First Rider's Call (59 page)

Hendry half-smiled. “An interesting event it shall be, then. More likely it will be remembered by whatever judgment is passed on Lord D’Ivary.”

Karigan raised an eyebrow. She had known the Riders had been sent off on errands to each of the lord-governors, but she hadn’t known the precise nature of the messages. Now she did. The king had summoned the lord-governors to Sacor City to debate the fate of Lord D’Ivary.

It was possible the king already had something in mind, but politically, it was best if he involved the other lord-governors so his decision would not appear arbitrary, but a consensus. He would have to work hard for their backing.

To Karigan’s surprise, Hendry gazed directly at her. “Odd, but I always heard that Captain Mapstone had red hair.” A slight blush colored his cheeks and Karigan liked him all the more for it.

She bowed. “I am not the captain, my lord, but a simple Rider.”

King Zachary smiled. “Laren Mapstone has been my faithful captain and advisor for years, but I fear she has been unwell.”

“A pity,” Hendry said. “My mother spoke well of her, and was always pleased that one of Penburn Province had such access to the king.”

“She used her access well.” The king winked at Karigan. “During her absence, I’ve called upon the assistance of Rider G’ladheon here.”

“G’ladheon?” Hendry said. “Of the merchant clan?”

Karigan nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

Hendry brightened, looking suddenly very roguish. “I heard the most extraordinary story about a member of that clan, who rode astride a big chestnut to the town of Darden on market day, clad in nothing but her own skin.”

Karigan strangled a groan before it could pass her lips.
Wearing nothing but her own skin?

“Is it true?” Hendry asked.

A wave of heat washed through Karigan as she noted King Zachary looking from Hendry to her with a bemused expression.

“No. Yes. But I was wearing—I was wearing . . .” Words failed her.

There was a subtle upward shift of the king’s eyebrows. Hendry waited, most intensely interested.

“I wasn’t—” She was going to melt there on the spot. “I had on—”

The king cleared his throat, and she jumped. “A nightgown, if I’ve heard the story correctly.”

Forget the melting. She was going to faint from embarrassment.

Hendry grinned. “I had always wondered about the young lady who possessed such gumption. I am very pleased to meet the inspiration of the story.”

The king’s peculiar smile did not aid her discomfiture. “I heard the story from Bard Martin.”

Karigan didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Bard had told the king the dratted tale?
Oh, Bard, you are a tease even beyond the grave.
At least he hadn’t concocted the idea of her riding without even a nightgown to cover her. Or had he? Sadly, she would never know.

The king said, “Rider G’ladheon served in your mother’s delegation.”

Hendry sobered immediately, his eyes wide. “You did? Would it—would it be too much of an imposition for you to tell me of her final days?”

“I would do it gladly.” Contrary to her words, her heart sank, for she did not relish recalling those days when she was currently so full of her own sorrow. She did, however, understand the young man’s need to know, and perhaps her words would bring him some peace. “Lady Penburn led us bravely.”

His expression was so earnest, so grateful, Karigan forgave him for bringing up that story about her ride to Darden.

The king asked Sperren to see to Hendry’s accommodations, and after the young lord left, he sat back upon his chair.

“What do you think of the new Lord-Governor Penburn?”

Karigan assumed the king did not seek an off-hand opinion, but rather the measured assessment of an advisor.

“He is genuinely grieved by his mother’s passing.” The words brought her own emotions painfully close to the surface. “He is inexperienced, but not unfamiliar with what his new role requires. And I think . . . I think he’ll do well.”

The king brushed his fingers over his chin. “I agree. He shall be an asset to his province.”

And to his king.
Karigan thought she could almost hear the words from him.

Then, not quite as an afterthought, the king added, “He is yet young and untried, and his new position will be the making of him. His ethics will be forged by his new power, and it remains to be seen what results from that forging.”

He spoke as a man who well knew what it was to be forged, and tempered, by leadership. He had been through the process himself, and emerged true and sound, but he had also seen what power could do to others, like his brother. Others who became twisted by greed, and a hundred other ills, and they then turned against the very people they were sworn to protect.

“Hedric D’Ivary was thought well of, as a kind and generous man,” the king said, “until he succeeded his cousin to be chief of his clan and lord of the province.”

The chamber door creaked open and Sperren poked his head in. “A messenger from the D’Yer Wall to see you, sire.”

The king glanced at Karigan. “Are you up to this?” he asked her quietly. “He may have news about Alton.”

She felt suspended in air, hoping against hope that maybe the messenger actually brought good news, that maybe Alton was all right after all. But she knew it could never be good news. Her hope was false. Alton was
gone.
Still, she had to hear it, she had to hear what the messenger had to say.

