Eidolon (22 page)

Serovek’s hand on his shoulder made him look up. “It’s done,” he said.

Brishen shook head. “Not yet.”  The image of Megiddo’s face in those last moments filled his vision, and he couldn’t hold back the choking gasp of grief. His mother, twisted, warp bitch that she was, had thrown her people—the entire world even—to a pack of ravenous, ethereal wolves. As a Kai and her son, he’d accepted the burden of righting the wrongs she committed, correcting an apocalyptic mistake. He’d closed the breach, but it had been a human—a courageous, quiet monk—who’d given the ultimate sacrifice and saved a nation of people not his own.

“We could have saved him,” Andras snarled. He glared at Brishen, his eyes blazing above his face shield. Hostile, haunted, disgusted—every emotion Brishen experienced himself.

“No, we couldn’t. They would have pulled you in too, along with Serovek, before I could close the breach. Megiddo knew it. Otherwise you’d still have your hand.”

Andras held up his arm. Revenant smoke curled around his wrist. “We’ve consigned him to a horror beyond even unclean death. Cowards all,” he said. “We are all cowards.”  He sliced through a
galla
that hurtled in from the stairwell.

He didn’t utter a sound when Serovek shoved him hard enough against the wall to knock him off his feet. “You might want to rethink that notion, exile.”  The two swords Serovek held pulsed with light, one his, the other Megiddo’s. He used both to cut away at
galla
still filling the chamber. “Our purpose was, and is, to close the breach and send those accursed demons back to where they spawned. The monk sacrificed himself for all of us. Honor that brave deed by going home and recounting it to the daughter you fight for.”

He sheathed his sword for a moment and offered Andras a hand up. The Gauri lord stared at him for a long moment before accepting, and Serovek hauled him to his feet.

Brishen leaned heavily against one of the walls, making half-hearted swings at the
galla
snapping at him. “I know it’s no consolation,” he told the Gauri lord, “but I will carry his loss the remainder of my life.”  He didn’t lie. Megiddo’s expression was etched in his mind as deep and fiery as the wards he’d burned into the ground.

Andras’s eyes flared for a moment before dimming. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s no consolation whatsoever.”  He turned away and strode out of the room, his steps on the stairs hardly a whisper of sound. A procession of
galla
dogged his heels.

“Those who survive the battle often suffer guilt,” Serovek said. “He’ll come to terms with Megiddo’s fate over time, as we all will.”

“It won’t matter if he does. His rancor doesn’t change the fact I had to close the breach no matter the cost.”  Brishen gazed at the human who once saved his life and called him friend. “You understand I wouldn’t have altered anything had that been you instead of Megiddo?”

Serovek chuckled and batted away a demon with the back of his hand. ‘I’d hope not. I didn’t much relish the idea of being skewered, resurrected and thrown on a sham horse so I can chase demons all over the place. You ruining the entire plan because you had a fit of the vapors about sacrificing me wouldn’t endear you to me.”

The weight of Megiddo’s horrific end didn’t lessen inside him, but Brishen cracked a smile at Serovek’s jesting. His amusement faded as fast as it appeared. ““If I thought it might free him, I’d kill his body.”  The three were connected—eidolon, sword and body. But if the body perished before the eidolon, the spirit was doomed to wander, and in Megiddo’s case, remain trapped in an eternity of unimaginable suffering.

“Andras or I should have taken his head instead of holding him,” Serovek groused. “He’d be free then. Dead but free.”

They followed Andras out of the palace, Brishen pausing for a final view of the throne room thick with confused, screeching
galla
. The thrones were still in place, undamaged. A vision of Secmis seated in hers, a ghastly spider in the center of her web, made him shudder. He turned his back and walked away.

The kings gathered in front of the dead, Andras looking at no one, Gaeres’s features drawn with shock at the news of Megiddo. Thinned of power, Brishen sensed the dead’s restlessness, the return of their anger at being yoked to the commands of a Wraith King. Time grew short along with his power. Soon, they’d shrug off his control, and if the
galla
were not banished, set the horde free once more to join their brethren who currently plagued them like fleas on a dog.

“How will we create the outer circle without the monk?” Gaeres asked.

“I remember the spell he had me repeat, and the runes to be drawn. I’ll be the one to give its power, just like the smaller circle,” Brishen said. A power that was now a lantern’s light inside him instead of the bonfire he first carried into this battle.

