She shifted the staff to lean it against her shoulder and reached for the third mask, the queen’s mask, but stopped short of actually touching it. Her hand hovered there for a moment, then she snatched it back.
“I do not need a mask,” she said, suddenly furious. She would not play this game.
She turned away from the pages with their burdens and continued her limping way across the island, but as if her anger stoked the energies of the white world, the music picked up to a frenzy and the dancers danced in a fury of silk and velvet and satin; spinning and twirling around her, knocking into her, pushing and buffeting her, kicking her injured leg. She cried out. For all that the dancers were not real, they felt real, and the blows sent white-hot pain through her and stole her breath. She was growing light-headed.
The king grabbed her broken wrist to swing her around. She screamed and swooned to her knee. The music silenced and the dance halted. She moaned amid a forest of legs and skirts. She would not let the white world do this to her, she would not let it defeat her. Using her staff to steady herself, she rose and found herself face to mask with the king.
“You are false,” she said. She turned around. “You are all false.”
Using her good hand, she threw the king’s dragon helm off. It clattered to the ground raising a puff of white dust. She gasped. Beneath the mask it was not King Zachary she saw, but Lord Amberhill’s smirking countenance. He raised an expectant eyebrow.
What did it mean? What was the white world telling her? If the king in this masquerade was not Zachary, then who was behind the Queen Oddacious mask? Would it be herself, or someone else?
Shuddering, but unable to resist, she pulled off the mask that concealed Queen Oddacious’ face and discovered Estora gazing at her. Karigan backed away, too many questions clashing in her mind to think clearly. She just wanted out, out of the white world. Blackveil was preferable—at least it was real.
She shouldered her way through the silent, stationary dancers. A tumbler in black stepped in her way. He wore the looking mask, but it only reflected the white landscape. Santanara had warned her about the mirror man, that he was a trickster, and she found the assessment appropriate. He summoned Neff and the three pages with a gesture.
“You must choose a mask,” Neff said, “if you wish to leave.”
Cold sweat beaded on Karigan’s forehead. What would happen if she chose one of the masks? Where was King Zachary in all this if he hadn’t been wearing the dragon helm?
“I prefer not to conceal my face,” Karigan said. “I will not hide, and I will not deceive.”
“You must choose a mask,” Neff intoned.
She contemplated striking him with her staff, but considering how real and solid the dancers had felt, it probably was not a good idea, for there might be a reprisal.
“All right,” she said, thinking fast. “If I must choose, I choose that one.” She pointed not at one of the three offered to her on satin pillows, but at the looking mask worn by the tumbler. Her reflection pointed back at her.
Everyone vanished but the tumbler. He waggled his finger at her and slapped his thigh as if silently laughing at her. Then he backed away, making an expansive gesture toward the bridges, and then he, too, vanished.
Karigan sighed. She’d apparently passed one test and was now presented with another. She walked from bridge to bridge, tapping each one with her staff. Each felt as solid as the last. There was no telling what would happen if she crossed the wrong bridge. It might vanish beneath her feet and she’d join the tainted Sleepers at the bottom of the chasm, or the bridge might cross over into some hostile land or layer of the world from which she’d be unable to return.
“Five hells,” she muttered, beyond exhausted, almost tempted to just choose one and be done with it. Then she smiled and removed the moonstone from her pocket. All of the bridges blazed with crystalline brilliance, but one was more true and continued to resonate with her moonstone long after the others faded.
She took a deep breath and stepped onto the bridge. And took another step. The others vanished. She hurried as fast as she could to reach the far side. When she stepped off the bridge into the grove of Argenthyne, it too disappeared.
She found Laurelyn on the terrace where she’d left her. The Eletian queen’s form was little more than a glimmer, a mere ghost of her former radiance. Karigan glanced at the sky. Black clouds encroached on the silver moon.
Laurelyn smiled. She seemed weary beyond measure to Karigan. You succeeded, Laurelyn said. The Eletians will always be in your debt.
“I don’t think they knew who I was.”
Laurelyn laughed lightly. Then they shall have a mystery, and Eletians love nothing better than a mystery to ponder and debate, and they will do so for centuries. But now my time ends. You’ve my thanks, Karigan, daughter of Kariny. You are as exceptional as I’d hoped you would be all those years ago when I brought your mother and father together in a forest glade. You must hurry to your companions now, and release your ability, for this piece of time is finished.
“Good . . . good-bye,” Karigan said.
Good-bye, child.
Karigan set off for the open doors of the castle, but she could not resist one last look at the true Argenthyne, and of Laurelyn reaching for the moon. She dissolved into motes of sparkling dust and then was no more. The clouds blanketed the moon, casting the grove in darkness.
Karigan hurried into the castle, her vision doubling again, and becoming even more blurred by tears of exhaustion, tears of loss. She had the feeling of some great magic passing from the world. Not the sort of magic she and her fellow Riders used, but the intangible, mysterious quality of something that was once wise and powerful and shining that would never be seen again. Laurelyn would live now only as pure legend.
