Blackveil: Book Four of Green Rider

by Kristen Britain

  Her father handed the basket over to Lona. “Fresh baked oat muffins,” he said.

  She lifted the cloth that covered them. “Ooh! They look delicious!”

  “There is more out in the sleigh,” her father said.

  “Oh, Master G’ladheon, you shouldn’t have!”

  He grinned. “Of course I should have.”

  “Jed! Clare!” A boy and girl came running down the stairs at Lona’s shout. “Master G’ladheon has brought us some things. Please unload the back of his sleigh for him.”

  Without taking the time to put on coats, the youngsters dashed out the door.

  “You must have tea with us,” Lona said, her gaze falling curiously on Karigan.

  “I’m afraid we must decline. Another time perhaps. But, I wish to introduce my daughter, Karigan. One day she’ll be watching over Garden House.”

  Lona gave Karigan a solemn curtsy. “I am pleased to meet you, mistress.”

  “Me, too,” Karigan said, much bemused.

  “We are grateful for all your father and Mistress Silva have done for us,” Lona said.

  Karigan glanced sharply at her father at the naming of the Golden Rudder’s madam. Garden House, however, did not have the air or appearance of a brothel. She didn’t know what to make of it.

  “Have we any new residents?” her father asked.

  Lona nodded and glanced down the hall. “Vera, dear, please come meet Master G’ladheon. Don’t be shy; he is most kind.”

  A figure emerged from the shadows of a doorway and limped toward them. When more light fell upon her, Karigan’s heart skipped a beat. Much of her face was a mass of burn scars. Karigan was immediately reminded of her friend Mara, whose own face was badly scarred when Rider barracks burned down. Karigan judged the young woman to be her own age. She did not approach closely.

  “Vera,” Lona said, “this is Master G’ladheon, our patron, and his daughter, Karigan.”

  Vera curtsied, but did not speak.

  “Hello, Vera,” Karigan’s father said with a nod. “I want you to know you are most welcome here. Welcome to stay as long as you need. And safe.”

  “Thank you,” Vera said in a tentative voice, and she receded back into the shadows.

  Lona drew closer to Karigan and her father, and said in a low, confiding voice, “Vera’s husband hurt her. Threw lamp oil on her and burned her for no reason other than his dinner was a little late.” As Lona spoke, Karigan could hear the fury behind her words. “He did that, and other things. One of Mistress Silva’s people brought her to us from Rivertown. It was best, we thought, she be hidden some distance away from her husband.”

  Karigan glanced at her father and saw his brows knitted together in anger. “You did right,” he said.

  Just then, Jed and Clare returned, arms loaded with some of the foodstuffs Karigan’s father had purchased.

  “Master G’ladheon, it’s too much!” Lona said.

  “There’s more out there,” Jed said, with wide eyes.

  Karigan’s father just grinned.

  Lona decided Karigan must meet the rest of Garden House’s residents, and one by one, they filed by to curtsy and bow to Karigan and her father. Mostly they were young women, some with children, a babe or two of suckling age among them.

  Her father greeted each of them by name, and received a kiss or smile in return, none so reticent as Vera had been. Meanwhile, Jed and Clare brought in the rest of the goods from the sleigh.

  There was much oohing and aahing over the size of the turkey, which seemed to dwarf Jed, and once again Lona asked that they stay for tea or supper, and once again, Karigan’s father declined.

  They made their good-byes and walked in silence back to the sleigh while the residents of Garden House watched and waved from the front step and windows.

  As Karigan’s father removed the blankets from the backs of the drays, she demanded, “What was that all about? Who were those people?”

  “They are those who’ve come on bad times; some profoundly hurt and mistreated by those who are supposed to love and protect them. Garden House provides them refuge, when they cannot find it elsewhere.

  “It was Silva’s idea, actually, and she founded the first in Rivertown. It’s called River House. She seeks out the abused, those with no place to go, and offers them a place for as long as they need. One in her profession has occasion to find such persons.” He set the blankets in the back of the sleigh and they both climbed up onto the bench. It was cold right through the seat of Karigan’s trousers.

