The Shadow Within (21 page)

Gillard was transfixed. “What do you mean, ‘take care of him’?”

Rhiad smiled. “I know of your secret plans, the men you have hired, the orders you’ve given them. But their attempts will fail, just as the first attempt has failed. No mere man will get past
his
guard. Besides, assassination is too good for him.”

“Gillard, this is treason,” Simon said, tugging at Gillard’s arm. “You cannot talk to this man.”

“A moment, Uncle.”

Rhiad paid Simon no mind. “I need only a few small things,” he hissed, his face drawing near to Gillard’s. “A lock of hair, a drop of blood . . . a few sovereigns.”

The words whispered into silence. Rhiad smiled.

Gillard blinked, shook his head slightly, then frowned. “You’re mad.”

Simon stepped between them. “Away with you, sir,” he said to the Mataian. “We want no part of this treasonous talk.”

“BE SILENT!”
Rhiad snarled, the amulet blazing at his throat.
“AND
MOVE ASIDE.”
His voice was still hushed, but it carried the power of a battle cry, and Simon felt his mouth close. In the same moment, he stepped back to Gillard’s side without any conscious intent to do so, and though alarm spun ever more wildly through him, he could not make himself move nor speak to act on it.

Rhiad’s voice reverted to its insinuating croon. “What I have planned for your brother, my prince, is much more fitting than simple assassination. We will ruin him—crush that fine young body, strip the flesh from that handsome face, cripple that famous sword arm. And should he survive, so much the better, for life will only be a torment to him. People will shrink away from him, women will shudder at his touch. He will lose everything, my prince! His beauty, his strength, his position. Everything!”

It was a living nightmare. Simon could hardly breathe, but he could watch and listen and feel in a way he had never felt before. Horrified and furious at what this madman threatened to do against one of the royal family on the one hand, cringing inwardly at what he’d already done to Gillard on the other. The boy’s pale eyes had glazed and his mouth hung open, breathless, the tip of his tongue just touching his upper lip.

“I’ll even let you watch,” Rhiad said, stepping closer than ever. Something metallic gleamed in his hand, down in the shadow between them. “I’ll even let you participate. . . . All I need is a lock of hair. . . .” In slow deliberate movements, his eyes never leaving Gillard’s, he lifted the knife he had produced and cut a pale blond curl from alongside Gillard’s face, eliciting not the slightest response from his victim. He stuffed the curl into his robe and went on.

“And a bit of blood . . .”Nowhe lifted Gillard’s left hand in his own, palm up. The knife flashed up, pulling Simon’s eyes to it like filings to a lodestone. Then it froze as the Mataian’s head jerked up and he peered intently over Gillard’s shoulder.

Simon heard steps approaching in the corridor behind them.

Rhiad dropped the prince’s hand. “You will remember nothing!” he hissed, pulling the cowl back over his head. “
Nothing!”
His amulet flared, and he whirled away as Laramor’s rough voice intruded into the tableau. “Here! What’s going on? Who are you?”

But the madman had already vanished into the shadows. Laramor stopped beside the two Kalladornes, looking at them in concern. “That sounded like Master Rhiad.”

Gillard did not answer him, looking dazed and lost. And Simon could not help him much, struggling to understand how he knew that Ethan was right—it had been Master Rhiad—when he hadn’t even seen the man’s face.

“Simon?”

“He just approached us out of the shadows,” Simon said. “Waiting for us, I guess. Whatever he wanted, he never got that far.”

Laramor frowned at him, then glanced again at Gillard. “What happened to your hair, my lord?” He gestured at the short lock dangling on the young man’s brow.

Gillard fingered it with an expression of bewilderment. “I guess it must’ve been cut in my contest with Tedron this afternoon.”

“Really? I don’t recall seeing it at dinner.” Ethan’s eyes darted once more to the shadows where Rhiad had disappeared.

“Well,” said Simon, “he’s gone now. And I’m off to Briarcreek at dawn. If I don’t get at least a little sleep before then, I’ll be falling off my horse all day. If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen?”

