Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  “My visions are not from the spore, ma’am. I had them before I was exposed.”

  “Spore, grief, the duress of childbirth . . .”

  “It was none of those.”

  Ronesca looked round at Maddie, her expression oddly bland. “What will it take for you to admit and accept that he’s not coming back? Three years? Five years? Ten? How long, Madeleine, will you wait?”

  Maddie said nothing.

  Ronesca sighed and apparently decided to get down to business. “So you’ve come to get your man out of prison?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why should I grant you this boon, when all you’ve been is trouble to me?”

  “He is ill, for one, with the spore. And for another . . .”

  Maddie frowned, realizing she’d get nowhere trying to trade on how outrageous it was that a close friend of the First Daughter should have been treated as shoddily as Trap Meridon had. Better to appeal to something practical. “Madam, as you, yourself pointed out, the Kiriathans are growing restless. Talk of riots has come up more and more often. And they are not the only discontents in Fannath Rill these days. If they are not placated, they will draw the other foreigners to them, those who have their own gripes. It would be, overall, to your advantage to release him.”

  The queen continued to fan herself and stare out the window, where the palm trees waved in the breeze, giving no sign she’d heard anything at all.

  “Leyton would not have held him this long, you know,” Maddie added. “He only wanted him restrained long enough to get away with the regalia. Now that the plan has fallen to ruin there is no reason to keep Trap locked up.”

  And still the woman sat, fanning herself and staring. Finally she sighed. “Very well. I’ll release him, but he is not to leave the city, and you will have legal responsibility to see he abides by that. I can put you in a prison too, you know. And would have every right to do so should you disobey my command.”

  She went on. “Because of these limitations, he cannot be your finance secretary. You will have to find something else for him to do.”

  “I’ll put him in charge of my guardsmen,” Maddie said.

  “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with the idea of your having your own special guard.”

  “The Kiriathans demand it. So does my station. I am queen of that land, despite your constant attempts to ignore that.”

  “Queen of a land and people who despise you. Well, whatever you wish. You will have no more than six men in your guard.”

  She stood there staring out the window and fanning herself. Then she sighed and collapsed into the chair. “I am so tired. It never ends. All the decisions. All the advice. All the terrible problems. No one agreeing. How am I to know what’s right?” She looked around at Maddie. “My generals want to launch another offensive. Want to try to break Leyton free. They’ve received some information. . . . I don’t know if it’s trustworthy. But . . .”

  Maddie frowned. “Are you asking me, madam?”

  “Yes.”

  “I say do it. Don’t wait for the emissaries to come with their ultimatums. As they will, you know. Most likely within the month.”

  “But if it means I might receive back my sons . . .”

  “You will not receive back your sons from them. Nor Leyton. They have never once done it; they will not do it with you. They will only toy with you, woo you with honeyed words, then do whatever it is they’ve planned all along. No matter what you agree to, you’re not going to get anything back but bitter sorrow.”

  Ronesca met her gaze steadily, and for a moment Maddie thought she glimpsed the beginnings of a ridge of sarotis in her left iris. But then the queen turned her gaze to her lap, and when next she looked up her eyes were normal and filled with tears.

  “But if I don’t, they will grow angry.”

  “They already want to destroy us, madam. Why should we care if we anger them? They intend to destroy the Kirikhal. Treat with them and ultimately they will forbid you from offering prayers to Eidon and demand you give your allegiance to Khrell. Is that what you want?”

  Ronesca blanched but said no more, and not long after that Maddie was dismissed.

  She returned to her quarters, feeling uneasy and confused. Ronesca was not at all herself. Was it the spore?

  “Ma’am?” Jeyanne’s voice broke into her thoughts and she looked around. “Draek Tiris has sent you another present. I put it in on your desk.”

