“Still better odds than against all of them,” Karigan murmured.
You should also know that I was unable to protect the Sleepers in Argenthyne’s other groves. I fear one day they, too, shall be a threat to your people.
“Mornhavon destroyed the grove in Telavalieth,” Karigan told her.
Then pray it is so for the others. Now, daughter of Kariny, we must get you on your way, because the more time that passes, the more my strength ebbs. First the bridge.
Laurelyn raised her hands to the moon and her palms filled with light. She then cast the light from her and it beamed in a glowing arc through the woods.
Moonbeams? “That ... that’s the bridge?” Karigan asked in incredulity.
Do not fear. It shall hold you, and the Sleepers, too.
Laurelyn began to sing, a melodious song without words, unearthly and unlike anything Karigan had ever heard before. She shivered. Laurelyn’s voice rose and expanded through the grove, flowing between the trees and up into the canopy.
Figures emerged from behind the trees and walked toward them, as though in a dream, unaware of their surroundings. These were not the creatures that had attacked Karigan and her companions. They were beautiful as all Eletians were, and untainted by the dark. Gradually hundreds stood arrayed before her and Laurelyn’s song faded. She spoke to them in Eletian, but they showed no signs of comprehension or wakefulness.
These are my people, Laurelyn told Karigan. All that remains of them. Among them are friends, confidants, and heroes of another age. Artists, poets, smiths, and architects. Please help them reach Eletia so something of Argenthyne lives on.
“I will,” Karigan said, only now fully appreciating the responsibility she was taking on.
Then cross the bridge. They will follow.
Karigan turned to leave.
Thank you, Laurelyn said. And remember, do not tarry in Eletia if you wish to return and aid your companions. My time is ending, and I shall not be able to hold the bridge for long.
Karigan nodded, then trotted down the terrace steps and walked between the Sleepers to reach the bridge. The Sleepers fell in behind, following her in silence. It was eerie.
When she reached the bridge, she gazed skeptically at it, or rather through it, for the moonbeams were translucent and she could see the ground beneath, which was not at all reassuring. She shook her head and took one step onto the bridge, and then another. It supported her just as Laurelyn said it would.
She continued with more assurance. It was as steady as walking on stone, but the bridge was narrow, and being able to see through it continued to disconcert her. She picked up her pace, and as she approached the apex of the arch, the way ahead grew cloudy, indistinct. She took a breath and plunged ahead.
The scents of the grove, the gentle air and sounds, vanished. Karigan emerged into the white world blinking. She’d begun calling it the “white world” the first time she’d passed through it, for the sky and the ground were both the same milky white color. She’d learned since that it was the space between the layers of the world, a transitional place just as Laurelyn had said. The two times she’d traversed its plains, she’d been confronted with visions, some metaphorical, some positively nightmarish. Once she had even seen the after-math of a battle, the ground strewn with the corpses of her friends . . . and the king.
At the moment she was enveloped in the white of the sky. The white world had a bleaching effect on her uniform as if color was not tolerated. And down below? She swallowed hard. Her previous passages through the white world had shown her a landscape of only featureless plains. This time she walked above a chasm so deep she could not perceive its bottom. She heard no water below, felt no updrafts or breezes, just saw the plunging depths where shades of white turned to shades of gray, and darkened beyond that.
Karigan had never feared heights, but she hastened her steps until she felt the solid white ground of the island beneath her feet. The Sleepers were right behind her, crossing the bridge in an orderly file. She thought them fortunate to be unaware of their surroundings.
It was the chasm that made the island an island; there was no milky sea or lake surrounding it. As Laurelyn had told her, the island was not even as large as the chamber that had housed the moondial. Karigan spotted the bridge on the other side that was supposed to cross into Eletia. It was a more ordinary looking bridge of stone and mortar.
