First Rider's Call

  The king raised an eyebrow. “Go on, I’m listening.”

  She told him about Crane and Bluebird, and Condor, too.

  “You think Alton’s horse is waiting for him, because it knows he’s still alive?”

  Karigan nodded emphatically. “Yes. And there’s one more thing.” She explained to him about the images of Alton she had seen in the Mirror of the Moon. The king was clearly skeptical. “Please,” she nearly begged him. “If there is the slightest chance I’m right, shouldn’t we try to find out if he lives?”

  The king’s shoulders sagged, and a sorrowful expression crept into his features. “Even if Alton is alive, I forbid anyone to cross the breach and search for him. It’s just too dangerous to sacrifice anyone else.” Before Karigan could respond, he added, “However, I see no harm in sending a Rider down to keep an eye on the situation.”

  Karigan stood. “I’ll leave immediately. I’ll—”

  The king took her arm and pulled her back down on the step. “I’ll send a Rider, but not you.”

  Karigan’s mouth dropped open. “But—”

  “I need you here,” he said, “while Captain Mapstone is unavailable.”

  A response died on her tongue when she saw his resolve. She would win no arguments with him this day. She saw also his concern, and wondered fleetingly if it were more than his need of her in Captain Mapstone’s absence.

  “You may be dismissed,” he said.

  Karigan rose to leave, but he called after her. “You broke three of Drent’s fingers.”

  With all the excitement, she had forgotten all about Drent and her outburst this morning.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, head bowed. “I’ll report to General Harborough immediately.”

  “Don’t bother. Drent says you are ready to move to the next level of training, now that you’ve tired yourself of being beaten on. His words, not mine.” The humor was creeping into his eyes again. “Besides, your acts here today override any demonstrations of insubordination. No discipline is necessary—this time. By my order.”

  Karigan left the throne room less than satisfied with the king’s response to her request to ride to the wall. Sending someone else was not good enough for her. She felt certain she must go. It had to be her.

  She walked through the castle corridors wondering if there was some way she could change his mind. The king wanted her by his side while Captain Mapstone was unavailable. What if the captain became available? The king would have little reason to hold her back. Perhaps if Karigan could convince her of the urgency of her task, the captain would pull herself together and be able to stand by the king again.

  Encouraged by her plan, she left the castle for officers quarters.

  “Please, Captain,” Karigan called through the door, “we need you back.” No lie there. “If you come back, the king will let me go to the wall and seek out Alton.”

  The door groaned open, and Karigan jumped back, thinking her plan must have worked, but when she looked upon Captain Mapstone, she realized her mistake.

  The captain stood in the doorway, gaunt and hard. She practically emanated ice. Even her hair had lost its vibrant sheen and seemed frosted over.

  She pointed a shaky finger at Karigan. “Leave my doorstep.” Her voice was weak, but harsh. “Leave.”

  And she slammed the door shut.

  Abashed, Karigan headed back for the castle. Not only had she lost Alton, but now the captain as well.

  Guilt washed over Laren, adding to her torment. She slid down the door to the floor, her head in her hands, her ability commenting on each and every thought and emotion as she experienced it.

  She no longer lived, but merely existed, with the mental battering in her mind. It would be better to die.

  True.

  Not even when she had been so ill after the knife wound that had left the brown scar down her neck and all the way to her belly, not even when she had lost the man who had meant the most to her in her life, had she so seriously considered ending her own.

  Her eyes roved over her saber and longknife hanging from her swordbelt on a hook on the far wall. The leather scabbards were shiny black, but she knew precisely the bright, sharp steel they concealed.

  She loosed a trembling sigh, knowing she hadn’t the reserves to actually stand and cross the room to draw her knife. Instead, she reached into her pocket and withdrew the stone butterfly she kept close by at all times. Each feature, each pattern and texture, was perfectly preserved. Life literally captured in stone. It only reminded her of how trapped she was as well.

  “I have never been so low,” she sobbed.

  True.

  She was a terrible captain—she had let down so many of her Riders—Ereal and Bard, Ephram and Alton . . .

  True.

  Let someone else make all the difficult choices and carry the weight of it. She was hopelessly incapable of it herself.

  True.

  She just wanted to bang her head against the wall, bang it bloody.

  Laren.

  Or, there was the honed edge of her longknife.

  Laren.

  “What?” She looked up, blinking rapidly.

  Her quarters were dim. She didn’t care to see the squalor she lived in. It seemed somehow fitting, for her mind moved in dark places. She had no covering, however, across the narrow arrow slit window, and dusty sunlight glared in her eyes when she looked in that direction.

  I want to help you, he said.

  She shielded her eyes and barely made out a figure.

  “Who—who are you? How did you enter?”

  He stepped closer, but his outline was fluid. The one who was first of us all sent me here from my long rest.

  His words did not send an assault upon her mind. In fact, there was an easing, a sense of peace that overcame her. The voice of her ability was slowly closed off. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  He came closer, but remained translucent. He was garbed in green, and there was the glitter of a golden winged horse brooch upon his chest. She barely made out ritual tattoos tracked across his cheeks. A gleaming mane of black hair fell down his back.

