First Rider's Call (74 page)

Dusk was settling in when Lil stumbled upon the ancient road, a road built and once used by Eletians before the coming of Mornhavon. She had never seen Argenthyne in its full glory, for it had fallen before her birth, but like all children, she had heard tales. Yes, even in the war-ravaged orphan camps, there was the magic of stories, and the most magical were those about lost Argenthyne.

A gruff veteran named Ansel visited the children and told them the tales. He was missing an arm, and a patch covered one of his eyes, but he never failed to mesmerize them with his descriptions of Laurelyn’s shining castle of moonbeams. The children, famished in mind and body, had hung on to his words as if they were physical sustenance.

She stumbled over a loose cobble, painfully jarring the knife wound, but at least managed to prevent Karigan from falling. She paused to rest, her eyes drawn to the side of the road. A statue stood there gazing back, arms upraised. A mage who had worked on the building of the wall claimed these statues had once held globes that collected the rays of sun, moon, and stars, and showed the way through the night.
Lumeni,
he called them. This statue no longer possessed a globe, nor did she have hands with which to hold one.

Lil had not known Argenthyne, but she was not unfamiliar with this road. The old mage had called it the Avenue of Light. She was unsure of the Eletian name for it. She had traveled upon it before, and it only looked more decrepit, more overcome than ever. Perhaps in the old days, some vestige of the goodness of the Eletians had lingered before Mornhavon had perverted the forest wholly.

She now knew where she was, and where the road would lead her. She would seek the tower, and even if there was no help for Karigan there, she could reach the other side of the wall through it.

She forced the body forward, realizing with alarm her fingers and toes had gone numb. She shoved her hands beneath her armpits.

“C’mon, Karigan, lass,” she murmured. “Stay with me.” She decided to sing. Whether it was the novelty of using a real voice, or a way to amuse herself, she wasn’t sure. She did hope a bit of the song found Karigan.

Lil paused singing and considered the racket she was making. Karigan was completely tone deaf! It should, she thought, scare off any of Mornhavon’s beasts that might be lurking about.

Inspired, and warmed by the singing, she took a deep breath and continued the song.

Karigan wasn’t sure what inspired her to sing the inane song. She could barely move her frozen lips to form the words, and the cold air stole her breath away. Was it a song Estral had taught her? She hardly remembered who Estral was. A musician?

She sagged against a tree trunk and took up the words once again. They were more croaked than sung, the effort pulling painfully at her wound.

Lil liked shouting the song into the forest, hearing her voice—Karigan’s really—echo, even though it was off key. She hoped all of Mornhavon’s creatures were cowering at the sound. Truly, she was trying to send a message: A bold Rider walks here. Beware.

Perhaps she was taking an unnecessary risk by drawing attention to Karigan, but she couldn’t help herself. There was nothing so empowering as walking nonchalantly through the enemy camp. Besides, Karigan’s body was warming a little with the singing. She launched into it again.

By the time Lil reached the wall and had begun walking in the direction of the tower, she had sung Karigan’s voice hoarse. It had helped pass the time at least, and helped her keep a steady pace. She had come this far even before the forest turned an inky black with nightfall.

When she finally came upon
Haethen Toundrel,
she wondered belatedly whether or not it would admit her, as it always had during her life.

She grasped the brooch, and pressed her other hand against the stone. The brooch tingled beneath her fingers, and the stone absorbed her.

She emerged into the central chamber of the tower, a place she had not laid eyes on for three ages. She gathered the keepers hadn’t maintained their vigil from the towers in many a year, so it was with a little surprise that she found the chamber brightly lit, and a figure pacing back and forth across it, his long beard bristling. He halted when he noticed her.

“Well, well, well,” he said, “as I live and breathe. I can see you, Liliedhe Ambriodhe.”

“You do not live, nor do you breathe,” she said.

“Hmph! Neither do you, for that matter.”

“At least I’m accepting it.”

Merdigen grumbled to himself. “Then what, may I ask, are you doing possessing the body of this young woman, hmm?”

“I’m not
possessing
it, I’m just borrowing it—to help save this Rider’s life.”

“Hmph.” Merdigen tugged on his beard and drew his bushy brows together. “Well, don’t bother.”

“Hey? I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”

“I said, don’t bother. The wall is going to fall and all will be lost.”

At Lil’s incredulous silence, he added, “One of those Riders of yours claimed he intended to mend the wall. Instead, he’s undermining it.”

Lil wanted to speak, wanted to say it couldn’t possibly be so, but just then, her energy began to falter and fluctuate, straining her bond with Karigan. As she felt Karigan slipping away, across the chamber a hand grew out of the stone wall, followed by another. Then there was a face molded into stone, molded around a figure. Finally a person emerged into the chamber, an Eletian in white armor.

PENDRIC

At first, after Pendric’s father was killed in Blackveil, the soldiers tried to watch over him. Captain Reems offered him an escort if he wished to accompany his father’s remains back to Woodhaven.

He’d have liked nothing better than to leave, but traveling away from the wall, he knew, would only shred his mind. The voices were ever more persistent, ever more desperate as they clawed away inside his head.

So Pendric stayed. Initially the soldiers deferred to him because of his rank, but he had nothing to offer them, no leadership, no wisdom, nothing. He had nothing but the voices in his mind.

He entered the encampment only for food and wine, and the soldiers began to look upon him as something strange, a feral beast, and they kept their distance.

The voices screamed at him for help, pleaded him to come.

“I am mad, I am mad!” He banged the heels of his hands against his head trying to dislodge the voices.

It was all Alton’s doing—he knew it. Alton had always hated him, and now Alton was making him go mad. It wasn’t good enough he had killed Lady Valia and Landrew. Now he had to destroy Pendric’s mind, too.

Suddenly there was a voice he recognized twining through his mind. A calm, rhythmic voice from which all the others recoiled.

If the other voices recoiled from Alton, then surely they were not the evil ones. And they were calling for help. Yes, all they had wanted all along was his help.

He allowed the voices to lead him along. He walked until he came to a tower embedded in the great stone wall. He blinked in surprise to find Alton’s horse standing beside it, its dark coat dull and tail snarled with burdocks. Its ribs were sharp against its sides.

Alton, Pendric determined, was somehow in the tower wreaking his evil. He had no choice but to enter and stop him.

ELETIAN ARROW

Karigan!
heard her name called from afar,

She heard her name called from 4 afar, threading through the snowy forest. She kneeled in the snow, arms wrapped around herself, one shoulder leaning against a tree trunk. She closed her eyes. She was beyond freezing.

The call was too far away, and she too drowsy to respond. She wanted to rest and sleep. She sank deeply into darkness and peace.

A horn bellowed, and clumps of snow fell from branches above and plopped on her head. She fluttered her eyes open. The horn blared again, and she recognized the call, the Rider call.

Why wouldn’t it leave her alone? First it had made her join the Green Riders, now it was forcing her to leave this place of tranquility. She decided to ignore it and close her eyes. She had ignored it before, and she could again.

But it wasn’t to be so. It was as if somebody grabbed her by her shortcoat and slapped each cheek. Her cheeks stung and light assaulted her eyes. She found herself kneeling not in snow, but in a chamber of stone, and leaning not against a tree, but against a fluted column.

She gasped, trying to make sense of everything.

Columns ringed the whole of the chamber, and a green oval of stone glistened on a pedestal at its center. Above the pedestal a dark cloud floated glistening with . . . stars? An old man paced beside it. He was twisting his fingers in his long whiskers, and for some reason she had a sort of secondary vision of him pacing back and forth on a vast plain cloaked by night.