She paced, waiting to ensure each and every Sleeper made it across the moonbeam bridge onto the island before she set off again. As each Eletian stepped off the bridge, she wondered if he or she were a poet or great hero. What had motivated them to take the long sleep? What were their names? What had they seen in their long lives? She cleared her throat and said hello to several of them, but none replied. They were entirely unaware of her, their eyes distant, filled with stars that did not exist here.
A gap opened on the bridge. A Sleeper hesitated on the arch, his posture different, less erect. Had he awakened while crossing? If so, he was probably startled to find himself on a translucent bridge spanning a strange chasm in the white world. Shocked was more like it. She decided she’d better help him.
She started back across the bridge. When the Sleepers started to follow her, she raised her hand and said, “No, stay.” For some reason, they obeyed and remained on the island.
Her relief was short-lived, for as she approached the arch, she realized it wasn’t one of her Sleepers standing there, but one of the tainted ones from Blackveil.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
A second appeared through the haze behind him.
She started to back away, her staff held before her. How was she going to get her Sleepers across the second bridge to Eletia with these tainted ones behind them? It would be a massacre.
The first tainted one snarled and lunged.
MOONFIRE
Karigan did not hesitate. Her training had prepared her to act first and think later until it was instinctual. Before the tainted one reached her, she cracked him in the head with the staff’s steel handle. It slowed him down, but did not stop him, and she followed up with a low sweep to his knees. He fought for balance, his arms wheeling in the air. A third blow knocked him off the bridge.
Karigan clenched her jaw at his scream as it trailed behind him. Through the bridge she saw him plummet, become smaller and smaller and smaller until he wasn’t even a speck.
The second one did not charge her, perhaps learning from the other’s mistake. Karigan adjusted her grip on her staff. Licked her lips. Waited. The tainted one stared at her with a malicious half-smile, his eyes like pitch.
Karigan felt time rushing away as she faced the dark Eletian. Laurelyn told her she could hold the bridge for only so long.
In a blink, the dark Eletian dove for her legs. Karigan got in only a glancing blow to his hip before he knocked her off her feet. The staff flew from her grasp and rolled down the bridge, teetering on the edge. She hit the bridge so hard that air rushed out of her lungs. The dark Eletian grabbed her legs; she thrashed and kicked, but his grip was like steel, his claws digging into her wounded leg, ripping open the old injuries and creating new ones.
She desperately glanced toward her staff, but it was out of reach. The Sleepers stood on the island as a mute audience to her struggle. She tugged on the hilt of her long knife, drew it, and gashed the creature’s face. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed. Before she felt it, she heard bones snap. She screamed. Her knife clattered to the bridge and over the edge, twirling tip over hilt into the chasm.
Karigan had been trained to handle blades with either hand, but the scabbard of her saber was entangled in her legs and her position made it impossible to draw. She’d only one other weapon left to her. It was awkward getting to it. Even as the tainted one wrestled with her, she flipped her hips, thrust her good hand into her trouser pocket, and drew out her mother’s moonstone. Brilliant light flared out and she blinked. The dark Eletian averted his gaze and loosened his grip. She kicked. as h
ard as she could.
The dark one fell back, and the moonstone’s light grew in intensity and ferocity, driving him still farther back. Karigan kept kicking, landing one booted foot squarely on his jaw. This time it was not her bones she heard breaking. Blood rushed from his mouth. Another blow sent him flailing on the edge. He did not regain his balance and he fell.
She’d barely begun to register what happened when the dark Eletian grabbed her bad leg as he fell. She slid half off the bridge, grasping the opposite edge with her good hand. The dark Eletian dangled from her leg, his weight dragging her down. Her fingers faltered, started to slide. She kicked at the Eletian and he slipped down her leg, claws scrabbling for a hold in her flesh, but failing. And suddenly, his weight was gone.
With a grunt Karigan swung her legs back onto the deck of the bridge, breathing hard, all her hurts colliding at once. Tears pooled on the translucent bridge beneath her.
A thread of Laurelyn’s voice came to her. Karigan, you must get off the bridge now!
