First Rider's Call (69 page)

“But—”

“Yes, Captain.” Karigan peered back up and couldn’t help grinning. She wanted to jump up and down in happiness—the captain was back!—but managed to retain decorum.

“So,” the captain said, “let me tell you what happened to me, then you can catch me up on your doings.”

They strolled through the pasture as the captain explained her illness and the visit by Gwyer Warhein. Karigan found herself perversely relieved she wasn’t the only one being visited by ghosts.

A monarch butterfly crawled onto the captain’s hand from a cone flower as she spoke, and stayed there for some moments before fluttering its wings and flying away. There was a serenity about the captain Karigan had not seen before, and she was glad.

When it was Karigan’s turn to talk, she found the captain knew most of what had been going on, but was missing some pieces.

“I don’t remember much after being pursued into the abandoned corridors, and especially after the traveling. I don’t know why that sergeant was after me. He said something about the empire, and that the wraith had come looking for me.”

“Uxton was captured,” the captain said. “He was part of a group called Second Empire.” She described the group’s origin and purpose. “Uxton gave us names of some of the members, including their leader, the leader of the Sacor City sect, anyway: Weldon Spurlock.”

“The chief administrator?” He was unpleasant, but she never expected this from him.

The captain nodded. “But a few names is all we got. You see, Uxton and Spurlock are dead, murdered, we think, by one of their own. Poisoned.”

Karigan shook her head in disbelief.

“While we don’t know exactly why, we do know they wanted to take you to Blackveil.”

Images of dark, spindly tree limbs reaching for her came back to her, of someone talking to her in the snow . . .

The captain stopped abruptly and placed her hand on Karigan’s shoulder, her eyes searching.

“Uxton,” she said quietly, “admitted pushing Alton off the wall and into the forest.”

The news, Karigan thought, ought to upset her, but it was more like being jerked awake.

“He’s alive.” She babbled it before she could stop herself.

The captain’s eyes widened. “You know this for certain?”

Karigan told the captain her theory about messenger horses and how they knew of their Rider’s welfare. She told her of the image she had seen of Alton in the Mirror of the Moon.

“We have to find him. Now that you’re well, the king will let me go.” Karigan spotted Condor in a far corner of the pasture, and started away from the captain as though to catch him and ride straight away for the wall.

The captain grabbed her wrist. “Hold on. There’s a catch to your plan.”

“What?”

Karigan bit her lip in embarrassment. What had gotten into her? All she knew was that she needed to find Alton, and she
knew
he was alive somewhere near the wall.

“Not to mention,” the captain continued, “you are the last person who should go there, considering that’s where Uxton planned to take you.”

Karigan felt constricted, thwarted, as though she would never get to take action. Her mind raced, trying to think of ways she could convince the captain to let her go. Maybe she would have to go against orders after all . . .

And then a curious thing began to happen, at first unnoticed by either Rider. Bluebird plodded over to them, shaking his mane with a snort. He bumped the captain’s shoulder with his nose, and she patted him absently. The other messenger horses moved in as well, casually cropping grass as they came, and flicking their tails at flies.

In short order, Karigan and the captain were surrounded.

“What do you suppose they’re up to?” the captain asked under her breath, glancing wide-eyed at the horse faces around them.

“I—I have no idea.”

Condor lipped Karigan’s sleeve, then clamped his teeth on it. He started to drag her away.

“Condor!”

Even if she ripped her sleeve from his teeth, the other horses were butting her from behind with their noses. Captain Mapstone was being similarly prodded.

Condor led Karigan across the pasture to the wall that skirted the castle grounds. Guards watched curiously from above. The captain joined her a moment later with an emphatic shove from Bluebird.

“I do believe we’ve been herded,” she said, tugging her shortcoat back into place. “But to what purpose?”

They gazed at the horses without a clue to their strange behavior, and the horses gazed guilelessly back.

“Well?” Captain Mapstone demanded of them.

Some ears flickered, a few tails switched. Robin yawned, and Sparrow rubbed the side of his head on Condor’s rump.

“Enough,” the captain said, rolling her eyes. She started to stride away, but Bluebird swiftly blocked her. She grunted as she walked into his shoulder.

Karigan decided to try and walk away, too, but Condor nudged her right back to the wall until she was flat against it.

“Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?” she asked him.

Condor, of course, didn’t say a thing.

“So,” the captain said, “what is it you think he’s trying to tell you?”

Karigan’s fingers brushed across the rough texture of the granite wall, a wall also built by Clan D’Yer. “The wall,” she said. “They want me—us—to go to the D’Yer Wall.”

There were a few satisfied snorts among the horses as they turned around and dispersed at a leisurely plod.

The captain rubbed at her neck scar. “Zachary isn’t going to like this.”

 

“Are you well?” the king asked Karigan.

“Yes, sire.”

“I’m very glad.” His voice was soft, and his gaze lingered on her for a few moments as if to make sure with his own eyes. Then abruptly he started pacing the room. He was attired in riding breeches and shiny black boots, with a short-coat of midnight blue. To Karigan he looked stormy, but strong and unbending.

