She trotted steadily onward and then paused, peering through the dark. From what she could discern of the main battle through the trees, the Sacoridians were outnumbered, but able to hold their own. They stood shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield in the clearing repelling the enemy, just as Lady Penburn said they would. Groundmite blows pounded on shields and defenders surged through to cut down the enemy. Among them she saw Bard, his saber rising and falling, his face lined in concentration.
As she stood pondering how she might go about aiding them, she became aware, belatedly, of some massive force crashing through the woods toward her. It burst from the undergrowth and hammered her into a tree.
Her sword arm and shoulder took the brunt of the impact and she scraped down the tree trunk, unable to breathe, her sword somewhere far away. Her vision crackled and blurred, and when finally she slid to her knees, she felt as though she had been shattered into pieces against an anvil.
A groundmite towered over her—the one she had left for the mules. Its trousers were shredded and bloodied. One of the mules had bitten a hunk of flesh out of its arm. It glared down at her with glinting yellow eyes, and she could only stare back up at it, too stunned to move.
“Greenie,” it said, and followed it with some coarse, garbled speech she did not understand. It found her saber, and raised it for a death blow.
It all registered dully in Karigan’s mind. She couldn’t move and in but a moment her own sword would come bearing down on her.
Insanely she laughed. She laughed because of her thought earlier in the evening about how her ride to Darden in a nightgown would be the most notable thing anyone would ever remember about her.
Even as she laughed, tears rolled down her cheeks. There were too many things left undone. She had to make peace with her father, tell him she loved him. Yet, when she closed her eyes against her fate, the image that came to her was that of King Zachary. There was a questioning look in his brown eyes, and for him Karigan felt some sorrow, some great depth of loss. Not for him, necessarily, but for . . . for herself?
Light footfalls passed by her, accompanied by a strangely familiar rank smell. It had been taking a rather long time, she realized, for the groundmite to kill her. She popped one eye open, and then the other. Brogan the bounder bent over the still hulk of the groundmite lying on its back with a forester’s knife lodged in its throat. Brogan yanked the knife out and wiped it on the groundmite’s tunic.
He then gazed down at her. His expression was feral, that of a predator on the hunt. Without a word he crept stealthily away, vanishing through the dark woods.
Brogan, Karigan realized, was doing as she had done herself—attacking from the shadows. He had looked at her just as she had others, to ascertain if she lived.
Karigan herself found it hard to grasp that she was still alive. She grew aware of a wave, building power and momentum, and that it would swamp her if she allowed it. At all costs, she knew she must hold it at bay.
She drew in a raspy breath, and sat very still, trying to settle her mind and take stock of her condition. Her entire side ached. When she flexed her arm, a tearing sensation ripped through the muscles. Her arm was not broken, but she would be unable to handle her sword again this night.
She rose unsteadily to her feet, cradling her arm against her. She peered again to the clearing, wondering what she could do to help.
Then something curious happened. It was impossible that she hear something so faint over the clamor of battle. No, it was more that she felt it, as though it traveled through the tree roots beneath her feet, or that it was whispered from branch to branch above her in the forest canopy.
Varadgrim, Varadgrim, Varadgrim . . .
And onward it hastened toward the clearing. Had she really heard . . . felt it? Somehow it reminded her of her dream. It had that tang of darkness. Even as she thought about it, she was overwhelmed by an awful feeling of impending disaster. It was as though the air had grown taut, as though there was a great pressure on it and it was about to explode.
In the clearing, there grew the steady rumble of thunder. The ground trembled beneath her feet. The battle seemed to pause as combatants perceived the change as well. The rumbling grew and intensified into an unbearable roar until finally there was release—a rupturing within the clearing.
The lines of defenders broke apart and chaos took hold. Groundmites threw down their weapons and bolted. Shields fell and figures ran and darted, flickering in the glimmer of lanterns and campfires.
Searing white energy coalesced about the obelisks, crackling up and down as though the magic of the wards was building up power.
