Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  Abramm said nothing for a moment as he considered. Then, “I don’t think I’ll be going after the regalia, Rollie.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Rolland was staring at him with a strange expression. “Ye look different without the beard and yer hair tied back like that.”

  “So you’ve said.”

  “Familiar somehow. Like maybe I did know ye before. From the palace, maybe.”

  “Maybe.” He waited, wondering if the time had finally come. . . .

  The other man looked almost pained. “But ye don’t remember me, do ye?”

  “No, Rollie. I really don’t. I’m sorry.” Abramm sighed wearily and started back to the campfire before Rolland could ask him what he was doing out here, squirming to think the man had heard him weeping. He felt strangely detached from the others and had no interest in discussing their plans for the regalia. Maybe it was just more of the exhaustion left over from his time in the desert, or maybe it was something else he didn’t understand. All he knew was that he’d barely rolled himself up in his cloak and stretched out beside the fire before he was asleep.

  In the morning the other Kiriathans were all afroth with their plans to rescue the regalia. Trinley, finally back in his element, gave orders freely about when they would leave, what they would do if they encountered anyone, who would carry what, and what order they would travel in. He had Abramm’s and Rolland’s loads all planned out for them—the heaviest of the lot, as usual—and the possibility they might not share his vision still hadn’t occurred to him.

  Thus when Abramm finally told him that he and Rolland were not going south with the other Kiriathans, the former alderman was genuinely shocked. “But . . . but . . .” he stammered as all around them other conversations trickled to a halt.

  “Did ye just say ye’re not goin’ with us?” Cedric asked, rucksack already slung over his one shoulder.

  “That’s right,” Abramm said. “We’re not.”

  “But ye were Abramm’s man,” Trinley protested. “I’d think you above all of us would want t’ see his regalia returned to his heir.”

  Abramm let his gaze slide over the men around him, familiar faces many of them, men he’d grown attached to. “Actually, I wasn’t Abramm’s man,” he said. “And my destiny does not lie to the south.”

  Their reactions to that were comical: amused indignation, consternation, a little bit of irritation at his hubris.

  “Yer destiny?” Trinley sputtered. “Who the plague d’ ye think ye are, anyway, Alaric?”

  Abramm shook his head. “You still have no idea, do you?”

  They looked at him blankly.

  “I will not seek the regalia. They will come to me.”

  With that, he picked up his Esurhite armor and started northward on the road, Rolland at his side. The Chesedhans followed them wordlessly. As they climbed back onto the road, Rolland said, “That was awful strange talk, Alaric. What the plague did ye mean, the regalia will come to ye?”

  But Abramm did not answer him. No one spoke to him for the entire morning, but when they stopped to rest around midday, Cedric and Galen and a couple others caught up with them. They said nothing to Abramm but favored him with puzzled looks and spoke among themselves of his strange words. “Sounded like someone else talking there for a time,” he overheard one of them say. The rest of the Kiriathans, including an obviously disgruntled Trinley, rejoined them by evening. But again no one said a word to him.

  In the days that followed, the others continued to give him his space, as if they were afraid of him. Perhaps they thought he had lost his mind. Even Rolland, who didn’t exactly avoid him, kept his distance and his silence, though often Abramm caught the other man eyeing him thoughtfully.

  Abramm had made the statement about the regalia seeking him without realizing he’d spoken it aloud. The thought had impressed itself upon him as if from another source, even as the words had fallen from his lips. Once they had, it had been too late to retract them, and he’d realized then that it was Eidon working through him, that the hour of revelation was coming.

  More than two weeks later, with the mountains now towering ahead of them and the road winding through grassy foothills and copses of oaks turning yellow with the fall, they passed the estate noted on Abramm’s map. The whitewashed plaster of the wall running along the road was cracked and peeling, the fields beyond it long since gone to weeds, and the gateway arch at the estate’s entrance lay in ruin, collapsed upon the drive and half buried in dirt—silent testimony to how long it had been since anyone of any means had passed this way.

  Which explained how they could have traveled so many days and met no one else. Not far up the road a small town also stood deserted, and he began to wonder why. Was the pass no longer crossable? Would they ascend the mountain only to discover the way was blocked?

