Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  By the time the door swung open, Maddie’s pulse raced and her stomach had turned to a nest of skittering crickets. She followed Ronesca and Minirth onto the main deck and glanced at the Chesedhan guards surrounding them.

  “Where is Captain Meridon?”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s gone ahead, my dear,” Ronesca said. “To arrange his men as he feels best to protect you.” She made a face of displeasure. “I still don’t see why you can’t trust our Chesedhan guards to do that duty. It’s hurtful, you know. To me and to them.”

  Her tone of veiled antagonism made the crickets in Maddie’s stomach leap and twitch all the more.

  Ronesca, though thin and frail, moved regally toward the gunwale and through the gap, making her way carefully over the lanternlit plank to the quay. Above, more light glowed from atop the island, turning the sky into a golden backdrop for the dark outlines of the gorsebushes that covered the slope they must climb.

  “When this is over,” Ronesca said as she started up the path, “I’m thinking we really need to find a proper tutor for your eldest. It’s time he start learning his letters.”

  Since her back was to Maddie, she did not see the look of astonishment and dismay Maddie flashed at her. Why was she talking about Simon now?

  Atop the flat, torches affixed to poles stood at intervals along the wide circle of men ringing the villa’s ancient pavement. Dark-tunicked Esurhites formed the far half of the circle, while the leather-clad, white-tabarded royal guardsmen formed the near half. None wore sword or dagger, as the agreement for this exchange stipulated, but she did not doubt blades abounded in hidden sheaths on both sides of the circle.

  She did not see Trap or his men anywhere, but knowing at least some had intended to watch from the shadows, she could not consider this absolute proof of something wrong. She had expected him to stay with her, though, and it bothered her that he had not.

  Once the royal party had arrived on the flat, the line of Esurhites opposite opened and the negotiating party emerged—one tall, dark-skinned man in a tunic shot through with gold thread, accompanied by two others. Together the trio advanced toward the circle’s center as Ronesca’s party did likewise.

  The queen, dressed all in white, approached at a regal pace, Minirth at one elbow and Maddie at the other, as she had earlier been instructed. The captain of the queen’s guard and his lieutenant followed behind the threesome.

  The two groups stopped about six feet apart, and the Esurhite bowed his head in a cursory greeting that fell short of any true deference. He looked vaguely familiar, though Maddie did not recall having seen any of the delegation when it was in Fannath Rill.

  “Do you have them?” Ronesca asked.

  “We do, Chesedhan queen. Do you have what we agreed upon?” The voice was familiar, too. Where had she encountered this man before?

  “You can see that we do,” said Ronesca.

  Maddie’s attention reverted suddenly to the conversation. Them? It was only supposed to be Leyton. Why did she say them? And what did she mean that he could see they had Tiris? Maddie twisted about to see if the Sorite lord was even now being brought forward. He was not. Nor was he with the men guarding their backs, among whom she saw no Kiriathans. The crickets turned into a cold hard lump of fear.

  “I would like to see my sons,” Ronesca declared.

  Maddie could hardly believe what she had heard. And before she could even grapple herself free of her denial, Captain of the Guard Romney, who stood at her elbow, seized her arm and compelled her forward past the queen toward the Esurhites. Right then the veil lifted—the spell she’d not even realized had been woven—and she knew that Trap’s worst scenario was true.

  Her sons? She’s done all this for her sons?

  Stomping on the foot of the man who held her arm, Maddie whirled, dashing a handful of the pepper from her cloak pocket into his face. He cried out and fell into a coughing fit as she jerked free of him and raced toward a gap in the circle. A bellow of Command fell on her like rain on a hot desert day, sizzling away as Light flared toward it.

  In the end it was her own people who caught her and brought her back to face both queen and Esurhite. The latter looked amused. Ronesca wore a face of savage hatred.

  “You always have to make things as hard and unpleasant as possible, don’t you?” the queen asked her bitterly.

  “How could you do this?” Maddie demanded.

  “How could I do this?” Ronesca barked a derisive laugh, and her eyes flashed with sudden blackness.

