First Rider's Call (75 page)

“Terrible, oh, most terrible,” he was muttering to himself.

Beyond both the old man and the pedestal, on the far side of the chamber, stood an Eletian. Karigan did not know where she was, or why she was there. She had no idea of what was going on or why, but she
did
recognize the Eletian, with the tines protruding from the forearms and shoulders of his armor. He held an arrow nocked to a bow. The tip of the arrowhead glinted, and she could feel his line of sight searing into her heart.

She could not move, could not speak.

“The time of watching is over,” the Eletian said. “And despite the warning, you came to the wall anyway.”

“Let us be reasonable here,” the old man said. “There is a crisis at the moment and—”

“I will not hear an illusion,” the Eletian snapped. “I have my duty to fulfill.”

“This is an outrage,” the old man sputtered. “The wall is—”

“The outrage is that this Galadheon is tainted, tainted by dark wild magic.”

“Indeed?” The old man turned to Karigan and crooked a bushy eyebrow.

“One,” the Eletian continued, “whose presence could bring about the destruction of the wall.”

Karigan’s temper rose, and her anger warmed her. She rose unsteadily to her feet, sucking in a breath at the wound that stretched beneath her ribs.

“Endangers the wall?” the old man asked. “Like the Rider who calls himself a Deyer?”

Both Karigan and the Eletian looked at the old man and stared.

“Alton?” It was the first word Karigan managed to utter, her voice strangely hoarse.

“Yes,” the old man said. “He called himself that. Claimed he was going to fix the wall. He’s merged with it now, destroying it instead.” He tugged on his whiskers, his face full of despair.

“Where?” Karigan croaked.

“I can’t tell you,” the old man said. “It seems you Riders have grown deceitful. So many lives were sacrificed to build this wall, and now you would undo it.”

“No!” she cried. “Mornhavon is—we—”

“His taint is within you,” the Eletian said, and he drew the bowstring taut.

“You don’t understand!”

As the words left her mouth, the Eletian loosed the arrow. It barreled at her and she could not move. Then a familiar tug on her brooch carried her through time, briefly enough that she had been pushed ahead a mere moment. When the traveling ceased, Karigan stood in the same spot, but the Eletian’s arrow clattered against the wall behind her as though it had passed right through her. It all had happened in the span of a heartbeat.

You are on your own now,
said the distant voice of Lil Ambrioth.
I have nothing left to give.

The Eletian scowled and was reaching for another arrow when behind him the wall came to life with silver runes.

A man emerged through the wall. He was wild and unkempt, his eyes haunted. His clothes looked as though they had once been the fine attire of a lord, but now they hung from him, soiled and torn. With some surprise, Karigan recognized Alton’s unpleasant cousin, Pendric.

The runes pooled on the stone beneath his feet, and he seemed oblivious to all else. When the runes streaked across the chamber and veered under an arch and into its dark passage, he followed, and Karigan darted after him.

The runes illuminated the short passage that ended at a stone wall. Sprawled on the floor was Alton.

“Alton!” she cried. She pushed past Pendric and knelt beside him, and placed her hand on his chest. Its rise and fall was barely perceptible. Otherwise, she would have taken him for dead.

Pendric hovered over them, fists cocked, a face devoured by rage and madness. “He should die.”

“No!” Karigan sprang up at him, but he punched his fist into her wound. She staggered back against the passage’s wall. The pain stole her breath away, turned her sight red. She sank inward, inward into the darkness and snow again. The last image of her fading sight was of the Eletian and the old man peering in from the end of the passage, before she collapsed across Alton’s legs.

HUNTED

Alton perceived the crackling around him. The fissures that spread through the wall were like vast, black crevasses he could not cross. The harder he worked trying to fix the wall, the more it seemed to fracture.

The guardians of the wall panicked around him, trying to resist his song. He perceived anger and enmity directed toward him. Why this should be so, he did not understand. At least, not at first.

As the stone continued to crack, slowly undermining the strength of the great wall, it dawned on him that maybe he was doing something wrong, that maybe he had the song wrong and he was somehow responsible.

But he sang the song Karigan had so carefully taught him, and she wouldn’t lie to him, would she? She loved him, she . . .

He was confused, and in his confusion, he stopped singing, but he could still discern the crackling.

No reassuring words came to him, or urged him on. Karigan’s voice did not guide him, and the intensity of his purpose faded away. It had been, he realized, someone else’s purpose. It was as though a veil was now lifted from his mind. Shadows fled and the fabric of lies unraveled. He had been overcome, overcome and duped.