  A rectangular box wrapped in white velvet and gold ribbon sat beside her notes from Terstmeet, and with it a sealed card written by Tiris himself offering his apologies for having abandoned her. In fact, I’ve been out of town—an unexpected difficulty has arisen at my estate in Ropolis. . . . That is no excuse, however. Please accept my apologies for my failure to stand by you, and this treasure as a token of my respect. Perhaps it will give you comfort and strength when you need it most.

  She set the card aside and pulled off ribbon and velvet to find a leatherbound chest within. Lifting the lid, she gasped at the sight of the oblong lump of amber she had first seen sitting on a pillar in Tiris’s Great Sand Sea gallery. The amber that allowed one to see the future. Or the past.

  Eagerness welled in her. This could show her where he was, why no one had heard anything, how long it would be before he got here. Fear and aversion offered other grimmer possibilities: What if she found him dead? What if she found nothing?

  It was not a thing of Eidon’s. She knew that for sure. What it was, she hadn’t quite figured out. More than that, she wasn’t sure Eidon would be pleased with her turning to something from the hand of a man whom she wasn’t even sure wore the shield of Light. Besides, how did she know what she saw there was even true? Or, if true, that it had any real relevance? With no place in time to fix the visions, what good were they? And didn’t she have enough troubles with her imagination running wild as it was?

  No. She would put it back in its box and trust Eidon to bring Abramm when the time was right. And only Eidon would know when that was.

  And for a wonder, she did exactly as she intended, setting the chest back into its silken nest, replacing lid and wrapping as they were. For a moment she seriously considered sending it back altogether. But in the end she pushed it to the back of her wardrobe and vowed to forget about it.

  And that was her mistake. She should’ve known better than to believe she would be strong enough to resist its temptation. Even knowing how unreliable its information was, even knowing it was not a thing of Eidon, still its very presence ate at her. All day long, the thought niggled at her that the knowledge she most yearned to have could well lie in the amber’s depths. And what would it hurt to look once more, anyway?

  She fought it off, and even that night as she sat on the edge of her big bed, staring at the wardrobe in which the thing was hidden, she withstood temptation. She went to sleep happy with herself, determined to place the gift in the royal treasure house tomorrow so it would be out of her immediate reach.

  She hadn’t counted on waking in the night, pierced with the desperate, overwhelming need to know what had become of her husband. He should have returned to her long ago. Garival had told her just the other day that when Trap had learned of her original vision in the amber he’d arranged from his prison cell to send a man to Trakas with a cage of pigeons. That had been two months ago. If Abramm had come through Trakas, the man would have sent word.

  I have to know, Father . . . I have to.

  She tore open the wardrobe and pulled out the box. In minutes she was lifting the chest’s lid with a trembling hand, the amber’s golden depths glimmering in the light of the night star on the bed table. Aware of her frantically pounding heart and jittering knees, she sat on the bedside, rested the chest on her knees, and looked into the golden resin—

  Choking, blinding dust filled the air, as the wind drove sharp, stinging grains of it into her face. It tore at her clothing and hair, and she could see almost nothing. She struggled forward and stumbled ove
r something in the shifting sand at her feet. Looking down she saw a wind-whipped corner of fabric flapping at the end of the robed form of a man. He lay face down in the sand, rapidly being buried by it. She gasped with horror and choked again as sand burned her throat and chest.

  The vision vanished and her bedchamber returned, her skin tingling from the onslaught of sand, ears ringing from the wind’s howling. Even the scent of the dust lingered as she reeled with nausea and denial. He’d been on the river. How had he come to be lost in a sandstorm?

  But of course, she’d long guessed he must have left the river, and the vision in the amber indicated only one logical conclusion: Slavers traded out of Obla, Tiris had said. They followed the Road of the Unchained through the Great Sand Sea. . . . They must have caught him and taken him into the desert. That’s why he hadn’t come to her yet.

  A low moan escaped her as the room wavered. Why had she done this? Instead of comfort and reassurance, she’d only let more horrible possibilities into her soul. Again she saw the robed form, prostrate in the sand, long blond hair streaming in the wind. . . . Anguish tore at her heart.

