His father finally took notice of him, his regard withering. “Your cousin has been taken by Blackveil.”
An involuntary, almost hysterical giggle erupted from Pendric’s throat. “Evil takes evil.”
His father’s slap rocked him like a blast of white lightning, but it helped clear his head, made him feel better. He almost wished his father would do it again.
“Remember who you speak of,” Landrew growled. “Your own flesh and blood.” Around them, soldiers shifted uneasily. “He at least attempted to do something about the wall, and he was sacrificed for trying.” With that, he totally dismissed his son.
“My lord,” shouted one of the soldiers on the breach, “there’s something going on down there, I don’t—”
Human cries of terror rolled over the wall in waves, and all were shocked into silence.
“Someone’s coming!” the soldier reported. He and his companion moved about the breach to help whoever it was over the wall.
Pendric watched in fascination. The man who descended the ladder was not his cousin, but another soldier.
“What happened, Mandry?” one of the officers demanded. “Where are the others?”
Tears streaked down the man’s cheeks. “It opened up.”
The officer knelt beside Mandry, who sat on the ground, his back to the wall. “What are you saying? What opened up? Where are the others?”
“The ground—it opened up and took them. It almost got me, but I ran. I could hear their screams . . . from beneath the ground. I looked back—there were only bumps on the ground where they’d been, like newly buried dead. Then Carris, I saw his face in the moss. ‘Help me,’ he says. ‘It’s—it’s swallowing me.’ And then he was pulled under. I tried digging after him, but the ground, it started moving beneath my feet again, so I ran.”
Murmuring and cries of dismay broke out among the soldiers.
“Silence!” Landrew shouted. Pendric watched as his father’s face became as set as granite with determination. He then called to his servant. “Bring me my sword. I’m going in there myself.”
The officers protested strenuously, but could not dissuade him. Even as Landrew climbed the ladder, giggles bubbled in Pendric’s throat.
If neither his father or Alton returned, there was a very real possibility he might be next in line to be the lord-governor of D’Yer Province, and for some reason it struck him as very funny.
BLACKVEIL
The sentience undulated in the moss beneath the man’s body, taking in its weight and contours. It absorbed blood that trickled from his head wound. The sentience penetrated the man’s mind, but found only dark nothingness. Bewildered, it fled, back into the world of moss.
The man was not dead, that much the sentience gathered, but the guardians of the wall were keening in anguish. Not only were they alarmed by the sentience’s wakefulness, but they were distraught by the man’s presence in the forest. So distraught were they, their efforts to coax the sentience back to sleep proved weak and ineffective.
The sentience was intrigued. What could upset the guardians so about this one man? Why was he important to them? With him in his darkness, it was difficult for the sentience to learn much about him.
Red stinger ants filed out of the nearby mound of soil and forest debris that was their nest. Attracted by the man’s scent, they formed a line leading in his direction, marching relentlessly forward over leaf and under twig. Bite by bite, they would return to their nest bearing tiny bits of human flesh. If the man’s consciousness returned at some point during the process, the poison the ants injected with each bite would leave him paralyzed, and a helpless witness to the slow devouring of his own body.
The ants were not native to this land, but had adapted well. They had unwittingly stowed away amid some cargo aboard a sailing ship from Arcosia.
Arcosia . . . The sentience savored the word like a fine wine. Arcosia was a land of many lands. Little fragments of memory had begun to emerge of late, memories of what could only be the sentience’s own origins. Memories of sailing from a far land to this place.
I was once a man. Of this the sentience was certain. Not only that, it—he—had been a leader among men.
Suddenly, it wanted to understand being a man again, somehow connect with the one who lay here. Maybe he had answers.
The sentience turned its attention back to the thousands of ants tromping across the leaflets of moss it currently resided in. Eagerly it diverted the ants, sending them in the direction of some carrion rotting some way into the woods. It had this power, the sentience did, to command the forest, to be the forest. But it wanted to understand being a man.
