“I know I left,” Abramm said quietly, crouching down to face his son. “And I meant to come back much sooner. But I am only a man, Ian. And men don’t always get to do what they want. Only Eidon can do that.”
“You are going away again.”
“You know I do not want to.”
Ian wore his reproach on his face and simply stared.
“There are people in our homeland who need me right now. Just as they will need you one day. They have no king. They do not know what to do, and they are very scared and sad. If I do not go, bad men like the ones who came here might come and try to hurt them.”
“Does Father Eidon want you to go?”
Abramm held his son’s gaze. “Yes, Ian. I believe he does.”
“Then he will bring you back.”
The confidence in his little boy’s voice rocked him to his core. Then, to surprise him beyond anything he could even have imagined, Ian stepped toward him, staring at the scars on his face and finally putting his finger to his father’s brow. Transfixed, Abramm watched his son’s face as the boy drew his finger down the length of the scars, then met his gaze again and finally threw his arms around Abramm’s neck, bursting into tears. “I don’t want you to go, Papa.”
Abramm held him tightly and whispered, “I know, Ian.”
He gathered his son into his arms and stood, carrying him to the end of the dock where the gangplank waited. And when Ian’s outburst had ended, he said, “I have brought lots of pigeons with me, and I will send one every day, so you can look for that. If things go as I hope, it won’t be long before all of you can come join me there. Would that be all right?”
Ian nodded, and wiped the tears away with his chubby hands. When Abramm put him down, he stood stoutly next to Simon and his thumb stayed down by his side.
And then, at last, it was time to say good-bye to his wife.
He grabbed her and kissed her hard. “I hate this,” he said gruffly when he pulled free of her. “You know that, don’t you?”
“Well, you shouldn’t.” She smiled up at him. “It is what Eidon has called you to do, my love. You might as well learn to enjoy it.”
He cocked a brow at her. Then she rose up on tiptoe, pressed her hand against the back of his neck, and kissed him just as hard as he had kissed her. “I will miss you worse than ever,” she whispered. “Try to get your business done swiftly this time, all right?”
Then there was nothing left but to release her and step across the plank to the deck of the New Mariner. But it seemed that all the crewmen were in far too much of a hurry to set sail, and all too soon he was on his way. Back to Kiriath.
EPILOGUE
It was a bright spring day when King Abramm returned to Kiriath, the land of his heritage. His people turned out in a vast multitude to welcome him home, their vessels filling Kalladorne Bay. Banners of every color fluttered in the breeze beneath the wide blue sky, and as the New Mariner turned into the bay’s mouth, the fortress cannon on both headlands boomed a welcome.
Slowly his vessel nosed through the mat of boats floating gunwale to gunwale across the bay. People cheered and fluttered hats, cloaks, and even aprons as bands played from the decks. The city bells rang in the distance and fireworks shot off from the shore, exploding overhead in sparkling clouds of thunder. Abramm stood on the quarterdeck, waving and wondering wryly how long it would be before some of them were complaining about him again. Once the thought would have disturbed him. Now he merely recognized it as truth, comfortable in the fact that it wasn’t the people who wanted him or didn’t want him that had made him king over them again—it was the will of Eidon.
Two years of drought, fires, and flooding had so filled the harbor with silt that deep-drafted sailing ships like New Mariner could no longer approach the city itself. Thus the royal barge awaited him halfway, leaders of the interim government arrayed on its deck in their finery to greet him. He saw Seth Harker among them, and his old discipler, Belmir—hardly recognizable without his long Mataian braid and gray robes—but the rest of them were strangers. A new cadre of leaders had moved into the hole created by the loss of the old.
As the New Mariner drifted to a stop beside the barge and the crew scurried to make ready for his disembarkation, Abramm surveyed the great crowd that surrounded him on both water and shore. He took in the blackened ruin of Southdock, stark against the new spring greenery of the nicer neighborhoods on the hills above it, all of it overlooked by the royal palace of Whitehill, serene on its high cliffs. His home. Soon to be his kingdom, again, in addition to Chesedh. He had brought the regalia with him, kept safe in a strongbox in the royal cabin.
Eidon had brought it all back to him, just as he’d promised on the walls of Highmount. More than brought it back. And there were moments, like now, when the contemplation of that fact, and the power it had taken to do it, overwhelmed him. For Eidon hadn’t just transformed events to bring this about, he’d transformed Abramm himself, and that was the much harder work.
Gratitude flooded him. Thank you, my Lord. For all that you have done. For taking everything away and all you have shown me through the loss. For making me wait. For all the ways you have protected and provided. . . . His thoughts danced from wonder to wonder, kindness to kindness—each branching into multiples, and the multiples branching further. . . .
It took his breath away to think the one who could do such things loved him as a father loved a son. That the Creator’s very Light dwelt in Abramm’s flesh and, more and more now, in his heart. You have taught me so much, Father . . . and yet it seems I’ve only begun to know you.
There was a chuckle. Do you think it all ends here, then? That I will not continue to teach you until the day that you die? And beyond?
The men who had lined up in flanking rows between Abramm and the opening in the gunwale now snapped to stiff attention in anticipation of his passage, and silence dropped around them. Beyond the gunwale, the kingdom of Kiriath awaited.
He grinned at Eidon’s question. Of course you will, my Father.
And with that, he strode through the gauntlet as the trumpets blared in fanfare, and all around the assembled multitude began to roar.
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