A dark figure appeared between a pair of obelisks. Groundmites and Sacoridians both fled before it, terror-stricken and screaming. Intricate spider webs of energy arced throughout the clearing, explosive and bright, lighting the sky above, scoring through anything and anyone in their path.
Tendrils of energy pounced on the figure like live things in attack, fusing onto it, causing it to stagger backward. Though buffeted by the force, the figure shrugged off the magic and forged ahead, passing between the obelisks.
The ward stones shattered.
The white bolts of energy sputtered out and evaporated, and the figure vanished like a shadow in the night.
And then there was nothing.
Nothing but a haze of smoke. Darkness descended over the forest quenching the afterlight of the magic. Small campfires and lanterns still glowed here and there, insignificant and incongruous with the events of the last several moments.
Nothing moved. Was everyone dead, or, like Karigan, too terrified to move?
After a period of silence, there were finally some cries of pain and fear, invocations to the gods, and coughing. Karigan’s own throat was raw. Had she been screaming all along, or was it the result of simply holding back the screams she had been unable to loose?
The dread that once inhabited the clearing now advanced on her. It moved toward her like a great inescapable wall and surrounded her. Her screams came out as whimpers.
A figure emerged from shadow and paused before her. It was made of the night, and only the black dusty rags it had been buried in gave it a man’s shape. The moon shone on the pale face of a corpse. An iron crown of twisted branches gleamed upon its brow.
It lifted its arm and pointed at Karigan with a bone-thin finger. The gesture was like a lance thrust into her chest and she stumbled backward.
“Galadheon.” The figure’s voice rasped out of nothing, clung to her, wrapped her throat in cold fingers. “Betrayer.”
BENEATH THE CAIRN
The wraith of rags and shadow dropped its arm to its side. It tilted its face up and, curiously, it snuffled the air. Then it averted its dead gaze to something behind Karigan.
She whirled. Before her eyes registered the Eletian with his bowstring released, before her hair had the chance to settle on her shoulders, or before she could even draw a single breath, an arrow grazed her cheek and ear before hurtling onward.
She spun, following the arrow’s flight, but the wraith was gone, the arrow impaled in a tree. The dread that had cloaked the wraith was absent; the oppressive weight of its presence all but gone from the woods.
A current of night-cool air stung her face. With a trembling hand, she touched along her cheekbone and ear. When she withdrew her fingers, she found them smeared with blood.
“You should not have moved.” The Eletian’s voice was light and accented. It possessed the timbre of a cool, fast-flowing stream. “A hair’s-breadth more, and I would have killed you.”
Karigan glanced over her shoulder, trying to comprehend just the Eletian’s presence, much less her close call with arrow and wraith.
The Eletian strode past her. Pearlescent armor glowed in the moonlight, and rippled with subtle tints of green, pink, and blue, changing continually as he moved. From his shoulder pauldrons bristled odd, deadly looking spines, and barbs jutted in rows along his forearms. She watched him thoroughly bespelled
.
He stopped before the tree and tugged his white shafted arrow out of the trunk. “My aim was true,” he said, “but one cannot kill that which is the substance of death.” On the arrow’s shining tip was a snatch of black cloth. He rolled his eyes to gaze at her without turning, and she perceived a tight-lipped smile.
He spoke in his own language and she thought of water smoothing over rocks in a stream. Despite its beauty, she found no comfort in it, though she could not explain why. Finally, using the common tongue again, he said, “Remember well the precision of my aim, Galadheon.” And before she could make sense of his words, he added, “Telagioth who leads us will speak to you in the clearing.”
Karigan stumbled away, wondering what new dream she had entered.
She picked her way among the slain, groundmite and Sacoridian alike. It appeared that very few of the delegation had survived. The night hid details—faces—but the tang of gore clung in her throat. When she reached the clearing, it was alight with the crystalline shine of muna’riel, the moonstones of the Eletians. The dead came into sharp focus.
