The Shadow Within (46 page)
“I know I saw
something,
” someone up ahead of Simon murmured.
“I didn’t. But Lewis did. He was closer.”
“Lord Faxton touched it and was not burned,” someone else said.
“It is a sign from above.”
“He is the King of Light! The Guardian-King!”
People swirled around him, their excitement growing as the story swelled and took on ever wilder forms. Simon stood where he was, bumped occasionally by those moving past him, yet hardly aware of them. A cold sick feeling congealed in his middle.
A halo of light enfolding him? Oh, please, no. Not that!
And yet he vividly recalled the day he had challenged Abramm about his claim of having renounced the Mataio.
“How can you expect me to believe it is
permanent? It’s not like you hold another faith in its stead!”
And Abramm had looked at him long and piercingly before turning away to contemplate the glass beneath his hand. In the long silence of his consideration that followed, was he wondering how much to tell?
Rhiad’s accusations. Gillard’s hoping. Abramm’s unwavering refusal to even humor Mataian requests . . . his open antagonism toward Prittleman. And all the other things that had happened: the voices he’d heard at Graymeer’s, the imagined assailant in his bedchamber, his shunning of all but a few personal servants.
The thoughts were piling up, making it hard to breathe. Simon had virtually turned his back on Gillard for this man, and now to find out he was nothing more than another Raynen?
Abruptly he came aware of someone speaking to him. It was Gwynne, asking if perhaps he might escort her back to her lodging. He very nearly swore at her, but captured his tongue and his frustration in time and assured her that he would, thinking perhaps a trip away from the palace would clear his head and make things seem less dire.
It did not. He returned as torn and distraught as he was when he had left, and after a period of time spent wandering halls now mostly deserted, found himself entering the anteroom of the king’s apartments. The guards wouldn’t let him go any farther, however, and were arguing about it when a disheveled Byron Blackwell emerged from the royal sitting chamber to assure him the king had not been poisoned, just overcome by the stresses of the day. “He’s sleeping peacefully, sir. No need to worry.”
“I should like to see that with my own eyes, if you please.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir. The king is very jealous of his privacy, and we could not violate his direct orders—”
“I don’t believe you, Blackwell,” Simon said quietly. “I believe I know exactly what he is doing right now, and it’s not sleeping. I demand to see him.”
Blackwell frowned. His eyes shifted uneasily behind the distorting lenses of his spectacles. Then he drew a breath and turned toward the door. “I will announce your request.”
“Which you and I both know will be a waste of time,” Simon growled, “since at the moment I suspect he cannot speak to anyone.”
Alarm crept into Blackwell’s face.
Simon went on. “I have seen these halos before, sir. On my father and on my brother, who was Abramm’s father. I know what they are.”
“Halo?” Blackwell chuckled as if relieved. “Is that what this is about? Sir, I assure you that was nothing. A trick of the light mixed with the people’s excitement. Nothing more.”
Simon held his ground, staring at Blackwell relentlessly. “If you will not let me see him, I shall have to address my frustrations and suspicions to my friends. Is that what you want?”
Blackwell stared back at him, his glasses reflecting the light in twin discs. He seemed unable to find his tongue.
“Oh, come, Blackwell,” Lady Madeleine said testily as she emerged from where she had been listening behind the half-open sitting room door. “At least fifty people saw it as we brought him here. And if the duke has already guessed, there is no point in putting him off.”
“Guessing is not the same as knowing for sure.”
“Well, with that remark, sir, you’ve just transformed the guess to a certainty anyway. Might as well go all the way.” She pulled the door open farther and cocked her head at them.
Blackwell capitulated with a sigh, stepping aside as Madeleine gestured Simon toward the open door.
