Shadow Over Kiriath (54 page)
The Brogai spoke sharply and the strongman stood hunch-shouldered. Another sharp word spurred the man to continue, and finally he pulled enough of the canvas back to reveal what Maddie knew at once must be the guardstar from Avramm’s Landing.
It looked exactly like the one at Graymeer’s—the same size, same pebbled, leathery surface, same black streaking. That they had brought it this far seemed to answer the question of whether a guardstar could be taken from its fortress. Although she didn’t recall the one at Graymeer’s being quite so heavy.
The Brogai lord immediately came to examine it, touching it gently, seeking to push it with his foot. A casual nudge did nothing, of course, and he seemed unwilling to compromise his dignity by trying anything more. One of the guards was told to cut the leathery covering off, but that only produced a dulled sword.
Irritated now, the Esurhite commander turned upon his Broho subordinate, peppering him with questions. Several times during their discourse Maddie heard the word
Avramm,
which seemed to confirm her conclusions as to the orb’s origins.
Then another breath of wind gusted through the arched openings from the valley, and out in the cove the purple column flickered erratically. The priest’s distant chanting broke off, and no one moved, though Maddie’s skin tingled with a sense of anticipation not altogether fearful. . . .
The column soon regained its bright and steady state, and after a moment, the chanting resumed. Plainly discomfited, the men in the chamber returned to their investigation of the orb until, shortly after that, the Brogai’s aide returned with a blond man in Kiriathan garb. Maddie thought him at first to be a captive or a slave, but when the commander spoke to him in flawless Kiriathan, she realized he was something else entirely.
“You told us the Chesedhan First Daughter was caught in adultery before the wedding,” said the Esurhite. “That Abramm did not marry her, but sent her in disgrace back to her own land. Eastward by a land route, you said.”
“That is so, my lord Uumbra,” the man continued, though Maddie heard him as from a great distance, stunned by the Esurhite’s words.
“. . . caught in adultery . . . didn’t marry her. . . .”Oh,my Lord Eidon . . . what have you done?
“How is it, then, that Xemai has captured her from a Kiriathan vessel just outside of Avramm’s Landing?” Uumbra held out the ring that the Broho Xemai had taken from Maddie that first day. “Is this not the signet of Chesedhan royalty?”
The Kiriathan took the object from him, examined it briefly, then turned to look at her, frowning. Finally, though, his face cleared and he handed the ring back. “It is indeed the signet of Chesedh. And she is Chesedhan royalty— just not the First Daughter. The First Daughter is blond and very beautiful. This is the Second Daughter, Madeleine.”
The Brogai lord frowned at her. “This one is certainly no beauty. . . .Second Daughter . . . that is the one the royal lineage bypasses, is it not?”
“Yes, my lord.”
There followed a sharp rebuke of the Broho, which Maddie could not deny she enjoyed. Xemai’s words of defense were irritably cut off, but before the dressing down could really gain momentum, the Kiriathan spy interceded.
“This might actually be a good thing, my lord.”
Uumbra turned a scowl on him. “How is that?”
“Everyone in the court knows this is the daughter Abramm really loves. If he knew you had her . . .”
He trailed off suggestively, as Maddie reeled again.
The daughter Abramm really loves? It was true, then. Everything I thought was true. . . .
Uumbra was now thinking furiously, his dark eyes fixed upon Maddie. Then the frown faded as his lips pulled back in a smile—and another gust of wind rushed through the room. Simultaneously the orb shifted off its cracked landing spot, moving maybe a half turn away from the Brogai lord. Every man who stood near it leaped back as if it were alive.
Another gust whooshed around them, rattling the bushes on the slopes outside and rippling the banners hanging behind the Brogai’s bench. Again Maddie felt that sense of something approaching, something the Light within her was responding to.
One of the soldiers raced into the room and uttered a brief statement that clearly infuriated the Brogai lord. A series of commands sent his underlings scurrying away moments before he strode from the room himself, leaving only Xemai to help the giant wrestle the orb back into its cart—and Maddie, for the moment, ignored.
