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

by Karen Hancock

“Go,” she’d said to him, “awaken the Heart.”

  She had died to give him that opportunity. To throw it away now, even if he didn’t have the first notion of how he would do as she asked, was surely betrayal of the highest order. And did he not have enough on his conscience already?

  “Very well,” he said softly, reining his reluctant horse around. “The SaHal it is.”

  DELIVERER

  PART FOUR

  C H A P T E R

  29

  They kept the horses to a brisk pace, following the road through a ravineriddled landscape dotted with gray-green sage and squat, black-trunked thronetrees. Except for the road itself, there was no sign of human habitation-only lizards, scrawny rabbits, and an occasional raven, flapping and soaring through the fringes of the misty ceiling.

  In the absence of any immediate threat, Abramm became increasingly aware of his abused flesh. His shoulder was stiffening to the point where he could hardly move his arm, and a deep soreness webbed across his chest to merge with the throb over his heart, where an oozing scab had formed. With no adrenaline to override the pain, he felt his cracked ribs with every breath. And after more than two days with no real sleep, it soon took all his willpower just to stay on the horse.

  Presently Trap gestured at the bags dangling from Abramm’s waist. “Do any of those have food in them?”

  Abramm handed over the sack of hardtack, but when Trap peered inside he snorted with disgust and drew out a fistful of dried, finger-long, greenand-black caterpillars. “Spima,” he said, inspecting the morsel distastefully. And they’re not even fried.”

  “Is there nothing else?” Abramm took the bag back to look for himself. The spima’s vinegary smell wafted from the opening, wrinkling his nose.

  Some called them miracle worms, provided by Laevion at Beltha’adi’s request back at the end of the first decade of his Wars of Unification. What crops had not been consumed or trampled by his soldiers had shriveled in an extended period of drought, producing a severe famine. Beltha’adi declared a realm-wide holy day, during which all would fast and bring offering to Laevion, goddess of life and plenty. Beltha’adi would and did seek her personally.

  On the morning after, the realm was invaded by huge red moths that laid eggs in the thronetrees, protected by sacks of thick white silk. A month later the sacks burst open and millions of worms crawled out. They ate only the leaves of the thronetrees, their presence somehow accelerating refoliation so the trees were never really stripped bare, despite the worms’ prodigious growth. Almost overnight they went from thumbnail-long slivers to stout, finger-sized worms. With nothing else to eat, the people fell upon them eagerly, and to this day the worms were regarded as both delicacy and staple, uniformly revered and happily consumed by all good servants of Khrell.

  “Plagues, I hate these things,” Trap said. He held one up as if in toast. “But, better than nothing. Thank you, Eidon, for your gracious provision.” The insect crunched as he bit into it.

  Abramm had never developed a taste for them, either, and only managed to down four by the time Trap had finished his first handful and took the bag back for a second one.

  “I thought you hated them,” Abramm said. “You’re munching like a native.”

  “Purging spawn spore always does this to me.” Trap crunched another worm. Actually, they aren’t so bad once you get going on them.”

  Abramm flashed him a doubtful glance.

  Trap grinned, closed up the bag, and patted it. “I daresay you’ll agree with me before this adventure is over.”

  “I’m hoping we can trade them for something better along the way.”

  Trap glanced pointedly at the expanse of deserted landscape sweeping around them beneath the ceiling of mist. “Who were you thinking of trading with? The ravens?”

  “Way stations were never more than a day’s ride apart on these old Ophiran highways.”

  “Aye, eight hundred years ago. Before the Cataclysm. Before the Wars of Unification. Before the Shadow came and the wind stopped and all the rivers dried up.”

  “There’s bound to be some settlements left,” Abramm insisted. Not all the springs would have dried up. And there were always cisterns.

  “Well, I’m not sure it’d be a good idea to go blundering into one, even if we find it. If Beltha’adi’s intelligence system is half as good as they say, word of our escape has surely preceded us.”

  “Not necessarily. He obviously wanted everyone to think we died in the Val’Orda, so he probably won’t make this search public. Especially when he doesn’t need men to find us.”

