Shadow Over Kiriath

by Karen Hancock

  You knew I would do this.

  I did.

  He began to weep, overwhelmed by all of it, his pain, his struggle, his failure . . . and the faithfulness extended to him now. How could you . . . You’re still here.

  I am.

  Take it off me, Lord. I don’t want this. You know that.

  If I do, they will order their torturers to continue.

  I don’t care. I want it off.

  He didn’t have to ask again. The Light welled up in a terrific burning over his heart, skin, and bone, gathered into a fiery crescendo that exploded out of his heart, and left a cooling tingle in its place.

  He opened his eyes. Bonafil was picking the bloody patch of skin off the front of his robe where it had been flung. On Abramm’s chest, the mark gleamed bright as ever amidst a patch of newly raw and oozing skin.

  Every man in the room stared at him openmouthed. He gazed around at them, his eyes catching on Belmir, who looked as if someone had struck him on the head.

  “Well,” Eudace huffed, “I see we must begin again.” He turned to the torturers. “Wellman, bring more of the Shadow cleaners.”

  “No,” said Bonafil. “He has defied us long enough. Take him to the square.”

  There ensued an excited discussion regarding the best means of execution, whether it should be burning, beheading, or tearing asunder. Beheading won out because it was quicker and they’d have his head to put on display. Toward the end of the discussion, he saw Gillard standing aside from the main group, nodding speculatively as Blackwell whispered into his ear. Then his brother stepped forward into the silence that had followed their decision and suggested that, since it was already early afternon, perhaps they should wait until the next morning to carry out the execution. In the meantime they could set Abramm on display so the people could see what had become of their great king and know the inevitable end of all who refused to turn from evil.

  There was some concern that Abramm might not survive that long on account of the intensity of his injuries, and even more concern his supporters might find a way to rescue him, but Abramm heard little of the specifics of those arguments. His pain-fogged brain was too busy tussling with the conundrum raised by Gillard’s observation that it was only early afternoon. Which made no sense at all. It had been nearly that when the soldiers had first taken him, and surely the nightmare in Wetherslea had lasted longer than a couple of hours. . . .

  After much labored cogitation, he realized that it was early afternoon a full day after his arrest—that more than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d been seized in that stable. They were probably right to worry he might not survive the night.

  Even so, in the end Bonafil liked the notion of putting the deposed king on display, and that’s what they ended up doing.

  A framework was set up in Execution Square, where Abramm was shackled anew, half naked, his breeches hanging in tatters about his legs, useless to shield him from the cold. He hung there facing the block he would tomorrow lay his head upon, as the people shuffled by in a never-ending line on the road beyond it, mocking him and pelting him with rotten plums and apples. Gadrielite guards stood in ranks about him, facing both outward and inward, and as a seeming eternity twilight began to gather he spied the colorful ribbons that were the rhu’ema watching avidly from the shadows.

  Eventually torches were lit for the people who continued to pass by until, in the deepest hours of the night, a drizzle began to fall. Even then, some curled up under their cloaks on the cobbles, determined to save their place from which to view tomorrow’s execution. It was a long and difficult night.

  Blackwell came to see him just before dawn, he who had not only betrayed Simon by intercepting his pleas from the battlefield but had also delivered Abramm’s family to the Gadrielites. It hadn’t taken Abramm long on that desperate ride back to Springlan to figure that out. And more, to realize he wasn’t just a man, but a creature in a man’s body, whose true name Abramm did not know, but who had been Master Saeral before he was Count Byron Blackwell.

  He stood now staring up at Abramm, smiling slightly. “So. You know who I am.”

  “I think I’ve known it for a long time.” It was hard to speak.

  “Yes, I think you have, too. I just wonder why you never acted on it. Perhaps you didn’t want to admit you could be so easily deceived. Or perhaps you still want some of what I offer you.”

  “I don’t.”

  “He’s taken everything from you. Why do you still serve him?”

