“I know,” Alton said.
“You know? Then why am I going to all this trouble?”
Before Alton could stop him, Merdigen wiped away the schema with a sweeping gesture of his hand. “I suppose I’ll go through the whole procedure and then you’ll tell me you know how to do it.”
“I know something of it, of talking with stone. The song.”
“You don’t need me then, hmm?” Merdigen grumped. He pointed at the arched doorway to their right. “The breach is to the west, so use the west portal.”
“Just—just like that?”
“Yes. Now leave me, I’m busy. I must feed the cat.”
Alton shook his head as Merdigen walked away and vanished. “And I thought Karigan had all the strangest experiences . . .”
Karigan. She had taught him a song.
He turned and the arched entry of the west portal stood before him, beckoning, mysterious, and imposing. The fascia framing the arch appeared plain, except when he shifted his stance and runes embedded in the stone suddenly shimmered to life. What material could do that? he wondered. So much stonecraft lost. Enchanted, he traced a rune with his forefinger. It was as smooth as marble, but made of some other unknown mineral or ore. They required no light to come to life.
He vowed to one day discover the process and replicate it. It was his dream to restore the old craft to Clan D’Yer.
His eyes roved to the center of the arch, to the key-stone, and there, carved in relief, were the tools of the stone-worker’s trade—hammer, drill, wedges, chisel. This more than anything called to him; it was his birthright to be here now, his destiny as a D’Yer, a worker of stone. He would fix the wall.
He limped through the arched entry of the portal into darkness greater than night. He put his hands out before him, groping in the air, but within a few paces he came to a wall of stone. The wall? It could be none other.
He settled his hands on it and opened his mind to it, just as he had been instructed. Silvery runes lit up around his hands.
Greetings, cousin, the guardians seemed to whisper.
Alton closed his eyes, and sank into the wall.
SPURLOCK
Spurlock fumed as he stomped through the abandoned corridor, a pool of lamplight shivering around him. Never was the girl alone, never! How could he carry out the will of Blackveil if he couldn’t get near her?
Constantly she was in attendance to the king, which meant she was constantly surrounded by guards, Weapons, and witnesses. At other times she was training with that monster, Drent. Spurlock didn’t dare venture near the training yard, knowing how suspicious it would look for him, of all people, to be there. On top of everything, she was currently housed in the diplomatic wing, which was also heavily guarded.
He entered a chamber and was welcomed by the glow of Sergeant Uxton’s lamp. They chose a new room to meet in every time now, after nearly running into a Weapon in their old place. This room was located above the records room, so Spurlock planned the meeting for early in the morning before Dakrias Brown reported to duty, for the old glass domed roof was still in place above it, despite the construction of more castle overhead. Their lights would shine right through it.
As if responding to his thoughts, their lamps rippled across the glass in swirling colors. Spurlock had an impression of figures dancing to life and horses stretched out in full gallop, swords being swung, and pennants snapping in a breeze. He didn’t know what events the stained glass depicted, and he didn’t care. It was, no doubt, the usual heroic nonsense.
Uxton regarded him curiously. Spurlock hadn’t invited the other members of the sect, deeming them unlikely to be as helpful as Uxton. The others were outsiders, for all they had business on the castle grounds, and he feared their too frequent visits would draw unwanted attention, especially after the “intrusion” of Lord Varadgrim. Security on the grounds had tightened perceptibly. Uxton, in contrast, was an insider, with a valid reason to be within the castle. He wore the king’s own insignia, and the black and silver of Sacoridia.
“We have had, as you know, a call to action,” Spurlock said, without even the pretense of a greeting. He dispensed with the ritual used to open meetings, as well. He was too irritated with Karigan G’ladheon, and he perceived there was too little time. After a thousand years, the time was now. He would honor his ancestors and the empire in actions, if not rituals.
Uxton waited expectantly.
“Our lack of progress is a disgrace to our ancestors. Karigan G’ladheon is too well protected.”