Abramm lay on his back on the canopied bed of the royal bedchamber, stripped down to britches and hose, his body enfolded in a corona of white light, so bright one could hardly see his face. Simon stood at the king’s bedside, regarding him for a long time, shocked beyond words or feeling, despite the near certainty of his suspicions. After a while he sank into the chair Haldon brought for him and continued to stare. As if staring would somehow ease the awful pain in his breast. Or make the light go away. Or give him a clear vision of what he was supposed to do now.
Slowly his mind began to work again, throwing up vignettes of memory, one after the other in no particular order—Abramm and Gillard and Meren and Raynen. . . . In the end he found himself mostly reliving those last few moments of the ball, the way Abramm had handled himself in the attacks upon his life. The clock had just finished striking—he didn’t know how many times—when he said to Haldon, “Do you think he really might have been this White Pretender Lady Madeleine made the song about?”
Haldon stood beside him, hands clasped at his back. “I know he was, sir.”
And now, finally, Simon looked at him, surprised by the conviction in his voice. “How could you
know
that, Hal? Just because a man can throw you up against a wall—”
“I’ve seen the brand on his arm, sir.” He paused, his eyes going back to the form on the bed. “And the scars on his body. The light is fading now. If you wait a bit, you’ll see them, too.”
And so he waited, and the light did fade, and the lines of Abramm’s muscular torso emerged and on it, gleaming white around the golden shield, was a network of scars, both long and short, wide and narrow, clean-lined and ragged. More battle scars than Simon bore on his own body, and Abramm still a very young man.
The White Pretender
.
Comprehension shook him to his core.
How much of Madeleine’s song is
true?
Had he really stood and fought the great Beltha’adi to the death? Little Abramm, the skinny-legged boy who’d been the only student ever to rank lower than twenty-five in the Qualifying Order of Fence, who’d excelled at song and scholarship and refused his princely warrior training to take up the vows of peace and contemplation? And then run even from them. To survive the nightmare of slavery in a galley ship and the even greater nightmare of whatever training he must have received to fight in the Games.
The steel was there. And the stubborn Kalladorne will. Simon wondered how he had not seen it. How he could have been so completely wrong about this boy. And about Gillard, as well. For if there might have been question as to who was behind the initial assassination attempt tonight, Gillard had removed all doubt by attacking the king in full view of everyone, no pretending, no façade of scare tactics. If Abramm had not deflected his brother’s blade, he would be lying here dead, surrounded by mourners. It was a despicable thing Gillard had done. A crime worthy of death. A dishonoring to the family name far worse than anything Abramm had ever done.
Yet something in Simon would not let him give up on the boy. This was Gillard, whom he’d doted on since infancy, the six-year-old who’d told him he wanted to be the best swordsman in the land just to make Simon proud. Now he’d tried to kill his own brother in front of all the peerage, and Simon couldn’t seem to get his mind to match the deed with the person. Confusion roiled in a bitter, murky froth—guilt and regret mixed with disbelief and the cold brutal truths of life. Was some of this his fault? If he had resigned his position as Grand Marshall and refused to work with Abramm, might he have been able to bring Gillard to his senses? To have stopped this before it started?
And now what was he to do? Go back to Gillard? Stay with Abramm? He didn’t know. His loyalties had become more bitterly divided than ever, his sense of honor teetering on the verge of cracking apart. Even his confidence in his ability to rightly judge a man’s character lay in ruin.
Only as the last of the light faded from around Abramm’s body did Simon leave, and by then it was almost dawn. He trudged back to his quarters, feeling alternately miserable and completely empty, wanting only to fall asleep in his bed and awake to find it all a terrible dream. Instead, he found his servant Edwin awaiting him with a message that had come in hours earlier. Edwin didn’t know who it was from, for its wax wafer was sealed with a generic mark. He knew only that the person who brought it had stressed that Simon must read it as soon as he returned.
“Why didn’t you send someone out to find me?” Simon asked, turning the envelope over in his hands.
“He told me not to, sir. Though I did try. Discreetly, of course. No one seemed to know where you’d gone.”
