“No. We’re back in Peregris.”
“Ronesca . . . you can’t trust her.”
“She’s no longer a concern.”
He blinked up at her dazedly.
“Eidon took her,” Maddie said softly.
A brief focused intensity came into his gaze; then he nodded and lapsed back into vagueness. She left him then and spoke at length with the physician in the sitting room downstairs. Trap’s prognosis was not good. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Lungs are still congested . . . and there’s the danger of fever.”
“What are you saying, sir?”
The man was soberly direct. “I’m saying . . . I don’t know how much longer he’ll last, ma’am. Maybe a week, if we’re lucky. More likely only a couple of days.”
She felt as if he’d slammed a door in her face. A couple of days?
She wanted to scream and wail. But she was queen now, and she hadn’t the luxury of falling apart. Returning to the palace in Peregris, she instructed her newly instituted secretary to send word to Carissa in Deveren Dol. “A pigeon tonight, and another in the morning.”
“But, madam, even a post rider would take near a week to get here from Deveren Dol.”
“I know,” Maddie said grimly. “Tell her to hurry.” She paused, then added, “Better send riders to Fannath Rill, too—just to be safe. Tonight and in the morning.”
As the man hurried off, she sagged into a chair by the fireplace, dropped her head into her hands, and began to pray.
CHAPTER
27
Abramm dropped swiftly through whiteness, the wind rushing by him, tossing his beard up into his face, tugging his hair straight up from his head, and shoving his robes up around his chin. He was falling fast and thought he should be afraid, but he wasn’t. Instead he felt euphoric—safe, protected, and given an experience as close to flying as a man would get in a mortal life.
He was not aware of slowing, but he must have, for suddenly he touched down on a hard surface, landing lightly in the bleached-out tableau of a huge chamber. It stretched away from the foot of the dais on which he stood, rows of stone pillars marching away from him beneath a ceiling of intricate vaulting. Though he heard nothing, a great wind whipped his robes and hair while light swooped from the dais into the multitude of shaven-headed priests and black-helmeted guards gathered there and knocked them flat.
Slowly his hearing returned to a distant roar filled with shrieks. The stench of burned flesh and oil and wood filled his nostrils as the brightness faded and he realized he was standing in an Esurhite temple where the only illumination seemed to be coming from his own body.
Men sprawled unmoving on the apronlike dais stair before him, and as the brightness continued to fade, he saw they were badly charred. Most were priests, but a number wore the armor and breastplates of soldiers in the Army of the Black Moon. In fact, beyond the sea of red-robed priests surrounding the dais, the chamber was filled with soldiers, now picking themselves up. The bodies of those closer lay in a long line between the bodies of the priests, and he realized they had been waiting to pass through the corridor he’d just destroyed.
For a moment all was still, the survivors staring up at him, as he tried to figure out where he was. Then, out in the crowd, a tall priest straightened, eyes blazing crimson. Rhu’ema. He pointed at Abramm.
“YOU! What are YOU doing here?”
Other lights flickered in the eyes of the priests around the tall one, and Abramm felt the shock of their recognition, the fear that followed, then the fulminating fire of their hatred—even as he realized he was weaponless, barefoot, and badly outnumbered.
Red fire glowed at the tall priest’s throat as the rhu’ema worked his voice and mouth to speak. “He’s an Infidel! Seize him!”
Immediately the priests broke ranks and a stream of temple guards burst past them, racing up the aisle. The white glow surrounding him was fading fast, and the angry men racing toward him seemed anything but intimidated. All he could think was that the only combat practice he’d had in over a year was the stickwork at Caerna’tha.
My Lord? I know you didn’t send me here to kill me, so—
The floor wrenched under his feet with a roar, and he fell flat on his face, barking elbows and knees on the suddenly heaving marble. A deep roar tore at his ears. He pushed up onto hands and knees and tried to crawl, but the floor leaped and bucked as if intent on flinging him down again. Dust burned his nose and brought tears to his eyes as streams of crumbling rock rained upon him. And all the while the ground roared and shook, on and on and on, until he thought it would never end.
