Amberhill could not believe his eyes at the sight of the magnificent stallion that put his Goss to shame. No, there wasn’t even any comparison…
And she but a shadow against the snow, talking to the stallion. He saw her leave her tent, unsteady on her feet and wan in the moonlight, then she faded to shadow and somehow the stallion appeared in his vision. The stallion was really too great for his eyes to take in. He was overwhelmed.
What was he to make of it? He was so taken with the stallion he almost forgot to listen.
“I will not ride,” the G’ladheon woman said. “If you want me to go, you’ll have to find another way.”
As if he understood the words, the stallion rose and walked off into the night.
“Damnation,” the Green Rider said.
It was all very perplexing. Unearthly. Amberhill thought back to the day he had fought the lovely woman in the museum over a scrap of parchment. He’d thought her brave but a fool. Though he’d detected her skill with a sword, hampered by her dress as she had been, he’d little understood what he’d really been facing. Not just a Green Rider, but someone who obviously dealt with powers, otherworldly powers. No ordinary messenger was she.
To his astonishment, the shadow turned to him and the moonlight illuminated the curve of her cheek and the flash of a bright eye. She said, “You imagined all this.”
With that the shadow hurried away until it was lost to the night, leaving behind footprints in the snow, but even these proved elusive, ending in midstride. He found no hoofprints. How maddening!
What was this Rider? Well, rude came to mind, but was she real?
Maybe her parting words were right. Maybe he in fact imagined it all. Hastily he strode back to her tent and peered in. The moonlight fell upon an empty cot, the blankets rumpled.
“Something wrong, my lord?”
Amberhill almost jumped out of his boots. The Raven Mask was truly slipping if he couldn’t detect the approach of another, but then these Weapons were uncanny. It was Donal who stood beside him.
“Please tell me,” Amberhill said, “it’s not my imagination that your Rider G’ladheon has left us. Disappeared.”
CROSSING BRIDGES
“Oh no,” Karigan said. “Not this place again.” She whirled to walk back to the snow-clad encampment, but the way was gone, like a door closed.
The stallion had led her into a white, white world of empty opaque plains draped by a milky sky. The terrain, if it could be called such, was flat and empty. It bleached the color from her clothes and flesh, but the stallion remained coal black. The contrast hurt her eyes.
She’d been conveyed here the last time by wild magic and learned it was a transitional place between the layers of the world, not of Earth or the heavens, but a place populated by symbols and images.
“Isn’t there another way?” she asked.
The stallion began to kneel.
“No—no, I won’t ride.” Her dread of riding him, what it might mean, was stronger than her dread of the white world. At least this time she had a guide, and maybe they wouldn’t be here long. Hah! As if time had any relevance in the white world. “Lead on,” she told the stallion.
He did so, plodding onto the featureless plain. She followed, her boots crunching on short, white grass. As she walked, she noticed the pain in her head subsided and she did not feel quite so fevered.
She walked and walked, but she might as well have been standing in place, for nothing changed around her, no landmarks appeared, and the plain remained level underfoot. All she could do was trust in the stallion and follow, watching the sway of his silken tail. She had an insane desire to pluck out some of those tail hairs for Estral to use in stringing the bow to her fiddle. She assumed, however, it was not wise to pluck the hair of any god-being. The absurdity of it made her laugh, and her voice rang sharp and disquieting in the emptiness. She hushed immediately.
At least this time she saw no corpses on funeral slabs, or Shawdell the Eletian trying to lure her into a game of Intrigue she could not win. Nothing of that nature thus far…
Until she saw the first bridge. It was an ordinary bridge of irregular, cut stone that spanned nothing, no brook, no chasm. It was as if some giant had picked it up from the real world and set it down here on the white plain. What was the purpose, she wondered, of a bridge that crossed nothing? She strode over to it, wanting to inspect it more closely, but the stallion darted in front of her and blocked her way.
“I just want to see it,” Karigan said.
The stallion laid his ears back.
“But—”
He scraped his hoof on the ground, raising a puff of white dust, then shouldered her away from the bridge as he might one of his mares, though perhaps more gently. She shuddered at the power she sensed lying just below the surface, and not just the physical power of muscle and sinew.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll leave it.”
She followed the stallion away from the bridge and glanced back at it, wondering why the stallion did not want her near it. She supposed she did not need additional trouble by pursuing it, but she couldn’t help wondering who might have built the bridge here and for what purpose. Maybe it was just an illusion.
The second bridge they came to was broken. This time the stallion did not prevent her from approaching it. The arch had crumbled away, leaving a gap between abutment walls. Blocks of cut stone littered the ground. She stood beneath the gap wondering what caused the arch to give away. Neglect? Weather?
Weather? What weather? Nothing changed here as far as she knew. Then she saw black scars on the bridge rocks, as if they had been scorched by some tremendous force. If only the stallion could speak and explain the ruins to her, but she could only find answers in her own imagination.
She left the broken bridge behind and followed the stallion toward the ever retreating horizon.
