Later that afternoon, she slowed the horse to a halt and dismounted. She threw her pack to the ground and searched through the saddlebags to see what would prove useful during her journey. To her delight, she found not only dried beef, bread, apples, and a water skin, but a thick green greatcoat, caped at the shoulders. Though it was a little long in the sleeves, it fit fairly well.
“Now I won’t go cold.” She took the food and water and plopped on the ground for a feast, and groaned. “Am I sore.” She glared at the horse who nibbled innocently at some grass.
After her light supper, Karigan wrapped herself in the greatcoat. She dozed off, and in a dream, imagined that a filmy white figure approached the horse and spoke to him. The horse listened gravely to every word. She heard nothing but a low whisper. Who are you? she wanted to ask. Why do you disturb my rest? But her mouth would not work, and she couldn’t shrug off her slumber.
A nudge on the toe of her boot woke her up. The horse gazed down at her and whickered. It was dusk.
“Are you telling me it’s time to go?”
The horse waited for her on the road.
“All right. I’m coming, I’m coming.”
They trotted along the road again, the flutelike song of thrushes echoing in the twilight. The horse compelled Karigan to ride through the night. It was an uncomfortable ride although his gait lacked its former tooth-rattling agony.
As she rode, the woods and the abandoned road began to take on a new, ominous character. Tree limbs clinked together like old bones, and clouds blanketed the moon and stars. Her breath fogged the air, and she was glad of the warmth the greatcoat provided.
A number of times she glanced over her shoulder thinking someone was following behind. When she saw no one, she pulled her coat tighter about her and tried singing some simple songs, but they died in her throat.
“Can’t keep a tune anyway,” she muttered. She urged the horse into a canter, but still the unseen eyes seemed to bore into her back.
DISAPPEARING ACT
By the time morning arrived, bleak and gray, Karigan rode hunched in the saddle. She was exhausted, but the sensation of being watched had disappeared with first light and she finally felt safe to stop and rest.
She slid from the horse’s back onto wobbly legs and groaned. Riding class had been one of her best, but nothing had prepared her for endurance riding. Too tired to even eat, she loosened the horse’s girth so that he might have some comfort, wrapped herself in her stained blanket, and fell into a deep sleep.
She guessed it was late morning when she awakened. Gray clouds foretold showers to come. She leaned against a gnarled ash tree and slipped her chilled hands into the pockets of the greatcoat, and found, to her surprise, a piece of paper. Curiously she unfolded the crisp, white sheet. It was a letter written in bold script, addressed to one Lady Estora.
“A letter from our dead messenger?” she asked the horse. He blinked at her with long lashes.
She hesitated to read it. It wasn’t addressed to her, or intended for her, and she feared invading someone’s privacy. But the messenger was dead, and reading it wouldn’t do him any harm. If she could find out who Lady Estora was, she might be able to deliver it to her one day. With this rationale, she felt better about reading it—until she realized it was a love letter. Her cheeks burned as she read:
My Dearest Lady Estora,
How I miss you these last few months; your ready smile and merry eyes. My heart aches with the knowledge that it will yet be a long month to the day before we see one another again. My brother insists it’s not love, but what does he know of it? He has never loved a soul.
Karigan scanned the private, loving sentiments until she reached the final paragraph.
It is dreadfully lonely without you and to keep my spirits light, I think fair thoughts of you planning our summer wedding. Do not worry—dark arrows couldn’t possibly keep me from you.
With Loving Devotion,
F’ryan Coblebay
Karigan clutched the letter to her chest and sighed wistfully, imagining that Lady Estora was the most beautiful woman who lived and how distraught she would be over her beloved F’ryan Coblebay’s death.
F’ryan Coblebay. The messenger for whom she swore she would deliver a message to the king. The dead Green Rider. He was no longer nameless. How ironic his last line about dark arrows.
The horse jerked up his head, his ears pricked forward.
Karigan shook herself out of the reverie. “What’s wrong? What do you hear?”
