The Shadow Within (64 page)
He frowned at her. “I don’t believe in luck,” he said. “I didn’t think you did, either.”
She bit her lip and looked down again, her face flushing. A moment she hesitated, then thrust the soft folds into his hands. “So take it for love, then.”
And with that she fled, leaving him standing there, staring after her in astonishment, the white scarf dangling from his fingers.
“Take it for love?”
Surely he’d not heard that right. And yet the memory of her words sent a warm rush of emotion tingling through him. It lasted but an instant, overtaken by that chilling sense of being watched and stalked. He didn’t have much time.
He looked down at the scarf, not knowing what to do with it. Should he stuff it in his sack? Tie it about his waist, where it might get in his way? Finally he gave up and stuffed it into his jerkin, aware of a faint scent of sage and lemongrass as he did.
Then he was striding for his horse and his destiny.
An armorer awaited at Warbanner’s side with the broadsword and pike Abramm had asked for. The man helped him fasten the sword harness over his chest and shoulders, adjusting it so he could easily reach back and pull it free of its scabbard. The pike was secured in a sheath tucked out of the way under his right stirrup leather.
“You know how to use these, sir?” the man asked after Abramm had swung into the saddle.
“The sword, yes. The pike. . . ?” Abramm gave him a grin. “I’m sure I can figure it out.” And then he was off, trotting through the sleeping camp, down the steepening slope to the gate in the inner wall and on across the larger outer yard to the main gate. He was surprised not to have seen Trap again, and a little disappointed not to have the chance to say good-bye. But it was all happening too fast. He had given the man quite a list of tasks to complete, and no doubt he’d had to argue Shale Channon into complying. At least he appeared to have been successful. Although Abramm wouldn’t be entirely confident of that until he cleared the camp without seeing them.
He came out of the barbican and continued down one of the long lanes that radiated through the host encamped outside the castle, still at a trot, unwilling to rouse the men with the noise of Warbanner’s gallop or risk running someone down in the dark. Thus by the time he’d reached the edge of camp, he felt almost as impatient as his horse and was relieved to nudge the animal into a gallop.
Flying across the dark, ruin-littered fields, it wasn’t long before he realized he was being followed and glanced back to find a veritable troop riding in his wake. Now he knew why he’d not seen Trap nor Channon nor any other of his personal guardsmen in the moments before he’d left. Irritated, he pulled Banner to a stop and turned him to face his pursuers, now pulling up likewise, scattering about him in a rough semicircle. Small kelistars flared into existence, balanced on palms and saddle humps, and he stared around at a group of familiar, and by now beloved, faces: Trap, of course, Shale Channon, Ethan Laramor, Everitt Kesrin, Will Ames, and several other of his personal guard, in addition to Lords Foxton and Whitethorne.
“What is this?” Abramm demanded, Warbanner tossing his head and prancing impatiently at the delay. “I told you I wanted no escort.”
“Nevertheless you have one, sir,” said Captain Channon.
“You have jobs back in the camp. The men will need you. The people will need you. And you’ll be no help to me, anyway.”
“We can be witnesses of your courage, sir.”
“I don’t
need
any witnesses of my courage.”
Plagues! There probably won’t
be any courage to witness!
“And you’ll just provide more targets for it to strike at.”
“They say it will be focused on you, sir,” said Foxton.
“Yes, and after it kills me, it will go for all of you. Especially for you, since it will know you are men that I care about.”
“Yes, Sire,” Trap said. “But Kohal Kesrin says that in killing you, it will have killed that part of itself that is most alive and thus become vulnerable to the blades and power of other men. Especially if it’s already been weakened in battle.”
Abramm scowled at Kesrin. “You know this for fact?”
“It is what I believe the Words teach, sir,” Kesrin said with a respectful nod. “Though, admittedly, I know of no instance in which my theory has been tested.”
“Then it could all end in ruin.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s a risk we are willing to take,” Trap interjected. He paused as Abramm’s gaze came back to him. “We might well be able to see it’s slain, my lord. If you cannot.”
Abramm stared hard at him, shocked to discover he had no argument for that. He let his gaze slide over them again, one by one, angry that Trap should have thought of this and that he himself could think of no rebuttal. How could he turn them down now, realizing that if he should fail—an all too likely possibility—hundreds of lives could be saved by their presence?
