First Rider's Call, Page 4

  “You would think your grandmother’s chin hairs an interesting story,” Ereal said.

  “Hah!” Bard rose to his knees—and the challenge—and made up a clever rendition of “Grandmother’s Whiskers” on the spot. It left the others clutching aching bellies, they were laughing so hard. Soldiers passing by eyed the Riders curiously.

  “I do not think,” Ty said, after things quieted, “that Karigan in her nightgown is the image of Green Riders we wish to project.”

  Not an appropriate image of a Green Rider, was she? Karigan held her tongue, but Bard, the big tease, winked at her. He was having too much fun.

  “It’s certainly not on the same level,” Ty continued, “as the heroic tales of Lil Ambrioth, Gwyer Warhein, or any of the others.”

  Ereal leaned back against her saddlebags. “I don’t know. Look at the stories we’re missing precisely because of that reason. No one has ever written a history of the Riders and as a consequence we know so very little of our own heritage. The stories we do know are so embellished that the First Rider in particular is larger than life—hardly human—and there is scant mention of other Riders and their deeds in any of the histories.”

  “Exactly my point,” Bard said. He drew his needle through the cloth as Ty watched very closely. “There are many generations of forgotten Riders and I think it very sad.”

  “Then I think,” Karigan said, “our first tale should be about Ereal and Crane.”

  They all looked at her.

  “Crane is the fastest horse in all the provinces.” She gazed at Ereal. “When was the last time you lost a Day of Aeryon race?”

  Ereal raised her eyebrows, her mouth open in surprise. “Never. We’ve never lost a race.”

  Bard was laughing again. “A good thought, Karigan. A story would put ever more pressure on our good lieutenant and her valiant steed—she’d never live it down if she lost!”

  Ereal blinked. “I thought I was already under that pressure.”

  “An officer racing horses.” Ty shook his head in disapproval, his eyes still following Bard’s inexpertly guided needle.

  “And Captain Mapstone hasn’t lost one silver betting on them,” Bard said with some acerbity. “In any case, certain stories take on lives of their own. Who knows what the citizens of Darden may be saying ten years from now about the girl who rode to town in her nightgown.”

  “They’d say nothing if you’d drop it,” Karigan said. Then the terrible thought occurred to her that this accursed incident might be the one thing in her entire life that anyone remembered her for. Her life’s legacy. Wouldn’t her aunts be furious!

  Ty, suddenly unable to contain himself, reached toward Bard. “Give me that.” He snatched the sewing right out of Bard’s hands. “Awful,” he muttered, examining the handiwork. He drew his knife and ripped out the stitches.

  Ereal and Bard traded knowing looks. “Rider Perfect” had struck again, and Karigan watched as Ty deftly sewed tiny, neat stitches in the sleeve.

  Bard leaned back on his elbows, content to let Ty wrestle with his sewing.

  “I believe this calls for a song,” he said. “When I was last on an errand to Selhim, Karigan’s friend Estral dug up an old song for me about the First Rider. It’s not one most remember. The title is ‘Shadows of Kendroa Mor.’ ‘Mor’ in the old tongue meant ‘hill.’ ‘Kendroa’ did not survive as a place name, so the mor of the song could be almost anyplace in Sacoridia.”

  Bard cleared his throat, and in his baritone, began the fast paced tune:Hee ya, hi ya, the Riders ride

  Gallop ’em down the mor

  Gallop ’em fast, Lil

  Slay them ’mites, Lil

  And ride down the clans of dark

  Their chiefs with branched crowns

  Burn black pale brows

  Ride ’em down, Lil

  Ride ’em down the mor

  Faster than an arrow, Lil

  Beware the dark chiefs, Lil

  Ride ’em down the mor . . .

  The song depicted a desperate nighttime ride—a charge or retreat?—led by Lil Ambrioth. Since the song relied mostly on its fast beat, the particulars of the story were vague at best. If the song depicted an actual event, then the particulars had been well known to the singers and audience at the time it had been written.

  “It could have simply been inspired by the First Rider in general,” Bard said afterward. “Maybe a conglomeration of events in her life. The actual theme of outrunning and slaying the enemy isn’t too specific.”