  Maddie gaped at them. Oh, mercy! It’s true!

  “You have set yourself to be my enemy since the day you returned to Fannath Rill,” Ronesca sneered. “Refused to comply with my requests, flagrantly resisted my authority with your outright disobedience, shamed both our houses with your scandalous behavior, your madness, your recalcitrance. Even Eidon you have scorned. You are a disgrace to your family and to the realm, and it will only get worse. When they asked for you, I jumped at the chance to be rid of you, for I knew it to be Eidon’s judgment and Chesedh’s deliverance. He will never let the Shadow lovers have us, but he will let them have you.”

  She turned to the Esurhite and threw her head back regally. “Where are my sons, sir?”

  The tall Esurhite gestured toward the men behind him. “They are right here, Your Majesty.”

  And between the gauntlet of dark forms came two slender men in white shirts and stained britches. Their hands hung unbound at their sides, but dark hoods covered their heads, and a pair of soldiers flanked and guided each. As they walked slowly forward, stumbling over the uneven pavement, one of the Esurhites came to pull Maddie away from the others. She gave thought to struggling again but realized it was futile. The Esurhite commander seemed to guess her conclusion, for he laughed at her. “I knew you would be trouble, and you have not disappointed me, my lady.”

  His words registered with a shock. Where do I know him from?

  Then she was passing Ronesca’s sons, and the cold, unmistakable presence of raw rhu’eman power washed all other thoughts from her mind. She looked at the young men in alarm and the horrendous stench of death slammed into her, so strong and thick she reeled with it, held up and propelled forward only by the hand of the Esurhite biting into her arm.

  Light’s grace. It cannot be!

  But a few moments later, as she was forced down the beach toward the galley’s waiting longboat, Maddie heard Ronesca’s shriek of horror.

  “No! No no no no. . . . Oh, Eidon!” Her wails echoed over stone and sea, the depth and misery of her grief clutching at even Maddie’s heart. “Oh, sweet Father, no! They are not dead. It cannot be. It cannot be.”

  But Maddie had known from the moment she’d passed by them that it was.

  CHAPTER

  24

  As Abramm ascended the ramp, the first thing he saw was a huge red-stone statue of a dragon landing on a rocky pillar. It stood at the midst of a wide entrance square directly in line with the gateway, commanding the attention of all who entered. Piles of dust-laden rubble and fallen pillars scattered the yard around it, bounded by decaying multistoried buildings—the only thing intact and perfectly preserved was the dragon.

  As Abramm stepped through the gateway, he was hit with a noxious stink, reminiscent of a stable in need of cleaning, only sharper. Not horse or ox or pig. Dragon, maybe? he asked himself, staring up at the massive sculpture. Its outstretched wings spanned some thirty feet, and its great, reaching talons would easily enwrap the width of his body. Carved from translucent scarlet stone, every scale and muscle and vein was rendered in such perfect placement and proportion, he half expected it to continue its downward motion until it settled on its rocky pillar. Even the eyes, which appeared to be fashioned from faceted topaz, glowered knowingly.

  Drawing a deep breath, he took his eyes from it, noting now the divided thoroughfare that led off the square behind it, flanked by long faces of crumbling masonry as it disappeared in an increasingly thick curtain
of mist. Since it headed in the same direction the path of light had started him on, he decided he’d follow it.

  As he crossed the square, his nape prickled with the sense of an unfriendly awareness focusing upon him. Small snorts and hisses issued around him, and here and there the paving stones had been pulled up and shoved aside to form shallow depressions in the sand, several of which looked as if they might have something in them. Mounds of very large scat lay everywhere, most of it dried. But not all.

  It had to be dragons. And probably not the half-human variety he had thus far encountered. Given the roar he’d heard earlier, and the heavy sense of this city’s age, he guessed these might even be the tanniym’s progenitors, said to have been imprisoned for seducing and raping the females of a lower creation. Though why Eidon would bring him to such a place, he could not imagine.