He swung onto the back of his
vuhana
and called to the dead. “Herd them toward the palace and hold them.”  The dead screeched and whooped, and as one body, shoved and pulled the captive
galla
farther into the city. Brishen sought out Andras who finally stared back with a withering expression. “Slash and cut until there are none left standing. They’ll return to their spawning ground. With no breach to escape, they’ll stay there.” he said. He raised his sword in salute. “We fight for the fallen.”

“We fight for Megiddo,” Andras said.

Brishen gave a brief bow. “We fight for Megiddo.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sunlight gilded the edges of the closed shutters, painting gold threads across Ildiko’s hands where they rested in her lap. It was mid afternoon, a time when humans went about their daily work, and the Kai slept. She had adopted the Kai’s nocturnal schedule when she married Brishen, but sometimes she stayed awake long enough to sit on the balcony off her room and welcome the sun’s rise. By this time, she was usually sound asleep, spooned against Brishen’s warm body.

Not today. Nor, indeed, for many days. Sleep had eluded her for hours in her lonely bed, and she finally gave up the battle. The floor lay icy under her feet as she slipped on a robe and wrapped in a heavy blanket for extra warmth. She was tempted to stoke the nearly dead coals in the hearth but changed her mind. An infant and her nursemaid slept in the room with her, and Ildiko didn’t want to disturb either with her rustlings. Instead, she padded to her favorite chair by the shuttered window and listened to the stirrings of the day patrols that watched over Saggara while everyone else slept.

The redoubt was still overcrowded and strained beyond its limits in providing sanctuary to the displaced and the homeless, but the crowd slowly thinned. Scouts had ridden out daily to reconnoiter the surrounding territories and the Absu in both directions. None had seen or heard the
galla
, and all scouts returned accounted for. The Kai were relaxing, some of the more adventurous ones packing their possessions to return to their holts and villages, believing the newly crowned king had succeeded in banishing the
hul
galla
from their land and world.

Ildiko wanted with all her soul to believe it as well. Seventeen days earlier Brishen had wielded an ancient necromancer’s magic to become like the dead and lead an army of revenants into battle. Except for reports from the traumatized Kai who finally arrived at Saggara, she’d heard nothing more.

The reports themselves were both epic and incredulous, a battle between demons and the dead witnessed from the banks of the Absu by more than a thousand of Kai fleeing Escariel. They had recognized Brishen as a Kai by his armor and described how five generals in various harness had plunged into the sea of
galla
, with the screaming dead encircling them. Cold sweat trickled down Ildiko’s back whenever she listened to the eyewitness accounts. Even when each person she spoke with assured her the Wraith Kings had succeeded in containing the horde, she still quaked inside. The hardest task remained:  driving the horde back to Haradis and closing the breach. There would be no reports or witnesses emerging from the ravaged city, nothing to assuage her terror and worry that, despite the power and protection of his transformation, Brishen might not survive. The thought tormented her relentlessly, and today wasn’t the first time she’d abandoned her bed thanks to her tortured thoughts.

The intermittent sounds of snuffling and smacking made her smile. The infant Queen Regnant slept in a hastily constructed baby bed, unaware of the dangers she had survived and the ones that still faced her now. A nursemaid Sinhue had brought to relieve Kirgipa’s tireless care slept on a mattress next to the bed.

Ildiko had insisted on them staying in her chamber with her. Outside her door, a pair of soldiers stood guard. The baby’s arrival meant a shift in Brishen’s and her circumstances, one that affected every level of government and power base in Saggara. New alliances would form, allegiances broken between one set of parties and reforged between others. For the child’s safety, Ildiko had ordered those who knew her identity not to reveal it. She wholeheartedly agreed with Necos’s belief that there were those residing in Saggara who’d benefit from an infanticide.

Kirgipa protested vehemently when Ildiko relieved her of her duty. “Please, my lady. I’ve been a devoted nursemaid. Why am I being punished?”  Her young features twisted in anguish.

Ildiko captured her hand, fingers sliding along the smooth curve of Kirgipa’s claws. “I’m not punishing you, Kirgipa. And when this is settled, you and your loyal guards will be generously rewarded for what you’ve done and your role reinstated if you wish, but to have you remain as the queen’s nursemaid for now will raise inconvenient questions. The Kai will think it the oddity of a human woman to suddenly adopt an ‘orphan’ Kai baby as her own.”  Especially a human queen considered barren by her Kai subjects. “But they’ll simply shrug, toss me pitying looks and prattle amongst themselves how Brishen Khaskem managed to shackle himself to such a wife.”  She smiled when she uttered the last, imagining the tut-tutting that would take place beyond her hearing.

