First Rider's Call (49 page)

She lost more precious time trying to locate someone to fix the fence. Hep the stablehand had gone into the city to tend to his wife, Flora, who had gone into labor with their first baby. In the end, she rigged a temporary fix herself.

As she put the final finishes on the fence, a breathless boy of the Green Foot ran up to her with a message from Captain Carlton admonishing her to join him and the captains of the other branches for their weekly meeting.

“He’s a bit annoyed, ma’am,” the boy warned her, “that you’re late.”

Sweaty and dirty, but with no time to spare for cleaning up, she ran full tilt to the castle and through the corridors to the meeting chamber. She charged into the room, and all the captains: guard, navy, cavalry, army, and Weapons, along with their aides, looked up at her. All Mara wanted to do, in her dirty and disheveled uniform, was turn and run back the way she had come.

Captain Carlton abruptly ordered her to sit, criticized her dress and lack of punctuality, and from there things deteriorated. Mara groaned, remembering how each captain angled and petitioned for their part of the treasury, and how every point she brought up in favor of the Green Riders was summarily cast down with, “You’ve got supplies freely given.”

She tried to explain that Stevic G’ladheon’s gift of supplies only covered uniforms and gear—not Rider pay, food, horses, or feed. She did not get a chance to add that having supplies freely given by Stevic G’ladheon left more of the treasury for the other branches to argue over.

This was a preliminary skirmish. The captains were to put their needs in writing and submit them to their superiors, who would hash it out from there. From that point, the captains pointedly ignored Mara. They discussed the crush of soldiers in their barracks, drill schedules, repairs needed, and so forth. Whenever she attempted to speak up, she was summarily cut off.

“Greenies don’t drill,” she was told, “so don’t waste our time with your suggestions.” Or, “You’ve got your own half-empty barracks. How could you understand how our soldiers must live?”

With growing frustration and alarm, Mara realized the other officers had the idea that Green Riders were somehow privileged and a useless holdover from the old days. “We carry half your messages these days,” said Captain Hogan of the light cavalry. “What are you complaining about?”

All too clearly she saw how their disrespect for the Green Riders filtered down all the way to the lowest ranks. How could Captain Mapstone manage such open hostility on a daily basis? She was sure the captain had honed her skills in dealing with her colleagues, but it put her in a difficult spot. How could she explain to them there were so few Riders because the brooches were not calling out for enough to work in the messenger service? How could she explain the magic? The mere mention of it might put her on even worse footing with the officers.

Mara gnashed her teeth as she rehashed the events of the day through her mind. And her stomach grumbled. She had eaten a hearty breakfast, thank the gods, but had had no time for other meals, and it was far too late to pester the cooks in the dining hall. No wonder Captain Mapstone had begun showing signs of strain. A day like this one, day after day, was bound to wear anyone down. Mara was certain the meeting had been enough to straighten her springy hair. At least the captain had had an aide of some sort to depend on for many things. Mara had only herself. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she’d cry.

Barracks loomed ahead unlit and quiet. Everyone was gone on an errand, except for Ephram. No light winked in the injured man’s window, so he must have turned in for the night.

It struck Mara just how still and silent it was, like a brooding shadow. The crickets had left off their chirruping. No guards patrolled this way. Not even a breeze shifted on the dewy grasses. It seemed clouds had been drawn over the stars like a shroud.

I am tired.
Mara tried to shake off her feeling of unease.
Barracks is empty, but for one Rider. Of course it’s dark and quiet.

Her sense of unease only intensified as she mounted the steps and paused on the threshold. An unlit lamp sat on a table by the entrance. She touched the wick, and with a mere thought, light sprang to life.

The light twisted and stirred, as if doing battle with the night, flickering ungainly at the walls. Floorboards moaned beneath her feet all too loudly in the dense, dark silence. She squinted into the shadows, but discerned nothing amiss.

She paused by Ephram’s door. No light filtered from beneath. Carefully she opened the door to check on him. He writhed on his bed, muttering. Concerned, Mara entered and stood beside his bed. His eyes were wide open but unseeing. Was he dreaming with his eyes open?

“They seek . . .” he muttered.

“Ephram?” Mara said, alarmed. She nudged his shoulder. “Ephram, wake up!” But he did not. He stared at nothing and gabbled unintelligibly like a man with a fever.

With a prickling, Mara turned suddenly as though she were being spied upon from behind. The lamplight swirled across the walls. When it stilled, nothing seemed amiss, but a sense of extreme danger washed over her.

A door groaned open somewhere down the corridor. Mara licked her lips, tasting the salt of perspiration. Her ability burned within her like the core of a blacksmith’s forge. She must radiate the heat.

With a last apprehensive glance at Ephram, she stepped out into the corridor. It was a nightmare corridor of dancing, darting shadows and palpable dread.

The opened door led into Karigan’s room.

What were the chances that it was Karigan who was within?

None.

By now, the lamplight would have announced Mara’s presence to whoever was there. Should she turn and flee from the unknown terror? Get help? She could not. She was drawn forward.

Each shaky step drew her inexorably closer to the open door, which stood like the black entrance to a tomb.

