Being on watch was almost laughable, because she could not see anything beyond their light. Would something come upon them before she could warn the others? Another cloud of hummingbirds, or something even worse? She squeezed her fingers around the smooth wood of her staff. All of her old worries and problems now seemed far off. She did not dwell on Alton and Estral, and not even on King Zachary.
When she was younger and read The Adventures of Gilan Wylloland, she’d dreamed of a hero like Gilan coming to her rescue, sweeping her away on his magnificent war horse.
Stupid, she thought with a bitter edge. Little girl dreams.
How many times had she fought her own way out of trouble? No one was going to rescue her. Certainly not King Zachary, and not just because she was currently out of reach. Even when she was within his reach, she was, so to speak, out of reach.
She had only herself to rely on and as pretty as the little girl dreams were, it was time to dispose of them. Perhaps it was the forest that inspired such bleak thoughts that dampened hope. She did not care. After Porter’s random and bizarre death, those old dreams lacked the weight they once held. Maybe if she left the forest alive she’d care again, but for the time being, survival was the priority. No hero to sweep her away from danger. Just herself.
She sighed. For all the darkness of her thoughts, it left her feeling somehow at peace to acknowledge what was true and what was not.
Footsteps announced the arrival of Lieutenant Grant wrapped in his cloak, his face shadowed by his hood.
“You can go to sleep, Rider. I’ll take the rest of your watch.”
“Sir?”
“It’s all right. I can’t sleep. The damned dripping—it’s driving me mad. Go along now, you’re excused.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Karigan stood and retreated to the tent she shared with Yates.
Dripping? she wondered as she ducked through the tent flaps. Yes, there were the ever-present drops on canvas, but it didn’t bother her. Now Yates’ snoring? That was something else.
Not to mention the occasional bloodcurdling scream of some creature meeting its end deep in the forest.
MOONDIAL
They survived the night. Those on watch reported creatures scuffling and snuffling through the woods, but nothing had come too close. Dawn arrived as another soggy, gray day and camp was swiftly packed up.
Karigan didn’t think any of the Sacoridians had slept well, except maybe Yates, who snored his way through the night. Between his snoring and the rocks rammed into her back, Karigan certainly hadn’t. As for the others, pouches sagged beneath Lynx’s eyes, and she wondered if the voices of the forest had infiltrated his dreams. Ard looked surly and threw his gear around as if he’d like to break something. A haggard Grant kept scratching his arm and muttering to himself about the dripping.
Once everyone was ready, they set off down the road, their mood subdued, no one engaging in chatter. Nothing threatened them as they walked along, though Karigan felt as if their every movement was observed by malevolent eyes.
They paused only for a meal at midday, and when they finished, Graelalea announced, “Here we shall depart the road.”
“What?” Grant demanded. “What do you mean we depart the road?”
“You don’t expect us to bushwhack through this forest, do you?” Ard added.
The idea of leaving the road dismayed Karigan, too, but she withheld her protest, waiting to hear Graelalea’s explanation.
“There were once paths, not just roads, that Eletians used to travel this land. If you knew our roads, you would realize they are not ... efficient. Think of your main thoroughfare in Sacor City. Is it the most direct route to the castle?”
“No,” Grant admitted. “There are shortcuts.”
“Though our roads were not made to slow an invading army as your Winding Way was, the result is the same. So I seek to shorten our journey by another path.”
“I see. And what will this path lead us to?”
“The heart of Argenthyne.”
Her pronouncement was met by silence.
“On the path,” she continued, “it is even more imperative we do not stray. The forest shall attempt to mislead us, I think, but it may be the land is not entirely opposed to Eletians.”
They were not consoling words.
Karigan saw no path leading from the road, but without further explanation or hesitation, Graelalea stepped into the woods, followed swiftly by the other Eletians.
“Wait!” Grant cried. “We need to survey this for the map.”
“We have paused here long enough,” Graelalea replied.
“Our mission is to map and—”
“That is your mission. Eletians need no maps. You may stay and strike out on your own if you wish, or you may come with us.”
The Sacoridians waited for Grant’s decision while he stood on the road cursing the Eletians, the gods, and the dripping water. Meanwhile the Eletians disappeared deeper and deeper into the woods. Finally he plunged in after them, much to Karigan’s relief, and no doubt to that of the others. She was pretty sure they did not stand a chance in the forest without the Eletians.
They thrashed through brush and branches, tripping over roots as they went, likely sounding like a pack of charging bears, until they saw the flash of white armor between the trees. When they caught up, Solan, who was last in line, cast them a smile. It was more than clear the Eletians possessed the upper hand in Blackveil. Any pretensions Grant once held about being in charge of the expedition were dashed long ago.
No words were exchanged as the Sacoridians followed. One advantage, Karigan decided, to having others ahead was that they cleared the path, though some branches still swung back at her from Yates’ passage. The trail they trod, though not easily visible beneath layers of loam and mud that sucked at their boots, was more level than the adjacent forest floor. Now and then there were hints of stonework—crumbling retaining walls and flat stones on the treadway—not entirely obscured by moss.