Karigan looked up and understood Laurelyn’s urgency. Three more dark Eletians emerged onto the arch.
Karigan crawled, taking up the moonstone that had miraculously not rolled off into the depths. She crawled, leaving smears of blood on moonbeams. The moonstone bought her time—its fierce glow flashed into the faces of the dark ones, making them hesitate. The bridge flared and seemed to be ablaze with moonfire.
She scrabbled along the bridge as fast as her battered body allowed, grabbing her staff as she went. She rolled the rest of the way, with the dark Eletians sprinting after her. When she reached the island, the bridge vanished. The three dark Eletians hung in the air for a moment before plunging into the chasm.
There are no others, came Laurelyn’s distant voice, and the bridge flickered back into existence.
Karigan rolled onto her back panting, gazing into the milky sky. She wondered if she had anything left in her to get to the next bridge, much less cross it and return. She could stay in Eletia, perhaps get her wounds tended. Would it be so great a betrayal if she did not return to her companions in Blackveil? Surely they could find their way back to the wall as easily without her, if any of them survived ...
No, she couldn’t abandon them, especially Yates. Yates, her friend who had gotten into more than he reckoned for when he had volunteered to join the company. Thinking of him made her climb up onto her feet. No matter how her leg hurt, wrenched and torn, she knew she had to return to Blackveil to ensure Yates made it home.
She slipped the moonstone into her pocket and leaned heavily on her staff, blessing the Weapons for the foresight of their gift. With her broken wrist held close to her, she hobbled across the island, a shepherd to the Sleepers who followed her like silent specters.
The second bridge was, to Karigan’s relief, shorter, spanning a narrower section of the chasm. The stones were cut in a rustic style, their earthy feel was a source of comfort to her. At the arch she stepped through a golden haze and into the sunshine of a forest glade that immediately warmed and soothed her after all the time she’d spent in the dark and wet of Blackveil. She sighed, closed her eyes, and let the sunshine wash over her. Laurelyn said her piece of time might not correspond to Eletia’s. She had left Argenthyne at night, and here it appeared to be full afternoon. Karigan was glad.
When she opened her eyes again, she took in the burbling stream, the towering grove of trees that surrounded the glade, star flowers and pink lady slippers wavering against a backdrop of emerald, the warbling of songbirds. She felt alive again.
A man knelt by the stream trailing his hand in the water. Flaxen hair hung around his face. He turned to gaze at her. He reminded her, with a start, of Graelalea.
“Hui a ven?” he asked.
“I’m a Green Rider,” Karigan replied, hoping that’s what he wanted to know.
“Are you an apparition then?” he asked in strongly accented common tongue, his voice rich and resonant.
Karigan glanced down at herself. Because she was using her ability to cross thresholds, she was also faded out, but the sunshine of the glade prevented her from completely disappearing, leaving her appearance ghostlike. The fading usually dulled her vision, but everything here was vibrant.
“No,” she told him. “I am not an apparition.”
The Eletian stood, his hand dripping. He did not shake the water off, perhaps because it would have been painful to do so. His hand was blackened with the fingertips desiccated to the bone so that they resembled claws. She had never seen such a disfigurement on any Eletian—not that she’d met that many. The man himself was tall and radiated brightness.
“Did your captain send you? Speak quickly. There are arrows trained on you, apparition or no.”
Karigan glanced around the grove, but saw no one else. That did not mean the Eletian archers were not there.
“Laurelyn sent me,” Karigan replied.
“Laurelyn! But she was overcome. I do not believe you.”
The Sleepers were jammed behind her and obscured by the mist of the arch, so she walked off the bridge, the Sleepers materializing into the sunshine and following her into the glade.
“She wishes a safe haven for these people,” Karigan said. “If they stay in Blackveil—Argenthyne—they will be changed, and not for the better. Laurelyn protected them for as long as she could. Until I came to bring them to Eletia.”
As the man took them in, his expression transformed from distrust to joy. “For how long did she protect them?”
