ELETIAN ARROW
Karigan!heard her name called from afar,
She heard her name called from 4 afar, threading through the snowy forest. She kneeled in the snow, arms wrapped around herself, one shoulder leaning against a tree trunk. She closed her eyes. She was beyond freezing.
The call was too far away, and she too drowsy to respond. She wanted to rest and sleep. She sank deeply into darkness and peace.
A horn bellowed, and clumps of snow fell from branches above and plopped on her head. She fluttered her eyes open. The horn blared again, and she recognized the call, the Rider call.
Why wouldn’t it leave her alone? First it had made her join the Green Riders, now it was forcing her to leave this place of tranquility. She decided to ignore it and close her eyes. She had ignored it before, and she could again.
But it wasn’t to be so. It was as if somebody grabbed her by her shortcoat and slapped each cheek. Her cheeks stung and light assaulted her eyes. She found herself kneeling not in snow, but in a chamber of stone, and leaning not against a tree, but against a fluted column.
She gasped, trying to make sense of everything.
Columns ringed the whole of the chamber, and a green oval of stone glistened on a pedestal at its center. Above the pedestal a dark cloud floated glistening with . . . stars? An old man paced beside it. He was twisting his fingers in his long whiskers, and for some reason she had a sort of secondary vision of him pacing back and forth on a vast plain cloaked by night.
“Terrible, oh, most terrible,” he was muttering to himself.
Beyond both the old man and the pedestal, on the far side of the chamber, stood an Eletian. Karigan did not know where she was, or why she was there. She had no idea of what was going on or why, but she did recognize the Eletian, with the tines protruding from the forearms and shoulders of his armor. He held an arrow nocked to a bow. The tip of the arrowhead glinted, and she could feel his line of sight searing into her heart.
She could not move, could not speak.
“The time of watching is over,” the Eletian said. “And despite the warning, you came to the wall anyway.”
“Let us be reasonable here,” the old man said. “There is a crisis at the moment and—”
“I will not hear an illusion,” the Eletian snapped. “I have my duty to fulfill.”
“This is an outrage,” the old man sputtered. “The wall is—”
“The outrage is that this Galadheon is tainted, tainted by dark wild magic.”
“Indeed?” The old man turned to Karigan and crooked a bushy eyebrow.
“One,” the Eletian continued, “whose presence could bring about the destruction of the wall.”
Karigan’s temper rose, and her anger warmed her. She rose unsteadily to her feet, sucking in a breath at the wound that stretched beneath her ribs.
“Endangers the wall?” the old man asked. “Like the Rider who calls himself a Deyer?”
Both Karigan and the Eletian looked at the old man and stared.
“Alton?” It was the first word Karigan managed to utter, her voice strangely hoarse.
“Yes,” the old man said. “He called himself that. Claimed he was going to fix the wall. He’s merged with it now, destroying it instead.” He tugged on his whiskers, his face full of despair.
“Where?” Karigan croaked.
“I can’t tell you,” the old man said. “It seems you Riders have grown deceitful. So many lives were sacrificed to build this wall, and now you would undo it.”
“No!” she cried. “Mornhavon is—we—”
“His taint is within you,” the Eletian said, and he drew the bowstring taut.
“You don’t understand!”
As the words left her mouth, the Eletian loosed the arrow. It barreled at her and she could not move. Then a familiar tug on her brooch carried her through time, briefly enough that she had been pushed ahead a mere moment. When the traveling ceased, Karigan stood in the same spot, but the Eletian’s arrow clattered against the wall behind her as though it had passed right through her. It all had happened in the span of a heartbeat.
You are on your own now, said the distant voice of Lil Ambrioth. I have nothing left to give.
The Eletian scowled and was reaching for another arrow when behind him the wall came to life with silver runes.
A man emerged through the wall. He was wild and unkempt, his eyes haunted. His clothes looked as though they had once been the fine attire of a lord, but now they hung from him, soiled and torn. With some surprise, Karigan recognized Alton’s unpleasant cousin, Pendric.
The runes pooled on the stone beneath his feet, and he seemed oblivious to all else. When the runes streaked across the chamber and veered under an arch and into its dark passage, he followed, and Karigan darted after him.
The runes illuminated the short passage that ended at a stone wall. Sprawled on the floor was Alton.
“Alton!” she cried. She pushed past Pendric and knelt beside him, and placed her hand on his chest. Its rise and fall was barely perceptible. Otherwise, she would have taken him for dead.
Pendric hovered over them, fists cocked, a face devoured by rage and madness. “He should die.”
“No!” Karigan sprang up at him, but he punched his fist into her wound. She staggered back against the passage’s wall. The pain stole her breath away, turned her sight red. She sank inward, inward into the darkness and snow again. The last image of her fading sight was of the Eletian and the old man peering in from the end of the passage, before she collapsed across Alton’s legs.
HUNTED
Alton perceived the crackling around him. The fissures that spread through the wall were like vast, black crevasses he could not cross. The harder he worked trying to fix the wall, the more it seemed to fracture.
The guardians of the wall panicked around him, trying to resist his song. He perceived anger and enmity directed toward him. Why this should be so, he did not understand. At least, not at first.