  Her gaze dropped to the amber still resting on her lap, and sudden hatred seized her. She slammed the lid shut, jammed the chest back into its box, tied it up tightly with its ribbon, and called for Jeyanne. When the girl didn’t immediately appear, Maddie stalked around the bed and called again.

  The girl sat up groggily on her pallet, rubbing her eyes.

  “Jeyanne, wake up!” Maddie cried. And when the girl struggled confusedly to her feet, Maddie thrust the box into her arms and told her to throw it in the river.

  Jeyanne’s blue eyes widened in astonishment. “Now, my lady?”

  “Yes. Take Lieutenant Pipping with you and do precisely as I’ve said.” The girl still looked so befuddled, for a moment Maddie considered throwing the thing into the river herself. But no. She knew she couldn’t trust herself to carry through. “Go now,” she said, picking up her own heavy night cloak from the chair and draping it over the girl’s shoulders. “Return here immediately when you’ve done what I’ve asked.”

  Jeyanne left without another word, and Maddie returned to her bed, struggling still to get the scent of dust out of her nostrils. And to erase the image of Abramm’s dead body from her mind.

  CHAPTER

  22

  Abramm awoke to the terrifying certainty he’d been buried beneath the sand after all. A monstrous weight pressed upon his back, and he could barely expand his chest enough to draw breath. A uniform pressure held his head and limbs, and all he could think of was how the sands had constantly shifted beneath his feet as he’d climbed and climbed one endless dune, trying desperately to stay atop it. With the wind whipping at his robes and filling his mouth and eyes with sand, he could hardly breathe, much less see where he was going, and could only walk at all when the wind was at his back. He didn’t recall stopping, though obviously he had.

  Now the wind had died, and he was trapped. Panic surged in him and he flailed his arms in desperation—they came free easily, and he found he was able to push himself up onto hands and knees, sand streaming off of him. Twisting around, he sat down, feeling silly for having transformed a couple of inches of covering sand into the sensation of being buried alive.

  He squinted up at the pale salmon-tan crest of sand looming above him. Dust still choked the sky beyond it. Below him, scalloped, knife-edged dunes tiered down the great dune’s face to his left and right, a frozen storm-tossed sea of sand plunging away as far as he could see before the haze of dust swallowed all. Dense silence enveloped him, broken only by a trickle of sand disturbed by his movement and the rasp of his own breathing.

  He saw no sign of his companions. Had they all been buried alive, as he had? Might some of them lie nearby, unseen? He felt through the sand near where he’d fallen but found only his walking staff and his water bags, one still full of fresh oasis water, the other halfway so. His rucksack was still on his back with its flint, socks, mittens, speaking stone, knife, and the packet of flatbread, figs, and dried mutton Janner had supplied them with—all of it coated in sand. At least he wouldn’t die of thirst or hunger right away.

  He stood and looked around again but saw nothing that even hinted of his former companions: no movement, no bulges in the sand, not even the corner of someone’s robe or the strap of a waterbag. A shouted “Halloooo” produced only a fit of heavy coughing, though he tried several times before working his way up to the dune’s crest, probing the sand with his staff as he went. As before, he found nothing. Nor did the higher vantage show him anything new. It was as if the storm had blown his friends off the face of the land. Or perhaps it had blown Abramm himself into some alternate desert world.

  For an immeasurable period of time, he walked about probing the sand with his staff and shouting until his throat was raw and his chest ached. Intermittent loud bugles on his reed pipe did no more than trigger brief falls of sand down the slopes around him, and finally he gave up, desperation simmering in his belly. How could they be so completely gone? And the road as well? Surely there would be something. . . .

  But there was nothing. And he couldn’t search the entire desert. He drew a long, calming breath.

  “Well, my Lord Eidon,” he said aloud, “I don’t believe you’ve brought me all this way just to kill me in this barren place.” Memory of Marta’s prediction he’d return encouraged him. “You’ve promised to guide yours who ask, and we both know I am yours. So, please show me what to do. Which way I should go.”

