Return of the Guardian-King

by Karen Hancock

  Movement in the shadows on the far side of the room drew Abramm’s eye to a tall man in a white tunic sashed with gold, standing in the shadow of a long hallway. He had the shaved head and long braided topknot of a Sorite warrior, with the gold-scaled cheekbones of a high-ranking noble, and as Abramm looked at him, the other’s gaze snared his own. Dark, long-lashed eyes, exotically shaped, and seemingly bottomless above the scaling, held him riveted with familiarity. Then the stranger smiled and a chill rippled up Abramm’s back.

  Just then a party of revelers came trooping across the main room toward the hallway, swallowing up the Sorite. When they had moved into the shadowed corridor, he was gone, but the image of his face remained. It was the man from Abramm’s dream in Caerna’tha. The one where the dragon had come to visit.

  Sudden fear clenched his stomach and dried his mouth.

  “I will take it all from you. . . .”

  Moroq was here. Now. Had been waiting for him, and wanted him to know it. . . .

  “So, you look like you’ve been in a few Games yourself, friend,” a voice said at his shoulder, startling him so badly he jumped.

  Looking around, he found a short, heavyset Esurhite settling onto the pillow beside him.

  “Aye.” He hardly knew what he was saying. Terror still clouded his mind, along with images of the throne room and the great pillar in the Hall of Records. Moroq could do nothing Eidon did not allow. But Eidon had given him free rein.

  “Do your worst, then. . . .”

  The man nodded, eyeing Abramm’s hair and scars. He said something that seemed to require a response, but Abramm had no idea what it was. Desperately he wrenched his thoughts back to the here and now. “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, your face is scarred on the wrong side. The Pretender’s scars were on the right.”

  “Oh. Aye . . .” Abramm grimaced. If Eidon had allowed Moroq free rein, it meant Abramm could handle whatever came. “His reward will only be greater for it. . . .” It would all be for the best. He had only to trust. And after all he had seen, all he had been through, how could he not?

  The panic subsided and his rattled thoughts ordered themselves again. As he finally truly focused on the man at his side he realized the other had sought him out. But had Katahn sent him? Or Moroq?

  “I’m looking for a Gamer, actually,” Abramm said, plunging onward. “I’ve slaves to sell tonight.”

  The man lifted his thick glass in long, swarthy fingers and sipped his syrupy tea. “I have a friend who might be interested. He doesn’t buy from just anyone, though.”

  Abramm snorted. “I’m sure your friend has already seen me and what I have to offer, or you’d not be here.”

  The man smiled, sipped again, then set down his tea glass and said, “Come with me.”

  He led Abramm from the common room into the same hallway where Moroq had disappeared, then along a series of narrow, plaster-walled corridors. They passed numerous closed carved-wood doors from which the fermikia smoke clouded so thickly it made him dizzy just walking through it.

  Finally they crossed a quiet courtyard, descended a short span of steps, and the man pushed open a heavy door to lead him into a large, dark chamber that smelled like the stable. A tin lantern with a spiraling top hung from a rafter in the middle of the room, the light of its kelistar turning the chamber into a puzzle of pooled shadow and dim light. In the corner, horses shifted and snorted, and all around him he sensed men watching him.

  His guide abandoned him there, stepping back through the door and closing it behind him. Abramm waited, knowing he was being scrutinized. Was the shaven-headed Sorite out there somewhere, drawing that long black bow of his as he prepared to put an arrow into Abramm’s heart?

  “So you’ve come looking to sell some slaves, have you?” said a voice from the shadows beyond the lantern.

  “I have,” said Abramm, turning toward the speaker and hoping his start of surprise hadn’t been noticeable.

  For another long moment they all stood there, Abramm in the lantern light, the unseen others breathing softly around him. Then a man stepped from the shadow into the light—short, broad shouldered, that familiar hatchet face now adorned by a gray goatee, which matched the hair in the warrior’s knot on his nape. He wore a dark tunic, a rank of combat honor rings in the margin of his left ear, and a broad grin on his swarthy face.

