NO ORDINARY MESSENGER

Karigan napped through the day, rising only to relieve herself or eat some food Willis brought her. Each time she crawled out of the warmth of her cot, the chill air assailed her like icicle daggers.

She heard the activity outside, voices, horses, people tramping by. She was just as glad she didn’t have to help prepare for tomorrow’s journey. She wondered what horse she’d be riding, and with pangs of loneliness, she missed Condor more than ever, but knew he was doing his duty to bear Estora swiftly and safely home. She wondered where they were now, if Estora and Fergal had found safe haven and were warm with their feet before a fire.

She looked forward to returning to Sacor City despite all the marriage preparations and the awkwardness and pain the wedding would entail. Somehow it did not seem as important to her now. She would carry on as well as she could. She had to. They were faced now with a new problem: Second Empire was learning the secrets of the D’Yer Wall from the book.

Karigan turned over on her side, and after a time her mind quieted and she fell into a troubled slumber.

She dreamed the land quaked with such force the D’Yer Wall shook and wobbled, spreading cracks down its entire length until it collapsed, taking each tower down with it, one after the other. An immense dust cloud rose from the ruins, enveloping the lands in shadow.

Karigan stood there before the desolation, all alone, without even her saber at her side. The dust settled to a mere haze and there on the rubble and beyond massed the denizens of Blackveil Forest, groundmites and creatures winged and on foot that defied description; and behind them there was something darker, more evil, and battle ready but she could not make out this new foe clearly.

All she had to defend herself and her country with were stones, broken shards of the wall. She hurled them at the enemy, but they bounced ineffectually off scales, off armor, off shields.

She gasped to wakefulness at first hot and sweating, then turning cold. She shivered and huddled beneath the blankets, unable to warm up. What was wrong with her? She touched the bandage over her head wound and winced when she pressed too hard, but she could feel the heat radiating through it.

“Not good,” she murmured. Leave it to Immerez to give her a wound that festered.

Eventually her body found equilibrium, neither too hot nor too cold. She fell again into an uneasy sleep. The dreams were hazy and nonsensical until he walked into her mind, all starlight and night sky, tail and mane flowing like black silk. He stood on the midnight plains, stark against moon-bright snow. He gazed at her, and knelt to the ground.

Hoofbeats pumped through Karigan’s body. Or were they wingbeats? Wingbeats of Westrion trying to drive her from bed. A breeze flowed over her sweat-dampened face and she sat up, pain stabbing her head. All was darkness and silence, and she thought she might be the only soul left alive on Earth.

She closed her eyes and rubbed them, only to be visited by the vision of the black stallion awaiting her. Always waiting.

“Gah.”

She flipped the blankets aside and was at once assailed by chills. She stumbled about the tent to find the frozen chamber pot, teeth chattering the whole time, and used it. Afterward, a fumbling search turned up her clothes which, with painstaking effort, she put on.

When she was ready, she flung the tent flaps open and stepped outside. She squinted against moonlight reflecting on the snow. In the distance the watch fires and torches were drowned in it.

Maybe it was a fever that drove her, or maybe a greater impulse lured her—it didn’t matter. She knew. She knew he awaited her. She intended to have some words with him.

She touched her brooch—it was ice cold—and faded away. There he was, black against shades of gray, lying in the snow and waiting for her.

The stallion gazed at her with obsidian eyes. Nostrils flared to take in her scent. Somehow Karigan sensed the wings beating in the air, could feel the breezes they created curling against the back of her neck.

The stallion would carry her to Sacor City. She knew this. He would bear her more swiftly than an eagle and she would arrive in time—in time to do whatever needed doing.

She shuddered at what it could mean to ride the death god’s steed, the harbinger of strife and battle. What would happen to her? What might she become? Something less than human? She wanted nothing to do with gods, wanted them to watch after their own affairs and leave her out of them.

“Why me?” she demanded. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

The only reply she received was the rhythmic beat of wings—or maybe it was her own blood hammering in her ears. Many people, she thought, would be honored to serve the gods in such a way and would not protest or hesitate. Why couldn’t the gods choose one of them? Hadn’t she done enough already? All she had wanted was an ordinary message errand for once, and this is what she got.

She put her hand to her forehead and was startled by the heat. She was shivering and roasting at the same time.

And still the stallion waited.

She wondered if her earlier dreams were given to her to show her what was at stake if she did not act. Surely the collapse of the wall would be catastrophic. And surely the death god’s steed would not come to her if it wasn’t important.

“Damnation,” she muttered. And to the stallion she said, “I will not ride. If you want me to go, you’ll have to find another way.”

The stallion rose, and with a glance at her that plainly said follow, he headed off into the night.

“Damnation.” Karigan half hoped there was no other way, that the stallion would just leave her alone and seek out someone else to solve the world’s problems, but it was not to be. She was about to follow when she detected someone else watching. Through the haze of her ability she saw Lord Amberhill’s silhouette against her tent, his blood ruby intense in her colorless world. She said to him, with no small satisfaction, “You imagined all this.” And she hurried off to catch up with the stallion, wherever he may lead.

Amberhill could not believe his eyes at the sight of the magnificent stallion that put his Goss to shame. No, there wasn’t even any comparison…

And she but a shadow against the snow, talking to the stallion. He saw her leave her tent, unsteady on her feet and wan in the moonlight, then she faded to shadow and somehow the stallion appeared in his vision. The stallion was really too great for his eyes to take in. He was overwhelmed.

What was he to make of it? He was so taken with the stallion he almost forgot to listen.

“I will not ride,” the G’ladheon woman said. “If you want me to go, you’ll have to find another way.”

As if he understood the words, the stallion rose and walked off into the night.

“Damnation,” the Green Rider said.

It was all very perplexing. Unearthly. Amberhill thought back to the day he had fought the lovely woman in the museum over a scrap of parchment. He’d thought her brave but a fool. Though he’d detected her skill with a sword, hampered by her dress as she had been, he’d little understood what he’d really been facing. Not just a Green Rider, but someone who obviously dealt with powers, otherworldly powers. No ordinary messenger was she.

To his astonishment, the shadow turned to him and the moonlight illuminated the curve of her cheek and the flash of a bright eye. She said, “You imagined all this.”

With that the shadow hurried away until it was lost to the night, leaving behind footprints in the snow, but even these proved elusive, ending in midstride. He found no hoofprints. How maddening!

What was this Rider? Well, rude came to mind, but was she real?

Maybe her parting words were right. Maybe he in fact imagined it all. Hastily he strode back to her tent and peered in. The moonlight fell upon an empty cot, the blankets rumpled.

“Something wrong, my lord?”

Amberhill almost jumped out of his boots. The Raven Mask was truly slipping if he couldn’t detect the approach of another, but then these Weapons were uncanny. It was Donal who stood beside him.

“Please tell me,” Amberhill said, “it’s not my imagination that your Rider G’ladheon has left us. Disappeared.”