Green Rider

by Kristen Britain

  She wandered the inner courtyard looking for an entrance into the castle. She did not use her brooch as long as no one was about to detect her. Every time she faded out, her headache intensified and the brooch sapped her energy.

  She came to some great glass doors, an unusual contrast to the massive stone walls of the castle. In fact, there were many windows here that glimmered like black ice in the moonlight. Whatever the room beyond, it was dark, and no guards were nearby. She tried the latch, and it yielded easily to her touch. She took one last look behind her, and stepped inside.

  She wished she had her moonstone now to reveal the room and aid her in navigating its vague expanse, but the moonstone was gone forever, just so much crushed crystal.

  The room, she decided, was some sort of sun room or study. She could make out the shapes of bookshelves and the edges of heavy furniture. She wondered if this was a place King Zachary spent much time in.

  She moved across the room with care, but still jammed her thigh on the edge of a table. She barely managed to suppress a cry of pain.

  “I’ll be black and blue from head to toe,” she mumbled, rubbing her throbbing thigh.

  She aimed for a bar of light that filtered beneath a door, and managed quite well without bumping into too many objects or knocking anything over. Once she reached the door, she dropped to her knees and peered through the space where the light came through, and she listened. She could not see or hear a soul.

  Just in case someone was out there, she touched her brooch and faded out, then cracked the door open. The corridor outside was only dimly lit, and it was empty save for some old suits of armor standing at age-old attention.

  She slipped out of the room, and using her own best judgment, headed in the direction she believed the throne room lay.

  THE GHOST

  Stevic G’ladheon was not sure he could take much more of the screaming. A few nobles had dared to defy Prince . . . no, he corrected himself, King Amilton. One noble lay dead with blood flowing out of his nose, ears, and mouth, a few others had given in to the strange power Amilton wielded before they met the same fate. Amilton would put his hands on their shoulders or heads. Bolts of black energy would spark and crackle around his hands, and the victim would cry out in pain.

  “I pledge . . . my . . . undying loyalty,” the most recent unfortunate said. It was a plump man on his knees with head bowed. Blood oozed from his nose.

  The fire seemed to burn within and without Amilton. His “loyal” servants, the nobles who had capitulated, stood behind him in the throne room. The strange stone that hung at his throat glimmered, and at times, seemed to pulsate like a living thing.

  Stevic and Sevano had found an alcove with a bench beneath one of the tall windows that marched down the length of the throne room. The bench was carved of stone, and was cold and uncomfortable, but it was better than standing among the sweating, shaking nobles. Amilton had dismissed him and Sevano as unimportant when he discovered they were lowly merchants. Yet they were not permitted to leave.

  The old woman, Devon Wainwright, stood among the nobles. Stevic remembered her back to the time he had visited Queen Isen to petition for recognition of his clan. Devon had been advisor even then, and as stern as a Weapon, but fair and careful in her judgments. She had aged a great deal in the time intervening, but her mind still seemed sharp. She talked quietly with a rather beautiful, statuesque woman with golden hair hanging long and loose to her waist. She wore black, a stark, mournful contrast to her features, as if a grieving widow. Soon Amilton would question their loyalties. Stevic hoped both would acquiesce without a fuss.

  His seat was shrouded in shadow, and partially obscured by a thick pillar. If he remembered correctly from his previous visit, Weapons had stood guard in these alcoves. They were dark, he supposed, on purpose. He wondered what had become of King Zachary’s Weapons. He wondered what had become of the king himself.

  Likely the king and all his Weapons are dead.

  Fleeting thoughts, like what Amilton’s reign would do to commerce and relations with other countries streamed through his mind. But most of all, he wondered and worried about Karigan. He had been so close to finding her. The Rider Connly had told him some strange story of how Karigan came to Sacor City bearing a message for the king. Stevic was not clear on what Karigan was doing with a Green Rider message in the first place. Connly was vague on the details, for he had only just heard the story himself, but he seemed to think Karigan had survived many frightening adventures.