He looked anew at the chasms and cracks throughout the wall, and knew they were strung out for a great length. He had been working hard to accomplish what he believed was the mending of the wall, but it had only worsened.

Hastily he tried to pick up the true rhythm of the song within the wall, the true song of the guardians, but it was difficult to find the harmony. So many of the voices had lost the key, sang to a different measure.

He despaired of what to do, lamenting his weakness that he should fall prey to the darkness of Blackveil and bring all this upon his people. He was filled with self-loathing. It was too far gone for him to fix, too big a problem for him to overcome.

The word vibrated along the crystalline structures. The one who uttered it was different from all the guardians, and Alton thought he knew the texture of it, the venom behind it.

The voices of the guardians clustered around Pendric, and it was like the build-up of a storm bearing down on him. They radiated all of Pendric’s molten hatred and would tolerate him no more.

Alton was knocked out of the wall, back into the world, back into his battered and ill body. He was conscious long enough to feel a hot tear slide down his cheek.

It was the horses again. They herded Laren, Garth, and Ty to the tower. Garth barely had time to grab a lantern so they could actually see where they were going.

Condor had clamped his teeth on Laren’s sleeve and practically dragged her all the way. When she saw the forlorn Night Hawk keeping vigil outside, she knew Alton or Karigan, or both, were within. They had to rein in their impatience and excitement as they puzzled over how to enter a tower with no obvious door.

It was Garth who happened to lean against the tower and brush his brooch with his hand. He fell into the tower—it
swallowed
him was the only way she could think of to describe what she saw. When he re-emerged, grinning broadly, they had their answer about how to enter the tower.

Among the wonders of the tower was an old man who claimed to be a “projection” of a great mage called Merdigen.

“An illusion,” Ty explained, his equanimity unshaken.

Merdigen
hrrrumphed.
“I am much more than a mere illusion.”

Ultimately, he led them to the passage where her Riders lay. Alton was unconscious, hot and feverish. Wounds on his legs festered, and there were old bruises on his face. He looked as though he had been through a great deal of torture and pain. Karigan lay across his legs, and in contrast, was freezing cold; so cold that ice crystals had formed on her eyelashes. Blood stained her midsection and Laren thought her dead until Ty knelt beside her and perceived her breathing.

A third body lying beside them showed no signs of life.

Laren gazed apprehensively at her Riders, one burning up, the other icy cold. How could they be alive? Maybe one had moderated the condition of the other . . . She knew they both must have incredible tales to tell, of their passing through Blackveil. But first she’d have to ensure they lived long enough to tell those stories later.

They decided to keep Karigan and Alton in the tower, wishing to move them as little as possible, and taking advantage of the shelter the tower offered. They were made comfortable near the hearth, and their wounds washed. They tried to bring down Alton’s temperature, and raise Karigan’s.

A soldier from the encampment with mending skills made poultices to draw out the poison lingering in Alton’s veins. She made one also for Karigan’s wound so it would not fester.

Periodically Alton came to, mumbling, whispering Karigan’s name. They gave him water and broth as they could, and watched over him as he slept.

Karigan proved to be more of a puzzle. The stab wound was not life-threatening since the flow of blood had been stemmed, yet she remained in some deep level of unconsciousness. No matter how many blankets they piled on her, she continued to emanate cold. Eventually they set ablaze wood that Garth had collected, in the great hearth.

“Not all battles are fought with swords,” Merdigen said.

Laren glanced at him, trying to fathom some hidden meaning, and then had to remind herself he was but an illusion, projection, or . . . whatever.

Eventually Alton’s lucid moments grew longer, and with nourishment, he was able to speak of his nightmare in the forest.

Karigan’s part of the tale, however, remained a mystery.

Karigan had never before been caught in so violent a blizzard. She blew into her cupped hands to warm them, but the wind sucked away her breath. There was no horn to call her back this time, only the wind assaulting her ears.

And she was being hunted. Hunted by some amorphous, shadowed creature that slipped through the forest. She heard its chuffing breaths as it loped after her, then paused to snuffle through the snow.

Her arm pressed against her painful wound, she ran through the blizzard as best she could, falling and forcing herself back to her feet. The creature cried out in triumph when it found her trail again, and pursued. Karigan swallowed back sobs, tears freezing in the corners of her eyes. She could not outrun this thing, it was catching up too swiftly.

It would be so easy just to lay down in the snow, to let her fate be what it would be. Just give in.