“But I was a royal nursemaid,” Kirgipa argued. “Won’t they think it reasonable that I continue the role for your orphan?”

Sinhue, who stood beside her, scowled and thumped her on the arm. “Kirgipa!  Remember your place and accept Her Highness’s decision.”

The young woman went ashen and stuttered an apology.

Ildiko waved it away. “No, she has a point.”  She waited until Kirgipa lifted her bowed head to meet her gaze. “Your argument is sound, but new nursemaids with no ties to the Khaskem family won’t elicit any interest. I’d rather have no questions than a dangerous few. If you wish, you and Sinhue may choose the candidates for me to review.”  A new thought occurred to her, one she was sure would trounce any more protests Kirgipa had. “I know you wish to hunt for your sister. Atalan is probably out there somewhere in the redoubt. Necos has said he’d find her for you. Why not accompany him?”

Kirgipa had embraced both ideas with fervor. Ildiko heard days later they had located Atalan among the survivors. She met with Mesumenes to arrange a position for both women in the manor itself. She’d do much more when Brishen returned. This family had suffered great hardship and loss in its service to the Khaskem dynasty, including insuring the line would continue. Brishen owed them much. Ildiko believed she owed them everything. Kirgipa had saved her marriage with the safe transport of Harkuf’s only surviving heir to Saggara.

She rose from her seat and tiptoed to the baby’s bed. Even with her eyes more adjusted to darkness, she still couldn’t make out the details of the baby’s features. It didn’t matter. The light of a candle didn’t reveal any more than the darkness did.  A Kai girl child, distinguished in her gender by the obvious genitalia and the cap of silvery-white hair. Beyond that, Ildiko couldn’t say if the infant resembled any member of the Khaskem family in a defining way. She had only her trust in Kirgipa’s honesty and the zealous protection exhibited by Necos and Dendarah to rely on. She had no way of proving this child was the heir to the Kai throne. That task lay with Brishen, and she wondered how he might validate the claim when he returned. If he returned.

The baby cooed in her sleep when Ildiko lightly traced the soft curve of her cheek. She had accepted the fact she’d bear no children while she was Brishen’s wife, and since her greatest wish was to remain his wife until she died, there would be no children for her ever. Fate, in its strange and twisted humors had proclaimed otherwise. This child, still nameless until her first year, was now not only a queen, but an orphaned one. Brishen, as her uncle, might no longer be king, but he would become regent, with all the responsibilities of a monarch until the baby came of age to independently rule. He would be her advisor, her mentor and ultimately her father. And Ildiko, her mother.

The reality of impending parenthood knocked the breath out of Ildiko’s lungs, and she pulled away to stifle a gasp behind her hand. The role of regent had frightened her, but she embraced it with dogged determination. Ruling a kingdom was one thing; raising a child something else. Something far more terrifying. The baby slept on, oblivious to her observer’s churning emotions.

Ildiko tiptoed back to her chair, feeling faintly ill. She could never replace Tiye as the baby’s mother, but she could be a second mother and love her in the way Ildiko’s mother had loved Ildiko—with all her heart. A burgeoning excitement soon chased away the sickness.

She froze in front of the chair when the chamber door creaked open. Every instinct she possessed screamed a silent warning, one verified when a dark shape slid stealthily through the narrow opening and crept inside on soundless feet. A pair of yellow eyes glanced at the bed where Ildiko usually slept, taking in the bunched covers that looked as if she slumbered there now. The intruder’s gaze moved to the sleeping nursemaid and settled on the baby bed.

Whoever this was hadn’t seen Ildiko by the window, and she used that fact to her advantage. She slammed the shutters open with both hands. Bright sunlight flooded the room, revealing a Kai man dressed in nondescript clothes and holding a bloodied knife.

He reeled from the blinding light and raised both hands to shield his eyes. Ildiko inhaled a deep breath and screamed at the top of her lungs. The earsplitting shriek startled the groggy nursemaid wide awake and sent the baby into a chorus of equally deafening howls.

“Guards!  Guards!”  Ildiko shouted until she was hoarse, but no one burst into the room. The would-be assassin squinted at her and snarled before returning his attention to the baby bed. The nursemaid added her own shrieks as she snatched the wailing child out of the bed and backed herself right into the far corner of the room.