“I have been out riding through the city and countryside,” he said, “to see for myself what the breach in the D’Yer Wall has wrought.”

He told them of people frozen in time—turned to stone—down on the Winding Way, while grieving mothers, husbands, sisters, and children left flowers at the feet of these all-too-lifelike statues. He told of the village of Merdith, which no longer existed. The buildings, the people, everything had vanished.

“The work of the wild magic,” he said, “was far more widespread than just the armor coming to life in our corridors, or the falling of snow. That’s why,” he continued, pausing to stand before the captain, “I would like you to take your Riders to the wall. I need information. I have heard nothing from the wall in too long.”

Karigan and the captain exchanged incredulous glances. Here they had been expecting a fight. They had put their heads together conspiring a way to convince the king to let them go to the wall, and now he was handing them the opportunity.

“Your Riders,” he said, “are trained observers, and know how to prepare a report that would be useful to me. They have experience as scouts, and in the use of magic. I had planned to send but one Rider. However, in light of recent occurrences, I think several should go. Take all who are available. This way you can send me messengers with reports should conditions warrant.”

“Very good,” the captain said, as though she had expected such an assignment from him all along. “I will assemble what Riders are here, and leave on the morrow.”

The king nodded. “I am . . . reluctant to send either of you.”

“We both need to go,” the captain said.

“I know.”

“Will that be all, sire?”

“Yes.” Before they could leave, he stepped forward and touched Karigan’s sleeve, softly, with only his fingertips. “Take care. Come home safely.”

Although he addressed them both, his fingertips lingered on Karigan’s sleeve, and she thought he gazed at her longer and harder, but the moment was quickly over, and she did not know what to think. As she hurried after the captain down the corridor, she was aware of him watching after them, and she absently caressed her arm where he had touched her.

A Green Foot runner hurried past them on his way to see the king. Karigan glanced back in time to see him bow before the king. “Lord Coutre has arrived with the other eastern lords, Your Majesty.”

The expression on the king’s face seemed to fall, but then Karigan turned a corner and saw no more.

In the darkness of the stable, the greenish glow of the apparition reflected in the eyes of messenger horses.

I certainly hope you know what you’re about,
Lil Ambriodhe chided them.

Most of the horses were half-asleep, unimpressed by the presence of the First Rider.

I won’t deny that a Rider must face danger in the course of her duty,
Lil continued,
but you are delivering them right into the hands of the enemy. The enemy that is blocking me from communicating with the Galadheon.
She paced, her feet hovering just above the hay-strewn floor.

A few of the horses began to wake up. Condor scraped his hoof against the floor.

It’s not my fault,
Lil retorted.
It’s a power at work greater than mine. I’m dead, after all.

Condor whickered.

Condor began to circle in agitation in his stall.

Sorry, Red,
Lil said.
You shouldn’t have put the notion in their heads to begin with, hey? But it’s done and now we have to make do.

The apparition’s glow dimmed and the horses fell into shadow.

Whatever happened to old-fashioned stupid horses?
Lil wondered. As she faded away into the netherworld of spirits, she reflected that her various Brownies had never argued with her.

RIDING TO THE WALL

Laren quickly understood what had so disturbed Zachary. People along the Winding Way had been caught, unsuspecting, turned to stone as they went about simple, everyday activities, activities that would never be completed. A man gazed perpetually into a fishmonger’s window, his fingers cupped around his chin as if he still deliberated the choice of fish displayed on hooks and the prices posted for them. Two women leaned toward one another as if sharing a secret, the laugh of one frozen in time. Their lines and details were as true to life as Laren’s butterfly had been, but their edges were hard and sharp, their visages cold and gray.

A carter bore a sack over his shoulder, his stride seemingly purposeful, but going nowhere. A boy gazed into the street holding a ball over his head that would never be thrown . . .

The Riders left the city in relief, but in the countryside they found other disturbing evidence of magic gone awry. Once-healthy crops lay blackened and withered in the fields, and there were empty places where houses had once stood.

Laren rode at the head of a dozen Riders, her sword slapping at her side. Through every village they rode, terrified folk came up to her asking what the king was going to do to make things right.

Laren had no answers, but reassured them as she could.

The farther they traveled from Sacor City, the quieter Karigan grew. She participated very little in campfire banter, as though preoccupied, and during the night she babbled nonsense in her sleep, or perhaps spoke in a tongue Laren did not understand. Although her behavior wasn’t outlandish, it was different enough for Laren to take note of and watch her carefully.

More of an immediate concern was the discovery that they were being followed. Laren glimpsed a mounted figure on the edge of her vision, like a brief flash of white, but when she turned in her saddle to look full on, he was gone, vanished into the woods. Since the horseman did nothing to threaten them directly, she did not bring up his presence to her Riders, not wishing to alarm them unnecessarily. He seemed content to follow and watch them. For now.