“The spawn have all left,” came a low, familiar voice from behind him. He turned as Trap stepped up to join him.
The Terstan was dressed in white-britches, tunic, and robe, the latter stitched with gold-and-green olive branches along its front edges. The tunic’s neckline, of course, was slit and stitched to deliberately reveal his shield. His red hair was tied back in a warrior’s knot, and his half-grown beard was already showing its curl.
Meridon did not look at him, his gaze on the view outside. “It rained all night and through the first morning after we came,” he added. “Been clear ever since.”
Abramm let his eyes be pulled back to that wonderful light outside, to the sharp lines and angles, the brilliant colors. “I thought the rainy season lasted a couple of weeks.”
“It does. It’s still some days off, in fact. This is the result of the Heart’s aura, warding away the Shadow. I’m told it extends some three leagues in every direction.”
Below them, the goats moved from clump to clump, their coats fancifully patterned in brown, black, and brilliant white. One of them wore a bell, which tinkled as it moved.
“I had forgotten how it was,” Abramm murmured. “The trees look so green. And these rocks are almost red.” Even the patchwork patterns of the goats’ hides seemed alive and vibrant.
The Heart, blazing on its straightened stanchions, snagged his gaze again, stirring those dangerous longings. Truly, I am enspelled, he thought grimly, forcing his eyes away and his thoughts to other subjects. “The young man who woke me said something about attacking Jarnek?”
Trap nodded. “Shemm means to leave tomorrow, so we can strike just before the rains.”
“I thought the rains stopped all chance of fighting.”
“They do. If we can take Jarnek before they start, Beltha’adi won’t be able to launch a counterstrike until they’re over. By which time we should be well dug in.”
Abramm cocked a questioning brow at him. “We?”
The Terstan grimaced. “Well, I have been rather involved in the planning.”
`And hope for no less in the plan’s execution, I’ll wager.”
“My first duty lies with you, my lord.”
Abramm blinked, not understanding what he meant at first. “You mean your oath to Raynen?” He huffed and shook his head. “I think we’re way beyond that, Trap.”
Meridon stared stubbornly out the window. ‘An oath is an oath. And even the White Pretender needs someone to cover his back.” The dark eyes came around to fix upon his.
“I’m not the White Pretender anymore,” Abramm said with a scowl.
“You are in the minds of the Dorsaddi. And in the mind of Beltha’adi, too, I’d guess.”
He had a point. So here it was-another choice. Another opportunity to step deeper into the affairs of these people who were not his own. His presence as the White Pretender would undoubtedly provide some motivation to them, even if he hadn’t turned out to be the Deliverer. And he would surely unnerve the opposition, seeing as he was supposedly dead.
He snorted softly at the irony of that thought, for he had fully expected to be dead by now-his duty to the Dorsaddi prophecy discharged, his debt to Shettai paid. But nothing had turned out as he’d expected, least of all that he should find himself alive and faced with choosing to take yet another step along a road whose destination he could no longer even begin to fathom.
Part of him wanted to walk away. He’d come to the SaHal, as Shettai had asked. Surely that was enough. More than enough. Except … Even if he was not the Deliverer, he was still in her debt. He had been eager enough to take from her what by right belonged only to a husband. Should he not also be willing to accept a husband’s responsibilities? If he’d taken her as his wife, would he not now be honor bound to stand with her people against their enemies?
He glanced at Trap. “Do you think there’s any chance of prevailing?”
Meridon grinned. “Shemm’s convinced of it. And I know Eidon will provide a way, if that is his will.”
Eidon. With a shiver of annoyance, Abramm turned back to the window, deliberately keeping his eye away from the shining orb and fixing it upon the goats below him.
“My Lord Deliverer?” They both turned to find a man in the standard headcloth, ochre robe, slit-necked tunic, and breeches of the rank-and-file Dorsaddi approaching across the carpet. “Your pardon, sir,” he said, stopping a few respectful strides away and nodding in the Dorsaddi version of a bow. “The arrows have been gathered, as you requested. Four thousand of them.”
