Return of the Guardian-King Read online

  Honors for the first books of

  LEGENDS OF THE GUARDIAN-KING

  The Light of Eidon

  Booklist—Top 10 Christian Novels 2004

  ForeWord Magazine—2003 Book of the Year—Silver

  Science Fiction

  Christian Fiction Review—Best of 2003

  Christy Award—2004

  Fantasy

  The Shadow Within

  Borders—Best of 2004

  Religion and Spirituality

  Romantic Times—Best of 2004 Finalist

  Inspirational

  Christian Fiction Review—Best of 2004

  Christy Award—2005

  Visionary

  Shadow Over Kiriath

  Christian Fiction Review—Best of 2005

  Christy Award—2006

  Visionary

  Books by Karen Hancock

  Arena

  LEGENDS OF THE GUARDIAN-KING

  The Light of Eidon

  The Shadow Within

  Shadow Over Kiriath

  Return of the Guardian-King

  Return of the Guardian-King

  Copyright © 2007

  Karen Hancock

  Cover illustration by Bill Graf

  Cover design by Lookout Design, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-2797-4

  ISBN-10: 0-7642-2797-1

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hancock, Karen.

  Return of the guardian-king / Karen Hancock.

  p. cm. — (Legends of the guardian-king ; 4)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7642-2797-4 (pbk.)

  ISBN-10: 0-7642-2797-1 (pbk.)

  1. Kings and rulers—Fiction. 2. Coronations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.A698R48 2007

  813'.6—dc22 2006038410

  * * *

  KAREN HANCOCK has won Christy Awards for each of her first four novels—Arena and the first three books in this series, The Light of Eidon, The Shadow Within, and Shadow Over Kiriath. She graduated from the University of Arizona with bachelor’s degrees in biology and wildlife biology. Along with writing, she is a semi-professional watercolorist and has exhibited her work in a number of national juried shows. She and her family reside in Arizona.

  For discussion and further information, Karen invites you to visit her Web site at www.kmhancock.com.

  “You are my servant. I have chosen you and I will strengthen you to do what I have commanded you. I will provide you with all you need to carry out my plans. And all who come against you will be shamed; they will be as if they never were.”

  —From the First Word of Revelation

  Scroll of the Seven Wars

  Table of Content

  CAERNA’THA

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHENA’AG TOR

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  ELPIS

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  FANNATH RILL

  PART FOUR

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  EPILOGUE

  CAERNA’THA

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER

  1

  “I dream of the meadows, green-gold ’neath the sun, sweet with the dew of the morn . . .”

  The bell-toned voice drew Abramm Kalladorne into the sunlight of the open meadow, a yellow butterfly zigzagging ahead of him above a patch of purple lupine. He pressed through the bloom-laden stalks into rippling grass, following the plucked notes of a lirret and a voice as familiar as his own. She must be just beyond that primrose at the meadow’s far edge.

  Children’s laughter echoed in counterpoint to her sweet voice, and his pace quickened. Ian would be over two by now, walking well, maybe even talking in phrases and sentences, while Simon would have left all his toddlerhood behind, a real little boy at last. Then there was Maddie. Abramm ached for her so badly sometimes he could hardly bear it. Now finally, that was behind him. All the worrying about threading the high passes before winter closed them had been for naught. In a moment he would step around that bush and there she’d be, her gray-blue eyes widening with surprise at the sight of him an instant before she’d cast her lirret aside and fling herself into his—

  His foot slipped, and he lurched to regain his balance, gripping his walking staff hard as he drove it into the snow. The misstep jolted his entire body as the vision winked out and the dark, icy reality of the blizzard-swept heights filled his senses again. She wasn’t here. His boys weren’t here. There was no meadow. The passes were not behind him, and winter was very definitely closing in. . . .

  Realization slammed him so hard he reeled to a stop, struggling to breathe as he felt again the cold and the exhaustion and the misery. Wind screamed around him, pelting his heavy woolen cloak with slivers of snow and flapping its snow-caked hem about his legs. For a moment the desire to give up was so strong he nearly collapsed.

  But he couldn’t. Maddie was waiting for him. His boys needed him. And so he drew a deep breath and reached up to dash away the ice that continually froze onto his beard and mustache. Chunks of it clung also to the long hair dangling beside his face, some of them rasping against the inside edge of his cowl, others frozen to his beard. He no longer felt his feet, and his fingers, numb beneath a double layer of glove and mitten, could hardly grip his walking staff.

  He squinted down the rocky hill to where a shin-deep trough of footprints angled across the slope through the rapidly accumulating snow. At the end of his pocket of visibility, the last of his companions were starting down the next switchback, obscured by the shifting veils of snow. Shuddering, he started after them, placing steps and stick carefully to avoid any more almostfalls.

