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.
Their fourth day out, they came to some ancient ruins, crumbling stone walls overgrown with vegetation. They decided to take a midday break there. Most of the Riders fanned out to sit in the shade and have a bite to eat.
Karigan, however, stood and gazed at the ruins. Laren took a swig from her waterskin and watched her, noting the glassy look in her eyes as if her mind traveled someplace very far away. Her expression was difficult to interpret, as though a thousand emotions moved within her.
Presently Laren joined her. “What do you see?” she asked.
“Battle. Here the forces of Alessandros del Mornhavon triumphed over insurrectionists who would not bend their knees to the empire. Burning, children screaming, arrows, magical fire . . .”
Laren drew her eyebrows together in concern. “Karigan?”
Karigan shook herself, blinked, and turned to Laren with a small smile on her face. “Yes, Captain?”
The transformation was startling. “Are you all right? If you are feeling poorly, I could send you back—”
Karigan registered surprise. “I’m fine, Captain, really. I don’t need to go back. Is that all?”
Laren nodded, and Karigan strolled over to a shade tree and dropped down next to Dale, the two starting up an animated conversation. It was as if nothing unusual had happened.
She returned to Bluebird where he grazed nearby, and ran her hand along his neck.
“I hope you knew what you were doing when you convinced us to go to the wall.”
Bluebird paused his grazing and raised his head to gaze at her. Was it her imagination, or was his expression sheepish? It certainly wasn’t reassuring.
That evening, Laren sat off by herself next to a lantern, poring over maps of D’Yer Province and the wall. It had been some time since she last traveled the region, and she wanted to refamiliarize herself with it, especially the area near the breach.
Tomorrow morning she was sending Tegan off to Woodhaven, the seat of Lord-Governor D’Yer, to let him know what the Riders were up to, and the state of affairs elsewhere. Depending on how Tegan’s meeting with him went, she would either return to Sacor City to report to the king, or catch up with the Riders at the wall.
Laren looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps, to find Ty heading over with a steaming mug in each hand. “Tea,” he said.
Laren carefully took a mug. “Thank you.”
“Checking our route?” he asked, gazing down at the map.
“It’s fairly straightforward, and I understand a horse track has been cut all the way to the wall.”
“I’ve never been to the wall,” Ty said. “Seems we’re usually bound for Woodhaven when there’s a message to deliver in D’Yer Province.” He then hesitated. “Captain, would you mind if I sit?”
“Not at all.” Laren gestured at the ground beside her. In the yellow lantern light, she discerned an apprehensive expression on the Rider’s face. “Something wrong?”
Ty set his mug aside as he made himself comfortable on the ground. He glanced over his shoulder at the other Riders, then said in a quiet voice, “It’s Karigan. She’s been acting a little strange ever since we left the city, and I’m not the only one to have noticed.”
“Oh?” Laren did not want to pass on her own thoughts about Karigan, lest she add fuel to the flames of any speculation on behalf of her Riders. She needed them to trust one another. Somehow she was not surprised it was Ty who came forward. He had been Karigan’s mentor, and likely still felt responsible for her. His personality was also such that anything out of place required being defined, and if possible, put back into place. It made him a trifle unbending and strict, and for that reason alone, she had never promoted him to Chief Rider or lieutenant, positions that required flexibility.
“Just now,” Ty continued, “she was murmuring about being abandoned. I could swear I saw a tear in her eye, and when I asked her who abandoned us, she acted confused and didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about.”
“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Laren said, despite the fact that was precisely what she was doing.
“But—”
“We’ve all been under enormous strain of late. We’ve lost Ephram and Alton, and barracks has burned. My mind wanders, too.” Laren tried to sound reassuring, even as her own concern escalated. “If you notice anything else that warrants my attention, do bring it to me.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Now, let’s take a look at tomorrow’s route.”
The sky clouded over and it showered the following morning. They rode off, spirits dampened as much as bedrolls, and the usual conversation was stilled to silence. When Laren tired of listening to the pitter-patter on her hood, she drew it back and let the rain fall on her head. Doing so returned her side vision, and she glimpsed the horseman.
A gray cloak had been thrown over white armor, and he blended in well with the gloom and forest backdrop. When he perceived her gaze, he vanished again into the woods.
Laren veered Bluebird around, and much to the astonishment of her Riders, kicked him after the horseman. She looked for any sign of him, and when she found nothing, she began to wonder if he were an illusion. Then she saw the slight depression of a hoofprint.
She sat there in the rain, staring into the woods. He must be an Eletian. From what she knew, or thought she knew, only Eletians could move so swiftly, and with so little trace.
If so, why would an Eletian be tailing them?