Sweat slid down her temple, her internal fire burning ever hotter.

She stepped into the doorway. Her lamp failed to illuminate each corner of the little room. She had visited the room so often when Karigan was in residence that there should be nothing sinister about it. Her bed was neatly made with a blanket folded at its foot. An old pair of boots, bent at the ankles and scuffed from much wear, stood against the wall. Yet, now, the room became an unfamiliar landscape of stark, angular shadows and invisible terrors. The room was cold, terribly cold, and threatened to quench Mara’s fire.

As she swung the lamp around, a brilliance flared on Karigan’s table. Strangely attracted, Mara stepped over the threshold and into the room. The crystal fragments of Karigan’s moonstone dazzled, reflecting and refracting the lamplight. They sparkled more than the dim lamplight warranted.

A hiss.

Mara whirled around.

A shadow detached itself from the wall, clutching Karigan’s greatcoat in one bone white hand, and a bit of blue hair ribbon in the other. The chain of a manacle dangled from its wrist.

Mara’s feeble lamplight gleamed on a lead crown.

Her mouth went dry. The summer evening had become bleak winter, a steely cold. Down in the city, the bell rang out the late hour in heavy, sonorous tones as though echoing the dread of this moment.

“We seek,” the shadow said, its voice a frosty almost-whisper, “the Galadheon.”

So stricken was Mara that she could not have spoken even if she willed it. Her hand fluttered at her hip where her saber would have hung had she been anywhere but on the castle grounds. She possessed no weapon, and she was certain it would have had little effect anyway.

The shadow creature stepped closer to her light. She made out flinty, impassive eyes; skin the shade of a corpse’s.

“We seek,” it repeated, “the Galadheon. You will tell us.”

The lamp slipped from Mara’s fingers and smashed to the floor, spreading oil across the old, wooden boards. Fire whooshed up between them, and the wraith brought up its arms to protect its face.

Laren gazed up at the clear sky. The Hunter’s Belt was migrating into the eastern horizon, and as the nights grew longer and the days shorter, it would reign dominant over the summer stars. The moon was brilliant, but did not diminish the brightness of the stars.

“Gods please help me through this,” she prayed, as she did every night.

Only after the castle grounds settled for the night did Laren dare step outside her quarters. She had learned that in the quiescence of night, her ability assailed her less, as though all the mental activity of others during the day somehow contributed to her problem.

By day she lay in bed, a pillow wrapped around her head to stifle the voice of her ability. It did not work of course. Only sleep brought her some measure of peace, though sometimes she could hear her ability intrude even on her dreams.

It commented on anything and everything, including her own thoughts and emotions. Slowly, she knew, it would push her to the brink when she just couldn’t stand the assault anymore. What she would do when that happened, she wasn’t sure.

Overlying everything was the guilt, the guilt that she had abandoned her Riders, leaving the entire operation in Mara’s hands.

Whenever her feelings of guilt welled up, her ability unswervingly told her “true” like a finger of condemnation.

A quiet cry of hopelessness escaped her lips and she continued prowling the grounds, trying to blank her mind.

The grounds near Rider barracks were quiet and the darkness held the weight of a cloak. A few tiny lights twinkled about the castle, but the grounds were soaked in shadow, only the moon outlining rooflines and walls.

The bell down in the city clanged out the hour, and she broke out in a sudden cold sweat. A sensation of terror overrode all other feelings of guilt and hopelessness. The source of the terror emanated from Rider barracks.

She ran toward barracks, though she desperately wanted to run in the opposite direction. The building was a shadow within shadow.

She ran toward what could be her very grave, and what compelled her forward in the face of such fear, she never knew. Did her fear for her Riders overcome her own sense of safety? Was it some inner strength? Or had she already been driven into madness?

A figure emerged from the shadow of the building. Loathing washed over her.

The figure crept toward her, paused, and crept closer.

Laren wanted to run, but she was held in place, as if ice had formed over her skin and solidified.

“We seek,” the wraith said, “the Galadheon.”

Lady Estora Coutre walked dim corridors, the lamps at low burn for the night. Her cousin would not be pleased if he ever learned she wandered the corridors unescorted at so late an hour, but she could not sleep, her heart filled with unease. Unease about the ultimatum her cousin planned to present to the king, from her father. She sensed she was but a game piece on an Intrigue board that others moved in some desired direction for their own benefit; powerless to move in her own direction. Her future was not her own.

She supposed her relationship with F’ryan Coblebay had been a secret retaliation against those who used her in their plots. A secret retaliation, yes, but one in which she held power—not over F’ryan certainly, for he had been as unpredictable as the winds, and not over her own emotions—but in the secret itself.

The castle corridors went for miles if one followed them through all their various wings, and up and down the various floors. She passed servants’ quarters, her shawl pulled up to cover her hair and shadow her face so none would take special note of her. The quarters were subdued, though some folk were about: a cook with flour smudged on his cheek retiring for the night, a laundress who set down her burden of dirty linens and rubbed her sore back.

She avoided the administrative wing, its corridors dark, cold, and cheerless. Even during the day, those older corridors did not invite her in. They stirred within her a sense of age and ghostly presence, and things best left undisturbed.