Shadow Over Kiriath Read online

  As he drew up before the Keeper of the Regalia, Lord Fortesque, the two deputies came round behind him to remove his scarlet cloak. Fortesque held a stiff floor-length garment supposed to represent Eidon’s Light, though it looked more like the wire mesh garment Abramm had suffered through the rehearsals with this last week. His cloak removed, Abramm turned toward the Robing Chair, seeing peripherally the nobles still standing in the royal box behind it. Muffled coughs and low creaks occasionally broke the silence as Fortesque slid the robe’s stiff sleeves up Abramm’s left arm first, then his right. At last it settled onto his shoulders, suddenly fluid and supple as if it were made of heavy silk. Startled and a little irked they’d made him use the awkward and uncomfortable practice garment, he turned his back to the chair and saw all three of the officials staring at the robe in open-mouthed surprise. Only then did he realize the wire practice robe really had borne a close approximation to the original. Until today.

  He sat in the simple wooden chair and the robe swirled like water around him, sending a chill of wonder up his spine. Meanwhile those in the royal gallery sat down in a symphony of creaking and rustling, followed by the rest of the audience in a vast, extended susurration. Abramm did not think that any in the audience, save perhaps those nobles closest to the front of the box, had noticed the robe’s change.

  He eyed the white gold weave draped over his thighs. What did it mean? Would he have Eidon’s special protection today?

  Laughter erupted in his skull, high-pitched and mocking. Eidon’s protection! How naïve. . . . How presumptuous. . . .

  The voice drew his eye to the tall, narrow Coronation Chair, now forward of his position on the stage. On a shelf beneath the velvet-cushioned seat lay the slate-colored stone of the border lords, placed there to symbolize the crowned king’s authority over those lands as well as Kiriath. The chair’s solid wooden sides and back hid it from the main audience, but he could see it clearly. And the moment he focused upon it, a blue light chased across its surface, then coalesced into a fuzzy glow at the stone’s heart, alternately revealed and obscured by shifting veils of darkness. His chest constricted with shock: a rhu’ema lived in the Hasmal’uk stone!

  How could no one have noticed that? True, the chair’s shelf had lain empty during rehearsals, the stone brought out from the Jewel House only this morning. But since then, at least a dozen of the Terstans who were part of his royal guard had been down here securing the place. How could they all have overlooked such a menace?

  And menace it was, waiting for him to sink right into its lap.

  Light’s grace! I can’t sit on that thing!

  But to refuse would make it appear as though he had been chased off, the very sign his enemies had predicted. . . .

  My Lord, what do I do?

  The ceremony marched onward without regard for his concerns. Fortesque brought him the Coronation Ring, anointed him with the oil, and finally laid the jeweled sword upon his open, outstretched hands, none of which evidenced anything close to the change that had been wrought in the robe. By then fear had gained a hold again, churning like a restless serpent in his belly. He was so rattled he hardly heard Fortesque’s charging of the duties of the sword and uttered his own avowal purely by rote before sliding the sword straight into his empty sheath. Shocked faces betrayed the hideous breech of protocol—he was supposed to have handed the sword back immediately after his avowal. Suddenly it no longer mattered.

  Whatever disasters he had envisioned for this day, none were as potentially devastating as this. And there was no way out, for now he must approach the Coronation Chair and take his seat to be crowned. Protocol already in shambles, Abramm risked a glance toward the audience. The white-robed Mataians sat stiffly along the front row, leaning toward him, eyes ablaze with the same baleful scarlet as their amulets. Above them darkness congealed in the intricate weavings of the ceiling beams. And in the stone beneath the Coronation Chair the blue fire burned brightly.

  Reluctantly he crossed the stage to the chair, pausing before it to stare at the tall, dark-wood back with its carved images of Alaric’s coronation, its heavy side-pieces, its red velvet cushion, all gilt with the blue light. The rhu’ema laughed in his mind. I have you! I have you! it squealed like some vicious child at play.

  You have to sit down, he told himself. Surely the change in the robe is Eidon’s promise of protection.

