First Rider's Call (29 page)

Their murmuring rose and fell as the marching feet of the Weapons faded away.

“We must see his soul safely into the hands of Westrion,” the priest said, “no matter his deeds in life, or his legacy.”

“Of course.” The castellan’s voice was a low rumble. “And Westrion shall have him. If we’d gone the normal route, the mobs would’ve desecrated his body and stolen the crown.” He glanced fearfully over his shoulder, but no one followed.

Karigan fell in step beside them, but they were unaware of her.

“Dying without naming an heir,” the castellan said with great distaste. “He’s left us a legacy, by the gods. A legacy I hoped to never see.”

The priest sniffed in indignation. “Beware of how you speak of the blessed ones.”

“Even that Rider-mender could not make his seed bear fruit. And the king saw him executed for that and—”

“Yes, yes, yes. He disbanded the Riders. An ungodly, deceitful bunch of traitors, those. The talk is that the Rider-mender
prevented
the king’s seed from bearing fruit.”

Karigan’s ears perked at that. She had never heard of the Riders being disbanded or considered traitorous. Never.

The castellan grunted and nodded. “He suspected goings-on behind his back. He was right, of course. Too shrewd not to be. Warhein sided with Hillander, and the time of chaos they sought is now upon us. There are none of the king’s clan left true enough of his blood to rule.”

“It seems to me,” the priest said very delicately, “the king had something to do with that.”

The castellan laughed. It was a creaky, rusty sound. “Your spies figure that out, Father?”

The priest sniffed in disapproval. “You would accuse me of—”

“I accuse you of nothing the king didn’t know about.”

The priest frowned.

The castellan laughed again, shaking his head. “Come, come, Father. It is not too difficult to figure out that the disappearances and sudden deaths of potential successors were in fact assassinations. The old man didn’t wish his supremacy challenged while he lived.”

The priest scowled. “I fear much precious blood will be spilled as a result of his—his misguided attempts to safeguard his throne.”

“Much blood already has been.”

The two men walked on in silence for a time before resuming their conversation.

“Who do you think will—?” the priest began.

“Who can say? But mark my words: whoever succeeds the king must conquer all the other clans to show he is strongest.”

“War,” the priest murmured.

“War,” the castellan agreed. “Between the clans. That is the legacy the king leaves us.”

The priest curved his fingers into the sign of the crescent moon. “May Aeryc watch over us.”

The castellan shook his head. “I fear it is Salvistar who watches over us now.”

His voice dropped low, and Karigan had to listen closely. “It’s the old fool’s fault. He could have named an heir, or found a way to produce some child and call it his. It is he who always played the clan chiefs against one another like it was some game, some game of Intrigue. He enjoyed it, the bloody bastard. He enjoyed it.” The castellan paused and rubbed his chin. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this was what he wanted, his final jest on the Sacor Clans.”

“Whoever wins this war,” the priest said, “may he unite all of Sacoridia once again. May he bring peace.”

Karigan’s mind spun. Was she dreaming, or had she just witnessed the roots of the Clan Wars? The seagull was the coat of arms for Clan Sealender, and upon the bier must have been King Agates Sealender, the last of his line, on his way to be prepared for the gods. The clan chief who waged war and won the right to succeed him was King Smidhe Hillander. As the castellan and priest had hoped, he united the clans and brought about the two hundred years of peace and prosperity that Sacoridia still enjoyed.

Two hundred years.
What she had just seen was two hundred years ago . . .

And the hoofbeats came again. The floor slid beneath her feet and she was swept into a slipstream of light and dark, the flames of torches hurtling by her in ribbons of light, casting odd shapes of shadow across stone walls, only to pitch her into the dark again. And then into the light.

People emerged and vanished, leaving but brief impressions. Their speech lagged behind in slurred echoes, like ghost voices.

The traveling, or whatever it was, halted jarringly. Karigan sprawled across the floor from sheer momentum. She clambered to her feet shaking her head. As far as she could tell, this was the same corridor she had been in with the castellan and the priest. She hadn’t moved—physically.

Torches crackled in sconces, smoke spiraling upward to the soot-stained ceiling. Brightly woven tapestries and shields hung on the walls, their proud devices glinting in the dancing light. Here Karigan saw the Sea Rose and the Black Bear, the Peregrine and the Evergreen. Devices not used in hundreds of years by companies that no longer existed.

How far have I come?
she wondered. How far in time . . .

Soldiers, mostly in silver and black, milled about the corridor, but there were other uniforms with other devices making a colorful mix. Their conversations clam ored in her ears. The light, the color, and the noise all buffeted her.

As before, no one was aware of her, but voices hushed and eyes glanced in her direction. The soldiers parted before her.

