The Shadow Within (62 page)

Standing there, dressed in fine leather and wool, cloaked in dark blue embroidered with gold, and flanked by some of the highest lords and generals in the land, there was no question he was in charge. Not even the shieldmark, glittering defiantly between the open neck edges of his jerkin, could diminish him. If anything, it added to his charisma.

He has become all I ever hoped he would be,
she thought as she crossed the room toward him.
Wearing that kingly authority as if it were the most natural
thing in the world. And I’ll bet he doesn’t even realize it
.

He came around the table to face her, but this time she did not throw herself upon him, did not weep tears of joy and relief, though after all the struggle of getting here, all the dreadful fears, it seemed she should have. She’d gone from wanting never to see him again, to wishing for nothing else, to right now complete deadness. Which was not at all how she expected to feel in this moment.

When she said nothing, he took the initiative. “So you’ve come back.”

Pain laced the edges of his voice, springing from the old hurt she had inflicted and was, by her stoicism, continuing to inflict. Except, she had no desire to hurt him anymore, did not hate that shield on his chest at all . . . she simply couldn’t seem to make anything work. As if the whole situation was more than she was equipped to handle.
As with everything else, it seems
.

A crease formed between his level brows. “They tell me you have news of this bear marauding in the Goodsprings Valley.”

“It’s not a bear,” she said, finally breaking free of her silence.

He waited.

“It is a morwhol. At least that’s what Rhiad said—”

“Rhiad is with you!” Alarm and surprise opened his face. Like Simon, he did not ask her what a morwhol was.

“I think he’s dead,” she said. “The last time I saw them, the beast appeared to be . . .
absorbing
him.”

Abramm glanced at one of the men standing across the table from him, an older man with sharp eyes and short gray hair whom she did not recognize. “I think we’d better sit down, and you can begin at the beginning.”

And so she told of her time with Rhiad—how he’d come through the corridor with the little beast, kidnapped her, made her ride with him, and finally how she’d escaped, racing to reach Abramm in time to warn him. Except when she reached this part, she was certain he had already known it was coming.

“You say it cannot travel in the rain nor open daylight?” he asked her. They sat at the long table now—Abramm and herself, Uncle Simon, Ethan Laramor, and the other men, most of whom she did not recognize. There was also a young woman she did not know, and two armsmen, the latter standing back from the table, one of whom looked an awful lot like Trap Meridon.

“That’s right,” she replied in answer to Abramm’s question. “Nor will it touch running water. It will only jump over it or use a bridge.”

“So with the Brackleford bridge out,” said Ethan, “it’ll have to go upstream to cross. And with the flooding it won’t be a short trip. If the rain forces it to ground we’ll have an even bigger window. I doubt it will get here before tomorrow night, sir.”

“We’ll have time to find it, then,” said Abramm.

“Find it?!” Carissa squeaked, staring at him in horror.

He looked up from the map and cocked a brow. “You think I should leave it free to kill whomever it encounters as it pursues me?”

“Abramm, you cannot stop it.”

“No, I am the only one who
can
stop it.”

Her eyes dropped reflexively to the mark on his chest, the old anger rising. “Why does it always have to be
you
?”

“Because it was made for me. You said it yourself.” He leaned over the map again, running a finger along the blue line that represented the Snowsong. “Assuming Ethan’s right, we have a day to find it. Once we figure out where it might cross, we’ll have an idea of its route.”

Absorbed in his plans, he did not see his men exchange uneasy glances, but Carissa did and gave thanks that someone here had sense. Until Simon opened his mouth and made things even worse.

“My lord, we can’t possibly find it before noon tomorrow.”

Abramm’s head came up and he regarded his uncle gravely.
Noon tomorrow,
Carissa thought, suddenly sick again.
That’s when he’s supposed to face
Gillard! Fire and Torment! Eidon, he is
your
servant! Why are you letting all
these enemies come against him?

“You’re saying I should wait,” Abramm said quietly.

“I am.”

“And how many innocents will die because I’ve tarried?”

“How many more will die if you don’t?”