Karigan shed her fading and staggered with the shifting of past and present, the profile of the first tower chamber realigning. She returned to a far dimmer, stagnant world.
The use of her ability always hurt her head and now the pounding in her skull distracted her from hurts on other parts of her body. She was cold. Passing through time made her cold.
She must seek out her companions, though she dreaded what she might find. She forced herself across the chamber and noted that Graelalea’s body remained undisturbed, the moonstone at low ebb.
Karigan limped through the winding corridor trying to keep her mind aware and working. She thought about the masks. If she’d chosen one of the three masks presented to her in the white world, which one might she have picked?
Certainly not the black one—it was vile. She’d known that without even touching it. She did not lust for the power it contained. The queen’s mask? No, not for her. She could not presume, especially knowing the king was absent from the mirror man’s little scene.
The king, the king . . . Why had he been absent?
That left the plain green mask, which seemed to go with being a Green Rider. Why hadn’t she chosen it?
“Because I don’t wear masks,” she answered aloud, startling herself.
She continued on, hearing the sound of fighting growing louder. When she entered the chamber of the moondial, she almost tripped over Ard’s body, still in the same place where he’d fallen with Ealdaen’s arrow in his throat. There was Grant’s body sprawled on the floor, a pair of nythlings feeding on him. The corpses of other nythlings were strewn about the chamber.
And Solan. Poor Solan. She could not even look at what remained of him, of what the dark Sleepers had done to him.
The corpses of several dark Sleepers also lay on the floor, but more knotted around the rest of her companions who stood back-to-back in a tight circle on the full moon of the moondial, swords, and Lynx’s ax, hewing up and down and side to side. About ten Sleepers assaulted them, far fewer than before, but still difficult odds.
They were all so involved that no one appeared to notice her. She weighed her options, taking into consideration her weapons and her condition. Quickly she dec
ided to use the one weapon that had served her best so far, and limped forward to meet the enemy.
CHANGING OUTCOMES
Karigan leaned her staff against her shoulder and drew out her moonstone. The light that blazed from her hand reflected again on the inlaid quartz of the moondial, raising walls of light around her companions. Attackers and the attacked were startled alike, but only the Sleepers recoiled. Her friends sprang to the advantage, running the unarmored Sleepers through with their blades, running them through and hacking again and again till they fell. They were hard to kill.
With each step that brought Karigan closer, the light grew in intensity, forcing the Sleepers to back off. A couple bolted. The others fell and her companions finished them.
A pall of silence hung over the chamber when it was all done and the light of Karigan’s moonstone settled to a comparatively low, steady glow.
“Where’ve you been?” Yates demanded. “We could have used your help here.”
If only he knew how much she had helped! If she hadn’t gone to the past and removed the Sleepers of then, Yates would not be standing here now. “How long was I gone?”
“Ten minutes at most. Felt a lot longer.”
Traveling through the white world did not obey the same rules as the normal world, accounting for Yates’ estimate and the much longer time period she felt she’d been away. It felt like years. In a sense it had been—centuries, actually. She swayed, light-headed and exhausted.
“Questions later,” Ealdaen said. “We should see to wounds and our dead. Telagioth and Lhean, guard the entrance to the corridor so we’ve no more intruders.”
Telagioth and Lhean trotted off across the chamber and down the corridor.
“There will not be many Sleepers,” Karigan told Ealdaen.
“I know,” he replied striding toward her. His armor was streaked with blood, but he appeared uninjured. Lynx and Yates followed behind. Lynx had the claw marks on his face she remembered from before, and Yates held his hand over a bleeding wound on his arm.
“You know?”
“You left with Laurelyn. But what was before is beginning to fade. Let me see your wrist.”
She gingerly extended her hand to him and he examined her wrist with gentle touches. “This needs a true healing,” he said, “in order for it to work properly again.”
“Damn,” Karigan muttered. That did not portend well for wielding her sword or anything else.
“In the meantime it must be set. How did it break?”
“A Sleeper. Crushed it with his hand.”
Ealdaen nodded, unsurprised. “Lynx, could you assist?”
Lynx moved around to Karigan’s side, and before she could say another word or ask another question, Ealdaen, holding her elbow, yanked on her hand and she fell screaming into unconsciousness.
When Karigan came to, she was lying on her back with one blanket rolled beneath her head and another spread over her. The winged statues filled her vision. She groaned as each individual pain flared to life; her wrist hurt worse than everything else. It felt heavy and she saw it was bound and splinted with white arrow shafts. There was something ironic about Eletian arrows being used to help heal her wrist. As much as she hurt, she was relieved to have accomplished her task. She’d helped Laurelyn’s Sleepers escape to Eletia, preventing them from becoming a dark, dangerous force in her own time.
She heard a scritch-scritch beside her and turned her head to find Yates working in his journal, the wound in his arm neatly bound.
“What ...” she began. She licked her dry, cracked lips. “What are you writing?”
“Drawing,” he corrected. He smiled. “Since my sight is much better, I’m drawing details of this room, the moondial, that sort of thing. I did a nythling, too, after Ealdaen took care of the ones that were left.”