The attacker’s feral grin curved triumphant as he crept toward them, knife blade gleaming in the sun’s light. Desperate, Ildiko searched for something, anything to stop him. Her gaze landed on the shutter pole leaned against the wall behind her. Used to unlatch and open the shutters too high for arm’s reach, it was the same length as the long
silabat
stick she used to train with Anhuset.

Concentrated on his prey and unconcerned about the weak human woman hiding in the opposite corner, the assassin didn’t anticipate Ildiko’s attack. She grasped the shutter pole like a spear and rammed the weighted brass hook end into the back of his knee with all her strength.

He crashed to the ground with a scream of his own, the knife flying out of his hand to spin across the floor. Ildiko didn’t pause. She pivoted on one foot, swung to the side and smashed the pole down on his head, striking his temple. A sickening crack followed. Ildiko struck him a second time. Sounds erupted from her throat, animalistic grunts and snarls as terrified rage cast a red haze over her vision. She raised the pole for a third blow only to stumble when it was seized from behind. She spun, hands still clutching the crimson-stained stick to stare wide-eyed and gasping at Anhuset. She screeched and tried to wrestle the pole free until the Kai woman roared directly in her face.

“Ildiko, stop!”

She froze, startled back to awareness of her surroundings. She looked frantically for the nursemaid and found her still huddled in the corner, clutching the howling baby to her. “Are you alright, Imi?” she croaked. The nursemaid nodded, her eyes huge in her face.

“Let go,
Hercegesé
.”

Ildiko returned her attention to Anhuset and discovered they both still gripped the shutter pole. Behind her, a crowd of onlookers filled the room, mostly troops with swords drawn.

Anhuset could have easily yanked the makeshift weapon out of her hand. She didn’t. She waited, stern features calm and watchful, until Ildiko loosened her grip and tucked her trembling hands under her arms in a self embrace.

“Is he dead?” she whispered.

Anhuset skirted around her, still holding the shutter pole. A short silence reigned before she spoke. “You shattered his knee and caved in his skull. I think it’s safe to say he’s dead.”

Ildiko slowly pivoted and wished she hadn’t. The Kai sprawled on the floor, leg bent at an odd angle. Bits of bone and brain dotted his cheek. Blood pooled under his ear and trickled out of his mouth. Ildiko raced to the wash basin and promptly emptied the remnants of her supper into it.

“He tried to kill the Queen Regnant,” she said after rinsing her mouth with a cup of water someone handed her. She groaned at the slip. For all her warnings to everyone else not to reveal the baby’s identity, she just virtually shouted it from the rooftops.

Anhuset’s dry response didn’t make her feel any better. “No use fretting,” she said. “If he came to kill her, then your secret is already out.”  Her tone changed, became sharper. “Someone close those shutters before I go completely blind,” she snapped. “And haul that sack of horse dung out of here so we don’t have to look at it. Find out who knows him and bring them to me.”

Ildiko pitied whoever might suffer an interrogation from sha-Anhuset. She ordered Ildiko to sit in one of the chairs by the hearth and sent a shaken Sinhue down to the kitchens to fetch wine for both her mistress and the nursemaid who looked on the verge of fainting.

“Do you want to retire to another chamber while this gets cleaned up?”  Anhuset jerked a thumb to the spot where the dead Kai had sprawled.

Ildiko avoided looking in that direction a second time and shook her head. Her nails carved half-moons into her palms before she relaxed her hands, marched to one of the chairs near the fire and turned it so it faced away from the scene. She sat down, holding on to the threads of her dignity even as shock shredded it like wet flax. “No,” she said in flat voice. “This is my room. I will not be driven out by some baby-murdering bastard Kai. Or his ghost. Just make sure the stain is good and gone.”

Her gaze sought out Imi and the baby hovering nearby. She dimly registered that the little queen’s wails had subsided to into soft hiccups and snuffles as Imi made shushing noises.  Ildiko gestured for the nurse to bring the baby to her. “You’re free to leave, if you wish Imi. Just send Kirgipa to me.”

“I’d like to stay, if you please, my lady,” Imi said in a soft voice and passed her charge to Ildiko who settled her on her lap.

Infant Kai and human woman stared at each other for a long moment, and Ildiko wondered what the baby saw when she looked into a face different from her kin. She stroked the tiny head, feeling the soft hair tickle the spaces between her fingers. The little queen cooed and blew a spit bubble between her pursed lips. Her small fist waved in the air, one opening to grasp the finger Ildiko held out to her.