  Before long he’d moved close enough to see that the low wall encircling the dragon’s pedestal held a moatlike pond, maybe two feet deep. In fact, the perch itself glistened and trickled with the moisture that apparently supplied the pool. Green algae lined the pond’s bottom and floated on its stagnant surface. Thirst-wracked now for days—maybe weeks, for all he knew— Abramm thought it the most enticing sight he had ever seen.

  He sat on the wall and was reaching down with cupped palms when his water bag sloshed against his hip and brought him to his senses. This was a dragon city cloaked in Shadow. A place of ancient evil. Possibly even a prison. The water he reached for lay at the feet of the red dragon, a creature he knew to be his mortal enemy. He had no business drinking this water, or taking anything else this place might offer him. He might not know why Eidon had brought him here, but he was near certain it wasn’t to give him a drink.

  He stood up off the wall and sucked the last mouthful of water from his bag. It wasn’t close to being enough, and for a moment, despite his conclusions, which he knew to be correct, he hesitated, staring at the dark liquid in the moat. He felt anew the chapped roughness of his lips, his cottony tongue, the dryness of his throat. Need and desire melded into a terrible craving. Just a few sips. Just enough to get him through whatever Eidon had for him. In fact, maybe he was wrong about Eidon’s intent. Couldn’t Eidon use anything for his purposes? Maybe he really had directed Abramm to this place in order to refill his bag. It would be cruel to lead him to water only to deny him its taste. . . .

  No.

  He jerked himself back from the pond again and looked up. The dragon’s yellow eyes glittered balefully. These are not my thoughts. . . .

  The water pulled at him, inviting him to look again, but he turned and forced himself to walk away. As he came around the low wall and headed for the thoroughfare, a great roar thundered from the buildings to his left, and he stopped. The sound shook bits of plaster off the decaying walls and provoked a sudden flurry of snorts from the square around him as, to his horror, a dozen large reptilian heads poked up from the rubble and fallen pillars—not all of which were pillars. As the first roar faded, another answered, then a whole chorus of them, from points all around the square.

  The creatures around him rose to their feet, giant lizards whose scales looked dry and cracked and sallow beneath a coating of dust. Most were wingless, but not all—one stretched out green-webbed limbs and pulled itself into the sky. Two downflaps carried it into the misty ceiling and out of sight. The rest stared in the direction of the roar for some time. Then, as they relaxed and looked around, a big salmon-colored beast nearby noticed Abramm and froze, staring at him with glittering ruby eyes as its dark forked tongue flicked in and out between thin-lipped jaws and far too many teeth. Never in his life had Abramm felt so much like prey.

  Now, as if their minds were linked, other dragons noticed him, too, and closed in upon him. Heart pounding, he brought his staff horizontal. . . .

  And was saved when a huge silver dragon crashed through a gap in the far wall and scuttled across the yard, long tail flicking back and forth to balance the motion of its thick, powerful legs. A blue dragon burst from the same gap in pursuit, a green right behind it. The silver whirled back to face its pursuers. Immediately all the other dragons abandoned Abramm to focus on this new interest.

  Some of the silver’s scales had been torn free, while others hung loosely from great bloody wounds. The beast’s forked tongue flicked in and out, its ribs lifting and falling rapidly. Big as it was, its attackers were bigger.

  For a long moment they held position, unmoving save for tongues and heaving sides. Then the silver bugled a challenge, a bright red ruff flaring round its neck. With a roar, the green one charged, slamming into the silver with a heavy thud and bowling it back through the dust and rock.

  Then the blue was upon it, as well, dust boiling up around them. They killed their fellow with alarming swiftness and fell to ripping it apart, tossing great gobbets of meat into the air and swallowing them whole. Before Abramm knew it, five others had joined the first two, and the rest of the beasts in the square, all of them smaller, drew near the kill, watching avidly as the others fed.

  Seizing his chance, Abramm hurried across the gap to the thoroughfare. When he glanced back, the big dragons were already withdrawing from the near-stripped carcass to flop down in the dust, satiated, while the youngsters crowded in for their turn.