But it did. The floor stilled, the rumble faded, and eventually all he could hear were small streams of still-falling dirt and rocks, and people coughing. He pushed himself up and sat back on his heels. Dust veiled all that lay more than ten feet away from him, glowing now with the light that poured in from above. To his right, the nearest pillar lay half buried by the ceiling and wall debris that had fallen with it. At Abramm’s side, the ground had ruptured, one edge of it thrusting four feet higher than the piece upon which he lay. Huge ceiling slabs surrounded him, one having fallen but a handspan from where he had crouched. The floor’s displacement had kept them from crushing him. Eidon’s doing . . .
As the dust continued to settle he stood and, wiping the tears and grit from his eyes, peered around at the slabs and rocks and piles of rubble covering the temple floor. The multitude of men, who moments ago had been intent on killing him, all lay dead—he saw a triangle of red robe here, a hand there, a bloody foot beyond. Even the coughing he’d heard earlier had ceased.
He considered searching for survivors, but a brief aftershock reminded him the rest of the temple’s vaulted ceiling could yet come down. Even if it didn’t, the place would soon be crawling with Esurhites. Let them find the survivors. He must seize his opportunity while it was still an option.
As swiftly as he could without shoes, he picked his way through the rubble toward the opening, moving along with a handful of others. Around him silence reigned, broken only by the small sounds of their movement.
The displacement had shattered the porch outside and collapsed its columns, the portico piled in huge chunks around them. Not far from the doorway, vents spewed steam from the barren ground. Between them a stairway switchbacked down to what appeared to have been a large tent camp, though most of the tents lay as piles of canvas. Bright purple banners bearing the silver-limned device of Belthre’gar’s black moon hung from canted poles, and tiny black figures in the hundreds, maybe even thousands, massed at the base of the hill.
Beyond the camp, a city sprawled along the bank of a wide gray river beneath a layer of gray clouds. Only above the temple was the sky clear, and that was filling in as he watched.
He squinted at the river and city, at the distant blue mountains behind them. Nothing looked familiar, but from the temple, priests, and soldiers he knew he was somewhere in Esurh. The biggest temples he knew of stood in Aggosim, Oropos, and Xorofin. He’d have recognized the latter two, so maybe this was Aggosim and that river the Okaido. He sure couldn’t think of any other river that big in Esurh.
He started down the steps, and his legs wobbled as a wave of dizziness swept him. The aftermath of his trip through the corridor?
Loathe to follow the front stair right into the midst of the enemy’s camp, he found a smaller side stair that descended into a ravine beside the temple.
As he did so, his weakness intensified. So did the dizziness. Several times he nearly fell down the stair. His tongue clove again to the roof of his mouth, dry and cottony against suddenly chapped lips. His head throbbed, his ears rang, and his stomach churned.
He had no idea what was wrong with him. Sporesick? But when he turned his awareness inward, he found no sign of it. Besides, he’d taken Eidon’s route back there in the domed room. He’d made the right choice. So how could he be sporesick? But if not sporesick, what? It was as if he had been utterly drained of life and stre
ngth, his body turning in on itself, consuming itself as he walked.
It must have been from going through the corridor. Even if he couldn’t tell he was sporesick, he should still do a purge. As soon as he found a suitable hiding place. . . .
He had no idea how he reached the bottom of the stair, but finally he stepped off it into a sandy-floored gully. Nearby he found a rocky overhang behind a screen of gray ratbush and crawled under it, lamenting its proximity to the stair but assuring himself that any searchers wouldn’t expect him to stop and sleep this close.
His thoughts wound off into darkness and light and dreams that were much more than dreams. He was back in the Hall of Record with the pillar and wall murals, though this time there was no adjoining room, no corridor of amber. . . . Only the great pillar itself, sometimes stone, sometimes light so pure and dense it seemed like stone.