  “He gave it all to me in the first place, so if he takes it back, how can I complain? He did not take the shield, though, because that cannot be taken. I belong to him. I always will.”

  Blackwell snorted and stepped closer. “But why do you want to? If this is all you gain from it.”

  And when Abramm did not respond, he added, “Surely you don’t expect some fantastic manifestation of Light to deliver you now, do you? If that is his plan, why has he waited so long?”

  “I don’t know what his plan is. I only know it is good.”

  Blackwell shook his head. “Your sons are dead, Abramm. Killed at your brother’s hand. Where is the good in that? Your wife is dead. Your best friend, your sister . . . all lost. You, Eidon’s alleged Guardian-King, hang there hurting and humiliated, about to lose your life . . . and you call that good?” He fell silent, the light of the torches reflecting off his broken spectacles, and when Abramm said no more he whispered, “You could’ve had greatness. You could’ve been remembered. But now you will be as nothing, for I will blot out all memory of you.”

  “Where I’m going, it won’t matter.”

  The other man’s lips tightened and his brows drew down. Then he expelled a burst of air and stepped back. “Fine, then. Go. I just hope you won’t be too disappointed when your expected reward doesn’t turn out to be what you think it will.”

  He left then, and some moments later Abramm sensed another moving in the shadows around him. Brother Belmir stood nearby, the ranks of guards barely visible in the mist. He was close enough to have heard their conversation. For some moments his former discipler stood there looking at him; then he, too, vanished into the darkness, and Abramm was, at last, alone save for the hedge of guards surrounding him.

  By now his thirst was intense, his mouth cotton dry, his throat feeling as if it had cracks in it. He was hallucinating about water, the paradise of Eidon filled with it—light flickering off streams and pools and fountains. He had been soaked by a drizzling rain earlier, and now he prayed for it to start again.

  He did not think it was possible to hurt as much as he did and still be alive. At least he could think now. Could think about Tersius and what he had done—that it had been more than anything Abramm had suffered here . . . because, while the Shadow had taken him in the end, it had not done so in the way it had taken Tersius, who had never until that moment known its touch. Odd to think that the worst pain Eidon’s son had suffered was something Abramm had lived with all his life, something he often had a hard time even identifying, much less experiencing as pain.

  But that was because he had only the vaguest grasp of what Tersius had really done. It surprised him now how content he felt, satisfied from knowing he had fought the fight and had finished his course in the Light.

  “It won’t be long now, my friend.”

  His requested drizzle began to fall, the moisture falling gently upon his lacerated back. He sagged forward, turning his head so it would run down his cheek into his mouth. Suddenly the stomp and ruckus of a new shift of guards marching up burst into his silence. With them came a Mataian Master with an order from Bonafil that the prisoner be brought over to the Holy Keep so one last attempt might be made to change his mind. How can they want another attempt? Abramm thought. Aren’t they tired of this yet?

  The captain approved the request, and the Master and his three cowled Gadrielite helpers approached, hurrying their steps as the rain picked up. When the Mataian stopped before him, Abramm
was surprised and a little disappointed to recognize Belmir. The man did not meet Abramm’s glance, but kept his gaze focused on fitting his key into the shackle on Abramm’s left wrist as the rain fell even harder, smacking the cobbles around them with a crisp, loud crackle. The wind gusted and, along with the torchlight, transformed the falling rain into shifting veils of bronze. The guards hunched over to shield their faces from the pelting drops, and the shackles opened, Abramm’s arm falling limply onto the shoulder of the second man as the third stepped close to steady him. Shortly, his right arm was freed, and then the two carried him by shoulders and feet up the hill in Belmir’s wake to the waiting wagon.