  Just as he protected you from the morwhol? He cut off the bitter question at once, uncertain whether it had originated with him or elsewhere.

  A mutter swept the audience. No doubt Bonafil was on the verge of calling out his denunciation. A quick glance showed the lowering darkness had obliterated the ceiling above the dangling banners, boiling out of itself and flickering with multicolored ribbons of light.

  Abramm made himself turn around, his back to the audience now, an uncontrollable tremor in his gut. Silence gripped the chamber.

  I’m not ready for this, he told himself. He could feel the people’s growing concern, the rhu’ema’s cackling triumph. The desire to flee swept over him— a wild, unthinking compulsion riding the memory of the morwhol’s claw dragging through his face when he’d trusted. He’d trusted! And what had it gotten him?

  You have to sit down, Abramm. You have no other choice.

  And so he sat. And the darkness took him, as he’d feared it would. The great chamber dimmed to near invisibility as old terrors arose from the grave of his memory: being pinned to the stable floor by Gillard’s friends, helpless to stop them from smearing him with horses’ dung; standing enchained and naked on the Qarkeshan beach, helpless to stop himself from being sold into slavery; helpless to stop the morwhol’s claws from tearing through his cheek, or Shettai from bleeding out her life on that Xorofin ledge. . . . How could he protect a kingdom when he couldn’t even protect the woman he’d loved? When he couldn’t even protect himself?

  A dark mist coiled around him, pinning his arms, squeezing his chest. Spangles of light twitched at the edges of his vision. Someone—it had to be Fortesque—loomed up before him, his form pulsating with the pale white glow of Terstan Light. The Keeper of the Regalia was Terstan? Abramm hadn’t known. . . . Could Fortesque sense what was happening? Could he help? And where was Maddie? Surely she must know what was happening. Why didn’t she help him?

  The dark coils squeezed him tighter, leeching his strength so that he sat weak and shaking, fearful he would be unable to hold even the scepter in what was normally his strong right hand, while his ruined left quivered with the agony of reignited spawn spore. Bonafil and Prittleman were right. He really wasn’t Eidon’s choice, after all. What people would ever want a scarred and crippled weakling as their king? Or one as flawed in soul and spirit as he?

  Despite all your attempts at devotion, you still can’t make yourself submit to him, can you? Still can’t make yourself really trust him.

  Distantly Fortesque intoned the litany for presenting the Scepter of Rule, a long thin rod now floating in front of Abramm, one end occluded by a lump of darkness.

  You let the Shadow have you constantly, the condemning inner voice went on. You have no strength of will. No wonder your wounds festered. No wonder everything’s gone wrong. Why should he bless you when you’re so faithless? After all the time you’ve spent poring over his words, you should be strong in the Light. But look at you. You’re a disgrace and an embarrassment.

  Shame twisted within him. It was true. He failed constantly, was failing now, in fact, and surely after all this time he shouldn’t—

  Fortesque laid the scepter into his weak and shaking hands, which somehow Abramm had raised from the chair’s armrests unaware. He stared at the official’s shimmering figure as disembodied voices buzzed in his ears. The cool rod thrummed against his palms, reminding him that he was supposed to transfer it to rest along his right arm. But the voices were strong upon him, deriding him, urging him to lower his fingers just enough to let the implement fall, for surely he was not worthy of carrying
it.

  Behind him he sensed a flare of triumph and a sudden hardening of decision. Bonafil was about to stand. . . .

  And somehow the rod came to lie along Abramm’s arm, right where it was supposed to.

  The Fortesque ghost disappeared, then wavered back into view carrying a thick clot of shadow. The orb! It must be the Orb of Tersius. The orb Abramm was going to drop the moment Fortesque laid it in his hand. That would roll off his palm and shatter on the granite beneath his feet.

  Fortesque held out the clot. The buzzing increased and the shadow coils tightened further, so that Abramm’s breath came now in small pantings. Bizarre images flooded his mind—glowing spheres hanging in darkness, trees big as towers, strange, monstrous creatures walking among them. He felt the frenzied eagerness of the thing in the rock poised to invade his flesh and told himself that was not possible. The Words promised he could not be taken with the Light living inside him. . . .

