First Rider's Call (42 page)

He took a deep breath and headed east, the direction of the rising sun, wishing he could see it. The cloying fragrance of blooming roses in the damp-laden air washed over him.

“What are you?”

Taken by surprise that the man addressed it directly, the sentience paused the feline in its attack.

Yes, it was the forest, but once it had been a man. The better question was:
Who
am I? The sentience had some suspicions thanks to its re-emerging memories. As it gazed at the man laying there on the ground, it decided to try something, something that would get around the shield that protected him, and open his mind.

The sentience bounded off into the forest. It knew the guardians were trying to reach the man, to call out to him. The sentience itself barely felt the lull of the guardians anymore. They were losing their power to call it back, subdue it, make it sleep and remain ignorant.

The sentience had glimpsed the other side of the wall, and wanted to know more, to explore that which lay beyond. It wanted to crush the wall and bring to bear its full self. The man might be the key.

The feline loped through the forest ahead of the man. Near the wall, the sentience would set its trap.

Hidden in the underbrush, the sentience settled the feline down into a crouch, and set to spreading its influence to an area near the wall. It pushed away layers of mist so that a mere gleam of sunlight thrust its way to the moist ground, producing a tendril of steam.

The sentience then expanded its mind throughout the forest, seeking the agent that would subdue the man for its purposes.

Beneath the column of leaden light, beneath the duff and soil, the sentience germinated seeds that had long lain dormant for lack of sunshine. Spidery roots quickly spread through the soil and shoots probed upward, seeking that shred of sun. Fighting their way through leaf litter and decaying matter, the shoots snaked up from the ground sprouting thorns along stems. Buds, closed tight, led the way in their journey, until maturing within moments to blue-black roses in full bloom.

The sentience enhanced their aroma—not to attract pollinators, but to attract the man. It waited.

The feline was hungry, demanded release to hunt, and struggled against the sentience’s hold, especially when the man-scent drifted near, discernable despite the strong fragrance of the roses.

The man emerged into view. He blinked in dazed fashion at the bleak sunshine and roses, and he sank to his knees and yawned. The sentience could tell he fought with himself to stay awake, but the roses overpowered him, and soon he wilted to the ground and slept. The man’s shield fell away.

The sentience retained enough control over the forest to hold predators at bay, and seeped into the man’s mind.

Unlike the last time the sentience had done this, when the man lay unconscious, it found a mind filled with vibrant color and sparks of energy. It found language, vision, and memory.

The sentience considered inhabiting the man’s body, using it to enter the world beyond, but it feared doing so. It feared leaving behind the safety of the forest, which was so much of what it was. It needed to know more about the outside world before venturing there.

The sentience paused its probing just to feel what it was like to be a man. It opened and closed a hand into a fist. The hands were large and strong. It flexed an arm, and felt gnawing hunger in the man’s stomach. There was pain, too, in his hip. Poison from the thorn scratches had begun to work its way into his blood, and soon he’d be experiencing the ill effects.

The lungs expanded with air, and the scent of roses was strong in the nose, though lacking the layers of nuance possessed by the feline’s olfactory organs. Eyes fluttered open and it took some experimentation to focus them.

It saw colors and shadings not even the sharp-eyed avian could detect. The shifting gold light pouring through the hole in the mist the sentience opened, the deep blue veins in the dark rose petals, the diseased brown leaves of an overhanging tree . . .

Reluctantly the sentience withdrew from the external sensations, thinking this was most familiar, that once it, too, had possessed a physical body of its own.

But the sentience couldn’t allow thoughts of Hadriax to distract it. Instead, it followed bits of the man’s memory—of suckling a mother’s breast, and the comfort it provided. The excitement of riding his first pony. The man-child rode the pony around a courtyard waving a wooden sword about.
I shall slay the bad man,
the child declared.
I shall slay Mor’van!
His family watched him, faces aglow.

The sentience leaped from memory to memory, catching shards of the man-child’s growth. Some included images of stoneworking, strengthening the sentience’s suspicions . . .

Finally it caught hold of a name.
Deyer. This man is Deyer.

It was like having double-vision as the sentience took in the memory of Deyer chipping away at a block of granite, while its own memories unfolded.

Deyer. Clan Deyer. Builders of fortresses and
walls,
expert stoneworkers who learned their craft from Kmaer nians to whom rock was like a living thing.

Builders of walls. Builders of
the
wall.

Fury so took the sentience that it nearly brought the man’s blood to a boil.

It deflected its fury to the feline, which burned from the inside out and turned into a heap of smoldering cinders.

The sentience focused its attention again on the man, Deyer. It fought to remain calm as it comprehended the man’s desire to repair the breach in the wall.

The sentience stumbled across a stray memory of the man looking at himself in a mirror, dressed in a green uniform. Upon his breast was pinned a brooch of gold in the shape of a winged horse. This is what the sentience had sensed hidden and shielded upon the man’s chest. But now it elicited a new surge of hate that toppled an entire thicket of trees south of their current location.