Karigan rode through the mist and rain, fogged by shadow like a dark hand in her mind—someone peering in, violating all that should remain private. It was like living in a dream, her attention drawn inward, reliving memories that were hers . . . and were not. Terrible battles raged through her sleeping dreams, and sometimes she awakened with such feelings of power, she thought she could dash away the world with the sweep of her arm—all living creatures, any structure created by the hands of humanity, all traces of civilization.
And always, he was there in the falling snow, goading her to come.
Yes, I am coming. Her reply, involuntary.
As she rode, she thought she heard the muffled sound of a horn trying to break through the clouds and murk, but it was never enough.
Please help! she cried out, but all she heard in return was, You will come.
Journal of Hadriax el Fex
Today, Alessandros called me into his work chamber. I never enter it because I’ve no wish to view his experiments, but this time I had no choice. He was very excited, babbling about some finding or other.
I entered the chamber seeing nothing but that which lay on a table, in its center, fully illuminated by the glow of prisms. It had been an Elt—male. Alessandros had surgically sliced out the Eletian’s various
organs, which now float in jars of syrupy preservative. His chest cavity lay open, the ribs drawn wide. Alessandros had made a circular cut of the brain case, like a cap cut off the skull.
I reeled out of the chamber retching, I who have slain countless others, in countless ways; I who have picked my way through battlefields strewn with the dead, and tortured the living. Alessandros followed me out, laughing as I heaved, and that was even worse.
“What?” he said. “My staunch soldier cannot stand the sight of blood?”
I leaned against the wall, fighting to restore control of my guts and to stop weeping, while Alessandros nattered on about his finding—something to do with etherea and eternal life. I did not care.
Alessandros did more than kill one of God’s angels—he had taken it apart piece by piece as if it were no more than the clock-works of a mechanical. And I know this can’t have been the first time. Beneath the physical beauty and pure etherea they exude, are only flesh, bones, fluids. . .
I can no longer abide this long war, or Alessandros’ madness. He is no longer the man I knew of old, but something twisted like the monsters he creates. Truly he is Mornhavon the Black, as the clans call him. For me, Alessandros del Mornhavon, the friend I loved so well, is dead.
It is clear that I must end the madness, and I now know what I must do. The vision of the young woman with her brooch in the mirror lake was truly a sign—a sign that I must contact Lil Ambriodhe.
BLACKVEIL
Exhilarated. < That was the only way he could think of to describe how he felt. She was coming. She with the long brown hair and ready smile. She who was of Hadriax’s blood.
He had pried into the mind of this young innocent, a mind curiously unblocked and unprotected. He learned her loves and loathings, followed her memories. He saw much of Hadriax in her, his courage and sense of loyalty.
Betrayer.
Mornhavon fought to contain himself, to remind himself that Hadriax was long gone. This young woman, this Karigan, he could mold her and twist her mind, make her his, as Varadgrim was his. He could bind her to him, and end his loneliness. He would have her at his side when the wall failed.
The wild magic was within her, and all he’d have to do is control it. She would shed all notions of being a Green Rider. She would be his.
Wouldn’t this be his ultimate revenge against Hadriax? To pervert one of his own blood?
You will come, he whispered to her.
There was no sense of time within the wall. A day might have passed, or a million. The granite tried to coax Alton away from his work with its memories.
He barely remembered what it was like to live within a body of flesh, blood, sinew. He hardly remembered his name.
He did know that he must sing, that he must make the others sing with him. His voice resonated among the crystalline structures and carried through the entirety of the wall. He modulated his voice so it might overcome the others.
Sometimes when he paused, he heard their whispers around him: anxiety, suspicion, hatred. Why should they feel such for him when he was only trying to help?
Sometimes he pondered over the incongruity, but then an image of Karigan would come to him, and he knew he must continue his work for her. He could not disappoint her.
THROUGH THE BREACH
Laren couldn’t believe the devastation as they rode into the encampment at the D’Yer wall. Entire stands of forest had been toppled as if a giant’s hand had swept through it. Whole trees had been uprooted, some splintered to the size of tinder. Boulders, unmoved since the days of the great ice, had been rolled aside leaving gaping craters where they once rested.
When the wind turned toward them, they gagged on the stench of carrion. Even the wildlife had been unable to escape the catastrophe. Vultures circled overhead.
The downed forest opened up views of the wall, and her Riders were silent as they took it in. Laren hadn’t looked upon it in many a year, and even then, only at a distance. The sun glowed warmly on it, making it at once innocuous and magnificent.
Spoiling the effect was the breach, an imperfection that looked as if a god had reached down and ripped out a chunk of wall. Gray mist billowed through the wound over smashed rock and debris. The repaired section had not held during the destruction.