“Very well,” he relented. “But keep your distance until it’s obvious I’m finished. There’ll be no leaping in to help me—you all know there’s nothing you can do until I’m dead.”
“We know, sir,” said Trap.
A moment more he regarded them, then wheeled Warbanner and launched him up the slope onto the remains of the ancient road that skirted the northern edge of the valley. Still in fairly good shape, the road was grassgrown and wet with rain but smooth enough. They kept the horses to a canter, and the clash of stone and hoof thundered up around them. While a slower pace would have been less likely to attract the attention of enemy patrols, time was running out. More and more Abramm saw the night through the morwhol’s eyes as the beast came up the pass from the other side. It ran with an eagerness he had not sensed before, like a hound hot on the scent of its prey, for it knew he was coming to meet it and already was filling his mind with visions of what it would do to him.
He clung to the Light and turned them aside, one after the other. Madeleine’s words held like a shield before them.
“I don’t believe it will
end as you say.”
Gradually the morning dawned around them. Gnarled, black tree-shapes emerged from the murk. The clouds hung low overhead and drifted through the trees. To their left, the land ascended sharply and disappeared into the clouds. To the right lay the valley floor, the camps of the two opposing armies mostly hidden in mist. Both sides were already stirring, but Gillard’s was much more active than Abramm’s.
They entered a stand of spruce and emerged at the mouth of the steepwalled canyon that led up to the pass from this side. A rush of brown water tumbled out of it in a boulder-strewn channel that crossed under the road here, spanned by the crumbling stonework of a Tuk-Rhaalan bridge, still sufficiently intact to be serviceable. They clattered across it and circled the base of the long flat-topped knoll that extended into the valley. Crumbling walls and pillars crowned its terraced top, their heads cloaked in clouds that were once more spitting rain.
This was the Temple of Dragons, if he recalled the map correctly. The road wound around this knoll, then switchbacked up the slope beyond it into the canyon itself. He had no idea what he would find there—the road might be impassable. Regarded as a place of Shadow ruled by ells, people had long avoided it, so the maps showed nothing.
Then, as if triggered by his thoughts, he saw again through the eyes of the beast, now racing up the opposite side of this pass to meet him—
Rock walls soared closely around a steeply ascending road, lined with stone
shrines. Each held a robed statue, wreathed in individual hues of light. Lavender, blue, red, amber—they flashed past as the beast galloped upward. Its bloodlust
burned so hotly now, it could not keep itself quiet, its triumphal yowls echoing
back and forth up the canyon and down the other side
.
Abramm blinked free of the link as he rounded the base of the temple knoll, the beast’s cries coming down as a distant echo in his ear. Warbanner flung up his head with a snort, but Abramm kept him on track. Setting his jaw against his own rising fear, he rode on, his men thundering after him. The clouds hung lower here, new veils rising from the moisture-soaked ground.
He was slowing Banner to adjust to the reduced visibility, when directly ahead he spied horsemen behind the parting mists, ranged ahead of him to block the road. A command rang sharply through the morning quiet, and more riders rode out of the mist into position along the road, closing off any avenue of escape to the valley on the right. As Abramm hauled Banner to a stop, he noted a good number of them were cloaked in gray. Regular foot soldiers stood both behind them, and across the road to Abramm’s left, the men ranged across the temple knoll’s steep slope. Together with the horsemen they formed a long funnel drawing down to the riders who waited at its apex. Of those, one wore the pale robes and gray mantle of a Mataian, another, Gadrielite gray. Between them, mounted on a tall black horse, sat a big man in a golden breastplate and purple cloak, his shoulder-length, whiteblond hair secured by the circlet of kingship upon his brow.
It was the circlet that caught Abramm’s eye as he walked Banner toward them, for it was not the original. Thanks to Simon, Abramm had that in his own possession, though he wasn’t wearing it. He hadn’t even considered it.
Yet here’s Gillard, audacious enough to make his own circlet and wear it out here
as if he were already king
.
The mist swirled and shifted around the men, alternately obscuring and revealing them as Abramm approached. To Gillard’s left sat Prittleman, holding his bandaged right hand close to his middle as he glowered at Abramm in self-righteous triumph. Belmir rode on Gillard’s right, his face closed and hard, with a flinty look in his eyes Abramm had seen only rarely, and never before directed at himself. Gillard wore his usual sneering disdain.