Abramm’s eye snagged on the golden shield glimmering in the V of his tunic. Annoyed, he tore his gaze free and made himself look at the man’s face, lean and swarthy, with a touch of gray in the short dark beard.
“See that they’re distributed,” Trap said. “Twenty to a man. What about the extra bowstrings? And the wax?”
“Still working on those, sir.” The Dorsaddi hesitated, eyes flicking to Abramm and back to Meridon. “Sir, the Lord Commander sends his compliments and wishes to know if you’ll be speaking to us tonight.”
“My thanks, and tell him I will be.”
“Very good, my lord.”
Trap nodded a dismissal, and as the man vanished around the doorway across the room, Abramm glanced at him askance. “‘My Lord Deliverer’?”
The Terstan made a face. “I’ve tried to get them to stop, but they refuse. I suppose I should’ve been more forceful about it at the start, but I really didn’t believe it would catch on like it has. It wasn’t me that awakened the Heart, after all-it was they themselves, accepting the Light into their flesh. Shemm says I’ll never get them to stop now and might as well resign myself to it.” His face reddened. “I guess I have, more or less, because I hardly notice it anymore. It certainly doesn’t help that Shemm calls me that himself”
It was odd that Abramm should feel jealous at that. Odd and ridiculous and completely illogical that he would feel increasingly disappointed-even angry-as the realization dawned that he had been supplanted by his friend in the vaunted role of Dorsaddi Deliverer. He had never wanted the role in the first place, knew from the beginning that he was nothing more than a pretender. Yet now that the truth had come out, he found it surprisingly hard to swallow.
It was his cursed Kalladorne pride again-the bane of his existence as a Mataian novice. He had thought that the experience of slavery would have driven it out of him. But the last eighteen months of being the White Pretender had apparently resurrected it, for he found he did not at all like being relegated to the ignominious position of companion to the great Deliverereven if Trap did refuse to claim the title.
He didn’t much like seeing himself for an arrogant fool, either, however, caught up in petty considerations of rank and pecking order when there were much more important things to consider. And perhaps, given the things he had done recently, it was no more than he deserved.
So he swallowed his pride and his discomfort and said, “What’s he like, this infamous Dorsaddi king?”
“Surprisingly humble-and sensible-for a Dorsaddi. But he is Dorsaddi, and their … um … self-confidence … can get a little overblown. Some were ready to ride on Jarnek the day after they received the shield.” He paused. “Still, for all his pride, he does listen and sometimes even takes advice.”
,,You like him.”
“I do. He’s a good man and a strong leader. A lesser one could not have held this group together. Especially not now, with half of them bearing the shield and the other half not. It’s been a real battle convincing them to let each other alone.”
So. There are others, then, who have refused.
“I’m surprised,” Abramm said aloud. “Seeing the king himself has it. You’d think his subjects would flock to imitate him.”
“Dorsaddi are not big on flocking and imitating. Mephid, for example, thinks he ought to be king himself, or at least the true Deliverer. And in any case, you can’t receive the shield unless you really want to know the
One who gives it. It is your own desire that ignites its power. A man who doesn’t want it sees only a plain, round pebble, completely ordinary and sometimes even faintly repellent. Picking it up would be like picking up a rock. Well, you know.”
Abramm had turned his attention to the goats again, his middle suddenly tight and fluttery, his heart pounding. `And what,” he asked, glad he managed to keep his voice neutral, “does a man who wants it see?”
Ah, he sees it as it is-ablaze with light and life, filled with the presence of the One whose Light it is.” He could feel Trap’s eyes upon him now but ignored him, watching one of the goats, a little red one, as it leaped for the fork of one of the olive trees, scrambled briefly for a hold, then fell back.
“Some even claim they see a man-Tersius himself, perhaps….” Trap’s voice strangled into silence, and he stood staring at Abramm, his tension palpable.
