Blackveil (92 page)
“Questions later,” Ealdaen said. “We should see to wounds and our dead. Telagioth and Lhean, guard the entrance to the corridor so we’ve no more intruders.”
Telagioth and Lhean trotted off across the chamber and down the corridor.
“There will not be many Sleepers,” Karigan told Ealdaen.
“I know,” he replied striding toward her. His armor was streaked with blood, but he appeared uninjured. Lynx and Yates followed behind. Lynx had the claw marks on his face she remembered from before, and Yates held his hand over a bleeding wound on his arm.
“You know?”
“You left with Laurelyn. But what was before is beginning to fade. Let me see your wrist.”
She gingerly extended her hand to him and he examined her wrist with gentle touches. “This needs a true healing,” he said, “in order for it to work properly again.”
“Damn,” Karigan muttered. That did not portend well for wielding her sword or anything else.
“In the meantime it must be set. How did it break?”
“A Sleeper. Crushed it with his hand.”
Ealdaen nodded, unsurprised. “Lynx, could you assist?”
Lynx moved around to Karigan’s side, and before she could say another word or ask another question, Ealdaen, holding her elbow, yanked on her hand and she fell screaming into unconsciousness.
When Karigan came to, she was lying on her back with one blanket rolled beneath her head and another spread over her. The winged statues filled her vision. She groaned as each individual pain flared to life; her wrist hurt worse than everything else. It felt heavy and she saw it was bound and splinted with white arrow shafts. There was something ironic about Eletian arrows being used to help heal her wrist. As much as she hurt, she was relieved to have accomplished her task. She’d helped Laurelyn’s Sleepers escape to Eletia, preventing them from becoming a dark, dangerous force in her own time.
She heard a
scritch-scritch
beside her and turned her head to find Yates working in his journal, the wound in his arm neatly bound.
scritch-scritch
beside her and turned her head to find Yates working in his journal, the wound in his arm neatly bound.
“What ...” she began. She licked her dry, cracked lips. “What are you writing?”
“Drawing,” he corrected. He smiled. “Since my sight is much better, I’m drawing details of this room, the moondial, that sort of thing. I did a nythling, too, after Ealdaen took care of the ones that were left.”
They’d been feeding on Grant, she remembered. Yates flipped a page and then showed her the picture of the nythling, sketched in realistic detail. Too realistic.
“Ealdaen has no idea how the eggs got in Grant’s arm,” Yates said. “He’d never seen nythlings before. How do you feel?”
“Pretty bad.”
Yates nodded. “Ealdaen said your leg was all ripped up again. He was surprised you could walk. You should really learn to take better care of yourself.”
If Karigan had felt up to it, she would have swatted him.
“Ealdaen wanted me to make sure you had this when you woke up,” he said, showing her Graelalea’s flask, the one that had contained the cordial. “And this.” He then showed her something that took her aback, for it had no context in this place.
“Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“If you’re thinking it’s a Dragon Dropping, you’d be right. It’s from the gift King Zachary had us give Graelalea the morning we crossed the breach.”
Karigan remembered.
“Ealdaen says the chocolate is very restorative to Eletians, which is why they prize it so much. He figures it means it’s restorative to non-Eletians, too, so he passed one out to everyone. Who’s to say if it helps us or not? Lynx and I didn’t argue the point. You should appreciate my restraint, by the way. You don’t know how tempting it was to eat yours and not tell you. I mean, how would you know?”
“I’d smell it on your breath.” She swiped her Dragon Dropping from him and bit into it. She rolled her eyes in pleasure, chewing slowly to savor the experience of the dark chocolate for as long as possible. After so long a diet of thin stews, gruel, hardtack, and dried meat, it did prove restorative after a fashion. And it made her dream of another favorite luxury, of a hot, languorous bubble bath. Maybe one day, if they ever made it back to Sacor City.
Yates chuckled. “I ate mine in one gulp.”
When she was ready, he unstoppered the flask. “Ealdaen says that this is all that remains of Graelalea’s cordial and that you are to drink all of it. The dew of Avrath, he calls it.”
There were three good mouthfuls left, and Karigan savored these, too, remembering Graelalea with sorrow. She touched the feather still in her braid. The cordial dulled her hurts and made her feel strong enough to sit up. When she did so, she observed the corpses had been removed.
“Where is everyone?” she asked.
“Dealing with the bodies, I guess,” Yates replied. “And keeping watch to make sure no more Sleepers get in. Ealdaen wanted to properly honor the dead.”
“All of them?”
Yates nodded. “Even Ard and the Sleepers. He said Ard had been a good member of the company until he tried to murder you, and that it was no fault of the Sleepers that they became what they’ve become. They were once untainted Eletians.”
“Poets, artists, and heroes of a distant age,” Karigan murmured, recalling Laurelyn’s words.
“Yes, Ealdaen said something very like that. I think he knew many of the individuals who were asleep in the grove.” Yates paused, then said, “As for Ard, the others were curious as to why he’d want to kill you.”
Karigan froze, heart thudding. “And?”
“Ealdaen told us what he overheard, that you were a threat to the marriage of Lady Estora and the king.”
“And?”
“I think the Eletians just shrugged it off as one of those things our kind engages in. Lynx, however, gave you a long, surprised look, but said nothing.”
Karigan groaned.
Must everyone know?
She thought she’d been so discreet, hiding away her feelings. “What do
you
think about it?” she asked Yates.
Must everyone know?
