“We shall have a contest,” Amberhill boomed, “and we will see what this weak girl is capable of. Wagers, gentlemen?”
A contest? What kind of contest? she wondered, biting her bottom lip. She forced herself to stand tall, fought anxiety. Did not want them to see her fear.
The Adherents talked among themselves, making wagers, while Dr. Silk visibly fretted beside her. “This is not what I intended,” he said.
His words did not help. Any confidence Karigan’s uniform had brought her was waning, sapped by the cold, and Mornhavon’s presence, and now the threat of this contest. How did she ever get to be in this place? Well, she knew, but still . . .
Amberhill did not participate in the wagering. Instead, he seemed to derive pleasure from her uncertainty and fear, and fed off it.
The guard that had been sent away returned quickly, and what he carried with him took her by surprise.
“What?” Dr. Silk said. “We can’t use that, it’s a valuable artifact.”
“And your Green Rider is not?” Amberhill asked. “It all belongs to me anyway, and I can use it as I wish.”
Dr. Silk bowed. “Of course, Your Eminence. I forget myself.”
“Do not do so again.”
“I won’t, Your Eminence.”
What the guard carried in was Karigan’s bonewood staff, and a second staff of a lighter wood.
“It will be a contest of the Eternal Guardian against the Green Rider,” Amberhill announced. “With staves. But not to the death, as our living artifact may have other, future value.”
Karigan had no idea what “future value” she might represent to him, and she didn’t want to know, but she was glad to find out this was not to be a fight to the death. Still, though she had fought and trained with Weapons, she had no idea what the Eternal Guardian was capable of, or even if he was human.
The bonewood was brought to Karigan, and the guard told her, “Any use of this for anything other than your contest with the Eternal Guardian, and you will be shot. We will have guns trained on you at all times. Do you understand?”
Karigan nodded and took the bonewood into hands stiff with cold. The wood warmed, seemed to hum in her grip. Despite the circumstances, it was good to have a familiar object to hold. It had been her companion all the way through Blackveil. It was solid, reliable, and deadly. If not for all the guards with their guns, she bet she could take on almost anyone in this throne room.
“Don’t get too damaged,” Dr. Silk warned her, before clearing out of the way to give room for the bout.
“Thank you for your concern,” she mumbled.
The Eternal Guardian stood before her. Though he was no taller than an ordinary man, his bearing made him seem a giant. He did not remove helm or armor, but he’d handed his swordbelt over to one of the other guards. Karigan wondered only briefly why he did not carry a gun, like all the others.
“Where is my armor?” she asked. “It hardly seems fair not to have any.”
He did not answer, there was only the hiss-sigh of the mechanism on his back. She knew this contest was not about fairness, anyway. He raised his staff at the starting position and waited. If they did not mean for her to get killed in this bout, they meant to be entertained by the spectacle of the big, strong Guardian fighting the weak female from the past, who had the temerity not to wear a veil. Well, entertain them she would. Let them see she could wield a staff.
She flexed her hands around the staff and stepped up to the Guardian. His eyes flickered as he blinked behind his visor. They touched off and began.
The Guardian did not hesitate. He did not take time to size her up. He simply attacked. Karigan barely deflected the blow to her mid-section and found herself desperately parrying a series of sophisticated moves. She was cold, stiff, slow. The icy floor caused her to slip and slide when she tried to maneuver away from the attack. The Guardian appeared to have no problem with his footing. He was like a stout tree rooted in the floor, she a pebble skittering across ice.
Meanwhile, the Adherents jeered and laughed at her, calling her names and using words they, as proper gentlemen, would probably never use in the presence of their wives or daughters, or in polite society, but she was not part of their polite society. To them, she was not even a person. She was a captive, in their minds a slave.
