Blackveil

  Ard tautened the bow string. “I do this for my lady, and with her blessing.” He loosed the arrow, but it flew wild, hitting the wall behind her. Ard’s knees folded and he crumpled to the floor, a white Eletian arrow piercing his throat. Karigan’s own knees went weak.

  Ealdaen appeared from the corridor with bow in hand, and he glanced briefly at Ard before stepping over the forester’s body.

  “I saw him follow you out,” Ealdaen said. “He had an interest in you all along, but not knowing the ways of your people, I could not discern his intent. Until now.”

  Karigan’s grip on the bonewood was clammy. It was too much betrayal to sort out all at once. Ard as murderer, with Estora’s blessing. Estora, who had been her friend.

  And now she was alone with Ealdaen who’d once tried to kill her. He strode toward her.

  “Did you kill Ard so you could finish me off yourself?” She extended the bonewood to staff length with a shake and stood in a defensive position.

  Ealdaen paused, a bemused expression on his face. “You are truly difficult to understand at times, you and your people. I am not here to kill you, Galadheon, but to aid you. The reason for hunting you in the past no longer exists. You are free of the tainted wild magic.”

  Karigan released a long breath and relaxed her stance.

  “Omens and prophecies are not set in stone,” Ealdaen continued. “A river will change course. You’ve a particular unpredictability, Galadheon, one that all the prophecies of the crown prince cannot pin down.”

  “Maybe Eletians are too set in their ways,” Karigan replied, not so ready to forgive one who almost killed her based on the unreliability of prophecy.

  He bowed his head accepting her words without recrimination. “It is clear that you’ve a purpose here, which I’m only just beginning to understand. Graelalea must have known something of it for she passed to you one of her feathers. And you are Laurelyn-touched.”

  He was right, she was here for a purpose, drawn by an apparition she’d seen one snowy night along the Arrowdale Road. Why she hadn’t remembered that purpose before, she did not know, but it galled her to learn that yet once again other forces were directing her life. She’d work out her feelings about that later—she’d more pressing concerns now.

  “I am here to help the Sleepers,” she said. “I was told this.”

  “By whom?”

  “A woman in the light.” Karigan thought her words wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else or under different circumstances.

  “I find it interesting that you found your way to this chamber of your own accord.”

  “Why?”

  Ealdaen produced his moonstone and strode to the center of the chamber. The shadows cast by the moonstone shifted as he walked, making the statues seem to follow him with their gazes, their wings flexing for flight. Walls of translucent light rose from the quartz in the floor.

  “You saw a small version of this in Telavalieth,” Ealdaen said. “You called it a moondial. This is Castle Argenthyne’s moondial.” He glanced at the skeleton near his feet. “I knew the defenders of this tower. They stayed to the last. Alas, the castle did fall.” He gazed around the chamber some more. “The gnomon is missing. Just like in Telavalieth.”

  The phases of the moon shone in the light that bathed the floor, and the stars, too, transforming the floor into a celestial map. Beneath them, in the very center of the chamber, was a large round piece of quartz that had the shading and subtlety of a silvery full moon. It was, by magnitudes, larger than the moondial in Telavalieth.

  “How would you awaken the Sleepers?” Karigan asked.

  Ealdaen lowered his moonstone and there was that disconcerting sense of the world shifting with the light.

  “We would sing to them,” he replied.

  “That’s all?”

  “There is a certain song, and a certain way of singing it. A calling it is. The Sleepers choose to heed or ignore it. But yes, that is all.”

  Before Karigan could question him further, another light coalesced in the chamber, a liquid column of light just like the one she had seen that night in Arrowdale. But the figure within was clearer this time: a woman with hair flowing about her shoulders and her gown touched by no earthly breeze.

  Ealdaen fell immediately to his knee and bowed his head. Every song and tale of Argenthyne Karigan ever heard flowed through her mind and this time she knew immediately who stood before her—Laurelyn, Laurelyn the Moondreamer; Laurelyn, the queen of lost Argenthyne, sweet Silvermind.