She thought she’d been so discreet, hiding away her feelings. “What do
you
think about it?” she asked Yates.
“I was not quite as surprised as Lynx,” he replied.
Karigan wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t help asking. “Why not?”
“That last night in the forest when we were alone? You were kind of delirious. You talked.”
“Oh, gods.” She blushed and hid her face behind her hand.
He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We all have our unattainable longings.”
Peeking between her fingers she saw his earnest, sad gaze, and her mouth dropped open, unable to say anything.
She was rescued by the sound of footsteps. Ealdaen, along with Lynx, Telagioth, and Lhean, entered the chamber, their expressions weary and grim.
“How are you?” Lynx asked Karigan when he reached them.
“All right, considering,” she said.
He sat on the floor beside her, leaning back on his hands, his legs sprawled out before him. “Where did you go when you left us?”
“To the past and then . . . and then to Eletia.”
“Eletia?”
Karigan nodded and explained how she’d gone back in time to lead Laurelyn’s Sleepers to safety in Eletia. The whole reconciliation of past and present, especially trying to explain it, bent her mind in odd ways, and left Lynx and Yates scratching their heads because they recalled nothing of overwhelming numbers of tainted Sleepers attacking them. The Eletians remained unperturbed. “I think I met King Santanara,” she added.
The Eletians exchanged glances among themselves.
“Did you notice anything in particular about him?” Ealdaen asked in a deceptively mild voice.
“His hand,” she replied, lifting her own splinted and bandaged wrist. “It looked very bad. Blackened and crippled.”
“You met King Santanara, then,” Telagioth said. “His hand was thus injured when he stabbed Mornhavon with the Black Star in the last battle of the Long War. It was a wound no one, not even true healers, could fully treat. It was a source of great agony for him.”
“Yes,” Ealdaen agreed. “His only escape was to take the long sleep. You, Galadheon, came to him as he contemplated staying abroad to lead his people and succor them after the depredations of the Long War, or sleeping to forget the agony of his wound and the dark that clung to his spirit.”
“You . . . you knew I was there?” Karigan demanded. “And you didn’t tell me what I was going to do?”
“No, I did not know, for you were but a blurring of the air. It was the king who told us a Green Rider brought the Sleepers. The last mortal to set foot in Eletia.”
Karigan opened her mouth and closed it. This was not just bending her mind, it was twisting it into knots.
“Why does Karigan get to have all the fun?” Yates demanded.
“Fun?”
She thrust her injured wrist into his face, then returned her gaze to Ealdaen. “If you knew the outcome for the Sleepers, why didn’t you tell us?”
She thrust her injured wrist into his face, then returned her gaze to Ealdaen. “If you knew the outcome for the Sleepers, why didn’t you tell us?”
“We did not know. It had not happened yet. We were in a different thread of time. And as old memories vanish, different ones emerge. We had suspicions, however. There are those among us who can see across such threads. King Santanara was one, and his son, Prince Jametari, is another.”
“Paradoxes,” Karigan muttered. “So confusing.”
“Your species is limited by its linear and mortal mold. Eletians have eternity to contemplate such complexities.”
“In other words,” Yates drawled to Karigan, “give up trying to make sense of it.”
“If we had told you what we suspected,” Ealdaen said, “it might have created a false sense of confidence leading to failure. There are thousands of possible, ever-changing threads and we could have been wrong. This was but one.”
Threads or no, Karigan could not get over the feeling she’d been masterfully manipulated yet again.
REDBIRD
A
shock of crimson darted through the bleakness of Blackveil, the wings of the redbird beating a steady rhythm. The redbird did not pause in its flight, was unwavering in its route, for as a creature of etherea, it required no rest or sustenance. Predators did not perceive it as prey, but as the impulse of magic, and therefore they did not hinder it. It sped bright and fleeting through the trees and murk of the forest, a spell venturing on its way to fulfillment.
shock of crimson darted through the bleakness of Blackveil, the wings of the redbird beating a steady rhythm. The redbird did not pause in its flight, was unwavering in its route, for as a creature of etherea, it required no rest or sustenance. Predators did not perceive it as prey, but as the impulse of magic, and therefore they did not hinder it. It sped bright and fleeting through the trees and murk of the forest, a spell venturing on its way to fulfillment.
Only when the redbird reached the break in the great wall did it pause, perching on a tree limb on the other side in the unfamiliar world of sunshine. It gazed upon the humans busy at work in their encampment, but the one it sought was not in this place.
And yet not far away. The redbird launched from its branch and flew eastward, the wall flowing along its wingtip. It would not be long now before the redbird’s reason for existing came to fruition.
D
espite the welcome spring sunshine, a gloom settled on Alton’s shoulders as he left the pickets and headed across the encampment. It wasn’t Estral that darkened his morning, for she brought lightness and joy to his life. He now saw the world as more lovely than he’d ever perceived it before, and the music . . . How had he gone through life without music filling his hours? Estral woke him in the mornings with song, carried him through the days with lute music, and soothed him to sleep with lullabies.
espite the welcome spring sunshine, a gloom settled on Alton’s shoulders as he left the pickets and headed across the encampment. It wasn’t Estral that darkened his morning, for she brought lightness and joy to his life. He now saw the world as more lovely than he’d ever perceived it before, and the music . . . How had he gone through life without music filling his hours? Estral woke him in the mornings with song, carried him through the days with lute music, and soothed him to sleep with lullabies.
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