Stepping away from the servant, Simon opened the envelope. It was from Harrady, requesting his presence at the man’s lodge at once,
regardless of when
you read this. Make sure you are not seen
.
It didn’t take much to deduce what this must concern. He tossed the letter into the fire, then stared at the flames, frozen with indecision. If he dallied, perhaps the choice would be made without him. . . .
Coward!
he thought with a grimace. Besides, was there really a choice to be made? As Simon had figured out the meaning of the corona of light on Abramm’s body, so would the Mataio, and likely soon. They’d force him to reveal what he was and remove him from the throne. Gillard would be reinstated, and all Abramm had done and planned would dissolve like mist in the morning.
The only real winner would be the Mataio.
Carissa and her party approached the town of Breeton nine days after leaving Highmount Holding, five after bypassing the ruins of Raven Rock. Those last five had been especially miserable—plagued with snow, rain, mud, and dwindling supplies. They saw no sign of Rennalf nor his men. No ells, no birds, no animals, and few travelers, though given the weather that wasn’t surprising. The farmsteads she’d hoped to shelter in had been intact, but deserted and emptied of foodstuffs. And as the snow turned to rain, dry wood became increasingly scarce, making their fires small at best. The last night they’d had no fire at all, sharing round their last portion of biscuit and washing it down with icy stream water which, even after most of the particulates had settled out, still tasted like dirt.
The ninth day had dawned like all the rest: cold, gray, and rainy, the clouds hanging low and thick above them, the trees dripping, the leafcovered road puddled with water. In retrospect Carissa wished now she’d chosen the Kerrey route, especially in light of the probability Rennalf really could use the Dark Ways—which she suspected were similar to the etherworld corridors of Esurh. If so, Cooper was right to fear she wouldn’t be safe from him until they reached the lowlands.
As for going to Springerlan, what was so awful about that, anyway? It was warm, civilized, populated, and as far from the Highlands as she could get and still be in Kiriath. Abramm was certain to be occupied with his kingly duties and unlikely to seek Carissa out, especially if he knew she didn’t want to see him. They’d been able to avoid each other in the confined cave system at Jarnek, after all. Surely they could continue to do so in the sprawling environs of Springerlan. Though, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she even wanted to avoid him anymore. For the part of her that longed to see him had been inexplicably gaining ascendance over the last few days. Perhaps it was escaping Highmount and the influence of the ells. Or spending nine days in the company of Elayne Cooper, who somehow always brought the conversation around to Eidon. Or perhaps it was Elayne’s observation back in Highmount that it wasn’t Abramm Carissa hated, but Eidon himself.
They had talked of that some on this journey, a word here, an exchange there. Never more than a few lines, but Elayne had made Carissa think.
Was
it Eidon she hated? She certainly had reason. He’d taken Abramm from her— twice—and also her mother and father and everyone else she’d ever cared about. He’d refused her a husband’s love, refused her the child she’d yearned for, and by that condemned her to humiliation and unending misery in Balmark. Then he’d refused to let her save Abramm—from slavery or the Terstans— and had turned her own travels in search of fulfillment to an extended exercise in futility. Wherever she turned, it seemed, he was there to slam her down again. What else could she do but decide there was no just creator directing things? It had to be fate or evil, or maybe just people randomly running up against one another, making each other miserable. Whatever the answer, if Eidon did exist, it seemed he had no hand nor interest in any of it and must be occupied elsewhere.
“Or perhaps he is simply trying to get your attention,”
Elayne had suggested.
But if that were true, then why had Carissa not been marked with the shield when she’d tried to take the star back in Jarnek? She hadn’t voiced that question to Elayne, for to ask meant admitting what she had done and what had come of it, and she wasn’t ready to expose that humiliation yet. She’d abased herself before him and he’d rejected her. Made herself willing to take on the curse that was his shieldmark for the sake of her brother and been refused. Eidon had already gotten her attention, only to reject it outright. If she did hate him, it was only because he hated her first.
