Light of Eidon (Legends of the Guardian-King, Book 1) (50 page)

“You are the White Pretender, then?” Shemm’s eyes seemed to bore right
through his skull.

“I was.”

The dark eyes darted to Trap. `And you the Infidel?”

“I was, Great One.”

Shemm’s gaze returned to Abramm-hard, sharp, strangely threatening.
“Why did you come to us?”

Here it is, Abramm thought. The moment you either do it or you don’t. He
pulled back his shoulders and met the level gaze unflinching. “We were told
we would find friends here-men who wish to throw off the evil strangling
this land.” He glanced at the men behind Shemm-the two priests and four
attendants. “We were told you had need of someone to awaken the Heart of
the SaHal.”

Flint-hard eyes bored into him.

“You claim to be our Deliverer, then,” Shemm said, in a voice as flat and
devoid of emotion as any of Shettai’s.

It was ridiculous. Abramm knew he was not their Deliverer. He knew
there was not a blessed thing he could do here to help them re-ignite their
Heart. He knew they would kill him when they learned that, but what else
could he do? He had done all Shettai had bid him, and if he failed, if they
killed him …

Heart pounding, he lifted his chin a fraction higher and pitched his voice
loud so that it would carry through the hall. “Yes.”

“You stand ready to prove that?”

“I do.”

“Very well, then.”

“Now, my lord?” Japheth turned to his king, gaping. “But it is past dark,
and the Horror is aprowl, and-“

“If he is truly the one we seek, Japheth, the Horror cannot stop us. You
will know him by his deeds, by the light with which he slays the Darkness.’”
The king’s dark eyes flicked to the priest, and one brow arched. “Is that not
how it goes, Mephid?”

“It is, my king,” Mephid growled.

“Then we shall let the Heart decide the truth. If he fails, we will kill them
as we killed the others. Unless the Horror kills them first.” He glanced at his
attendants and the men sprang forward to lead the way through the crowd.

“He will need the orb, Great One.” Trap’s voice stopped the king and
drew everyone’s eye. The Terstan still knelt where he had been placed, and
now, with the king frowning down at him, he elaborated. “The talisman you
took from him. He will need it to awaken the Heart.” He flicked a glance at
Abramm, clearly urging him to take his cue.

Abramm frowned, annoyed at the Terstan’s attempt at manipulation and
reluctant to take back the orb now that he was freed of it. Did Meridon really
think it might somehow ignite the Heart? And if it did, did Abramm want to
be in the middle of it?

Or was it just the veren Trap was thinking of, and Abramm’s need for
some protection against it?

He was aware of the king’s regard again, saw the questioning look in his
eyes. The decision came all at once, riding that crazy, fatalistic bravado that
had driven him from the moment he’d gotten here. Why not take the thing?
What could it do now? He was going to die anyway…

“He is right,” Abramm said. “I had forgotten it was taken from me, but I
will need it.”

A moment the king considered, then he motioned for the priest to return
the artifact. As the stone bounced once more against the scab on Abramm’s
bare breastbone, he flashed a sour look at the Terstan. As if this would change
anything.

Emerging from the great hall, they traversed yet another canyon with
numerous doors and openings carved into its salmon-hued walls. Iron brackets holding lighted torches had been fixed into the stone beside many of
them, and often the doorways were blocked with beads or skin coverings.

Shortly they emerged from the canyon, the mist forming a woolen wall
around them, reflecting back the torchlight and blocking view of anything
beyond the radius of a few strides.

It seemed to Abramm that they progressed down a long promenade. An
ancient pavement buckled and humped beneath his feet, and lines of gnarled,
mostly dead olive trees loomed ghostlike in the mist beside them. Occasionally they stepped across deep, black-edged scores in the pavement or piles of
rubble fallen across their path. In places the trees lay uprooted, their branches
clawing at the men as they passed. Sometimes the mist shredded enough to
reveal the doddering, age-stained remains of masonry walls jutting up from
the rubble field. Sometimes the walls formed buildings with windows and
railed balconies and frescoed doorways, only to fall away in rubble and blackened timbers and gaping craters awrithe with thousands of dark shapes skittering away from the torchlight.

Shadowspawn. Twisted things that watched from the mist and darkness.
Staffid of all forms. Feyna. Griiswurm. He recognized right off the strong feeling of anxiety and aversion so peculiar to the griiswurm’s aura, even spotted
here and there the globular bodies and tentacled legs hugging the rocks and
walls. Time and again, unseen horrors moaned and crackled and muttered
around them, and once, from somewhere comfortingly distant, something
roared. Or screamed. Or moaned. The sound reverberated off cliffs and mortared stone, making it impossible to pinpoint the direction from whence it
came.

“I hope these people know what they’re doing,” Trap muttered beside
him.

Abramm strained at the bonds on his wrists yet again, inwardly chafing
with the helpless frustration of having his hands tied in the face of obvious
danger. There had been no talk among the men since they’d left the hall, but
now it seemed there was not even breath. All held either bow or sling, and
all had eyes only for the torchlit mist around them.

They were well away from the canyon’s protective embrace when the
veren’s familiar frigid aura enveloped them, stopping them en masse. Every gaze rushed skyward as arrows were nocked and stones slid into slings.
Abramm stared at the wooly ceiling like everyone else, gooseflesh prickling
his back and neck as he strained again at his bonds, about to burst with the
need to be free.

But again the creature passed on without attacking, still just keeping an
eye on them-or perhaps only waiting for the right moment. In any case, the
aura faded, and the group released a collective sigh. The men who had gathered protectively around their king relaxed and started forward again.