  “Sevano,” Stevic said, “do you believe those stories that Rider told us about Karigan?”

  The old man grunted. “I believe he thought them true. And why not?”

  Stevic shrugged. “My own daughter . . . a schoolgirl . . . facing brigands on the road?”

  “A resourceful schoolgirl. We taught her to be so.”

  Stevic rubbed his upper lip thoughtfully. Connly had directed them to the castle where they sought out Captain Mapstone, but there was not a single Green Rider to be found. As they walked the castle grounds, they were nearly run down by the cavalry. They waited some time at Rider barracks for someone to appear, but no one did.

  Then they resolved to speak with the king himself, but when they stepped outside, soldiers in silver and black were running wildly in all directions. Arrows whined over the castle wall and everyone was shouting. When an arrow took out a soldier right in their path, they retreated to the barracks to await the outcome. It was not long before soldiers wearing Mirwellian scarlet found them. They were mistaken for a noble and his guard and were taken to the throne room to be dealt with by Prince Amilton, and there they had been ever since.

  Still one question remained unanswered: Where was Karigan? Had she made it off the castle grounds before the fighting broke out?

  Stevic stretched his long legs before him and leaned back against the stone wall. Castellan Crowe’s voice lilted as he made the pronouncement: “And L’Petrie Province joins His Majesty’s grand purpose. . . .”

  “There goes commerce,” Sevano muttered.

  “Our dear lord-governor is not the one to go against the current,” Stevic said.

  He allowed the shadows to hang about him. Amilton and Crowe were but distant things in a glittering light that did not include him. He gave up being surprised by Amilton’s use of magic and by the treachery of Zachary’s castellan, one of his most important advisors. He tried to ignore the scene of two guards in scarlet dragging away another body.

  In the darkness, he imagined he saw a figure in green weaving in and out among the columns of the opposite wall. She was wraithlike and thin and hard looking. He could not see her clearly—she seemed to fade in and out of the light.

  She carried herself like one who is hunted and keenly aware of all that is about her. She was self-possessed and unafraid. She turned to him and looked directly at him. Her features were filmy and blurred, but he felt her eyes on him, haunted eyes that had seen too much. Eyes he recognized.

  He sat up straight, and his mouth fell open.

  She drew her finger to her lips, then melted away into a shadow, became part of it, and did not reemerge.

  Stevic’s heart plunged. “Nooo,” he moaned.

  Sevano looked at him startled. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

  “Karigan ...”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s dead, she’s dead. . . .” Stevic put his face in his hands.

  “What?”

  “Her ghost.” Stevic pointed a shaking finger where he had last seen her.

  “Her ghost? Now look here. That Connly lad said she was alive.”

  “Was. She’s dead now. I saw her ghost.”

  Stevic shook his head and put his ashen face in his trembling hands.

  Jendara peered in each alcove along the east wall in search of the merchant. There had been something unsettlingly familiar about him, and she now took the opportunity to seek him out while King Amilton was preoccupied with terrorizing his n
obles.

  She found the man and his guard tucked away in one of the alcoves, and to her surprise, he was weeping, the cargo master’s hand on his shoulder.

  “You there,” she said to the cargo master. Her voice was nasal and muffled from having her nose broken. “What is the problem?”

  The cargo master looked at her with jaundiced eyes. “It is none of your nevermind,” he said.

  “I could cut your heart out before you drew your next breath, old man.” Jendara unsheathed her sword and watched as comprehension dawned on the man’s face when he saw the black band on her blade.

  The cargo master looked up at her, but the disgust in his expression had only deepened. “What in life made you fall to such a level, Swordmaster?”

  Jendara smiled, showing her canines. “You say I have fallen? Am I not the personal Weapon to the king of Sacoridia? It seems I have ascended to a higher place.”

  “That is no king.” The cargo master pointed in the direction of the throne.