  “But why ... ?” she began.

  He clucked Roy and Birdy on. “Let us just say Silva was once in a position similar to those she aids today. She was inspired to help others because of a stranger who once helped her.”

  “You?”

  He smiled enigmatically. “Silva and I go back a long way.”

  Karigan was glad he and Silva helped those in need, truly she was, but she found it difficult to reconcile the Golden Rudder and Garden House as being part of the same equation.

  “Silva runs a brothel,” she said.

  “Yes, she does,” her father replied. “It’s what she knows. And, she is very good to those in her employ. She does not force them into labor or to stay as others do.”

  Karigan remembered Trudy, one of the prostitutes at the Golden Rudder, speaking well of Silva. But it was still a brothel, a business that traded in flesh. It was a demeaning profession, and just plain wrong.

  Her father drove the sled down the main street of Corsa, past shops where one could purchase exotic teas and spices and other goods from afar, and by landmarks Karigan knew well from her childhood: the counting- and customshouses, the stately residence of the lord-mayor, and the offices of important merchants, including her father’s. She picked out its bold, granite facade as they drove by.

  A branching street was inhabited by the guild houses of the merchants, coopers, and longshoremen, among others. Another street held housing for dockworkers and shipwrights. All appeared quiet, and would remain so until the spring trading season picked up.

  They paused on the brink of a hill before the street descended straight down into Corsa Harbor, to take in the view. The harbor bristled with masts, some vessels tied up to wharves, others anchored offshore or moored to buoys. The snow concealed the usual squalor of the waterfront, made it appear more quaint. Traps and nets, pilings and barrels, all the ephemera of a busy waterfront, were bumps beneath the covering of snow.

  Gulls lined up on the wharves and waves thudded against wooden hulls. A way off, Karigan could make out a raft of eider ducks adrift, undismayed by the swells the storm had created. It was nearing sundown and the edges of billowing clouds were tinted orange, while small islands across the harbor, with their crowns of spiky spruce and fir, fell into silhouette.

  A crumbling keep of the Second Age stood jagged on the headland of a larger island at the entrance to the harbor, maintaining a ghostly vigil over all who passed. Mordivelleo L’Petrie, a clan chief of old, had built the keep. He’d known the harbor’s importance and stoutly defended it from those who’d contest him for it, namely pirates and invaders from foreign lands. After repelling a particularly ferocious assault from the Under Kingdoms, he was formally invested as the prince of the region that included the harbor, today’s L’Petrie Province.

  Karigan’s gaze swept along the crescent contour of the shoreline, and there, near where the Grandgent River emptied into the ocean, were the warships of Sacoridia’s navy, and the yards that serviced them. It was a testament to Corsa’s importance as a port that the navy’s largest fleet berthed in its harbor, guarding it, the realm, and the all-important river from any enemies. Mordivelleo L’Petrie, she thought, would be pleased.

  “I was going to show you Garden House when you finished service with the king,” her father said presently, the sunset casting an orange glow on his face as he gazed out to sea. “But it seemed appropriate to take you there today. I hope you consider it a worthy endeavor
, something to keep going when the time for you to inherit comes along. Many of our residents have moved on and done well for themselves.” After a long pause, he added, “I don’t suppose I’ve redeemed myself in your eyes at all.”

  “Is that why you brought me to Garden House?” Karigan asked.

  “I did not wish for you to judge my relationship with Silva based purely on your knowledge of the brothel.”

  “What is your relationship with Silva?”

  “We are friends of long standing.”

  “And you’re a client of her brothel.”

  Her father did not answer, but snapped the reins over the haunches of the drays and guided them away from the harbor.

  They left the town behind, the sleigh gliding into the deepening dark. With the setting sun, the air chilled perceptibly and Karigan burrowed beneath the blanket. The cobbles at her feet had gone cold long ago.

