A SHIMMERING IN THE WOODS

After breakfast when Karigan told Fergal that he was to continue riding west and that she was not going to return him to Sacor City, his relief was so palpable that she almost felt guilty about her previous plans.

He remained quiet as they rode, and followed her instructions to perfection, not pulling any of the previous day’s mischief. They continued at a steady rhythm, alternating long walks with long trots. It was a fine autumn day with golden leaves drifting down around them and chickadees fluttering in the branches along the road. Brassy blue jays could be heard bellowing above the clip-clop of hooves.

They encountered a few travelers heading east, the wheels of carts following well-established ruts in the road. During the reign of Queen Isen, major portions of the Kingway had been paved with cobbles, but since the work was left to local authorities, there were long stretches of road between towns and villages that remained dirt tracks through the woods.

By midday, Karigan called a halt so they could rest and have a bite to eat. She found a grassy carriage turn-around next to a stream and they dismounted. Fergal pleased her by immediately turning his attention to Sunny, loosening her girth, and replacing her bridle with a halter so she could graze and drink.

Karigan couldn’t say whether he cared for her out of growing affection or duty. She hoped he at least began to view the mare as something more than “meat,” but it was probably too soon to expect too much.

She tended Condor, then led him to the stream for a drink. When the horses were all settled, the Riders removed from their saddlebags strips of dried meat and fresh-baked bread Innkeeper Miles had supplied them with, and the apples given to them by the farmwife the previous day.

They sat in silence on boulders, the only immediate sounds that of the gurgling stream and the horses pulling at grass and swishing their tails. Karigan found she could no longer abide the silence, and after sloshing some water down her throat, she asked, “You feeling the long ride? Are you sore?”

“It’s not bad,” he mumbled.

“That’s good.” Karigan racked her brain for another way to initiate conversation. “Where are you from?”

“Arey Province.”

“That’s a long way.”

Fergal nodded.

Karigan waited for him to tell her of his travels, how he managed the journey from the northeast corner of Sacoridia and across the Wingsong Mountains, but he volunteered nothing.

She sighed and tore at her bread. It was clear he didn’t feel like talking.

They rode in silence until the evening hours set in. This time they were not near a village or an inn, nor were there any Rider waystations nearby. Populations ebbed and flowed over the eons, and Karigan guessed that during the era of waystation construction, there had been villages or farmsteads in the area that could house a Rider, but they had disappeared with time. It left stretches of road without shelter for wayfarers between villages.

Karigan searched the edge of the road for a trail leading to a campsite Ty once showed her. As time went on and she couldn’t find the signs, she feared she had missed it completely. Then they came upon a massive boulder with tongues of tripe lichen growing on it that looked like strips of peeling brown paint.

In the boulder’s shadow was a cairn of rocks marking the trail. She reined Condor onto it, ducking beneath low-hanging branches. The world muted around them as the woods closed in, the horses’ hoof falls muffled by a deep carpet of pine needles and moss. The air thickened with moldering leaf litter and the darkness deepened.

The horses picked their way over tree roots that arced and snaked across the trail, and clipped hooves on the occasional rock. The trail went on at length before opening up at the shore of a lake. The air freshened like a wave falling over them.

Karigan raised her hand so Fergal wouldn’t speak, and she pointed at a bull moose wading through the shallows. Water rippled away from his stiltlike legs, lighter lines against water that reflected the darkening sky.

The moose dipped his nose into the water after cattail tubers. The water poured off his muzzle when he raised his head. Chewing on vegetation, he shambled toward shore, a giant bearing a majestic crown, and vanished into the woods, never hurrying; regal despite his ungainly size.

Karigan glanced at Fergal, realizing that moose must be even more common in Arey and he undoubtedly saw them as…meat. His features fell in shadow and she could not read them.

“Probably looking for a mate,” she said quietly.

“Probably.”

They tended their horses and while Karigan collected wood and laid it in a charred stone ring a previous camper had built, Fergal squatted at the edge of the lake staring into it, or so she thought. Suddenly he jerked and pulled and there was much splashing. He whooped in delight. To Karigan’s astonishment, he grabbed a large, silvery fish by the gills, pulled it out of the water, and held it up for her to see.

“We will have trout tonight!” he proudly declared.

Karigan was impressed. He showed her his fishing kit of string and odd hooks wrapped with colorful threads, which he claimed looked like the bugs the trout liked to eat. Having grown up on the coast, Karigan’s experience with the tools of fishing ranged from heavy deep-sea hooks, to nets, weirs, traps, and harpoons. Not that she engaged in fishing herself, but she had spent enough time on the wharves of Corsa Harbor to have known the men and women who fished for a living. If her father had not fled Black Island when he was a boy to seek his fortune elsewhere, she supposed she would have grown up to be a fishwife. The thought was not an appealing one.

