And yet, it was.
As beautiful and as useful as a light source moonstones were, they were powerful when unleashed. The one given her by the Berry sisters had ultimately become a weapon when she fought Shawdell the Eletian, who had breached the D’Yer Wall. She had wielded its light like a blade, sharper and stronger than any earthly steel. When the wounded Shawdell fled, all that remained of the moonstone were crystal fragments on the palm of her hand.
She could not imagine the Eletians giving away moonstones to just anyone. What was their purpose in giving one to her mother? So that it would eventually come to Karigan, as Professor Berry’s had?
She closed her fingers around the moonstone, the sensation of being part of some greater plot washing over her once again. Her aunts were pleased the mystery of Kariny’s final words was resolved, but for Karigan, there was no resolution, just more questions.
Secrets, she thought. Too many secrets.
She was jarred from her thoughts by the sound of the front door opening and closing, and feet stomping in the entry hall.
“Stevic?” Aunt Stace called from somewhere deep within the house, followed by footsteps as she strode down the corridor.
“Snow’s stopped,” he answered. “The clouds look like they’re breaking up.”
“Good, good,” Aunt Stace said. “Then maybe you’ll take a few minutes to visit with your daughter. It isn’t often she’s home.”
Karigan pocketed her moonstone and crept to the doorway of the office. She peered into the entry hall and saw her father heavily cloaked and holding a pair of snowshoes. Snow crumbled off his boots and shoulders. Aunt Stace faced him with her arms crossed.
“I will,” he said. “But I still need to—”
“You need to talk to your daughter. About certain things.”
“Certain things? What things?” Then Stevic G’ladheon’s features clouded over. “She told you about the brothel?”
Aunt Stace’s eyebrows shot up. “Brothel? What brothel?”
Silence filled the hall as brother and sister regarded one another.
Aunt Stace shook herself and Karigan could tell she was just bursting with questions, but instead said, “You need to talk to Karigan about her family. Kariny’s family.”
“Why? What for?” Stevic’s manner was guarded.
“She’s a right to know,” Aunt Stace replied, “about what was said back on the island concerning the Grays. How some of the women of that line—”
“No.”
“Stevic—”
“No. I will not talk about those lies. None of it was true, and I will have no such talk in my house.”
“But you—”
“It’s bad enough my daughter is cursed and that damn Rider call has taken her from me.”
His words stunned Karigan. Cursed? He believed her cursed? She tightened her grip on the moonstone in her pocket.
“But Kariny—”
“Do not speak of her—do not even bring up her name—not when you discuss magic. She was untouched by the taint. She was perfect.”
Karigan swallowed hard, feeling as if the floor beneath her feet were falling away. She knew her father’s views on magic, an antipathy borne of fear. It was not uncommon among Sacoridians whose ancestors suffered so under the depredations of Mornhavon the Black.
Yet the vehemence in his voice, the hate—it took her aback. He saw her as cursed, as tainted by evil. A small cry escaped her lips.
Her father and aunt both looked toward the doorway where she stood.
“Karigan?” Aunt Stace said.
Her father blanched.
Karigan barely registered the tears on her cheeks.
“Karigan,” her father said. “I didn’t mean to say—”
But then she removed her hand from her pocket, the moonstone on her palm. It lit the entry hall in a brilliant silver-white hue, illuminating her father’s flesh with a deathly pallor.
The snowshoes crashed to the floor.
“No,” he whispered.
Before Karigan or Aunt Stace could say another word, he flung the front door open and bolted out into the wintry landscape.
Karigan sank to her knees, the moonstone clenched in her fist. In two strides Aunt Stace was there, holding her.
ISLAND LORE
Karigan’s aunts had always been of the opinion that applying food to a problem usually solved it. They placed before her a bowl of goose and leek soup from the kettle simmering over the fire, as well as peach preserves, tarts, and muffins.
Aunt Tory uncorked a bottle of pear brandy. Tea, she declared, just wasn’t efficacious enough to succor the distress caused by her brother, and after splashing a dram into a goblet for Karigan, she poured herself a cup near to overflowing. Then she took a long, hard draught of the stuff, ending with a satisfied sigh. She refilled her cup while her sisters looked on in astonishment and severe disapproval.
For Karigan’s part, she sat at the kitchen table with head in hands, the fire warming her back. She had no appetite whatsoever and sat mute while Aunt Stace recounted her confrontation with their brother.
“We should sit on him,” Aunt Tory said.
“I’m not sure that would help Karigan,” Aunt Stace replied.
“She could sit on him, too. The more of us, the better.”
Aunt Gretta snickered, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“He believes I’m cursed,” Karigan said plaintively.
“Do not take it to heart, Kari girl,” Aunt Stace said. “He’s just angry the Rider magic took you away from him. He fears for your well-being, for he knows your work can be dangerous.”
When Karigan finally succumbed to the Rider call, she had to explain to them why she had to leave to be a king’s messenger, why she must go to Sacor City. She had to explain why she could not be a proper merchant’s daughter, working with her father and marrying to produce heirs that would carry on the line and clan. Her announcement predictably upset her family, especially her father.
