Blackveil (75 page)
K
arigan stirred and opened her eyes to gray, Yates’ head still resting on her shoulder. They’d both fallen asleep with their backs against the tree. They ought to have organized a watch between the two of them. Not that Yates could actually
watch,
but he could at least listen for trouble.
arigan stirred and opened her eyes to gray, Yates’ head still resting on her shoulder. They’d both fallen asleep with their backs against the tree. They ought to have organized a watch between the two of them. Not that Yates could actually
watch,
but he could at least listen for trouble.
Fortunately it was not raining as hard as it had been. She yawned, then detected movement from the corner of her eye. She looked, but saw nothing. Then there was movement again in her peripheral vision, this time in the opposite direction. She twisted around, but whatever it was was gone. She put her hand to the hilt of her sword and tried to stand, but the stinging pain ripped through her leg and she gasped. When she looked down she found it crawling with insects burrowing and biting into the wounds.
She screamed and slapped at her leg.
Yates started to wakefulness beside her. “What? What is it?”
Karigan kept pummeling her leg, regardless of the howling pain, until she realized there were no insects. None at all. Illusion? All she’d managed to do was start the wounds oozing again through their makeshift bandages.
“Karigan? What’s happening?” Yates reached for her, clamped his hands around her arm.
“N-nothing. I thought . . . I thought I saw something is all.”
“Are you sure it’s nothing?”
“I’m sure. Bad dream, or the forest is playing tricks on me.”
Yates did not seem to know what to say, so they sat in silence for some time, the wet forest
drip-drip-dripping
all around them. Finally he cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Uh, I’ve got a very full bladder. Think you can help me, er, find a place?”
drip-drip-dripping
all around them. Finally he cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Uh, I’ve got a very full bladder. Think you can help me, er, find a place?”
Karigan did not want to stand. “I will tell you where to go.”
“Promise you won’t make me walk into a tree? Or fall down a hole?”
“No promises,” she said in a weak attempt at humor. “You’ll have to trust me.”
“There is no one I trust more,” Yates said very quietly.
A hollow place inside Karigan ached at his words. He trusted her, he trusted her to help him get through this, to get out of this forest. If she were seeing illusions, how could she trust herself? How could she take care of him when she was falling apart?
She took a deep breath. First things first. She directed him away, step by step, telling him when to lift his feet over a tree root or when to skirt a boulder. When he was some yards away, she gazed in the other direction to give him privacy while he took care of his needs. She’d have to take care of her own soon, but she just did not want to move her leg. She kept glancing at it to ensure there were no insects on it, real or imaginary.
When Yates finished, she guided him back. He remained standing. “I assume it’s morning.”
“It’s gray out,” Karigan replied, “so night is gone.”
“You still think we should stay here?”
“Yes, in case the others come looking for us.”
He nodded.
And so began a day of waiting, the mist wafting around as if it were a living mass that coiled between the trees and encircled them. Karigan and Yates ate their half-rations. Yates kept standing and sitting and standing, and looked like he wanted to wander off, but one jolting trip over a downed branch convinced him not to wander far. The monotony of gray throughout the day overwhelmed Karigan with the desire to nap and she had to shake herself awake more than once. The pain of her leg was tiring, and she feared whatever ichor the thorns contained had poisoned her. How bad? There was no way of telling.
At least nothing had come to make a meal of them. Yet. And there’d been no sign of the illusory insects feeding on her leg. She swatted her neck and corrected herself: real insects were indeed making a meal of them one nibble at a time. She was astonished that the biters of Blackveil seemed no worse than those on the other side of the wall. Perhaps biters were already plague enough that the tainted magic of the place did not affect them.
“They’re not coming back for us, are they,” Yates said for perhaps the hundredth time. He stood facing away from her, as if he could force his eyes to see again.
“Don’t know,” Karigan replied. “They certainly won’t find us if we’re stumbling around the forest.”
“Waiting around isn’t like you,” he said.
She supposed it wasn’t, but a lethargy had settled over her, and waiting in this instance seemed the sensible course. She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“I was just thinking that I’d made a sensible decision to wait, and then I wondered since when had I started making sensible decisions?”
As the bleak day passed, Karigan fell into a restless sleep filled with dark shapes and a sense of loathing. A rustling awoke her. Yates was sitting beside her and appeared to be half asleep himself. He hadn’t made the noise—it was farther off. She glanced around and caught movement, maybe a shadow, leaping between trees, and almost as soon as she saw it, it was gone.
“What was that?” she murmured, feeling muzzy-headed.
“What was what?” Yates asked.
“Thought I saw something.”
“Forest playing tricks on you again?”
“Maybe,” Karigan replied.
Some moments passed, then Yates jerked his head up. “Now I think I’m
hearing
things.”
hearing
things.”
“What?”
“Horses.”
Karigan was about to tell him he
was
hearing things until she heard them herself, the sound of snorting and several hooves muted on the forest floor. Then she saw them a way off through the woods, six or eight dark gray horse forms ambling between the trees, pulling at sparse vegetation from branches as they went, moving with the mist, never straying from it, almost wearing it as a cloak.
was
hearing things until she heard them herself, the sound of snorting and several hooves muted on the forest floor. Then she saw them a way off through the woods, six or eight dark gray horse forms ambling between the trees, pulling at sparse vegetation from branches as they went, moving with the mist, never straying from it, almost wearing it as a cloak.
“You’re not hearing things,” Karigan whispered to Yates.