His problem wasn’t sporesickness but profound exhaustion—mental, emotional, and physical. He had gone without food and sufficient water for months, it seemed, for time had been stretched in Chena’ag Tor. . . . And yes, the corridor had taken a lot out of him, for it was entirely alien to his flawed and mortal flesh, which did not tolerate it well. Which would not have tolerated it at all, had Eidon not . . .
He wasn’t sure what it was Eidon had done. Shielded him in some way he could not really understand. In any case, it would take him days to fully recuperate, days he did not have, and so for now the Light enfolding his flesh and penetrating into his soul and spirit would rejuvenate him enough to do what needed doing.
And what is that, my Lord?
For answer Eidon showed him a pen of men, bedraggled, half clothed, shaggy haired, and bearded, many of them blond, all of them relatively fair skinned, though some appeared to have been burned by the sun. Esurhites stood around them, and behind them gleamed the river. . . . The scene shifted to that of a great army beneath the combined banners of Abramm’s own dragon and shield and the Chesedhan white with gold crown.
I will gather you an army with which I will vanquish your enemies and deliver your people. All that was lost will be restored. . . .
Abramm felt the hilt of a sword against his palm and the weight of a crown upon his brow, reached up with his left hand to touch the plaited metal—
A harsh cry shattered the dream like a rock hurled through glass. He grew aware of the sand beneath his cheek again, the hollowness of his belly, and the quivering of the ratbush shielding him from unwanted eyes. Air swirled around him; a brief stirring swiftly settled. The cry came again, earsplitting in its proximity as the bushes stirred anew. He heard the hiss of feathered wings on air, and his skin crawled with alarmed recognition. The priests had sent a veren to search for him.
Rhu’ema spawn made from the bodies of men who were so far gone in their self-willed bondage to Shadow they gave themselves willingly to be transformed into monsters, veren were huge, vulturine birds, renowned for their ability to scent their quarry from miles away. They were even more sensitive to Terstan power. Which meant the creature knew where he was.
Abramm heard the returning whisper of its wingbeats as the air stirred again and the ratbush quivered. Soon it would alert its masters to his location. He couldn’t stay here, but he had nothing with which to defend himself, and if he tried to move, the thing would surely attack.
I have the Light, he told himself firmly. And if Eidon could get me out of that temple filled with priests and soldiers, he can handle one measly veren.
A second cry followed the first, deeper and more resonant, obviously from a different beast.
Okay, two measly veren. If he didn’t want it to be three, he’d best move now.
He stood and, having his wits about him now, saw the reason for the stair he had taken: Beyond the gully lay a practice yard on the shelf that extended out from the mountainside, a great stone barracks looming on its far side. The quake had stove in the barracks’ roof and collapsed its sidewall. Though he’d have expected guards to be on duty, or at least men moving about, the place stood eerily unattended.
Cautiously he climbed out of the gully and crept along the base of the slope from which the shelf extended. Passing the struts of a wooden water tower whose tank now lay shattered on the ground at its base, he dashed across the open yard to reach the barracks. Halfway across he felt one of the veren dive through the mist at him and threw himself sideways just when he judged it about to strike. It missed him entirely, and he rolled to his feet in time to see it shoot up into the mist.
Moments later he’d entered the barracks and made his way through piles of rubble interspersed with standing walls and clear spaces. The few men in the building when the earthquake struck lay dead in their beds, half-buried by debris. Their uniforms, which had apparently been hanging on wall hooks nearby, were now mixed with the rubble. Picking through it all, Abramm was able to find for himself a tunic, britches, cloak, and pair of boots. His own clothes, of course, had been shredded by the dragons, but he was surprised to find, caught in the remnants of his ruined rucksack, the speaking stone Laud had given him—his only possession to have escaped Chena’ag Tor and the trip through the corridor intact.
As the veren continued to circle the ruined building, he sought out the armory, belting on the best of the long blades and slinging another to his back. He also fastened a dagger to his hip, strapped another to his leg, and used a third to cut away the beard that had covered his face for well over a year. Its length shocked him, for it did not seem enough time had passed for it to have grown as long as it had. For that matter, his hair was nearly as long as it had been after his eight-year novitiate as a youth.