It removed an ant out of line. The sentience became a part of the ant, directing it to climb the toe of the man’s boot, to crawl along his leg and hip, stolidly following the folds of clothing, and march across his stomach and chest.
The sentience skittered, causing the ant to back away from something on the man’s chest. Something that was nothing. The contradiction made no sense, but the sentience detected some minor power at work here, that the nothingness protected the something by hiding it.
A power. The art.
Perplexed, the ant crawled in circles around it, but learned no more. The sentience would leave it now as a curiosity to be mulled over later. It continued its exploration, stepping onto the flesh of the man’s neck. It climbed the chin and wandered the man’s face, following contours of lips and cheeks, dipping into depressions of eyes.
On the cheek, the sentience allowed the ant to do what it instinctually was born to do: bite. Venom flowed beneath the man’s skin. The sentience prevented the ant from carrying away the tiny piece of flesh to its nest, but made it consume it.
The ant did not possess a wide ranging palate, but it was more the essence of the man the sentience sought anyway, the consistency of flesh, the meaning of blood.
A disturbance near the wall distracted the sentience. It sent a part of its awareness hurtling through duff and moss to the area. The guardians had stopped screaming, but they were taut.
Boots tread across the ground.
Men.
The sentience surmised they sought the one who lay unconscious deeper within the forest. It didn’t want them to find him, for it was curious about his possession of the art, and why the guardians were so worried about him.
It simply opened the ground beneath their boots, heaving back moss like a great maw. It whipped roots around their legs and torsos, and pulled them down. It felt the reverberations of their screams, but screams were harmless. The steel that armored their torsos could not protect them, for tree roots were stronger than steel.
It rolled a blanket of moss over the men, using roots to pull them ever deeper, squeezing them apart. Corpse beetles, and other earthly denizens of the forest, would take care of the rest.
All of this sudden contact with men evoked memories of men the sentience had once known. There was the frail, elderly man who sat high upon a golden throne. A fatherly figure, one who loved him well. Arcos.
There were others—Varadgrim, yes, faithful Varadgrim, and Lichant of the east, Mirdhwell of the west, and Terrandon of the south. All faithful, all friends. Unlike the red stinger ants, they were natives of this land. The sentience called out for them, and could feel Varadgrim somewhere out there, but he was far off. Of Lichant and Terrandon, there was no response at all, but Mirdhwell did stir . . .
Then there was the man who meant the most to the sentience, to the man he had been. Hadriax.
My dear friend, my best friend.
A surge of longing made the rain pour in the forest, pattering the man’s face. On impulse, the sentience called out for Hadriax, and to its surprise, it felt something, a brief hum of life. The sentience pursued it, and once found, held onto it.
This was not Hadriax after all, but something of him was present. As the sentience probed, it found the imprint of a familiar aura of power, but the feeling was decidedly feminine. And far away, so far
away.
Desperately the sentience called out to Varadgrim and Mirdhwell, revealing to them the aura of the female before it lost contact.
Find her!
MIRROR REFLECTION
Karigan plucked bits of straw from her work tunic as she strode away from the stable in the dimming light of evening. She’d been helping Hep with feeding, as much as her bad arm allowed. He forked hay down from the loft, and she threw the appropriate amount into each stall. Scooping out grain wasn’t too difficult either, and helping made her feel more useful.
In light of all her recent and strange experiences, it didn’t hurt that the work was nothing but ordinary. It involved no “traveling,” no hauntings, no magic. Being surrounded by all those horses was a tonic for her soul. They asked for nothing more than food, water, shelter, and a scratch behind the ear, and those were easy enough to provide. For those simple things, the horses returned love and affection in earnest, and unconditionally.
Karigan’s sense of peace, however, did not last. As she approached Rider barracks, a tide of wooziness rushed over her, forcing her to an abrupt, unbalanced halt. The castle grounds darkened in her vision, and she forgot where she was going and why. She thought she heard a calling. Not the Rider call, but a lonely mournful calling tinged with desperation. Something touched her mind, like cold fingers leafing through her thoughts and memories.