“If I’m dead at its hand, though, there won’t be a—” He broke off, glanced at Carissa, then said, “You must be exhausted, Riss. We’ll not keep you any longer. Lieutenant Merivale, will you escort the princess to her chambers?”

“Yes, my lord.” The man who looked like Captain Meridon stepped to her side and pulled back her chair as she arose.

As they ascended the stair, the conversation resumed, Simon quietly continuing with his point. “Sire, you’re set to win the crown for good tomorrow and end this war before it starts. Don’t throw that chance away. You know where this creature is right now, and that it is driven to seek you out. Let it come to you, then. The north banks of the upper Snowsong are mountainous and unpopulated. . . .”

Despite Carissa’s pretense of being too fatigued to climb the stairs quickly, his words fell out of earshot before he’d finished, and Lieutenant Merivale was there to ensure she didn’t go back and eavesdrop. He led her to her third-floor chambers without comment, where Elayne awaited her, having agreed to serve as her maidservant, while Cooper had been quartered in the barracks with the royal guard off the first floor.

Carissa was glad for someone to whom she could pour out her frustration at being cut off and dismissed, her warnings virtually ignored. “It’s just like when I found him in Esurh,” she railed. “He has his own plans and I’m not part of them.”

“My lady,” Elayne said when she’d finally run down, “Eidon’s hand is on him. Did you not see the banner of his coat of arms? Felmen says he wears both those devices on his body.”

Carissa looked up at her from where she sat in the chair by the fire. “So what are you saying? That Eidon will protect him? The way he protected Professor Laud? And Brenlan Throckmorton, while he was being tortured to death at the hands of the Gadrielites? Elayne, no one for whom a morwhol was made has ever survived the encounter.”

“I know. But you have done what you can do. And it is out of your hands.”

Carissa threw up her hands and turned away. “So what am I supposed to do? Just forget about it?”

“For now. And trust him. Know that he is worthy of that trust.” She smiled. “You’ll see.”

But Carissa only snorted and thought she’d seen quite enough to know just how worthy Eidon was of being trusted. But later, bathed, fed, and wearing the nightgown Elayne had brought down from Breeton, Carissa lay on the straw-mattressed bed in her chambers and stared at the ceiling. The fire flickered erratically, casting strange lights across the planking and rafters. Elayne, exhausted, had long since fallen asleep on her pallet by the hearth. No less exhausted, Carissa could not find slumber. Everything that had happened, everything that was set to happen, ran through her mind like an endless waking dream. After all her fears and struggles to get here, she’d changed nothing, and it left her feeling empty and confused.
Why did I have to come at all? Just
to have my nose rubbed in the fact that I’ve been wrong about Abramm and that
precious shield?

Certainly she had been wrong. Seeing him in the Great Room with his lords, seeing their deference to him, their admiration for him—
even Uncle
Simon!
—was a memory that surfaced over and over, often swiftly overlaid by more fearful images, but always returning. The quiet way he was determined to do whatever he had to do, regardless of what it cost him. She had hated that part of him in Jarnek. That sense of duty that had driven him back to face Beltha’adi when he could have fled with her to safety. Although in retrospect she’d come to realize that had they fled, neither of them would’ve left the SaHal alive, even apart from Rhiad’s treachery. It had been his courage and willingness to risk his life facing Beltha’adi that had saved not only the two of them but all the Dorsaddi, as well. And so it was here.

She rolled onto her side, straw crackling beneath her, pieces of it poking through the linen cover, and her gaze caught on the Terstan orb left on the bed table when her clothing was sent off to be cleaned. It glowed softly against the stained and pitted wood, its white light a stark contrast to the hearth fire’s reddish illumination. After a moment, she pushed up on one elbow and picked it up, remembering how upset she’d been in that cistern when she’d first seen the shieldmark on his chest. Shock, fury, grief. She had not understood how he could have done such a hateful thing to himself, for she had believed it would cripple him and drive him mad. If he ever returned to Kiriath, he would be ridiculed and humiliated. Instead, here he was at the head of an army determined to fight for him, revered by men who had given him their fealty. The shield she’d been so sure would ruin him had only made him stronger. Had, in fact, made him what he was.

