“Yes, of course, I did explain it to him, but he hasn’t been out in the world much.”
Everyone had to go out into the world sometime, Alton thought, even if the ones who loved them wanted to keep them safely home.
FAREWELLS
For an ordinary message errand, two days of preparation time was an overabundance, but since this was not exactly a message errand, but a journey into wild country, two days seemed rather inadequate to acquire all the supplies necessary. It was still winter and the weather would be fickle as they continued toward spring, so Karigan erred on the side of caution packing extra layers of clothing. They’d have a pack pony with them, specially chosen by Hep. The pony would be burdened with their gear and food supplies.
Drent accused her of running away from swordmaster training even though he knew very well she was leaving by the king’s command. “Waste of effort to train you Riders,” he grumbled at her during her final session. She had ended up on the floor only three times, an improvement.
Elgin was mournful at the news that he was losing his able copyist. She recommended Daro for the job, though she wasn’t sure Daro would appreciate it.
She was excused from her other regular duties as well, so she could run about the castle for supplies and pore over maps. Mara, in her role as Chief Rider, assisted, but it was Estral who needed more help in finding adequate travel gear.
Enver, for his part, roamed the castle, looking into its nooks and crannies, studying tapestries and statues, knocking on the breastplates of suits of armor that stood along the corridors. Unlike Lhean and the other Eletians, he chose to spend his nights in a guest room in the diplomatic wing.
When the day came to leave, Karigan threw her stuffed saddlebags over one shoulder, and the longsword over the other. Her saber she wore at her hip, and she carried her bonewood staff at cane length in a scabbard that could be worn on her back or strapped to her saddle. She gave Ghost Kitty, who was sprawled on her bed, a final pat on the head. He’d probably start staying with Mara again. She was about to stride from her room, but paused and turned around and went to her desk. Setting her staff aside, she opened a certain drawer and withdrew the paper that held the image of Cade.
“I’m going away for a while,” she murmured, and she touched his cheek, but felt only the texture of the paper. She closed her eyes trying to retain the image of him in her mind. After a deep breath, she returned the paper to its drawer where it would remain safe and, grabbing her staff, left her chamber without looking back.
Most of the Riders were out and about, but she bade farewell to the few she encountered. She also found Anna lugging her ash buckets and tools toward the common room. She now wore the livery of the royal household, a gray chemise and skirts with a fresh white apron, an improvement over her old allotment.
“Hello, Anna,” Karigan said.
“Oh, Sir Karigan, I heard you were leaving.”
“Yes, I’ll be gone for a little while. How is your new position?”
“It’s wonderful. The queen is kind, and even Mistress Evans treats me well. She never screams at me or accuses me of shirking my duties.”
Karigan frowned. Had Anna been so mistreated working with the general castle staff?
“I have a real bed chamber now,” Anna continued, “and have to share it with only one other person! But . . .”
“But?”
Anna glanced over her shoulder as if gazing off into another world; then her shoulders sagged. “Nothing. I couldn’t be happier.”
If Karigan had the time, she’d try to pry out whatever it was Anna had on her mind, but she didn’t. Fortunately, she had asked Mara to keep an eye on the girl. Something about having helped Anna during the attack on the castle had made Karigan feel responsible for her.
“I wish you didn’t have to go,” Anna said.
“I’ll be back sooner than we think.” Karigan said it with more force than she intended. There would be, she had promised herself, no traveling to another time. No crossing through the layers of the world. “If you need anything, look for Mara, or if she’s not around, Tegan or Daro.”
“Thank you,” Anna said, but she still looked disappointed.
“I’ve got to go now. You take care.”
“Good-bye, Sir Karigan.”
Karigan went on with the hope that Anna would fare well. Estora, she knew, would be good to her, and the Riders would keep an eye on her as well.
Estral and Enver awaited her just inside the castle entrance, each with their own packs and weapons. Estral wore a longknife beneath her coat, and Enver his sword, knife, and bow and arrows.
“Greetings, Galadheon.”
“Good morning. Are we ready?”
“Better be, I guess,” Estral said. She looked a little nervous.
They stepped outside into the gray day, the clouds gravid with snow. Karigan wondered if Tegan’s ability to know the weather was failing, for she’d predicted fair skies. Perhaps it would clear off. The captain and Mara awaited them on the drive with Condor, Estral’s gelding, and the pony.
Karigan glanced at Enver. “Are you walking north?”
“Eletians do prefer the land beneath their feet,” he replied, “but I will mount when we leave the city.”
On what? she wondered. The wind?
When they reached the captain and Mara, the captain held a message satchel out for her. “The king’s letter to the p’ehdrose and related documents,” she said, “should you find them. And a box of Dragon Droppings for your journey.”
Karigan smiled and took the satchel. She then busied herself strapping the longsword and saddlebags to Condor’s saddle. She slung the bonewood across her back and took the reins from Mara.
“Leg up?” Mara offered.
“I would, but Enver is on foot.”