“I know he doesn’t like magic,” Karigan said, “but I’ve never seen him like that.”
“It was very much part of our upbringing to regard magic as evil,” Aunt Stace replied. “Our father was strict on the matter and every rest day we had to listen to the moon priest rail against the evil of the old days. He preached that if it were ever born upon the Earth again, it ought to be destroyed, along with anyone with the ability to use it.”
Green Riders kept silent about even their minor abilities because of this sort of irrational fear and intolerance. What would her fellow citizens think if they learned magic users served the king? How could they trust the king or his messengers?
“Our father,” Aunt Stace continued, “was particularly fervent in his beliefs and used a switch liberally if any one of us even uttered the word magic. All we knew was that it was vile and corrupt.”
“And of course,” Aunt Brini said, her gaze focused on her needlework, “Stevic was smitten with Kariny Gray.”
“What does she have to do with it?” Karigan demanded, turning to Aunt Stace. “You were telling father to talk to me about her.”
“Yes, so I was. And since he’s seen fit to run off into the snow again, I daresay we’ll do the telling for him.” Her sisters murmured in assent.
“Your mother’s line,” Aunt Brini said, “has always been known on the island to be a trifle ...” And here she whispered, “fey.”
“Uncanny,” Aunt Tory added.
“Just a touch,” Aunt Stace emphasized. “You see, there was not so much written history on Black Island, but quite a lot of spoken lore that has been passed down through the generations and discussed as if something that happened a century ago happened only yesterday. Your thrice-great grandmother, for instance, is said to have had conversations with fishermen who never returned from the sea.”
“Their spirits,” Aunt Tory interjected, features animated, “would come to shore on foggy nights, it is said, smelling of brine and moaning like the w
ind, seaweed dragging at their feet!”
“Tory!” Aunt Stace snapped, and her sister subsided. She turned back to Karigan with an annoyed expression. “You see how these stories get embellished?”
After Karigan’s own experiences with the spirits of the dead, she could not discount Aunt Tory’s description, but she simply nodded.
“There were others in your mother’s line,” Aunt Stace said, “who were held to be uncommonly knowing.”
“Uncommonly knowing?”
All four aunts nodded.
“Knew things beyond normal ken,” Aunt Gretta explained. “About the weather, the fishing, and peoples’ lives. The future.”
“Your mother,” Aunt Brini said, glancing up from her needlework, “laughed when she heard such talk, and said they were just stories. She was a very practical woman with her feet planted squarely on the ground, except for her penchant for riding out at night as Stace already told you. Of course, we all have some odd habits, like Gretta who must make her bed at least three times before she is satisfied.”
“I do not!”
“Hah! You do, too! I’ve counted.”
“Well, you only eat one thing on your plate at a time,” Aunt Gretta said.
Aunt Brini sniffed and punched her needle through cloth. “It’s a texture thing.”
Aunt Stace rolled her eyes. “Your mother’s family,” she told Karigan, “was mostly well-regarded on the island, for not all held as harsh a view toward magic as our father did. There were a few, certainly, who might smile to your grandmother Gray’s face, then make the sign of the crescent moon when she looked away, and some whispered of witches in the family and other rubbish. But on the whole? They were considered law-abiding, productive members of the village who followed the traditional ways. They even endured the rantings of the moon priest on rest days.”
“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me this?” Karigan asked. Magic in her mother’s line? The brandy was beginning to look good.
“You never asked,” Aunt Stace replied. “And no doubt our own antipathy for our past on the island made us reluctant to discuss it. But getting back to your father, he was so smitten by Kariny, he’d defend her and her family’s honor if he heard someone make a remark about their more uncanny side. This usually led to fights.”
“Black eyes and bloody noses,” Aunt Brini intoned, nodding.
“Not to mention an additional beating from our father,” Aunt Stace said, “who believed all the lore about the Grays and did not approve of Stevic’s interest in the youngest girl. If he spoke her name, or even glanced her way, out came the switch.”
“Which of course,” Aunt Gretta said, “did not stop Stevic one jot. One evening our father spotted Stevic carrying some burden for Kariny from the village mercantile. The whipping he received—it was ferocious. That’s when he left the island.”
“He promised to come back for Kariny,” Aunt Tory said, “as soon as he found work, made his way in the world. We had no hope of ever seeing him again, but his love for Kariny made him true. He came back and sailed away with her. We soon followed.”
“Kariny never doubted him,” Aunt Gretta mused, and the others murmured in agreement.
And that brings us back to you,” Aunt Stace said. “Taking into consideration your own touch of magic, it is our belief that the lore about Kariny’s bloodline wasn’t just stories as she claimed. That uncanny touch has come down to you.”
Karigan had already arrived at the same conclusion. It only made sense. How else could she explain the Rider call and her minor ability with magic? Where else would it have come from?
She wondered how powerful her ancestors were, but she was sure her aunts would have told her if they knew; if there was anything of note from the island lore. Perhaps, just like Karigan, their abilities were minor, remained buried just below the surface, dormant until awakened. Karigan’s own surfaced because of the Rider call. The Green Rider brooch she wore, a winged horse, augmented her ability to fade from sight, seemingly to vanish.
