First Rider's Call (19 page)

The breach was as wide as his arms outstretched. It had been filled in with granite cut from ancient quarries once used in the making of the original wall they had uncovered nearby. The stonecutters, Alton among them, had sized blocks of granite to match exactly those of the wall. Craft-masters examined the original mortar and came up with their best binding material ever, and the repairwork was put in place, painstakingly and precisely matched with the original wall and its materials.

It was some of Clan D’Yer’s best work in a hundred years, maybe more; painstakingly crafted to the minutest detail. Yet it was not enough. One essential ingredient was missing: magic.

The illusory magic of the wall did not extend above the repairwork of the breach. As though a slice of stonework had been cut right out of the wall, Alton saw only sky.

Then the wind picked up again and sulfurous mist from Blackveil roiled and drifted over the repairwork. Alton remembered the mist well. As he had worked to repair the wall, it had clung to him, to his skin and clothes. He’d felt soiled by it, and though he washed vigorously every night, he was never quite able to cleanse himself of it.

He remembered glancing into Blackveil, as if to catch someone or
something
watching him, but observed nothing—just the shifting mist animating the black branches of trees into snakes or tentacles.

There were creatures that lived in Blackveil, one of the reasons the wall was so important a bulwark, and Alton fancied it was these twisted monstrosities that had watched him and the other laborers. And if they could not see the creatures, they were certainly able to hear their hoots and screams.

Then there was the night a big laborer named Egan slipped away from the campfire to relieve himself. He was never seen alive again. The only trace they found of him the next morning was blood staining some of the stonework he’d helped place in the breach the day before. No one dared venture into the forest to search for more evidence of Egan’s demise. From then on, the night watch was augmented by additional troops sent by Landrew.

Alton frowned as he drew his gaze along the repairwork. The granite ashlars he helped cut, shape, and set a couple years ago looked duller, older, than the rock around them, which had been cut and set a thousand years ago. The old rockwork retained its pink hue as though freshly cut. Black lichen splotched the repairwork, but none marred the original wall—not even a fleck of lichen, as though it were impervious to the weathering of nature and time.

It was very strange, he thought, how the same granite, drawn from the same quarry, could look so different.

Yet the wall was not impervious to all damage. Cracks radiated outward from the breach. Alton trailed his fingers across the rough texture of the wall, tracing one of the spidery cracks. He walked for several yards, following it. From one crack was born dozens of others, and no amount of re-pointing fixed the problem. The mortar merely cracked, too.

His frown deepened as he saw the extent of the damage. It had nearly doubled since his last visit.

How were they ever going to fix it?

“What do you think, nephew?” Landrew asked.

Alton had forgotten about the presence of his uncle and Sergeant Uxton. To his dismay, he saw that Pendric had joined them.

Rubbing his chin, he said, “Doesn’t look good.”

Pendric snorted. “We knew
that.
I told you, father, that he’d be of no help.”

“Perhaps if I had some time and less of an audience,” Alton said, glowering at his cousin.

“Of course,” Landrew said. “There will be time enough for you to examine the wall in detail during the days to come. We will leave you for now, though Sergeant Uxton must remain. Don’t linger too long, however, for your aunt will wish to see you.”

Alton waited until his uncle and cousin were well away before he turned to the sergeant. “Would you move off some paces, please, so I can think in peace?”

“A
few
paces, my lord, aye.”

Alton wasn’t sure why he was so self-conscious about having anyone witness him work. Maybe it was just more difficult to think and act when someone’s eyes were trained on him. Or maybe, because the Riders were so careful to conceal their special abilities, he did not want to expose himself before others should any magic come into play.

Somehow, he sensed the exposure of magic wasn’t going to be a problem just now. Despite the pull he had felt for so long, the wall remained as immutable as, well, stone, as though to mock him. No voices called to him, and the pull was inexplicably absent.

He laid his palms flat against the cold stone, his nose but inches from the wall. What did he expect? The wall to whisper its eternal secrets to him?

Nothing.

Alton debated whether or not to give up and return to his uncle’s tent when, like the shot of an arrow, silver lines streaked beneath his hands, forming glistening runes which swirled to life around the cracks, only to vanish in the blink of an eye.

Startled, he jumped backward, looking wildly about the wall for another sign, but finding nothing.

“Did you see that?” he demanded of Sergeant Uxton.

“See what, my lord?”

“The—” He stopped. The sergeant waited, watching intently. How could the sergeant have missed the flash of runes? Unless . . .

He placed his hands against the wall again, cajoling, wishing, and even cursing, but the wall revealed nothing. After a half hour of this, Alton pulled away, disgusted with himself for thinking he alone would discover the secrets of the wall.

He turned his back to it and stalked toward the tent village with Sergeant Uxton in tow, the wall rearing up ominously behind them. Then someone cried out in fear and Alton whirled just in time to see a large dark shape winging toward him.

BLACKVEIL

The sentience awoke to silence. The voices that entrapped it were strangely absent, focused elsewhere.

Cautiously, it extended a thread of awareness, gently probing through the forest, remaining as tiny and inconspicuous as possible so as not to alarm its guardians.

It slipped along the slime trail of a glistening slug for a short distance. It hid beneath rocks, and tunneled in the damp underground as a blind mole.

