First Rider's Call (23 page)

“Your copy is abominable. What happened? Did one of your little ghosts come tweak you on your back end?”

“N-no, sir.”

“I’m at fault,” Karigan said, “for disturbing him while he was focused on his work.” The man turned his withering glare on her, but she lifted her chin. She wasn’t afraid of him.

“You again,” he muttered. “What are you doing here?”

“Delivering documents on behalf of my captain.”

She picked them up and passed them to him. He glanced at them dismissively and dropped them on Dakrias’ desk. Karigan saw the flash of a black stain on his palm. Likely his penmanship was less neat than Dakrias’.

“I need that memorandum in three copies,” he told Dakrias, “and I need it now.”

“Yes, sir,” Dakrias said, and the man strode out of the records room.

Karigan waited until she was sure the man was out of hearing range. “Who was that?”

A totally deflated Dakrias replied, “The chief administrator, Weldon Spurlock.”

“Oh.” She had now managed to get on the wrong side of the head of administration, which did not bode well if she was going to be handling more administrative duties. She hoped her elbow mended
really
fast.

She took her leave of Dakrias so he could get back to work. As she passed the abandoned corridor, she did not dare to pause lest she see another apparition.

 

As Karigan approached officer quarters, she stopped in her tracks when she saw Mara leading Reita Matts away from Captain Mapstone’s door. Reita had been a Rider for only a few months longer than Karigan, and had proved to be perfect morale support during those early, difficult months.

Now Reita’s face was ashen. Tears leaked from her eyes, and she seemed unaware of her surroundings.

“What—?” Karigan began, but Mara curtly shook her head to forestall questions. She wrapped her arm around Reita’s shoulders, guiding her in the direction of Rider barracks.

Reita must have received some terrible news. Perhaps the captain could tell Karigan more, but when she entered officers quarters, she found the captain slumped over her worktable, head in her hands. A winged horse brooch glittered next to her elbow.

“Captain?” Karigan said, with growing alarm. “What’s wrong? I just saw Mara and Reita.”

Without looking up, the captain said in a heavy voice, “Reita’s brooch abandoned her. She wasn’t with us for even a whole year and a half, and her brooch abandoned her.”

Reita was no longer a Green Rider. No wonder she had looked to be in a state of shock. She loved the messenger service, and the other Riders were her only family. Not only had she “lost” an occupation she loved, but she’d be unable to be with her “family.”

“It’s the shortest term I’ve ever known a brooch to stay with a Rider.” This from the captain who had spent most of her adult life as a Green Rider. She had seen many Riders come and go during her years of service, but Karigan could tell she was taking this one particularly hard.

“It just seems odd,” the captain said. “The shortest term I have seen is three years. Five is more common, barring a Rider’s death.”

Not just odd,
Karigan thought,
but wrong.

Aye, wrong,
a separate voice seemed to echo her.

She shuddered it away, thinking that Dakrias’ notions about ghostly conversations were getting to her.

“Karigan—” the captain rubbed her face with both hands as though fatigued. “You’re excused for the rest of the day, unless Mara needs some help with Reita.”

Karigan nodded in acknowledgment and turned to leave.

“Just a moment.” The captain reached down beside her and hauled out a large leather pouch. “This is for you, from Arms Master Drent. Careful, it’s heavy.”

Karigan took the strap of the pouch with her left hand and immediately the weight of it dragged down on her. When she set it down, she heard a metallic clinking within. She opened the flap and found inside iron balls of various sizes. Hand weights.

“You will report to Arms Master Drent at nine hour sharp tomorrow morning,” the captain told her. “You are to bring the one pound weight with you.”

Drent?
Karigan opened her mouth to protest, but the captain cut her off with a crooked, mirthless smile.

“Penance.”

THE MUSIC OF THE NIGHT

In the starlit night, a horse jogged along the road with a perky clip-clop that had its rider humming a new tune to accompany the rhythm. The frogs chorusing in a bog he’d passed by and the chirruping of crickets filled out the harmony of his tune. Music was Herol Caron’s life, and he tried to fill every moment he could with it. His mother claimed that when he was born he came into the world singing.

