First Rider's Call (41 page)

His body had other hurts as well. His cheek was swollen with an oozing, painful bite of some kind, and he ached all over. He hadn’t broken any bones in his apparent fall from the breach, but his right side was pretty banged up, especially his hip.

Did his uncle send rescuers to search for him, or had they left him for dead?

He was surprised nothing had attacked him while he was unconscious, or even when he dared to sleep fitfully in the overwhelming black of night that blanketed the forest. The undergrowth rustled all around him, and he heard the occasional pad of feet. Sometimes he caught the glint of baleful yellow eyes in the shadows.

At least once during the night, some creature had come right up to him and snuffled his elbow. After that experience, he never hesitated to draw on his ability to shield himself whenever he felt threatened. Doing so, however, exhausted him.

He sensed something else at work in the forest, as well. The intelligence he had sensed from the other side of the wall surrounded him here. He didn’t doubt this very same intelligence was all that held back the predators that would otherwise tear apart an injured man. It chilled him to think that something without apparent form could possess such power.

He was grateful for the protection, but he suspected it was not provided out of a sense of charity. In fact, it frightened him to think it had so much power over him. What would happen when the intelligence grew bored with him and decided to drop its protection?

“Got to find the wall,” he croaked.

It was his only chance of escape. But which way was it? The clouds and mist obscured the sun and moon, so he couldn’t discern direction. If he actually located the wall, how would he know which way to turn to find the breach, without a point of reference?

The first step was nourishment, for if the predators of the forest didn’t take him, the constant wet and chill of the place, and starvation, would.

With this in mind, he scooped up a grub, feeling all the eyes of the forest watching him with great interest.

Occupying the body of a feline, the sentience crouched beneath the fronds of a fern and observed the man. It watched him constantly, watched him while he slept, watched him while he hunted, watched him while he voided. He was injured and weak, and this feline wanted badly to eat him, but the sentience suppressed the urge, and kept other predators at bay as well.

Somewhere, in some long ago time, the sentience had learned that observation was an essential tool for gaining knowledge about others. You watched the subject move about his daily life, and observed how he reacted to his environment. Sometimes you manipulated the situation to see how well the subject adapted.

In this case, the sentience observed the man was desperate, and not adapting at all well to the forest.

The man’s presence also prompted the re-emergence of memories. At one time, the sentience considered the people this man belonged to as repugnant.

Barbarians,
Hadriax had called them.

Hadriax—thoughts of him aroused even more memories. The sentience remembered him standing tall and proud as the ship he sailed upon departed home for far seas and lands unknown.

He had been a soldier, scholar, and gentleman in the court of Arcos V, and the sentience’s fellow adventurer and best friend.

The sentience lingered in its memories of piers crowded with well-wishers who tossed flowers into the harbor waters as the ships made way. The fishing fleet and the flagship of the Arcosian navy escorting them out . . .

Terravossay, the capitol of Arcosia, and the imperial seat, rose above the harbor, and that was their last glimpse of home, of the great buildings of the city with their fluted columns and golden domes, their perfect symmetry and playful fountains, the carvings in bas relief and statuary adorning courtyards. A place of intellect and culture.

High above all the other great buildings were the turrets of the God House, and higher still, the palace of the emperor of Arcosia.

Sorrow washed over the sentience, and the feline it inhabited yowled in pain, and groomed itself to find comfort.

The only answer it could summon was the idea of adventure, though this did not seem entirely correct. There was more to it.

As the sentience considered the man, it remembered bringing war to his people, many years of it. Yes, there had been conquest. Conquest for the glory of Arcosia.

But it had not all gone well, had it.

The feline raised its hackles and extended its claws. Those such as the man who now fed on grubs had defeated the armies of the empire. The feline crouched, ready to leap on the man and disembowel him. The sentience hadn’t felt such rage for an eternity. It would sink the feline’s claws into his flesh and rip at muscle and sinew; feed on the soft underbelly of the enemy.

As the feline poised to strike, the entire forest tautened, a reflection of the sentience’s emotions. Far-off, the guardians of the wall screamed.

Alton spat out the carapace of a beetle, sensing a dramatic change in the posture of the forest. The mist wafted down as usual, but the forest itself had gone stone cold and silent.

Somewhere off to his right came the threatening, low-rumbling growl of a large wildcat. Trembling, Alton rose to his feet and backed away. He could use his ability to shield himself from attack, but he felt the malevolence of the forest beneath his feet, quivering in every tree around him in the very air he breathed. He could shield himself from the attack of a wildcat, yes, but from the entire forest?

Panic gripped him. He had to find the wall. He half ran, half loped in a random direction as though taken by sudden insanity. He slid on damp undergrowth and pushed branches out of his face, the running sending stabs of pain through his hip. Something pursued, the watchfulness rippling through the forest alongside him.