He pawed at the road. His uneasiness was enough of an answer for Karigan. She thrust the love letter back into her pocket and cleared up her things. Hooves clipclopped distantly down the road.
She stepped into the stirrup to mount the horse, but the saddle slid beneath his belly. The contents of the saddlebags spilled onto the road. She cursed and pushed the saddle to its rightful place behind the horse’s withers, and stuffed the bags with their displaced goods.
A sudden gust took her blanket and it tumbled down the road with a life of its own. Karigan sprang after it, feeling like a clown as the wind took it just out of her grasp. Finally she pounced on it and ran back to the horse with the crumpled mass.
This time, before mounting, she tightened the girth, skinning her knuckles on the metal buckles. She sucked on them, tasting salty blood. Sweat trickled down her sides. The hoofbeats were drawing nearer.
There was no telling exactly how close the riders were, or even if they were the ones who had pursued F’ryan Coblebay. She was determined not to find out.
A fine mist fell and tendrils of fog reached out of the forest as Karigan and the horse galloped along the road. She didn’t know what else to do except follow the road. If they cut through the forest, its dense growth would hamper their speed. If the people following behind were hoping to waylay the message she carried, they might have a tracker among them who could find her just as easily off the road as on. If she remained on the road and an archer with black arrows was among the group, surely she was an open target. No easy answer came to her.
They ran hard. She began to wonder how long the horse could endure this pace without rest. The fog, at least, would provide some cover. And where were they? Where did the road lead besides north? The stream of doubts flowed through Karigan’s mind. She bent low over the saddle, queasy with uncertainty.
When they came upon an enormous fallen spruce blocking the road, Karigan was prepared to pull the tireless horse aside, but his stride did not flag. As he gathered himself beneath her, she grabbed handfuls of his mane and closed her eyes. He launched over the spruce. Branches slapped his legs and belly. Upon landing, his front hooves dug furrows into the soft road surface. A lesser horse would have refused.
Rain pelted down, the sky darkening as if it were evening rather than late morning. The road turned into a quagmire of mud, and the horse slipped and labored through it. When they reached a stream flowing across the road, instead of under it through a collapsed culvert, she pulled the gasping horse to a halt.
“Running through this mess will only break one of your legs,” she said.
She guided him upstream. A tracker wouldn’t be able to find hoofprints in rushing water. If they were lucky, the rain would wash away their prints on the road. The Horse, as she decided to call him for lack of any other name, seemed to approve, or at least he did not resist.
Karigan pushed away branches hanging over the stream, receiving an extra drenching from water accumulated on each limb. They picked their way over slick moss-covered rocks and through deep mud.
A granite ledge, mottled with green lichen, large enough to hide behind, loomed out of the mist. The road couldn’t be seen through the fog, but it was close enough that anyone passing by could be heard. Karigan concealed herself and the horse behind the ledge, and stood miserably in the downpour awaiting some sign.
Though only moments passed, the waiting was interminable. Karigan dismounted and, tired of the rain pounding on her hea
d, drew up her hood. She leaned against the coarse, wet granite, berating herself for having left Selium at all.
When she left Selium, the possibility of encountering genuine danger had never occurred to her. Sure, she had wanted an adventurous life like her father’s. And here it was, nothing at all like she dreamed it would be.
If something happened to her, she would be unable to clear her name in Selium. More distressing still, the people who cared about her would have no clues to her disappearance. She closed her eyes and could see her father scouring the countryside for her, calling her name, grieving. . . . Her throat constricted, and she swallowed hard.
The Horse tensed beside her, his ears pricked forward. Voices could be heard from the road, faint at first, then clearer as they drew closer.
“No sign of any horse here.”
“I don’t like it. The Greenie’s dead and you can’t tell me the horse has the smarts to deliver the message by himself.”
There was a long silence before the first voice replied. “Sarge, in my estimation, a ghost rides that horse. How do we stop a spirit rider?”