“Not much we can do about it,” Uxton said with an indifferent shrug, “unless we can get her alone.”
That was not a helpful reply, but what could Spurlock expect from an uneducated man? He had brawn, but lacked intellect. One day Spurlock would surround himself with only the best minds. “Blackveil is arising. Here is a chance to further our glorious mission of resurrecting the Arcosian Empire, a chance we have not had in a thousand years, and all you can say is that there isn’t much we can do about it?”
Uxton hooked his thumb into his belt. “You have an idea of how to move things along?”
Spurlock frowned. Why was it he had to find all the answers? Why was he surrounded by simpletons? “We must lure her away from the king and his protectors, and out of the diplomatic wing, to someplace where we can trap her.”
“You just need the lure,” Uxton said. “I think I know a way. It will require a little planning, and the help of our brothers and sisters.”
Spurlock relaxed. Finally, something would get done. He would avenge those of Arcosia who had spilled their blood in these lands, and in so doing, prove his worthiness to the power in Blackveil. One day he would be accounted among the great of Second Empire, and his descendants would hold him in highest honor.
It was much too early to be up and about, to trudge up the Winding Way to the castle gate while the sun had not yet peeked over the rim of the world. Lanterns still ablaze, the guards at the gate had looked down at the bleary-eyed recordskeeper and chuckled.
“Ol’ Spurlock drivin’ ya hard again, lad?” one called down.
“Yes,” said Dakrias Brown, even though it wasn’t entirely true, but he would never tell these hard-bitten soldiers the real reason he needed to catch up on his work: that it had been upended by the spirits of the dead.
The guards made sympathetic noises and let him through the “small” gate, a normal-sized door in the big gate. Ever since the intrusion on castle grounds, and the burning of Rider barracks, they’d been shutting the big gate at sunset, and not reopening it till sunrise.
Dakrias had been slaving away in the records room, because of Spurlock, since the night of the intrusion. He had emerged from the castle only to witness the chaos outside, and the blaze of Rider barracks. Someone had died in the fire, and another was seriously wounded, both Riders. He hadn’t known Ephram Neddick, but he did know Mara Brennyn, and the thought of her grave wounds hurt him.
He yawned hugely as he made his way toward the castle. He would much rather hide in his room at Mistress Charon’s. Small as it was, it was blessedly un-haunted. What will the ghosts have left for him this morning? he wondered. More smashed crates? An overturned table or shelves? Papers he had labored to file in an organized manner now spilled across the floor?
These days Dakrias spent more time on hands and knees picking up than attending to his other duties. Good thing Spurlock had been so preoccupied with other matters of late. He rarely checked on the records room, and when he did, he seemed not to notice his surroundings.
He reluctantly mounted the steps to the main castle entrance. For days now he had been making this early morning walk to reclaim order from disorder. He’d also done some reading, surreptitiously, in the castle library. It contained too few books on ghosts, and most of the writings seemed too fanciful to be as true as the authors claimed.
One book, however, proved more useful and dealt with ghosts in a serious way, by examining and classifying their trai
ts. It was called Phantoms in My Attic, by Lord Eldred Faintly. As Dakrias read, he thought, perhaps, he might be haunted by poltergeists, “. . . a type of ghost that leaves an unseemly mess in its wake,” Lord Faintly had written. But poltergeists were also prone to “violent manifestations and unbearable wailings.” Dakrias’ ghosts were not otherwise violent, nor did they wail.
Of the more mainstream ghosts, there were “the curious ghost, the friendly ghost, the sorrowful ghost, and the mischievous ghost.” Dakrias was not sure exactly what demeanor his ghosts displayed, though the havoc they wreaked in the records room might be construed as mischievous. He rolled his eyes.
Most ghosts feel they have left something undone, Lord Faintly wrote, and so they forever walk the Earth trying to right a wrong, or to see some activity to fruition. Until those goals are achieved, the ghost will not rest.