  Ealdaen, the woman of light said, rise.

  Ealdaen did so, though at first hesitant; he slowly raised his face to meet her gaze. “I thought never to look upon you again, my queen.”

  Nor I, you, but it heartens me to see you here now for this unfolding.

  They spoke at length in Eletian and although Karigan could not understand the conversation, she felt grief and anguish in their words. There was a shared history between the two, a history Ealdaen was reliving by having come home.

  Excluded by their language and conversation, Karigan thought to leave them to give them privacy, but she was caught by surprise when Ealdaen spoke again in the common tongue.

  “I am here to redeem myself,” he said.

  So be it, Laurelyn replied. She turned her gaze upon Karigan, and Karigan was arrested by the queen’s eyes of midnight blue, her appearance far, far clearer than that night in Arrowdale.

  Daughter of Kariny, you are here at last. My influence is stronger here, but still it wanes, and soon it will vanish entirely. The powers of the forest have striven to vanquish me altogether. I still fight, and here within the castle I am a little protected.

  “How do you expect me to help the Sleepers?” Karigan demanded. “Why me?”

  You can cross thresholds, the liminal line, and by doing so, you will lead the Sleepers to safety. Daughter of Kariny, you can step through layers of the world.

  Karigan could not remember ever being told this, and yet she knew it as if someone had explained it all to her before. Her ability to fade was really the ability to stand on that threshold, but her ability was meager, even with her brooch augmenting it. It took some additional force to push her across, like the wild magic that had once allowed her to pass through the ages to the time of the First Rider.

  “I do not know what to do,” Karigan said.

  I will tell you, Laurelyn replied.

  Just then, the other Eletians, along with Yates, Lynx, and Grant, filed into the chamber. Their eyes grew wide as they took in Ard’s body and the lady of light. The Eletians dropped to their knees as Ealdaen had.

  Laurelyn swept her arm up and pointed, the light sparking with anger around her. Grant cowered away, hid behind Lynx. That one, she declared, brings evil into this place.

  THE POTENT SNARL

  Grandmother gazed in satisfaction at the dead bodies lined up before her, eight of the loyal band of groundmites that had escorted her to Castle Argenthyne’s grove, plus her own Griz. She’d plucked the white arrows from them all, the wooden shafts stinging her fingers. She’d also sensed that Eletian blood had been spilled in the grove and she believed it would only make her working stronger.

  She had tied knots feverishly, using much of what was left of her yarn, holding in reserve a ball of the indigo should they survive this and need it for finding their way out of Blackveil. Lala had intently watched the tying of knots, helping and fetching as needed. Meanwhile, Grandmother had gotten Gubba to oversee the butchering of corpses, cold, still hearts placed into Min’s largest pot.

  Even as Grandmother worked at invoking the power of the art, she felt the darkness of the forest press in on her, the intensity of its attention. The trees of the grove had gone rigid, and she heard the sound of cracking like the winter forest, moisture freezing within the wood.

  After she tied the last knot, a complex weaving of command, she slumped exhausted and gazed at the snarl of yarn in her hands. The potent snarl.

  Lala nudged
her shoulder and handed her a cup of tea. Her people had started a fire while she worked. She was never so grateful.

  “My good girl,” Grandmother said wearily. She hugged Lala’s shoulders. “Now would you fetch me my special bowl?”

  Lala nodded and skipped away to where their packs lay. Gubba came over and chirped in admiration at the knots. Meanwhile, Grandmother sipped her tea, letting it warm her. Lala brought over the earthenware bowl and set it at Grandmother’s feet.

  Grandmother did not move, she just rested, enjoying the tea and the respite, and knowing that everything came down to this. She knew everyone watched her to see what would come next. God had not spoken to her of late, had not given her any indication of what was supposed to be done, except that she was to awaken the Sleepers.

