Shadow Over Kiriath (26 page)

His visitor picked up the spoon with his left hand, clearly not his hand of choice, and began awkwardly feeding his charge the thick, beany porridge he’d brought. It was an unpleasant affair, for he kept dropping the spoon, sometimes into the bowl, sometimes onto the tray, sometimes onto the napkin he’d spread across Gillard’s chest. And every trip the utensil made to Gillard’s mouth, it trailed gravy, so that, if it weren’t bad enough having his face covered with a nest of whiskers, now he must suffer the indignity of having gravy all over them. Gillard wanted to snatch the spoon away and feed himself, except that his own limp, aching arms were unlikely to do a better job.

As he ate, his gaze flicked repeatedly to the man’s narrow, weathered face with its tight lips and dark, too-close eyes, thinking again that he looked familiar. It was the first time he’d actually looked at him with anything approaching a clear mind, and memory stirred. A gray cloak. A small red flame . . . those last days before his showdown with Abramm, the hideous march up to the Valley of Seven Peaks, dogged incessantly by the cowards Abramm had sent to torment him. Slipping in and out again, they’d cut ropes, loosed horses, damaged wagons and tents and tack, appearing like spirits only to melt into the darkness should anyone confront them. What kind of fighting was that? The coward’s way, that’s what.

But what did it have to do with the man now feeding him? Gillard had brought no Mataians with him. Or wait . . . maybe he had. The paleness of the man’s pate and the glaze of brown stubble pricking through it indicated he was a recent convert. So he wouldn’t have been bald and robed before Seven Peaks. Was it Matheson, maybe? He studied the face as he accepted another spoonful of porridge, allowed his bearded chin to be wiped and gave up. “You only answered one of my questions,” he said.

“Indeed, sir. That is so.” His attendant sat back in the chair, bird-bright eyes fixed upon Gillard’s face. “You still don’t know me, do you?”

“You look familiar. I feel I should, but I can’t seem to call it up.”

“Mmm . . . well, it doesn’t surprise me after what was done to you.” The acolyte leaned primly forward, plucked up the bread crust, and broke a piece off. “Once I was Darak Prittleman. Lord of Lathby, First Secretary of the Nunn, and Headman in the Laity Order of Gadriel. Now I am merely Brother Honarille.”

The moment he said his name, Gillard stiffened with both recognition and revulsion. Prittleman! So it was Abramm who’d ruined his thumb. How odd that observation should be so pleasing.

“A recent change of name and status, I gather?” asked Gillard.

Prittleman’s thin lips tightened and he gave a single nod. “I am a wanted man, sir.”

The former Gadrielite dipped the chunk of bread he had been holding for some moments now into the bean porridge and offered it to Gillard. When the prince had finished chewing the morsel and swallowed it, he was offered a sip of watered wine. Then, as his acolyte attendant took up the spoon again, Gillard asked quietly, “What was it that was done to me?”

Prittleman’s fingers tightened on the spoon. “You were enspelled, Highness. After you killed the morwhol and saved your brother’s wretched life, he thanked you by working a deathsleep over you. So he could take the credit for himself. While you have lain like one dead these last six months, he has basked in his stolen glory, making himself at home in the palace, claiming Eidon’s favor, even while allowing all manner of wickedness and atrocities to be committed against his true servants. . . .”

He rambled on, but shock had closed Gillard’s ears.
Six months! I’ve been bedridden and senseless for six
months
? No wonder my hair and beard are long as a hermit’s. No wonder I feel so weak . . . and
Abramm
did this?
He found that hard to believe. Abramm was a Terstan, which of course Prittleman saw as a great evil. But Gillard had known Raynen, and his father, and a handful of others who wore the shield, and none had the ability to cast a spell of sleep over anyone. In fact, he had never known them to cast any sort of spell at all.

“Thanks to the unceasing petitions of the handful of faithful who have remained here,” Prittleman said, “the spell has been broken, my prince, and you are freed.”

Gillard received this declaration uneasily. “
I
killed the morwhol, you say?”

The beady eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember?”

“I remember it attacked me . . . bit me in the shoulder.” He frowned as the memory resurfaced, as vivid as if he’d experienced it yesterday: pinned helpless to the ground by the beast’s great weight, gagging on the stench of its breath and bloodied coat, its vicious laughter echoing in his head as it sucked away his strength and breath . . . and life?

