Blackveil (11 page)
Her father did not answer, but snapped the reins over the haunches of the drays and guided them away from the harbor.
They left the town behind, the sleigh gliding into the deepening dark. With the setting sun, the air chilled perceptibly and Karigan burrowed beneath the blanket. The cobbles at her feet had gone cold long ago.
She would receive no real answers about the brothel from her father. He had told her there were things he’d never discuss with her. And, she supposed, she did not want to know the specifics. What she really wanted was for none of this to have happened in the first place. She wished she had never heard of the Golden Rudder; she wished he’d deny his connection to it and say that it was all just a huge misunderstanding.
But he did not, and it was not. She could wish all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change a thing.
And yet, she reflected, because of his association with the brothel and its madam, he was doing good works such as supporting Garden House, his efforts no doubt saving the lives of those like Vera. Karigan may have had a privileged upbringing, but she wasn’t so naive that she didn’t recognize the need for such places.
As she thought about it, she realized she’d only known a single, narrow facet of her father. Now she had discovered he was just as complicated and complex as any other person.
So absorbed in her thoughts had she been, that when the sleigh hit a bump, she was surprised to discover her father was not taking the main road home, but rather a narrow lane bordered by forest.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Arrowdale Road,” her father said.
Karigan’s disorientation faded immediately. Arrowdale was a meandering old track that was the “long way” home. She used to go riding on it sometimes, but to her it had always seemed so forsaken, a little spooky. There were only a few, long abandoned homesteads along it, taken over by the march of the forest. History held that some battle of the Long War had taken place in the folds of the land, hence the name Arrowdale.
“Your mother and I used to ride out this way at night sometimes,” her father said unexpectedly. “The stars were always lovely, and no one bothered us out here.”
Karigan glanced up, and between the bordering tips of evergreens, the stars were bright. The Hunter was making his seasonal trek to the west, and the Sword of Sevelon was in the half-raised position, slowly rotating upward from its winter’s rest.
They entered a clearing and the full expanse of the heavens opened overhead. Her father halted Roy and Birdy to gaze at the stars and Karigan imagined her parents young and in love coming to this spot.
“Now that you know I am quite imperfect,” he said, “can you accept that I misspoke earlier? I can’t say I like magic, or the fact it puts you in harm’s way, but I would never view my daughter as cursed.”
“You never told me about mother’s bloodline,” Karigan said.
“Stories. Stories told by superstitious islanders.” He paused, then said, “Tell me, where did you find the muna’riel?”
“You knew of it then?”
She perceived, more than saw, him nodding.
“I found it in mother’s chest among her things.”
“How did it ... ? I had it locked in my sea chest, down in the study.” He shuddered beside her. “Magic. I guess it wanted to be found.”
It was, Karigan thought, a perceptive statement from one with an aversion to magic. “You didn’t give it to me as mother wanted.”
Silence followed her words, then he said, “I desired to protect you from the magic. Or, at least not encourage it. I even let your aunts believe your mother was speaking nonsense in the end.”
Karigan wished she could see his features better in the dark, but she imagined his expression downcast to match his voice.
“I see I was wrong,” he continued. “Magic found you anyway. Do you have the muna’riel with you? May I see it?”
Karigan dug beneath her coat and into her pocket to retrieve the moonstone. She held it aloft on her mittened hand, the shock of light making the horses snort and bob their heads. The brilliance of the stone chased shadows deep into the woods, and the snow in the clearing intensified the silver-white light almost to blinding.
Karigan’s father shielded his eyes until the light ebbed to a more gentle glow. The snow on the trees that ringed them glittered as if strewn with diamonds.
“I forgot how bright it was,” he murmured. “I can’t remember when your mother first showed it to me. After we were married, of course, but before you were even conceived, I think. She never explained how she had acquired it, but she said it was Eletian. When I pressed her about it, she’d only laugh and find ways to distract me.”
“She knew how you felt about magic,” Karigan said.
“Yes, I suppose she did. And I suppose I chose not to see it in her, even though the muna’riel would light only for her and not me.”
“I wish I could help you understand,” Karigan said, “that it’s not the magic itself that is evil or good, but the user who makes it so.”
But he did not reply. He sat there, his eyelids drooping and head nodding until his chin rested on his chest. He breathed deeply as though asleep.
“Father?” Karigan asked. She nudged him, but he did not stir. She jabbed him harder, and still no response. He seemed only to sleep, but ...
She glanced at the horses, and they stood with heads lowered as if also slumbering.
A light blossomed in the center of the clearing. A silvery, fluid flame that flickered and grew into a column the height of a person.
“Five hells,” she murmured.