Shortly they entered a wide plaza, its pale pavement buckled and scored
by numerous trenches. At its midst stood a circular stone structure, double a
man’s height and shaped like a cone without its peak. It crawled with tentacled griiswurm and was encircled at the top by a lumpy iron railing from
which three iron poles extended skyward. Once likely converging to a central
point above the whole, now they were twisted and bent over the mound of
stone and griiswurm. In fact, looking more closely, he realized the lumps on
the railings were also griiswurm.

The Dorsaddi encircled it silently, and when all had assembled, Shemm
ordered Abramm’s bonds cut. He gestured to a fractured, half-buried stairway leading to the top of the pile. “The Heart is up there. Awaken it if you
can.”

Abramm’s anxiety had grown so great he could hardly breathe, much less
move, and he knew it wasn’t just the aura of the griiswurm. The certainty of
his death was hitting him hard now-and it terrified him.

He swallowed. “You must remove the spawn,” he said, gesturing at the
mound. “I cannot concentrate with them there.”

As if concentration would change anything. Yelaki!

Shemm matched him frown for frown, suspicion burning in his eyes. He
probably guessed it for the delaying tactic it was, but he waved his men to
comply all the same. With spears and swords and arrows, they stabbed and
pried loose all the larger spawn, casting them off the mound as others went
round scooping them up and hurling them into the night.

Too soon the structure was cleared. Abramm stared up at the crumpled
railing. That would make a good place for the veren to take him, wouldn’t it?
He swallowed grimly, feeling the eyes of the Dorsaddi upon him. Shemm still
frowned-the priest, Mephid, was almost smiling, and Japheth looked puzzled.

`Awaken the Heart,” she’d said.

Very well, my love. For you.

He clambered up the ruined stairway and ducked under the railing that
supported the ruined struts. It ringed a gaping crater some twenty feet in
diameter. At its lowest point, half buried in rubble, lay a large crystalline
sphere, roughly a forearm in diameter. The spore wriggling to life in his wrist
and the sudden glow of the orb on his chest told him power dwelt in this
place.

But how to awaken it, he still had no idea.

Grimly he walked the crater’s circumference. Not much longer now and
they’d see he didn’t know what he was doing, realize he was indeed the
imposter they had already accused him of being. Unless the veren came first.

Having circled the pit twice, there was nothing left but to step into it, and
he did so, skidding down the stone scree to the bottom, hip-deep below its
rim. There he spied a heavy, warped shield of bronze twisting out of the
rubble and marked with the angular symbols of the Tahg.

His light will protect us: the King of Light, the King’s Light, the kings
of Light, three and one. He is before us and with us and over us. Darkness shall not touch us, so long as we are in the Light.

He straightened with a chill. That was from the First Word. But what was
it doing here? And rendered in the Tahg at that? The sense of destiny fell on
him again, strong and compelling, a sense of being at the mercy of something-or Someone-far greater than himself, like a leaf caught in a windstorm.

He stepped over the shield, moved on to the pit’s center, and squatted
beside the reflective surface of the crystalline globe. This must be the Heart.
It was slick as it looked but cool and dead to the touch. He stood again,
imprisoned by twisted bars of metal stabbing up through the mist. A ring of
hard-eyed Dorsaddi stared at him from below, the ruddy torchlight imbuing
their still forms with a brooding malevolence.

`Awaken the Heart,” she’d said.

I don’t know how, my love. Curse me, but I don’t know how!

He stepped onto the buried globe, closed his eyes, and reached for the
talisman on his chest, willing something to happen. The scar on his arm
writhed furiously, and nausea swirled in his middle. Beyond that, nothing.

He let out his breath and looked at the stone in his hands. It gleamed
softly, pale opalescent white against his dirty palms. That was all.

A soft word sounded behind him, followed by an ominous rustle. Then a
loud cry split the night.

“Wait?”

He turned to see Trap scrambling up the mound, his bonds falling away
in a cloud of smoke. Gaining the top, he turned, his body now between
Abramm and the three archers who stood at Shemm’s side with longbows
drawn and aimed.

“Wait!” he cried again. “He does not know-“

“Now?” Shemm commanded.

Light flared in a blazing corona around Trap’s body just as the arrows
released. Abramm saw them with unnerving clarity, floating slowly toward
him while Trap fell backward in slow motion, still ablaze with white fire.

His left shoulder caught Abramm in the chest, though Abramm was himself already twisting down and away. He fell hard, on his left side, stones
gouging his chest and shoulder, Trap slamming down on top of him.

Angry shouting rang out, followed by a clatter of arrows and bows and
the thump and rattle of men climbing the mound. Trap shoved up off him
and waved a score of clear white kelistars into existence as Abramm gasped
back the air driven out of him in the fall. He started to press himself up when
he saw the Heart flickering with the same white light as Trap’s kelistars.

Astonishment drove him to his feet and back a few steps before he realized what he was doing, and he almost took an arrow in the arm for his
incaution. He ducked back below the crater’s lip, but before he could draw
Trap’s attention to the globe, the veren dropped out of the mist above them.
It slammed into one of the rails and pushed off it, bending it farther into the
pit, the metal squealing protest. Then it was gone in an icy wind, flapping
skyward on powerful wings.

Breathlessly Abramm crawled up beside Trap to peer over the lip of the
mound. The ring of bowmen had scattered. Shemm and his personal guard
were already heading back toward the safety of the canyon walls. Others
raced around the mound, all with arrows nocked and eyes cast heavenward.

With a shriek the veren plunged out of the mist again, pouncing on one of the king’s protectors and leaping skyward, a headless body slumping to the
ground in its wake. At that the Dorsaddi looked ready to bolt-a few didbut a good number of them had managed to hold steady and fire off some of
their arrows. A handful still crouched around the mound, but even as
Abramm noted them, they were up and chasing their fellows, taking their
weapons with them.

“The spears,” Abramm said, pointing. “They left some spears.”