  “Khrell’s fire!” Katahn ul Manus cried as he came forward to catch Abramm in a rough embrace. “Will you never stay dead?”

  Abramm laughed as they stepped apart. “I thought it was you I saw in the street.”

  “No one was more surprised than I,” Katahn countered. “What were a pack of Esurhites doing up here this early in the night? I thought. And with a cart of slaves, no less. Then something caught my eye. There’s no missing the way you move, old friend. Even if you are supposed to be dead.” He paused, then shook his head. “What are you doing here?”

  “That is a very long and complicated story. I am more interested in why you are here. Though I have my suspicions.”

  Katahn’s eyes narrowed. “You were the one who destroyed the temple at Aggosim, weren’t you?”

  Abramm cocked a brow at him. “Why would you guess that? Aggosim is hundreds of leagues away.”

  “Aye, and it’s been four months since it happened. Rumor said the Pretender had come back from the dead through its temple corridor, destroying it in the process. The blast went through the links to Oropos and Xorofin, destroying those as well and triggering earthquakes in all three places. I have to admit the stories perplexed me. I knew you were dead, but who else could do such things? I thought maybe it was Meridon.” He shook his head again. “It really was you.”

  “Actually, Eidon did it. I just went along for the ride.”

  “Eidon seems to take you on quite a few rides,” Katahn said dryly. He shook his head. “Destiny swirls around you still, my friend.”

  Before they went any farther, Abramm asked if they might bring in the men he’d left outside before some of the locals decided to make trouble. Soon, all seventeen of them had been brought into the stable, the street gates closed securely behind them. It turned out Katahn had come to Horon-Pel as leader of the group Maddie had sent to rescue her brother, and when Borlain and his Chesedhan countrymen met those who’d come with Katahn, a second reunion ensued.

  Eventually, though, they all settled down, and Katahn was ready to plot. As the others scattered about the stable, taking seats on barrels, boxes, and kegs, he told Abramm that the man who would fight tomorrow was indeed Leyton Donavan. “I’ve seen him with my own eyes. And Belthre’gar is here, as well.” He flashed Abramm a sharp look at that point. “Though you don’t seem very surprised.”

  Abramm smiled. “I would never have come to Horon-Pel if it had been up to me. My plan was to head north from the pass to Zereda on the strait. But the earthquake closed the pass, and the only other road led here. Eidon would not have brought me to this place on practically the same day Leyton is supposed to appear if it weren’t really him.”

  “Or at least,” Katahn added with cocked brow, “if it weren’t really your regalia he’s got. He has two of the pieces that we know of. The scepter and the crown. They paraded him around this afternoon. Of course, both could be fakes.”

  Abramm said nothing to that, and after a moment Katahn went on outlining his plan. He’d brought along a man from Chesedh to play the part of Abramm and had entered him into the qualifying rounds for that position last week. The man had fought his way through all the rounds, winning at last the right to have his face cut in imitation of Abramm’s scars. Only to have one of the minor cuts he’d sustained in a previous match suddenly suppurate so aggressively that twenty-four hours later he was weak and thrashing with fever, unable even to stand, let alone fight.

  “We’ve been praying he’d recover and are trying every treatment we can think of,” Katahn said, “but nothing’s helped. This afternoon I told my friend, the one you met in the teah
ouse, to be on the lookout for anyone newly arrived who might have slaves to sell, but I didn’t really expect he’d find anyone.” He paused and shook his head. “And now here you are.”

  “Aye. Here I am.”

  “Perfect in every regard.” Katahn grinned. “Except for your scars being on the wrong side of your face.”

  And at that they both laughed.

  “Wait a minute,” Borlain said now, looking from one to the other. “You’re thinking of Abramm taking your champion’s place?”

  Katahn still had his eye on Abramm. “I don’t know. Are you ready to get back into the ring, then, Pretender? Think you still have all the old moves?”

  “You know I don’t, old fox,” Abramm said with a chuckle, lifting the arm the morwhol had maimed.

  At that point Rolland could no longer contain his horror. “Sire, you cannot be serious!”

  “Do you see anyone else here more suited to play me than me?”