“I will keep up with your horses,” he said. “I do not mind if you ride. I will lead the pony.”
“His name is Bane,” Mara said.
“Well, that’s ominous,” Estral commented from atop her gelding.
Karigan glanced at the shaggy mountain pony with his rakish forelock, their supplies laden on his back. She hoped he did not live up to his name.
She accepted Mara’s leg up. “Any final orders?” she asked the captain.
“The usual. Stay out of trouble and come home safely.”
Mara laughed. “As if that ever happens.”
Karigan made a face at her.
The captain remained serious. “You are a capable Rider, Karigan; otherwise, the king would not be sending you out on this mission as his voice to make contact with the p’ehdrose for the first time in a thousand years.”
“I understand.”
“Good. And I’d prefer to not have to report bad news to your father again.”
Karigan gave her a sly smile. “When you see him next, tell him I send my love.”
The captain squinted suspiciously at her in return but did not reply.
Flurries started to drift down in lazy spirals as they bade their final farewells, and departed. Karigan and Estral rode side by side, and Enver followed with Bane. Just before they crossed through the castle gates, Karigan turned in her saddle to wave good-bye to the captain and Mara, but they’d already reentered the castle. Enver, she noticed, was gazing at the castle heights. When she followed his gaze, she saw only the pennants fluttering listlessly in the breeze, a raven soaring overhead, and soldiers at guard on the battlements.
She turned her attention to the way ahead.
Zachary stood upon the battlements, a breeze playing through his hair as he observed the three prepare to depart for the north. It was not the first time he had watched Karigan ride away from him. Would it be the last? It wasn’t the first time he’d entertained that thought, either. She had returned all those previous times, sometimes miraculously. He hoped this errand woul
d prove less perilous than those others, but of course, one could never tell how things would turn out. His messengers often rode into danger; it was the nature of their job, but he was the one who made the decision that they must go. And Karigan was more than a messenger to him.
He could not hear what words were exchanged down below, nor see their expressions, but he watched Karigan mount, so easy in the saddle. He wished he could ride out with her, leave the problems of the realm in someone else’s hands. A light flurry descended from the sky, and he imagined the snow alighting softly upon her hair and shoulders.
The horses started forward, with the Eletian on foot leading the pony. As they approached the gates, he noticed the Eletian looking his way. He met the Eletian’s gaze, then stepped back from the battlements. A raven wheeled overhead, and he turned on his heel. He strode for the doorway that led back into the castle, Fastion following close behind.
He’d almost felt the intensity of the Eletian’s gaze, almost as if Enver could see into him, beneath his skin. Although Zachary had been unable to see Enver’s face clearly at such a distance, he knew Eletians possessed exceptional sight. As a guard tugged open the heavy iron door for him, he wondered just how exceptional Eletian sight was.
Did Enver see Zachary’s desire for the freedom to do as he wished? The desire to be other than king? His longing for the one who must always ride away, even in his dreams?
As he trotted down the stairwell into the comparative warmth of the castle, cold currents stalked him until the door above clanged shut. A prison door it was, for all that he was king.
GRAY ON GRAY
Zachary moved through a day that was gray on gray, stone walls against cloudy skies. He met with his generals and examined maps and plans, his vision filled with lines and shading, black ink delineating borders and territories. Outside his window, the dance of flurries continued, turned into a squall, a shower of arrows. He shook his head, tried to pay attention but did not hear the words. Laren, he saw, watched him carefully, but silently.
He took his mid-morning tea with his wife. Their relationship had turned awkward since Estora revealed she had looked into Karigan’s mirror eye. They avoided one another’s gaze, and what little conversation passed between them came in stilted bursts.
In the gloom of the day, he strode the corridors; his retinue of officers, counselors, Weapons, courtiers, secretaries, and attendants hastened to keep pace. The clamor as they spoke to him—no, not to him, but at him—rolled off behind him into dust. How often had he made this walk day after day? It was the same motions over and over.
Petitioners, common folk and nobles alike, awaited him in the throne room. They bowed at his entrance. They’d all want something of him, some advantage, perhaps, justice or absolution. He paused a moment gazing at them bent to him in supplication, some peeking at him with hopeful expressions on their faces.
He climbed the steps of the dais and seated himself on his throne, the queen’s chair vacant. Castellan Javien called out the petitioners one at a time, who came before him humbly, or jauntily, or filled with their own smug self-assurance to express what it was they wished of their king.
They do not see me. He might as well be a statue. Even those closest to him did not see. To them, he was a symbol, not a simple man of flesh and blood.
The petitions took on a familiar pattern, and he gazed out the tall windows at snow streaking down, the hail of arrows, as his counselors discussed each case among themselves. He rendered judgment as if a sleeper. The throne room could have been frozen in time for all it never changed, the same old walls, the same old pleas and arguments.
After the last petitioner was dismissed, his counselors talked at him until he dismissed them, as well. Silence fell like a pall, and he sat there feeling as if his flesh were turning to marble. He closed his eyes and exhaled.
