She took his hand in hers, feeling the calluses herself, and the strength of his grip. They smiled at one another. Karigan released his hand. “But the wall was built a thousand years ago,” she said. “Stone walls crumble with time.”
Alton shook his head. “This wall shouldn’t have. It was built of the finest craft we possessed, the rock magically bound in ways that are lost today. The wall had to be strong to keep at bay the evils of Blackveil Forest. A clan disgrace doesn’t heed the passage of time or generations.”
This she had never heard. Of course Clan G’ladheon hadn’t existed for very long, nor was it of original Sacor Clan lineage. She sprinkled water over her hands from her water skin to clean off sticky peach juice. She would have to be careful in this life not to disgrace any of her descendants.
“Will someone repair the D’Yer Wall?”
“I don’t know if we can.”A troubled expression crossed Alton’s face. “As I said, much of the craft that went into the wall has been forgotten. Something must be done, though. I can’t imagine what evil has found its way through it already.”
Karigan could. She had met it.
They cleaned up the remnants of their picnic and rode for another hour, the long valley still stretching below them.
This must have been some lake, Karigan thought, listening to the rustle of meadow grass in a breeze. Bees droned on the lupine. Whether or not the lake had been drained, it was still a pleasant place.
“Look below,” Alton said, pointing into the valley. “I think that is the king’s hunt.”
Tiny mounted figures trotted below. Smaller white spots moved just ahead of the horses.
“This should help.” Alton removed a brass telescope from a leather case attached to his saddle. D’Yer was no impoverished aristocratic clan if it possessed even one such looking piece. “The dogs seem to be on the scent of some quarry.” Politely, after a brief glance, he passed the telescope to Karigan.
She took it into her hands dubiously. The last time she had looked into one was at Seven Chimneys where she had seen disturbing images of her past, present, and future. The last time she had seen a telescope was on the balcony of the castle during the ball. When Zachary had looked through, one of those future images had become apparent.
Six Hillander terriers bounded through the tall grass up front. They stopped to sniff the ground, pink tongues lolling, then sprinted off on a scent. The hunting party followed slowly behind, King Zachary in the lead with bow and arrow nocked. He was garbed in light mail, a short hunting sword girded at his side, and the silver fillet rested on his brow. His almond eyes scanned the meadow intently. Behind him rode a standard bearer in livery, holding aloft the Clan Hillander terrier banner, identical to the one that hung in the throne room.
Some well dressed men, who seemed more intent on conversation than hunting, hung behind, sipping at flasks probably filled with wine. They waved their bows about to add emphasis to whatever they were discussing. Among them was the lord-governor of Mirwell, dressed in scarlet and accompanied by his stoic aide and a guard.
Miscellaneous provincial soldiers and guards in silver and black rode with the nobles, boredom blanking their faces of expression. Weapons ranged about the group, their expressions, in contrast, wary and attentive. Karigan counted four of them, though there may have been more out of sight.
“You call that hunting?” She passed the telescope back to Alton. “It looks more like a procession to me.”
Alton shrugged and looked through the eyepiece again. “The king considers this relaxing. He doesn’t have any of his advisors present, there are no servants milling about, and the nobles are too drunk for rhetoric. No one is nagging him about the state of the country.”
Karigan hooked a strand of hair behind her ear. When she had addressed King Zachary in the throne room that day, had her complaints been considered nagging?
“It wouldn’t have been politic of him not to include a few nobles. They don’t seem to be annoying him. The soldiers are a must. He is probably enjoying himself thoroughly, and his dogs are getting a little exercise.”
Whatever.
Alton continued to watch through the telescope, his brow furrowing. “Now that’s strange,” he said. “I wonder what’s got the dogs riled up. Certainly not a hare.”
Karigan shielded her eyes from the sun and looked down into the valley. Without the telescope, all she could see were little white dots scattering in all directions. Barking came to her distantly. The horses screwed on their haunches, ruining the orderly formation they had been walking in. A black-clad figure fell from his mount.
