Shadow Over Kiriath (21 page)

When she reached him, she dropped him a curtsey and came up frowning. “You look like death itself, sir!” she blurted with her usual direct approach. “Why are you not returning to your chambers to rest?”

He smiled and shook his head. “Because these ill-advised clandestine meetings we keep having seem to be the only way I’m able to talk to you of late.”

She flushed, the color spreading up to her hair and down to the scooped neckline of her gown. “You could’ve summoned me.”

“I tried. No one knew where you were.” He gestured now at the padded bench beside him. “Please sit with me awhile.”

Her frown deepened, but she sat—perched upon the bench’s edge as if ready to flee at a moment’s notice. “I was at the University library,” she said.

“Ah. That explains everything, then.”

Her chin came up. “I can’t help it if your people are inept,” she said tartly, and he found himself rejoicing to see what appeared to be the return of the old Maddie.

“Unless, of course, you influenced their not finding you.” As adept as she was at making speaking cloaks, he wouldn’t be surprised if she could work one to baffle the eye as well as the ear. Indeed, her face positively flamed.

“I was reading,” she said. “I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

“And naturally forgot all about the ceremonies of today and your part in them—”

“I’m through with those ceremonies. It only stirs things up and”—her gaze dropped to her hands, clasped tightly upon the book and folio—“makes things worse for you.”

He regarded her wordlessly, waiting for her to go on. But now she watched her fingers pick at a crack in her folio, having gone back to that frustrating nervousness that had characterized his last two encounters with her. He grew aware again of the scars running tightly down his cheek and wondered if they were putting her off more than she wanted to admit.

She stilled her hands with a sigh and laid book and folio flat upon her lap. Then she lifted her face. “Briellen received a double portion not only of beauty but of the social graces I lack. She’ll have your courtiers eating out of her hands in a day, whereas I only seem to put them off more and more. The less they see of me, I figure, the easier it will be for both of you.”

His heart fell at the implication of her words.

“And anyway,” she finished awkwardly, “I had no idea you’d want to speak to me.”

“No idea? After what you found today?”

“What could I tell you that the others couldn’t?”

“Well, for one, I’d like a look at the dragon fetish you found. Dragons do have special interest for me these days.”

“Yes, I know.” Her gaze returned to the books in her lap. “But you were busy today, and . . .” She trailed off.

“Back there in the theatre, I had the distinct impression you were waiting to talk to me.”

“I was. But when I saw you, I knew this wasn’t the time.” She looked up at him. “Truly, sir, you do look awful. You should be—”

“Resting. I know. And I will happily oblige you once you satisfy my curiosity.” He paused. “And what
were
you doing just now in the gallery?”

She flushed and her chin jerked up. “I was looking for a painting. But really, sir, it can wait.” She must’ve seen the annoyance in his expression, for she added quickly, “It was just some things I learned in the history of the Western Isles I was reading today.”

History of the Western Isles? His heart sank even further.
She really does mean to go
.

“Did you know they were colonized by the old Ophiran Empire?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And that the Ophirans protected their borders and far-flung fortresses with guardstars?” He nodded and she continued. “There was a guild of Terstans that created and installed them. . . .”

“Yes. I learned that in Hur.”

“Ah. Of course.” Her brief burst of excitement died back to the awkward tension he was coming to despise. Why wouldn’t she tell him what was wrong? What had happened to that refreshing directness that had so long both befuddled and beguiled him? And why was she so set on leaving just when he needed her most? It made no sense at all.

Before he even realized what he intended, he burst out, “Light’s grace, Maddie! I don’t know what’s gone wrong between us, but I don’t want you to leave!” She looked up at him in surprise and he barreled on. “I need your eyes and your wit and your spirit. It would be like losing—” He scrambled to find an appropriate comparison. “Like losing Warbanner.”

And that, he saw from the souring of her expression, was not the thing to say at all.

“Yes,” she said coolly, “I imagine he would be a great loss.”

“He would be . . . but . . . but you would be a greater one.”
Oh, Eidon, I am making a mess of this
. “I know I have plenty of capable researchers. But none that can . . .” And here he trailed off, partly from the embarrassment of recalling what he’d said to her last night at this point, partly because he had just come up against something he couldn’t articulate.