But here the forest felt closer, shouldering in and bearing down on them, the air stagnant, almost suffocating with wet rot. Brambles grabbed at trousers and sleeves. Yates stumbled to the ground and Karigan almost tripped over him. She helped him rise and he kicked at an arching tree root in the path.
“It tripped me on purpose,” he declared, and he stepped around it, hurrying to catch up with Grant.
Karigan tapped the root with her walking cane. Was it her imagination, or did it shrink away from the touch of bonewood ? Perhaps Yates had not been exaggerating. She hurried on, taking especial care to watch her footing.
Despite the chill, perspiration trickled down her face. The Eletians maintained a punishing pace, and she was grateful when they halted, until she found out why.
“Be silent,” came Graelalea’s order down the line.
A screech pealed out overhead. Karigan’s toes curled in her boots. Eletian arrows nocked to bows tracked something overhead obscured by fog and trees. Another cry and the perception of vast wings beating the air. Water poured off branches.
It must be, Karigan thought, a flying creature, like the one that had crossed the breach last summer. An Eletian arrow sang and somewhere beyond their cloudy ceiling was impact and a screech that turned into a wail. The creature crashed through tree limbs as it fell to Earth somewhere beyond their sight.
“Good aim,” Yates said.
“A large target,” Solan replied. “An anteshey. It was hunting us.”
And just like that, they were off again. Off again and not stopping until the gloom deepened toward dusk once more. The Sacoridians staggered to a halt behind the Eletians in a slightly more flat and open space. There was stonework underfoot where not covered by black moss, and as Karigan took her bearings, she realized they were on a plateau of sorts with the far side giving way to a valley. She could only guess at its depth because of the fog. Granite steps descended into it, fading away as though leading into a different world.
Ard, who was the oldest among the Sacoridians, was bent double, still trying to catch his breath. He was very fit, but the pace had knocked the wind from them all.
“You trying to kill us?” he asked Graelalea.
“We made acceptable progress today.”
“Acceptable?”
Graelalea made no reply.
Lynx spoke quietly to Ard who nodded and said, “I’m all right. Thanks.”
Karigan slid her backpack to the ground and dropped down next to Yates whose legs were sprawled out before him.
“This must be one of the five hells,” he said.
“Told you,” Karigan replied half-heartedly, too tired to be smug.
“Don’t sit around too much,” Grant warned them, “or your muscles will cramp.”
He was right, of course, but Karigan could not bear the thought of standing on her feet again. They hurt unto numbness, and she had no idea what the blisters were doing. She’d beg Hana for some evaleoren salve before bed.
“I’ll get up if you do,” Yates said.
“Right.”
Neither of them moved, until clouds of biters found them and it became a feeding frenzy. They leaped up cursing and slathered on priddle cream from a tub Lynx passed them. The stuff stank, but it helped keep off the ravenous insects.
By the time Karigan and Yates finished raising their tent, someone had gotten a smoky campfire burning. Dark descended quickly, seeming to smother the fire. Without lumeni to give them light, night fell more densely than ever, until a couple of the Eletians produced their moonstones. The dark then peeled away from their campsite, and when Karigan gazed upward, she swore the trees recoiled from the light as if it burned them, the mist carrying the light like swirling smoke. Karigan did not pull out her own moonstone—she did not need to with the others alight. Idly she wondered when last a moonstone had shone in the forest.
“Ai!” cried Solan who knelt near the rim of the terrace, where the stone steps began their descent into the valley.
While the others gathered around Solan to see what the commotion was about, Yates stayed where he was.
“Tell me if it’s something that’ll eat us and then I’ll move,” he told Karigan.
She shook her head and joined the others. Solan was peeling back layers of moss from the terrace and wiping away dirt. Worms and centipedes squirmed away from the light. What Solan revealed were crystalline stars embedded into the flat terrace stone. They glittered brilliantly even beneath a film of grime. Further digging revealed a tree crowned by the phases of the moon.
“What is it?” Grant asked.
“It is a piece of time,” Graelalea replied.
“You mean a time piece, like a sundial.”
“More a moondial,” Karigan murmured and Grant glanced sharply at her.
“I mean a piece of time,” Graelalea said. “The Galadheon is somewhat correct, that the time is kept by the moon, though there is no moonlight to reach this one and it is missing its gnomon. It would have been placed here by the folk of Telavalieth whose village once lay down below.”
Curiosity got the better of Yates and he managed to rouse himself enough to come over, journal in hand. He deftly copied the design, ink bleeding on the damp paper. Solan cleared more moss, but there was no more to be seen. Eventually they all broke away to attend to camp duties and eat supper.
Later, when Karigan crawled into the dark confines of her tent, she detected Yates there still scratching away in his journal.
“Do you want a light?” she asked him, thinking her own moonstone could be of use.
“Nope.”
“Ah.” He was using his special ability to see in the dark. Now that she thought of it, he’d be able to see everything if she changed into the big shirt she liked to sleep in.
The scritch of pen on paper paused, and as if Yates knew her thoughts exactly, he said, “No need to blush. It’s not as if you have something I haven’t seen many times before. Not that I don’t enjoy it every time ...”
Karigan’s cheeks burned and Yates chuckled.