Abramm stared in pleased surprise at the empty piers around him. Part of his intent in pretending to drop anchor for the night with Leyton and the frigates was to tempt the Esurhites into making a preemptive attack. That this grotto lay utterly deserted two hours before dawn could well mean his enemies had taken the bait. And in so doing had provided the perfect refuge for him and his fleet. If he’d questioned Eidon’s hand in this endeavor before, he did no longer.
They were here, against all odds—safe and apparently undetected. He had only to get some idea of what they were up against, then find a likely spot on the island above and see if the scepter really would start up the winds that would drive the mist away. Which it had better do, for the sake of Leyton’s frigates, since, becalmed and with their guns inoperable in the mist, they would be easy targets if an Esurhite fleet did attack. Leyton had refused to return to wind-stirred waters, however, insisting the scepter would work and wanting to be close enough he could move in swiftly when it did. He planned to sail round to a wider, deeper entrance to the bay shown on the old maps to lie southeast of the shallows. There he would bring his guns to bear on the Esurhites’ fortress and tip the battle swiftly to the Kiriathans’ favor. First, though, Abramm had to remove the Shadow’s mist.
The moment
Yverik
touched dock, four Esurhite crewmen jumped ashore, hurrying along the wooden pier and up a short stair to a tunnel opening that looked as if it might lead to the rest of the complex. Being Esurhite and dressed in the right uniform, they hoped to be ignored by any they might encounter. As they disappeared into the tunnel, other men scurried about, seeing the ship snugly moored. By then Katahn’s vessel had slipped into the moorage beside
Yverik,
and soon the Gamer stood with Abramm and Channon atop the stair at the tunnel’s mouth, watching the other five galleys nose into adjoining slips.
Trap, clad in black with his features darkened like Abramm’s, leaped to the dock even before his ship made contact with it, hurrying up the stair to join them. Barely had he done so when one of the four scouts returned to report the tunnel was secured and that two of his fellows had gone on in search of a route to the top of the island.
“I don’t know where everyone is,” the man said, “but they sure don’t seem to be expecting us. There’re no guards, and they haven’t even locked their gates.”
Which was just what Abramm had hoped to hear. Leaving most of his men in the grotto, he took Trap, Katahn, Channon, and Philip, along with a small party of Esurhites, and set off for the island’s surface. He had mixed feelings about taking so small a group of men. On the one hand, he didn’t want to tip their hand before he could attack the Shadow, since its removal would protect his men from the arcane weapons it enabled his enemies to use: fireballs, fearspells, the power of Command. On the other hand, destroying it would surely bring down all the men in this fortress upon him, and the dissipation of the mist would not diminish the effectiveness of sword and shield and stone and arrow.
Not long after, they met another of their scouts coming back to report they’d found the way out. The man led them the rest of the way, and even though he’d told Abramm what they’d found in the wide, rock-rimmed valley that formed the top of the island of Chakos, it was still a shock to see it for himself: the fire-rimmed cove with its platform and ramp and massive purple corridor. The question of why the halls had been so deserted was answered, as well, for it seemed that all the men in the fortress had turned out to line the cove alongside the torches.
“Looks like they’re bringing something through right now,” Trap murmured in the Tahg at his side.
“And as big as that corridor is, with the ramp and the water— Plagues! I’ll wager they’re bringing whole galleys through.”
“That would explain all those rowboats lined up along the side of the cove . . . and why there’s so many men out here. It’s a sure bet they’re not just guards.”
Most looked to be unarmed and were facing inward toward the corridor rather than outward in the direction from which a threat would be expected to come. Abramm scanned the valley’s rocky, guano-whitened rim, and sure enough the few sentries posted up there were all watching the proceedings below. He drew his men’s attention to them, outlined the plan that had just taken form in his mind, and shortly they were heading up to the rim themselves as two from the group headed back to the grotto to bring up the rest of the men.
Impersonating a senior officer, Katahn rebuked the Esurhites for their laxity in guarding the fortress and sent them off in the custody of two of his own. By the time the disciplined pair realized what was going on, it would be far too late. As two of Abramm’s men took over the post of the disgraced guards, those on the rim’s far side hurriedly turned themselves back to their jobs, leaving Abramm relatively unobserved.