There are still other ghosts who are merely disturbed and seek attention. They can be a housekeeper’s nightmare.
Dakrias had hit on his ghosts. They weren’t only a housekeeper’s nightmare, but a recordskeeper’s, too. Just why they sought attention, or just why they were disturbed, was probably something he would never learn. Unfortunately, according to Lord Faintly, the resolution of their problem was the only way to get rid of them. And how was he going to figure that out?
He sighed as he scuffed down the corridor toward the administrative wing. The only one who hadn’t laughed at his claim of ghosts haunting the records room was Karigan G’ladheon. Not only had she refrained from laughing, but the look in her eyes told him she believed.
If Dakrias hadn’t profoundly felt his duty to the king and people of Sacoridia, he would run from the castle all the way to his uncle’s farm in D’Ivary Province without looking back.
The hauntings had made a mess of his life. Where once he kept an impeccable and orderly records room, it now fringed on chaos, just like his personal life. He jumped at the slightest sound, and he felt like a cat afraid of its own shadow. The other clerks dropped books behind him just to see how high he’d jump.
He didn’t know how much more he could take, how many whispers in his ears, or the cool touches on the back of his neck . . . He wasn’t sure his heart could handle any new antics on their behalf.
Ghosts rarely alter their behavior, Lord Faintly reassured. They are cursed to repeat the same motions time after time unless, by good fortune, there is closure to whatever it is that anchors them to the Earth, and only then, at last, may they rest in peace.
Dakrias paused at the entry to the records room to ignite a candle with which he could light the lamps within, and unlocked the door. It swung inward with a screech. All else was silence.
He took a deep breath and stepped inside, and immediately a chaos of strewn books and papers fell into the circle of his candlelight. He groaned.
Then voices, distant whispery voices, raised the hair on the nape of his neck. Slowly he gazed upward. There, high above, were two spirits that manifested as colorful spheres of light.
Dakrias Brown’s ghosts had not read Lord Eldred Faintly’s book. No, indeed. They had gone and done something new and unexpected.
Dakrias’ eyes rolled to the back of his head, his candle extinguishing as he hit the floor in a dead faint.
Journal of Hadriax el Fex
The face of the young woman I saw in the mirror lake so long ago haunts my dreams. Why did she appear to me? Was she a messenger from God? If so, I did not hear her message; I do not know what it portends. All I know is that she appeared out of the etherea as though to look upon me, and that she wore a winged horse brooch, just as Lil Ambriodhe and her riders do.
KARIGAN RIDING
“No,”Karigansaid.
“No?” Drent’s eyes creased as he stared her down. He loomed over her, gigantic and bristling.
“No.” Her outward calm did not reflect the anger roiling inside her. Her emotions were far too raw to tolerate Drent and his abuse anymore.
“On the beam,” he growled. “Now.”
Drent had raised the beam, and greased it, to test her “sure-footedness.” All she saw was a new opportunity for him to batter her senseless with his practice sword, and to create a spectacle for onlookers. Well, she’d give him a spectacle, all right.
“I’m done here,” Karigan said.
“Insubordination.” Drent smiled in anticipation. “You know what—”
“I won’t be cowed by your threats.”
A heavy silence blanketed the practice field. Even the crows seemed to settle on treetops to watch.
Drent raised his practice sword to strike her. She ducked beneath it and rotated her own in a graceful arc, and smashed his knuckles. He dropped his sword with a howl of pain, a howl that brought her a gratifying amount of satisfaction. Had any of his other students ever heard him utter such a sound?
He watched her wordlessly, clutching at his hand.
“I learned that move from an arms master named Ren dle, a good man who never beat me to teach me a lesson.”
She pivoted and slammed the flat of her practice sword against the beam. The wooden blade broke and she dropped the hilt to the ground. Wiping her hands, again perversely satisfied, she strode away from Drent, the onlookers, and the practice field, never looking back.