  He was lifted into its bed as the rain came down in earnest now, the men hurrying to get into the wagon and be on their way. They clattered over the cobbles and then turned unexpectedly off the main road into a dark alley and the shelter of an awning. After a moment, hands grasped him gently and maneuvered him into some sort of trough running lengthwise through the wagon’s bed—which seemed so bizarre he thought he was hallucinating again, a suspicion intensified when they laid a series of boards overtop of him, as if he lay in wagon with a false bottom. Surely not. How could Master Belmir, after all he had done to break Abramm’s faith, be involved in a rescue operation that could see him hanging from a whipping frame himself?

  But it was a very vivid and detailed hallucination. Through the rush of rain and wind, he heard and felt the thuds and thumps of cargo loaded atop the boards above him. Shortly after that, the wagon lurched forward, bumping once more down the cobbled street amidst the violent rushing of the rain.

  CHAPTER

  40

  Gillard lay on the pallet in his private meditation chamber and wept. Sometimes he cried aloud. Sometimes he howled, and then Amicus would come and tell him to be silent and offer him more of the drink that was supposed to help and did not.

  He was ashamed of himself, could hardly believe he was acting like this, for he had always seen himself as a man’s man—tough, invincible, and impervious to pain. But never in all his life had he known this kind of agony. Already he’d staggered up and vomited into the chamber pot three times, and the last time nothing but bile had come up. He was cold and sweating and shaking as the pain squeezed him tighter and tighter until he thought it would drive him mad.

  It felt as if every bone in his body had been crushed and now throbbed in a symphony of fiery torment. Yet there was no sign of breakage. Nothing swollen or reddened. Every limb working just fine. When one of the brothers had felt the bones in his legs and arms and hands for soundness, Gillard screamed and thrashed in agony while the others held him down. But in the end, nothing was found to be wrong with them. The only possible diagnosis could be a few cracks . . . or maybe more than a few, but they were not hampering his movement or use of anything in the least.

  Except for the pain.

  Eudace visited him finally, after he’d called for the Mataian at least fifty times. Hearing Gillard’s complaints he nodded and allowed that it was possible his bones were cracked. After the abuse he had put them through in beating Abramm, that would not be surprising. The fall he’d taken when Madeleine rushed him hadn’t helped, either.

  “You said they wouldn’t break,” Gillard accused. “That your Flames would make them strong.”

  “And I was right. Whatever has broken has done so inside, without adverse effects. You can still use everything you have.”

  “I can hardly even bear to lie here, let alone move.”

  Eudace’s face tightened. “Then you must learn to tolerate the pain.”

  “For how long?”

  “At least a week. Maybe more.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Very well—we can give you more hockspur if you like, but it will leave you sluggish and thick-headed for the duration.” His tight expression deepened into a frown. “Which would be an inexcusable waste of time and ability, since there’s nothing substantially wrong with you.”

  “Nothing substantially wrong with me?”

  “You just need to set your mind to bear it.” He turned to go, but Gillard stopped him.

  “What of Abramm’s execution?”

  “It will proceed as scheduled.” Eudace flicked a questioning glance at Amicus, seated at Gillard’s bedside.

  “I heard you’d changed your mind,” Gillard pressed. “That now you’re going to burn him instead of beheading him.”

  “We are. Burning signifies judgment. But why do you ask?”

  “I want to be there.”

  Eudace pursed his lips. “Well, then, you’re going to have to get yourself out of that bed.”

  “I’ll need something more than the hockspur.”

  “Very well.”

  Thus it was that just as the dawn was gilding the clouds over the eastern headland, Abramm Kalladorne, thirty-sixth King of Kiriath, was burned alive in the public square for the crimes of heresy, colluding with evil, and persecuting the true faith of the Flames, and Gillard was there to see it. He had to be carried in a sedan chair, though, and his vision was blurred.

  Perhaps that was why, just before the flames licked up around the figure bound to a stake amidst the great pile of burning wood, he experienced a sudden alarm, sure the figure wasn’t Abramm after all, but someone else. After a few moments of panic and something approaching terror, he labored through his drug-fogged mental processes to the conclusion that it wasn’t possible. He’d have known if Abramm had escaped. He had been far too badly beaten. For him to escape, someone would have had to carry him, and with all the guards on site last night . . .