“You and your conquests,” she muttered.
“And you are one of my greatest challenges, impervious to all my charm and good looks. You are like an ocean that cannot be crossed, a mountain that can’t be climbed, a—oof!”
Karigan had slugged him in the shoulder. She assumed it was his shoulder. It was hard to tell in the dark. In any case, she found it immensely satisfying.
“Now move over,” she ordered, “you’re hogging all the space.”
When he complied, she crawled into her bedroll.
“What? You aren’t going to change?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m on second watch, so why bother?”
“Such a disappointment,” Yates said with a tsk, tsk. “But we will have many more nights together to—”
She kicked him, but this time it just made him laugh.
It was so strange, she thought, to hear laughter. It was as if once they entered the forest, and especially after Porter’s grim death, such a thing as laughter could not exist here.
“Do you suppose,” he asked after some moments, “the Eletians sleep in their armor?”
For that she had no answer—she wasn’t even sure if Eletians slept, but she joined Yates in his laughter, eventually falling asleep feeling much lighter than she had since entering the forest.
A PIECE OF TIME
Karigan awoke with a grunt and a jerk, caught in a dream where a black tree root had snaked from the ground and grabbed her foot. She cried out.
“Karigan,” Lynx whispered, reaching through the tent opening and shaking her foot.
She groaned, tatters of dream lifting from her. It must be time for her to go on watch. She unwrapped herself from her tangled bedroll, then backed out of the tent dragging her saber with her.
“It’s been relatively quiet,” Lynx said.
Their meager campfire, and the glow of two moonstones, accented the craggy lines of his face. Something wailed in the forest’s depths.
“Like I said, relatively quiet.” Lynx gave her a grim smile before heading for his own tent.
The moonstones belonged to Lhean and Spiney. Lhean strode around the terrace, looking out into the night, obviously on watch. Spiney stood motionless, gazing at the moondial. The light reflected from the crystalline engravings flared up around his feet like white fire.
Karigan shook off the last residue of sleep and approached Spiney. He still did not move, did not even seem to blink. A statue he was in his white armor.
When she stood beside him, the moondial looked no different than before.
“The forest does not permit the moon to shine here,” Spiney said unexpectedly. “No matter the phase. Without it we cannot experience a piece of time.”
“And your muna’riel is not enough.”
“It contains a moonbeam, not the moon.” He lowered his moonstone and placed it in a pouch on his swordbelt. Darkness draped them. As Karigan blinked to adjust to the change, the Eletian left her.
Karigan fingered her own moonstone in her pocket. She had yet to reveal it to the darkness of Blackveil, and wishing to take a closer look at the moondial herself, she did so now, wondering if her mother could have ever imagined it would be used here, in this the forest of darkest legend. Its light flooded the terrace, and once more the moondial glistened.
Her chest cramped beneath her Rider brooch. She gasped and doubled over in pain, clenching the brooch. Shafts of light beamed up from the moondial, trapping her like the bars of a cage, and the world blurred and changed around her. There was the Blackveil as she left it and the tents of her companions, but layered over it was another forest; the forest before it became Blackveil, smelling of green life, with the stars shining above.
There was smoke.
The valley bloomed with gold and orange fire, smoke pluming into the sky—or was it just the mist of Blackveil’s present?
Screams of the past came to her even as some creat
ure in the present screeched. Ghostly figures ran up the stairs onto the terrace, which appeared as pristine as if the stone had just been laid, and yet, in the doubling of her vision, it was blanketed by the taint of time and neglect.
The people ran in terror, crying, carrying children, shepherding and supporting the wounded. Eletians.
Who else would it be? This was Argenthyne. And it was Blackveil.
Hulking figures swarmed the terrace after them, their guttural war cries assaulted Karigan’s ears. Arrows flew from their bows. Eletians fell. The groundmites gave chase like a pack of feral dogs driven mad by the scent of blood.
Others—not groundmites, but men—climbed up the terrace at a more leisurely pace behind them. Karigan recognized the crimson and black uniforms of the Arcosians and among them was a power. She could feel it emanate from him from across the ages. He was black cloaked and black hooded.
Peripherally she heard Lhean calling to her. He sounded so far away.
The one with power looked at her, saw her. He lowered his hood, watched her with eyes blackened by wild magic. His striking face with its strong cheekbones and chin, the curl of raven hair. Mornhavon.
She would know him anywhere. She had borne his consciousness in her body across time, and that power—it was like a wall slamming into her.
Others began calling for her, telling her to come back . . .
Mornhavon smiled. Reached toward her with his crimson-gloved hand.
The cramping of her brooch turned into a dagger twist. She cried, fell to her knees, and her moonstone rolled from her grasp. The light died and Karigan was absorbed into the darkness of her mind.
A tumult of voices penetrated the dark.
“What in five hells just happened?” Grant demanded.
“A piece of time,” Graelalea replied.
“She nearly crossed into it,” Spiney added.
Karigan kept her eyes closed. Not again. It was not the first time she had surpassed the ages, but she’d had wild magic running in her veins then, and now it was supposed to be gone from her. How? she wondered.
Blackveil: Book Four of Green Rider Page 42
