First Rider's Call (53 page)

Karigan had a strong sense of a story left incomplete and wondered if she would ever know the true outcome. Had Lil survived her arrow wound? Did she get to see her king again? Had Hadriax el Fex’s information played a part in the actual demise of Mornhavon the Black?

Tree limbs parted before her and the Eletian woman emerged from the woods. Gone were her weapons and armor. She now wore a long dress that wrapped her with the hues of the ocean, all foamy greens and blues. Her hair, freed of the confining braids, flowed down her back in fluid waves.

Karigan stiffened under her appraising gaze.

“You are well?” the Eletian asked.

“When will I—?”

The Eletian raised her hand to silence her. “I know there is much you must wonder at. You will find answers soon enough.”

“Where’s my horse?” Karigan demanded, not willing to give in so easily.

“He is content.” The reply was delivered with an ironic cant of an eyebrow.

“That’s hardly an answer.”

“Will it not satisfy you to know he is well?”

“Very little satisfies me at the moment.”

The two stared at one another in a silent challenge, neither flinching.

Finally, without conceding, the Eletian said, “Come,” and turned to leave the clearing, expecting Karigan to follow without question.

Karigan folded her arms and did not budge.

The Eletian paused, and truly mystified, asked, “Why do you not come?”

“Where are you taking me?”

The Eletian’s features remained placid, but Karigan thought she detected a slight narrowing of eyebrows.
Good.

“I am taking you to the king’s son.”

Karigan didn’t bother to conceal her surprise.

“Yes, you shall see one whom no mortals have ever looked upon, Galadheon, for the prince, my brother, was born after the Cataclysm your kind calls the Long War, and the upheaval that followed.”

“Why am I to see him?”

“Because there are things that must be spoken of.”

Karigan frowned at the vague answer.

“You must follow.” The Eletian turned back toward the woods, but still Karigan refused to obey.

This time, when the Eletian paused to see what was the matter, Karigan said, “I am not accustomed to accepting orders from anyone but my captain or my king.”

The woman’s eyes blazed with anger. “You are a guest among us.” Then realizing how much it sounded like an accusation, she added, “Forgive my presumption, but it is not wise to keep the prince waiting.”

If confinement was their idea of how to treat a guest, Karigan thought she’d hate to see how they treated a prisoner. “First,” she said, “tell me your name.”

The request startled the Eletian. “There is a reason you ask this?”

“It is a courtesy one extends to a
guest.
It seems you know who I am. It would only be courteous for you to tell me who you are.”

Again, the eyes appraised her. “Very well. You may call me Grae.”

Karigan nodded, satisfied by this one small victory.

 

The imprisoning trees lifted limbs to allow them passage. Karigan attempted no conversation with Grae, figuring there was no point. Eletians were more mystery than anything else, and Grae appeared more intent on obstructing her than helping her understand what this was all about.

Throughout the depths of the woods, moonstones glittered, turning white birches silver, their interwoven branches like stark spiderwebs. The effect was beautiful, and precisely the sort of thing she’d imagined when thinking of Eletians. Above, stars pierced the canopy of night with a painful clarity and closeness she had never known before. The constellations were familiar, yet at the same time foreign, as if slightly askew. She could not say if she was still within the bounds of Sacoridia, or if the Eletians had spirited her away to some netherworld of dream.

They emerged into another clearing, lit by the ever-present moonstones. Fair folk moved amid the clearing drinking and feasting, or so it seemed one moment, then the next they vanished away leaving no hint of their mer rymaking, but for a goblet the prince held, as he sat upon a chair of woven tree boughs. His head was bowed as he listened to a woman singing at his feet.

Her voice was clear and pure, and the melody rent Karigan’s heart with great sorrow, though she could not understand the words. When the song trailed off and the last notes hung in the night, the prince cupped the singer’s chin in his hand. She rose and left him then, walking away with the light steps of a dancer.

The prince’s hair was the same pale flax as his sister’s, but his eyes were very different. While Grae’s were the emerald of the forest, the prince’s were the blue of a brilliant summer sky, and quite suddenly Karigan was shaken by images of another Eletian whose eyes had been strikingly similar.

