Abramm said nothing to that, and after a moment Katahn went on outlining his plan. He’d brought along a man from Chesedh to play the part of Abramm and had entered him into the qualifying rounds for that position last week. The man had fought his way through all the rounds, winning at last the right to have his face cut in imitation of Abramm’s scars. Only to have one of the minor cuts he’d sustained in a previous match suddenly suppurate so aggressively that twenty-four hours later he was weak and thrashing with fever, unable even to stand, let alone fight.
“We’ve been praying he’d recover and are trying every treatment we can think of,” Katahn said, “but nothing’s helped. This afternoon I told my friend, the one you met in the teahouse, to be on the lookout for anyone newly arrived who might have slaves to sell, but I didn’t really expect he’d find anyone.” He paused and shook his head. “And now here you are.”
“Aye. Here I am.”
“Perfect in every regard.” Katahn grinned. “Except for your scars being on the wrong side of your face.”
And at that they both laughed.
“Wait a minute,” Borlain said now, looking from one to the other. “You’re thinking of Abramm taking your champion’s place?”
Katahn still had his eye on Abramm. “I don’t know. Are you ready to get back into the ring, then, Pretender? Think you still have all the old moves?”
“You know I don’t, old fox,” Abramm said with a chuckle, lifting the arm the morwhol had maimed.
At that point Rolland could no longer contain his horror. “Sire, you cannot be serious!”
“Do you see anyone else here more suited to play me than me?”
“Let me go, sir. I’m the right size and have the right coloring!”
“Rollie, we’d have to cut your face.”
“I know that.” Though his voice trembled, Rolland stood firm. “I am more than willing to suffer what you already have if it will keep you out of there.”
Abramm stared at him, moved to muteness by the man’s offer.
Katahn snorted. “So, then, you think you could do better in the ring than the White Pretender, Large One?”
Rolland’s eyes widened as he turned to the Esurhite.
“Even at half what he was,” said Katahn, “he is still a formidable foe.”
“That he is,” Borlain offered grimly.
“Not that it matters,” Abramm intruded. “Since I’m not expecting to fight him anyway. What I’ll bring is shock. When Belthre’gar sees me out there, he’ll burst a blood vessel, most likely. Start yelling to have me killed or seized, especially if either of the regalia are real. In their panic and haste, they’ll open the gates themselves for the rest of you to come in.”
“Don’t think Leyton won’t fight you,” Katahn warned. “He won’t have a choice. And last time you faced him, remember—”
“He beat me. Aye. But with you all rushing in to rescue us, surely he’ll be distracted enough I can elude defeat this time.”
“So it’s true, then, sir?” Galen asked out of the blue, staring at him. “You really
were
a slave in these Games? Really were sold off to them by your own brother?”
“I was sold by a man who shares my parentage,” Abramm replied grimly. “I have a hard time thinking of him as my brother anymore. Especially after what we saw today.”
He spoke of the temple outside Horon-Pel, where today they’d been forced to wait on the road while troops of Sorites, Irianni, and Kiriathans had marched through its gates and onto the road before them. Five score of his countrymen marched by wearing tabards marked with a flame-and-crown device he’d not recognized. If he’d not seen it with his own eyes, he’d never have believed it. When Rolland had yelled to them from the slave cart, asking whom they marched under, the answer was “Makepeace! Long may he reign.”
The words had nearly knocked Abramm off his horse.
“They say he’s gone mad,” Katahn said now, speaking of Gillard. “Obsessed with you. Even cut his own face to look like you.”
“Surely that’s just a crazy tale.”
“I don’t think so, my friend. He serves the Bright Ones now. And they are obsessed with you, as well. Do you know how many men bear the same scars as you do? How many men they’ve sent, pretending to be you?”
Bright Ones . . . He’d forgotten that was one of the Esurhite names for rhu’ema. Bright Ones . . . Shining Ones . . . the Ban’astori . . .
“See?” Galen said quietly to his uncle Oakes. “He really is King Abramm.”
Trinley only scowled at the straw-covered floor and said nothing.