  “What is meant by ‘clans of dark’?” Karigan asked.

  Bard shrugged. “Estral thinks it refers to Sacor Clans that took Mornhavon’s side during the Long War.”

  The Riders fell silent. Ereal stirred the embers of the fire with a branch and threw on some more wood. Growing flames hissed and popped as they consumed the wood.

  The idea of clans betraying their own people had quieted the Riders. Sacoridia had come a long way in its sense of unity since those days. But the thought of Sacoridians joining a monster like Mornhavon who committed atrocities against their own people was sickening.

  “Hah!” Ty said, startling the others. He broke the thread with his teeth, and knotted it off. He then presented Bard with his expertly mended shortcoat. “This is the way it should be done.”

  Bard took the coat, smiling. “My humble thanks, Rider Newland. Next time I need some mending done, I’ll know who to call on.”

  This brought more laughter, but despite the lightened mood, when Karigan finally kicked off her boots and wrapped herself in her bedroll, she still heard Bard’s rhythmic song ghosting through her mind as she fell into sleep.

  BLACKVEIL

  Far beneath the canopy of dark, twisted trees and vaporous shroud; buried beneath layers of loam, moss, and decayed leaves—a thousand years’ accumulation of growth and decay—a sentience stirred in deepest Blackveil Forest.

  Even as it struggled to shudder off the captivity of sleep, voices called it back, lulling it, willing it to sleep. Sleep in peace, ancient one, they sang. Disturb not the world, for it is not for you. Sleep in peace . . .

  The sentience tried to block the voices and their enchanting songs, but it was a terrible labor. The sentience moaned, which in the forest was a breeze that rattled tree limbs and sent drops of moisture plinking into still, black pools. Forest creatures paused their scavenging, yellow eyes aglow and alert.

  The sentience wanted nothing more than to obey the voices, to slumber undisturbed. Yet it was too restless, and so it resisted, spreading tendrils of awareness, like vines, creeping outward through duff and leaf litter to try and feel itself out, to understand itself, to seek and comprehend its boundaries.

  Though it was the barest ripple of resistance and awareness, the voices climbed an octave in alarm; increased the rhythm of their song; and pursued the sentience.

  Panicked, the sentience surged through moss and scattered leaves. It flushed fowl from undergrowth and rushed through a hollow log shredding spider webs. It sent wavelets across a sludgy, slow moving stream and followed it to the sea.

  The sea, it found, lapped a rocky shore. The sentience slid along the stems of rockweed, tasting brine and swaying with the undulation of the waves, but it could not travel beyond the shore, for a great submerged barrier sang it back.

  It traveled inland, and was absorbed by tree roots and sucked upward through the very fibers of the tree’s blackened heart. When it emerged as a droplet of dew at the tip of a pine needle, it found only heavy clouds of vapor.

  The sentience raced northward, but found again a barrier, a massive wall of stone and magic. Here the songs intensified; interwoven songs of resistance, barriers, and containment.

  The sentience backed off.

  It was hemmed in, surrounded on all sides, trapped. The voices lulled and cajoled, and as drowsiness bore down on the sentience, it perceived just the tiniest hint of weakness in the song, a fragility that was an off-key note that emanated from the wall
.

  Rebellion had bled most of the strength from the sentience. Unable to resist further, it began the inevitable slide into sleep.

  But even as it was overcome, a name from ages long past came to the sentience, and childlike in its desperation, it called out for an old protector: Varadgrim!

  This the voices could not repress, and even after the sentience drifted into heavy slumber, its cry penetrated a weak section of the barrier wall, and flowed into the land of Sacoridia, taking on a life of its own.

  NIGHT INTRUSIONS

  Perhaps it was Bard’s song that caused Karigan to toss and turn in her blankets, its eerie images and heady rhythm coursing relentlessly through her mind, or maybe it was the ill feeling of the clearing all too nearby. Whatever it was, when exhaustion finally did claim her, she fell into a heavy slumber only to be plagued by troubling dreams.

