Blackveil (83 page)
Karigan hopped to a wobbly rock in front of Ard, her legs quivering from exertion. Ard did not move, forcing Karigan to fight once again for her balance. He did not give her a hand, but instead appeared lost in reflection.
“So kind she was,” he said. “Considerate to those beneath her station when she didn’t have to be. She didn’t change as she grew up. Always good to me. I’m proud to serve her.”
This was all fascinating, Karigan thought, but her leg was killing her as she struggled to prevent herself from falling and dashing her brains all over the rocks.
“Um,” she said, hoping Ard would take the hint.
He gazed at her, his eyes chips of flint, his face set and body rigid. Karigan tensed in return. She did not understand his posture, or why he was not helping her.
“Would you mind moving on?” she said. “We’re falling behind.”
Ard did not move, but kept staring at her, tapping the hilt of his sword. “I’d do anything for her,” he murmured.
Karigan hopped back to a more stable rock behind her, now holding the bonewood more in defense than for balance. What was wrong with him? His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.
“Is all well back here?” It was Telagioth.
Karigan sighed in relief.
“Aye,” Ard replied, and he turned toward Telagioth and strode off, leaving Karigan behind. “We were just resting is all.”
Resting? Is that what he called it? Then why was she drenched in sweat and shaking?
To her further relief, Telagioth stayed with them and Ard carried on an animated conversation. All seemed as it was before. Had she only imagined he’d posed a threat to her just moments ago? She could not even guess at his change. Until now he’d been nothing but helpful to her along the journey.
Perhaps the poison of the thorns had muddled her perceptions. Even so, she intended to remain wary of Ard in case he showed his darker side again.
REDBIRD
“V
ery good,” Grandmother said when Lala showed her the knot of red yarn. “You have a natural knack for the art.”
ery good,” Grandmother said when Lala showed her the knot of red yarn. “You have a natural knack for the art.”
“Lalala goot!” cried Gubba. The old groundmite sat across the fire from them, beaming at them with a toothless grin.
In the evenings when they paused in their journey through the forest, Grandmother had taken to teaching Lala more of the craft once taught to her by her own mother and grandmother. The protection provided by the groundmites had removed some of the responsibility from Grandmother, and it was now they who guided her and her people. The groundmites also provided them with fresh meat and water, and all of them were feeling the stronger for it. Such relative ease, compared to the beginnings of their journey, allowed Grandmother the leisure to teach Lala.
If only Lala could speak. Without speech, many spells would prove inaccessible to her.
Her granddaughter’s inability had always saddened her, but now it angered her. It was unfair. She wanted Lala to carry on the craft of her ancestors, to have a voice. When Grandmother finally surrendered her soul to God as all mortals must, who would carry on the art for Second Empire?
There was also that music, the flow of an almost otherworldly voice that came into her mind sometimes, its source at the wall. It mocked her with its power and made Lala’s silence all the more difficult to accept. She had decided it was high time to do something about it. To lash out, as it were. So here they sat, Lala tying a very special knot.
Grandmother appraised it critically, looking for imperfections, but it was well executed, with extra knots that were Lala’s personal expression. It was, after all, an art. The girl had the aptitude, and now Grandmother wished she’d done more with the girl sooner.
“You understand the next step?” she asked.
Lala nodded and picked up the knife from the blanket between them.
“Remember to pour your intent into it.”
Lala closed her eyes, looking much older than her years, even beneath the dirt smudged on her face. In one swift motion, she slashed the blade across her palm. Grandmother grabbed her wrist and pushed the knotted yarn into the wound so it would absorb the blood. Lala clenched her fingers around it. They could have used a nail clipping or a lock of Lala’s hair for the spell, but nothing was as potent as fresh blood.
Grandmother spoke the words of power, words as ancient as the roots of the empire itself, her voice a singsong, and a red glow seeped between Lala’s fingers.
Gubba, who was accustomed to the unpredictability of Blackveil’s etherea, chanted in counterpoint to buffer them from some devastating backlash.
When Grandmother finished, the glow captured in Lala’s hand flickered red against her face like firelight.
“You may release the seeker,” Grandmother said.
Lala carefully uncurled her fingers, the glow blooming, then coalescing into a redbird perched on her bloody palm. The remnant glow settled into its feathers as it preened.
The detail! Grandmother looked at it in awe. From its black face mask to its crest, it was every bit the real thing. The dear child had made more than a seeker—she’d taken the art to a higher level. The aesthetic alone revealed more sophistication than those so gifted showed in a lifetime. The art should not be just a tool, Grandmother thought. Too often she had used it as a means to an end, forgetting about its inherent beauty.
“Well done, child, well done.”
Everyone in camp paused to admire Lala’s creation. The redbird fluttered its wings as though impatient to be off. Without further prompting, Lala tossed the bird into the air. It stretched its wings and circled above their heads once before veering north. It would fly the quickest route to seek the one who sang.
As the bird disappeared into the misty night, Gubba clapped and chortled, and Grandmother turned her attention to tending Lala’s cut hand.