Not long after that they got around to planning out the details of the rescue operation. Katahn and his men had already scouted the narrow runs of the city as they extended from the amphitheater’s ring-shaped plaza. In addition, just as in the Val’Orda, Horon-Pel’s amphitheater had the under ground works associated with the arena productions—the elevators, the drainage tubes, the chutes through which the animals were driven. Besides that, it turned out that many of the people who lived in the city had long made their livelihood raiding the nearby tombs of their distant ancestors, and there was a veritable network of underground passages beneath their simple dwellings. Katahn knew of several in particular that he could use.
They would go early tomorrow morning, as Katahn had already arranged: himself, Abramm, well cloaked, and a handful of men to serve as his guards and handlers. Once checked in and approved—as early as possible to avoid the potential of running into someone who might recognize either of them— Abramm and his handlers would be left in a holding cell to await the contest. Meanwhile the others would be infiltrating from the tunnels, garbed in Esurhite black. . . .
It was late when they finally finished outlining all the specifics, memorizing maps and parceling out positions and assignments. As the others settled down to sleep there in the stable, Katahn took Abramm to the spacious chamber he was renting from the teahouse proprietor. There, over small glasses of tea mellowed with the brandylike Andolen
saria,
they indulged in some private conversation, and it wasn’t long before Abramm found himself asking about the rumors of Maddie remarrying.
A frown creased the old Gamer’s brow as he looked at his glass and shrugged it off as “only a rumor.”
“Katahn . . .”
The Esurhite drew and released a quick breath. “I know nothing for certain, for I’ve not been to Peregris since she sent us off. I can say the man was courting her at that time, but she was holding out for your return. Admittedly, she was alone in that belief and her courtiers and advisors were pressing her hard to accept him. He had them all charmed—handsome, smart, rich, completely devoted to her.”
Something in Abramm’s chest seized up as Katahn said these things, forming a hard, painful knot.
“It wasn’t until we got here that we heard she’d accepted his suit,” Katahn finished.
“A man tonight said she’d already married him.”
Katahn sighed. Sipped from his tea glass. “You know how these things are, Abramm. This far away, behind enemy lines . . . the truth could be anything. For all we know Maddie put out the tale to buy herself time. The wave decimated the Chesedhan navy and the breastwork on the river, you know. And you must have noticed how nervous it makes the Esurhites to think of Tirus ul Sadek joining the Chesedhans.”
“Yes. I noticed . . . and that’s another thing. Why do they know of him— and fear him so—when I’ve never heard of him?”
Katahn smiled grimly. “Oh, the House of the Dragon is well known in Esurh, for our dealings with it go way back. . . .”
He spoke on, but Abramm heard not a word, his attention riveted on that single word:
dragon
. The knot in his chest hardened into stone, squeezing the air from his lungs as the room spun. He’d readied himself to hear of his wife’s death and abide it. He was not at all ready to hear of her life with another man. Let alone one said to be of the house of the dragon.
Surely it couldn’t be Moroq she had married! He swayed in the chair and pressed his forearms hard against the table, sweat popping out upon his flesh. No. She would know better. She was too smart, too strong in the Light. . . .
“Abramm . . .” Katahn’s hand tightened on his forearm, drawing his attention. His dark eyes were crinkled with worry. “Don’t trouble yourself over what might not even be true. You have more than enough to think about right now.”
But as Abramm stared at him, all he saw was the white blaze of the throne room, the beautiful, vicious voice of his worst and truest enemy echoing in his head:
“I will take it all. . . .”
Carissa Kalladorne Meridon, Duchess of Northille and wife to the man who was Special Counsel to the Queen, stood at the bay window of the spacious apartments she shared with her husband and gazed across the promenade of palms cutting through the waterpark at Fannath Rill. She had weaned Conal almost four months ago now—though he’d nearly weaned himself by then—so there were no more morning nursing sessions. It was hard to believe he was almost two years old. And that it had been that long since Abramm’s death.
And here come the tears again. . . .
She frowned and wiped them from her lashes, annoyed with herself for being so weepy. This was to be a day of rejoicing, and here she was with one of her horrible moods again.
Though the dawn had earlier turned the ceiling of cloud to blood—it was what had roused her from her bed—that had faded, leaving the flat gray overcast that had obscured the sky for months. Below, scurrying like ants along the promenade, workers swept, pruned, carted in potted orange trees, and set up brightly colored pavilions and flags and garlands of fresh spring flowers for the wedding celebration to come. Today Queen Madeleine of Chesedh was to wed Draek Tiris ul Sadek of Soria, and Tiris had promised the party would last for days. Already the smell of roasting meat filled the palace.