She took a glancing blow to the hip and slid away, steam puffing from her mouth. For all that the Guardian’s moves were swift and well-executed, they were familiar to her. She willed herself to recall her training, and to allow it to overtake her. She must incorporate the uncertain footing into her fight, find her center, use it to her advantage. It was not easy, for the Guardian was relentless. He pounded on her bonewood, numbing her hands, the wrist that Silk had clenched so hard aching. But she was warming up.
Soon she found a rhythm, a desperate rhythm, but one she could work with. Still, she had to be ready when the Guardian made an unexpected move. Just as she had tried to teach Cade in swordplay, she must not become lulled by that rhythm.
The constant din of colliding staves filled the room, the raucous shouts of the Adherents falling into the background. The Guardian’s staff smashed into a mass of icicles hanging from a chandelier. Shards of ice pelted Karigan, bit into her hands and cheeks, but she managed to block another numbing blow.
She used the slick floor to move quickly out of the way, sliding here, then there. The Guardian’s armor slowed him down only a little. She skated among columns, using them as shields. She knocked a phosphorene sconce off the wall, a ball of flame hissing to the floor, a burning tail sizzling behind it in an arc.
When Karigan engaged in yet another punishing series of forms, she thought, I am a king’s messenger. I have lived through worse. This is nothing. Even if the Guardian defeated her, humiliated her, she could live with it. With that in mind, she decided to make a move that would likely be her last, but which was better than breaking a leg, or worse, her head, on the slippery floor. It was a move that was not part of any proper form, one that only the desperate and untrained would attempt. She took her staff by the end and swung it like an ax, bearing down on the Guardian’s. Wood splintered like a crack of thunder. Not hers, but his, for she wielded bonewood, which was the strongest of them all. She jerked her staff back, its hooked metal handle catching his staff and pulling it apart into two pieces that clattered onto the floor.
At first all she heard was her own hard breaths. Then Amberhill’s laugh. The Adherents had fallen silent in astonishment.
She could not tell what the Guardian felt because of the visor and bevor concealing his face, but he blinked rapidly and gazed at his empty hands.
Then he stared directly at her. She cocked her head. Was there something familiar about his eyes?
“Well done, Rider,” he said in a low, harsh whisper.
The voice . . . No, she didn’t think she knew it, but because she was distracted and mulling over it, she did not see him move before he backhanded her across the face.
THE ETERNAL GUARDIAN
The blow sent Karigan careening, and she landed on her knee, heart hammering from shock, and face stinging. She shook her head and touched her cheek, and opened and closed her mouth to make sure her jaw worked properly. Fortunately the Guardian’s armored gauntlet had not broken or dislocated it.
She rose unsteadily to find that Dr. Silk had confiscated her staff, which had dropped from her hand when she’d been hit, and the Eternal Guardian was returning to his post beside the throne chair. Coins clinked from hand to hand as the losers of the wager paid up.
A thunderous boom shattered the quieter noises, and everyone looked up.
“What now?” Dr. Silk muttered. His moment of triumph clearly was not going the way he had hoped.
BOOM! The throne room door shuddered. Guards scrambled toward the entrance. Were they under attack? BOOM! The door cracked, and then another impact
slammed it open. A high-pitched whinny resounded down the length of the throne room.
“Oh, no,” Karigan said when she realized what was going on. A familiar stallion reared in the doorway. “No, no, no.”
She set off for the doorway at a run, her feet slipping as she went. She paid the Adherents and the emperor no mind. No one tried to stop her; they must have all been distracted by Raven’s intrusion. Her only thought was to reach him and calm him before anyone else could harm him. How had he even gotten into the palace?
“Raven!” she cried.
He had most certainly sensed her distress and was coming to her aid. Green Rider horses bonded strongly with their Riders, and he being the headstrong and willful creature he was, had come for her.
It was difficult to see exactly what was happening in the confusion of the doorway, but she saw a guard nearby raising and aiming his firearm.
“No!” She leaped toward him, grabbing the gun, holding on despite the pain that seared her hands just by being in contact with the weapon. She knocked it out of the guardsman’s hand, and it slammed to the floor, steel striking icy marble.