“I’ll stay,” she said.

The king looked at her in concern, but nodded to Sperren to let the messenger in. He was dressed in the blue and gold livery of D’Yer Province, and looked haggard, as one who has ridden hard. He knelt before the king.

“Rise,” King Zachary said. When the messenger did so, he asked, “You bear me tidings from the wall?”

“Yes, sire. Lord-Governor D’Yer urged me on to you, with his wish to inform you of the passing of Lord Landrew D’Yer, his brother.”

The king sat back in his chair, stunned. “So close upon the death of Lord Alton?”

The messenger nodded, his features troubled. “Yes, sire. Lord Landrew went over the wall to search for his nephew. He, and most of the soldiers that accompanied him, were slain. We were able to retrieve what—what was left of Lord Landrew.”

“Gods have mercy,” the king said.

He questioned the messenger further, asking how many soldiers had perished, and the circumstances. Karigan did not hear the answers, for her thoughts went to Alton. If his uncle had died so quickly, surely his had been the same fate. Whatever evil lurked in Blackveil, it had taken Alton as assuredly as the sun rose in the morning.

“And they found no sign of Lord Alton?” the king asked the messenger. He flicked his gaze to Karigan to see how she was taking it.

“No, sire, but there’s the most astonishing thing . . .”

“Yes?”

The messenger shook himself as if lost in thought for a moment. “Lord Alton’s horse, sire. I’ve never seen anything like it. He stands at the breach, and won’t leave it, not for anything. We’ve tried to drive him off, but he comes back. We stake him with the other horses, but he breaks his tether and heads back to the breach.

“So, we’ve just taken to humoring him, you see, and we bring him his fodder there. Not that he’ll eat much. It’s like he’s on guard, waiting for his master to return.”

That was enough. Remembering Crane guarding Ereal’s body, Karigan dashed from the chamber, tears sliding down her cheeks once again.

TOWER OF THE HEAVENS

Alton moved in dreams. Dreams of dark, tangled branches and burning, of vast empty spaces. Karigan came to him during his moments of deepest despair, ethereal in her ivory gown, whispering to him in loving words, only to melt away into something hideous and terrifying. He writhed in fever, sometimes awakening to nothingness, and total dark.

During one such awareness, he felt around him with hands shaking from illness. He was on a stone floor, not the damp mossy earth of his dreams. It was cool and seemed to moderate his fever. He pressed his cheek to the stone, thinking he remembered something of a tower, of entering it. If it was so, he was safe. He was out of the forest and safe.

This time when he slept, the nightmares did not return, but the dreams were still strange. They were of talking to stone, and of a beat that swelled up from the floor and pulsed through his body.

Sometime later, awareness came again. He lay on his back, gazing up at the starlit heavens. He frowned in consternation, thinking he was supposed to be in a tower of stone. The floor was still beneath him, and he did not hear the usual sounds of night or feel a breeze, or the damp of dew. His fevered mind must have affected his senses.

He groped about himself and found a column of stone to sit against. The new position made him dizzy and nauseous, and he gasped and retched. When the illness passed, he used the column to haul himself to his feet. Sharp pains shot through his hip and legs, but he managed to remain upright.

The column, it turned out, was a waist-high pedestal. He groped the top of it, his hands gliding across a smooth stone embedded into its surface. Green lightning crackled within it, then softened to a steady glow, tinting Alton’s skin a pale green. It did little to illuminate his surroundings.

“It is about time, Orla,” a voice said out of the darkness.

Startled, Alton steadied himself against the pedestal, fear darting to the ends of his nerves.

“Did you take all this time to plot your next move, or have you been cheating again?” The voice, impossible to pinpoint, reverberated around him in what felt like a vast chamber.

Alton peered into the dark, trying to discern this new threat.

“Why are we sitting in the dark, Orla?”

“Hello?” Alton ventured.

A long moment passed before the voice, rather peeved, spoke again. “You’re not Orla.”

“Um, no. I’m Alton.”

Miraculously, and with startling intensity, golden sunshine showered down on him, and he blinked rapidly to allow his eyes to adjust. He discovered he stood on a plain of rolling hills and grasses.

Had he been transported to someplace else, or was this more of his feverish dreaming? Beneath his feet were blocks of stone patterned into concentric circles that looped outward before vanishing into the grasses. To either side of him were stone arches that led nowhere, but rather framed the horizon. Fluted columns encircled the area, supporting nothing on their scrolled capitals but the sky.