  He was the half-breed Rider captain who helped deliver King Smidhe Hillander to his throne. “Gwyer Warhein,” she murmured.

  He nodded. We share a brooch, you and I. It augments a singular gift, a rare one. It is something to rejoice in, not despair.

  “The pain—” The words wrenched from her gut.

  I know.

  All of Karigan’s dealings with ghosts had not prepared Laren for this moment, but having the shade of one of Sacoridia’s hero Riders in her quarters did not frighten her or make her question her sanity. No, it awakened her sense of wonder, and uplifted her spirits from the blackness of despair in which she had wallowed for so long. She stood, her legs trembling.

  I have left my rest to help you, he said. He reached out with a translucent hand to her. Will you let me show you how you may control your gift?

  “Yes, oh yes.”

  She felt a fluttering against her palm. Miraculously, a butterfly lifted from it, and into the air, free of stone.

  Journal of Hadriax el Fex

  Alessandros has turned his back on God. He has decided there is no God. If there were a God, he explains, his father would not have abandoned him here in these lands. If there were a God, he’d have conquered the barbarians by now. If there were a God, Alessandros would have brought a cure to ailing Arcosia and become the blessed ruler of the Empire.

  So, he has declared himself the god. “Look at my powers,” he tells me. “Are they not the powers of a god?”

  Indeed, he uses his powers to alter the world to his own designs—the creatures he has made, the lives he has taken. All I see is ruin. When first we came to the New Lands, they were so full of potential, unspoiled and primeval, so unlike Arcosia, which was wasting away from the drain on etherea and the wear of a populous and long-lived civilization. Now Alessan
dros destroys everything he touches—the people, the creatures, and the land itself, which has turned brown and bleak as though wilting in despair. He misuses etherea in great quantities. The land is all toppled forests and battlefields. He has wrought more damage in the New Lands in less time than ever occurred in Arcosia with its large population of mages.

  Tonight Alessandros proclaimed himself the one god before the assembled troops. The priests among us were tortured and flung into the fires. He said the sacrifice was essential to cleanse us of their blasphemous teachings. Anyone caught worshipping the former god would endure a similar fate.

  I have never seen morale bleaker among the troops. Desertion is at its highest level ever. Inevitably these men are hunted down and slain, their bodies displayed for all to see, as an example of the wrath of Alessandros the god.

  There are men I know of who still devote themselves, in secret, to the one true God, but I will not report them, because I am one of them.

  Even Renald and his fellow Lions are uneasy, but they are far too loyal to speak out. They live to serve Alessandros, and are the bravest of all soldiers. None have deserted their ranks.

  Tonight I will pray to God that Alessandros returns to the right path, and remembers our purpose, and that the madness leaves him.

  BLACKVEIL

  With little else to occupy the sentience while it waited, it drifted in dreams, daydreams and night dreams, dreams of remembrance, and in this way it came to know its name.

  I was Alessandros. Alessandros del Mornhavon.

  The son of Emperor Arcos, the heir to the empire.

  The revelation elicited little excitement as though it had been remembered all along, deep within its consciousness.

  Knowing the name, however, unlocked avenues to its history, its childhood, and to memories of growing into manhood with Hadriax at its . . . his side. Together they had gone hawking and battered down uprisings among the empire’s holdings. There were parties and balls, dinners and festivals. Hadriax had snuck wine and women into their rooms when the devil got into him. Alessandros had enjoyed these diversions, but he cared less about them than he did about Hadriax.

  Always Hadriax had been there beside him, the dashing soldier-courtier, his best friend, and his best champion.

  Then there had been the time of exploration across the sea into the New Lands. Here had been the opportunity for Alessandros to prove himself to the emperor, and to clinch his favor with the people. Here had been his moment to achieve true manhood and, in the eyes of God, prove his suitability to represent Him on Earth.

  Glory was to be had, and riches, and the greatest expansion of the empire’s boundaries since the time of Arcos I. He would return home triumphant, bearing gifts to the emperor of gold, spices, slaves, and knowledge. Most importantly, he would bring back a new source of etherea that would heal lands throughout the empire left barren and drained by its overuse. It would make the emperor more powerful than ever.

  No emperor would be as renowned as Alessandros del Mornhavon, Arcos VI. With Hadriax at his side, he could not fail.

  But Alessandros had never returned home, had he? He had become something other than a man. Something greater?

  Something trapped.

  And where was Hadriax now?

  They had come to these lands and things turned out much different than he ever imagined they would. The barbarians proved more and more resistant as time passed, initiating a war that never seemed to end.

  Alessandros had been confident it was just a matter of time before they wore the barbarians down. The empire kept sending ships filled with supplies and soldiers. Then, inexplicably, the ships stopped coming.

  He had sent messenger after messenger back home seeking assistance from his father, the emperor, but no word ever came back, the ships never returned. He thought the first few had been lost at sea, but as he depleted his fleet, another answer came to him: his father had abandoned him.

  His father must have disapproved of the long war, and perceived his son as a failure.

  Abandoned.

  The forest trembled.