  No. It wasn’t possible. Abramm was dead. Finally and for good.

  But Gillard was bitterly sorry later that he’d not been able to stand before his brother, look him in the eye, and light the kindling beneath him with his own hand.

  ————

  It was late summer when Abramm finally reached Highmount Holding— the old one, not the new one. The new one, under the rule of Ethan Laramor’s son, did not make a habit of welcoming Terstan refugees, though it was certain that many of those who lived there knew the Underground used the old fortress.

  He arrived alone and on foot, with nothing but the clothes on his back, his battered rucksack, and a walking stick. He carried no blade, since blades were forbidden to the common folk now—only the Gadrielites could wear them—and he didn’t wish to draw attention to himself. Besides, he was pretty good with his stick and with the sling and stones in the pouch at his waist. Good enough he’d not lacked for meat on his hike up here.

  The trip had been good for him, the weather generally fine, and his journey without incident. The quiet splendor of the lonely woods through which he walked had been a healing balm to a soul hard-used. As was the increasing sense of freedom that had come with each step farther north he took.

  Master Belmir had indeed rescued him, along with Uncle Simon and Philip Meridon. They claimed there was no fourth man, and Abramm could hardly argue with them, given his state at the time. They’d taken him halfway across the city by wagon, then transferred him to a secret room beneath the stable of a prominent inn.

  For a couple of days they’d tended him there, enough to get him to the point he could walk on his own. One of his arms had been broken and several of his fingers, as well as nearly all his ribs, but his legs, though bruised and abraded, had been spared.

  It was during this time that he learned that his efforts had not been in vain. So far as Simon knew, Maddie, Carissa, and Trap had all escaped cleanly. The prisoner’s coach had stopped near the river and they’d been hustled out the unlocked back door to a barge that had taken them to a waiting galley, which had then rowed out of the bay under cover of the rain, heading for Chesedh.

  Not the slightest hint had been leaked that Abramm had escaped— though Gillard had been made king upon his “death”—which argued for the fact that no admission would be made with respect to his sons, either. His enemies claimed the princes had been killed wh
en taken from the palace, but Abramm was certain that if it were so, his tormentors would have shown him their small, lifeless bodies in their attempts to break him. And likely would have succeeded.

  Thus, he chose to believe the boys still lived and, further, that they would soon be—if they were not already—reunited with their mother. As much as it tore at him not to be with them, and not to know for sure, even this much was a comfort.

  When he was strong enough, they had set off again through tunnels and caves long compromised to the authorities, but which they managed to negotiate safely nonetheless, eluding the many guards that patrolled those dark reaches and coming at last to the city’s edge. From there they’d traveled by night, on foot, to a place just north of the Hennepen, where a horse and cart awaited them, and once more Abramm was forced to ride in the coffinlike space beneath the cart’s false bottom.

  Eidon was with them on that busy road, for though they were searched at two different checkpoints, the false bottom passed muster. Which could have been due to the fact that it was carrying manure, an arrangement Abramm wasn’t sure he would ever forgive his uncle for.

  When they crossed the Snowsong, Belmir had left them, not sure what he was going to do but intending to head back up to his old keep and spend some time in solitude and prayer. When they said good-bye, Abramm had given him a Star of Life to take with him, and he had accepted it. He’d stood there rolling the Star between thumb and forefinger for some time before finally tucking it into his satchel with a snort. “At this rate I might never make it to Haverall’s Watch.”

  “I shall pray that you don’t,” Abramm said with a smile.

  Belmir looked up at him, his gaze suddenly intense and troubled. Finally he said, “What you did that night beneath Wetherslea . . . I thought I had seen Eidon before. Thought that I knew him. But after that night . . .” He trailed off, then shook his head. “It is hard to face the fact that one’s entire life has been a waste,” he said quietly.

  “And yet, so long as you live, it’s never too late to start afresh and make it count,” Abramm had responded.