Alton pulled the scope away from his eye, as if he couldn’t believe what he had just seen and needed to confirm it with his bare eyes.
“What is it?” Karigan asked.
Alton handed her the scope. The scene was chaotic. Dogs were nearly trampled by rearing horses. The king shouted orders at the dogs. Weapons galloped to the king’s side with swords bare. The useless guards were too busy fighting for control of their steeds to be of any help. The figure she had seen fall lay still in the grass. A Weapon. Two arrows protruded from his chest.
Karigan, like Alton, took the scope away from her eye in disbelief. On the opposite ridge, and farther along their own, metal glinted in the sun.
By Breyan’s gold, they’re under attack!
Alton saw the reflection, too, and took the telescope from her. “Aeryc and Aeryon, have mercy. Those are groundmites.”
BLACK ARROWS
Mirwell yawned.
“Are you tiring, my lord?” D’rang asked.
Mirwell surveyed the valley. The hunters moved at an excruciatingly slow pace. They waded through the tall grass in search of hare or small rodents at the absolute worst time of the day, with the sun still high in the sky and the critters burrowed away to where even Zachary’s fine terriers could not dig them out. Even if it was the right time of the day, the noisy nobles would scare even the deafest of game to the far reaches of the country.
“I am not tired, D’rang,” he said. “I’m bored. Though I believe things will get interesting very shortly.” He glanced at Beryl. He had hoped for things to grow interesting between the two of them, but now she didn’t even talk, except to say “yes, my lord.” She was no better than the boy who had tended him during his bath the other night. Beryl’s beautiful eyes were glassy and vacant. Whatever the Gray One had done to her, he had removed or hidden her spark of life and personality.
Mirwell squinted at the ridges on either side of the valley, which formed an excellent place for an ambush. The Gray One’s forces could hide beyond the ridges and then, when the time came, trap Zachary and his nobles in the bottom. The valley was narrowing even now.
“Let us pause here,” he said, “and see what unfolds. I have no wish to get caught in the thick of things.”
“Yes, my lord,” Beryl said in a deadpan voice. She reined her horse in reflex and sat there staring straight ahead.
Then, as if on cue, a Weapon fell from his horse, impaled by two arrows. The drunken nobles hauled on the reins of their panicked steeds. At least a few lord-governors would die today, eliminating possible contenders for the throne and leaving their provinces in disarray. Mirwell had hoped more would join the hunt, but they knew from past years what a bore it was.
A bore no longer, he thought.
Twenty to thirty metal-clad figures swarmed over each ridge toward the valley floor. The brave little terriers charged the groundmites as if the instinct to attack the creatures had been bred into them. Nobles fell to the ground with arrows bristling from them like pins in a pin cushion.
“Who is that?” Alton asked. He pointed at the opposite ridge and passed Karigan the scope.
She trained it where he pointed. At first she saw no one among the trees and tall grasses, but then a solitary figure standing there became discernible. Just barely. He was dressed in gray. She nearly dropped the telescope.
“You know him?” Alton asked.
“I’ve encountered him,” she replied, overcome by shakiness. “A gray rider. The Shadow Man.” Condor shifted his weight and pawed the ground, his ears laid back. “We’ve got to do something.”
“I agree, but what? We would most likely get ourselves killed down there.”
Karigan grabbed only air where the hilt of her saber should have been. It was the one thing that had not been returned to her. “We must stop that gray rider. He uses terrible black arrows. They’re magic . . . and evil. We must stop him.”
Alton loosed his saber from his saddle sheath. “Well,” he said with a rueful smile, “I was tired of being left out of the action. My family will kill me if they find out about this. And if I survive.”
Karigan saw that he was about to charge down into the midst of the ambush. “Don’t go yet. I’m going to ask for help.”
She freed the little velvet pouch from her belt and drew out the bunchberry flower, now with only three petals left on it. Alton held himself taut, ready to ride into the valley to fight for the king, but watched Karigan with his head cocked at a quizzical angle to see how she hoped to find help.