  “Let me go, sir. I’m the right size and have the right coloring!”

  “Rollie, we’d have to cut your face.”

  “I know that.” Though his voice trembled, Rolland stood firm. “I am more than willing to suffer what you already have if it will keep you out of there.”

  Abramm stared at him, moved to muteness by the man’s offer.

  Katahn snorted. “So, then, you think you could do better in the ring than the White Pretender, Large One?”

  Rolland’s eyes widened as he turned to the Esurhite.

  “Even at half what he was,” said Katahn, “he is still a formidable foe.”

  “That he is,” Borlain offered grimly.

  “Not that it matters,” Abramm intruded. “Since I’m not expecting to fight him anyway. What I’ll bring is shock. When Belthre’gar sees me out there, he’ll burst a blood vessel, most likely. Start yelling to have me killed or seized, especially if either of the regalia are real. In their panic and haste, they’ll open the gates themselves for the rest of you to come in.”

  “Don’t think Leyton won’t fight you,” Katahn warned. “He won’t have a choice. And last time you faced him, remember—”

  “He beat me. Aye. But with you all rushing in to rescue us, surely he’ll be distracted enough I can elude defeat this time.”

  “So it’s true, then, sir?” Galen asked out of the blue, staring at him. “You really were a slave in these Games? Really were sold off to them by your own brother?”

  “I was sold by a man who shares my parentage,” Abramm replied grimly. “I have a hard time thinking of him as my brother anymore. Especially after what we saw today.”

  He spoke of the temple outside Horon-Pel, where today they’d been forced to wait on the road while troops of Sorites, Irianni, and Kiriathans had marched through its gates and onto the road before them. Five score of his countrymen marched by wearing tabards marked with a flame-and-crown device he’d not recognized. If he’d not seen it with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it. When Rolland had yelled to them from the slave cart, asking whom they marched under, the answer was “Makepeace! Long may he reign.”

  The words had nearly knocked Abramm off his horse.

  “They say he’s gone mad,” Katahn said now, speaking of Gillard. “Obsessed with you. Even cut his own face to look like you.”

  “Surely that’s just a crazy tale.”

  “I don’t think so, my friend. He serves the Bright Ones now. And they are obsessed with you, as well. Do you know how many men bear the same scars as you do? How many men they’ve sent, pretending to be you?”

  Bright Ones . . . He’d forgotten that was one of the Esurhite names for rhu’ema. Bright Ones . . . Shining Ones . . . the Ban’astori . . .

  “See?” Galen said quietly to his uncle Oakes. “He really is King Abramm.”

  Trinley only scowled at the straw-covered floor and said nothing.

  Not long after that they got around to planning out the details of the rescue operation. Katahn and his men had already scouted the narrow runs of the city as they extended from the amphitheater’s ring-shaped plaza. In addition, just as in the Val’Orda, Horon-Pel’s amphitheater had the under ground works associated with the arena productions—the elevators, the drainage tubes, the chutes through which the animals were driven. Besides that, it turned out that many of the people who lived in the city had long made their livelihood raiding the nearby tombs of their distant ancestors, and there was a veritable network of underground passages beneath their simple dwellings. Katahn knew of several in particular that he could use.

  They would go early tomorrow morning, as Katahn had already arranged: himself, Abramm, well cloaked, and a handful of men to serve as his guards and handlers. Once checked in and approved—as early as possible to avoid the potential of running into someone who might recognize either of them— Abramm and his handlers would be left in a holding cell to await the contest. Meanwhile the others would be infiltrating from the tunnels, garbed in Esurhite black. . . .

  It was late when they finally finished outlining all the specifics, memorizing maps and parceling out positions and assignments. As the others settled down to sleep there in the stable, Katahn took Abramm to the spacious chamber he was renting from the teahouse proprietor. There, over small glasses of tea mellowed with the brandylike Andolen saria, they indulged in some private conversation, and it wasn’t long before Abramm found himself asking about the rumors of Maddie remarrying.

  A frown creased the old Gamer’s brow as he looked at his glass and shrugged it off as “only a rumor.”