As the stone continued to crack, slowly undermining the strength of the great wall, it dawned on him that maybe he was doing something wrong, that maybe he had the song wrong and he was somehow responsible.
But he sang the song Karigan had so carefully taught him, and she wouldn’t lie to him, would she? She loved him, she . . .
He was confused, and in his confusion, he stopped singing, but he could still discern the crackling.
No reassuring words came to him, or urged him on. Karigan’s voice did not guide him, and the intensity of his purpose faded away. It had been, he realized, someone else’s purpose. It was as though a veil was now lifted from his mind. Shadows fled and the fabric of lies unraveled. He had been overcome, overcome and duped.
He looked anew at the chasms and cracks throughout the wall, and knew they were strung out for a great length. He had been working hard to accomplish what he believed was the mending of the wall, but it had only worsened.
What have I done?
Hastily he tried to pick up the true rhythm of the song within the wall, the true song of the guardians, but it was difficult to find the harmony. So many of the voices had lost the key, sang to a different measure.
He despaired of what to do, lamenting his weakness that he should fall prey to the darkness of Blackveil and bring all this upon his people. He was filled with self-loathing. It was too far gone for him to fix, too big a problem for him to overcome.
Idiot.
The word vibrated along the crystalline structures. The one who uttered it was different from all the guardians, and Alton thought he knew the texture of it, the venom behind it.
Pendric?
You have destabilized the wall.
I thought I was fixing it . . .
You are wrong, cousin, very wrong. You have wrought enough evil here, and I will be the one to fix it—I will be the one to save our people, and the glory will be all mine this time. May the king judge you guilty for your crimes, and hang you from the castle’s highest
turret.
The voices of the guardians clustered around Pendric, and it was like the build-up of a storm bearing down on him. They radiated all of Pendric’s molten hatred and would tolerate him no more.
Alton was knocked out of the wall, back into the world, back into his battered and ill body. He was conscious long enough to feel a hot tear slide down his cheek.
It was the horses again. They herded Laren, Garth, and Ty to the tower. Garth barely had time to grab a lantern so they could actually see where they were going.
Condor had clamped his teeth on Laren’s sleeve and practically dragged her all the way. When she saw the forlorn Night Hawk keeping vigil outside, she knew Alton or Karigan, or both, were within. They had to rein in their impatience and excitement as they puzzled over how to enter a tower with no obvious door.
It was Garth who happened to lean against the tower and brush his brooch with his hand. He fell into the tower—it swallowed him was the only way she could think of to describe what she saw. When he re-emerged, grinning broadly, they had their answer about how to enter the tower.
Among the wonders of the tower was an old man who claimed to be a “projection” of a great mage called Merdigen.
“An illusion,” Ty explained, his equanimity unshaken.
Merdigen hrrrumphed. “I am much more than a mere illusion.”
Ultimately, he led them to the passage where her Riders lay. Alton was unconscious, hot and feverish. Wounds on his legs festered, and there were old bruises on his face. He looked as though he had been through a great deal of torture and pain. Karigan lay across his legs, and in contrast, was freezing cold; so cold that ice crystals had formed on her eyelashes. Blood stained her midsection and Laren thought her dead until Ty knelt beside her and perceived her breathing.
A third body lying beside them showed no signs of life.
Laren gazed apprehensively at her Riders, one burning up, the other icy cold. How could they be alive? Maybe one had moderated the condition of the other . . . She knew they both must have incredible tales to tell, of their passing through Blackveil. But first she’d have to ensure they lived long enough to tell those stories later.
They decided to keep Karigan and Alton in the tower, wishing to move them as little as possible, and taking advantage of the shelter the tower offered. They were made comfortable near the hearth, and their wounds washed. They tried to bring down Alton’s temperature, and raise Karigan’s.
A soldier from the encampment with mending skills made poultices to draw out the poison lingering in Alton’s veins. She made one also for Karigan’s wound so it would not fester.
Periodically Alton came to, mumbling, whispering Karigan’s name. They gave him water and broth as they could, and watched over him as he slept.
Karigan proved to be more of a puzzle. The stab wound was not life-threatening since the flow of blood had been stemmed, yet she remained in some deep level of unconsciousness. No matter how many blankets they piled on her, she continued to emanate cold. Eventually they set ablaze wood that Garth had collected, in the great hearth.
“Not all battles are fought with swords,” Merdigen said.
Laren glanced at him, trying to fathom some hidden meaning, and then had to remind herself he was but an illusion, projection, or . . . whatever.
Eventually Alton’s lucid moments grew longer, and with nourishment, he was able to speak of his nightmare in the forest.
Karigan’s part of the tale, however, remained a mystery.
Karigan had never before been caught in so violent a blizzard. She blew into her cupped hands to warm them, but the wind sucked away her breath. There was no horn to call her back this time, only the wind assaulting her ears.
And she was being hunted. Hunted by some amorphous, shadowed creature that slipped through the forest. She heard its chuffing breaths as it loped after her, then paused to snuffle through the snow.