  So engrossed was he with his speculations and so accustomed to their solitude, he didn’t hear the Esurhite troop until it was upon them, trotting around a bend in the road which had, until then, obscured them behind a screen of oak trees. Though Abramm had established a plan in which, should such a thing occur, the last ten men of their troop were supposed to disappear into the roadside vegetation, this troop was on them so quickly he doubted anyone remembered what they were to do. Rather than look surprised or fearful, or turn around to see, he proceeded onward as if nothing were amiss.

  The troop’s captain pulled up in a cloud of dust, his big gray gelding reminding Abramm ofWarbanner. He demanded to know what Abramm was doing here, but Abramm faced him down boldly, aware that he wore the superior rank of a temple guard. The corridor in the Temple of Aggos had been destroyed, he informed the man, so he and his troop were escorting these slaves north over the mountain to the front.

  The captain asked why Abramm was on foot. He said his horse had gone lame and he’d had to leave it behind. A brief exchange ensued, during which Abramm learned that the road ahead was closed at the old fortress— unnamed on his map but marked by a solid square at what seemed a pass through the mountains. The earthquake had filled a place called the Slot with rock, and they would all have to go back. The Esurhite captain and his men, who’d been sent to investigate the damage, would escort them to the river. At that point Abramm decided to act upon the ideas that had been percolating in his brain ever since the troop had arrived. Borlain had gotten into position after all—he could see him out of the corner of his eye, hiding in the brush at the side of the road. Hopefully, he’d see what needed doing.

  Abramm smiled and said he would welcome an escort, but that one of the captain’s men must surrender to him his mount because it was unseemly for him to walk when others of lesser rank rode.

  “In fact,” he said, letting his smile broaden a hair as he took hold of the reins under the horse’s chin, “this animal will do nicely.”

  Shock preceded outrage on the captain’s face. Scowling, he kicked the horse forward. Abramm released the reins and stepped to meet him, grabbing the Esurhite’s lower leg as the horse went by. The other man’s momentum helped Abramm to pull his booted foot free of the stirrup, then flip him up and over the horse’s far side. Meanwhile, Borlain and his men were erupting from the bushes to attack the captain’s subordinates, while from somewhere at Abramm’s back came the hard thunks and clacks of sticks on sword and bone. Braced against the gray’s flank, Abramm pulled his sword and turned to the rider behind him. The man was still fumbling to get his own blade free of his scabbard when Abramm ran him through the armpit.

  It was over in moments. Five Esurhites lay dead in the dirt, and the sixth, who had been last in line, stared in horror as Rolland advanced upon him, then shrieked something in the Tahg and flung himself off his horse to crash away into the underbrush.

  Trinley, who was closest to his line of flight, started after him, but Abramm called him back. As they all caught their breaths and then came together to take stock, Rolland asked, “What does rashawin mean?”

  “It means pretender,” said Borlain
, eyeing him speculatively. “He must’ve thought you were the White Pretender.”

  “Aye.” Abramm nodded. “You’re about the right size and coloring.”

  Rolland looked embarrassed. “I’ve never heard any tales about the Pretender attacking anyone with a stick,” he grumbled.

  “It wasn’t his weapon of choice,” Abramm agreed.

  “Why the plague did you let him go?” Trinley demanded as he stalked up to them. “He’ll tell everyone we’re here and bring back that army you’re so afraid of.”

  “The Pretender is dead, Trinley.”

  “Still . . . we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

  “We’re a few escaped slaves among a multitude. This earthquake has shaken the whole realm apart. They aren’t going to go chasing up some impassable road on the word of a scared young soldier claiming to have faced the White Pretender. They’ll think he’s just trying to save face. I’m sure he won’t be the only one.”

  “Aye,” Borlain agreed. “I heard talk back in Aggosim that some believe it was the Pretender who destroyed the temple.”

  “I heard that, too,” Abramm said. He cocked his head at Borlain. “You didn’t tell me you spoke the Tahg.”