  She dreamed that the surrounding forest decayed and darkened. Seedlings sprouted and grew above her, unfurling branches that blotted out the moon and stars, and twined together in a net that trapped her.

  Beneath her, tree roots roiled to life. They churned and snaked through the ground, breaking loose and showering her with soil. Karigan wanted desperately to arise and run, but she was held a captive of her own sleep, her body like stone.

  The roots lashed around her limbs and coiled about her neck. The ground began to give way beneath her, the roots pulling her down.

  No! she wanted to cry, but her nose and mouth became clogged with earth.

  A root slithered along her side and plunged into her shoulder. It tunneled within muscle and sinew and wrapped about bones. Shoots spread throughout her body seeking to take it over; to take her over.

  Karigan wanted to fight, but could not move, nor could she breathe, suffocated as she was by the weight of the earth that buried her. A scream she could not loose threatened to explode in her lungs even as the roots inside her needled ever closer to her heart.

  When all seemed lost, when it seemed the forest might claim her wholly, the clarion notes of a horn rang out, shattering the roots that bound her and thrusting her back up for air as one who has been drowning.

  Karigan gagged on a sharp inhalation of air. When the fit passed and she realized she could breathe freely, her eyes fluttered open to stars winking between the limbs of tall, spindly spruce and fir. She could almost still hear the fading tones of the horn like an echo of the dream. It stirred some dormant memory, but she couldn’t place it.

  The dream left her exhausted as though the struggle had been a physical one. Tears shed in her sleep cooled on her cheeks, and she discovered she had wrangled her bedding into a tangled wad.

  A sharp pain stabbed at her left shoulder and she rubbed it. There was an old wound there, a tiny pinprick of a scar where once she had been attacked by tainted wild magic. She hadn’t thought about it in a very long time, and why now it should bother her when it was normally just a small point of numbness, she did not know. Just as quickly as she wondered about it, however, the sensation passed.

  She rubbed her eyes and then rose on her elbow, now fully awake. The fire was but glowing embers. Ty and Ereal slept nearby, but Bard’s bedroll was empty and Karigan recalled he had been assigned to second watch.

  It’ll be my turn soon enough.

  She decided to stay up rather than attempt sleep again and risk more bad dreams. She shivered at the cool night against her clammy skin and drew on her shortcoat and boots. She stepped carefully by Ty.

  “Everything all right?” The scratchy voice belonged to Ereal and she popped open a bleary eye to watch Karigan.

  “Yes,” Karigan said.

  “Are you sure? I thought I heard someone cry out.”

  “I’m fine, it’s nothing—just a dream,” Karigan said. “I go on duty soon.”

  Ereal murmured something and rolled over. Karigan stepped quietly away, rather embarrassed she had awakened her superior officer because of a dream, as though she were nothing more than a child experiencing night terrors. She sensed Ereal had been keeping an eye on her ever since their departure from Sacor City. It brought Karigan mixed feelings of gladness that people cared about what happened to her, and resentment that they might think her incapable of taking care of herself or doing her job.

  Now that sounded childish, she thought, yawning deeply. It was only natural for Ereal to watch out for those under her command, especially the most junior of the lot. Karigan shook her head thinking that a cup of tea and a hot steaming bath would do much to dispel her cranky mood.

  She headed for the horses and was struck by how quiet the night was. A few small campfires and lanterns flickered like fairy lights here and there throughout the woods, and the hushed voices of those on duty drifted to her. She inhaled a mixture of woodsmoke, manure, and pine, and she did not find it unpleasant. As she walked, the peacefulness of the night lifted the darkness of the dream from her shoulders.

  She greeted a sleepy guard on his rounds near the picket line and found Condor staked between Crane and a snoring mule. Condor welcomed her with a nicker, his eyes aglitter with starshine. She pressed her cheek against his warm neck and closed her eyes, receiving from him the solace only he could provide. It worked even better than tea or a hot bath ever could.

  “Steadfast friend,” she murmured to him. Through everything, from the torment of the call and sundering from her family, to her assimilation into Green Rider life, he had been there for her, an encouraging presence that provided comfort and unconditional love.