The horses paused, lifting noses to the air, no doubt scenting Karigan and Yates. Karigan narrowed her eyes, wondering how prey animals like horses had survived Blackveil. Then she discerned that perhaps they were not simple horses. Their eyes gleamed amber-red through the mist, and their underbellies and the bottoms of their necks were armored with scales that rippled in the weak light. In fact their movements differed from ordinary horses; they seemed more flexible, their necks more sinuous. One shook its head and she realized even the manes were not ordinary, but bristle-stiff. She shuddered, both fascinated and appalled.
The band continued along, fading away with the mist, vanishing utterly. She described them to Yates.
“Just like everything else in this place,” he grumbled. “Not normal. Definitely not normal.”
“They must be descended from the horses the Arcosians left behind,” Karigan surmised. “Somehow they adapted to the forest.” Or else Mornhavon had altered them as he had other creatures, she thought, but did not add.
The mist horses did not reappear and the interminable day began to fail.
“Maybe my moonstone will help the others find us,” Karigan said, and she was sorry she hadn’t thought of it the previous night.
By the time it was full dark, it had started to pour again. The light of Karigan’s moonstone flared out from beneath their simple shelter, turning the rain into threads of silver fire.
Karigan awoke again to a sense of movement. They’d made it through another night even though, once more, both of them had failed to keep watch. Yates snored softly beside her. It was gray again and Karigan began to wonder if it was really the vapor of the forest, or if like Yates, she was losing her eyesight.
And her mind.
Movement. A black figure floated among the trees. She thought of the mist horses, but the form was human in shape. Had they been finally found by the rest of their companions? “Lynx?” Her voice emerged as a raspy whisper. Despite the wet of the forest, her throat was dry. “Lieutenant Grant?”
No one answered.
Using the bonewood, Karigan struggled to her feet, ignoring the pain striating her leg. When finally she stood, the figure ran off in graceful bounds, fleet of foot and soundless, and then vanished. Karigan tried to run after it, but her leg betrayed her and she fell with a cry.
Yates was up instantly, crawling toward her, his hands feeling the way. When he reached her, he patted her arm, touched her face.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
“I’m passable,” she lied. “Thought I saw something—or someone—again, but it’s gone. I think I’m going mad.”
“Please don’t,” Yates said with a feeble smile. “We’ve enough problems.”
He had, Karigan thought, no idea.
They returned to their shelter and the day passed much the same as the previous one, though Karigan felt less well and gave Yates her half of the morning ration. She did not feel up to eating, and with a sickly languor weighing her down was more inclined toward sleeping.
“You are very quiet,” Yates said.
“Sorry. Not much to say.”
“I wish you’d tell a story or something to help pass the time.”
She thought about the legends of Laurelyn and Castle Argenthyne because of where they were, and because her mother always sang and told her stories of Laurelyn to soothe her when she was little. She did not, however, even possess the energy to tell a story.
The lethargy settled in, took on a dreamlike quality. She saw the figure again. It tumbled and leaped through the trees like an acrobat. She tried to stir, tried to speak to Yates, but could not seem to do either. Yates just sat there, gazing unseeing into the forest.
The figure somersaulted right up to her and came to rest on bent knee. His face and head were encased in a looking mask just like the tumbler that had been at the king’s masquerade, but the mirror of this mask was tarnished and corroded. She could barely see her reflection in it.
The tumbler then rose and backed away, and with a flourish pointed to others stepping out from behind trees, ladies and gentlemen in ragged finery, faded longcoats and yellowed lace. They wore masks of grotesque horned demons and ferocious creatures with gaping, toothy maws, the eyeholes empty sockets. They leered at her.
Discordant music wafted through the woods and the ladies and gentlemen danced, their movements jerky, dead. A mockery of the king’s masquerade ball.
This is not real,
she thought. Just the bent, craggy trees with their crazy limbs seeming to drift in the fog. Just her own madness making her see things.
she thought. Just the bent, craggy trees with their crazy limbs seeming to drift in the fog. Just her own madness making her see things.
She still could not move or speak, but this time when the tumbler knelt before her, she gazed at her wan reflection in his mask behind the tarnish—until it changed. A vision took hold. Blood splashed the looking mask like crimson rain on a window, then smeared away revealing a face. Not her own, but one she knew well. The king’s. She swallowed hard. His face was pallid, lifeless, the stained mask making it look diseased. The vision pulled back. He lay in bed and people in black surrounded him like mourners. And it was gone. The looking mask returned to its dull countenance.
“No!” Karigan cried. “Tell me!”
The tumbler leaped away.
“Karigan?” Yates said anxiously.
The dancers twirled away into the mist, and with each blink, the tumbler became more distant. Karigan staggered painfully to her feet with the aid of the bonewood and attempted to pursue him.
“Karigan?” This time Yates’ voice was sharper, alarmed.
She kept going, bent on seeing more in the looking mask. Tears of pain and grief washed across her cheeks. What was this vision of the king? What had become of him?
But the tumbler was gone. She searched the shadows, breathing hard, her body shaking with exertion and pain.
Several pairs of green glinting eyes stared back at her. The shadows came to life. Large, bristling shadows.
Oh, gods,
she thought.
she thought.
“Karigan?” Yates called, his voice quavering with fear.
She glanced back, saw more pairs of eyes, dark forms snuffling near him. A pack of Blackveil’s creatures had scented them out, two helpless people, one blind and the other injured—easy prey.
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