__________

Across the palace, in the semi-darkened bedchamber of the royal apartments, Abramm’s stomach growled and he rolled onto his back, opening his eyes in frustration. He could not sleep. It seemed as if everything he had learned and seen and experienced today had been dumped into the pot that was his mind, where it boiled around in an endless, random tumble of images and feelings and fears. Already he’d lain here over an hour, and now he was hungry, as well.
Perhaps you should give up and try to go through those Table
Records you asked for
.

He groaned. The last thing he wanted was more information!
Well, then
read the Words or review your notes. It’s better than lying here thrashing
.

He closed his eyes again, hoping maybe
now
the drowsiness would come. Only to reopen them a few moments later in the acknowledgment it was a lost cause. Sighing, he sat up, tossed back the covers, and swung out of the bed. As he pulled on the breeches left draped on the bedside chair, movement across the room drew his eye to the full-length mirror beside his wardrobe. As he straightened so did the man in the mirror, staring back at him with a stern, suspicious glare.

With his hair so short and that trim, old-style beard edging his mouth and jaw, his own reflection still gave him a jolt of surprise every time he saw it. At least now his clothes were merely commonplace, not the tailored silks and brocades a king must wear. But even in the linen undershirt, his shieldmark glinting between the untied open neck slit, he looked like a stranger.

He had changed in Esurh, and he thought he understood that. It was one of the reasons he’d come back. Now he was changing again, no longer the White Pretender, no longer the mysterious monster-hunter promising adventure and riches, nor even the lost prince returning to claim his birthright. Now he was king.

King of Kiriath.

For a moment he could hardly breathe. Awe. Wonder. Disbelief. And sheer, unadulterated terror. They clamped around his chest and held him motionless. He was riding those winds of destiny again, carried even now to the place Eidon had prepared for him, yet it still felt wrong. As if it were something someone else should be doing and he but an imposter soon to be found out and exposed.

But you are not an imposter,
he thought at the reflection.
You are king, and
this
is
your destiny. The Pretender was only a preparation
.

Then why does it feel so uncomfortable?

He turned from the mirror, padding barefoot to one of several tall windows, drapes open to the night.

And why do I feel so inadequate?

A blanket of yellow lights spangled the valley below him, cut through by the great dark swath of the River Kalladorne. Nine bridges arched over its width, their night lanterns casting evenly spaced circles of warm illumination along their lengths, a few night-lit barges drifting beneath them.

Terstans, Chesedhans, Gadrielites, courtier politics, grand balls, flirty young ladies, trustworthy councilors, war, rebellion, border raids, a crippled economy . . . So many problems to solve, so many options, so many people . . . and so many, many places to fail. His choices could bring success or disaster—and for all the glut of information he’d received, he still did not have enough to guide him.

Dare he trust Blackwell? Should he cancel the parties and symphonies and plays? Arrest Gillard on suspicion of assassination? Risk telling Simon his most precious and dangerous secret?

That, above all, haunted him. He remembered too well the look of horror on Carissa’s face when she’d first seen his shieldmark, and he lived even now with the knowledge that it had driven her from his life. And
she
had started out loving him—sacrificing two years of her life to rescue him from slavery— whereas Simon had never loved him at all.

The perpetual hint of revulsion had been missing from his expression tonight, though, a realization Abramm made only now as he sorted through the memory. A realization that filled him with almost as warm a glow as Blackwell’s incredible assertion:
“I think he favors you.”
Was it possible? And if it was, did he wish to jeopardize it by unveiling truths he knew the man could not appreciate? Wouldn’t it be better to prove himself first, as Trap had done with Abramm himself? That would take time, though. Time he might not have, with Rhiad shrilling accusations and Gillard already prying at the edges of his secret. Was this pressure actually Eidon’s hand, pushing him in a direction in which he was reluctant to move? Or was it merely another worldly distraction that appealed to his own desire to have it over with?

He sighed his frustration, fogging the window in front of him.
My Lord
Eidon, it’s obvious you’ve put me here. But now what? For all I know you may
not even want Simon to be my ally
.