Just as one lost sense of time in a subterranean world that no sunlight reached, Karigan could not say how long she followed behind the stallion, only that she was growing weary and thirsty and her head throbbed anew. Nothing changed in the landscape or sky, there weren’t even any more bridges, just the same blanket of white.
When she had enough, she plopped to the ground and closed her eyes, trying to remember other colors and the smell of the forest after rain. She tried not to think about how tired and thirsty she was, or what food used to taste like. She touched the bandage around her head, felt the pain and heat of the wound. At least those things were real.
She opened her eyes to find the stallion’s velvety nose hovering just inches from her own. He blew a sweet breath into her face and she felt revived, no longer thirsty, no longer worn out. She gazed at him, startled, but then remembered what he was and figured he possessed even more remarkable abilities. In any case, she was grateful for this gift.
She rose to her feet to press on, but something caught the corner of her eye. In the distance a figure stood watching. The only details she could make out about him were a sword and quiver strapped to his back and the gleam of mail. She took a step in his direction, but he turned around and strode away, merging into the white. The white world, Karigan thought, was playing tricks on her and she wondered what else lay ahead.
She and the stallion set off again, and she soon found out. The delineation between land and sky grew hazy and a gauzy fog settled around them. She kept close to the stallion almost reaching out to touch him to make sure she did not lose him. But like her aversion to riding him, she feared tactile contact would draw her in and she’d lose herself in the vastness of the unending universe.
She tripped and fell to her hands and knees. Her surprise was supplanted by curiosity of what could have caused her to fall. She reached through the fog and felt around the ground. She touched something cold, but pliant, suspiciously like flesh. She recoiled and the fog swirled away first revealing an outstretched arm, a sword loosely gripped in its blood-spattered hand.
She hastened to her feet, a scream c
aught in her throat. Frantically she whirled looking for her guide, and just as she was about to cry out for him, he came back through the fog, pushing it aside.
As the clearing around him widened, it revealed the arm she tripped over was attached to the body of a soldier in Sacoridian black and silver with an arrow in his neck.
The lifting mist uncovered more. More dead twisted and sprawled upon the ground, impaled with pikes that jutted at angles above the landscape, or their heads cut off, or torsos skewered with swords and arrows and crossbow bolts.
Horses lay dead along with their masters, bloated and thick, and among the corpses was the debris of battle, pennants lying limp on the ground, broken weapons, shields, helms, bits of gear, shattered cart wheels, and there was the gore smeared across the white ground.
The stallion walked into the carnage, following some invisible path only he knew. Karigan fought with herself, clenched and unclenched her hands, trying to feel the pain of healing flesh to turn her mind elsewhere, to banish the scene from her vision.
“This is not real,” she whispered. “Not real, not real…”
It was the sort of trick the white world liked to play, to send such images, like a bad dream needing interpretation.
She steeled herself, continuing to tell herself over and over that it was not real, and set off after the stallion. Among the uniforms of the dead she noticed provincial colors—the cobalt of Coutre, the blue and gold of D’Yer. Solid black caught her eye—a Weapon. And there was green. She refused to look at faces, to even look at the horses, but her gaze drifted and before she could stop herself, she saw Ty beneath Crane, his eyes open but dull, a wound deep in his gut crawling with maggots.
“Not real,” Karigan chanted. “Not real.”
She hurried the best she could. In places the bodies were so thick and intertwined she had to take a circuitous route, and during one of these her gaze was stolen again by familiarity—a banner of silken green with a gold winged horse rising, the ancient banner of the Green Riders woven and embroidered by Eletian hands, now bloodstained and torn, and lying across the body of Captain Mapstone like a shroud.
“N–no!” Karigan cried, but her eyes were drawn just beyond to a mass of slain warriors in black that had been protecting one man, all cut down by some force greater than themselves. In their midst lay King Zachary, splendid in his silver and black armor, his amber hair swept back from his face, a trickle of blood flowing from the edge of his mouth into his beard. His body bristled with arrows.
“No!” Karigan cried again. Her voice echoed across the silent landscape and raised movement among the dead. Flapping wings, stabbing beaks seeking flesh.
Overhead a monstrous avian circled, dragging its shadow across the battlefield and Karigan. The creature shrieked and dropped to the ground, then hopped over the corpses with wings spread until it stood upon King Zachary’s chest. Its head swiveled from side to side at the end of a snakelike neck and, after one glance at her, plunged its beak into King Zachary’s throat.
She screamed in rage and was about to throw herself at the avian when she heard the unmistakable twang of an arrow and the thud of impact. The avian slumped to the ground, its head hitting a discarded shield with a definitive clunk. The arrow, with its green fletching, jutted from its neck.
She turned and there was the watcher again, holding a short, stout bow. She caught the glint of a golden brooch, and this time she could tell he was garbed in a Rider uniform of ancient vintage, with mismatched mail and leather, and a sash of blue-green plaid across his chest. The horn of the First Rider rested against his hip. He nodded to her and mounted a white horse, and when he cantered off into the plains, he seemed to ride a cloud.