  She did not know what she would do without him and was aware that other Riders shared similar bonds with their horses. It came of a close working partnership, of course, and the fact that horse and Rider must rely on one another not just to get the job done, but for companionship and even survival. And it went deeper.

  Somehow, and Karigan was still unclear about this, messenger horses were able to pick out or sense the Rider with whom they’d be most compatible. Condor had never had a chance to “pick” her because of the dire circumstances that originally threw them together, but they certainly developed a deep fondness for one another that surpassed an ordinary relationship between horse and rider. It went a long way on a lonely road.

  He was an unbeautiful horse, her Condor, gawky in proportion, with his chestnut hide scored by old scars, but she didn’t care. She would not trade him for the most beautiful horse in the world, and she had had access to some truly fine steeds in her father’s stable, but they weren’t Condor. There was no other horse like him.

  Even now he provided her comfort from bad dreams, and gave her a light chuff in her face with breath sweetened by grain. She smiled and pulled on his ear and he lipped at her sleeve, begging for a treat.

  “Sorry, I don’t have anything for you tonight.”

  They had played this game often since they had been with the delegation. She had needed to come to him for his familiar comfort. This whole delegation business had taken some getting used to. Compared to her usual duty, it was like a traveling circus. So many people moving at such a slow pace. It was the same routine every day—riding from sunup to sundown, stopping to pitch camp for the night, breaking down camp in the dusky hours of morning, only to begin the cycle anew. The repetitive nature of it chafed at her.

  On an ordinary message errand, she had the freedom to set her own pace and stop where and when she desired. Sometimes this meant sleeping in the open, and sometimes it meant the camaraderie of an inn. With the delegation, she had no choice over pacing or people.

  While she missed the independence, she did enjoy getting to know the other Riders better. It was a rare occasion when Riders rode in one another’s company because, by necessity, they must work alone to cover the far reaches of the countryside, bearing King Zachary’s messages. But then, this was an unusual mission.

  A mission for which Karigan had been hand-picked.

  There were several other Riders better suited for a diplomatic mission, Captain Mapstone had informed her, than Karigan
who was not—and here she smiled—the most “diplomatic” among them. But it was she who had the most experience with Eletians.

  “The most experience” did not amount to much, Karigan thought. She combed her fingers through Condor’s mane, flipping it to the right side.

  A couple years ago, an Eletian named Somial had saved her life, mending her until the poison that raged in her blood had dissipated. Her memories of that time were dim, but she seemed to recall dancers amid moonbeams in an emerald clearing, and Somial’s gentle laughter and ageless eyes.

  Were most Eletians like Somial? Magical and healing? Or were they more like Shawdell, who had wished to crush the D’Yer Wall so he might claim whatever residue of dark and powerful magic remained beyond the wall in Blackveil Forest? It had not mattered to him how many lives he destroyed in the process, and in fact the more lives he took with his soul-stealing arrows, the stronger he became.

  Karigan grunted as Condor’s great weight settled against her. He had decided to use her as his leaning post. She heaved him off. “Hold your own self up, you great oaf.” He yawned comically and shook his mane out of sorts again.

  As Karigan stroked Condor’s neck, she found herself unsettled by thoughts of Shawdell. He had come close to bringing about her undoing, and King Zachary’s, too. The memory of Shawdell sighting the king down the shaft of a black arrow still made her shudder. It had been a close thing. Fortunately, Shawdell and his ambitions had been thwarted, but what was to say there weren’t more Eletians like him? Even just one such as he could present untold danger.

  And so here was the delegation, tramping through the northernmost wilds of the Green Cloak Forest. King Zachary needed to learn the Eletians’ mindset regarding Sacoridia. He hoped they still honored an alliance made with the Sacor Clans a thousand years ago, but who knew with that strange folk?

  Karigan suspected the Eletians wouldn’t be particularly concerned with Sacoridia unless it suited their own needs. And did something now concern Eletia? It was like the sleeping legend had awakened. People had not seen Eletians simply slipping through a forest glade in the light of a silver moon, but on busy roads in full daylight. Passersby gawked at them, but no Eletian deigned to speak with any Sacoridian, and none sought out King Zachary.