“Zachary?” Laren’s voice came to him through the haze. He looked down to see that she had stayed behind. “You are very pensive today, distant.”
He glanced out the windows. No arrows, just flurries whirled past the glass. “What is,” he asked, “the point of it all?”
“Zachary?”
“The motions we go through. What is the point of it? One day I’ll be no more than a marble effigy for the few who care to remember. What is the point of this life?”
“Oh, Moonling,” Laren murmured, “you are in a dark mood.”
“I don’t know what I am.”
“You know what you are,” she replied softly.
He stood and stretched his back, and stepped down the dais. “I still don’t understand the point of it, the striving, the scheming, the battles, when everything ends anyway.”
“I think we need to take a walk.”
• • •
They walked the central courtyard gardens. The paths had not been shoveled since the morning, and the only other footprints they encountered belonged to squirrels and birds. Chickadees hopped among the branches of trees and shrubs bowed by the weight of snow. The flurries came slowly now, but the temperature was plunging again. The cold did help dissipate the haze Zachary had been mired in, though some leaden aspect of it weighed on him still.
For a long time, neither of them spoke, just ambled along caught in their own reveries, a pair of Weapons trailing some distance behind. Zachary enjoyed the silence. The gardens were a world unto themselves with only the noises of nature around them. They may as well have been miles away from the castle rather than surrounded by it.
“You have always been introspective,” Laren said. “In a way, that’s a good quality in a king. In another way, it just makes life harder on you.”
“My thoughts I can keep for myself as I choose. The rest, everything that I am, I cannot.”
“Such as the choice of the person with whom you may marry and spend your life?”
He did not reply. He had not expected to be so affected by Karigan’s departure, especially since she was heading off on a mission that should not be as hazardous as entering Blackveil. But she was only so recently returned to them, and the belief that she had been lost in Blackveil was still raw. He used to look out upon his petitioners during her long absence and imagine he saw her face among them, but it was always only a dream.
What if she had stayed in the future with Cade?
He remembered how it had been when she came home, how she pleaded to return to a disastrous future so she could be with Cade, how she was willing to give up her own life in the present to be with him, to probably die with him. He could still hear her shouting, “Let me go back! I must go back to him!”
She’d tried to hide her grief, but he’d seen how desolate she looked in unguarded moments when she thought no one was watching. He wished he could be the object of her regard. He was thankful to Cade Harlowe for his part in letting her go so she could come home, but also found himself envious of a man who did not exist in this time, and who was probably dead in his own.
And had Karigan stayed in the future or otherwise failed to return? Zachary would never have known her fate, and the loss and grief would be his.
“I blame myself sometimes,” Laren said.
He looked at her in surprise. “For what?”
“For being so eager for you to put the realm before your personal happiness.”
“You did not make that decision. I did, and it was the right one. The realm is stronger for it, the eastern provinces now bound more closely to Sacoridia’s heart through Coutre. We need that strength to face troubled times.”
“There are always troubled times,” Laren said, “although I’ll admit some are more troubling than others.” She reached out and knocked a clump of snow off a low-hanging bough. It sprang up, trailing the fragrance of balsam. “After seeing you today, it occurs to me that a realm is only as happy as its king.”
“You do not think I’m happy.”
“Someti
mes, yes. You try to hide what’s inside, it’s what you do, and it’s a matter of survival for you as a king. But I know you, and you are not happy today. You were wondering what is the point of living.”
“Don’t you ever wonder those sorts of things?”
“Don’t turn this around on me.”
Sometimes he forgot how sharp her tongue could be, and he looked away to hide his smile. They meandered along a wayside path, and he could hear the trickle of water: King Jonaeus’ Spring, hidden behind snow-covered shrubbery and boulders. It rarely froze.
“Zachary,” Laren said in a hushed voice, “you came close to dying from your arrow wound, and you’ve been close to death in other ways. It is not unusual to explore the nature of life and its end.”
“Laren, please, you are lecturing me.”
“If I was lecturing, you would truly know it. My Riders certainly do.” She subsided for a moment. “Perhaps I am just trying to make myself feel better. It hurts me when you are in pain.”
“I am not in pain.”
“You know better than to lie to me.”
He smiled again, this time in chagrin. He’d gotten into enough trouble with her when he was a boy.
“After being as close to death as you were,” she continued, “it makes you aware of how fleeting life is, of its futility, especially when you can’t attain what makes you happiest.”
He felt an angry retort building that she would presume to know how it felt, but then he recalled she spoke from experience, from her own close calls and losses.
“If I ever thought . . .” She shook her head. “If I’d considered your marriage in the way I am doing so now, perhaps we could have found another way. I am sorry for not seeing another way when it counted.”
“I don’t think any of us saw another way, and even now I certainly don’t know what could have been done differently. We can’t change the past, so there is no use in agonizing over possibilities that never existed.”
The wings of a crow swept overhead. Flurries spiraled along the trailing edges of ebon feathers.