Despite her efforts, the unmistakable report of gunfire exploded in the entryway. Before she could even break away from the guard she wrestled, there was more shooting, and Raven’s screaming. Desperation made her strong, and she pushed the guard away in time to turn and see Raven stagger.
“No!”
His knees buckled as she ran toward him, and he crumpled to the floor.
She slid to his side. “No,” she whispered, frantically patting his neck. Blood pooled beneath him, and his legs jerked and trembled.
“Don’t leave me! Please . . .”
But the light in his intelligent eyes faded, and after he heaved a final breath, his whole body went limp, his tongue lolling out between lax jaws. He was gone.
Karigan rested her forehead on his already cooling neck, all the strength and life gone from it. Some essential element of her soul had been stripped out leaving her drained, abandoned. By having saved him from the meat market in Mill City, she had still brought him to his death.
“Old Samson,” said his former owner, Dr. Silk. He shook his head. “So he meets his end after all.” He nudged one of Raven’s huge hoofs with his toe. “He will be dog meat and glue now.”
Karigan stood unsteadily, rage washing over her. She was ready to unleash it on Dr. Silk. She forgot where she was and all who depended on her. She could only think of murdering Silk.
He must have seen it in her eyes, for he took a step back. “Mr. Howser?”
The man moved toward Karigan, and she was ready and willing to take him down, too, if he got in the way.
Oddly, it was the presence of the emperor that calmed her. She had been unaware of his approach. Amberhill was just suddenly there, kneeling at Raven’s head. He placed his hand between the stallion’s ears in a sort of benediction. “He reminded me so much of my Goss.” He shook his head sadly. This was not Mornhavon, but Amberhill.
“Why did he do it?” someone asked.
“That horse was always wild,” Silk said. “Insane.”
“He was a Green Rider horse,” Amberhill said. “He came to defend his Rider.”
Silk stared aghast. The others who crowded around looked on uncomprehending.
“This noble horse will not be made into glue or dog meat,” Amberhill told Silk reproachfully. “He will be interred in the great pasture with my other beloved steeds.”
“A Green Rider horse?” Silk asked himself in disbelief. He must have regretted not knowing he’d had such an “artifact” right in front of him the whole time.
Amberhill rose and demanded, “Who shot my horse?” Heat rolled off him like palpable waves of anger.
Two guards fell to their knees right away, heads bowed. One said, “We feared—”
A flare of heat shut the man up. Ice melted beneath Amberhill’s feet, and vapor rose up around him like a shroud. Even amidst her loss, Karigan remembered how Yates seemed to burn up when Mornhavon occupied his body. Was the throne room kept cold in an attempt to prevent the emperor from burning up?
He strode to the guard who had spoken and held out his hand. The guard did not hesitate, but unsheathed his gun and handed it over to the emperor, head still bowed. Too shocked by the loss of Raven to understand what was happening, Karigan reeled when Amberhill fired the weapon and much of the guard’s head blew off in pieces.
By the time the second guard was executed, the Eternal Guardian was dragging Karigan from the throne room, its gold door battered by the impressions of horse hooves.
• • •
Karigan did not resist, too depleted by all that had happened. She stumbled alongside the Eternal Guardian, his steely grip on her arm the only thing keeping her upright. The passing corridors were a blur, and it was with some surprise when they entered the suite of rooms she shared with Lorine and Arhys.
The Guardian released her, and she collapsed onto the sofa, placing her head in her hands. There were no tears yet. It had not sunk in. She was just intolerably empty, wanted nothing more than to be in Cade’s arms. She was barely aware of the Guardian moving through the rooms, looking through doors, moving objects. There were no sounds or indication of Lorine and Arhys being home.
When the Guardian, that fearsome presence in leather and red armor, stood but inches in front of her he could no longer be ignored. “They cannot see or hear, at least for the moment,” he said in his wreck of a voice.