  She would receive no real answers about the brothel from her father. He had told her there were things he’d never discuss with her. And, she supposed, she did not want to know the specifics. What she really wanted was for none of this to have happened in the first place. She wished she had never heard of the Golden Rudder; she wished he’d deny his connection to it and say that it was all just a huge misunderstanding.

  But he did not, and it was not. She could wish all she wanted, but it wouldn’t change a thing.

  And yet, she reflected, because of his association with the brothel and its madam, he was doing good works such as supporting Garden House, his efforts no doubt saving the lives of those like Vera. Karigan may have had a privileged upbringing, but she wasn’t so naive that she didn’t recognize the need for such places.

  As she thought about it, she realized she’d only known a single, narrow facet of her father. Now she had discovered he was just as complicated and complex as any other person.

  So absorbed in her thoughts had she been, that when the sleigh hit a bump, she was surprised to discover her father was not taking the main road home, but rather a narrow lane bordered by forest.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Arrowdale Road,” her father said.

  Karigan’s disorientation faded immediately. Arrowdale was a meandering old track that was the “long way” home. She used to go riding on it sometimes, but to her it had always seemed so forsaken, a little spooky. There were only a few, long abandoned homesteads along it, taken over by the march of the forest. History held that some battle of the Long War had taken place in the folds of the land, hence the name Arrowdale.

  “Your mother and I used to ride out this way at night sometimes,” her father said unexpectedly. “The stars were always lovely, and no one bothered us out here.”

  Karigan glanced up, and between the bordering tips of evergreens, the stars were bright. The Hunter was making his seasonal trek to the west, and the Sword of Sevelon was in the half-raised position, slowly rotating upward from its winter’s rest.

  They entered a clearing and the full expanse of the heavens opened overhead. Her father halted Roy and Birdy to gaze at the stars and Karigan imagined her parents young and in love coming to this spot.

  “Now that you know I am quite imperfect,” he said, “can you accept that I misspoke earlier? I can’t say I like magic, or the fact it puts you in harm’s way, but I would never view my daughter as cursed.”

  “You never told me about mother’s bloodline,” Karigan said.

  “Stories. Stories told by superstitious islanders.” He paused, then said, “Tell me, where did you find the muna’riel?”

  “You knew of it then?”

  She perceived, more than saw, him nodding.

  “I found it in mother’s chest among her things.”

  “How did it ... ? I had it locked in my sea chest, down in the study.” He shuddered beside her. “Magic. I guess it wanted to be found.”

  It was, Karigan thought, a perceptive statement from one with an aversion to magic. “You didn’t give it to me as mother wanted.”

  Silence followed her words, then he said, “I desired to protect you from the magic. Or, at least not encourage it. I even let your aunts believe your mother was speaking nonsense in the end.”

  Karigan wished she could see his features better in the dark, but she imagined his expression downcast to match his voice.

  “I see I was wrong,” he continued. “Magic found you anyway. Do you have the muna’riel with you? May I see it?”

  Karigan dug beneath her coat and into her pocket to retrieve the moonstone. She held it aloft on her mittened hand, the shock of light making the horses snort and bob their heads. The brilliance of the stone chased shadows deep into the woods, and the snow in the clearing intensified the silver-white light almost to blinding.

  Karigan’s father shielded his eyes until the light ebbed to a more gentle glow. The snow on the trees that ringed them glittered as if strewn with diamonds.

  “I forgot how bright it was,” he murmured. “I can’t remember when your mother first showed it to me. After we were married, of course, but before you were even conceived, I think. She never explained how she had acquired it, but she said it was Eletian. When I pressed her about it, she’d only laugh and find ways to distract me.”

  “She knew how you felt about magic,” Karigan said.

  “Yes, I suppose she did. And I suppose I chose not to see it in her, even though the muna’riel would light only for her and not me.”

  “I wish I could help you understand,” Karigan said, “that it’s not the magic itself that is evil or good, but the user who makes it so.”