  Neither he nor anyone else in his party had any real idea where they were going, only that having come through the Kolki Pass they must descend the barren slopes beyond to an ancient Terstan monastery just below the tree line. “The way will be obvious,” the men back at Highmount Holding had assured them. Maybe it would be if clouds hadn’t swallowed the world and driving snow hadn’t made it hard to open one’s eyes and the rock cairns that were supposed to be their guides weren’t fast disappearing beneath the drifting snow.

  It
was typical, though, of the bad luck that had plagued them since leaving Kiriath, transforming what should have been a three-week journey through the pass into a six-week trial of endurance. They’d run out of food two days ago and burned the last of their dung-pats in last night’s fire. Water had been in short supply for over a week, and they had an old man, a pregnant woman, and a number of children with them. Thinking they’d be in Caerna’tha tonight, they’d left much of their bedding and tents with the wagon when it had irreparably broken down in the pass that morning. Now, with the day three-quarters gone, and the tree line still who knew how far below them, their situation was growing desperate.

  For not the first time he sent up a prayer for guidance and protection.

  Thus, when the trail rounded a rocky slope to emerge onto a promontory overlooked by a small trailside hut, he should have been elated. His traveling companions certainly were. Many were already picking their way up the steep, narrow stair to the doorway where two men worked to string up a blanket.

  At the base of the stair in the slope’s lee, the big, blond former blacksmith, Rolland Kemp, lifted the pack frame off their one remaining horse. “Ah, Alaric!” he said as Abramm drew up beside him. “I thought maybe we’d lost ye.” The wind was lessened there in the slope’s lee, but it still made conversation difficult. Rolland tossed the frame onto the ground, then bent to dig through one of the discarded saddlebags. He pulled out a near-empty grain bag and offered the remainder of its contents to the horse. Snow mounded on his shoulders and clung in balls to the fur-lined rim of his hood.

  Rolland had become something of a friend on this journey. As the strongest of the men, he and Abramm were most often called upon to search for the lost, unstick the wagon, or carry extra loads—and the shared experience and responsibility had bound them together. Besides, Rolland had an easy temperament, a level head, and a strong sense of loyalty. He was a good man, and a good husband and father. If Abramm couldn’t have Trap here with him, he thought Rolland might be the next best thing.

  Now Abramm turned to stare over the promontory into the stormy whiteness, relieved they had a place to escape the cold, but uneasy nonetheless. Caerna’tha was supposed to have been but a few hours’ hike once they’d left the pass. Wind gusted against his side, ice crystals stinging his cheekbones and making his eyes water as he searched for some sign of the monastery’s presence: the glint of a window, the straight line of a wall, even the dark bulk of a mountainside. But swirling white obliterated all beyond the small promontory on which they stood.

  “See anything?” Rolland shouted from the other side of the horse.

  Abramm shook his head. “It could be right there, for all we know.”

  “An’ we could blunder off the trail and get hopelessly lost b’fore we found it,” Rolland said. As with every other man in the party, ice clotted his blond beard and brows, framing a small patch of wind-burned cheekbones beneath deep-set blue eyes. “Ye wanna help me get Pearl here up that stair now?” He slapped the mare’s flank, dislodging a mass of accumulated snow.

  Abramm glanced back at the hut where the last of the women and children disappeared through the blanketed doorway. His uneasiness remained, but he could think of no reason why it should—other than the fact he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted, and deeply disappointed they’d not reach Caerna’tha after all. He was sick to death of snow and cold and wind and, truth be told, these people and their endless needs. If only he could—

  His breath caught and he froze, listening hard. “Did you hear that?”

  Rolland regarded him blankly.

  “Sounded like someone screaming.” But he heard nothing more and clearly Rolland had not noticed it. Probably the wind. Or maybe another hallucination.

  Though all the other huts on their journey through the pass had had linked to them a shelter for the animals, this one did not. Since the mare refused to climb the ice-slicked front stair, Abramm suggested they take her back up the trail and try leading her across the slope on a level closer to where the hut sat. But they could get her to go only a little way off the trail before she refused to go another step. Finally they had no choice but to tether her to a pile of rocks back at the foot of the front stair.

  “I hate leaving her out here,” Rolland said, and Abramm marveled, not for the first time, that a man as big and strong and fearsome looking as Rolland Kemp could be so tenderhearted. He clapped his friend’s beefy shoulder. “She’ll be all right, Rollie. She’s weathered worse up in the pass.”

  “I suppose . . .” Rolland shook out his own blanket and laid it over the mare as Abramm started up the stairway.

  Fatigue was closing in hard on him by the time he gained the top of the slippery steps. He was reaching to push aside the blanket when again he heard the distant scream. Skin crawling, he cast back his cowl. But the sound did not repeat; instead he heard voices arguing inside the hut.