After Fergal caught a second monster of a fish, he chopped off their heads and gutted them with expert, deft strokes, then extracted the bones. When he finished, he rummaged through his saddlebags and produced little sacks of spices which he sprinkled liberally onto the fish. He left them in their skins, and wrapped them in leaves to cook among the coals of the fire Karigan had started.

“Learned to fish when I got sick of horse meat,” Fergal said, the flames playing in his eyes as he poked the coals with a stick. “My da thought it was fine when he didn’t have to feed me.”

Karigan waited to hear more about Fergal’s da, the knacker, but he said no more and seemed content to watch the fire. She wasn’t going to press him, considering his actions of the previous night.

The trout, when it finished cooking, tasted better than anything Karigan had ever eaten. Or maybe it was just the alchemy of the cold air and the stars shining above that made it taste so good. Whatever it was, she hoped Fergal had opportunities to catch more trout along their journey.

“It was a long way from Arey,” Fergal said unexpectedly, as though there had been no intervening time between midday, when she tried to draw him out, and now. Maybe it was the companionability of the meal and campfire that inspired him to speak, or the time had simply come. Karigan dared not interrupt for fear he’d withdraw again.

“I thought I was running away from my da,” Fergal continued. “I wanted to often enough, but it turns out I wasn’t really running away, but running to Sacor City because of the call. It came on me fast, so I didn’t take too much with me. Just the clothes I was wearing and my fishing gear. One minute I’m washing down the floor in the shop, the next I’m running out the door all sudden like. Didn’t know where I was going at the time, but I always seemed to want to head west. Slept in barns, under trees, in abandoned cots. Sometimes there was just the stars, like tonight.” He laughed. “Good thing it was summer.”

He went on to describe how he had worked his way west in exchange for food, and had even hitched up with a merchant’s caravan coming over the mountains. Sometimes he’d fished if there was a stream or lake along the route, or built traps with his own hands to snare small animals. Karigan found herself impressed with how he’d made his way, surviving by virtue of his own ingenuity.

“I was hungry and cold some of the time,” he said. “It wasn’t bad though. Folks were good to me—far better than my own da, but I couldn’t stay anywhere long. I had to keep going till I reached Sacor City. And now to be a Rider—that’s like heaven!”

Karigan could see that being a Rider was a definite improvement over the knacker’s shop. He didn’t have to go into detail about his life with his father for her to make guesses about how hellish it must have been. Despite his harsh life, he’d shown himself as resourceful and clever during his journey to Sacor City, which only made sense since Green Riders shared such traits.

“Thank you for telling me about your journey,” she told him, and she meant it.

He glanced sharply at her as if expecting to be mocked or lectured, but then nodded and relaxed when she remained silent.

A pair of raccoons hissed at one another over the fish guts, which Fergal had dumped by the shore. Better raccoons than bears, Karigan thought, though they were making enough of a ruckus to be mistaken for bears. Eventually they sorted out their dispute and toddled off with the offal, one casting the Riders a bandit-faced glance, the firelight catching in its eyes before it vanished into the night.

The raccoon reminded Karigan of the masked thief she had fought in the Sacor City War Museum. She had not thought much of him since their encounter—she hadn’t had time!—but now her thoughts strayed to him, and she wondered what he wanted with a bit of ancient parchment. It seemed beneath him somehow. She’d expect him to be more interested in jewels and gold. Maybe, as Mara suggested, the parchment gave directions to a hidden treasure.

She shrugged. Sacor City was miles away, and she would never know what value the thief placed on his plunder. That would be for the constabulary to figure out, but somehow she didn’t think they’d ever catch him.

With the raccoons gone and Fergal staring into the fire, the night grew quiet, except for the hiss of flames and gentle lap of waves upon the shore. If loons called this lake home, they were long gone, well on their way out to sea for the winter. It made the lake seem desolate, knowing she would not hear their haunting calls this night.

“I’ll take first watch,” Fergal offered.

“You’re welcome to watch if you like,” Karigan said, “but unless it’s a dangerous situation, there’s really no need. Remember, when you’re finished with training, you’ll be on the road by yourself, and you won’t be able to watch all the time. You’ll need to sleep.”

“Oh.”

Karigan smiled to herself as she unrolled her bedding, thinking how nice it was to be on an ordinary message errand, without outlaws pursuing her or supernatural forces influencing her. There was always the chance of encountering a bandit or the stray groundmite, but this far from the border she wasn’t too worried.

