Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1)

by Karen Hancock

  Eldrin shook his head, which was throbbing now along with his arm, as much from confusion as from his reaction to that staffid. “I … it’s not Dorsaddi, Whazel. It’s Kiriathan.”

  Whazel was reaching for the stone yet again, as if he couldn’t help himself, not aggressively now but in wonder. Eldrin braced for another shock, but this time the stone permitted Whazel’s tentative touch. Its power flared gently, the warmth almost pleasurable. Whazel seemed not to notice, but when he pulled his finger back, the stone clung to it, lifting away from Eldrin’s chest.

  They both stared, breathless, astonished, watching as the marble swelled, its perfect orb malforming into an oblong, then dividing slowly in the middle until there were two stones. One on the end of Eldrin’s chain-and falling back now to thump against his breastbone-the other balanced on Whazel’s fingertip, swelling steadily. The Dorsaddi stared enrapt, like a man gazing into paradise, his face aglow, his eyes radiant.

  He rolled the stone-clearly as solid as the one Eldrin still wore-between his fingertips, murmuring in the Tahg something that sounded like a litany, something that repeated the words “sheleft” and “Sheleft’Ai,” the god he claimed he no longer served.

  Eldrin swallowed uneasily and massaged his throbbing arm, completely at a loss.

  Whazel fell silent, letting the stone roll into his upturned palm. Slowly he closed his hand upon it and stood stock-still, blank eyed, a strange smile on his face.

  Then, right in front of Eldrin’s eyes, so clearly seen there could be no doubt, a golden shieldmark appeared in the red-brown skin over the man’s heart, gleaming softly between the neck edges of his tunic.

  C H A P T E R

  13

  Horrified realization doused Eldrin like a wave of icy water. Yanking the amulet over his head, he flung it away as if it were a viper. It skidded across the tile to fetch up against the side of the Holy Pool, and immediately a crow swooped from the trees to snatch it up. As it flapped back into the shadows, Eldrin rubbed the skin on his chest, dizzy with relief at finding no golden shield.

  Whazel still wore that silly, blank-eyed smile.

  A Terstan. By all that’s holy! I’ve just witnessed the making of a Terstan.

  He backed another step. Then as Whazel finally stirred, as his eyes began to blink, Eldrin turned and fled up the path to the servants’ compound. He had worn that stone for over four weeks now; it was a miracle he was not himself corrupted. He’d been a fool-a fool!-to have taken anything from a Terstan.

  They are devious, clever, cunning…

  He didn’t see the man in the path ahead of him until they nearly collided. As he back-stepped madly, renewed alarm swept through him.

  At your ease, Abramm,” a rough voice murmured in Kiriathan. “I mean you no harm.”

  Eldrin stopped dead. “Who are you?”

  A friend. Come to rescue you.” The stranger pressed a wad of dark fabric into Eldrin’s hands. “Put this on.”

  Beneath the robe’s dark cowl, light glinted off a swarthy face, long of nose, too hidden in shadow to see clearly. The man read his question before he could ask it. “Your sister sent me. The Lady Carissa. Just sailed into Qarkeshan today.” The man directed Eldrin’s attention to the bay stretched out below them. “You can see her merchantman there, just north of the point.”

  Eldrin turned to study the tall ship, one he had watched sail into the bay that very morning, before his encounter with the Vaissana. Carissa had owned a merchantman. The one on which he was to sail with her to Thilos. The one that would have been his own had he taken Raynen’s offer.

  The man held out a pair of sapphire earrings. “She gave me these to prove my claim.”

  Eldrin stared, reality pinwheeling around him. Is it true? Is she really here?

  Hope rode the back of his astonishment as he looked again at the merchantman, topsails treble-reefed and glowing golden pink in the sun’s lowering rays.

  “There you are, you miserable rockworm?” Ghoyel’s voice shrilled in the gathering twilight, echoing across the compound. Eldrin whirled to find his mysterious deliverer vanished and in his place the advancing majordomo, rapping his rattan against his thigh in sharp, jerky chops.

