Karigan, content with her meal and the warmth, yawned. She might have dozed off, but something scratched at the edge of her mind, an irritation. She had no idea what it was, but it was there, something trying to attract her attention, the faintest whisper beneath the music and murmur of patrons. Then it was gone.
The server brought squares of gingerbread slathered in clotted cream out to them, and Karigan nearly forgot the irritation as she dug in. They listened to Barris as he played mostly jaunty tunes. When he paused for a break, Estral crossed the room to intercept him and Karigan watched, but could not hear their lively exchange.
“You are getting a good look at everyday Sacoridians in an ordinary setting,” Karigan told Enver. “What do you think?”
“Illuminating,” he replied. “Especially the music. I wish to learn it.”
Karigan smiled at the thought of an Eletian singing a song that was all about praising the attributes of common ale.
Estral brought Barris over for introductions.
“I have heard a fair bit about you, Sir Karigan,” he said, and then smiled, “including your days as a student in Selium. It is an honor.”
“Thank you,” Karigan murmured. It was a mixed compliment at best, considering the notoriety of her school years.
Barris chuckled at her discomfiture. He was a dark-bearded fellow with a wide girth, and wore nothing to openly indicate he was a master minstrel of Selium. He turned to Enver. “And an honor to meet you, sir.” Very softly he added, “One does not see Eletians in this benighted town.”
“I should like to learn your music one day,” Enver said. “It is quite entertaining.”
Barris looked tickled. “I would be happy to teach you, but Estral says you are not staying long.”
“No,” Karigan said, “we are not.”
“Things here are not quite as bad for the king’s folk as they used to be,” Barris said, “but I don’t blame you.”
“Have a seat,” Estral told him. “Barris says my father did travel through here several months ago.”
“It was a brief meeting,” Barris warned her, “and he never came back through that I’m aware of.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“He talked about a lumber camp north of here. There are a number of those, of course.” Barris grimaced. “I hate to tell you this, but while he wouldn’t say exactly what his aims were, I’m under the impression he was trying to get near the Lone Forest to see what Second Empire was up to. It’s rumored there is a base up that way.”
Rumored? Karigan thought. More than rumored. Captain Mapstone had ensured she knew the latest intelligence on Second Empire’s positions. A glance at Estral showed how disturbed she was by this information.
“The Lone Forest was once united with this forest you call the Green Cloak,” Enver said.
And was once the northern limit of the lands of the Sacor Clans, Karigan thought. Given that it was likely under Second Empire’s control, they would be avoiding that region as if it were a plague town.
As Barris and Estral continued to discuss Lord Fiori’s whereabouts and news of Selium, Karigan found herself distracted once again by the irritation. It was like stirrup leathers chafing her calves when she wasn’t wearing boots. And there were the whispers, and now a cool touch on the back of her hand. Perhaps it was just an air current, but she knew better.
The voices of the inn’s patrons, the clink of dishware, the laughter, and hurrying steps of servers, all washed away to a dull murmur and Karigan stood. Estral and Barris, deep into their discussion, did not pay her attention, but she was aware of Enver’s gaze on her.
She observed a flicker of filmy movement by the bottom of the staircase that led to the inn’s rooms above. Without another thought, she headed for the stairs, disregarding the displeasure of those she bumped into.
“Watch it, ye bloody Greenie.”
She barely perceived their words. They did not touch her. Nor did she see the inn’s watchful enforcer leave his post by the wall to follow her.
BLACK ARROWS
Karigan climbed the stairs to the inn’s upper level as though she knew where it was she needed to go. Had to go. At the landing, the compulsion led her unerringly down the hall past the doors of guest rooms. She rounded a corner into another hall of doors, carried along as though she were a leaf borne upon the currents of a strong-flowing stream.
A transparent figure walked through one of the doors. Karigan strode to it and tried the knob, but it was locked. Driven by an impulse that was not her own, she kicked at the door until wood splintered in the frame and then used her shoulder to force it open. That this was not acceptable behavior for a representative of the king was not foremost in her mind.
The room was unkempt, with blankets strewn about the bed and clothes piled on the floor. It smelled stale. An entire collection of weapons hung on the walls—knives, cudgels, a throwing ax, and even a shortsword.
“Here now, what ya doin’?” a man bellowed from behind her.
She turned and saw the enforcer. She took in, without emotion, the knife he carried, and promptly dismissed his existence. She moved across the room as though in a dream, pulled toward that which irritated her. She felt the presence of Westrion hovering, his great wings beating frigid downdrafts from the depths of the heavens.
“Get outta my room!”
She turned once more to face the man. He blanched and backed off.
“What the hells are you?” he whispered.
She gazed past him and sensed another presence in the shadows of the corridor, the Eletian, her witness.
The whispering drew her to one of the walls where a trophy of sorts was displayed, two arrows, each black and inscribed with dark ruins. One was splintered not quite in half. They burned in her vision. She removed them from their mount. They were loathsome to the touch, stung her hand, sought flesh and spirit. The arrowheads were encrusted with old blood.