Despite all the groundmites provided for Grandmother and her people, the endless walking was wearying. Grandmother wished she had wings so she could fly like Lala’s redbird. Alas, she was confined to the Earth with all the other ground-dwelling creatures, forced to labor to reach a destination when birds easily flew over all obstacles. At least the ruins that appeared more frequently alongside the road lent more interest to their surroundings and indicated they were nearing their destination.
Most of the ruins were entangled in vines and roots. Trees grew through roofs. Ferns and brush shrouded entrances and facades. The forest was nothing if not resilient, obscuring even the pedigree of the architecture—was it Eletian or of the empire? They did not stop to investigate the ruins, but Gubba jabbered on beside Grandmother, pointing out this and that as if they were on a pleasure outing to see the sights. Grandmother understood none of it.
Instead, she ignored Gubba and thought of the task that lay ahead, when they reached their destination. How was she supposed to awaken the Sleepers? As much as she prayed on it, the answer never came to her. It was, she guessed, a test placed before her by God. Truly, up till now she’d been more worried about just surviving long enough to reach the grove of the Sleepers. The groundmites, with their help, had lifted much of that worry from her, leaving her more time to concern herself with the how of the task before her.
She did not understand the Eletians, or how they Slept as they did. All she knew was that it was going to take some powerful art to rouse them. Would she have the ability?
She’d been so deep in her own thoughts, ignoring Gubba and watching the road just ahead of her feet, that she was startled when she bumped into Sarat, who had stopped in the road. In fact, everyone else had stopped to gaze ahead, and she gasped when she saw why.
The forest fell away, revealing a black lake, tendrils of fog coiling just above its flat, oily surface. She thrilled to see that a statue of Mornhavon the Great stood in the center of the lake looking defiant and courageous, one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, and the other fisted as if to show whose realm this really was and by what means it was acquired. The details of his features were blurred and moss-draped. The lake level had risen at some point, and now lapped at his knees. To Grandmother he seemed to be rising from the water, not sinking. Around the edges of the lake were the roofs of drowned buildings, also attesting to the deepened water.
One of the great, black avians Grandmother had seen and heard signs of in the forest skimmed across the water, leaving ripples in its wake. The creature circled the statue, then landed on the head of Mornhavon. It loosed a screech that echoed right through her and swiveled its head around on its serpentine neck to gaze at its surroundings.
As magnificent as the statue was, it was the backdrop that she found truly arresting. Towers rose out of the forest into the sky, pale phantoms of what they must have once been, but still a powerful vision, their slender forms like graceful stems growing from the earth, their pinnacles lost to the ceiling of clouds that hung overhead. There was just enough grayness of day that the towers reflected on the lake.
“What is that place?” Min whispered in awe.
“Our destination,” Grandmother replied. “Castle Argenthyne.”
SPIRALS AND VOICES
G
raelalea led the company mercilessly over rugged terrain until abruptly she stopped on the edge of a cliff where the forest opened up, revealing a lake below. To Karigan’s eyes it seemed shaped like a beech leaf or a spearhead. Clouds obscured the far shore.
raelalea led the company mercilessly over rugged terrain until abruptly she stopped on the edge of a cliff where the forest opened up, revealing a lake below. To Karigan’s eyes it seemed shaped like a beech leaf or a spearhead. Clouds obscured the far shore.
“The Pool of Avrath,” Ealdaen said. “I thought never to gaze upon it again. But it is dark, defiled.”
“What do you see?” Yates whispered to Karigan.
“We’re looking down into a valley with a lake,” she replied.
“You must remember this for the journal.”
“I will.” To be honest, when they stopped for the night, she was so exhausted she knew she’d probably fall fast asleep before she could get to the journal.
“What’s that in the middle of the lake?” Ard asked.
Karigan could not make out the details for it was too distant, but some rock formation stood in the lake’s center. Its shape looked too regular to have been made by nature.
Ealdaen, whose Eletian sight was more keen, spoke angrily in his own tongue. All the Eletians looked incensed.
“What is it?” Karigan asked.
“It is the Evil One,” Lhean said. “A statue of Mornhavon.”
“He thought himself a god,” Ealdaen spat. “The god of all, and he would have known what it meant to our people to place a statue of himself in the pool.”
“What would it mean?” Yates asked, but the Eletians were already moving on, and Lynx took Yates’ arm to lead him away.
Karigan remembered sitting in the library of the Golden Guardian in Selium. Aaron Fiori had sung of Avrath, a Shining Land. He’d believed Avrath to be a spiritual place of the Eletians. Perhaps, if Avrath were like the heavens, the Eletians believed it was reflected in the pool. Whatever the significance of the lake, a statue of Mornhavon planted in its middle clearly wounded them.
She was quickly being left behind again, and not wishing to end up alone with Ard, she made her weary body take a step forward. Then she paused. The fog on the far shore thinned just enough to reveal tall spires rising among the trees. They gleamed dully. Before the clouds layered over them again, they flashed in crystalline brilliance as perhaps they had long, long ago beneath a silver moon. Then the light died, and the towers disappeared in the fog.
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