But once more all he received was an inner silence that was growing increasingly familiar.
I need to get to a Terstmeet,
he thought. By now he’d read his notes a hundred times, and they’d become so familiar he could quote them all verbatim. Reading them again would generate no answers, not like hearing the words straight from the mouth of the kohal as he spoke to the gathered Terst. When those words spoke precisely to whatever private dilemma Abramm wrestled with, or when they came shaped as a conversational answer to a question he’d asked earlier in prayer, that was when Eidon’s voice was most clear to him. When the answers just drifted up in his own mind, he was never sure they weren’t the result of some part of himself providing what he wanted to hear—or at least thought he
should
hear.

His stomach growled again, the hunger pangs increasingly insistent. After the ambush, and the fuss surrounding it, he’d been late getting back, then too nervous about the reception to eat a proper dinner. The decision was catching up with him now.

Opening the bedchamber door, he nearly tripped over young Jared, sprawled asleep in a chair against the study’s wall, legs outstretched, an open red-bound book facedown in his lap. He looked up groggily.

“Jared!” Abramm exclaimed, embarrassed not only for nearly having fallen on the boy, but for the wild aggression that had surged through him in his surprise. “What the plague are you doing here? Have you no bed?”

The boy scrambled to his feet, white-faced, fumbling to keep hold of the book while bowing at the same time. “Y-yes, sir. But I thought you might have need of me.” His gaze darted to Abramm’s chest and away again, a reminder that the neck slit of Abramm’s blouse remained untied, the shieldmark fully visible between its open edges.

A wave of horror doused the fire of Abramm’s irritation, followed by chagrined relief. Had he not stumbled over the boy, he’d have walked straight into the sitting chamber and one more person would suddenly have become privy to his secret. And surely adding Blackwell to the list was enough for one day.

Regaining his poise, he addressed the boy more civilly. “As it happens, I do have need of you. Fetch me some bread and cheese from the kitchen. And a pot of cider, too.”

The boy bowed again, stammering his acquiescence, his gaze darting to Abramm’s shieldmark and away again, as if he could not keep from looking and at the same time couldn’t stand to look. Abramm wondered if he might not be the first Terstan Jared had ever known. At least openly. So far he had only given thought to the dangers of the boy revealing the secret, not what he might think of it all himself.

But already Jared was rushing off to do as he’d been bidden. When he returned, Abramm had retired to the desk in his study, reading through the scroll of Amicus in the copy of the First Word he’d found in his personal library. Jared set the tray of food on the desk, then asked if there would be anything else, his gaze darting skittishly to the shieldmark still visible behind the untied neck slit. Abramm said there was not, but as the boy turned away he reached to snatch the book now tucked into the back of his breeches. “You were reading this earlier, weren’t you? Ah,
Alain’s Aerie
. A good tale.”

Surprise superseded the boy’s wariness. “You’ve read this, sir?”

Abramm grinned. “About five times, I believe.” He handed the book back.

“
Five
times?” Jared’s standoffishness dissolved in the excitement of finding a shared passion. “I’ve only read it twice, but surely it is the greatest book ever written.”

Abramm’s smile broadened. “You’ve not read
Aerie
’s sequel, then.”

Jared’s eyes widened. “Sequel?”

“It must still be in the royal library. I’ll find it for you tomorrow.”

“Oh. Thank you, Sire!” His face glowed with excitement. Then his eyes dropped back to the mark, and uncertainty washed it away.

This time Abramm did not let it go. “Have you never seen one before?”

“Sir?”

Abramm gestured at his own chest. “A Terstan’s shieldmark.”

All the blood drained from Jared’s face. “No, sir. Only heard about them.”

“And what did you hear?”

The boy’s eyes flicked up to his, to the shieldmark, to the chamber at Abramm’s back, and finally to the floor. “That you serve the Dark One and drink the blood of goats and work evil spells to snare the unwary. . . . Wild tales, sir. Probably not true.”

“Mmm.” Abramm studied him, remembering himself at this age.
I would
have been aghast. Horrified. In fear for my life. He doesn’t seem so bad as that
. “Do you serve the Flames, then?”

“Yes, sir.” Jared continued to stare at the floor, standing rigidly, book clutched one-handed to the side of his chest. “Sort of, sir. My aunt and uncle make me.”

“Ah.” Abramm leaned forward, folding his hands atop the open First Word. “You have many questions, I think,” he ventured. “Perhaps you would like to ask some of them.”