It occurred to him to simply give up, to lay down and surrender, but his D’Yer pride wouldn’t permit it. He’d keep running until the end. Maybe he was running deeper into the forest, maybe he was running all the way to Ullem Bay, but he’d keep running no matter where his feet led him.

He sloshed through a black pool and creatures snapped at his heels. He fell to his knees, but rose painfully and set off again. Something screeched in the canopy above his head, but he kept on.

Over his own harsh breaths, he heard the miraculous voices of the wall calling to him, as they once used to. They were unclear, stuttered as though a barrier prevented them from fully reaching him, but all that mattered was that he heard them, and they gave him a sense of direction.

His lungs burned as he lunged through the forest, adjusting his direction toward the voices. He leaped a downed log and rushed through hip-high brambles. He howled as thorns ripped through his trousers and flesh.

He stumbled from the brambles and fell to the ground, air forced from his lungs. Slowly he looked up and found himself nose to nose with a huge feline, its glimmering gold eyes embodying intelligence and all the menace and evil the forest represented.

The feline was much like a catamount in shape and coloring, but it was at least twice as large as the average catamount male, and there were other not-so-subtle differences. Its whiskers were thick, barbed spines. Its extended claws, the color of blood, were like curved knives. Alton thought he saw venom sacs at the base of each claw.

The feline’s back was arched, the hair along its spine standing on end. When it growled, Alton thought,
I’m going to die.

They stared at one another, eyes locked, one assessing the other.

The very
human
regard of the feline fascinated Alton. It looked to be turning something over in its mind, struggling over baser instincts and emotions.

“What are you?” he murmured.

The creature cocked its ears forward in surprise. It paused, Alton was sure, to consider his words. It narrowed its eyes to slits, then turned tail and bounded silently off into the undergrowth and disappeared.

The malevolence still surrounded him, but the power of the forest held it at bay once again. He rose on shaking legs. His trousers were shredded and blotched with blood. He hoped the thorns weren’t poisonous, but it might be too much to expect from Blackveil.

The feline was gone, and so were the voices. Still, Alton had his life, and he had a direction in which to travel. He picked through the forest, judiciously avoiding brambles.

After a long time of walking, it became clear he traveled upon an open path that was not an accident of nature. He bent down and ripped moss off the ground, and found sea-rounded cobbles beneath that must have once served as the paving of a road.

Long time ago,
he thought.

He had never considered people once living here, but then again, Mornhavon had made this place his stronghold. He might have constructed the road, or perhaps the people who lived here before him had. Blackveil hadn’t always been an evil place, but what it was before Mornhavon arrived, Alton could only guess.

As he walked, a human face peering out at him from the foliage along the road took several years off his life. Heart throbbing, he threw a rock at the figure. Rock clacked on rock.

He drew closer, and saw better the texture of carved stone. Weathered eyes stared blankly back at him. The statue’s arms were uplifted, but her hands were missing. Perhaps if he knelt in the duff and searched beneath moss and undergrowth, he might find them.

The figure was draped in intricately carved twining leaves. She must have been beautiful once, but now her edges and details were ravaged by weather and time, and blotched by lichens.

He continued along the road, some of the paving stones jutting out of the moss, making for a topsy-turvy walking surface. When he stumbled over an upheaved cobble, he could only hope he wouldn’t break a limb, adding to his miseries.

The roadway rose ahead, and only as he mounted the rise did he realize he stood upon a bridge. From beneath came the sluggish gurgle of a stream. What civilization had this been before it was overcome by Blackveil? When something large and glistening slurped in the stream, he hastened on, leaving it far behind.

He saw more statues on alternating sides of the road. Some appeared whole, if marred by neglect, while others were missing arms or heads, or had tumbled from their pedestals altogether and lay shattered beneath the carpet of moss. A few held the fragments of curious amber orbs in their upraised hands.

He didn’t pause long to examine the statues or anything else along the road, for the barely suppressed menace of the forest eyed him warily. As long as he was given the grace to retreat toward the wall, best he make good use of the time while he had it.

The road meandered now and again, but it generally traveled in the direction from which he remembered hearing the voices. Maybe the wall was only a mile or two away, maybe a hundred. It was impossible to tell with the interlocking branches of the forest overhead, and the opaque mist that shrouded all. So it was to his surprise when the wall appeared immediately before him. It had been constructed right across the road.

Alton pressed his body up against it, finding it as welcome as his mother’s embrace. It was cold, and it was stone, but it was real. The wall did not react to his touch, nor did the voices sing out to him. With his hands still pressed against its stony façade, he looked over the sur face and found a hairline crack.

He couldn’t be far from the breach, but in which direction did it lay? East, or west? The crack provided no clue, for it wended off in both directions. All he could do was choose a direction and walk. If he didn’t find the breach within a day or two, he could turn back and search in the other direction—providing he was still alive. The road would serve as a good marker.