Herol was on the road because of Estral Andovian. Estral had a manuscript that needed delivering to a Green Rider friend of hers in Sacor City, but no one was available to take it. She was not unaware of the irony of the situation. Herol smiled as he remembered Estral standing in Selium’s library, hands on hips, asking the gods in a tart voice, “Where’s a Green Rider when you need one?” She then looked about as if expecting one to materialize out of the air.

Herol offered to change his plans to carry the manuscript to Sacor City, an offer Estral gladly accepted. He did not mind such diversions, not at all. Minstrels often conveyed messages, letters, and small parcels as they moved about the realm. And he’d be delivering it to the castle grounds. He hoped that while he was there, he might persuade someone to let him play and sing in court, and maybe even for King Zachary himself.

He’d have a better chance, he reflected, if he were a master minstrel rather than a junior journeyman. If he couldn’t play for King Zachary’s court, he was sure the castle servants would enjoy some entertainment, and see to it he was well fed and looked after.

He also knew of some Sacor City inns where he’d likely receive excellent tips.

He clucked at the horse to keep its rhythm, enjoying the jingle of harness that added to the music.

The road he traveled was a curving side road that wound north of the Kingway. There was an out-of-the-way inn that would be more than eager to show its hospitality to a Selium minstrel. Inns on the main roads were all-too-frequented by minstrels. Those innkeepers were less than delighted by the sight of yet another minstrel, and the food and ale was less free-flowing, the common room less attentive to his talents.

Herol adjusted the lute case he wore strapped across his back, and rode on, enjoying the pleasant summer night. He still had a few miles to go before he reached the inn, and there was nothing between here and there except the music of the night.

He hadn’t traveled much farther when the horse, a reliable old plodder, shied and attempted to bolt. Herol held it in, cursing. The horse must have gotten a good whiff of some predator.

It flattened its ears and tossed its head, scraping at the road with its hoof. Herol peered about to see if he could discern what was disturbing the horse, but even with good night vision, he couldn’t make anything out.

Then Herol realized the sounds of the night had faded to silence—the frogs, the crickets. Nothing stirred in the surrounding woods.

A shadow slithered across the road ahead. No, it was darker than shadow, if that were possible. Cold desperation washed over Herol and a claw of ice wrapped around his heart.

The horse went berserk. It bucked and reared, and wheeled on its haunches. Herol held on for all he was worth, but the girth broke away and he flailed off backward, falling hard on the road and smashing his lute case beneath him. Disharmonious notes twanged from the lute as it broke into pieces.

The crazed horse bucked the saddle and saddlebags right off, and galloped in the direction from which they had come.

Herol tried to roll over onto his hands and knees, but the lute case rendered him helpless like a turtle stuck on its back. The fear that penetrated his heart made it hard to move or think.

He stopped struggling when he realized that terrible something, that deep shadow, stood over him, staring down at him with eyes of flint, its face that of a corpse.

Crooked, bony hands emerged from tattered black sleeves and reached for him.

Herol Caron may have entered the world singing, but he left it screaming.

THE STONE STAG

Karigan arrived at the practice field just as the last note of nine hour pealed from the bell tower down in the city. Soldiers were already at work in the practice rings going through drills, their efforts punctuated by grunts and the clack of wooden practice swords. The morning was hot and humid, and many were already stripped down to tunics.

A couple arms masters prowled about evaluating their trainees, pausing to correct them, and setting them off on additional sets of drills. One was Arms Master Gresia, who trained the Riders. She was a reasonable woman by all accounts, and Karigan watched after her longingly, knowing Drent was an altogether different matter. What did he have in store for her?

Karigan resisted the impulse to cringe, and turned about knowing exactly to whom the voice belonged, and exactly what “girl” he addressed.

There Drent stood, in all his puffed up glory, fists planted on his hips and biceps bulging, his little eyes glaring. “While your right arm mends, we’re gonna do a little work on you. I’m going to teach you how to fight with your left side.”

If Captain Mapstone had been looking to punish Karigan, she had certainly succeeded. Karigan had one last straw of hope that just maybe she could get out of this.

“Shouldn’t we check first with Master Destarion? I mean—”

“Don’t Master Destarion
me.
” Drent hacked and spat. “What we’re doing is with his approval. We’re not touching your bad arm. Yet. In the meantime, the rest of your body is mine.” He gave her a harrowing grin. “Just because you have one bad arm doesn’t mean the rest of your body should waste away. I want ten laps around the practice field.”