  Somehow through all the confusion, he saw his left hand extend, palm up as if nothing were amiss, felt something cool and slick and heavy settle into it. And stay there.

  It began to dawn on him that Eidon was working here. That what he was doing, he did regardless of rhu’eman distractions and threats—and Abramm’s own failure to withstand them. . . . And rightly so. Neither his life nor his service had ever been about his own ability and strength. Whatever his failures, they’d all been dealt with on that Hill of Reckoning outside Xorofin, and Eidon was never the one who accused and condemned. Only his enemies did that. The rhu’ema. The Shadow within him. Eidon already knew what he was and had long since forgiven him.

  As Abramm’s frame of thinking shifted, it was as if scales fell from his eyes. The clot of darkness dissolved, revealing the smooth milk-crystal sphere that was the orb lying in his palm. As he stared at it, its surface brightened steadily until it became a globe of brilliant white. A kelistar? he thought, squinting at it. Why confer upon me a kelistar? And why is it so heavy?

  He looked up. Fortesque had been replaced by a lean sober-faced man with close-cropped white hair and a face scarred even worse than Abramm’s. Abramm hardly noticed the scars, however, caught by the man’s eyes, which were dark as the night sky and every bit as deep. Familiar eyes. My Lord Tersius?

  He should not be sitting here, staring dumbfounded. He should be out of this chair and falling on his face. But he could not move—even though, he realized suddenly, the thing in the rock had released him, retracting its black coils down into the stone, where it huddled in abject terror, hoping to avoid notice.

  Tersius vanished, and here was Fortesque again, holding the crown aloft between them as he intoned the litany of the crowning ritual. Light gleamed on its golden base and arches, reflected softly from the gigantic pearl at its top, and flickered in the myriad of precious stones. Abramm had seen his father crowned with this artifact and was now, incredibly, about to be crowned with it himself. His breath caught and his heart fluttered as Fortesque concluded his litany and called upon Abramm to take the Oath of Rule. Once he’d done so, Fortesque spoke the ritual’s final words:

  “Remember always from whom you receive this crown: the King of kings and Lord of lords who grants all earthly power. You are but his hand. And you answer always to him. To whom much is given, from him shall much be expected.”

  Abramm watched Fortesque’s arms lower toward him, felt the crown settle onto his head, pressing heavily into his brow. Suddenly the chair shuddered beneath him and a loud crack rent the silence. With a cry of rage, blue fire corkscrewed around him as the creature that had lived in the stone fled upward toward the shadowed ceiling. Fortesque stepped back, startled, and in the gallery spectators looked upward, murmuring in surprise, though Abramm doubted any had seen it as fully as he had.

  And here was Tersius again, standing before him as Fortesque retreated to the back of the stage. Abramm felt the Light within him now, strong and warm and clear, though apparently none of the spectators could see that, either. He frowned. If I truly am your choice, Lord, why won’t you make that clear to the people I’m supposed to rule?

  “And why are you ever seeking to make your business that which is not your business?”

  Abramm felt the blood rush to his face. Forgive me, Lord.

  “You’re supposed to stand and face them all now.”

  Thoroughly befuddled, Abramm did so, dropping neither staff nor orb, though the crown bore heavily upon his brow. Leaving the chair, he strode around it to the front of the stage where for the first time all those in the audience would see their king crowned. The herald was supposed to announce his name and the multitude cheer their new king, but no one moved and the herald said nothing.

  Behind him, Tersius spoke again. “You have entered into the function of your destiny, Abramm. Are you willing to go forward from here? To be conformed to my image and so become a true witness of my Father’s power and grace?”

  Of course I am, my Lord.

  “Consider well. The road ahead will be more difficult than anything you have yet faced, though its blessings are beyond anything you can imagine. Is this what you want?”

  Abramm hesitated. More difficult than what I’ve already experienced?

  “And gloriously better. But the choice is yours.”

  And if I choose not to go forward?

  “Then, for a time things will go easier for you.”