Her face could not have been more expressionless. “That can what?”

“See things the way you do,” he said helplessly.

She looked down at her hands, apparently unmoved by his appeal. And why not? He’d done little more than beg her to stay. And could think of no more to add. “Can’t you stay a little longer, at least?”

And still she looked at her hands, clasped together, motionless atop the Book of the Words. She sat there, silently, and he felt the moments ticking by, timed by the beat of his heart.

At length, she let out a long, shuddering breath and said, “Briellen is not going to understand the rumors that have sprung up around us, sir. If I stay, it would be best if we had nothing to do with each other.” And now, finally, she glanced up at him. “Which shouldn’t be that difficult. I’ll simply put all my comments in writing and have my assistant make the verbal reports to you.”

He frowned at her, not at all pleased with such an arrangement but seeing no good reason to refuse it. It was certainly better than the alternative. “Very well. If that’s what you wish.”

Her eyes dropped back to her hands, now more clenched than clasped. “It is,” she whispered.

When she didn’t move and seemed disinclined to say more, he returned to their earlier subject: “So then, what painting were you looking for?”

“The one of Avramm’s coronation.” Her eyes came up again as she seemed to seize upon this opportunity to discuss something relatively benign. “I was reading an account of the event this afternoon and recalled there was a painting depicting it. I wanted to see how the two compared.”

He cocked a bemused brow. “And you just had to rush down here to see it now, though the place is deserted and the light bad?”

Her fingers began to pick at the folio crack again. “I have my own light. And I was down here anyway, so why not?”

“You were hiding, weren’t you?”

A grimace twitched her lips. “Oh, very well, yes. I saw Leyton coming down the ramp and just didn’t feel like facing him tonight.” She looked around as if in sudden realization. “I can’t think why he’s not here now.”

“I sent him away.”

Dismay flooded her face and he could almost hear her groan.

“He can hardly hold you accountable, my lady. You were obviously trying to escape me.”

“That’s not the way he’ll see it,” she muttered. She sat silent a moment, then sighed. “I really was interested in the painting, though.”

“Well, I can help you there. You ran right by it. It’s not a painting, you see. It’s a wall hanging.” He gestured toward one of the pieces down the left wall not far from where they sat.

Her eyes sparked with interest and she leaped up, then remembered herself. “May I have your leave, sir?”

“Of course.” As she hurried down the ramp toward the object of her interest, he drove himself to his feet, trying not to wince and gasp as he did, and giving thanks Channon had provided him with a very stout cane. Right now it was bearing almost all his weight. The first few steps were the worst.

The ancient tapestry hung from ceiling to floor and was nearly as wide as it was high. Its colors were muted and dark, its lines blurred with age, its style the rough, clumsy technique of the ancients. A man wearing a robe of fur knelt on a square rock amidst a grove of tall dark trees. Another man held a stylized crown over his head as a group of nobles looked on.

She shook her head. “That’s not at all like what was described. Is this the only one?”

“The only one I know of.” He stepped closer, frowning at it. “It’s awfully dirty, though. Maybe if all that mold were removed it would look different.”

“Mold?”

“Or mildew. Whatever it is.” He reached past her to scratch at the dark gray fibers clinging to the work. The moment he touched them, a green spangle shivered across the weaving’s surface and he saw that it had been enspelled. From her gasp, he knew Maddie had seen it, too. They glanced at each other, then stepped closer to the hanging and began to strip off the network of fibers that covered it—neither mildew nor mold but something of the Shadow. Abramm soon discovered that little currents of Light set into it coalesced the fibers into stiff, integrated patches that lifted free from the tapestry beneath to be more easily pulled off.

Slowly, patch by patch, they uncovered the work that lay hidden beneath— one like nothing in all the collections of the palace, the University, or even the archives in the Hall of Kings. Fine deeply colored threads had been worked into a tableau of exquisite detail and nuance. Scarlets, blues, a wealth of greens interspersed with rich browns and luminous blacks, the whole accented by shining silvers and golds. It reminded Abramm strongly of the Robe of Light, and the more they revealed of it, the more convinced he became it was no ordinary weaving of wool or linen, but very possibly a work of the Light itself.