Sarge snorted. “You know I forbid that kind of talk. Don’t let the captain hear it either. That’s the problem with you rustic fools, you’re all superstitious.”
“Things was getting uncanny,” the “rustic fool” answered. “These woods, the dead Greenie, and the Gray One. Ice cold, he is. It’s not reg’lar.”
“I don’t care if it’s regular or not. We follow the captain’s orders and right now our orders are to find that horse and destroy the message. Understand?”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
Sarge grunted. “Spirit riders. You rustics have lively imaginations. I’ve never heard such nonsense. Now look for tracks. Captain doesn’t carry that whip as an ornament, you know. You don’t want his leather licking your hide, I assure you.”
So at least four searched for the message. Where were the other two if they weren’t with the sergeant and his companion? Whose soldiers were they? Their accents were Sacoridian to the core, but surely the king’s own militia would not be involved in trying to block a vital message from reaching him. Some of the wealthier provinces armed their own small contingents, as did major landowners. Would any of them have something to lose if the message reached King Zachary?
“Sarge! I got something. Looks like a hoofprint in the mud.”
“Sharp eyes, Thursgad.”
Karigan unconsciously grasped the winged horse brooch pinned to the greatcoat. It warmed at her touch. Trees shifted around her in the gently wafting mist like the shapes of armed soldiers. Branches jabbed at her like swords. Should she make a run for it? Could speed and surprise allow her and The Horse to escape? She remembered all too vividly the black-shafted arrows protruding from F’ryan Coblebay’s back.
Trying to outrun the soldiers would be fatal. She would hide behind the granite ledge and flee only if she had to. If the soldiers believed the messenger horse was acting on his own, all the better. She unsheathed the saber and stood by the horse’s side, ready to mount, just in case.
“I can’t figure out which way the horse went,” Thursgad said.
“Think like a horse. Shouldn’t be too hard—they’ve got small brains like yours. They’d take the easiest route.”
“You mean . . . straight down the road?”
“Whadya think I mean? Is your brain even smaller than a horse’s? Yes, the road. Straight ahead. This hoofprint confirms it came this way.”
“But if a spirit rider guides him—”
“Thursgad, you fool. Didn’t I say none of that rustic nonsense?”
Their voices faded down the road. Karigan heaved an enormous sigh of relief and sheathed her saber. She swung herself up into the wet saddle, grimacing as cold rainwater soaked through her trousers.
Then she sat in indecision. Using the road might mean running into those who searched for her. She could cut through the woods and head east, but the woods would slow her down. She frowned. If she hadn’t skipped so many geography classes, she might be able to think of some other route than the road.
The Horse whinnied sharply and danced beneath her, his hooves sucking in the mud.
“What now?”
The driving rain had changed to a penetrating drizzle. It fell away in layers like veils to reveal the approach of a mounted figure. The rider was much like one of Thursgad’s spirit riders, gauzy and indistinct in the shifting fog, molded of mist, insubstantial as air. His tall white stallion faded in and out of the opaque fog.
The Horse pawed the mud and snorted, every muscle in his body taut, willing Karigan to give him his head to flee as instinct told him he must. Her arms ached with the effort of holding him in. She sat rooted, fascinated by the stranger. Then she remembered F’ryan Coblebay’s final words: Beware the shadow man. . . .
As the rider neared, his form solidified and sharpened. No ghost was he, and his demeanor did not suggest he was a man of the shadows. He sat erect in the saddle. He stared at her with one intense green eye, the other covered by a black patch. Rain beaded on his bald head, but he seemed unconcerned. Beneath a plain charcoal cloak he wore a gold embroidered scarlet tunic. It was the uniform of one of the provincial militia.
The man halted the stallion’s fluid movements with an imperceptible twitch of the reins. Karigan watched him through her tunnellike hood. Water plunked rhythmically from the rim onto her arm.
The leather of the man’s saddle creaked as he leaned forward. His eye searched her. “My men seem to believe you’re some sort of spirit rider,” he said in a gravelly voice roughened by a lifetime of shouting commands. “Who is beneath the hood?”