  The Chesedhan shrugged. “I can pick out words here and there. But I understand more than I can speak.”

  In the course of stripping the bodies of their uniforms and weapons, they found a mail pouch on one of the men, filled with letters in the Tahg along with a detailed map of the area on both sides of the pass. Abramm kept the pouch himself, and as those without uniforms decided who would get the black tunics and helms they’d just acquired, he helped Rolland and Borlain drag the bodies off the road.

  Four days later they had followed the road up the side of a steep, rocky canyon to a narrow slot of a pass, filled with fallen slabs of granite. Overlooking it was the blasted-out hulk of an old fortress whose distinctive towers and spiraling stonework marked it as Andolen, probably abandoned since the Esurhites had captured it some ten years ago. Considering how long the villa they’d passed earlier had lain in ruin, Abramm suspected some of the damage to the pass itself had come through that action, but that only with the earthquake had it become blocked completely.

  When it became apparent they’d have to go back, Trinley began to complain bitterly over Abramm’s stubbornness in keeping on when he’d known there was no passage. Why hadn’t he listened to the Esurhites? Now they’d wasted much time and these uniforms would serve them nothing.

  Abramm finally told him, bluntly, to take his griping elsewhere. They set up camp at the mouth of the slab-filled slot. In the morning, Abramm was up early, determined to do a thorough daylight investigation before abandoning the place altogether. He’d been confident of Eidon’s direction in following this route, and he didn’t want to miss whatever might be here for him.

  It was young Galen who drew his attention to the game trail that cut away from the slot along the cliff face opposite the road they’d come up. Nearly as wide as the road when they started on it, it narrowed quickly, turning out to be suitable only for the goats that had made it. When the trail disintegrated into a series of rock-to-rock jumps, Abramm gave it up and turned around.

  And on the way back down they found the illusion that had been woven over part of the cliff face, just at the point where the path began to narrow. Behind it, a long, crooked crack spilled them into a bowl-shaped valley fringed with yellow-leaved oaks. A corral stood to the right of them, near a number of stone buildings and a now-empty trough that had apparently been spring fed at one time. Beyond this deserted settlement, an ancient stair crawled up a rocky slope to the fortress, which was much larger than it had appeared from the road.

  “Plagues!” Galen said as they stood looking about at the site. “It’s like it was made fer us.”

  “I think it was,” Abramm said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Let’s go get the others.”

  The first thing they did was bring the horses up, for if they couldn’t get the beasts to pass through the illusion, the place would be useless to them. Rolland came up with the trick of blindfolding them and startling them through the spell one by one. It took all afternoon, but finally they had them all through—Abramm’s big gray being the last. As he rode the animal through the long, sloping entrance slot, he marveled anew at Eidon’s provision. Whoever would have imagined such a thing as this awaited them when they’d left the river?

  Once in the valley, he trotted down the incline to where Rolland stood with Cedric and Galen, dismounted, and handed the reins to the blacksmith, hardly realizing what he was doing. It was an action born of habit mixed with preoccupation, an action he had done countless times in the Springerlan stables as Abramm, but never before as Alaric. He’d already started walking away, wanting to check out the spring Borlain had told him about earlier, when he heard Rolland’s strangled, “Eidon’s mercy!”

  He turned back to find the blacksmith staring at him, stricken. “What’s wrong?”

  “Ye look like . . . like King Abramm! That’s the memory I’ve been chasin’ after all this time. Why ye seem familiar to me. Ye . . . look like . . .” He seemed to be having trouble getting his breath. “Ye look like . . . him.”

  “I know,” Abramm said quietly, stepping round fully to face him. And just like that, the moment had come.

  Around him the other men had all gone still and alert, looking from Rolland to him in puzzlement. None of the rest had ever seen him as Abramm.

  He kept his gaze on the blacksmith, watching the man shuffling the facts alongside his observations and the experiences they’d shared for more than a year. “Dragon and shield . . .” he murmured.

  The change came like a huge wave rising up inevitably and unavoidably within him, until the crest finally curled, broke, and tumbled down, rushing over him in a fierce burn of comprehension.

  No way to turn it or deny it now. Rolland had seen the truth. At long last.