“Those are mine!” the man protested from the doorway, but he seemed afraid to cross the threshold of his own room.
Karigan ignored him and broke the arrows over her knee. There was a release, an easing, and all else seemed to vanish from existence, the noise from downstairs, the yelling man, the unkempt room. The filmy figure of a Green Rider appeared before her. It was Joy Overway. Karigan had never known her in life.
You have freed me, Joy said. Her hair floated about her shoulders in the downdraft of the great wings. Thank you, Avatar. She faded away and then all was normal once again.
Karigan shook herself as though awakening from a dream. She stared at the broken arrows in her hand, not clear on how she’d ended up in this room with them. The only thing she did know was that she wanted to be rid of them, but the inn’s enforcer blocked the doorway.
“I paid lots for those,” he said, holding his knife in a threatening manner. Yet, his eyes flicked nervously. He almost looked scared.
There were any number of actions Karigan might have taken. She could have impressed him with her status as a swordmaster and honorary Weapon by drawing her saber to reveal the knotted silk on the blade, or she might have allowed him to attack. The first might have only served as provocation, and the second would certainly end in spilled blood. Both would have drawn Enver into a situation that would unmask him and cause even more trouble. As a representative of the king, starting a fight if it could be avoided would reflect poorly on the Green Riders and King Zachary, especially in a town such as this. Instead of drawing her sword, she reached into her pocket and tossed four silvers, an exorbitant amount, at the man’s feet.
“Sorry,” she said, and slipped past.
He’d pressed against the door frame so as not to touch her. “You will be sorry,” he said, “if I see you around here again. Unnatural bitch.”
Enver shadowed her back down the stairs. She eased her way between patrons to t
he hearth and threw the broken arrows into the fire. It flared and she fancied she could see a demonic face form in the flames, which was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She glanced at her hands. They were unscathed, but a sense of uncleanliness lingered. The people warming themselves at the fire regarded her curiously and with some suspicion.
She hurried to where Estral still sat talking with Barris. A glance over her shoulder revealed the enforcer stomping down the stairs, still unhappy, but his confidence back and looking ready for a fight. She dropped more coins on the table, grabbed her longsword, and said to Estral, “We are leaving. Now.”
“What? Barris and I were—”
Karigan grabbed Estral’s arm. “Now.”
Estral uttered farewells as Karigan dragged her out of the common room and into the wet courtyard, Enver close behind. The rain made the dusk even darker and the day feel even later than it was.
Estral wrenched her arm out of Karigan’s grasp. “What was that for? Barris and I were catching up.”
“We’ve overstayed our welcome.” She and Enver hastened to help the stable boys tack the horses and reload Bane with their gear. When all were ready, Karigan did not pause, but rode out of the courtyard. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed the enforcer watching them from the doorway of the inn. To her credit, she kept Condor at a walk and did not run, but it was a fast walk.
Estral nosed Coda alongside Condor. The cat poked his face from beneath Estral’s coat into the rain, and quickly hid himself again. “What was that all about?”
“Avoiding trouble,” Karigan replied.
“Trouble? What did you do this time?”
Karigan looked at her askance. She supposed it was her fault, though she did not know exactly how she’d sensed the arrows and been drawn right to them. She shuddered, recalling how they had felt in her hands, how they’d wanted to feed on her soul. She had done that enforcer a favor, really, by destroying them. Not that the arrows would have impaled themselves in him of their own volition, but their mere presence in his room, with the malevolence they emanated, might have affected him in some way. How he obtained the arrows in the first place she did not wish to know. She had last seen them impaled in Joy’s body, and he’d displayed them as prized possessions. He said he’d paid for them and she could only guess at what sort of person would sell arrows removed from a corpse. She tried to not let dark thoughts cloud what she had accomplished, the release of the spirit of Joy at long last.
“The Galadheon,” Enver told Estral, “diffused a difficult situation.”
Karigan glanced at him wondering how much he had witnessed. A good deal of it was unclear to her. She could not see his face for he still wore his hood.
“What difficult situation?” Estral demanded.
“I was taking care of unfinished business,” Karigan replied. “It angered the inn’s enforcer.”
“What are you talking about? What unfinished business?”
Apparently Estral was not going to be satisfied until she explained. They were now outside the town and no one appeared to be following, so she told her about the arrows.
“Oh, gods,” Estral murmured. “I remember the arrows. Captain Mapstone came looking for my father with the pair that had killed F’ryan Coblebay. They were . . . dark. As I recall, you broke the ones you found after the Battle of the Lost Lake.”
“Yes, and later, the ones that killed F’ryan.” The battle had not been long after Karigan’s first passage through North. Shawdell had set up an ambush to kill King Zachary, and many nobles with him. When they fought Shawdell off, she had broken all the soul-stealing arrows she could find to release the spirits he’d enthralled.
“There were many I could not help,” Karigan said, “and I never expected to find the pair that had taken Joy.”
“If not for you,” Estral said, “none would have been helped at all.”