  “You dare to soil the Vaissana’s purity, dare to thrust your filthy presence before his face and speak to him? You have known nothing of my wrath as yet, worm. And if you run-“

  A swirling, swooping of shadow descended upon him from behind, collapsing him senseless onto the path. Eldrin gaped in dismay as blood welled from a temple, dark as pitch against the dusky skin. He looked up. The stranger stood before him again-dark cloak swaying around dark boots, his face still no more than glints of light off nose and chin.

  “Hurry now,” the man said. “He’ll have drawn someone’s attention.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  The stranger seized the fabric from Eldrin’s idle hands and shook out a cowled cloak much like his own. “No. Now are you coming? Or would you prefer to stay here and face the consequences of that?” His head jerked toward Ghoyel’s too-still form.

  “Tyi, hechami,” Whazel said quietly behind him, the voice bringing him around yet again. His eyes went at once to the new-made shield gleaming on the old man’s chest.

  “I lie them. They say you do, but no matter if gone.”

  The stranger was already settling the cloak over Eldrin’s shoulders.

  “Find free life, hechami,” Whazel said. As I find mine, eh? Sheleft’Ai, he not leave afterward, I think.”

  His dark eyes flashed, and for a moment Eldrin saw in them the man he’d once been-lean and strong and proud.

  Voices echoed now from the servants’ compound, and the thud of approaching footfalls warned that time was short.

  Eldrin nodded at the old servant. “Thank you, Whazel. I’ll not forget this.”

  A heavy hand settled on his shoulder, pulling him around and into the foliage beside the path. They scrambled over the wall as an eruption of outraged voices shattered the evening quiet. Eldrin’s rescuer led him briefly along the road that skirted the villa, crossed it in a pool of shadow, then skidded down an embankment planted with succulents. Running now, Eldrin followed his guide across another road, through more wet foliage, down an alley, over a wall….

  The loud, clear note of a horn sounded over the city as the last of the sun’s rays faded. “They’ve raised the alarm,” Eldrin’s rescuer observed quietly. “Now we’ll have to step carefully.”

  Out of breath and still feeling nauseated, Eldrin welcomed the slower pace. They moved in bursts, creeping through the shadows, darting across the light spots, keeping an eye on all who shared the way with them.

  They spent a number of hours crouched beneath the branches of a pungent-smelling bush in someone’s garden, then hunkering in a brokendown stable farther on, and finally pressed against the damp, fishy-smelling stonework of an alcove in a blind alley while a search party poked through the shadows not three strides away from them. It was deep into the night when they finally reached the waterfront, passing numerous quays before Eldrin’s rescuer led him out along one to a moored dinghy. Directly across the water from them, a little over a double stone’s throw, Carissa’s merchantman floated at anchor, veiled in a light mist and dimly illumined by its night lanterns. The scallops running lengthwise down her hull and the snake-haired goddess at her bowsprit-Ekonissima, he knew now-betrayed her Thilosian heritage.

  Hope exploded within him, strong and fierce and redemptive. Oh, Eidon, forgive me for doubting, and thank you. Thank you!

  Tears blurred the world as his throat tightened with emotion. All the fears and doubts and empty despair-all for nothing. If only he had trusted, he could have saved himself so much misery. If only he had believed …

  On the waterfront behind them a dog began to bay. Eldrin only laughed to himself. Even if the search dogs were on to him, they’d never catch him now. As his rescuer climbed down into the dinghy, songs of thanksgiving rang through Eldrin’s head.r />
  Wonderful are his ways! Who can know them?

  Oh, Eidon, I will never doubt you again! I will serve you with all my might and make myself pure and never turn from your ways.

  His rescuer moved into the stern sheets as one of the four oarsmen aboard joined Eldrin on the quay to help him down. The oarsman looked familiar, but Eldrin was too ecstatic to do more than grin back.

  Ashore, the baying hound drew nearer.

  The oarsman seized Eldrin’s arm, suddenly impatient, and Eldrin looked up, annoyed. Light from the boat’s lantern gleamed off a young mustachioed, parrot-nosed face, a crescent cheek scar, and two gold ear hoops. Eldrin gasped with recognition.

  The man grinned at him, nothing friendly in his expression.

  Eldrin looked to Windbird again and saw now the curve-sterned silhouettes of a gaggle of galleys anchored just this side of her, shrouded in the misty darkness.