Sorrow and loneliness turned to surprise and hope, and led to more probing.
She staggered when it finally released her. A residue of that touch clung to her like moist, black roots. A residue of dark intelligence.
Karigan tried to shudder it off, but could not. Her left arm prickled insistently.
She pushed on toward Rider barracks along the well worn path, caught in a fog. When she entered, she found Yates and Justin in the common room playing Intrigue. As she gazed at their pieces arrayed on the board, she suddenly saw patterns and strategies as she never had before. On impulse she pulled up a chair and started setting up the third set of pieces—the red—while Yates and Justin gaped at her in surprise.
“I thought—” Yates began. He and Justin passed a look between them, shrugged, and started repositioning their own pieces to start anew.
The game ran fairly swiftly in terms of Intrigue. Some matches were known to last for months and even years. Karigan dominated the entire game, first attacking Yates, the stronger player, and lulling Justin into thinking she had formed an alliance with him. With the two-pronged attack against Yates, he was quickly weakened, and though Karigan sacrificed some of her own pieces, she set up the attacks so Justin sacrificed more than she.
It was almost a miracle how she could formulate strategy, as though she’d suddenly been endowed with the ability. Instead of seeing disparate, individual pieces, she saw patterns drawn on the gameboard like the lines of a map she could follow. It was so clear to her now—why hadn’t she seen it all before? How could she have missed it? How easy it was to annihilate Yates’ knights, assassins, infantry, courtiers, and archers, and how easy it would be to do the same to Justin.
When Yates finally surrendered, she turned on Justin, pulling him into an intricate trap that killed off more than half his pieces. He gazed at her slack-jawed, even as she moved in to take his king.
Afterward, she slumped in her chair exhausted.
“You’re the most merciless Triad I’ve ever played with,” Yates told her in awe.
“She’s not the Triad,” Justin said, “she’s an empress.” He looked up at her. “I thought you didn’t like this game.”
Karigan gazed at the game board as if seeing it for the first time and could not believe the carnage. She had led a conquest, taking over all of Yates’ and Justin’s countries. She had done it with trickery and cunning, and excellent strategy. She had been cold and calculating.
A part of her congratulated herself on doing what was necessary to expand her holdings and win domination. There had been major casualties, but that was the price of power.
Another part of her was so appalled her stomach lurched.
Abruptly she pushed away from the table and sprinted from the common room, leaving behind two baffled Riders.
She ran into her room and slammed the door shut behind her. She felt so—so unclean—tainted even. That hadn’t been her who played so ruthlessly, had it? She hated the game, and whenever she was coaxed into playing it, she always lost. Except this one time.
“Madness,” she said.
She went to her table and grabbed her mirror to see if she had sprouted horns since the last time she looked.
The mirror had once belonged to her mother, a wedding gift from her father, part of a beautiful silver dressing set, etched with wildflowers. Karigan remembered, as a little girl, slipping out of bed and peering into her parents’ room. There in the candlelight sat her mother on the corner of the bed in a white shift, looking into the mirror and giggling while her father tenderly brushed her long, brown hair. Karigan had watched, enraptured, until one of her aunts found her and sent her back to bed with a pat on her bottom.
Karigan smiled at the memory. It lent her balance. But when she looked into the silvered glass of the mirror, it was not her own face she saw.
The power of Blackveil is rising, said the face in the mirror.
Karigan squawked and flung the mirror across the room. It stopped a hair’s breadth from smashing against the wall. It hung there, floating in the air.
Madness, madness, madness, she thought.
It got worse. The mirror floated straight toward her as though carried by a phantom’s hand. Karigan raced for the door, but the mirror flew there before her, and advanced on her again. She backed away, until she got wedged between her wardrobe and the wall.