He’d selected the highest ground available, both as the best defensible position and thinking the scepter might work better the more exposure it had. Turning his back to the ceremony, he drew the scepter from its sleeve on his back, gripped the base of the rod with both hands, and swung it back and forth before him, approximating the moves he’d made with it during the battle at Graymeer’s.
But he stirred no more air with it than he would’ve with his sword, and not even the jewel on its top lit this time. Distracted by the crawly feel of the corridor on his back, and the mind-numbing buzz in his ears, he dropped down off the rim line to get it out of sight, stepping out onto the rock-strewn island top to try it again. With similar lack of results.
A third position change sent him stumbling into a mass of the birds that nested on the ground there—birds he’d taken for rocks—knocking them from their hollows, stepping on them and their eggs, and raising a terrible ruckus of squawks and wing flapping that did not go unnoticed.
“All right, enough of this,” he muttered, stuffing the scepter back into its sleeve and returning to the rim line. “It’s not working,” he said to the others. “I can’t seem to focus with the corridor right there. Maybe if we take that out first, the scepter will work.”
“
Can
we take it out, sir?” Trap asked.
“Well, we’ve already destroyed two of them . . . so we must be starting to get the hang of it. Which is better than I can say for the scepter.”
His men said nothing, but he saw the protest on their faces as they stared down at the cove and the monstrous purple column.
Trap shifted uncomfortably. “Sir, you’ll be right out there in the middle of all of it.”
“Exactly. We’ll be a diversion while our men move into position.” He paused, then added before his friend could speak, “And I don’t want to hear any suggestions of how I should hide up here with the birds. I came to lead this campaign and I intend to do so. Besides, my presence is part of the plan.”
Trap frowned at him.
“They’re afraid of the Pretender, remember? If things start to go our way and they suddenly find out that I’m here . . . And yes, I know you don’t like it. But I wish you’d have a little more faith, my friend. If not in me, then at least in Eidon.” When they only frowned the more, he gave up. “All right, then. Let’s get that thing shut down before whatever it is they’re bringing through gets here.”
Leaving two of their number on the rim, they made their way downslope toward the cove and joined the mass of men waiting for the corridor to deliver its burden. Many had already packed themselves into the rowboats as up on the platform the priests chanted on with increasing rapidity and volume. Abramm and his companions were working their way toward the platform stair when the corridor shivered and a sense of something huge bearing down upon them lifted the hairs up Abramm’s spine. A flash to his left drew his eye to the violet column and brought him to a stop. The air grew heavy, difficult to suck into his lungs, pressing upon his chest. His ears ached as the sense of power crawled across his flesh and the priests’ cries escalated into screams. Just when it seemed they could not get any louder or higher pitched, the column burst into a light so blinding he had to turn away.
Pressure, sound, and light all dropped away together, and when he could see again, he found the column reduced in both diameter and brightness, a thin vestige of what it had been, but still several times larger than the corridors he had encountered in Graymeer’s. The priests lay in a heap on the platform, silent and unmoving, as below them, sliding slowly toward the dark water at ramp’s end, loomed the dark bulk of a full-sized Esurhite galley.
After a moment’s startled recovery, the men on the shore surged into the water with a collective shout, boats and oars knocking together in their drivers’ haste. Abandoning his idea of taking one of the boats for themselves, Abramm hurried around the curving cove to the platform stair, ignored by the Esurhites now that all had their eyes upon the galley, where men in the first of the rowboats were tossing up their grappling hooks, securing their boat to its hull.
With Trap at his side and the others following, Abramm jogged up to the platform where the debilitated priests sprawled unmoving across its railed top, many draped over their fellows. Looking down to pick his way among them, he stared into the glazed eyes of one, the red fire of a rhu’eman indweller flickering deep in the man’s dilated pupils. It saw him and knew what he was, but though the red light pulsed in the amulet around his neck, the creature seemed as drained of power as the man it inhabited. Perfect. Maybe Eidon hadn’t infused the scepter with his Light because the time wasn’t right. . . .