The light of Karigan’s moonstone spread toward the flame, surrounding it as if to embrace it.
Finally,
a voice said,
you have come.
a voice said,
you have come.
MOON DREAMS
T
ransfixed, Karigan stepped off the sleigh, her feet sinking deeply into the snow. A figure rippled within the column of flame.
ransfixed, Karigan stepped off the sleigh, her feet sinking deeply into the snow. A figure rippled within the column of flame.
“What are you?” she whispered.
The figure did not answer, but its radiance grew, spread outward, and though Karigan backed away, it overtook her until there was only the light. Everything else, her father, the sleigh and horses, and the surrounding forest, vanished into shadow. She could not say for sure she was still in the clearing, or even in Sacoridia for that matter, though the snow still glared with its reflected light.
I am weakening,
said the figure in the flame; a woman’s voice, distant, strained.
Under siege ... for so long ...
said the figure in the flame; a woman’s voice, distant, strained.
Under siege ... for so long ...
“Who ... who are you?”
Losing hold ...
“Of what?” Karigan demanded. What was this? What was going on?
The grove.
The figure shimmered, cried out in pain, and Karigan discerned darkness staining the fringes of the light, black branches scratching against radiance.
The figure shimmered, cried out in pain, and Karigan discerned darkness staining the fringes of the light, black branches scratching against radiance.
You must come.
The voice held a desperate tenor.
You cross thresholds.
The voice held a desperate tenor.
You cross thresholds.
Cross thresholds ...
The words kindled some memory buried deep in Karigan’s mind and came to her like the shreds of a dream: the spirit of a Green Rider, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, the royal tombs.
When we fade,
he said,
we are standing on a threshold.
Something about passing through the layers of the world.
The words kindled some memory buried deep in Karigan’s mind and came to her like the shreds of a dream: the spirit of a Green Rider, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, the royal tombs.
When we fade,
he said,
we are standing on a threshold.
Something about passing through the layers of the world.
She grasped at the shreds of the memory, but it dissipated until she could not recall even the ghost and was left with only an impression of something missing. Karigan rubbed her temple. Her head felt strange, full of cobwebs. “Where is it I must come?”
The figure extended her hand of quicksilver from the flame, and a globe, much like a snowglobe, hovered above her palm. Karigan stepped closer to see it better, squinting against the intensity of the figure’s radiance. The globe was a blotch of blackness in the light and as she neared it, she discerned in it the scene of a dark forest of decay and murk.
Karigan recoiled. “Blackveil?”
You must help the Sleepers,
the figure said, her voice increasing in urgency.
If awakened by the enemy, they shall be a deadly weapon.
She cried again in pain and the light wavered.
I am losing hold!
the figure said, her voice increasing in urgency.
If awakened by the enemy, they shall be a deadly weapon.
She cried again in pain and the light wavered.
I am losing hold!
“Sleepers? What ... ?”
The dark on the edges of light began to close around them like a claw.
Keep the muna’riel close, daughter of Kariny. It is your key.
Keep the muna’riel close, daughter of Kariny. It is your key.
The figure and her flame sputtered like a dying candle.
“Wait!” Karigan cried. “The key to what?”
You will recall our encounter only when you are given the feather of the winter owl.
The figure dimmed and waned, writhed as though in the throes of some agony.
“Please!” Karigan cried. “You must tell me more!”
I ... I cannot hold on, I—
The figure screamed and her flame extinguished.
The figure screamed and her flame extinguished.
The world was cast into a midnight void and Karigan staggered back, her muna’riel dimming as if in sympathy. The globe that contained the scene of Blackveil hovered in the air for a moment before rupturing and, for a single instant, transported Karigan to the forest, its rotten tree limbs arcing over her, clawing for her, the mud of the forest floor sucking at her feet, the wild screech of some creature seeking blood piercing the thick, wet air. Then the vision was gone and the shattered pieces of the globe cascaded into the snow like crystals of ice.
There was a sigh upon the wind and an anguished whisper that came to Karigan from far, far away:
Argenthyne.
Argenthyne.
Then silence.
Karigan stood there in the deep snow of the clearing, the muna’riel glowing on the palm of her hand. Before she had a chance to grasp the apparition and her words about Sleepers, thresholds, keys, and Blackveil, or even the reference to her mother, the filament of memory was drawn from her so it was as if none of it had ever happened.
“W
e are nearly home.”
e are nearly home.”
Karigan started at her father’s voice. The sleigh was in motion, the brasses and silver of the harnesses jingling. The drays stepped at a good pace, knowing they were headed for the barn.
“What happened?” Karigan asked, looking about herself, but discerning little in the dark.
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