From the look of things, the power must have funneled right through it. She dared not think what would have happened if the rest of the wall hadn’t been standing to shield the countryside.
At the encampment itself, they were greeted by a fresh row of graves. Too many graves. Laren nudged Bluebird toward the wall, where soldiers stood guard. One broke off a conversation and started toward her. She met him halfway.
The soldier saluted. “Captain.”
“Corporal.”
“Corporal Hanson, ma’am.”
Laren nodded her acknowledgment.
“We are glad to see you,” Hanson said, “but we were hoping for a larger force. The soldiers here, they need relief.”
“We are here on reconnaissance, Corporal. We’ve had no word from the wall in quite a while.”
“Oh.” The corporal looked disappointed. “We sent a man up some time ago, first to Lord D’Yer, then to the king.” He did not speculate over what might have become of the messenger.
Laren swung off Bluebird, her Riders following her lead. “Tell me, Corporal, what is your situation? Who’s in command?”
“Captain Reems, ma’am. He was injured. I’ll see that he’s awakened and—”
“No, no. Don’t wake him. Surely you can brief me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Hanson spoke of great whirlwinds crashing through the breach, slashing through the encampment and forest. It was miraculous, he said, that anyone survived. Those who stood directly in the path of the fury had been stripped of their flesh.
They had spent most of their time since then trying to take account of the living and dead. One soldier emerged alive from beneath the rubble of the wall’s repaired section, while others had been impaled by splinters that had once been trees.
“We’ve also doubled our watch on the breach,” the corporal explained. “The creatures within, they want out. We killed some half a dozen ’mites. They know the wall has weakened, and that we have, too.”
“My Riders and I will help as we can,” Laren said, “and I’ll send one directly to the king with the news.”
Laren was about to pass on the assignment to Dale when a shout went up near the breach. The guards stood with crossbows cocked and aimed at a figure that stepped through it and over the rubble. Mist curled around him, veiling his features at first, then ebbing away. She froze, startled to the bone.
“Lord Alton!” Corporal Hanson cried. “It’s Lord Alton!”
Karigan experienced few moments of clarity. She had ridden much of the day in the dimness of his touch and call. Though she rode beside her fellow Riders, they could have been a million miles away. She was an island amid an expansive ocean. Isolated, except for him.
He must have been distracted by other things during those rare moments of clarity. She knew his mind was churning with plans. Plans to carry out when the wall was felled. Plans to make the world his. Churning, churning, churning like a wagon wheel, he made plans, and discarded them, or stored them away for later use. He planned that she be one of his tools, but she never figured out why he chose her.
When he was in her mind, he pried into her memories, feelings, attitudes, and layers of knowledge. The violation sickened her, made her feel more vulnerable. He went where he had no right to, into her innermost mind, laying it all naked—the loss of her mother, small moments of childhood, a birthday celebration for her father, her confusion over King Zachary . . .
All she could do was issue a mental whimper when he probed her. She possessed no skill or weapon to stave off such an attack.
On occasion, he chose to be cruel for no other reason than it amused him. He planted images in her mind, of those she knew and loved, the dearest people in
her life. One by one he decapitated them, or flayed their flesh off their bodies. Mara was shown to be roasting on a spit over a fire. The captain was slashed from her neck to her belly, her intestines squirming out of the cut. Her father was thrown overboard a merchant ship into waters boiling with sharks, the sea turning foamy red around him as he screamed and thrashed.
To the image of King Zachary, he included her participation. He made her wield a sword and cut off his limbs. His dogs attacked him, feeding in a frenzy that turned their white coats scarlet.
Her mind screamed, but she could not force the scream to become a physical act, could not make it cross her lips. The images were so intense as to be real while she saw them.
He was controlling her, he was testing her, he was breaking her.
In a brief clear moment, she wondered what had happened to the little boy who played with toy sailboats in a fountain, the young adventurer who set off on dozens of quests. Her wondering was met with quizzical silence. And a clearing of the mist. He departed again to carry out plans.
Through the evaporating mist, she became aware of her physical surroundings. She saw the wall for the first time in her life. The wall that contained Blackveil Forest; the wall that was supposed to contain him.
“Help me,” she whispered, but no one heard her. There was some excitement occurring near the wall. “Help . . .” Why couldn’t her friends hear? Why wouldn’t they help her?
I hear you.
It was the voice of Lil Ambrioth.
The world reeled as Karigan looked around, and she stumbled against Condor’s shoulder. He nickered at her. Her mind had been so caught up in webs and images that she could not find equilibrium. She could see nothing of Lil but a pale pair of eyes gazing at her.
You must block him out, Lil said.
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