  “No,” he breathed.

  Down in the boat, his rescuer threw back the cowl of his cloak, revealing that bold hatchet face with its pulled-back hair and multitude of gold earrings.

  The Esurhite Garners.

  In a heartbeat he twisted free of his captor and fled up the quay, dashing toward shore as the baying hound drew nearer, its voice frantic, ear-piercing. Eldrin angled left as it burst upon him. It was a big brown hound, towing a boy on a leash, its nose to the ground, its tail slashing the air.

  He expected others, officers of the city, men from the villa, civilians. But there was only the boy and the dog.

  The Esurhites, who had hesitated as the dog approached, now thundered after Eldrin. He yelled at the boy to go back, and the lad stopped, but the hound raced on, tearing the leash from his hands.

  No time. Eldrin angled off the quay, feet landing painfully on sharp, wet stones. He slipped, touched water—

  Purple light flared in the darkness.

  “STOP.” The voice was not loud, but it carried an authority impossible to resist. Eldrin’s body wrenched itself to a stop, teetering at water’s edge, arms windmilling.

  Behind him, the baying silenced with a yelp.

  Now the Gamer loomed on the quay above him, thumbs hooked into his belt below an amulet that glowed like a malevolent eye. He grinned. “I knew there was fire in you, my Kiriathan prince.” He spoke in the Tahg to the men beside him, and they descended to Eldrin’s side. Rough hands hauled him back up the quay, then bound and gagged him.

  The boy hung limply in the grip of a henchman, his pale face streaked with tears. Beyond them lay the still, dark form of the dog. Did they mean to take the boy to their galley, too, then? Surely he was too young….

  As Eldrin was shoved into the shore boat, the Gamer stuffed a folded parchment into the boy’s belt and gestured to Windbird, now a dim and indistinct shape behind the rapidly thickening mist. He spoke softly, then jumped down into the stern sheets of the dinghy and they shoved off.

  The boat slid silently across a sea of black glass, oars dipping and rising in near silent unison, heading for the nearest of the galleys. All too soon they were swinging up alongside it, a rope boarding ladder tumbling down from the gunwale as the oarsmen secured their paddles.

  The Gamer stood and pulled Eldrin to his feet, chuckling softly. “You are far too trusting, hechami,” he murmured. “Let that be your first lesson for the Games: never trust anyone but yourself.”

  Eldrin stared at him.

  The Esurhite’s grin widened. “You are going to make me a very rich man, Abramm Kalladorne. A very rich man.”

  C H A P T E R

  14

  Carissa lurched up in her bunk, breathing hard, staring into the darkness. Something awful had happened. She had dreamed….

  A round gray stone hanging in the air, a dog’s frantic baying, a dark figure looming up to drag her into a dark hold where scarred, malevolent faces leered around her in a purple light. A symbol of glowing lines floated up from the shadow, a rampant dragon filling her vision, exploding her brain into terrible, burning pain—

  It was only a dream. Yet her head and chest and arm still burned, and nausea spun in her middle.

  She sat holding her head in her hands, catching her breath and feeling the pain ebb. Something had happened to Abramm, again. This was like the dream she’d had before they’d left Springerlan. The dream she’d had years ago when Gillard had lured Abramm to a secluded corner of the palace and beaten the spit out of him. Humiliated, hurting, miserable, Abramm had crawled away to a hiding place and collapsed. They never would have found him if not for Carissa’s dream.

  She didn’t understand this linkage she had with her twin, didn’t know if he had reciprocal dreams about her-she only knew it was real and should be acted upon. Except … she had no idea what action to take.

  She got up and poured water with trembling hands, sloshing some on the thin carpet beneath her feet. The tallow dip burned dimly on its brass pan, casting ogrelike shadows on the cabin walls as she gulped the water. Images whirled before her mind’s eye: the shadowed hold, the dark faces, the glowing dragon….

  A horrible suspicion made her drop the ceramic cup to the table with a clatter, then tear her cloak from its peg and wrench open the door.

  Cooper slept outside, as was his wont, sitting with his back to the bulkhead, legs bent up, head drooped forward. Careful not to wake him, she hurried past onto the deck.