  Swiftly, the blade tip pressed against the old man’s throat. She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

  “Do you wish to die?” she asked him.

  “I have no such wish,” he said with equal intensity. “But I see it in your eyes.”

  Jendara laughed. “We become Weapons because we expect death.”

  “Then I will rephrase my question. What has made you such a bitter woman?”

  “A man,” she said.

  She pushed the cargo master away with the flat of her blade. She gazed down on the overcome merchant. “Tell me what ails him, old man.”

  “Grief.”

  “Is that all? There is enough to go around these days.”

  “His daughter has been missing. Now he believes her to be dead.”

  “He believes? Doesn’t he know?”

  “He says he saw her ghost.”

  “What? Just now?”

  “Aye.”

  There was a prickling on the back of Jendara’s neck. She placed the tip of her sword beneath the grieving man’s chin, and lifted it, tilting his face upward. Even in the shadows, she saw how striking his face was, how strong and well-formed, though drawn and creased with worries. The lines around his eyes suggested character and more merry days. There was also that nagging familiarity.

  She grabbed his chin. The cargo master started, but she whipped her sword to his chest.

  “Stand off,” she told the old man. “I won’t hurt your chief.”

  She shifted the merchant’s face in the dim light. Yes, there it was in the dimples around his mouth, and perhaps the bright glint of his eyes. The shape of the face was different though. She dropped his chin, and then saw on his finger a familiar ring. She had worn its twin.

  The girl’s features must favor the mother, but the ring was unmistakable. A fine chill tingled up her spine. “She should have killed me,” she whispered.

  The merchant seemed to only just notice her. “What?”

  She looked right into his eyes. “I know her.”

  Jendara swung around. Amilton had another noble on her knees. He was about to place his hands, hands full of magic, on her shoulders. Jendara would not interrupt him, and he would not notice her absence.

  She stalked down the throne room, peering into every alcove, testing the air before her with her sword. The Greenie could be gone by now for all she knew.

  Then, near the entryway, she saw it—a flickering light, a streak of green. Jendara pelted down the throne room and through the great doorway, past astonished guards. Here the corridor was well lit with lamps and candles, and the flames bent at the Greenie’s retreat. Down the corridor she saw the Greenie run, transparent and ghostlike. No wonder the merchant thought his daughter dead.

  Holding her sword before her, Jendara charged down the corridor after the Greenie, but when she rounded one corner into another corridor, she discovered it was darkened and the air thick with candle smoke.

  Jendara peered through the hall and into the shadows. Careful, she thought. The Greenie could be armed.

  The shape of a person loomed up on her left and in the blink of an eye she swung her sword into it. A suit of armor crashed to the floor. The helm rolled down the corridor. Jendara narrowed her eyes as she stepped over a leg of armor and extended every sense into the gloom, but she heard nothing, saw nothing, felt not even a shift in the air. She smelled nothing but candles.

  Even then, however, another sense awakened in her, like a peripheral vision of the mind. She perceived the Greenie to her right, tight up against the wall. Jendara shifted her eyes, but could see no one. Maybe there was a deepening of a shadow against the wall.

  She took a deep breath, and held her gaze straight ahead, defying her greatest urge to take a direct look. That would only alarm the Greenie. Instead, she slashed out with her sword.

  A cry of pain from the shadows confirmed her instinct had been true, and she laughed in triumph. Now she spun toward the Greenie, just in time for another suit of armor to topple down on her.

  It took Jendara some moments to realize she was on the floor. Her body hurt, pummeled as it was by age-old plate armor. She groaned and pushed the breast piece away and untangled herself from the arms and legs.

  She felt around for her sword on hands and knees, and her hand fell into something wet. She brought her fingers to her lips and dabbed them with her tongue. Blood!

  Jendara raised herself to her feet and trotted back to the lit corridor. She grabbed a candle and took it into the dim corridor. She found her sword next to the twisted wreckage of armor. She looked in satisfaction at the blood on its tip, and the drips of blood leading in a trail down the corridor. Candle and sword in hand, she followed the trail like a hound on a scent.