  Revolted and unnerved, he turned away and, eyeing the mist-hung thoroughfare before him, wondered again what he was doing there. He hadn’t gone two steps when a pleasant voice remarked behind him, “They used to be men.”

  He whirled to find a lithe young man in a white linen tunic leaning with arms folded in one of the open doorways lining the street. He was cleanshaven and so handsome he was almost pretty. Blond curls tumbled in a gleaming mass about his shoulders, and his long-lashed blue eyes were the sort that set women’s hearts aflutter and drove men to valiant deeds.

  “Who are you?” Abramm asked suspiciously.

  “You can call me Lema,” the man said, stepping from the doorway and coming toward him. “And you are?”

  “Alaric.” Abramm glanced about. “You live here?”

  “I do.” The blue eyes flicked up and down Abramm’s form. “You look like a warrior, Alaric, though somehow that name does not seem proper for you.”

  “Well, Lema doesn’t seem a proper name for you, so I suppose we are even.” Abramm stepped away from him. Closer now, he realized the man’s proportions were scaled to the city’s gargantuan architecture, so he’d not seemed unusually large until they stood face-to-face. Now he towered over Abramm, his broad chest and powerful shoulders almost double the width of Abramm’s.

  The stranger cocked his head, looking almost pleased. “You don’t think Lema suits me? Why not? Too . . . ordinary? Too plain?”

  “Too small.” Abramm took another step back.

  Lema threw back his head and laughed. “Where are you headed, Alaric?” he asked when he had finished.

  “I thought I’d follow this road,” Abramm said, gesturing vaguely up the street, which was littered with weeds, fallen rocks, and the ever-present piles of scat. Broken-off pillars marched in line along the central divider on his left, while in the tall masonry walls soaring to right and left, the high-placed window holes and remains of stone balconies gave evidence of long-lost upper stories.

  “Ah, that’ll be the Central Plaza, then.” Lema nodded and eyed him with a knowing gleam. “I guess we know what you’re after.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The treasure of Chena’ag Tor, of course.”

  “I don’t think so,” Abramm said. He started down the thoroughfare.

  “Well, you’re headed right for it,” Lema said, falling into step with him.

  Abramm said nothing, wondering suddenly if he might be right. Riches such as Chena’ag Tor was said to hold would certainly build him the kind of army he’d need to take back his homeland and defeat the Esurhites.

  “You’re not the first to come here looking for the treasure, you know,” Lema remarked che
erfully. “In fact, it’s the only reason any of your kind ever come here.”

  “There are more of my kind here?”

  Lema waved a dismissive hand. “They’re all dead. Last one passed a few years ago, I think. It’s hard to keep the time straight anymore. They never seem to last long, but maybe that’s just relative since the rest of us have been here so much longer.”

  “So there are others like you here, then?”

  “Oh yes. Many of us, in fact. Most live down near the plaza, where it’s nicer.” He paused as a loud snort erupted from the shadowed interior of a room beyond the street-level doorway they were passing, then said, as if it were nothing, “You can’t take the treasure away, you know. The road will only bring you back.” He paused again, then added, “Of course, it would do that even if you didn’t have the treasure.” And the grin he flashed at Abramm seemed almost a leer, as if he hoped his words might have provoked fear and dismay in his listener.

  Abramm shrugged. “Well, since I didn’t follow the road here in the first place, I doubt I’ll be relying on it to leave.”

  “When you leave—”

  He was cut off by another snort, followed by the sudden appearance of a fat yellow dragon lumbering out of a gap in the wall to their right. It scuttled into their path and stopped when it saw them, as if startled. Topaz eyes fixed upon them as its black tongue tasted the air. It was twice the size of the pair that had killed the silver back in the square.

  Lema made a shooing motion at it. “Go on!” he said as if it were a stray dog. The beast ignored him, staring at Abramm as if it were trying to figure out what he was. In that instant something about it looked almost human.

  Lema waved his hand again. “Go on! Get out of the way.”

  The creature flinched, then turned and scuffled across the divider into the adjoining street, where it turned back to watch them.