  “Well, if yer friend Alaric hadn’t insisted on stoppin’ early yesterday, we’d have gone on and found the right place t’ camp.” That was Oakes Trinley, former tanner and city alderman, and the group’s self-appointed leader since long before Abramm had met them. “An’ if we’d camped in the right place—”

  “He didn’t insist!” a female voice interrupted him. “You all agreed it was a good idea, so don’t go blaming Alaric for what was your decision.” Marta Brackleford, the widowed sister of Trinley’s wife, Kitrenna, was one of the few who had no compunctions about speaking her mind to him. Once married to a banker, and proprietor of her father’s printing business, she’d been an independent woman all her adult life. She’d also taken an unveiled interest in Abramm, which made him as uneasy as it warmed his heart.

  Trinley, on the other hand, had disliked him from the moment he’d joined the group at Highmount.

  Now, as the former alderman started to reply, Abramm forcefully stomped the snow from his boots, cutting him off. Pushing aside the blanket, Abramm stepped into the close, warm air of the dimly lit chamber beyond.

  People sat or curled on the floor between piles of salvaged bedding and gear. A rope net full of murky kelistars hung from the ceiling timber. Others gleamed here and there throughout the company—most of them warmstars—while in the shadows at the back, old Totten Ashvelt picked his way through a rubble of fallen stones, filling the many chinks in the wall with dried grass from the floor. The three mothers in the group wrapped their crying children into blankets, promising they’d have all the food they wanted tomorrow when they reached the monastery.

  For now only snow filled the kettle on the cooking tripod, heated by a fire ring heaped with warmstars. Trinley stood near the doorway, a stocky, broadshouldered man in an ice-caked leather greatcoat. Marta faced him from the far side of the ring of warmstars, her dark eyes flicking to Abramm as he entered. A blush deepened the pink of her wind-burned cheeks.

  Trinley turned to glare at him, but Abramm made no mention of the recently terminated conversation, shrugging out of his rucksack as he informed them of the situation with the mare.

  “And Rollie?” Mrs. Kemp inquired from Marta’s side. “He’s not going to stay down there with the beast all night, is he?”

  Abramm smiled. The woman knew her husband well. “He’ll be up shortly, ma’am.”

  She seemed content with that, but Marta gave Trinley a look of alarm.

  “We’re not below the tree line yet, Marta,” the alderman said before she could speak.

  Abramm had no idea what that was about and was too tired and discouraged to care. He picked his way through the clutter of people and belongings to a clear spot on the other side of the warmstar ring and settled tailor style before it. As he stripped off his ice-crusted mittens, Marta said quietly, “They told us specifically not to stop after we left the pass. To go straight to Caerna’tha.”

  “And in good weather that would have been fine,” Trinley retorted. “But it’s not good weather, and anyway, if Caerna’tha was an easy walk away, why would anyone build this hut? B
esides, if the wolves are rhu’ema spawn like they said, they won’t be out in this storm anyway. The horse will be fine. Stop worrying.”

  Wolves . . . rhu’ema spawn . . . Abramm stuffed the wet mittens into his rucksack and conjured his own warmstar to hold directly against his palms, thinking he should know what they were talking about but unable to make his mind focus on it. Instead, it wandered off into an exhausted haze that involved another reunion scenario with Maddie and the boys. . . .

  The painful tingle of his hands returning to life brought him back to the moment. A sense of being watched and mocked swept over him. Probably with his head bent like this, the others felt freer to stare at him and exchange whispers. They’d all die now, and it would be his fault.

  Not my fault. I wanted to move on.

  “But you didn’t move on, did you? And now you are stuck.”

  He wasn’t sure who had said that. Were they speaking aloud? Why did everything sound so far away? He wanted to look around, but he couldn’t seem to lift his head.

  “Stuck.” Two voices taunted him in unison: “You didn’t think you could escape us, did you, loser?”

  And suddenly he knew who they were. Rhu’ema had dogged him on the journey through the pass, knowing exactly who he was, even if the people he traveled with did not. They’d delighted in harassing him with a stream of subverbal insults and threats. He’d spent many nights maintaining the Lightshield he’d routinely conjured to protect everyone—a duty few of them knew he carried out.

  Knowing they’d be forced to ground once the storm hit, the rhu’ema had come ahead to wait for him. And not just to wait . . .

  He sensed other minds through theirs—dark, savage minds, full of bloodlust. Human, yet not human at all, feeling the wind and the snow as they ran toward the feast that awaited them in the heights. . . .

  “NO!” The shout burst from him as he surged to his feet, drawing the startled gazes of those around him. The room whirled briefly as he stared back, struggling to understand what had just happened. He’d stood up too fast for one thing.