Between two shattered obelisks lay Bard. His eyes were closed and his expression peaceful. Silver light gleamed against the golden threads of the winged horse emblem on the sleeve so recently and meticulously mended by Ty. If not for the pool of blood beneath Bard’s mouth and nose, and the gaping hole in his back, she’d have thought him merely asleep.
“Galadheon.” The silver light intensified to a blinding white as an Eletian joined her. “Follow.”
Karigan stepped over Bard with quavering legs and trailed behind the Eletian. The great wave threatened to overwhelm her, but for now she held it back, if one young woman can hold back the ocean.
The clearing was filled with others like Bard—defenders, servants, nobles, all dead, all with similar wounds as though some immense force had simply punched holes through their bodies. Some soldiers looked among the dead for survivors, but Karigan sensed they’d find none.
The Eletian led her to the clearing’s center, to the cairn. Two soldiers supported Captain Ansible whose leg was deeply gashed and hastily bandaged. He seemed to be surveying the carnage, and Karigan thought her own expression must reflect his unfocused look of shock. Another Eletian stood next to him speaking quietly.
“It was the force of the magic which warded this place that killed them. It was loosed when the unspeakable one left its tomb.”
Captain Ansible murmured inaudibly.
“We shall assist you as we can,” the Eletian replied.
The captain nodded in acknowledgment. When his gaze fell upon Karigan, he said, “Rider, this Eletian wants to speak to you.” Then his eyes darted away and he muttered to himself, “Must send word to the king.” The two soldiers helped him limp away.
The Eletian turned to Karigan with appraising eyes. “I am called Telagioth. I am ora-tien, leader of these tiendan.”
The word shone through Karigan’s foggy mind as a bright memory. She had met tiendan before—Somial had been one. They were hunters of the king. The Eletian king.
Telagioth, as well as other Eletians who moved about the clearing and encampment, were all clad in the odd, milky armor, though no others possessed spines that she could discern.
At Telagioth’s side was a sword sheathed in the same material as the armor which, she was certain, wasn’t steel. The sword was girded with a belt of embroidered cloth. Lengths of it dangled from the knot at his hip to his knee, the complicated patterns woven into it seeming to move and swim as though alive.
“How do you know me?” Karigan’s cheek was stiff with drying blood, and as she spoke, fresh blood trickled along her jaw.
“We know you,” Telagioth said. “You are touched by Laurelyn’s favor . . . and other things.”
He took her by the elbow, holding a muna’riel aloft in his other hand. He guided her around the cairn, taking special care to avoid the dead.
“Where are we going?” Karigan asked, wishing that the whole nightmare would just end and she’d wake up safe and sound beside the campfire and other Riders. Where was Ty? Had he been slain, too? Was she the only one among the Riders to have survived?
The Eletian paused and gestured toward the cairn. A portion of it had been blown outward. Rubble was strewn before a gaping hole. The light of the muna’riel revealed steps that descended into darkness. He guided her toward them.
“You—you’re not taking me down there,” Karigan said, backing away.
Telagioth turned to her, the crystalline light of the muna’riel making his features smooth and well-angled, and alien. Cerulean eyes, with the transparent depth of blue glass, regarded her with interest.
“You would not enter an empty tomb when there is far more death beneath the open moon?” His demeanor was not hostile, nor was it kind. It was merely curious.
Karigan had no wish to enter that blackness from which the wraith had emerged. She hated tombs.
There were other things that required her attention besides, more pressing needs. “The injured need tending.” And the dead, too, she did not add. She started to walk away, but Telagioth caught her elbow again.
“Come. The air is sound and nothing is below that can harm you. Others shall tend the injured. You must see what lies below, as a witness, so you may tell your king of it.”
Karigan wanted to argue that she had witnessed more than enough already, but she was too weary for argument. And, in a way, his words appealed to her sense of duty, for she knew it was true that King Zachary would want to know the details. She wanted to know the details. Just what had been loosed into the world?