  A mist had come up in the night, swathing harbor and sky in thick black wool. Two lanterns hung athwart the ship’s waist, their light constricted into muzzy yellow pools, limning the crewmen’s huddled forms, asleep on the planking but ready to rouse and make sail at a moment’s notice. Though in this breathless mist, sail would do Windbird little good.

  She paced to the port gunwale. The lanterns of one of the neighboring galleys showed as blurry lights in the darkness, but she could just make out the dark hulls, five of them, still there. Somewhere a hatch shrieked, followed by muffled thumping, then silence. The faint aroma of roasting meat waxed then waned on the air.

  She grimaced, caught in a flurry of agitation. Part of her wanted to awaken the captain and send him over there to assure her that Katahn wasn’t intending betrayal after all. As soon as the Esurhite had left yesterday she’d been beset with doubts-that he was really a Gamer and hadn’t bought Abramm earlier because he didn’t know who he was. Maybe because of her, Abramm would be plucked from the kettle and thrown to the flames.

  True, the captain, upon his return, had affirmed the difficulty of freeing Abramm from the temple and said he’d heard a rumor that a slaver had recently delivered a number of young men over to the temple priestesses. Moreover, the activity they’d observed ashore this evening was indeed due to the search for an escaped slave, though Kinlock believed the man had belonged to one of the villa owners, not the temple.

  Still, with all the commotion tonight, if Katahn had freed Abramm, he might well and sensibly have gone to ground, might even now be making a run from shore.

  She stared into the darkness, every sense straining for something that might foretell his approach.

  Windbird creaked around her. A cricket sang somewhere below. The scent of burning tobacco wafted on the still air from the lone sailor at watch well forward of her. Around him lay his slumbering mates, their snores muffled by the mist.

  If Katahn had come out and bypassed Windbird to go straight to his own vessel, the watchman would have notified Danarin….

  Suspicion wrenched at her again. What if he had? What if Danarin had deemed it unimportant and done nothing? That way, Katahn would take Abramm, and Danarin’s orders from the king would be fulfilled.

  She hurried forward to ask the man herself, but he assured her there’d been nothing. Clearly the Esurhite had not returned.

  Go back to bed, she told herself. There’s nothing you can do here.

  Sleep, though elusive, did claim her finally, and the next thing she knew gray daylight filtered through the wide stern window. Her first thought was that no one had co
me to her with news of Abramm’s rescue. Her second was that the ship still stood at anchor.

  Quelling incipient panic, she washed her face, combed her hair, and pulled on a blue woolen shift. Cooper stood awake outside the door now, giving no sign he had ever been other than standing there at attention. She passed him without comment, avoiding his gaze.

  Captain Kinlock stood near the starboard companion in counsel with Danarin and the second mate. As she stepped into the cold, misty morning, they turned to her of one accord, their faces grim, and her heart fluttered.

  Immediately she turned to the port railing and the five black-hulled galleys. They were gone.

  She stared at the empty place on the gray water and her knees turned to jelly. “Please, no,” she murmured. Not that…. He’d never survive that….

  “I’m afraid so, lass,” the captain said, proffering a wide white envelope. It was grubby and crinkled, but she recognized the fine paper, the watermark of Haden’s Mill. Her name was flawlessly and flourishingly lettered in black ink on the front:

  Her Royal Highness

  The Princess Carissa Louise Mariellen Kalladorne Balmark

  The wax wafer was broken-Kinlock had read it first. She frowned at that but said nothing as she withdrew the note. In the same beautiful calligraphy she read:

  Your brother was actually sold at auction five days ago to a wealthy official of the Qarkeshanian government who employed him as a scribea dreadful waste of his potential, in my opinion. I could not have told you that, of course, or you would have never sent me to rescue him, though I must confess, your gullibility surprised me. It is a prime example of the stupidity of your people and a demonstration of why it will not take us long to conquer you.

  I will make far more than four thousand sovereigns on your royal brother in a single match. Warriors will bid with each other for the amusement of defeating him in the arena. I will, of course, do all that I can to prepare him for his contest. Obviously the longer he lasts, the more money I make. Perhaps you will find comfort in that.