The prince regarded her steadily, while Karigan stood paralyzed by the eyes of Shawdell.

“Ari-matiel Jametari,” Grae introduced, “prince of Eletia.”

The prince rose. No crown did he wear, no jewels, nor did he carry a scepter—nothing to indicate station or power. It was all in his bearing. He wore only a simple silvery-blue tunic tied with a cord about his waist, and loose trousers. He seemed to pull starlight to him and reflect it, so that it almost hurt Karigan’s eyes to look upon him.

His contempt, however, was plain to see, his scrutiny worse than Grae’s, for now Karigan felt herself not only an object to be viewed, but an object of disdain.

“If there is a reason you have brought me here,” Karigan said, “I’d like to hear it.” As a representative of Sacoridia, her disrespect was inexcusable, but so was their haughty treatment of her, and the passing of each second drew her patience closer to its limit. Whether or not they called her a guest, she felt more like a criminal.

Those blue eyes met hers, proud and chilling. “I would see you for myself.” His voice was a melodious echo of Shawdell’s.

“Why?”

“You sent my son to his death.”

“Shawdell.”

“Yes.” The prince stood there, his eyes holding her captive. Accusing her? Assessing her? Eletians were too unknown a quantity, their minds too alien for her to guess what went on there. Had she been brought before the prince for some form of judgment or retaliation?

The prince broke eye contact, returned to his chair, and sat. Then the blue eyes captured her again.

“Can you comprehend an eternal life, Galadheon?”

“No.”

The prince nodded. “A wise response. Death is a rare occurrence among my kind, though once many died during the Cataclysm.”

Karigan waited for the prince to accuse her of murdering his son, for ending an eternal life, but the words of accusation did not come. His eyes merely became great wells of grief, and this was accusation enough.

“What do you know of times past; of the times beyond what you call the First Age?” he asked.

His question took her off guard. “Very little.”

“Your folk have not the long memories of mine,” Prince Jametari said. “Yours is fragmented and faded by the discontinuity of mortal lives. Our folk have seen the building of mountains and the encroachment of ice, and its melting into the sea. We’ve seen the birth of stars and the gathering of moons. We’ve watched forests grow and spread.”

Karigan realized she listened to a voice of the ages.

“The
tiendan
brought you to me not simply because you ended my son’s life. That is of little matter at the moment. No, they brought you because there are things that must be said. Things of the past, things of the future.” He tilted his head and the moonstones turned his eyes into tiny silver mirrors, and he smiled, mystery sealed behind his lips. “You are not unknown to us, and not only for your vanquishing my son.”

Telagioth emerged from the shadows of the clearing, and Karigan realized there were others of the
tiendan
standing along its perimeter in their milky armor. Spines protruded from the shoulders of one figure, and she shuddered.

Telagioth brought forward a translucent and delicate bowl. He held it reverently and said, “Greetings, Galadheon. So we do meet again.”

“How did you know we would?”

Telagioth smiled. “The prince is most wise.”

Prince Jametari left his chair and took the bowl from Telagioth. He sat cross-legged on the ground and placed it before him in the grass. He indicated with a gesture that Karigan should join him. Grae and Telagioth drifted away to the fringes of the clearing.

Karigan dropped to the ground beside the prince, the starlight that gathered around him hurting her eyes in such close proximity. She blinked and looked away, wishing he’d just get on with whatever he wanted to discuss, but she gathered that with Eletians, everything was a dance. A mystery.

“Our people are diminishing,” the prince said. “The flames of our lives are on the brink of disappearing from
Everanen,
the Earth, for all time. We are in danger of becoming but echoes of memory in tales and song, among the mortals, who have spawned in great numbers across the lands. Our decline began long ago.

“First we shall speak of the past, so you might understand our plight.” His expression fell distant as though he traveled in a daydream. “In the time before your counted ages, preceding even the Black Ages, Eletians were the power of
Everanen.
It was our age, for the element of magic, which flows from all living things, was plentiful. We understood it, and harnessed it for good.