Abramm felt as if his chest were wrapped tight with Dorsaddi thong, and he knew his face had gone dead white.
Trap’s voice came softly, hardly more than a breath. “You almost took it that night, didn’t you? That’s why you threw it away. Because you nearly did it, and it scared the wits out of you.”
Abramm’s headache was back, as if little men pounded with tiny hammers along the inside of his skull. An image flashed through his mind-a man standing in the darkness, his marred features clear in their own light. Not Eidon, who could not be seen, but Tersius, who was both god and man and with whom men had once walked and laughed and lived. Who had not been consumed to make the Mataio’s Flames, claimed Terstans, but lived on in the light of their magical orbs.
He shook his head, opened his mouth, closed it. Then he tried again, his voice barely more audible than Meridon’s had been. “I left all that behind, Trap. Don’t ask me to go back to it.”
“You left a lie, and no one’s asking you to go back to that.”
Abramm shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I believed in Saeral! With every fiber of my being I believed. And I was wrong.” He drew a breath to still the trembling that had crept into his voice. “I don’t ever want to be wrong like that again.”
A breath of air blew through the window, and the chimes tinkled quietly. Outside, the goat made another leap, scrambled, and fell again. Another one, smaller, with white and black patches set against the red, came up to nuzzle it.
Trap exhaled softly. “You were a boy,” he said finally. `And he set himself to deceive you-a master deceiver versus a ten-year-old. What chance did you have?”
“Still … I should have doubted.”
“You did! Why do you think they never touched you in all that time of your novitiate? Because somewhere you doubted.” He paused. “But things are different now. You know a great deal more about the world and evil … and truth. Certainly you know enough to choose.”
He lifted a hand, and a tiny globe bloomed on his fingertip, blazingblazing-at the corner of Abramm’s vision.
Abramm rubbed his throbbing arm and refused to look at it, grinding his teeth with the effort of keeping his eyes away. After a moment it hardened and rolled down the Terstan’s finger into his palm. He set it carefully on the sill, his eyes never leaving Abramm’s face.
“I … I have to know it’s Eidon this time,” Abramm said. “No doubts. No questions.”
“How can you not know, Abramm?” Trap waved a hand at the mist-free city with its glowing Heart and living trees and bright blue bowl of sky. “What more do you need?”
“Evil fights evil sometimes?” Abramm cried, dismayed by the desperation that rang in his voice. “How do I know it’s not another trick? Just another lie dressed up in pretty clothes?”
“You know in your heart.”
“I can’t trust my heart.”
The goat finally managed to make it up into the fork of the tree and was now straining toward the fresh green leaves, still out of reach. The others moved farther along the promenade, the bell on the lead animal clanking, the boys who were seeing to them practicing idly with their slings. Up the street a group of men laden with bundles emerged from one of the cliffside doorways and hurried away.
The breeze washed around Abramm again, warm and heavy with goat smell. The chimes tinkled. And after a time he said softly, “What of the sarotis, Trap? Do you just pretend it doesn’t exist, or do you count it the price you must pay to stand on the side of good?”
The Terstan frowned. “The sarotis is caused by our own choosing.”
“Who would choose such a thing?”
“Those who pretend it doesn’t exist. Those who receive the gift, then turn away from it to follow their own path.”
“But why would anyone, once he had the Light, refuse it if it really is good?”
“Because even when we have the Light, we still carry the Shadow. And the Shadow will always strain against the Light. When we let the Shadow have sway over us, when we indulge its desires and delusions consistently, ignoring the Light, refusing its entreaties-that’s what eventually produces the curd and the madness. And any acquisition of spawn spore accelerates the process.” He paused. “It’s commonly believed that the sarotis will inevitably strike all those who wear the shield. But that is not so. It’s merely another lie spread by the enemy. Far more people than you guess have worn the shield for years and have never shown a trace of curd. My father, for example, and others-people you’ve known all your life, in fact.”