Her arm pressed against her painful wound, she ran through the blizzard as best she could, falling and forcing herself back to her feet. The creature cried out in triumph when it found her trail again, and pursued. Karigan swallowed back sobs, tears freezing in the corners of her eyes. She could not outrun this thing, it was catching up too swiftly.
I could give up.
It would be so easy just to lay down in the snow, to let her fate be what it would be. Just give in.
She plowed to a stop, and glanced over her shoulder at the creature closing in. She could run herself to death, or give up. Or she could face the creature.
Her stubborn streak refused to let her give in. She cracked a limb off a tree and waited.
The creature rumbled toward her, gathering speed, taking down trees as it came. The ground trembled, or maybe it was Karigan who trembled, thinking her branch a pitiful defense against something that could uproot trees. It was like waiting for an avalanche to roll over her.
Snow swirled up into a stinging fog as the beast slid to a halt in front of her. She could only make out the dense shadow that formed it. It snorted and pawed at the snow, and she could imagine large nostrils flaring as it took in her scent.
It plodded forward a couple more steps, and still she could discern no details. It seemed to ooze through the dark as if it were part of the night itself. Did it carry itself on hooves, or sharp claws? Or did it slither through the forest as a snake would?
What are you? Karigan wondered, shaking from cold and fear.
The thing reared up before her, reared up higher than the tops of trees, its forelegs with clawed feet stretching up against the backdrop of falling snow. It howled into the night.
Horrified, Karigan screamed, too, and plunged her branch into its underside. The creature bellowed, but her makeshift weapon did it no harm—it was absorbed into its body.
That’s what’s going to happen to me. It was going to absorb her and consume her. She had no doubt of it.
She spun and ran, calling on reserves of strength that really weren’t there. She ran heedlessly, certain the end was near.
The beast charged after her. She could almost feel its breath on the back of her neck, and she knew she must be in range of snapping jaws or the swipe of a claw.
She did not want to die. She did not want it to end this way.
She stumbled down an embankment and her feet flew out from beneath her. She sprawled onto a hard surface, a pond sealed in glittering black ice. The wind had swept it clean of snow.
Her momentum sent her gliding and spinning away. She gazed into the ice as she went and it was like looking into the heavens whirling beneath glazed glass, for there were bright pinpoints of stars there. Spinning she went, spinning across the heavens.
Fractures marred the ice—she feared her weight would send her crashing through into the freezing water, but she glided safely over them.
The creature paused its pursuit by the pond’s edge, at first hesitant. But with its prey so close by, it tossed caution aside and dashed onto the ice, at first scrambling for purchase, then unsheathing its claws to grip the slippery surface.
Karigan tried to regain her feet in the face of the creature’s onrush, but she just kept slipping. Ice chips flew as the creature bounded toward her, its claws scoring the black ice.
This is it, then. Karigan closed her eyes, finally finding her end.
Yet it wasn’t to be so. The splintering of ice cracked through the forest and roused her. The creature had reached the fractured patch, which gave way beneath its feet. It screamed and thrashed, fought to pull itself back onto solid ice, but only broke more ice. The creature sank beneath the pond’s surface, and did not re-emerge.
The broken ice released the heavens that had been locked beneath it. Clear, dark night, unpowdered by snow squalls, spread upward from the hole, carrying with it a galaxy of stars.
Beyond exhaustion, Karigan laid her head on her forearm and sighed deeply.
They rushed to Karigan’s side when she screamed.
“What’s happening?” Garth dem
anded.
Ty shrugged.
Karigan had partially thrown one of the blankets off herself. Was she dreaming? Was it a nightmare? Laren had no way of telling, but thought it a hopeful sign, better than total lack of consciousness.
Karigan thrashed some more, then fell limp, breathing heavily.
“Look.” Garth pointed at her left arm.
At first Laren thought Karigan was bleeding, but what oozed from her arm was a black, oily substance. She had seen its like before, in the castle’s throne room two years ago. It pooled onto the floor, then slithered to and fro in the cracks between the stone flagging, as if to find an avenue of escape. It could not. Then quite suddenly it evaporated with a hiss of steam.
“Gods!” Garth exclaimed. “What was it?”
The illusion, Merdigen, had come up behind them and watched over their shoulders. “Tainted wild magic. She’s better off for having expelled it.”
As if to confirm his words, Karigan sighed deeply and sank into what appeared to be a peaceful, normal sleep.
Journal of Hadriax el Fex
Alessandros has betrayed us. He has betrayed everything. His madness is destroying the ideals upon which the Empire was founded, this world, and even those who have proven themselves loyal time and again. I can barely write—my hand shakes so from outrage and grief. Tears blur the ink.
Alessandros has committed a terrible act. He made a sacrifice today—not of prisoners or slaves, not even of Elt.
I had just returned this afternoon from a campaign to the west, and my men and I had barely dismounted when we found ourselves, along with others of the town and palace, being ushered inside to the great hall by Alessandros’ guards. We were all confused and did not know what to expect.
Alessandros stood upon a raised platform—a stage, now that I think of it—before drawn curtains. He had news, he said, news of great import that would finally secure our victory in the war. A great cheer went up in the hall and the people chanted his name. He grinned and raised his hands to silence them.