  He squinted across the mounds and gullies, searching for a flare of light, an anomaly in the sameness, a distinct path, a variation of color or brightness. . . . But there was nothing. Perhaps that meant he should stay where he was for now, wait for the haze to settle out of the sky and show the sun’s position. Maybe while he did, someone would happen by. He couldn’t be that far off the road. . . . Then he grimaced at the realization that the road could be anywhere. And that wherever it was, it could be somewhere else tomorrow.

  He might be days waiting for the dust to settle, and even then he wasn’t sure what good knowing the sun’s position would do him. It might keep him going in the same direction, but it wouldn’t tell him which direction was the right one. And impatience rebelled at the notion of loitering atop this dune using up precious stores of food and water while getting nowhere.

  He frowned. “My Lord . . . I have no idea what you want me to do.”

  But still nothing came. Sighing, he sat down and drank from his water bag. Like everything else, he was covered with sand—his beard, his mouth, his nose, his eyebrows, his hair, his ears. A thick crust gummed his eyelashes, and his eyes still burned from the assault they’d endured under the wind. Grit lodged between his fingers and toes, chafed in his armpits, and had worked its way into every other crack and crevice on his body. And shaking out his robes did little to help.

  As hunger gnawed his belly, he dug the flatbread from his bag, brushed it off, and grimaced as his teeth crunched sand with the wheat. The fig was worse. Washing it all down with a couple gulps of water, he decided to walk along the crest of this massive dune and see if its far edge blocked anything significant from his present line of sight.

  Sometime later, he was still walking, as the first crest had led to a second and then a third. So much for his plan to sit and wait. He’d prayed for direction, so perhaps his current action was part of the answer to that prayer, even if he didn’t have any idea where he was going. Even if he couldn’t sense the Light he hoped was guiding him.

  The haze did not lighten, the scenery did not vary, and when evening finally came, he felt as if he’d walked in place for hours. With the dust in the sky blotting out the stars, the night was like a dense black fog that even his keen night vision could not penetrate. Eventually it forced him to stop lest he tumble off the edge of an especially steep dune crest and hurt himself.

  After the first day he lost all track of time and knew that it passed o
nly because eventually his food ran out and he started on his second water bag. As that, too, grew ominously lighter, he spent hours as he walked debating whether to drink the bag dry and have done with it or continue to ration himself. He was always hungry now, his mouth was always dry, his lips increasingly cracked. The water in his second bag was reduced to a mere mouthful, and every time he drank, he thought he’d come to the end of it. Yet, inevitably the next time he brought the bag to his lips there was just another mouthful. Sooner or later, though, he knew even that would give out.

  He’d begun to second-guess himself, wishing he’d stayed where he was in the first place. In retrospect, all the reasons he’d listed for doing so seemed far superior to the path he had chosen. It sure didn’t seem that Eidon had any part in the process, though he prayed constantly for answers, for direction, for reassurance . . . for something.

  And then, one morning, when his desperation had reached a new low and he was seriously asking himself why he bothered to keep on walking, he saw the pigeon. He nearly stepped on it, in fact, for it was white and almost invisible against the pale sand. It flapped out from under his feet, then returned to the ground a little ahead of him, its beak open and panting, its wings held out from its body and dragging a little as if it were tired. Its feathers were tattered and it looked hard used. Probably a homing pigeon, blown off course by the storm. He strode to pick it up, thinking that he would carry it a bit, but it flew up into the sky when he reached for it and flapped away, disappearing beyond the tops of the dunes. After it was gone, he stood waiting, wishing it would come back, suddenly aware of how alone he felt.

  When it didn’t come back, he trudged on, half hoping he might find it again on the ground beyond the next dune. But it wasn’t there. He fell again into his mindless slogging, so he had no idea how long it had been when suddenly the bird returned, circling over his head and then flapping away over the dunes. He thought little of it, until the bird was back a third time, flying the same pattern, almost as if it were trying to guide him.