  How could his father have done this to him? In anger, Alessandros had indiscriminately killed slaves and prisoners, and flattened villages. He had declared himself Emperor of Mornhavonia, and pledged to return to Arcosia to wrest power from his father. Once he conquered the barbarians here.

  Hadriax had pleaded with him to reconsider. Perhaps some ill had befallen the empire, he said. Surely there was some explanation.

  Alessandros had not been able to believe something so disastrous could happen to the empire that it would cause his father to cease contact with him. Arcosia was vast, strong. So he had continued his campaigns here in the New Lands.

  As years passed, Hadriax had grown aloof and spent more time on the field of battle. Their few meetings turned into arguments, and Hadriax expressed his revulsion for Alessandros’ work with the Eletians.

  “The experiments are necessary,” Alessandros had said, “for understanding the species and the nature of etherea.”

  Hadriax had walked away with a disgusted expression on his face, and Alessandros killed a few Eletian prisoners to spite him.

  What had happened to Hadriax? Why had he become so withdrawn? Alessandros had missed him during his absences, but filled his time in his workroom, creating a device to enhance his powers a hundredfold, and allow him to end the war once and for all.

  The Black Star. It was his greatest work, a thing of entrancing beauty, a star of five points fashioned from obsidian. The points were as sharp as swordtips, but as a weapon, its true power lay in its ability to augment etherea, specifically, his ability to work the art, the way glass can intensify the rays of the sun. Eventually even that great power could be augmented . . . with a few sacrifices.

  Amid his triumph of the Black Star, at a moment when Hadriax should have been most proud of him, he had learned instead of Hadriax’s plan to meet secretly with Liliedhe Ambriodhe.

  Blackveil Forest quaked so fiercely that branches fell from trees and creatures scuttled into their dens to hide.

  Even more powerful than the abandonment by his father had been Hadriax’s betrayal.

  Black clouds roiled above treetops, a breeze whipped into a frenzy shredding leaves off branches.

  Hadriax’s betrayal had provided the League with intelligence that strengthened them. They had waylaid Alessandros’ army in final battle across the Wanda Plains. He had watched as the League forced its way through his legions, somehow neutralizing his Great Mages.

  He had watched them beat back his lieutenants—Lichant, Terrandon, and Varadgrim. Mirdhwell had been slain by his own son.

  Alessandros had let his powers build within the Black Star. He had planned to sweep the battlefield clean, even if it meant decimating his own legions. For once and for all, he had planned to use his powers in a way a god should.

  After all, was he not God himself, with the power of life and death in his hands?

  But again, victory had been stolen from him. Somehow, that demon bitch, Ambriodhe, had gotten King Santanara of Eletia near him unawares. Santanara had wrested the Black Star from him, and turned it against him—not using the art, but by using it as a common weapon.

  Down, down, down had come the falling star, a thing of entrancing beauty, Alessandros’ finest achievement. Down it came, a sharp point, and stabbed into his chest.

  Sharp pain, then darkness and slumber.

  The forest stilled, lay calm and silent. From stillness came an explosion.

  A tidal wave of rage funneled through the breach, knocking out the repaired section and sending more cracks through the wall. Trees shattered into splinters, killing several soldiers within the encampment.

  The rage, like an extraordinary storm wind unleashed, raced through the Sacoridian forest, and all vegetation touched by it withered and decayed.

  Elsewhere, an entire village vanished and the Broken-branch River reversed its flow. Vessels of all tonnages, from t
he smallest fishing skiffs to heavy merchant ships, foundered at sea.

  In Sacor City, people going about their business along the Winding Way turned to stone.

  In the castle, it began to snow.

  THE MEMORY OF STONE

  Disembodied, Alton felt no pain or illness, no hunger or thirst. He had no need of sustenance here.

  His soul and consciousness soaked through the pores of granite. At first he panicked that he was trapped, as inert as stone, caught in gray nothingness unable to move or float free. He had turned to stone, unmovable and dead. The sensation was akin to being buried alive, knowing there was no escape, even as the earth is being shoveled over one’s coffin.

  Then Karigan’s soothing voice came to him, reminding him to relax and open his mind so he could go deeper, of how to enter another level of existence within stone. He did as she bid, and as he calmed, he found himself adrift among shining crystalline structures. Complex and perfect, they were the stuff of stars, like the homes of the gods in the heavens.

  As he flowed and oozed through the stone, he grew aware of its memory. Each block knew of molten magma and ice sheets. Of the first touch of the dawning sun chasing away the chill of night. The granite remembered the cool shade of the forest and the crash of the raging sea. It remembered the painful bite of ice freezing and thawing, creating cracks and joints.

  The stone recalled creatures scuttling atop it, and being quarried by man. It had many inconsequential stories to tell of its enormous lifetime, stories of weathering and the cold of interminable winters. The memories elicited no emotions, they were simply there like the words in a book, but engraved within the stone.

  The stories resonated through Alton, but he had to shake himself loose, feeling a million years could pass without his knowing it. He had work to do here.

  He plunged into a yet another level of awareness within the wall, and this time he found energies inconsistent with the inert character of stone. There were other souls here with him.