  They glanced uneasily at the sky, and Abramm half expected a dark vulturine shape to drop out of the mist right before his eyes.

  He was right about the way stations. In the afternoon they came upon their first, catching the stench of it several moments before they topped a ridge and saw it nestled in the barren draw below. Three large, blockish buildings, broken and time ravaged, stood within the crumbling remains of a guard wall. Black fire rings scattered the semi-enclosed yard, and though the place looked deserted, smoke drifted from one of the chimneys.

  They approached cautiously in the deep silence, feeling the touch of unseen eyes as in the distance a goat bleated.

  Flanking the main gate, a pair of brightly colored prayer flags hung limply from sticks supported by cairns of red stone. Wreaths of onions encircled the sticks, warding away the staffid. In the yard, several patches of corn, squash, and more onions had been scratched out of the hardpan. This late in the year, with the harvest weeks over, the foliage was dry and pale, and at the far end, someone had begun to pull up the dead cornstalks. In a few months, once the annual rains refilled the cisterns and the ground had dried enough to work, they would plant anew.

  As the two men passed through the gateway, the stench of rotting flesh overlaid the aroma of the latrine, drawing their gazes to a fly-enshrouded pile of fresh goat’s legs and entrails lying beside the wall. A pair of ravens tore at the offal, while a lone chicken pecked the ground nearby. Somewhere out of sight in the draw below the station, more goats bleated, no doubt having been hurried away before the intruders could find them.

  Fresh corn cakes and goat cheese were laid out on a low table in the main room of the building with the smoking chimney. The stone floor was swept, the shelves and jars free of dust, and the sleeping pallets rolled and stacked in the corner. A cornhusk doll sprawled beside them, and further on lay a tumble of small wooden blocks. And of course there were the ever-present swags of onions, guarding every opening.

  The men looked longingly at the corn cakes but left them and moved on to the spring that erupted from the steep rocky hillside at the back of the compound. A massive thronetree, laden with white silk bags of spima eggs, stood guard over a ceramic pipe jutting from the red-brown rock. Water trickled from it into a square stone basin, which in turn fed a livestock trough. The trough held only a shallow layer of water now, though the thick green algae on its exposed inner sides showed it was usually full. The churned mud and crushed grass surrounding it confirmed what the offal and fire rings suggested-a large party of riders had recently passed through.

  Necks crawling with the sense of being watched, the northerners watered their horses from the trough and refilled only one of their bags from the already depleted supply in the basin. Trusting there would be another station and another spring, they determined not to contribute to the hardships of the locals any more than they had to.

  As they prepared to move out, Trap squatted by the tracks around the trough, thoughtfully fingering the jumble of grooves and ridges. Finally he straightened, frowning down the draw they would shortly be descending. “Two days ago at most,” he said, wiping his hands on his trousers.

  “Probably a division sent to block the boltholes at this end of the SaHal,” Abramm said.

  “Probably,” Trap agreed with a grimace. With Beltha’adi’s two Hundreds coming down from Andol to attack the north entrance at Jarnek, there’d
have to be at least a small force sent south to round up any refugees. Abramm and Trap were supposed to have evaded it using Shettai’s secret routes.

  As they rode through one of the breeches in the guard wall, movement drew Abramm’s eye up the barren hillside, where three shaggy-haired urchins watched them from atop a red-brown rock. He was close enough to see the whites of their eyes, stark against gaunt, dusty faces. Each wore a scrap of loincloth, their bone-thin limbs and hunger-swollen bellies revealed for all to see.

  His gaze seemed to paralyze them, and they stared at him like deer caught in a hunter’s torchlight. A sharp cry from across the draw jerked them free and sent them scurrying up the narrow ravine behind them.

  The men rode on. At the bottom of the drainage, as they were about to round the end of a long ridge that would blot the station from view, Abramm glanced back and found a handful of raggedly clothed people standing near the guard wall. Even from a distance he could sense their fear and desperation, barely one step ahead of starvation.