  So she’d constructed a spell the best way she knew how. The Sleepers, she assumed, were in a state akin to death, or at least as close to death as many of that immortal race would ever get. Therefore, she’d devised a spell similar to—though definitely not the same as—one that would raise the dead. This was a major undertaking considering the size of the grove, and she thought of how proud her own grandmother would be that she had used the art on a scale that had not been seen for centuries. How proud all of those along her maternal line would be; all their knowledge passed down the generations for this one moment in the service of Second Empire and God.

  The spell required one more element before she could summon the awakening. She drained the last of her tea, looked mournfully at the leaves settled on the cup’s bottom, and sighed. Lala took it from her and helped her rise.

  “Gubba,” Grandmother said, placing her hand on the old groundmite’s furry shoulder. “I need another favor.”

  Gubba chirped a query, and Grandmother gazed into that rheumy eye. Grandmother smiled in reassurance, then slashed her knife into Gubba’s throat. She sawed through the groundmite’s tough flesh until she hit the vital vein.

  Gubba fell with shock in her eye, arms flailing. Grandmother grabbed her bowl to catch as much of the spurting blood as possible.

  The remaining groundmites, those not still fruitlessly pounding on the castle doors, did not retaliate at Gubba’s sacrifice. Their eyes filled with horror, but they recognized Grandmother’s strength in the art and understood Gubba had become part of a larger working. No, instead of retaliating, they fled yipping and barking into the woods and out of her ken.

  The earthenware bowl looked ordinary enough, but it contained the power to preserve blood, even keeping it warm, and Gubba’s blood was special, for she’d an innate ability to use the art. That made it a strong additive to the spell Grandmother was weaving.

  Gubba’s heart had been added to the pot with the others. Grandmother cut it out herself.

  “Won’t be using that pot again,” Min muttered. “No, by God. Not for soup or anything.”

  Grandmother’s knotted yarn stewed among the hearts in the pot. Not that the pot had been placed over a fire, but the words of power she invoked, drawn from the ancient language of the art, boiled among the organs making them sizzle and pop with magical heat. She paced. The grove filled not only with the scent of cooking meat, but with potential. Her people, even Lala, stood well away. She’d used some clippings of yarn to create wards to protect them, if such a meager spell could do so against the larger.

  When she deemed the knots had spent enough time among the hearts, she lifted them from the pot with a spoon, which Min also declared no longer suitable for cooking, and transferred them into the bowl filled with Gubba’s blood. Blood overflowed the brim, dribbling down the sides of the bowl.

  Grandmother spoke softly and slowly as she swished the yarn in the blood with her fingers, making sure it absorbed as much as possible. Soon the blood started to boil.

  She stepped back, her fingertips dripping crimson. The spell was not as malevolent as one for waking the dead, but she felt the shadows eating at her soul. It was, after all, blood magic. The entire forest seemed to lean in on her, eager for the spell to be loosed.

  She licked her lips. “Rise!” she commanded. A sphere arose from the bowl, dull and mud colored, and hovered in the air. No blood dripped from it for it had absorbed all of it.

  “Awaken the Sleepers,” she said, repeating the words in the ancient tongue.

  The sphere pulsed, then darted through the grove, circling the trunks of the great trees, trailing a subtle glow that settled into the bark. A keening arose among the branches as they swayed in an unnatural wind, wood splintering, shattering, cracking so loudly that Grandmother thought it was her own mind that was breaking. She covered her ears. Even the corpses nearby jerked and trembled with the force she had unleashed.

  Bark exploded, peeled back. Ocher sap oozed in runnels. Enormous limbs fell around her. Trees struck the earth like thunder, shuddering the ground.

  Then she saw them, the figures pushing out of the rotten hearts of the vast trees, wailing, hungry, angry, dark. Grandmother smiled. The light that had once been the natural essence of these Eletians had been extinguished by centuries immersed in the evil of Blackveil.

  They resembled Eletians except for the dark that shone through them. They were like wraiths, thin and feral, rags that had once been the finery of Argenthyne flowing from their limbs.