“Perhaps.”
Traveling through North was a reminder of how it had all begun for her, a runaway schoolgirl who promised a dying messenger she encountered along the road that she would complete his mission. His brooch accepted her, and she learned very soon that it augmented a weak magical ability she had not known she possessed, an ability to fade out. More time passed before she learned that she was in fact not just fading out, but crossing thresholds in the layers of the world.
On that first momentous journey, she’d begun interacting with ghosts, and since then, had even seen and dealt with Salvistar, the steed of the god of death. It was not something she wanted, but it came with her brooch and being a Green Rider. Fortunately, it did not dominate her life, and once in a while, something good came of it, such as being able to break the arrows that had trapped Joy’s spirit.
They had ridden a few miles when Enver halted Mist.
“What is it?” Karigan asked.
“Our path lies off the road here,” he said.
“But we haven’t reached the waystation.”
“That is still hours down the road, is it not? We would have to backtrack. The path is here.”
“I want to dry out,” Karigan grumbled.
“The rain is slackening. It will be clear tomorrow.”
“Karigan,” Estral said, “I would like to be dry, too, but I would just as soon not lose time backtracking. I am also not interested in riding all night.”
“We will ride for only a little while,” Enver said, “then set up camp. There is a way I can spare you some of the damp.”
Karigan wondered at that.
“Please,” Estral said, “the farther north we go, the closer I may be getting to my father.”
“We are not going to the Lone Forest.” Karigan realized, unamused, that that was what she had said about North.
“This path does not lead to the Lone Forest,” Enver said, “but it does lead north.”
Estral fell uncharacteristically quiet.
Karigan contemplated the shadowy forms of her companions in the dark, rain dripping off the rim of her hood. She’d been looking forward to a roof over her head, the warmth and dryness of the waystation, and perhaps seeing the forester who was guardian in that area, but this was no leisure jaunt through the woods. The waystation was almost a day’s ride from North and it would be well after midnight when they reached it. Then, if Enver was right about the path, they’d have to turn around and ride all the way back.
The cat poked his nose out from beneath Estral’s coat again and sniffed the air. “Meep,” he said.
“You say you can keep us dry?” Karigan asked Enver.
“Yes, Galadheon.”
He must, she thought, have some sort of Eletian magic at hand. She let out a mournful sigh. “All right. We’ll take the path.”
CAT-MONSTER-THING
They did not ride long before Enver found a place for them to camp for the night in a patch of older woods that had not yet been harvested by the lumber merchants. The boughs of tall pines offered some protection from the rain.
“You will have to care for the horses,” Enver told Karigan and Estral, “if I am to give us dryness.”
Karigan thought that if he could work some magic, she was fine with that. Her fingers were stiff and cold as she tried to undo buckles of tack and harness. Enver, meanwhile, had drawn out his muna’riel and stood gazing into its depths. She glanced over her shoulder as she worked to see him moving his hand over the muna’riel, almost as if he were sculpting light.
Another time when she looked, it was much the same, but the rain did not seem to fall where there was light. The cat sat at Enver’s feet, long whiskers rigid as he watched the Eletian’s every move.
When the horses were taken care of, Karigan realized it wasn’t raining on her even though she was outside the range of the light. The horses would be dry, too. She stretched her palm out to make sure, but no rain fell on it. She could hear it falling elsewhere.
She carried their gear closer to where Enver sat cross-legged on his cloak, his head bowed and the muna’riel cupped in his hand. The cat lay stretched out beside him.
“Are you all right?” Karigan asked.
“I am well,” he replied, “but using etherea has its cost, especially for one who is only half Eletian.”
Karigan and Estral exchanged glances and continued to set up camp. Enver may have created a dry area for them, but they were not going to find dry wood. Karigan was just as glad she’d had a hot meal in North.
“Do you want us to set up your tent for you?” Estral asked Enver.
“No. It takes persuasion.”
Persuasion? Karigan wondered. Eletians.
After a time, he left the muna’riel nested on a pile of pine needles and rose to set up his tent. Karigan lit a lantern even with the light of the muna’riel, thinking it could at least be reminiscent of a fire. Then she and Estral collected wood and brought it into the light of the muna’riel. Perhaps it would dry enough overnight that they could have a fire in the morning.
When Enver emerged from his tent having, apparently, persuaded it to be set up, Estral asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?”
“Yes,” he said, giving her a penetrating gaze. “You can teach me the song about the ale.”
They sat around the lantern, and Estral did teach him, hesitantly at first, uncertain of the gift Idris had given her, then more strongly as her confidence grew. Karigan found herself amused by Enver, with his melodious Eletian voice, singing such a common song, especially the parts about belching ale bubbles. Whatever magic he had used to shield their campsite from the rain, it not only kept them dry, but seemed to warm them as well. Karigan’s mood lightened, and any tension she’d felt since leaving North was vanquished.
When the song ended, Enver said, “You see, Lady Estral, you can sing. Your voice will not fail you.”
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