“I know you got my warning,” Abramm said as he drew up before them, “or you wouldn’t be here. I can only conclude you didn’t take it seriously, else you’d not have brought these men with you.” He gestured at the soldiers surrounding them.
Gillard smirked. “I’m told this beast is only after you and those you care about, brother. These men have nothing to fear.”
“These men are my subjects, whom I am duty bound to protect. They have everything to fear. Even you might not be completely safe.”
Gillard’s face went dark. “I know what you’re trying to do,
little
brother, and you’ll not wiggle out of our contest that easily. Did you think all the nonsense about you being the White Pretender would really scare me out of accepting? Far from it! I’m eager now to test your mettle.”
Abramm opened his mouth to respond, then reality shifted—
A huge, long-faced stone man peered down from a narrow alcove on the left,
heavy browed, eyes flickering red-orange in the shadows. The ancient road wound
upward, clinging to sheer walls, the air heavy with the scent of damp stone. Mist
swirled overhead, shredding in a brief window to frame a rocky crag gilt by the
sun, bright against blue sky— “Aaug! Look away! Look to the velvet shadows
and the dark, damp rock. Feel the fire inside. We are close now. Very close. Friends
will make more clouds to shield.”
The creature crowed its victory as again Abramm pulled free of it.
His brother affected a high-pitched, mocking voice, “‘The monster is coming, brother Gillard. Best take your men and flee while I go out to meet it, for I alone can do so.”’ He reverted to his natural, deeper tone. “You thought I would heed that?” He spat on the ground between them. “That’s not the way
this
tale will end. You got the kraggin. I’m taking this one.”
Abramm gaped at him. “
I’m
the one it’s after!”
“If that’s true, we’ll just hold you here until it comes. That way
we
can choose the battlefield.”
When Abramm had told Simon to send word the morwhol was coming and for the men to be moved away from the pass, the last thing he expected was that his brother would seek to face the monster himself.
“Gillard, you can’t—” He broke off in frustration, realizing anything he said would be discounted as another attempt to seek his own glory.
Gillard smirked at him, savoring his victory as he’d done that night in Southdock six years ago. Gritting his teeth, Abramm gestured at the soldiers surrounding them. “At least get your men out of here.”
His brother rocked back in the saddle. “But then we would have no one to witness what we do.”
“All we’re going to do is
die
. You and I, seeing as you’re so intent on taking my place. I see no reason to drag them along with us.”
He loped up the narrow winding road, looking to the deep shadows instead of
the painful brightness above, savoring the sharp smell of stone and the growing
scent of horses and men—one man in particular. A roofed shrine slid by on the
right, cut out of the sheer stone walls sheltering the Lady within. Her eyes pulsed
amber. “Yes, she will make us a covering.”
Abramm shook away the vision, and fire turned to a ball of ice resting in the pit of his stomach as he realized who the “friends” were—rhu’ema.
Gillard gestured grandly at Belmir. “Have you not noted my companions, Abramm? Your once esteemed Discipler, now a master among the Holy Brethren? The venerable and righteous Lord Prittleman? We ride under the protection of Eidon’s Sacred Flames.” He glanced over his shoulder at the group of Guardians Abramm now saw standing up the road, half hidden in the mist, holding the flattened bronze orb of their traveling brazier aloft. “What need have
we
of fearing monsters of the Shadow?”
“You’re trusting in
them
to keep you safe? Plagues, Gillard! They’ll just make it stronger.”
Belmir’s face slackened with astonishment, then drew down into a thunderous frown as Prittleman sputtered about Terstan heretics and blasphemy.
I don’t have
time
for this!
Abramm glanced at the line of archers hemming him in on the left. Gillard must’ve thought the steepness of the hill behind them would be enough of a deterrent not to warrant another line of horsemen. Or maybe it would’ve been too hard to hide them. In any case, Abramm could probably charge Warbanner straight up the hill through their ranks to the top of the knoll before they knew what had happened. According to the map, a narrow track led from the back of the temple complex to the main road up the pass, joining it well beyond Gillard’s line of men.