“About a thousand years, I’d guess.” His question made Karigan wonder when she was herself.
“It sounds a strange story,” he replied. He took a few steps closer to Karigan, glancing at the Sleepers. They began to disperse on their own, instinctively seeking out the grand trees of the grove. “You’ve the fading of Lil Ambriodhe.”
“I wear her brooch,” Karigan replied. Had this Eletian once known the First Rider?
He glanced at the Sleepers vanishing into grove trees to resume their rest. Karigan felt her own strong impulse drawing her back to the bridge. If she released her ability, it would not pull on her. She could stay.
“I am grateful you have brought these Sleepers to us through unknown dangers,” the Eletian said. “Will you not sit with me and tell me your story? About Argenthyne and Laurelyn? We’ve been so grieved.”
“I—” The brooch pulled harder on her. She stumbled backward.
“We could tend your wounds.”
Karigan thought of Yates and the others back in Blackveil and she was overcome with a sense of foreboding. “N-no, I can’t stay.”
He drew nearer still. There was great age and great weariness in his eyes. They were the blue of snow shadows and reflected ages past. Karigan almost lost herself in them.
His gaze grew unfocussed, far away. “Before you depart, I must warn you to be cautious of the mirror man.” His voice carried the weight of prophecy. “He is a trickster who will try to ensnare you for his own amusement. Beware the choices that lie ahead, and choose wisely. You have traveled great distances for one so young. Your wits and skills have served you well so far. They will aid you in the trials ahead.”
Karigan backed toward the bridge, stepped on it, and immediately the glade in Eletia began to grow more distant. The pull to return to Blackveil increased, and even the immense attraction of staying in the sunshine of Eletia and the presence of the remarkable man could not anchor her.
The man, she realized, who could only be Graelalea’s father, King Santanara, the one who had defeated Mornhavon the Black at the very end of the Long War. He’d become a Sleeper himself sometime after the war, leaving his son, Prince Jametari, to lead Eletia.
The heady sensation of meeting King Santanara made her shiver even as she hastened across the bridge back into the white world.
CHOOSING MASKS
When Karigan limped off the bridge into the white world, an opaque mist shrouded the island.
“Uh-oh,” she said. In her p
ast experiences with the white world, the mists were usually preludes to visions she’d rather not see.
She had no choice but to wait until the mist cleared before proceeding across the island to the moonbeam bridge—she could barely see her hand in front of her and she did not want to accidentally step into the chasm.
When the mist tumbled away, she looked in dismay upon what it revealed. Arrayed before her was a masquerade ball in full swing, strains of music echoing ominously from the depths of the chasm. The colorful finery and masks of the dancers were in stark contrast to the dullness of the white world.
This is not fair, Karigan thought. Haven’t I been through enough? She knew, however, fairness had nothing to do with it.
Making matters worse, on the opposite side of the island there wasn’t only the one bridge, but a dozen that, to her eye, looked identical.
“I have no time for puzzles,” she muttered, still feeling the tug on her brooch. She decided she would ignore the masquerade and she started to limp across the island.
“Rider Sir Karigan G’ladheon!” cried out a masked herald that sounded just like Neff, and who also appeared just the way he had the night of the king’s masquerade ball. He most definitely was not Neff, however. Just a vision provided by the strange environs of the white world. The announcement was met with scattered applause, and ladies and gentlemen curtsied and bowed to Karigan.
She might be trying to ignore the masquerade, but its participants were not ignoring her. She proceeded cautiously, recognizing many of the masks from the king’s ball, including the king’s own iridescent dragon helm. It gleamed in the dull light as he danced ... as he danced with Mad Queen Oddacious. Jester’s bells jingled from her crown, the red diamond pattern of her skirts a garish blur against white.
No. Must not be distracted.
She started to trudge ahead, but three costumed pages appeared before her, each bearing a mask on a satin pillow.
“You must choose one,” said Neff, who strode up beside her, “to join the masquerade.”
Blackveil: Book Four of Green Rider Page 59