She plucked a petal from the flower and threw it into the breeze. It floated into the sky and was whisked away by the air currents. “Please bring help,” Karigan said.
Alton snorted in disbelief. “If that isn’t the most outrageous—” Night Hawk reared, and he fought to keep his seat. “Now what?”
What Alton D’Yer considered to be outrageous was blown away by a gathering of wispy, shifting spirits who arrayed themselves before Karigan. F’ryan Coblebay, dead F’ryan, stood frontmost. The faces of his companions stirred and changed as if under water, their voices a breathy babble. Alton blanched, enabled by some whim of the shadow world to perceive the dead, too.
“F’ryan,” he said. “How—?”
F’ryan did not acknowledge the young lord, as if he must keep each movement to the barest minimum. Instead, he stood before Karigan. I have come to help one last time, he said. One last time for the Wild Ride.
The Wild Ride, the other ghosts echoed.
Alton glanced at Karigan, stricken, and she knew exactly how he felt.
In the valley, several nobles had been slain, though the rest attempted to repel the attackers, but mostly in vain. The remainder of the guards and Weapons left them unprotected and ringed the king, and though several groundmites lay dead, the odds were impossible.
You must end the pain, F’ryan said to Karigan. Soon I will fade and be enslaved by him. He swept his pallid hand across the valley where the gray rider stood unseen without the aid of the telescope. So many have already fallen to him. You must break the arrows. Break all the arrows.
Break arrows, the ghosts echoed.
It is the last time for the Wild Ride, F’ryan said.
The Wild Ride! The Wild Ride! The Wild Ride!
“Hang on for your life,” Karigan warned Alton. His wide eyes told her he was clearly frightened.
Condor and Night Hawk sprang down the hill after the ghosts, and it was as Karigan remembered. Everything wheeled past her as an indistinct blur in streamers of color. But this time the ghosts remained hushed and grave, intent upon their goal. Their passage was like a rustle of wind across the grasses, for this Wild Ride lasted only moments, and when it ended, they stood on the opposite ridge abreast of the Shadow Man. The ghosts seethed and wavered behind them. Alton was still white from the shock, his features taut, but he was in one piece.
The Shadow Man gazed into the valley. He leaned on his longbow and held in his hand in a casual, careless way, a black arrow. The spectral breeze of the ghosts fluttered his gray cloak. He turned to them, and although his features lay shrouded in the shadow of his hood, Karigan felt his gaze upon her.
She licked her lips, seized by fear and dread, wondering what it was the ghosts expected her to do against this one who possessed dark magic. She hadn’t even her saber to use.
Alton overcame his fears first. He sat tall in his saddle, and with the most aristocratic bearing he could summon, he commanded, “Call off your attack.”
Soft laughter trickled from beneath the Shadow Man’s hood. “What a pretty hero you make, Lord D’Yer.” The Shadow Man tossed his hood back, revealing deep golden hair that seemed to shine with a halo beneath the sun.
“The Eletian!” Karigan said.
Eletian, Eletian, Eletian, the ghosts babbled.
“I see the shades have come to your aid again, Karigan G’ladheon, but to what end? Here they have placed you within my grasp. Of you I shall make another slave.”
The ghosts shrieked like the winter wind in the fury of a tempest; their otherworldly voices rose in a crescendo to an unbearable, piercing whine, and they began to spin around Karigan, Alton, and the Shadow Man, in a dizzying blur of white like a cyclone. The faster they revolved, the more high-pitched their voices rang, until it was almost beyond the hearing of living beings. Alton and Karigan covered their ears, the horses dancing beneath them and rolling their eyes.
The Shadow Man stood still, undismayed by the spirits’ display, and uttered quietly words that had not been heard for hundreds of years, words of evil summoning that had never been spoken since the end of the Long War. And yet he spoke these words with ease.
The wail of the ghosts died abruptly, and they split apart, fell away, and reassembled in a mass behind Karigan and Alton, waiting. Waiting for what?