Karigan was too paralyzed by fear to speak. Why hadn’t she let The Horse run when she had had the chance? She grasped the brooch again.
The man’s green eye flickered. “I see from your hands that you are of the flesh. Though one Greenie is dead, another carries on the mission. If you don’t wish to shed your earthly flesh like Coblebay, I suggest you hand over the message satchel you carry. And you will tell me who gave Coblebay the information.”
Karigan sat frozen, holding the reins tightly, feeling as if someone clenched her in a steely grip. The Horse’s neck was lathered with sweat, his eyes rolling wildly. Only her tight hold prevented him from bolting.
The cold rain soaked through to Karigan’s skin and the clamminess of it made her shiver. The sodden greatcoat weighed her down and made movement an effort.
The man raised a brow and Karigan imagined the great gaping socket beneath the eyepatch widening. “My governor is most displeased by this. Someone has abused his trust, and all his plans will go to ruin if he doesn’t learn the name of the traitor.”
Karigan remained still.
“I see.” He pulled what looked like a live snake from beneath his cloak. It was a coiled whip. “Since you do not volunteer the information, I shall have to persuade you.”
Karigan panted, and loosened her hold on the reins. Whatever had held her back now eased its grip on her. The whip unraveled in the man’s hands, and he cracked it expertly.
“I will have you know that the hands that wield this tool of persuasion are well-practiced. Perhaps you’ve heard of me. I am Immerez. Captain Immerez.”
Karigan had never heard of him, though a true Green Rider might know him by reputation. Her knuckles turned white around the brooch. She swallowed hard. If only she could snap her fingers and turn invisible! The brooch pulsated with sudden heat beneath her hand.
Captain Immerez stiffened, the whip going limp in his hand and his one eye wide open. “Where . . .?” He bent close again, his eye darting about. “Where are you?”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open. Had he gone suddenly and inexplicably blind? Yet he seemed to see clearly. He just couldn’t see her. She looked at . . .no, looked through her arm. It was there like a faint shadow, but definitely transparent. She jabbed her arm with a finger. It was solid enough. . . .
Whatever rendered h
er invisible had affected her vision as well. The deep greens of soaked moss and pines became shades of gray. Immerez’s scarlet tunic darkened to a shadowy maroon. Shapes grew indistinct as if a thick cloud obscured her sight.
Immerez’s eye still searched for her. He unsheathed his sword, undoubtedly attempting to test by touch.
The shackles of indecision and fear fell away. The Horse needed no prompting as she gave him his head.They bounded down the stream, and she let instinct guide him, the grayness in her eyes lacking enough contrast or depth to distinguish rocks from water.
Once they nearly fell headlong, and Karigan was thrown onto The Horse’s neck. He almost fell to his knees, then scrambled for his footing, slid through mud, and picked up the pace again. They careened around boulders and between trees in a breakneck dash that would have mortified her riding instructor. All the while, Captain Immerez’s high-strung stallion splashed behind them.
An eternity passed before they reached the road. Karigan could only guess how the struggle downstream had taxed The Horse, yet he flew into a flat-out gallop when they reached level ground.
Thursgad and Sarge, at least the two men whom she guessed were Thursgad and Sarge, appeared ahead, riding their own horses at a slow jog. Should she turn back? The whip whizzed past her ear. Immerez was just strides behind. But she was invisible. How could he . . . ? She blew past the two men ahead and got an impression of their amazed expressions.
“The horse!” they shouted.
Though she was invisible, The Horse was not. As she rode around a bend, she wished for him to be invisible, too. The Horse vanished from the pursuers’ sight, leaving behind only the echo of pounding hooves.
Karigan rode on, feeling as if she were submerged beneath some gray sea, with water pressing in all around. She felt as if she fought the tide; her lungs ached for air. In the grayness, a gloom clung to her which she felt she would never be free of, as if she would drown in it. She was so exhausted. Exhausted and wrung out with despair in the never ending gray, gray world.