Two people brushed by. One was a tall woman in half armor with a green cloak thrown over her shoulder. She wore a cross sash of blue and green plaid, and a saber girded to her hip. A horn swung at her side. As she passed, Karigan caught the gleam of a winged horse brooch. Her own brooch hummed, filled her head. A thrill sang through her nerves.

Karigan had seen the plaid before, and the saber. The plaid had been draped across the remains of the First Rider, Lil Ambrioth, down in the tombs beneath the castle. The sword Karigan had held in her own hands.

The man who strode beside the First Rider had a striking mane of gray hair and a bristling beard. He, too, was armored and girded with a greatsword. He wore the jeweled gold crown Karigan had just seen resting on the body of Agates Sealender. The soldiers murmured and dropped to their knees as the man swept past them.

He could be none other than King Jonaeus, the first high king of Sacoridia. He had been crowned a thousand years ago near the end of the Long War.

Karigan had traveled far. Very far.

SPURLOCK

Weldon Spurlock stalked along the row of writing desks, his clerks working furiously to copy correspondence and documents. There was no other sound in the room except for the
scritch-scratch
of pens and his own footsteps.

He paused at Fenning’s desk. The young clerk was not doing anything wrong. On the contrary, he was making rapid progress on the letters he was copying, his hand neat and clean, but it pleased Spurlock to no end to see his mere presence intimidate the young man into working even more feverishly. Blotches of red formed on his cheeks. He became so nervous he spilled ink on his paper.

Spurlock rapped his wooden stick on Fenning’s desk. The clerk jumped, his eyes wide.

“Sloppy work, Fenning,” Spurlock said. “Start over.”

“Yes, sir.”

As the young man fumbled for a fresh sheet of paper, Spurlock continued along the row of desks with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He enjoyed keeping his clerks and secretaries on their toes, of reminding them who oversaw them. If he made them nervous, all the better. Fear was an excellent motivator.

Oh, he knew they talked about him behind his back, but in his presence he kept them on edge, and punished them with extra work if he caught wind of any talk. Often they had no idea of what they were being punished for, and that kept him unpredictable, and them even more on edge. They never knew what to expect next.

I am chief administrator, and this is my empire.
It was a bitter thought, for didn’t the nobles look down upon him as some petty bureaucrat? Wasn’t he despised by his common subordinates? His immediate superior, Castellan Sperren, was a doddering old fool who left all the work to him, but berated him soundly if something was late or the slightest bit imperfect. Certainly the king took him for granted.

It was a paltry office for one destined for much greater things. One day he’d give these clerks something to truly fear. In fact, all of Sacoridia would be shaking at his feet, especially its king. He’d—

Irell was staring dreamily out the window, as if willing the noon hour bell to ring. Spurlock grinned maliciously and tapped his stick on the floor. Irell came to at the sound, and gulped when he noticed Spurlock’s gaze upon him.

“Hungry, are you, Irell?” Spurlock asked very softly.

Flustered, the clerk shuffled his papers and blushed. “No, sir.” As if to betray him, his generously sized gut rumbled. His blush deepened in humiliation. The other clerks snatched glances at Irell, and someone snickered.

“Dreaming of those pasties fresh out of the oven down in the dining hall, hmm?”

Irell stared at the surface of his desk.

On cue, the noon bell began tolling. His clerks looked eagerly to him for dismissal. Even after the twelfth note faded, he did not release them. He held them there, stretching their anticipation to the brink. But Spurlock couldn’t waste his time here playing games—he had other things to attend to. Important things.

“You are dismissed for the midday meal,” he said, “except for you, Irell. You shall remain here and continue your work.”

Chairs scraped back and the clerks raced out of the room to be relieved of his presence. All except Irell who continued to gaze at his desk, his expression morose.

“If I do not see your work satisfactorily completed upon my return,” Spurlock said, “I shall keep you here until after five hour. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Spurlock knew he’d remain here, working diligently. Irell could not risk permanent dismissal, for he had a burgeoning family to feed. How many brats did he have now? Ten? And with an eleventh on its way.

Spurlock left the chamber, seeking the spiral stairs that would take him to the lowest level of the administrative wing. His destination, however, was not the records room for a visit with that ridiculous recordskeeper, Dakrias Brown, the superstitious lout. No, he had a different sort of meeting to attend.

When he reached the lower level, he took a lamp from the wall, and ensuring no one was nearby to see him, he darted down an abandoned corridor.

These corridors were useful. His group ought to have used them to begin with, rather than taking chances in more well traversed areas, like the central courtyard gardens. He still couldn’t believe how close they’d come to having that Galadheon girl stumble upon one of their meetings. What a disaster that could have been.

She was a problem. While he was pretty sure where he stood on the Galadheon issue, it was not a simple matter. No doubt the group would have to address it eventually. The greatest irony to Spurlock’s mind was that she had become a Green Rider.

THE FUTURE FROM THE PAST