She followed Telagioth down the steps through what had been an entranceway, framed out by stone and now-rotted timbers, before the tomb builders had covered it with rocks. They had to clamber over the shattered remains of a stone door. Karigan’s fingers trailed over glyphs as she worked her way around it.
Their descent took them down a rough shaft that had been cut right through the bedrock. The walls glinted with wet and slime. Currents of damp smelling air that had been trapped for too long beneath the earth lifted tendrils of hair out of her face. She slipped on a step and jolted her arm painfully as she fought to regain her balance.
“The black moss is slippery,” Telagioth said belatedly as he helped her right herself.
“Thanks for the warning,” Karigan muttered under her breath.
The muna’riel brightly lit the way. The black moss was like a disease that grew on the steps and walls.
“How did you happen upon us?” Karigan asked, perhaps to keep her mind off the tomb they descended into.
“We did not happen upon you,” Telagioth said. “Our scouts were monitoring your scouts and the movements of the delegation. When we realized where your encampment was placed, we knew we must come and make ourselves plain to you.”
Their timing could have been better, Karigan thought bitterly. “Why didn’t you come to us sooner? Certainly you must have known our mission.”
“We did know of your mission, but we are hunters, not emissaries. And once we knew of your danger, we came as swiftly as we could.”
Before Telagioth could speak further, a chamber opened up before them and his feet splashed into water. “Hold,” he warned her. He proceeded forward, testing the footing. “Ai, they delved too deep and the water has flooded in. There are two steps more.”
He held out a hand to help her navigate the submerged steps. Ice-cold water seeped through her boots. It was above her ankles.
The chamber was low-ceilinged and dripped with moisture, sounding like rain as it plinked into the pool of water that covered the floor. In the dancing light of the muna’riel, she detected carvings on the walls slimed with more of the moss, and other glistening, moving things.
“This is but an antechamber,” Telagioth said, his voice taking on a hollow sound. “Beware the unevenness of the floor.”
He had to duck as he made his way through the chamber, the ceiling was so low. Karig
an hurried after him, feeling the blackness of the subterranean world pressing at her back. She slipped and slid on the uneven floor in her haste and made herself more wet than she wished, but she was across the room in no time, ducking her head beneath a lintel into a tight corridor.
“All of the seals are broken,” Telagioth said. “There should have been one as we entered the corridor.”
The passage elbowed, but the muna’riel was bright enough that it offered her light even around the corner. Wet hanging things fell across her face and she wiped them away with a shiver of disgust. Pale spiders skittered into crevices as light found them. Karigan had been, she thought, in better tombs.
The burial chamber opened up before them, much vaster than the antechamber. The darkness of it swallowed the light of the muna’riel. Karigan caught glimpses of colorful walls and of a basin of black water with a rectangular stone platform in the center like an island.
Telagioth stepped down, the water now as high as his knees, and he turned to her offering his hand again. “It will not get deeper than this.”
Karigan shuddered with revulsion as the cold water poured over the tops of her boots and soaked through her trousers. It may only reach Telagioth’s knees, but for her, the water came to mid-thigh. Who knew what existed in water that stagnated in a tomb?
The muna’riel cast the water with silver light, causing liquid waves of that light to reflect onto wall murals. Though somewhat obscured by layers of moss and oozing slime, the murals depicted battle and death, and images of the gods. The gods, painted larger than life, averted their faces and held their hands palms out, either in warding or in denial. There were Aeryc, god of the moon, and Aeryon, goddess of the sun, Dernal the Fla mekeeper, Vendane the Harvester, and others, except, Karigan noticed, Westrion, god of death.
While Westrion himself was missing, his steed Salvistar was most prominent of all the figures. Salvistar leaped across the wall, black neck arched and mane flowing like the tongues of a flame. His head was tossed back and his teeth bared. The wavering light seemed to lend him motion and life.