The mirror “faced” her. Blue-green eyes peered out at her, from leonine features framed by tawny hair. A face Karigan had seen a thousand years in the past.
Time is short, Lil Ambrioth said, before the door closes again, so listen to me for once, hey?
Inanely Karigan wanted to know what door.
You’ve been touched by the influence of Blackveil—resist it! I will help as I can, but it is up to you to resist—
Lil’s face vanished and the mirror plummeted toward the floor. Karigan snatched it from mid-air. She pressed it to her chest, and slid down the wall to sit dazed on the floor.
Barston Grough puffed on his pipe as he took in the dimming light of day over the rolling grasslands of Mirwell Province. The stem of his pipe fit comfortably between a gap in his teeth, and white smoke twisted up into the air.
Polly and Bill watched over the flock, tongues lolling, alert for wanderers or predators. Sheep bleated and munched on the grass with great contentment. Their woolly backs sheened against the lush grasses in the waning light.
Barston was as content as a ram this fine summer evening. In a couple of days he and the collies would bring his fat, woolly flock to market in Dorvale, and he’d get himself a bulging purse in return.
Good feeding was the key. He didn’t have to compete with anyone else for these grasslands. The good feeding helped the mommas make strong lambs in the spring, and when the lambs weaned, they grew eating that same fine grass. All the other grasslands were overgrazed and trodden to death by other farmers’ livestock. If Barston had chosen to graze his sheep there, he’d have scrawny, sick lambs, instead of the fine, strong beasties dotting the land before him now.
As dusk deepened, mist crept along the rolling countryside. On a near hillock, the huge old cairn and the obelisks that surrounded it turned into menacing silhouettes.
Barston grinned. Mad Grough, the other farmers called him. The crazy old man.
“Crazy? Bah.”
He’d have thought they’d figure it out when at every market he got the best prices for sheep and wool. The rest of them were a bunch of superstitious crybabies.
“All the better for me,” he said with a scratchy laugh. He didn’t have to share with anyone.
The
old legends claimed this was haunted ground, that a demon spirit inhabited it, and that anyone who lingered here was doomed.
Barston admitted the old cairn was forbidding enough, the ground within the circle of obelisks barren of the grass that grew so prolifically elsewhere. The obelisks were carved with strange sigils, but he figured they did nothing more than tell the story of the one interred beneath the cairn. Probably a clan lord.
He was surprised grave robbers hadn’t broken into it to plunder whatever treasures had been buried with the clan lord, but he supposed the legends kept off thieves as well as sheep farmers. Or, better yet, maybe the fact the tomb had no entrance had discouraged thieves.
The clan lord probably had been terrible in life, spawning the legends, but the fact remained he was dead. Dead for a good, long time, Barston guessed, and gone to dust. Not a threat to one sheep farmer, two collies, or a flock of sheep.
The legends only served to keep others away, much to Barston’s profit. He’d been bringing his flocks here for a very long time, and no demon spirit had bothered him yet.
He turned back to his little campfire and stirred up the embers. He had made himself a little shepherd’s hut here on the grasslands, lugging all the materials himself, piece by piece, except for the sod that covered the roof. He found that aplenty all around him.
Barston was just contemplating making himself a modest supper when the ground began to tremble beneath his feet.
“Wha—?” His pipe slipped from his mouth and landed in the fire.
A silent concussion slapped the air, followed by terrified bleating by the sheep. Polly and Bill started howling.
Barston whirled about, holding his shepherd’s staff before him. What in the five hells was going on? Were wolves on the prowl? He hadn’t heard any, nor seen sign of them. This was more than wolves, though; the ground had shaken.
When lightning exploded in spidery arcs between the obelisks, crowning the hillock of the cairn in white-blue light, Barston threw himself to the ground. His sheep stampeded. They stampeded right past the dogs, right past him. Some even trampled over him. Polly and Bill ran off whining, tails tucked between their legs. They ignored Barston’s calls and whistles.
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