A Deyer
and
a Green Rider.

Only the utmost self-control prevented the sentience from killing the man. Instead, it formulated a new plan, a plan that would cause the wall to fall absolutely.

Before the sentience could carry out the next step of its plan, it stumbled upon a cluster of memories centered around a young woman. Her hair was brown and cascaded about her shoulders. She, too, was an accursed Green Rider.

They sat beneath a shade tree, overlooking a pleasant valley. They had eaten a picnic lunch, but the Deyer’s stomach was all twisted with anxiety, his emotions a mix of hope, dismay, and desire.
The breach in the wall is a disgrace to my family,
he said.

A thrill surged through him as she took his hand into hers. He marveled at how slender and perfect her hands were, and how his dwarfed them. They locked eyes, smiling at one another, and he hoped they might kiss, but the young woman, whose name was Karigan, dropped his hand and said,
Stone walls crumble with time.

The sentience sifted through the other memories of the young woman, but they were filled mostly with confusion and disappointment. Deyer’s feelings for her were strong, but disordered.

There was something else about the young woman that brought to mind Hadriax, though the sentience couldn’t quite touch precisely what the connection could be.

Her presence in Deyer’s mind gave the sentience an idea that would help fulfill its plan. For now, however, it seeped out of Deyer’s mind, turning to its own memories of Hadriax dressed in full military glory, amid the splendor of the imperial court. A fountain sprinkled merrily from the snouts of whimsical sea creatures. Flowers were in full bloom everywhere . . .

ILLUSION

lton awakened stiff and sore, his body trembling with chills. He rubbed his eyes not knowing how long he had slept. A residue of dark and formless dreams lingered in his mind.

The waking nightmare that was Blackveil Forest still surrounded him, but held itself at bay. He sensed an eagerness about it, anticipation. He worried what it held in store for him, but he had the protection of his special ability and the wall at his back.

The wall.
He allowed himself a grim smile. He would find his way out of Blackveil, and he’d make sure a message got through to King Zachary, warning him the forest was far more than it seemed. He’d give the king a first-hand account of it, of all he had seen and experienced. He had to, for he knew it was only a matter of time before the intelligence spread its power across the breach, and if they couldn’t repair the breach, D’Yer Province would be the first land in the path of danger. What would happen to the fields, the forests, and the people?

Alton had to help protect D’Yer Province and all of Sacoridia, no matter the cost.

He rose from the moist ground, body heat bleeding from him and gripping him in another bout of chills. Daggers ripped through his legs as he stood. The puckered thorn wounds oozed with a sickly yellow pus, and he knew it did not bode well for him. Nausea washed over him.

He supported himself against the wall, gagging, but bringing up nothing. It taxed his already weakened body, and he clung to the wall with all his strength.

Only sheer will propelled him forward, pain ripping through his legs with each step.

Behind him, the petals of blue-black roses shriveled and dropped to the ground, leaving behind only the thorny stems in a shaft of mist.

 

Someone lifted Alton’s head and helped him sip water. As it passed over his cracked lips and down his parched throat, he swallowed rapidly like one who has spent days stranded in a desert. He blinked open crusty eyes to see his savior. At first she was a blur, but when his vision cleared, he knew her at once.

“Karigan?”

“Shhh, you are ill,” she said. Her hair rested on her shoulders and was glossy with sunshine. Oddly, she wasn’t dressed in green, but in an ivory dress that sheened in a brightness that made his eyes hurt. She looked to be a celestial being of the heavens—she was beautiful.

“What are you doing here? How did you find me?”

She set aside the bowl of water and stroked back his hair. Her touch was light and feathery, and it sent chills racking through his body. When he gazed up at her, she wavered in his sight.

He closed his eyes. “I’m not seeing very well.”

“My poor Alton.”

When he opened his eyes again, his vision was steadier. Karigan’s features were serene and unperturbed. He could not remember her ever looking so peaceful, and it occurred to him that maybe he had died, and maybe she had, too. When he struggled to rise, she firmly pressed him back.

“Please, reserve your strength,” she told him. “You’ve a fever. You must use your strength to fight it.”

As if in response to her words, the chills left him and he burned. Perspiration beaded on his forehead.

“I feel terrible,” he said. “I want to go home. I have to . . . I have to tell the king. I have to tell him about the forest.”

She quieted him with shushing noises, all the while stroking his hair away from his face.

“I know, I know. You will be able to do this soon, but you’ve another task ahead of you.”

Alton sighed and closed his eyes, listening to the soothing tones of her voice.

“I think . . .” he began. “Thirsty. I’m so thirsty.”

She lifted the bowl to his lips, and when he finished drinking, he said, “I think I . . .”

He couldn’t quite manage the words. Karigan always left him perplexed. One moment she was his confidant and friend, and the next she would say or do something that terribly confused him, causing his feelings for her to range from extreme frustration and anger that she would toy with him so, to hope and—and—