It had betrayed him. He thought it would kill Abramm, and then he himself would kill it and get the glory for doing so. Only at the last moment had he understood it meant to kill them both, drawing his life energy into itself first so as to be strong enough to kill Abramm.

He shuddered, then reminded himself that it had failed. He still lived and it, apparently, was dead, though he did not recall how it had died.

“It had you,” Prittleman explained, “but then Eidon was persuaded by the fervent entreaties of his holy ones and provided you the strength to prevail.”

The holy ones and Eidon, again. I see where this is going
.

“You killed it with your bare hands, my prince.”

“My bare hands?” His glance fell upon those hands now, thin and bony beneath skin as translucent as silk. They reminded him of his long-dead grandmother, all angles and bones. It was hard to imagine lifting a cup to his lips these days, let alone killing a morwhol.

The former Gadrielite seemed to read his mind: “It must have been his spell that took your memory of it, my prince,” he said.

Ah. That made sense. Except . . . why leave me alive at all? Why not simply kill me?
“And you were there? You saw all that?”

“They should be calling
you
Morwhol Slayer, my prince,” Prittleman declared. “Not him. The danger was past, you had saved yourself and him, but you were still weak and drained from your efforts when he pounced, spinning his evil upon you so that he might take your place and seduce away your people. And so he has. And all of us who supported you, who gave allegiance to the true Flames, we have been cast down. Our lands and titles taken, our reputations destroyed, our very lives in danger. Many have fled to Chesedh and the Western Isles, others are imprisoned—he had the gall to lock up High Father Bonafil! Can you imagine?”

Gillard didn’t think that was supposed to please him, but it did, even if it was Abramm who’d done it.

Prittleman was off and running again, words spilling out of him willynilly, making his story hard to follow.

“I thought hatred was a sin, brother,” Gillard interrupted finally. “I thought it diminished the Flames.”

“Not when it is directed at that which is evil. In fact, we are commanded to hate the Shadow and all associated with it. And your brother is consumed with Shadow, spreading his darkness over the people he has deceived.”

The bowl emptied, Prittleman removed the tray and set it on the bedside table. “I am only grateful Eidon has seen fit to deliver me so that I may continue to serve. The creator sees all that has gone on, and he will neither forget nor overlook. I am confident that in time he will restore me to my former position. As he will you, sir, should you seek recompense from him.”

Gillard smiled grimly. “Your faith is admirable, brother, but I prefer to seek my recompense from Abramm.” He scratched the beard again. “I don’t suppose in the meantime you could arrange for someone to serve as my valet.”

“I am sorry, sir, but no. As you can imagine, your brother is searching desperately for you. For me, as well, for I have not been kind to him these last six months. As secretive as we made your arrival, it has still raised a few brows among the brethren here. If you were to have a valet . . . well, that would ignite far too many questions. If the beard is bothersome, it would be my honor to shave you.”

Gillard looked at him in mild alarm, noting again the cuts and nicks and missed spots of whiskers on that weathered face. Prittleman frowned and put a hand up to his chin. “I know my hand is not the steadiest, but I’ve not yet slit my throat.” He had an odd, wheezing laugh.

Gillard shuddered. “That’s all right. I’ll do it myself.”

“Sir, I very much doubt—”

“When I’m able, of course. Until then I’ll live with it.”

“As you wish, sir.”

————

———— The morning after his address to the Tables, Abramm rose early, spent some time in prayer and meditation, and then went out for his morning ride. Barely had he reached the stable when Jared caught up with him, breathlessly informing him that Master Belmir had arrived at his apartments to request a private audience. “Lord Haldon bid him wait, sir,” Jared said, “to see if I could catch you before you left on your ride.” He paused. “He came in a common robe, without attendants, sir, and we got the sense he doesn’t wish to be widely seen.”

Abramm hesitated only a moment. That Belmir had come surreptitiously implied he sought to talk rather than accuse and denounce. And after Abramm’s less than successful attempt yesterday to persuade the Table of Lords of the need for another tax and conscription writ—thanks largely to Mataian opposition—he would take every opportunity to change things.

He returned to his apartments by the back stairway, where Haldon was waiting for him. “I’m sorry if I overstepped, sir,” the chamberlain said, closing the door behind him. “But I thought—”

“No. You did right, Hal.” Abramm unfastened the ties of his cloak.

“He’s in the sitting chamber,” Haldon said. “And quite restless.”