“I just thought…” Fergal began.

“Yes?”

“Well, I just thought it would be more…more exciting than this.”

Karigan wondered what stories he had heard. “Be happy when it is this ordinary and peaceful. Running for your life is not fun.” She sat on her bedding and pulled off her boots.

“Is it true…?”

“Is what true?”

“All they say about you.”

“It depends. What are they saying?”

“About how you defeated that Eletian and how you pushed Mornhavon into the future.”

Karigan sighed. “I was involved in those things. Look, Fergal, as messengers, our main job is to deliver the king’s word, and that can be dangerous enough on its own. Messengers face blizzards and have accidents and encounter cutthroats. Some have their lives cut short by angry message recipients. Others have died in battle.” When Fergal appeared skeptical, she added, “Mara lost fingers when some cutthroats tried to rob her and Tegan nearly got caught in a deadly snowstorm. Just this summer, the ship Connly was sailing on went aground on a deserted island. Don’t wish anything extra to come down on you—an ordinary errand can be hazardous enough, and remember, we’ve only just begun this journey.”

Karigan drifted off to sleep that night not sure he was convinced. It was the difference, she reminded herself, between a seasoned Rider and a green Greenie.

Maybe it was a cold breeze seeping beneath Karigan’s blanket, or maybe it was a quiet whicker from Condor that warned her, but her hand went immediately to the hilt of her saber, which she always kept beside her when she slept. Her eyes fluttered open to a dazzling array of stars piercing the heavens above, the constellations framed by the spires of jagged spruce and pine.

All was still, their campfire burned down to dull, orange embers. Fergal was a dark lump of bundled blankets on the ground across the fire ring. The horses were peaceful enough, though Condor gazed at her with shining eyes.

What woke me up?

Carefully she raised herself to her knees, her blanket falling away from her shoulders. A shiver spasmed through her body. She looked around, searching the darkest shadows of night, her senses honed to a knife’s edge as she tried to discern what had awakened her.

Then a flicker of light among the trees on the far shore caught the edge of her vision. It was gone as quickly as it came. Had she really seen it? Then there was another shimmer, this time closer, and as quick as the blink of an eye.

It was much too late in the season for fireflies.

She waited, tense, forcing herself to breathe. It wasn’t the light that came upon her again, but voices in song, achingly beautiful voices singing in a language she did not understand, though enchanting enough that she could guess who sang it: Eletians. Eletians were passing through the woods.

She drew her saber.

Light—many lights—came to life among the trees, flaring between tree trunks across the cove from where Karigan and Fergal camped, glancing on the still surface of the lake. Dewdrops clinging to the tips of pine needles glistened. Figures, some on horseback, some afoot, shone in the silvery glow of moonstones, moonstones held like lanterns on the ends of poles and shrouded by colorful shades. Some Eletians held moonstones on their palms before them, like acolytes bearing candles down the aisle of a chapel of the moon.

The moonstone lights were reflected in the black surface of the lake like stars. Karigan, unable to move from her knees, watched in wonder, a supplicant before these godly beings.

The Eletians’ passage was silent but for their song. If they knew of Karigan’s presence, none changed course to approach her.

She thought their procession solemn, but discerned laughter amid their singing. Then, with a surge that went through her heart and nearly made her lose hold of her saber, she recognized her name in the song. As she listened more closely, she gleaned some understanding of the words, an understanding in her heart, though the language was foreign.

Karigan drew her eyebrows together. The singing grew more distant and here and there lights extinguished.

Karigan awoke with a start to the golden light of dawn breaking through the mist that had settled over the lake during the night. Eletians. She had dreamed of Eletians passing through the woods. No, it had not been a dream. Or maybe…? She was unsure. Until her eyes focused on the arrow protruding from her chest, an arrow with a white shaft and fletching. She screamed at the sight of crimson blooming across her chest.

Fergal jumped up from a dead sleep, looking wildly around. “What is it? What is it?”

Karigan opened her mouth to speak, but the arrow turned to smoke and drifted away. The blood vanished, too. She pawed at her chest finding no evidence of arrow or wound.

“What is it?” Fergal repeated, blinking blearily.

“I–I…dreams,” she said, more than a little rattled. Had she merely imagined the arrow, or had one of the Eletians left her a message? Gods, if it had all been real, the Eletians, the faction that wanted her dead, already knew she yet lived.

“Dreams.” Fergal yawned. “I dreamed of people laughing at me, and singing ‘knacker’s boy, knacker’s boy…’” He shook his head. “I can’t remember it too well.”

When he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, Karigan noticed it glittered like gold dust as it drifted to the ground. She shuddered.