Warm blood gushed through the mole’s body, pumped by its heart in a rhythmic throb the sentience found oddly comforting and familiar. The mole burrowed deeper, using its powerful shoulders and spadelike front feet to shovel aside soil.

It stopped abruptly, and twitched its nose. The sentience felt its hunger, and with unthinking instinct, it gnashed at something soft, damp, and wriggly.

Repulsed, the sentience expelled itself from the mole and traced its way back through the tunnel.

The mole had a body, but it was a dim, stupid creature that relied on instinct.

This did not seem correct either. The air could not be trapped this way, trapped behind walls and barriers.

The sentience resurfaced to the world above as moisture sucked from the ground by the roots of a limp, dark fern. It joined with an insect, which sped away on buzzing wings. Through multifaceted eyes, it spotted a young avian tearing into the carcass of some unfortunate prey animal, gulping down flesh to bulge out its sinuous, scaled neck.

The insect alighted on the avian to feed on its blood, giving the the sentience an opportunity to transfer itself to a new host. The avian flapped its wings in agitation at the intrusion, but the sentience stayed quiet, sensing the creature’s hunger and lust for blood, feeling the warmth of its prey easing down its gullet and into its gnawing stomach.

The avian was merely base instinct, aware of nothing but its own needs, a vicious creature on all counts, its very heart dark. The sentience decided to seize control of it.

The avian struggled mightily, waving its head back and forth and squawking in protest, but it did not take long for the sentience to overcome its small mind.

Through the eyes of the avian, the world of the sentience’s confinement sharpened—the contrast of dark tree shadows and gray mist, logs decaying into duff, insects hovering in the dim light, the fuzz of mosses carpeting the ground. Something slurped into a black pool, piquing the avian’s interest, and registering “prey” in its mind.

The sentience stilled the avian’s predatory excitement, and again sent out a pinpoint of awareness through the forest. The guardians had not yet noted its wakefulness. Something else had taken their attention; they strained to reach out to the other side of the wall.

Intrigued by their preoccupation, the sentience, too, wished to see the other side of the wall.

It released a measure of control over the avian so it could fly. The avian stretched its wings, flapped, and spiraled upward through the trees, deftly missing entwined branches, and surged above the canopy. Thick mist enclosed the forest below, except for the spires of tree tops poking through. Even above the forest, the mist was still thick, banishing the sun to a murky white disk.

The sentience forced the avian unwaveringly northward, toward the wall, seeking the place where it had once detected weakness.

It wasn’t long before the layers of mist peeled away, revealing the wall directly ahead. The avian wheeled away, barely in time to avoid a collision. The sentience reined the creature into a glide, the wall swirling past its wingtip.

A brightness shone where there should have been wall, signaling the place of weakness. The sentience forced the avian to land on the broken wall, talons scrabbling on stone as it backwinged. The avian extended its serpentine neck, and with a blink, peered to the other side.

The sunlight, so unfamiliar to the creature, was too bright. It dropped nictitating membranes over its eyes to protect them.

A myriad of structures billowing in the wind filled the world below, and moving among them were many creatures.

Men,
came the unbidden memory.

They were scattered everywhere, these men, milling, moving, thriving. There was a power here, too. A power reminiscent of that which entrapped the sentience. Somewhere among these men, there was one who could speak with the guardians, one who could fix the weakness in the wall. One who could seal off the sentience’s prison forever.

Hunger roiled in the avian’s belly, and its gaze settled on the back of one who walked away from the wall.

The guardians chose that moment to become alert to the sentience’s wakefulness. Alarm buzzed through the wall and beneath the avian’s talons. Startled, the avian flapped its wings and launched into the air.

Come back to us, ancient one,
the voices called.

Overcome, the sentience lost control of the avian. The creature angled its wings for maximum speed and soared toward the man’s back, talons extended.

Men pointed and shouted. The man turned, eyes wide as it took in the avian arrowing in on him. He dropped on the ground just in time to evade talons.

The guardians screamed at the sentience, or maybe it was the wind screaming past the ears of the avian. The sentience could make no sense of it. The billowing structures—
tents
—were but blurs below. Men scattered in all directions, yelling and running in confusion.

Fear radiating from so much available prey aroused the avian’s predatory hunger to a new height. It turned on a wingtip, screaming for blood, bearing down again on the man, but this time he held a shiny object.

The sentience wanted to avert the avian’s mad flight, but the guardians distracted it with their songs of peace and contentment, and promises of tranquil slumbering. All it had to do was return; return to the other side of the wall and end the struggle. Just rest. Rest and sleep . . .

The avian circled above the man, flicking its forked tongue, before stooping into a dive.

The man did not cower but slashed with his blade, cutting the avian above its talon.

PAIN! RAGE! REVENGE!

Maddened, the creature surged upward with great wing-strokes to gain altitude for another diving attack. A projectile whizzed by its head.

Stupid creature,
the sentience thought, fighting the grogginess brought on by the guardians. With a mighty effort, it again exerted its will into the avian’s mind.

Survival,
it urged the avian, fearing for its own survival should the avian be killed.
Seek safety.

The avian tossed its head and screeched in angry resistance, and pursued prey.

This time it hunted for one without defense. Men scattered as it skimmed above their heads, and it lunged upon one who could not run fast enough. The man—
no, woman
—loosed a bloodcurdling scream as talons sank into her shoulders.