  She felt their hunger and their interest in her and her people. She pointed at the corpses and pot of hearts. “Feed,” she commanded in the ancient tongue.

  The Eletians swarmed the meat, but there would never be enough. She could not count how many she’d awakened—a hundred? Two hundred? Three?

  They stripped the corpses to the bone and she knew she had to redirect them before they turned to her and her people for more nourishment.

  “Go to the castle,” she ordered them. “There are more you may feed on there.”

  They would, she knew, find the last of Gubba’s band stubbornly trying to knock down the castle doors. Where the groundmites could not gain entry, the Sleepers would. Dark or not, they knew the castle and its workings. The Sleepers would take care of the problem of the others. The rest was up to God. Grandmother had accomplished what she set out to do: the Sleepers were awake.

  She took in the devastation around her, the roiling fog where once great trees stood. She could not believe she had survived that, but when she reached her people, she discovered that Sarat and Deglin had not. They’d been crushed by a tree limb that narrowly missed the others.

  God’s work required sacrifices, she thought, and He had received them.

  THE SHADOW OF LIGHT

  Laurelyn’s accusation reverberated up into the heights of the tower. Grant bolted, but the Eletians were quicker and grabbed him. He fought, hitting, biting, kicking, and it took Telagioth, Solan, Lhean, and Lynx to subdue him.

  You must . . . Laurelyn began.

  Grant howled, an inhuman blood curdling sound. Karigan clamped her hands over her ears. Grant brushed off his captors like they were nothing and staggered forward. He ripped the sleeve from the arm he’d been favoring for so long and Karigan stepped back, resisting the urge to retch.

  The flesh of his arm was stark white, bloodless. Angry, bloated veins flowed into blackened pustules the size of eggs. They twitched like something writhed inside them.

  “My nythlings,” Grant crooned, his expression rapturous.

  They all stared at him in horrified fascination.

  Grant howled again, a rending cry of pain. The pustules burst and Karigan did retch. Black glistening creatures, like armored reptiles, clawed their way out of Grant’s flesh, fluid sacs splattering to the floor. The creatures shook out membranous wings.

  Behind Grant, Telagioth drew his sword.

  “My nythlings!” Grant exulted.

  The tip of Telagioth’s sword emerged through Grant’s chest. Grant wailed, then slid off the blade and to the floor. Telagioth stood there with blooded sword, a grim expression on his face.

  “Kill the creatures!” Ealdaen sprang to and Karigan made
to follow. If only they could have helped Grant before it came to this.

  Wait, Laurelyn commanded her.

  Karigan hesitated. A couple of the creatures dipped their sharp beaks into Grant’s corpse and fed. The others stretched their wings and launched into the air, flocking around her companions.

  It is time, Laurelyn said. You must help the Sleepers.

  “But—” At that moment, Karigan felt something change, something in the atmosphere, a rending of the air; she felt the castle brace itself.

  The light of Laurelyn flickered and her back arched, arms flung out. She opened her mouth in a silent scream.

  No . . . Laurelyn whispered.

  “What is it?” A creature darted at Karigan and she whacked it away with her staff.

  Laurelyn shone again, but darkness blurred her edges.

  Another power in the grove has awakened the Sleepers.

  Karigan was confused. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  No, child. Laurelyn’s eyes were wild. The forest has blackened their hearts as they slept. They have awakened as dark, vile creatures that hate the light.

  “Then why did you want me to rescue them?” Karigan batted another of the nythlings with a satisfying crack. It hit one of the statues and fell to the floor into a crumpled heap.

  Stand on the moon. Laurelyn’s image fluctuated again. Stand on the moon and I will show you. Hurry! They will soon be upon us.

  Lynx cried out as one of the nythlings dove and attacked. Lhean leaped to aid him.

  “I can’t abandon my friends.”

  If you hesitate, that which has awakened will swarm out of Blackveil and into your country, a terrible, savage enemy. Do you wish this?

  “No, but . . .” She glanced at her friends hacking at the flying creatures. Telagioth cut one out of the air.