  The thought of the soldiers who had so recently passed through, eating their goats and drinking their water without a thought, ignited a smoldering anger in him. To those soldiers these people were worth less than some dogs. Fit only to serve and sacrifice for their betters, they would have been killed if they even so much as touched one of the Brogai. Even in the Dark Abode of death, they would exist only to be ruled by the lesser of the Chosen.

  He remembered the arrogant claims of destiny and superiority, and part of him hoped he’d catch up to those soldiers, maybe teach them a lesson, exact a little justice-while another part observed wryly that it would be better if he did not, since fatigue seemed to have made him appallingly stupid. Just what sort of justice did he imagine two stiff, exhausted, weaponless men might exact from a group of at least twenty trained warriors who were well rested and thoroughly armed?

  Daylight faded to darkness, forcing them to stop for fear of losing the road. Tying the horses to a thronetree, they collapsed on the sandy bed of the dry wadi that ran across their path. Trap muttered something about Eidon having to keep watch over them for tonight, and Abramm’s last conscious thought was to hope that Eidon was up to the task.

  He dreamt of Shettai, talking and laughing in a garden beyond a crystalline latticework aglow with a brilliant white light. Try as he might to peer through the slats, he could see nothing past the blinding light. Walking along the barrier yielded no end to it, and climbing it only brought him back to the bottom again and again. With frustration burning ever hotter in his breast, he finally hurled himself at the slats, hit them hard—

  And woke up, surprised to find a raven tugging at the Terstan talisman he still wore round his neck.

  It was gray daylight, but the bird was so close and its behavior so unexpected that for a moment he lay there and stared at it, sure he was still dreaming. When the creature put a splayed foot on his chest to brace itself and jerked at the chain again, both sensations were far too strong and vivid for a dream. In sudden affront, Abramm exploded off the ground, sweeping the would-be thief aside with an arm. Squawking indignation, the bird tumbled head over heels, and Trap sprang to his feet, groping for the weapon that should have been at his hip and turning frantically in search of the danger.

  Recovering itself and still squawking, the raven flapped up into the thronetree across the ravine, ruffling its feathers and glaring down at them. In the foliage around it hopped a flock of sparrows, chattering and chirping. Abramm stood in the center of the wash, staring at them, hackles rising, while Trap picked up a rock and hurled it at the big bird, striking the shiny black breast. Cawing with renewed outrage, the creature tumbled wildly from its perch, then righted itself and flapped skyward. Another rock followed the first, then another, both missing their target. By then the bird had disappeared into the mist.

  They stood motionless in the sand-bottomed wadi, waiting. Even the sparrows were silent. When the raven did not return, they exchanged a glance and, in unspoken accord, collected their bags, untied the horses from the tree, and set off again.

  After breakfasting on spima washed down with niggardly sips of water, Abramm forced himself to work his bruised shoulder, circling it round and round, teeth gritted against the pain, until finally he could move it somewhat freely again. Then there was nothing to do but ride and think. And today he did not hurt so much that he could not think.

  So much had happened in only two days he could hardly process it all, couldn’t even remember it all clearly, the way it had whirled together. Despair and hope, agony and ecstasy, fulfillment and loss-his soul felt as bruised and battered as his body. It seemed like a nightmare. Hardly real. Hardly anything that could really have happened. That he should have survived the Broho, that he should be out here, free at last, riding toward whatever destiny held for him with the Dorsaddi. That she had loved him.

  That above all else … she had loved him. The realization sparked a sense of wonder that was transmuted almost instantly to the gall of terrible loss. His throat constricted, his eyes teared up, and once again he found himself teetering at the edge of an emotional abyss. Then the wave of grief passed, and he regained himself, finding solace and distraction in a rising bitterness that eventually erupted into words.

  “You ever been in love, Trap?”

  He saw Meridon glance his way, though he kept his own gaze fixed upon the road. The Terstan’s reply came slowly, reluctantly. “I have, my lord.”

