to ride in the coffinlike space beneath the cart’s false bottom.

Eidon was with them on that busy road, for though they were searched at two different checkpoints, the false bottom passed muster. Which could have been due to the fact that it was carrying manure, an arrangement Abramm wasn’t sure he would ever forgive his uncle for.

When they crossed the Snowsong, Belmir had left them, not sure what he was going to do but intending to head back up to his old keep and spend some time in solitude and prayer. When they said good-bye, Abramm had given him a Star of Life to take with him, and he had accepted it. He’d stood there rolling the Star between thumb and forefinger for some time before finally tucking it into his satchel with a snort. “At this rate I might never make it to Haverall’s Watch.”

“I shall pray that you don’t,” Abramm said with a smile.

Belmir looked up at him, his gaze suddenly intense and troubled. Finally he said, “What you did that night beneath Wetherslea . . . I thought I had seen Eidon before. Thought that I knew him. But after that night . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head. “It is hard to face the fact that one’s entire life has been a waste,” he said quietly.

“And yet, so long as you live, it’s never too late to start afresh and make it count,” Abramm had responded.

They had stood there gaze to gaze for a long silent moment, until finally, wordlessly, his old Master turned away and disappeared into the darkness of the night.

Simon had driven the cart northeast out of the populous Kalladorne River Valley and into the rugged wilderness along the Upper Snowsong to a remote hunting lodge. They’d stayed there three months, hunting, fishing, playing uurka, and spending many a night in long conversations that inevitably took a spiritual turn. To Abramm’s surprise, Simon had brought copies of Eidon’s Words of Revelation, and though he was not as ready as Belmir, there could be no doubt the things he had seen—the things Abramm had endured for his faith—had worked a mighty change in him. He still had a difficult time accepting the Star Abramm offered him, though.

“If nothing else, it keeps the staffid away,” Abramm had told him with a grin. “And may even help protect you from the influence of Command or fearspells.”

And so Simon had taken it and slipped it into the pocket of his jerkin.

They had heard by then of the High Father’s order that Abramm’s name be expunged from all the governmental rolls, all the minutes of the meetings, and even from the histories and the genealogical records. The pictures that had been painted of him and of his wife and sons were burned. Her songs were banned and new ones written ascribing his achievements to others. It was now illegal to utter his name in public, and the punishment for disobedience included fines, imprisonment, beatings, and even the cutting out of the perpetrator’s tongue.

Simon intended to stay behind and work with those who opposed the new age of tyranny, but they both agreed Abramm’s appearance was far too conspicuous to blend in with the general populace. Besides that, he had to find his family.

Thus it was that he had left the hunting lodge on foot in midsummer, traveling cross-country and living off the bounty of the land. And that long, lonely walk had been a time almost sacramental—a communing with Eidon in ways he’d never known before, even as it marked his separation from his old life into a new, utterly unknown phase.

And now he had arrived at Highmount as the leaves were just starting to turn in the highest elevations, the pass through the Aranaak still open, though not for long. A wagonload of fellow refugees had arrived just before him, its passengers bound together by the dangers of their shared journey. He was a stranger among them. One looked at askance and with no small bit of wariness. Though he had been alone now for weeks, he had not really felt it, not really been aware of how little he had until now. His walking stick, his sling, and his battered rucksack with its single cup and pan, its water flask and flint, its thin, rolled blanket and two extra pairs of stockings. No guards, no attendants, no friends—not even a name. With his long, full beard and shaggy hair, and the limping, hunch-shouldered gait he affected when he was in company, few looked at him closely enough to notice the scars. And if they had, it would have not mattered, because as Maddie had often said, people saw what they expected to see. And no one expected to see the former king of Kiriath—dead these last five months of burning in the public square of Springerlan, his name expunged from public life and forbidden to be uttered—wandering on foot through the northern woods.

As he watched the others eating, laughing, and talking together, knowing he dare not join in for fear of bringing harm to them, the sense of loneliness became, for a moment, a crushing, almost unbearable weight.

“They will all desert you. . . . There will be none to help you. . . .”

He had not believed it could happen . . . but it had. Some because of betrayal or cowardice, but others had just been taken from him.

Suddenly the room became suffocating, and he went outside. There, his rucksack hanging over one shoulder, his staff in his hand, he walked a circuit of the yard, then climbed to the wallwalk, where a rising wind tugged at his cloak. Wandering along it for a ways, he stopped finally at a point where he could look south, across rolling waves of forest beneath an overcast sky. None of it was his anymore, and yet somehow it still felt as if it were. . . .

Not having heard anyone approach, he was startled when a voice spoke quietly at his shoulder. “That was quite a journey up from the river, wasn’t it?”

Abramm glanced at the man who now stood beside him, also looking south, his face hidden behind the edge of his cowl. “It was,” he said finally. Even if the stranger had taken him for someone else, they’d both come up from the river.

“I noticed you came in alone, though,” the man said. “And on foot.”

“Aye.” So he hadn’t taken Abramm for part of his group after all.

“Takes a lot of courage to walk this life alone. Though you’re hardly the first to do it.”

“No, I’m not.”
And I’m not alone, either, am I, Lord?
He sighed and leaned his forearms on the stone wall. “I’ve learned long ago, though, that Eidon sees a picture far bigger than we do. We don’t see what he sees, but in the end it is always much better than anything we could’ve planned.”

“That is true.”

Abramm let his eyes drift over the hills below, pockets of bright yellow jumping out from the green here and there. “I think I will be back here one day. . . .”

“Yes, I think you will be, too.”

He looked around, surprised, and the stranger met his gaze, a pair of dark and friendly eyes looking out of his weathered face. And it almost seemed he knew who Abramm was.

“Hey, up there!” called one of the men from the yard. “They say with the wind that’s sprung up we’d best leave soon t’ thread the pass before it snows. If ye want t’ come, ye’d best get yer baggage gathered up.”

“Thanks,” Abramm called down to him. “I’ll do that.”

He turned back to the man who had been beside him, but the stranger was already gone.

POSTLUDE

“HE WAS JUST SPOTTED
at Highmount Holding, sir,”
said Vesprit.
“Came in from the forest, alone.”

Hazmul stared through his apartment window at the lanternlit Grand Fountain courtyard below him. In the gloomy twilight, fine coaches rolled up to the palace entry one after the other to disgorge their satin- and jewel-bedecked passengers, attendees of the annual Harvest Ball.
“So . . . he
does
live.”

Behind him Vesprit displayed an admirable improvement in masking the vibrations of his uneasiness but was still not adept enough to escape notice.

“You are concerned he might return,”
Hazmul observed.

Vesprit’s uneasiness spiked and was swiftly veiled.
“He has surprised us many times, sir.”

“Perhaps. But he is alone now, and he’s suffered much—a suffering which has not ended even yet. And this time he has no friends to help. I do not think he will return.”

In the courtyard below, the coaches continued to roll up and then away, King Makepeace’s guests filing up the entryway stair in a near continuous line.

Hazmul snorted.
“Even if he does, what will it matter? In a year, maybe two, no one will even remember his name.”
He turned to his underling, smiling.
“We have won, Vesprit. Just as I promised.”