  His rugged face turned white, his mouth sagged open, and his blue eyes widened. “I saw ye die,” he breathed.

  “You saw someone else,” Abramm said calmly, though his ears had started to roar. “I was rescued before the execution took place. I spent three months recovering—” “

  . . . in a hunting lodge at the headwaters of the Snowsong River,” Rolland took over, repeating what Abramm had told them months ago in Caerna’tha, “an’ then walked up t’ Highmount Holding alone.”

  Borlain and Trinley had joined the others now, all eyes riveted on Abramm and the blacksmith.

  Rolland shook his head, his gaze running again over Abramm’s face and form. “How could I have been so blind?”

  “It wasn’t time for you to see.”

  Rolland regarded him steadily for a moment, then dropped to one knee and bowed his head. “My lord . . .” he said, voice trembling. And by that action he received a flurry of shocked looks from the others.

  “What the plague?” Trinley exclaimed. “Ye’re calling him lord now, Rollie?”

  “My lord . . . and my king,” Rolland said gravely. As he recited the ageold words of fealty, the others’ eyes flicked back to Abramm, who stood before him, accepting his vows without protest. Their brows furrowed, and they looked nervously at one another, not truly understanding until Rolland came to the end of his speech and Abramm began his own, using his real and rightful name: “I, Abramm Alaric Kesrin Galbrath Kalladorne . . .”

  As he spoke the words of his own promise, he saw the realization of truth sweep through the others, forced upon them as they considered the brand on his arm, the shield on his chest, the scars on his face, and what the last few weeks had brought them to.

  When he had finished, Borlain said, “You’re the one who destroyed the temple, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Plagues!” Cedric cried. “I remember thinking back in Caerna’tha how ye had all the traits they said belonged to Abramm—the scars, the shield and dragon. But to think ye really are him . . .
King of Kiriath. . . .”

  “And you’re going to take it back, aren’t you?” Galen said, eyes shining. “Kiriath, I mean. That’s why you’re heading north.”

  “That’s why we’re heading north,” Abramm said. “And if any of you don’t want to be part of this”—he fixed his gaze on Trinley—“feel free to move on.”

  It was as if the Light itself moved through them—perhaps it did—erasing the years of hardship and loss and despair and replacing it with new hope and pride and purpose. The change in their attitude was so profound it raised gooseflesh across Abramm’s shoulders.

  As the Chesedhans looked on, Cedric knelt and uttered the oath of fealty, followed by Galen and—except for Oakes Trinley—all the rest of the Kiriathans. Abramm looked each man in the eye to receive his oath and give his own in return.

  When it was done, he had the first troop of his army.

  CHAPTER

  30

  For two months Abramm and his men stayed in the hidden valley behind the ruined fortress, living off the land and learning how to fight. Abramm, with the one-eyed Borlain’s help, instructed them in the use of sword and shield, and the basic rules of combat. He worked them hard, and they didn’t complain; in fact, except for Trinley, they complied eagerly.

  Their discovery of his true identity and the Kiriathans’ swearing of fealty to him had not only infused them all with new purpose—it had finally given him unquestioned command of the group. Rolland had gone around in a daze for a week, refusing to advance any opinion save one that agreed with Abramm’s, and erecting a barrier of awkward distance between them. Besotted, was how Trinley put it, though not in front of Abramm.

  He was right, though. They were besotted. And to some degree, they had to stay that way. In all his longings to have his name and authority restored, he’d forgotten the inevitable loneliness that came with leadership.

  By the time the last yellow leaves of autumn had fluttered to the ground and the chill of winter’s advent gripped the mountain air, Abramm judged the men were as ready for combat as any new trainees, and it was time to move on. Originally he’d hoped to cross North Andol through its sparsely populated eastern plains, heading north to the Strait of Terreo and on to Chesedh. But the mountains they were in rose up gradually from the south and ended in a line of impassable cliffs on the north, so that, except for the road they’d followed up, the only way down was a narrow trail heading westward along the ridge. Which meant, instead of the deserted plains, they’d have to cross the populous western coastal region.