A new moaning grew as if from the very earth, and resonated in the air all around them. The trees trembled, and a gloom materialized behind the Shadow Man. Shawdell spoke the harsh words again, and the Green Rider ghosts seemed to cringe.
“What—” Alton began. His hair twisted and turned in a spirit wind. “What could ghosts be afraid of?”
“Other ghosts,” Karigan said.
A host of the dead formed behind Shawdell, merging and separating among themselves. Their moaning was worse than a dirge, low and leaden and despairing. Slowly they passed around and over Shawdell intent on facing the Green Rider ghosts. They were young and old, some in uniforms, others dressed in the plain clothes of commoners.
Karigan and Alton put their hands in front of their faces as if to ward off the spirits as they surged toward them. But the ghosts passed by and between them. Karigan uncovered her eyes, but too soon. A spirit with the visage of a matronly, older woman, walked straight through her. Karigan felt the spirit as a blast of cold, like stepping into a winter cold room.
Each of Shawdell’s spirits was impaled by two black arrows.
The faint trumpet of a battle horn could be heard, muffled as if an echo of time, and then there was the distant ring of blades being drawn, and still the low dreadful moan. The spirits streamed all around them like a fog on a hilltop shaped and reshaped by the wind.
Shawdell stood unflinching as the ghostly battle was waged around him.
The horses trembled, their necks lathered in a foamy sweat, barely tolerating the spirits that swarmed and moaned about them. Karigan watched as Alton slid off his unsettled horse and grimly dodged the ghosts to put himself in front of her and Condor. He stood erect and proud before the Eletian and drew his blade. Karigan wished he wouldn’t put himself in the line of fire, further endangering himself. She jumped off Condor to stand beside him and lend support. They were in this together. He glanced briefly at her and she saw the apprehension in his eyes.
To Shawdell, he said, “You will stop this, traitor.”
“Traitor?” Shawdell chuckled. “I owe allegiance to none, and certainly not to a mortal kingdom like Sacoridia.”
The spirit of a young boy tottered by, and reached out to unravel an old Green Rider. Karigan rubbed her eyes and tried to put the ghosts out of her mind. “Then why were you trying to court favor with King Zachary?”
“Court favor? Sacoridia borders Kanmorhan Vane, the single, greatest concentration of power left in this world. Your king refused to take advantage of the situation, but Prince Amilton comprehends what
it means.”
“What has Eletia to gain?” Alton asked, his eyes betraying incredulity.
“Eletia? A land of fools always hiding, always hiding among their trees. I serve myself, but never Eletia. It is time for old powers to rise again. And you, my lord Alton D’Yer, threaten those powers. You possess the skills to repair the breach in your ancestral wall.”
Faster than the eye could follow, and with the spirits aswirl about him, Shawdell raised his bow, speaking in whispers as if to himself, and loosed his arrow. Karigan cried out. Alton dropped his sword and raised his hand, palm outward, as if to stop the arrow. And he did. An arm’s length from his breast, the arrow smacked some invisible barrier and dropped to the ground. All three looked at the arrow in utter amazement.
“I . . . I imagined a granite wall,” Alton said.
“Your Greenie defenses are impressive,” Shawdell said, “but like the D’Yer wall, they are not enough.”
Before Alton had time to react, Shawdell nocked another arrow, drew it back, and shot. This time the arrow skimmed across the invisible wall and penetrated, piercing Alton’s side. Alton wavered on his feet before crumpling to the ground.
With a cry of dismay, Karigan knelt by his side. The arrow had not pierced him deeply, but who knew what magic was at work?
The trumpeting of a horn shattered the air—not the trumpet of the dead—but clear, ringing notes of the living, and Karigan felt hope build inside her. Shawdell glanced down into the valley where five still defended the king. Their swords slashed at more than twice as many of the enemy, and as the horn sounded again, the fighting seemed to pause. Watching the scene through the embattled ghosts was like looking through a veil.
Green Rider Page 34