No need to worry about the Esurhites interrupting the ceremony. One hundred of Tiris’s galleys stood at anchor in the Peregris harbor, and a hundred thousand of his armed soldiers were garrisoned along Chesedh’s southern shores, guarding the strait. No need to worry about rain ruining the festivities, either, for the rainy season had ended early this year. There’d been not a drizzle for at least six weeks. The wedding should go off without a hitch.
All those in power were ecstatic. Ever since Tiris had arrived last month to make his final preparations, he’d been feted by every noble house in Chesedh, one after the other. Thanked for his provision and welcomed to the realm.
They were saved, and it was his doing. Chesedh was gaining a new king, Maddie’s children would have a new father, and Maddie herself, after nearly two years of mourning, was finally moving on to a new relationship. Tiris seemed the perfect replacement.
So why is there such heaviness in my heart?
Carissa asked of Eidon.
Why do
I feel I’m attending a funeral instead of a wedding?
She heard the door open and close behind her, the clink of the cups jiggling on their saucers as the familiar footsteps approached, sounds she’d been awaiting. Her pulse fluttered, and already her skin tingled at the anticipation of his touch. She and her husband had reinstated their tradition of sharing cocoa the morning after they’d been truly married that afternoon in Peregris. Now each day Trap got up early for his sword practice, then picked up the cocoa from the kitchen on his way back to the apartment.
He set the tray on the table at her back and came to rest his hands on her shoulders as he buried his face in her hair, flowing long and loose down her back. He inhaled deeply. “Good morning, my lovely wife. I’ve missed you.”
She giggled and leaned back against him. “All of two hours?”
“I cannot get enough of you. . . .” He moved the curtain of her hair aside and laid a whiskery kiss on her shoulder, just beyond the neckline of her dressing gown. Then he dropped his hands to her waist and slid them forward to cradle her womb, which soon would be showing the new life he had planted there. A deep and powerful emotion welled in her—contentment as she’d never known it, gratitude so strong it could bring her to her knees, and love. She had not thought it possible to fall more in love with this man than she’d already been, but she had. There was also a strong thread of guilt and piercing sadness. And now here came the tears again.
She wiped them away and pressed her lips together, chasing off the weeping spate before it could get started.
“The darkness is upon you again,” he murmured. It was not a question.
She sighed. “The realm is saved. Maddie is moving on. I should be rejoicing.” She tilted her head back against his shoulder, her forehead against his bearded jaw. “Instead I stand here hoping she doesn’t go through with it. Though I myself advised her to marry him, and I see what a good match he is for her . . . I just want to bury myself back into my bed and let this day pass without me. The prospect of standing on that stage and hearing her say marriage vows to anyone but Abramm—” Her voice broke, and this time she couldn’t stop the tears.
He turned her gently toward him and wrapped his arms around her as she pressed her face to his chest in misery. And when the wave of weeping had passed, he said softly, “She held on to him for so long, believing so resolutely that he was out there somewhere, I think it kept a spark alive in us, too. Now she’s come at last to accept the truth. He really is gone. He really isn’t coming back. And we have to accept it just as she does.”
He fell silent while she wept against his chest as she had not since they’d first left Kiriath. She’d been wrong about Tiris being a suitable replacement. No one would ever replace her brother.
When the storm had passed he eased back enough to cradle her face in his palms, his brown eyes full of warmth and sadness and infinite wisdom. “He is with Eidon now. But we go on, my beautiful wife.” He kissed her gently. Then again, not so gently, and as sorrow slowly transformed into a different kind of passion, they returned to their bedchamber to comfort each other as only they could do.
Later, as they lay side by side in utter contentment, the bright morning sun pouring through the veils of silk that draped their canopied bed, she marveled at the change he was able to work in her moods. She still felt the grief at losing Abramm, but it was lighter now, softer. An old grief, really, being superseded, day by day, with the wonders of the new life Eidon had given her. She turned her head to look at her husband, stretched out beside her, and smiled at him. “I still can’t get over how I thought for all those months that you didn’t care, and now . . .”