He had no idea how long he had been in Chena’ag Tor—or the Hall of Record room, for that matter—but clearly, it had been considerably longer than it had seemed.
He scraped his beard off as closely as he could without cutting himself too badly. The job was rough and uneven, but a little grizzle under the present conditions would surely go unremarked—and might even serve to camouflage the scars on his face. His hair he tied into a tail and stuffed down the back of the tunic, trusting the helm and the cloak to conceal its color from those who might note it with suspicion.
From the armory he hurried through the rubble-filled corridors until he found the dining hall and kitchen—happily undamaged—where he provisioned himself with food and water, and even found some fat and soot with which to darken his face. When he was done, however, he smelled so strongly of mutton, he wondered if he’d only traded one problem for another. Hopefully, whoever he encountered would chalk it up to a tunic too long unwashed. And maybe it would confuse the veren.
He’d decided he must go to the city first and find out where he was. If this was Aggosim, as he’d guessed, he had to decide whether to find a boat downriver, or cross over to head for the mountains he’d spotted earlier. First, though, he had to get past the veren.
The moment he left the protection of the barracks’ portico, one of them swooped out of the darkness, talons reaching for his face. He was ready, though, and its own momentum impaled it on his blade. As its claws scrabbled at his helmet, he let the Light flare, bursting out up his arms and into the sword and flinging the veren off him as if it were made of rags. As it arced limply through the air, the second veren dropped from the mist in its own dive and ran straight into its fellow. The two tumbled earthward together.
Dashing around the barracks into a second yard, Abramm skirted another heavily damaged stone building and came to a road that appeared to lead down to the city below. Sure enough, it wound through thronetrees and a shallow ravine to emerge on the flat below, where it headed straight into the army’s demolished tent camp. From the torches that had been lit, he guessed it was full dark, though for him the light was still more twilight. There were soldiers everywhere.
So, my Father? Abramm thought dryly, You mean to build me an army of Esurhites?
He thought he sensed warm laughter and set off briskly toward the encampment. As distracted and f
rantic as everyone was, he suspected he could pass unhindered, and so he did. Every man he encountered immediately averted his eyes and stepped aside.
He was fast approaching the riverbank when he passed a pen of men: ragged, bearded, long-haired, hunch-shouldered men, many of them blond.
Memory of his recent dream stopped him cold. Though most of these were likely barbarians, there were surely some Kiriathans and Chesedhans among them, en route to the rowing benches of Esurhite galleys waiting at the river’s mouth. Without another thought, he turned aside and, as he drew up to the enclosure, saw the prisoners were already being moved out, filing down the sloping riverbank toward a lanternlit barge moored at the end of a short dock. Like sheep they were herded into the vessel’s hold, and every man among them wore a Terstan shield upon his chest. Abramm thought that odd until he realized that while other slaves could have been transported through the corridor, the Terstans would either have died in passage or left the corridor irreparably damaged. Or both. They had to be ferried to their posts in the normal way.
He glanced across the river toward the twinkle of lights on the far bank, aware for the first time of all the flotsam that floated downstream—bushes, branches, bodies, even trees, all from the earthquake, no doubt. Faint as the far lights were, he judged it was probably a good four or five hundred strides to the far bank. It had to be the Okaido. The only Esurhite river that wide— the only river south of the Strait of Terreo. Forming the border between Andol and what was formerly Eram, now officially Esurh, it flowed westward into the Salmancan Sea. Where the need for galley slaves would be great.
As the last of the slaves stepped aboard, he hastened down the bank, and again his uniform made the way for him. Seeing him coming, the soldiers held the gate open until he had leaped aboard. No one said a word to him, nor seemed to expect anything from him, and everyone avoided making eye contact.
He couldn’t have picked a better disguise. So I see you have this whole thing well in hand, he said to Eidon. But I still don’t understand what I’m doing here. Or where I’m going. The few men on this boat are not going to make an army. And besides that, they are in terrible shape. And probably not fighters at all. . . .
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