  “Katahn . . .”

  The Esurhite drew and released a quick breath. “I know nothing for certain, for I’ve not been to Peregris since she sent us off. I can say the man was courting her at that time, but she was holding out for your return. Admittedly, she was alone in that belief and her courtiers and advisors were pressing her hard to accept him. He had them all charmed—handsome, smart, rich, completely devoted to her.”

  Something in Abramm’s chest seized up as Katahn said these things, forming a hard, painful knot.

  “It wasn’t until we got here that we heard she’d accepted his suit,” Katahn finished.

  “A man tonight said she’d already married him.”

  Katahn sighed. Sipped from his tea glass. “You know how these things are, Abramm. This far away, behind enemy lines . . . the truth could be anything. For all we know Maddie put out the tale to buy herself time. The wave decimated the Chesedhan navy and the breastwork on the river, you know. And you must have noticed how nervous it makes the Esurhites to think of Tirus ul Sadek joining the Chesedhans.”

  “Yes. I noticed . . . and that’s another thing. Why do they know of him— and fear him so—when I’ve never heard of him?”

  Katahn smiled grimly. “Oh, the House of the Dragon is well known in Esurh, for our dealings with it go way back. . . .”

  He spoke on, but Abramm heard not a word, his attention riveted on that single word: dragon. The knot in his chest hardened into stone, squeezing the air from his lungs as the room spun. He’d readied himself to hear of his wife’s death and abide it. He was not at all ready to hear of her life with another man. Let alone one said to be of the house of the dragon.

  Surely it couldn’t be Moroq she had married! He swayed in the chair and pressed his forearms hard against the table, sweat popping out upon his flesh. No. She would know better. She was too smart, too strong in the Light. . . .

  “Abramm . . .” Katahn’s hand tightened on his forearm, drawing his attention. His dark eyes were crinkled with worry. “Don’t trouble yourself over what might not even be true. You have more than enough to think about right now.”

  But as Abramm stared at him, all he saw was the white blaze of the throne room, the beautiful, vicious voice of his worst and truest enemy echoing in his head: “I will take it all. . . .”

  CHAPTER

  32

  Carissa Kalladorne Meridon, Duchess of Northille and wife to the man who was Special Co
unsel to the Queen, stood at the bay window of the spacious apartments she shared with her husband and gazed across the promenade of palms cutting through the waterpark at Fannath Rill. She had weaned Conal almost four months ago now—though he’d nearly weaned himself by then—so there were no more morning nursing sessions. It was hard to believe he was almost two years old. And that it had been that long since Abramm’s death.

  And here come the tears again. . . . She frowned and wiped them from her lashes, annoyed with herself for being so weepy. This was to be a day of rejoicing, and here she was with one of her horrible moods again.

  Though the dawn had earlier turned the ceiling of cloud to blood—it was what had roused her from her bed—that had faded, leaving the flat gray overcast that had obscured the sky for months. Below, scurrying like ants along the promenade, workers swept, pruned, carted in potted orange trees, and set up brightly colored pavilions and flags and garlands of fresh spring flowers for the wedding celebration to come. Today Queen Madeleine of Chesedh was to wed Draek Tiris ul Sadek of Soria, and Tiris had promised the party would last for days. Already the smell of roasting meat filled the palace.

  No need to worry about the Esurhites interrupting the ceremony. One hundred of Tiris’s galleys stood at anchor in the Peregris harbor, and a hundred thousand of his armed soldiers were garrisoned along Chesedh’s southern shores, guarding the strait. No need to worry about rain ruining the festivities, either, for the rainy season had ended early this year. There’d been not a drizzle for at least six weeks. The wedding should go off without a hitch.

  All those in power were ecstatic. Ever since Tiris had arrived last month to make his final preparations, he’d been feted by every noble house in Chesedh, one after the other. Thanked for his provision and welcomed to the realm.

  They were saved, and it was his doing. Chesedh was gaining a new king, Maddie’s children would have a new father, and Maddie herself, after nearly two years of mourning, was finally moving on to a new relationship. Tiris seemed the perfect replacement.