Yes, she’d been wrong about it. Completely and utterly wrong. And it was humbling to have to admit it. Perhaps that was part of the reason she hadn’t wanted to confront him. Seeing him strong and whole and successful would not have reminded her so much of the gulf that lay between them as it would the fact that his new faith had not destroyed him. And if it had not done all the things she had said it would, what did she have to hold against it?

She rolled the orb between her fingers, studying its bright, clear light, and thinking about the recent events in her own life. Even though she couldn’t see the purpose in it, yet she saw the way it had been orchestrated. Was it just luck that Cooper and Elayne had seen her trail and followed? Happenstance that Heron had bolted straight toward them instead of a compass-full of points elsewhere? Was the rain that had chased away the morwhol last night a coincidence? Or the washed-out bridge that had forced it north up the Snowsong, or the Brackleford ferry pushing off just in time? Or was Someone’s hand behind it all?

She stared into the orb, recalling how it had stopped Rennalf from taking her to Balmark, how it had destroyed that horrid corridor, protected her from the morhol’s Command and maybe even from its claws. She’d thought it was Rhiad protecting her, but maybe there’d been someone else. Maybe she’d not been as alone as she’d believed.

“Go to your brother. I will make you a way.”

I only half obeyed that command,
she thought.
And everything went wrong
and it was miserable and horrible, and yet . . . here I am. Can you hear my
thoughts? Did you make me a way? But if you did, why? I don’t seem to have
anything to give to Abramm. And what does he have that I want?

Well, the last one was easily answered. He had purpose. He had a place in the world. People who loved and admired him. He had right now almost everything he’d ever wanted in life. And he had a relationship with the one whose Light lived in this orb.

Is that what I want?

The question hung in her mind, as bright as the orb itself, and she remembered the scar-faced man who had stood between her and the north gate at Highmount, barring her way as the ells had urged her on.
“I will let you go,”
he had said,
“if that is truly your wish.”
But it was not her wish at all.

The orblight beat against her face in a warm and soft caress, drawing her sight down into it. She frowned, peering closer.
Is that him?
Her heart began to thump.
Yes!

Light flared around her, clean and bright and clear, after all the darkness she’d endured. He stood before her, his dark eyes gentle and full of understanding. He knew what she had felt and feared and longed for. He
knew
. His orb burned against her palm, his power reaching out to her. And suddenly she
saw
. He was real and with her now, as he had been all along. Ignored, discounted, railed at, yet he had not abandoned her. Emotion welled in her— remorse, desire, wonder that he should care when she had not, wonder at what he offered her: a chance, finally, to belong. To be wanted and protected and loved, even when she had been so thoroughly unlovable.

Her fingers closed around the talisman. The stone pressed hard against her hand, blazing hot, as if it were melting into her palm. Her heart fluttered. Voices rose in chorus around her, too beautiful for words. He smiled at her with eyes both young and impossibly ancient, and warmth flowed into the hole in her soul—warmth and light of purest gold. A vast presence enfolded her and she rode on wings of joy, transported for a moment beyond time, and flesh, and all the hurt and terror she’d endured to a place where none of that mattered, all the cursing turned to indescribable blessing.

She returned slowly to herself, the parting gentle but firm, the sense of presence withdrawing until she was only herself again, sitting on her mattress in a room gone dim with the dying fire. Elayne still lay on her side before it, snoring softly. Carissa looked down at her hand, the chain still looped around her palm. The orb had vanished.

CHAPTER

38

Tonight, my Golden Prince. We come tonight, and we will have our due from
you
. The voice was dry, inhuman, tauntingly familiar.

Abramm jerked awake with a gasp. Darkness enveloped him, tainted with the scent of musty age and a hint of woodsmoke. It took him a moment to remember where he was: in bed in his chambers on the second floor of the keep at Stormcroft, the night before he was to fight Gillard for the crown. The night candle must have gone out, but Trap and Jared slept nearby. He could hear the whisper of their breathing in the silence now that the rain had stopped outside.