They’d been feeding on Grant, she remembered. Yates flipped a page and then showed her the picture of the nythling, sketched in realistic detail. Too realistic.
“Ealdaen has no idea how the eggs got in Grant’s arm,” Yates said. “He’d never seen nythlings before. How do you feel?”
“Pretty bad.”
Yates nodded. “Ealdaen said your leg was all ripped up again. He was surprised you could walk. You should really learn to take better care of yourself.”
If Karigan had felt up to it, she would have swatted him.
“Ealdaen wanted me to make sure you had this when you woke up,” he said, showing her Graelalea’s flask, the one that had contained the cordial. “And this.” He then showed her something that took her aback, for it had no context in this place.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“If you’re thinking it’s a Dragon Dropping, you’d be right. It’s from the gift King Zachary had us give Graelalea the morning we crossed the breach.”
Karigan remembered.
“Ealdaen says the chocolate is very restorative to Eletians, which is why they prize it so much. He figures it means it’s restorative to non-Eletians, too, so he passed one out to everyone. Who’s to say if it helps us or not? Lynx and I didn’t argue the point. You should appreciate my restraint, by the way. You don’t know how tempting it was to eat yours and not tell you. I mean, how would you know?”
“I’d smell it on your breath.” She swiped her Dragon Dropping from him and bit into it. She rolled her eyes in pleasure, chewing slowly to savor the experience of the dark chocolate for as long as possible. After so long a diet of thin stews, gruel, hardtack, and dried meat, it did prove restorative after a fashion. And it made her dream of another favorite luxury, of a hot, languorous bubble bath. Maybe one day, if they ever made it back to Sacor City.
Yates chuckled. “I ate mine in one gulp.”
When she was ready, he unstoppered the flask. “Ealdaen says that this is all that remains of Graelalea’s cordial and that you are to drink all of it. The dew of Avrath, he calls it.”
There were three good mouthfuls left, and Karigan savored these, too, remembering Graelalea with sorrow. She touched the feather still in her braid. The cordial dulled her hurts and made her feel strong enough to sit up. When she did so, she observed the corpses had been removed.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Dealing with the bodies, I guess,” Yates replied. “And keeping watch to make sure no more Sleepers get in. Ealdaen wanted to properly honor the dead.”
“All of them?”
Yates nodded. “Even Ard and the Sleepers. He said Ard had been a good member of the company until he tried to murder you, and that it was no fault of the Sleepers that they became what they’ve become. They were once untainted Eletians.”
“Poets, artists, and heroes of a distant age,” Karigan murmured, recalling Laurelyn’s words.
“Yes, Ealdaen said something very like that. I think he knew many of the individuals who were asleep in the grove.” Yates paused, then said, “As for Ard, the others were curious as to why he’d want to kill you.”
Karigan froze, heart thudding. “And?”
“Ealdaen told us what he overheard, that you were a threat to the marriage of Lady Estora and the king.”
“And?”
“I think the Eletians just shrugged it off as one of those things our kind engages in. Lynx, however, gave you a long, surprised look, but said nothing.”
Karigan groaned. Must everyone know? She thought she’d been so discreet, hiding away her feelings. “What do you think about it?” she asked Yates.
“I was not quite as surprised as Lynx,” he replied.
Karigan wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t help asking. “Why not?”
“That last night in the forest when we were alone? You were kind of delirious. You talked.”
“Oh, gods.” She blushed and hid her face behind her hand.
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We all have our unattainable longings.”
Peeking between her fingers she saw his earnest, sad gaze, and her mouth d
ropped open, unable to say anything.
She was rescued by the sound of footsteps. Ealdaen, along with Lynx, Telagioth, and Lhean, entered the chamber, their expressions weary and grim.
“How are you?” Lynx asked Karigan when he reached them.
“All right, considering,” she said.
He sat on the floor beside her, leaning back on his hands, his legs sprawled out before him. “Where did you go when you left us?”
“To the past and then . . . and then to Eletia.”
“Eletia?”
Karigan nodded and explained how she’d gone back in time to lead Laurelyn’s Sleepers to safety in Eletia. The whole reconciliation of past and present, especially trying to explain it, bent her mind in odd ways, and left Lynx and Yates scratching their heads because they recalled nothing of overwhelming numbers of tainted Sleepers attacking them. The Eletians remained unperturbed. “I think I met King Santanara,” she added.
The Eletians exchanged glances among themselves.
“Did you notice anything in particular about him?” Ealdaen asked in a deceptively mild voice.
“His hand,” she replied, lifting her own splinted and bandaged wrist. “It looked very bad. Blackened and crippled.”
“You met King Santanara, then,” Telagioth said. “His hand was thus injured when he stabbed Mornhavon with the Black Star in the last battle of the Long War. It was a wound no one, not even true healers, could fully treat. It was a source of great agony for him.”
“Yes,” Ealdaen agreed. “His only escape was to take the long sleep. You, Galadheon, came to him as he contemplated staying abroad to lead his people and succor them after the depredations of the Long War, or sleeping to forget the agony of his wound and the dark that clung to his spirit.”
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