She brushed her fingers over her brooch, the gold smooth and cool. Her aunts probably saw some other piece of jewelry, or maybe nothing at all, for a spell of concealment had been placed on the brooches long ago allowing only Riders to perceive them properly.
“Your father,” Aunt Stace said, “loves you. Loves you deeply. He was not thinking when he spoke out earlier.”
Despite her aunt’s reassurance, her father’s words still hurt. Karigan’s hand went to the moonstone in her pocket. She believed her father was very much in denial about her mother. Perfect, he had called her. Pure from the taint of magic.
Karigan shook her head, thinking she should just pack up her scant belongings and begin the journey back to Sacor City. Coming home had been a mistake, though she wasn’t sure how she could have gotten out of an errand assigned her directly by the captain. All she had done was stir up turmoil. The brothel and her father’s pirate past no longer seemed to matter.
Then she remembered she couldn’t leave without her father’s reply to the captain’s message. That meant having to face him, but at least it would be as a king’s messenger, not as his daughter.
Just as Karigan resolved to leave as soon as she could, the kitchen door opened and her father entered, cold air drafting around him. “I have hitched up the sleigh,” he told her. “Grab a coat. We are going into town.”
ARROWDALE
Karigan outfitted herself in an old wool coat, wrapped the scarf that Aunt Brini insisted she wear around her neck, and pulled on heavy mittens. In the sleigh was a thick, coarse blanket she and her father could throw over their laps, and sea-rounded cobbles that had been heated at the hearth to keep their feet warm.
Her father took up reins and coach whip, clucked to the pair of drays, Roy and Birdy, and the sleigh lurched forward. The sun had broken clear of clouds and clumps of snow dropped from fir boughs along the drive as they glided along.
The air felt lighter, not so bitter, and the chatter of birds reminded Karigan the worst of winter was done and spring was on the way.
“Why are we going to town?” Karigan asked.
“You shall see.”
Karigan settled beneath the blanket, slightly annoyed. She said no more, however, figuring her father would reveal his purpose in his own time, and no sooner, even if she pestered him. So she kept her peace as the horses paced steady on through drifts, their brasses and harnesses jingling in a cheerful rhythm.
The G’ladheon estate sat in the country just outside of Corsa, and once they joined the main road, they picked up speed, for the road wardens had already knocked down drifts and compacted the snow. Such maintenance was spotty throughout the realm, but Corsa was prosperous, and the city masters paid attention not only to the harbor, but to the roads as well, knowing that while a great deal of trade happened along the waterfront, goods must also be transported to and from the harbor overland. Proper road upkeep, they asserted, could only promote the city’s continued prosperity and its reputation as the foremost merchant port in the lands.
Soon the woods thinned, opening up to field and pasture, the snow smooth across the landscape like thickened cream and undisturbed save for the meandering tracks of hare and fox. Houses appeared with more frequency as they approached Corsa. Karigan could sense the ocean, too, feel the moist draft of it upon the air. And still her father did not speak. He just sat there, subtly guiding the horses, his gaze fixed on the road.
In Corsa proper, the streets were lined with homes and shops, folk sweeping and shoveling snow off front doorsteps. Children played in the street throwing snowballs at one another, and a few shoppers struggled along on uncertain footing.
Her father halted the sleigh before a poulterer’s shop with plucked chickens, geese, and turkeys displayed in the window.
“I’ll be back momentarily,” he said. He hopped out of the sleigh and entered the shop, returning minutes later with a large, dressed turkey, and deposited it in the back of the sleigh.
&
nbsp; He left her again for other shops, returning with a huge wheel of cheese, a sack of flour, a jug of molasses, a tub of butter, and other foodstuffs to amply fill any larder. Karigan could only watch in astonishment as the back of the sleigh was filled up. She did not think Cook’s pantry had been so barren.
“What is ... ?” she started to ask, when finally he sat beside her again and collected the reins.
“You’ll see,” he said.
He guided the sleigh onto Garden Street. It wasn’t a particularly gardenlike neighborhood, even when it wasn’t winter. Still, it was a solid street of middle- to lower-class merchants and tradesmen. Their houses stood tightly together, smoke issuing from chimneys.
Her father brought the drays to a halt in front of a tall narrow house sided with cedar shakes, just like all the others.
“This is Garden House,” he said, startling her. “We shall go in for a brief visit—it’s time I brought you here, because as my heir, you will one day become its steward.”
What was he talking about? Before she could ask questions, however, he said, “Look and listen, and you shall see.”
He spread blankets across the backs of the horses, then removed a basket from the sleigh, leaving the rest of his purchases in the rear. He strode toward the house and Karigan could do nothing but follow.
Her father bounded up the front steps and knocked on the door. Within moments it was opened by a matronly woman with steel gray hair. At once she smiled.
“Master G’ladheon!” she exclaimed.
“Greetings, Lona,” he said. “How are you?”
“Never better,” the woman replied, “and now even better than better to see you. Come in, come in out of the cold!”
Karigan followed her father into the dim entry hall and was conscious of others peering from doorways and around corners.
Her father handed the basket over to Lona. “Fresh baked oat muffins,” he said.