Once they had pulled away most of the obscuring veil, they stood back to regard a completely new scene: Avramm didn’t kneel at all, but stood on a much lower stone, presumably at the base of the natural amphitheater upon which the Hall of Kings was built. The first few rows of onlookers’ backs had been rendered in the foreground, gathered around the king as he was crowned. Beyond swooped the valley, cut through by the River Kalladorne and bounded on the far side by the western headland. The sky, no longer cloudy, was light blue, with puffs of white cloud.

As for Avramm, he was a small, dark-haired man who already wore the real crown upon his head—the same plaited skeins of light Abramm had worn yesterday. The ancient Avramm also wore the Robe of Light, and held the scepter in one hand, the orb in the other, just as Abramm had. A plume cloud of tiny stars extended from the orb toward the onlookers, some of whom reached out toward it.

“It’s just like what happened with you,” Maddie breathed while Abramm gaped in astonishment.

She moved back to the tapestry again, holding up her kelistar for a better view, finally pulling over one of the benches so she could climb up and peer at the area of her interest: something on the horizon at the far left edge of the work. A moment she stared at it, then glanced over her shoulder at him. “I think this is Graymeer’s . . . shown fully built here, at the same time as he’s being crowned. Which makes it unquestionably Ophiran. And this gold and silver thing here . . . must be the guardstar.”

He stepped closer, not needing to climb onto the bench, and saw that it was indeed his fortress. And that she could be right about the guardstar. Wonder flooded him. The Heart had been left intact but buried in its platform in Hur. What if Graymeer’s still had its heart buried somewhere? If they could find it and ignite it . . .

“It would solve all the problem with the warrens and the possibility of more corridors being opened,” he murmured. To say nothing of the protection it would give them from the Esurhites. With such a wonder in place . . . he might not even need the Chesedhans.

She had left the matter of the guardstar and was now peering at another part of the scene not too far away from the fortress. He heard a faint, “Oh!” and then, after a moment, “It’s your dragon, again.” She glanced back at him as she pointed to something in the sky floating not too far from the fortress. He stepped closer still.

It looked exactly like the dragon in his vision.

Chills crawled madly across his flesh. He stared at it, reliving his coronation vision and feeling again the suffocating power of this creature’s evil.

“Sir?” Byron Blackwell’s voice broke into his thoughts and drew him around. His secretary hurried down the ramp toward him, the look on his face presaging he had yet another crisis to report. “They’ve found the—” His voice choked off as his eyes fixed upon the tapestry hanging at Abramm’s back. “Why. . . ? Where. . . ?”His eyes tracked to Maddie and back to Abramm.

“It was cloaked,” Abramm said. “All these years, and we didn’t even know it.” He glanced at the hangings across the hall from him and added, “Who knows how many more are hidden in the same manner.”
And what kinds of things we might learn from them
. He drew his thoughts back to the moment. “What did they find, Byron?”

Blackwell gave a start and cleared his throat. “The printing press, sir—in the bowels of the Keep, as you expected. No Prittleman, though. And trouble’s brewing down in Southdock. A mob’s come together, threatening to storm the Holy Keep. Two squadrons of royal troops have already been sent to quash it.”

Abramm nodded. “I don’t suppose I need to go down until it’s over.”

“No, sir. Probably be better if you waited.”

“Well, see that I’m kept informed.”

Blackwell frowned at him. “You should be in bed, sir. You look on the verge of collapse.”

As soon as he said it, Abramm was swept with a wave of wooziness. He staggered for a moment, then shook it off. “I’ll be going there very soon,” he told his secretary. “Don’t worry.”

Blackwell continued to frown at him. “Yes, sir.” He stepped away, glanced at Madeleine, then at the tapestry again before hurrying off.

It was almost as if he had taken all of Abramm’s energy with him, for no sooner had he departed than the wooziness was back, stronger than ever. Maddie said something once Blackwell was out of earshot, but her voice sounded blurred and distant. When Abramm turned to ask her to repeat herself, he set the entire hall spinning around himself, as at the same moment his legs turned to water. He collapsed on the bench, grunting as fire flashed up his leg.