  Abramm looked over the hall filled with people staring back at him, at Trap in the front row, Philip beside him, then their father and mother. Across the aisle from Trap, the Mataians glared more fiercely than ever, the fire from their amulets lighting up eyes clogged with the curd of the sarotis. Sarotis? How can they have sarotis? They are not Terstan! But the thought was lost as he saw straight through their skulls to brains entwined and squeezed by ropes of scarlet fire. He felt their pain, their bondage, their misery . . . and their rock-hard resolution to fight him, no matter what.

  His gaze lifted to the people in the stairstepping ranks of pews behind them. His people. His calling. His realm.

  My Lord, I owe you everything. I am nothing without you, as you have shown me yet again. Whatever you will for me, that is what I want.

  “Very well, then.”

  At that moment, as if he had realized his chance was slipping away, High Father Bonafil leaped to his feet, jabbed an arm at Abramm, and shouted out his denunciation. He had not even finished speaking when the Light rushed through Abramm in a great storm of power. Every piece of the regalia blazed with it, and all around him men flinched back in awe. Except in that front row, where Bonafil’s Mataian brethren had leaped up beside their leader, originally to support him in his denunciation but now to flee screaming up the long aisle.

  As they disappeared beneath the balcony, the orb swelled in Abramm’s hand, brightening to an unendurable brilliance that exploded in a firework of white sparks. They sailed out in every direction, drifting down over the vast audience: tiny stars of life for those who saw and knew and wanted. . . .

  Their light grew brighter, filling all his vision and expanding his awareness. Multiple images assailed him: a great army beneath the combined banners of Chesedh and Kiriath; a woman veiled in white, facing him, the Light flowing strongly through their clasped hands; a dark cave filled with the rush of churning waves and a pungent salt-seaweed aroma; a pair of Esurhite galleys moored in the cove below Graymeer’s Fortress, dark-tunicked soldiers racing out of the opening at the cliff base to board them as shouts rang out from the ramparts above; more galleys streamed away from a cluster of fog-veiled islands to the south; while to the north, a great dark cloud alive with baleful flickerings hung low over the borderlands and crept slowly southward. . . .

  He focused on the woman but could not see her face through the veil. Then a shadow passing over them drew his gaze upward to where soared a massive dragon so huge it seemed impossible the thing could hold itself in the air. Its golden eye fixed upon him as it wheeled majestically against a fogbound sky, and he shudde
red with the cold dispassion of its regard. Perhaps one day it would come for him, if he became troublesome enough. . . . But not today.

  At the end of its circuit, it veered away, long wings flapping languidly as it disappeared into the southern distance.

  The vision faded, and he stood again in the Hall of Kings, upon the very granite where his namesake Avramm had been crowned. He stared at the people before him, all of whom were on their feet. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape. He could see the Light reflecting in their faces and off the gold Receiving Throne atop its dais before him, and even off the struts of a ceiling suddenly free of shadows. It was Eidon’s own Light, and it was coming only from Abramm, from the regalia that he wore.

  And as he watched in wonder, all the hundreds in that vast audience dropped to their knees before him.

  CHAPTER

  4

  As the brilliance of the Light dimmed, Captain Eltrap Meridon stared up in wonder at his king, chills zinging over his body. The robe shimmered like water around Abramm’s tall, straight form, the crown afire on his brow, its light bleaching the scars on his face so they almost disappeared. His lips were firm, his jaw resolute as his gaze swept the crowd of stunned onlookers.

  Eidon had revealed his choice. Whatever doubts people had regarding Abramm’s kingship earlier, they were gone. The Mataians’ empty bench stood in powerful refutation of their vicious claims, and Trap would forever cherish the memory of them fleeing up the aisle in screaming disarray. He loved knowing that after all the rhu’ema had done to make this day a disaster, they had been chased off as ignominiously as their human puppets.

  As for himself, he could only laugh at his foolishness for indulging in that torment of guilt and worry last night over his dire words to Abramm. Foolish words they were, for he did not know if they were even true, and it would have been better never to have uttered them, but hindsight always trumped foresight.