PATHS
Karigan did not return to the Rider wing to work on
accounts. How could she after what the captain had told her? She
headed instead to the stables, barely acknowledging the others now
done with their riding lesson and untacking their horses. She
saddled up Condor and rode off castle grounds in a daze, unaware of
the winter owl gazing at her from the limb of a towering pine, and
not knowing that her king observed her from the castle
roof.
Condor was full of
himself, feeling the sun on his back and the change in the weather.
He pranced and puffed and tossed his head. Karigan focused on
holding him in as she traveled the city streets taking shortcuts,
carefully wending her way through crowds, until finally they passed
through the last set of gates.
She let him have his
head and he sprang into a gallop down the road, kicking up slush
and mud. She paid little attention to direction, just letting
Condor run. When finally she pulled him up to rest, they had come
well east of the city to a grouping of squat, rounded hills. On
maps they were called the Scangly Mounds, but Mara simply called
them the Pimples.
Some thought the
mounds contained lost treasure and the tombs of forgotten kings,
but all anyone found when they dug into them was dirt and rocks.
They’d been made by nature, not the hands of people. All that
Karigan knew was that they were good for riding and she brought
Condor here now and then for exercise. The hills were barren,
except for clumps of snow and coarse grass, and Karigan urged
Condor up the nearest and tallest, which provided a good view of
the odd terrain, but what drew her gaze lay to the west. Rising
above the forest, wrapped in its granite walls, was Sacor City, the
castle sitting at its pinnacle, its pale gray walls almost white in
the sunshine.
It occurred to her
she could just keep riding, run away from all obligations. The idea
of traveling when and where she willed held a seductive quality,
but if she were ever caught, the punishment for desertion would be
severe. Besides, she doubted the call would allow her to abandon
her duty. And things had changed. She
had changed. There was a time when running away was her answer to
everything—a way of evading responsibility or confronting difficult
problems—but she had come too far, had grown up enough to realize
running away was no answer. Not anymore. Not even when it meant
having to enter Blackveil Forest.
She shuddered. Even
on this day of sunshine, with the promise of spring not far off, a
shadow touched her. She recalled little of the forest itself, but
it remained a threatening presence on the edge of her awareness.
And she remembered Mornhavon, the incorporeal darkness that had
invaded her mind and body.
“Why me?” She had
meant to shout, but it emerged as a whisper.
Maybe because she
knew it had to be her. Not because the captain told her she must go
to Blackveil, but because all the paths she’d been traveling were
leading her there. Somewhere inside she’d known it was
inevitable.
The words
destiny and fate felt too weighty, and she did not like the
idea of some external power directing her life. No, it was as much
an internal force, like she had to see something through. Find
completion. Whatever completion meant for her.
She removed her
mother’s moonstone from her pocket, and even in the sunshine it
cast a sharp, silver glow. Her mother had passed it on to her, and
this she would take into Blackveil. It would help force back the
dark. As she gazed into the light, it wavered like a flame.
You must come, she thought she heard,
as some distant whisper, and she shuddered. Then she decided it was
only the breath of the wind blowing among the Scangly Mounds that
was making her hear things.
She tore her gaze
from the moonstone and looked out upon the landscape around her
thinking there was a rightness to her mission, but it did not mean
she wanted to go or that it didn’t
frighten her. She’d have her mother’s moonstone at least, and she
was not the only one doomed to go into Blackveil, yet that created
another complication: Eletians.
The prince of the
Eletians, Jametari, had once explained that the tainted wild magic
that had burrowed into her veins created a duality within her, a
capacity for much good or great evil. The prince warned her that,
as a result of this conflict, there were those among the Eletians
who wished her ill because she posed a possible threat to the D’Yer
Wall. Some desired to just eliminate the threat. One had
tried.
The wild magic was
gone from her, but she feared some Eletians still wanted her dead.
In the fall, while she and Fergal had traveled west on errands,
there’d been that illusionary arrow in her chest she’d received
like a message after Eletians had passed their campsite in the
night.
How would those
Eletians who thought her a threat react to her being a member of
this expedition?
She supposed it was
just one more danger among the many she’d be facing.
Condor shifted
beneath her, and she nudged him to a walk. When they reached the
base of the hill, she clucked him into a canter. She rode among the
Scangly Mounds, adhering to no set path, moved only by the joy of
her horse running.