  But he did not reply. He sat there, his eyelids drooping and head nodding until his chin rested on his chest. He breathed deeply as though asleep.

  “Father?” Karigan asked. She nudged him, but he did not stir. She jabbed him harder, and still no response. He seemed only to sleep, but ...

  She glanced at the horses, and they stood with heads lowered as if also slumbering.

  A light blossomed in the center of the clearing. A silvery, fluid flame that flickered and grew into a column the height of a person.

  “Five hells,” she murmured.

  The light of Karigan’s moonstone spread toward the flame, surrounding it as if to embrace it.

  Finally, a voice said, you have come.

  MOON DREAMS

  Transfixed, Karigan stepped off the sleigh, her feet sinking deeply into the snow. A figure rippled within the column of flame.

  “What are you?” she whispered.

  The figure did not answer, but its radiance grew, spread outward, and though Karigan backed away, it overtook her until there was only the light. Everything else, her father, the sleigh and horses, and the surrounding forest, vanished into shadow. She could not say for sure she was still in the clearing, or even in Sacoridia for that matter, though the snow still glared with its reflected light.

  I am weakening, said the figure in the flame; a woman’s voice, distant, strained. Under siege ... for so long ...

  “Who ... who are you?”

  Losing hold ...

  “Of what?” Karigan demanded. What was this? What was going on?

  The grove. The figure shimmered, cried out in pain, and Karigan discerned darkness staining the fringes of the light, black branches scratching against radiance.

  You must come. The voice held a desperate tenor. You cross thresholds.

  Cross thresholds ... The words kindled some memory buried deep in Karigan’s mind and came to her like the shreds of a dream: the spirit of a Green Rider, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, the royal tombs. When we fade, he said, we are standing on a threshold. Something about passing through the layers of the world.

  She grasped at the shreds of the memory, but it dissipated until she could not recall even the ghost and was left with only an impression of something missing. Karigan rubbed her temple. Her head felt strange, full of cobwebs. “Where is it I must come?”

  The figure extended her
hand of quicksilver from the flame, and a globe, much like a snowglobe, hovered above her palm. Karigan stepped closer to see it better, squinting against the intensity of the figure’s radiance. The globe was a blotch of blackness in the light and as she neared it, she discerned in it the scene of a dark forest of decay and murk.

  Karigan recoiled. “Blackveil?”

  You must help the Sleepers, the figure said, her voice increasing in urgency. If awakened by the enemy, they shall be a deadly weapon. She cried again in pain and the light wavered. I am losing hold!

  “Sleepers? What ... ?”

  The dark on the edges of light began to close around them like a claw. Keep the muna’riel close, daughter of Kariny. It is your key.

  The figure and her flame sputtered like a dying candle.

  “Wait!” Karigan cried. “The key to what?”

  You will recall our encounter only when you are given the feather of the winter owl.

  The figure dimmed and waned, writhed as though in the throes of some agony.

  “Please!” Karigan cried. “You must tell me more!”

  I ... I cannot hold on, I— The figure screamed and her flame extinguished.

  The world was cast into a midnight void and Karigan staggered back, her muna’riel dimming as if in sympathy. The globe that contained the scene of Blackveil hovered in the air for a moment before rupturing and, for a single instant, transported Karigan to the forest, its rotten tree limbs arcing over her, clawing for her, the mud of the forest floor sucking at her feet, the wild screech of some creature seeking blood piercing the thick, wet air. Then the vision was gone and the shattered pieces of the globe cascaded into the snow like crystals of ice.

  There was a sigh upon the wind and an anguished whisper that came to Karigan from far, far away: Argenthyne.

  Then silence.

  Karigan stood there in the deep snow of the clearing, the muna’riel glowing on the palm of her hand. Before she had a chance to grasp the apparition and her words about Sleepers, thresholds, keys, and Blackveil, or even the reference to her mother, the filament of memory was drawn from her so it was as if none of it had ever happened.