She squinted after him as he vanished into the distance. His appearance sparked a vague memory—from a dream? That was it, she thought. He had come to her in a dream. But all she could remember about it, besides the Rider himself, was an unanswered question that niggled the back of her mind like an itch, a question she could not answer because it was lost to her; she could not recall it.
“Not real,” she murmured. None of it. Not the dead, the gore, this world; but she was thankful for the intervention of the watcher, even if he wasn’t real either. Or was he more than a simple dream vision? Karigan sighed. Maybe some questions were better left unanswered. All she knew was that the white world was full of deceptions; that it drew images from her mind and made them seem real. She could trust nothing she saw there.
They set off again, Karigan not looking back, trying to focus on nothing but the stallion ahead of her. But more movement caught her attention—three figures walking toward them. What now? Survivors of the battle? Other travelers? Illusion?
When they met, Karigan recognized one of them.
“Merdigen?” she asked incredulously.
He squinted at her. “You again? Did you cause this mess?” He swept his hand to take in the battlefield.
“What? I—”
“Figured as much,” he grumbled. “And I see you found the horse you were looking for.” Then he peered more closely at the stallion and jerked back. “Oh! I see. Dear me. Interesting company you keep.” And he gazed long and hard at Karigan.
“Are you really here?” she asked Merdigen.
“Are you?” he countered. “Why is it everyone always asks me if I’m real?” He shook his head. “How many times have I had to explain I’m a magical projection of the great mage Merdigen? Hmph. Well, I haven’t the time for a conversation, fascinating as philosophy can be. The others and I are looking for the right bridge.”
The man and woman who accompanied him bore walking sticks and packs as he did. The man had a long beard like Merdigen’s, though it was rusty in hue, and the woman was tall and willowy and wore a sort of leaf hat. Or maybe she just had leaves and twigs sticking out of her hair—it was hard to tell. The green of the leaves, fresh like spring, defied the bleaching effect of the white world, bringing Karigan visual relief that had nothing to do with corpses.
“Who are—?” Karigan began.
“Radiscar,” Merdigen said, and the man bowed solemnly. “And Mad Leaf.” The woman smiled, looked on the verge of giggles, which was more unsettling than humorous. “And before you ask, yes, they are magical projections, too. We’ve been on a long journey.”
Before Karigan could speak again, Merdigen started ambling off with the other two behind him. “A most unpleasant mess this is,” he grumbled. “Farewell.”
Karigan watched them go, but the mist rolled back in over the battlefield and they were lost to sight. Once again she followed the stallion as he delved into the delicate billowy stuff, but it quickly lifted, and when it did, all signs of the battle were erased. She shook her head and continued on.
Karigan almost walked into the stallion’s rump when he came to a sudden halt. She peered around him to find they had come to another bridge rising up in a graceful curve. It was made from the same rustic cut granite as the others but the parapet walls ended in rounded scrolls. She couldn’t get over how ordinary and real the bridges were, and how at home they’d look in a park or country estate.
“Are we going to cross this one?” she asked.
The stallion tossed his head, his forelock falling over one eye, then stepped onto the bridge. She walked beside him, observing nothing different about the white world as she did so, but when they reached the center of the bridge’s vast deck, the far end appeared darker, murky, like a storm cloud was forming there. She glanced uncertainly at the stallion. His nostrils flared and he bobbed his head.
“What—” she began, but he nudged her with his nose and she stumbled forward. The message was clear: he wanted her to cross the bridge into the murk. “You aren’t coming with me?”
The stallion took one step back and bowed his head.
Karigan licked her lips and hesitantly walked forward, toward the cloud engulfing the scrolled ends of the bridge. She took a final glance back at the stallion—he stood silent and still as a
statue, just watching her.
She had to trust him. She had to trust he had guided her to someplace she could be useful and not into another strange world. Before she could talk herself out of taking those last few steps, she strode the rest of the way into the dark cloud.
RIDER IN BLACK
A burst of wind from behind thrust Karigan the last steps across the bridge and into darkness. She tripped and landed in a pile of refuse.
“Ugh,” she said, pushing herself up from the rotting vegetables, egg shells, and…fish guts?
From the shadows a raccoon hissed at her for disturbing its repast. She rose to her feet, brushing fish scales and other disagreeable bits from her clothes and laughed; laughed in joy at the stench, the dark of night, the sounds of voices somewhere nearby, the gold of lamps and candles in windows, flurries swirling around her. She’d left the white world behind and returned to one full of life, scents, and textures.
She tugged Willis’ cloak closer around her to fend off the cold, realizing that while this was a vast improvement over the white world, she hadn’t the faintest idea of where she was. Was she even in Sacoridia? At the moment she stood in a tiny courtyard behind someone’s house or business, occupied mainly by crates, casks, and rubbish.
Business, she decided.
The opportunity arose to discover her precise location in the person of a portly and harried woman carrying a bucket from the back door of the establishment.
“Excuse me,” Karigan said.
The woman squawked, liquid sloshing over the brim of her bucket. “Who’s there?” she demanded.
“Could you please tell me where I am?” Karigan asked.
It was apparently the wrong thing to say.
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