  BLOOD TRAIL

  Karigan leaned in a darkened doorway, sucking in painful breaths. One hand clutched the door frame, the other closed on the wound beneath her ribs. It was not too deep, but it bled profusely and stung painfully.

  Dim light glowed in an adjacent corridor, but she had to drop the invisibility to preserve any energy she had left. The slash to her side was not helping matters. She looked down, and in the darkness, discerned an even darker stain spreading across the front of her shirt. Crimson oozed between her fingers and pattered on the floor.

  She leaned her head against the door frame and tried to catch her breath. Sweat poured down her face and burned her eyes. It would not be long before Jendara found her. She feared she would have to confront her this time, in a clash she had little hope of winning.

  Light shimmered at the far end of the corridor. No time to rest. She shook off her light-headedness and reached to touch her brooch. It was her only—

  Disembodied hands reached from behind through the darkness of the doorway. One clamped over her mouth before she could utter a scream, and the other grabbed her around her chest. Weakly she struggled against the iron grip. It drew her slowly, inexorably inward, into the night dark room behind.

  Shhh, someone breathed into her ear.

  She began to think she had fallen into the darkness of the unconscious realm, or it was simply the unlit room, but her body fell limp and felt as if it floated upward and away to the night sky, perhaps to the heavens to meet the gods.

  Jendara smashed her hand into the wall until her knuckles bled. She had followed the Greenie swiftly, but the blood trail simply ended in the doorway of an empty storeroom. She scoured every inch of the room, but it remained undisturbed. No strange shadows, no invisible presences, no tell-tale drips of blood.

  Jendara had to face it: she had failed.

  She was thankful she had not told her lord of her little errand. She had no wish to exact more punishment from him. She was tired, so tired. But what else was there? She had been devoted to Amilton and his cause for years. She knew he could be cruel, but he had never punished her before the way he had the night of the silver moon. He was a different man, a different man from the smooth, dashing prince she had sworn her life to pr
otect so long ago.

  She had once been an innocent much like the Greenie when she was younger and a swordmaster in training. She was proud to serve Sacoridia and King Amigast. When she became a Weapon assigned to protect Prince Amilton, he swept her away with his charm. She lost her innocence then. She had made a choice. Reflecting on that choice and others, she knew she would still make them if she could do everything over again. That was where she and the Greenie differed, she supposed. The Greenie learned from her mistakes.

  She left the empty room and stumped down the corridor, the candlelight like a shield around her.

  When she reached the throne room, she found the merchant still sagging on his bench with the cargo master sitting stiff and resolute next to him, his arms crossed. Jendara thrust her bloodied sword tip in front of the merchant. He looked at it with bleary eyes.

  “This is the blood of your daughter,” she hissed. “She is no ghost.”

  She did not await his reaction and strode down the runner past the thinning ranks of defiant nobles. Among them was her old teacher Devon Wainwright, a mighty warrior in her day, but now blind as a possum and reduced to being Zachary’s advisor in her dotage. Jendara shook her head. She had once admired Devon, but now saw only a wrinkled and bent crone. Jendara did not wish herself such a long life.

  Crowe and King Amilton were speaking with a Mirwellian soldier and did not note her presence, for which she was grateful.

  “What did they say?” Amilton’s cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flashed. Energy crackled about his clenched fists.

  “M-monarchy is tyranny, my lord.” The soldier licked his lips and his eyes darted uncertainly from Crowe to Amilton.

  “Who are they?”

  “The Anti-Monarchy Society, my lord.” It was Castellan Crowe who answered. He leaned on his staff of office, untroubled by the news. “Your brother spoke of them from time to time, but they were a nuisance at best and nothing more. He did order the leader arrested, but didn’t pursue the matter. He became a little more concerned when they found much support in North, but other matters demanded his attention.”