“Is he?”

The chamberlain stepped around behind him to lift the cloak from his shoulders as Abramm stripped off his gloves. “I brought him some orange juice and twistbreads,” said Haldon. “Would you like some, as well?”

“Just some juice.” He handed over the gloves and strode down the short hall past Haldon’s tiny quarters into his own bedchamber, then through the study beyond it and into the royal sitting chamber.

Master Belmir sat in one of the blue-and-white-striped divans arranged around a table before the marble fireplace. Sipping a glass of orange juice, he stared up at the huge painting of the Battle of the Hollyhock on the wall beside the hearth without seeming to see it. He looked smaller than Abramm remembered, more wizened, his long braid thin and more than half white. Looking around as Abramm entered, he leaped to his feet.

“Your Majesty,” he murmured, giving Abramm a short bow. “Thank you for seeing me.”

“Please, sit down, Master,” Abramm said, taking the divan facing Belmir.

After Abramm had settled, Belmir sat himself, still holding on to the juice glass and staring down at it through his wire spectacles as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

The last time Abramm had seen this man, he had been riding at Gillard’s side, appearing out of the mist to block Abramm’s attempt to meet the morwhol outside the Temple of Dragons. According to what Abramm had learned, when Belmir had seen Gillard go after Abramm, and Prittleman had run for the valley, he’d ridden on into the pass himself, leading his holy men with their pan of flames in a futile attempt to stop the beast. There hadn’t even been a confrontation. The morwhol was so focused on Abramm it had blasted by them, killing most of them incidentally before it sucked up their tiny flame and ran on. Belmir was one of the few who survived. He’d been brought back to the Holy Keep without fanfare and there had all but closeted himself these last months, healing from injuries reputed to be more than physical.

Because of this, plus the fact that few had even noticed Belmir at Gillard’s side that day—along with blatant sentimentality—Abramm had declined to pursue him for his treasonous stand with Gillard. The man had been his discipler for eight years, after all, and Abramm had grown to love and respect him in ways he could hardly articulate. Nor was he the only man who’d supported Gillard that Abramm had pardoned.

“Well, Master,” Abramm said, “what brings you out of seclusion so unexpectedly? And at such an early hour?”

The holy man looked up, his eyes magnified by the lenses of his spectacles as they flicked to the scars raking Abramm’s face, then down to the juice glass again. He turned it once in his hands, then set it on the table between them and sighed. “I’ve come to plead for the High Father’s release.”

“Ah.”
Plead, he said, not demand. That’s promising
.

“Though not in an official capacity, of course,” Belmir added. “Few, in fact, know I’ve come. And many would be irked if they did. But I felt I might offer a perspective you have not yet heard.”

“I’m listening.”

The old man’s eyes went again to Abramm’s scars, held there a moment, then dropped to the shieldmark on his chest, glittering between the openneck edges of his blouse and jerkin. Abramm did not wear the mark exposed when he was formally dressed anymore—but when working or relaxing he made no effort to hide it, and now his former discipler’s gray eyes fixed upon it for some time before rising again to meet his own. “You must know the kind of tensions his imprisonment is breeding. It’s certainly not the way to make yourself friends among us.”

As Haldon arrived with his juice, Abramm cocked a brow at his guest. “I didn’t think making friends with Mataians was even possible for me.”

Belmir grimaced. “Perhaps ‘friends’ is too strong a term. Let me just say there are those among us who do not support this radical element that is taking hold of our faith. We believe the Words command us to respect and obey the civil leaders Eidon has placed over us.”

Abramm sipped the cold, tart juice, giving himself a moment to cover his surprise and the sudden strong surge of hope his former mentor’s words had provoked. He set the glass on the table, too, then looked up at Belmir.

“Yet you’ve come to plead for the release of a man—your superior, in fact—who obviously does not agree with you.”

Belmir frowned. “The people are afraid, sir. Rumors are running rampant. And with your obvious preferences for Terstan advisors, your impending marriage to a Chesedhan, the closing down of the city, the search, the High Father’s arrest, and the destruction of the Keep . . . no one is sure what you’ll do next. Many fear persecution and seizures. There is talk you’ve already executed Bonafil and that you mean to use the tax and conscript writs you asked for to build an army that will purge the realm of your enemies. They believe you mean to abolish the Mataio. Even the leaders who would not oppose you hesitate to speak out.”