“Who are not here to prove this claim, I note.”
Trap regarded him for a long, silent moment, then turned away, a look of frustration on his face.
“I want to believe you,” Abramm said. “I really do. I just … I can’t.”
Meridon ran a finger along the sill in front of them. “Can’t, my lord? Or won’t?”
“If I could believe it was true, I’d do it in a moment. I would.”
“Well, then, my friend, I suggest you ask yourself just what it is that’s keeping you from believing. Because whatever it is, it lies in your own soul, not in the evidence before your eyes.” He pushed back from the window. “I’d better go. I expect the king will call you this evening. In the meantime you get some rest.”
“I feel fine.”
“You are weaker than you know. And if…” He hesitated. “Will we be riding with them tomorrow, then?”
“Yes, of course.”
Even if he said no, he had the feeling he would be pulled there anyway. A leaf in a windstorm. Carried along by forces quite beyond his ability to control or even understand. The question was … did anyone have hold of the windstorm?
C H A P T E R
34
“Do you ever wonder why you’re alive?” Carissa asked, scratching the new staffid bite on her forearm and eyeing the salmon-and-ochre cliffs looming around them. She sat with Cooper at a wrought-iron table under an ancient, gnarled olive tree in one of Jarnek’s outdoor restaurants. It was situated on the artificially constructed island standing at the point where two wide, currently dry wadis converged to become the one main channel. “I mean, do you ever think maybe there’s no real purpose in it?”
“I think we’re alive to serve Eidon,” Cooper said.
A stock Mataian response.”
“If we keep the commands, we are blessed. If we don’t, we-“
“Not good enough, Coop. These people do not serve Eidon, yet some of them are blessed.”
He frowned at her.
“My brother wanted only to know and serve him-I have never known anyone more devoted to that cause. Yet what did it gain him?”
“He is surely reveling in the Garden of Light right now, my lady.”
She snorted. “If there is such a thing. How do we know it doesn’t all end at death?”
His frown deepened. “You certainly are being grim today.”
She sighed deeply. “I feel as if my whole life has been nothing but one big blundering. Everything I touch turns to ash. Not one thing I have wanted have I received. Only pain and despair and failure. If Eid
on really lives, what have I done to deserve that?”
“Nothing.” He swallowed and looked up at the red cliffs, frowning more deeply than ever. “Nothing.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“No.”
She let her gaze wander over the soldiers’ tents pitched in the wadis to either side of them, the purple pennants of the Black Moon hanging limply from their standards. Most of the merchants whose booths would normally fill those dry washes had packed up and headed upland to beat the rains. Once the winds came and the clouds broke, all roads in or out would be transformed to churning rivers, and whoever was in Jarnek would be trapped for at least a month and maybe two.
The soldiers figured to be here that long, regardless.
Beyond them the terraced rock walls loomed under the mist, their curving organic lines merging gracefully with the sharper, more angular aspects of the villas built among them, even carved from the rock itself. Stairways and water channels wound between them, and she knew the cliffs themselves were riddled with narrow, mysterious canyons, laced with more channels and dams and cisterns, all part of the original builders’ sophisticated hydrologic system. Abramm would’ve loved this place.”
“Aye, he would’ve.”
“He’d have run you ragged and given Gillard fits.”
Cooper snorted softly, and suddenly, beneath her veil, Carissa was weeping again. It often happened like this-a word, a thought, and all unexpected the grief took her.
Not long after that, Philip bounced up the stairs from the wadi, Newbold in tow, and hurried over to them, his eyes bright, face flushed with excitement. He had been wandering the city, listening to the gossip, and now he fairly overflowed with it-how the Dorsaddi Deliverer had come and awakened the Heart, how there was a hole in the mist over Hur, a good six leagues in diameter. “They say it’s the White Pretender,” he bubbled, “but I’m sure it’s the Infidel”
Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) Page 38