  “Two years I loved her, longed for her. Finally I learn she shares my feelings, only to lose her before a day has even passed. Tell me … where is the good in that? Where is the benefit?”

  Again Meridon was slow to answer. When it came, his voice was quiet. “She is with Eidon, Abramm. Her tears and pain replaced by perfect joy. Would you really want to call her back?”

  Abramm’s nape hairs stood up. Those words so closely echoed what he’d heard in that cliffside tunnel, he wondered briefly if he hadn’t hallucinated after all. Maybe Trap had been the man he’d seen and heard. Perhaps somehow the power he’d used—

  No. He remembered clearly that Trap had fallen unconscious by then, overwhelmed by the veren’s poison. Trap hadn’t even known Shettai was dead until later. It had been a hallucination.

  But part of him wanted to believe those words so badly. So very badly. “She is with Eidon … a place of perfect joy.”

  He remembered the dream, the beautiful light, the singing, the way she had laughed and talked, the joy, warm and rich in her voice. Call her back from that?

  “No,” he whispered. Not if that were truly where she was.

  As for you,” Trap went on, “well … you remain alive to choose.”

  Abramm flinched, the chills reaching now to the core of his being. `And you, Abramm, son of Meren, remain alive to choose.” Exactly what that mysterious man had said to him. Exactly.

  But it was a hallucination. And this … this was merely coincidence.

  “I know what you’re trying to do,” he said sharply. “Confuse me. Play on my grief. Well, it won’t work, so you may as well give it up.”

  Trap gave a weary sigh. “Do you truly believe I’m evil, Abramm?”

  “Evil can masquerade as good. Moroq himself assumes the guise of a servant of Light when it suits him.”

  `And you think I am a servant of Moroq.”

  “I … I only know there was a time I was sure Saeral was good and true, and I was wrong. And all my life I’ve been warned how your kind deceive the unwary, twist the truth, cast your spells of coercion.”

  Trap looked pained. “So you think I’m trying to enspell you, then? After all this time, all we’ve been through? You really think I would do that, even if I could?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know how to know.” Abramm realized he was fingering the stone on his chest again and stopped. “If I can’t trust what I see and hear and feel-“

  “Then you go to the Words.”

  “The Words? The Words condemn you.�
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  “Do they? Where?”

  “Everywhere. The Words say Eidon is the perfect Light of Life. Righteous and holy, with no darkness in him at all. He’s not going to let just anyone walk up and shake his hand. We must be cleansed, purified before-“

  `And just how are we to do this?” Trap cut in. “You think soap and water will take care of it? Or throwing wooden sticks on a fire, or spending eight years adhering to a convoluted system of ordinances and restrictions? The Words say we’re tainted, Abramm. Us and everything we do Shadow cannot wipe away shadow?”

  Abramm stared at him, startled by the passion in his voice. It was the first time Trap had ever spoken of this subject in any way but with cool, guarded objectivity.

  The Terstan frowned, then turned his attention to the road, winding through the barren hills ahead of them. After a moment he spoke again, more carefully. “Why do you think Tersius had to die?”

  “To make the Flames, of course.”

  “The Flames are a lie, created by the very darkness they claim to ward. But you’re right about Eidon being perfect and that He can’t ignore our failings. There is a price to be paid. It’s just that Tersius is the only one who could pay it.”

  He fell silent, leaving Abramm to wrestle with his claims, which were all wrong-if only Abramm could find the words to explain it.

  “So you’re saying,” he said finally, that the most evil, vicious man in the world-Beltha’adi himself-could touch that stone and, if he wanted it, he’d be marked like all the rest of you? Carry the power of Eidon within him, as you claim to?”

  ” And Eidon said, I will grant you my light.’”

  “Grant you so long as you’ve fulfilled the requirements.”

  “It doesn’t say that. How about Amicus, midsector, line 40-`My Light is freely given. Whoever receives it will be my heirs’? Or the Illumination of St. Elspeth-‘The light of Eidon is a gift to any who will receive it’? Or Salasan 1:20-By his mercy we are made whole, not by our own deeds’?”