She was so dazed she had little idea what he was talking about.
He took her chin in the same hand that had struck her. She flinched.
“I am sorry about that,” he said, “but I had to make it look good after the disgrace of losing. I used a weaker staff on purpose.”
Look good? Weaker staff?
He tilted her chin up so he could study her face. “I cannot believe it,” he murmured. “After all these years. It is actually you. After Dr. Silk found your belongings in Blackveil, I thought you had vanished utterly, never to be seen again.”
Karigan jerked her chin out of his grasp. He did not reach for her again. Instead, he knelt before her. He twitched his head, and wheels and gears on the sides of his helm were set in motion. Ticking and whining, they lifted the visor and lowered the bevor. The hiss-sigh of his cylinder apparatus ceased. She looked upon a visage as wrecked as his voice, the features of his face fused together by scars and melted flesh. The extent of the scarring was horrific, beyond even what her friend Mara had sustained when Rider barracks burned down. It was like looking at a face of clay slapped together by a child. She wanted to look away but could not. There was something in his eyes, something about the way he had fought and held himself. Something about his stoic attitude.
“Do you know me?” he asked, his breaths a terrible wheezing sound. “I am much changed.”
She squinted, tried to fill in spaces where eyebrows might be, the original shape of his nose. How could it be? It was impossible. Just as impossible as it was for her to be here. “Fastion?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“How?” How was he right here before her, a Weapon of King Zachary’s court? One whom she considered a friend, as much as one could call a Weapon a friend. He was of the past, should have died long ago.
Then she launched from the sofa and battered his breastplate. “You betrayed him!” she cried. “Zachary! All of us! Traitor!”
He simply shrugged her off him, his strength undiminished by time or injury.
“Shh,” he said quietly. “There are still guards posted outside, and I’ve much to tell you before the emperor misses me. Will you hear me out?”
She wanted to hurl more accusations at him, lay blame on him for all that had become of Sacoridia and all the losses—the professor, those left behind in Mill City, Luke, now Raven. She also wanted to thr
ow her arms around him and weep. Here he was, someone from her own time, though so disfigured she hardly recognized him. She did neither.
“You had better talk fast,” she told him, not imparting what she might do to him if he didn’t. She wanted him to give her reason to trust him, she wanted to believe there were good reasons for his being the emperor’s Eternal Guardian.
Fastion, still on his knees, simply nodded and began. “During the final battle with the hosts of Blackveil and Second Empire upon us, it was my duty to help Queen Estora and the prince escape into the tombs. Lord Amberhill had already turned on us. When I put her into the care of the tomb Weapons, I returned above so I might aid in the defense of the castle. King Zachary had ridden out onto the field of battle and may have already been slain by then. I don’t know.”
She had already known this outcome for Zachary, but hearing it again on top of everything else caused an intake of breath that sounded like a soft cry.
“I fought at the castle gates,” Fastion continued, “but all I remember of it was fire, fire and burning.” He closed his eyes. “The burning. I should have been dead, but Lord Amberhill rescued me.”
“Why?” Karigan demanded. “If he had turned, you were his enemy.”
“It is something I often question myself, but I believe it was because I had saved him earlier. Something I have spent so many years regretting.” Fastion paused to take some rasping breaths. “He had returned from voyages in the east changed, but remained essentially himself and not threatening. He promised the king he’d help turn the tide of war in favor of the Sacoridians. It was sometime after I had rescued him that he changed yet again.” Fastion’s expression darkened.
“Mornhavon,” Karigan said.
“Yes. Somehow the dark one insinuated himself into Lord Amberhill’s being. The part that was still Lord Amberhill rescued me. The part of him that was Mornhavon healed me, gave me eternal life. I think it amuses Mornhavon to have one of Zachary’s Weapons now guarding him. I also believe that the part that is still Lord Amberhill wishes for me to ensure he does not fall.”
Mirror Sight Page 70