“Mortalkind, the bestial beings they were in those days, revered and feared us for it, though they, too, possessed rudimentary skills with magic, but did not recognize it as such. Abilities to heal or foretell the weather were seen as the works of their gods, not as something that came from within. Never did we expect your kind to grow in strength and knowledge—and cunning. We underestimated your ambition.

“And thus came the Black Ages, with war upon the Eletians, and the wars the mortal tribes committed upon one another. Truly we wished mortalkind would exterminate itself, but we also underestimated the tenacity of your kind, your will to survive and exist.

“Amid the turmoil of those years, Mornhavon came from across the sea.”

Grae and Telagioth approached again, bearing a tall fluted vessel with twin handles fashioned into vines, made of the same translucent material as the bowl. They passed the vessel to the prince.

He unstoppered it and said, “Herein lies what remains of what your folk called
Indura Luin
of old, the Mirror of the Moon.”

“The Lost Lake,” Karigan murmured, wonder overcoming some of her apprehension. “It truly existed?”

“Yes. Before Mornhavon drained the lake, Fraleach the Long-bough was able to preserve a little of it in this very vessel. One of our great poet-warriors was he, of a time when words were more than mere language.”

The prince tilted the vessel and water streamed into the bowl with the crystalline, cutting essence of starlight. Karigan was not sure, but she thought she could see a separate shimmer of movement within the flowing water, half-formed images striving to emerge and take on lives of their own. Even as the water flowed, a thin mist began to veil the perimeter of the clearing, turning the
tiendan
who stood there into formless shadows.

Prince Jametari was precise and careful not to let the water dribble or splash. When the last precious drop plunked into the bowl, sending out rings on the surface, he set the vessel aside.

“According to legend,” Karigan said, “if one pure of heart gazed into
Indura Luin
during a full moon, he or she could speak with the gods.

“Your gods are not ours, and I cannot speak for the authenticity of your legends. The lake, however, did possess properties as ancient as anything of this Earth. Eletians held great reverence for it, as did your folk long ago, which is why Mornhavon drained it. We still mourn its demise.

“Perhaps your folk construed its powers as the works of gods. It was Laurelyn-touched, thus blessed in its own way. We Eletians need not a full moon to find our reflection in the water. And now I place it before you, Galadheon, the last remnant of
Indura Luin,
for within its waters lies your reflection.”

The water lay still and concave, its surface silvery, reflecting bright points of moonstone light.

“Our forests were broken by the surge of mortalkind and their destructions,” the prince continued. His hands moved gracefully as he spoke. “Our own kind splintered alliances and scattered. Because of this, there is no love of our people for yours. We became what we are now, dwellers of an Earth dominated by mortals, a quaint mystery for your historians to ponder.”

As he spoke, the mist wafted about the clearing and trees, moonstone light dimming and brightening with its passing. Karigan fancied she could make out shapes forming in the mist.

“Our numbers diminish,” the prince said. “Children are a rare joy among a long-lived race, and many of those who were eldest were slain in the Cataclysm or sleep the great sleep. Whether or not they shall awaken, no one can tell.”

He spoke of Eletians, weary of their eternal lives, who lay upon the ground and fell into a sleep of unknown depth. Those who awakened returned to the world. Those who did not became part of
Everanen,
part of the living soul of the Earth.

“The souls of those who choose never to awaken become the hearts of great trees, and they reach for the heavens.”

A vision of saplings sprouting from the water’s surface took hold. They grew into tall, magnificent trees, their boughs swaying in a breeze. Karigan blinked rapidly, and in a single swift moment the vision was gone.

“Since the Cataclysm,” the prince said, “the magic of
Everanen
has diminished to almost nothing, further endangering Eletians. This element that you call magic is essential to our existence. As a tree is the expression of sun and rain, so are the Eletians an expression of magic. Without it, we shall die. We are a fragment of what our race once was, and there is little hope of our recovering unless magic is restored in great strength.”