They could, and probably would, lock her up for both insubordination and the purposeful injury she inflicted upon a superior, but it no longer mattered. Compared to her losses, it was insignificant.
By the time she reached the stable, she was shaking from all the anger she’d held inside. She went to Condor and started currying him with hard, circular strokes. He leaned into them with a grunt of pleasure, as the tension seeped out of her arms and shoulders.
She would go for a ride. A ride would calm her, help bring some balance to her frayed nerves. She remembered her promise to Bluebird, and decided she’d take him along for some exercise.
When she rode Condor out onto the castle grounds, Bluebird followed on a lead rope. The gelding pricked his ears forward, and there was a new spring in his gait. He looked about himself as if seeing his surroundings for the first time. His spark of interest in life gladdened Karigan, and it brought her closer to healing.
She rode to the west castle grounds, which were wide and open, an ideal place for exercising horses, and as about as far away from Drent as she could get and remain on castle grounds. A couple other soldiers sat astride their horses, sharing a conversation at the north end, otherwise the area was all hers.
The walk there had warmed up both horses, and she squeezed Condor into a trot. After making a couple of very large circles, she let him run, Bluebird nosing alongside them. All cares melted away from her, and she knew only the wind against her face and the rhythm of hoofbeats.
He watched her riding down below, how her hair streamed behind her like a wild horse’s mane. He could not see her face clearly, but he imagined her lips turned up in a smile, those dimples of hers dinting her cheeks, and the sun shining in her eyes. She rode fluidly as though one with her horse, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her.
Gone was her usual shortcoat, the sun blazing on her white shirt. She was unfettered and free, a wild spirit he could not capture, tame, or confine, but one he wished would come to him, as a deer is tempted by a handful of oats. Would she shy away and run?
Wild spirit that she was, she was not invulnerable, and he yearned to comfort and protect her, but she would only run, he knew.
No, she could not be captured, but he was. Inextricably.
“My lord?”
Zachary Hillander bowed his head before turning away from the window to face Lord Richmont Spane and the nobles of Coutre Province. Laid out on the table before him was a heavily inked document.
“My lord,” Spane said, “I believe Lord Coutre’s terms are exceedingly generous. The dowry alone represents considerable wealth.”
Everyone wanted something from the high king of Sacoridia, whether it was a pardon, status by
association, or his agreement to a marriage proposal so a daughter might become a queen, bringing a clan much prestige and power. Few wanted him for himself. Laren had always been his close friend and confidant, but the relationship was overshadowed by her sense of duty. His position seemed to put some sort of taint on all his relationships.
“You do realize you have much to gain,” Spane said, with a look in his eye that reminded Zachary of a rodent. “Or, much to lose. As you know, Lord Centre’s influence over the eastern clan lords is critical to your power. For instance, there is the D’Ivary matter to consider ...”
Zachary pretended to be unaffected by Spane’s inherent threat. Everyone wanted something from him, everyone except Karigan.
Yet, even his own wish, a simple one at heart, was denied him. She rode free like the wind, while he remained hopelessly encaged.
BLACKVEIL
The sentience prowled back and forth across its domain, upturning rocks and tunneling beneath the ground. It pushed through underbrush like an unnatural whirlwind. Creatures scurried up trees or otherwise fled its approach, aware of its fury.
Mirdhwell had been destroyed. Varadgrim had failed in his mission of securing the one of Hadriax’s blood. Neither Lichant nor Terrandon responded to its calls.
And there was more that agitated the sentience. Had its plan with the Deyer been a colossal mistake? Would the influence it had entrenched within the man’s mind help bring down the wall? Or had it failed?
The waiting frustrated the sentience and it wanted results now, but there was nothing it could do except wait. It was impossible to know what the Deyer was up to inside the tower, for it could not penetrate the wall. Only time would reveal the success or failure of its efforts.
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