OWL
The wings that brushed the air, however, were large
and white, nothing at all like a tiny hummingbird. When the winter
owl settled on a limb and tucked its wings to its sides, it looked
like a clump of snow until it swiveled its head to gaze at its
surroundings. Karigan realized she was squinting at the owl. The
white of its plumage was so stark in the gloom of the forest that
it hurt her eyes.
The others came
beside her to look at it as well.
“Where are your
arrows?” Grant demanded of the Eletians. “We should kill
it.”
“No.” Graelalea
replied. “It is not a forest denizen, and of no danger to
us.”
“How do you know?
Those other birds looked harmless enough until ...” His sharp
gesture took in Porter’s cairn and the hummingbird corpses
littering the road.
“I know this owl is
not of this forest, and that is enough.”
“She’s right,” Lynx
murmured. His eyes were closed in concentration. “It’s from the
other side of the wall. Besides, it would not retain its snowy
plumage in this forest.”
“I saw one
yesterday,” Karigan said, “when I went out for a ride. What would
it be doing here? Is it lost?”
“Lost? I do not
think so,” Graelalea replied. “It is not here by accident. Such
owls are revered in Eletia.” She stroked one of the white feathers
braided into her hair. A light shone in her eyes. “We call the
winter owl enmorial,
memory.”
The owl preened,
looking entirely at home in the dark woods. It paid them little
heed, as if they were beneath its notice.
“Why memory?”
Karigan asked.
“Memory is what it
keeps.”
Karigan sighed. It
was a typical Eletian response.
The owl spread its
wings and launched from its limb, circling around their heads and
winding down in a glide until it alighted on Graelalea’s
outstretched wrist, its talons doing her no harm because of her
armor. She and the owl gazed at one another for a long moment,
before it lifted once more into the air. They watched it vanish
above the trees and into the mist, a lone white feather twirling
down back to Earth as the only proof it had been real.
Graelalea caught the
feather before it could touch the ground and smiled. “Memory,” she
said, and she tucked the feather into one of her
braids.
They left behind
Porter’s grave and trudged on along the road, the damp air
thickening into a pervasive drizzle that drip-drip-dripped through the trees of the forest
and onto their hoods. The gloom and the loss of Porter dragged down
Karigan’s spirits. She could not help wondering who would be next.
Who would be the next one for whom the rest built a
cairn.
Only the occasional
lumeni broke the spell of darkness, welcome beacons along their
path. Few lumeni still held globes in their stone hands, but those
that retained even a shard cast at least a little light, and that
light seemed to brighten as the Eletians passed near
them.
As they approached
another of the lumeni, liquid light splashed across the mossy
cobbles before them, and Ard sourly muttered, “Magic.”
Karigan thought the
light beautiful and was glad something like the lumeni could endure
in the forest for so many centuries, and she tried to imagine a
different time, a different forest, when Eletians ruled this land,
traveling this road freely and without fear.
“Magic?” Telagioth
asked. “They collected light of sun and moon and stars. The lumeni
would have been brilliant in the time before the
Cataclysm.”
“He means the Long
War,” Karigan said in response to Ard’s perplexed
expression.
“Oh,” Ard replied.
“Well, magic is magic, and you can see what good has come of it.”
He swept his arm to take in the whole of the forest.
“An outside
influence,” Telagioth said. “This land existed in light and harmony
for many millennia before the coming of Arcosians. If you could see
Eletia, you would understand.”
“Eletia is nothing
compared to what Argenthyne once was.” This from Spiney, who came
forward to join their conversation. He spoke as if he knew, as if
he’d once tread Argenthyne’s ways during the lighter times before
Mornhavon.
“I suppose I’d like
to at least see your Eletia, then,” Ard said.
“You would not find
your way in,” Spiney replied. “No mortal has been permitted beneath
Eletia’s canopy for centuries, though some have tried.” He gazed at
Karigan, a glint in his eye. “The last mortal to travel within
Eletia was a Green Rider. It is still spoken of in the Alluvium.”
With that pronouncement, he dropped back to walk in the rear with
Hana.
Before Karigan could
ask Telagioth who, he also left them
and strode to the front to walk with Graelalea. Much Green Rider
history had been forgotten over the years and so she liked it when
she could find out more about the messengers who had come before
her. Perhaps she could ask Telagioth more later.
They continued on
until the gloom grew into impenetrable dark. Graelalea chose to
camp on the road beside a headless lumeni, its light aiding them as
they pitched tents and built a fire. The tent of the Eletians was a
dark, mottled gray, and it blended so well with the environs that
Karigan thought she’d fall over it if she didn’t know exactly where
it was. It also seemed too small a tent for six
people.
“How they all going
to fit in that?” Ard asked.
“Don’t know how they
do it,” Yates replied, “but when they camped outside Sacor City
last summer, their tents held a lot more than you’d think possible.
That’s what I heard anyway.”
Graelalea told the
company not to stray far, probably an unnecessary warning with the
forbidding forest all around them. Everyone stuck close to the
light of the campfire and lumeni as they ate their rations and
prepared for the night.
Karigan was assigned
first watch with the Eletian Solan. When everyone else turned in,
Solan stood unmoving on the very fringe of light, gazing into the
night in the direction from which they’d come. Karigan sat with her
back to the dwindling campfire, her staff across her lap, and gazed
in the opposite direction, down the road they had yet to
travel.
Now that the company
had come to such stillness, the sounds of the forest grew louder,
the clacking of bare tree limbs and the patter of water spilled
from branches, the wild screeches of creatures near and far. During
her time as a Rider she had spent many a night alone in the
wilderness, but the sounds of those nights had been more subdued,
held less of an edge to them. Those nights had not been so
black.
Being on watch was
almost laughable, because she could not see anything beyond their
light. Would something come upon them before she could warn the
others? Another cloud of hummingbirds, or something even worse? She
squeezed her fingers around the smooth wood of her staff. All of
her old worries and problems now seemed far off. She did not dwell
on Alton and Estral, and not even on King Zachary.
When she was younger
and read The Adventures of Gilan
Wylloland, she’d dreamed of a hero like Gilan coming to her
rescue, sweeping her away on his magnificent war
horse.
Stupid, she thought with a bitter edge.
Little girl dreams.
How many times had
she fought her own way out of trouble? No one was going to rescue
her. Certainly not King Zachary, and not just because she was
currently out of reach. Even when she was within his reach, she
was, so to speak, out of reach.
She had only herself
to rely on and as pretty as the little girl dreams were, it was
time to dispose of them. Perhaps it was the forest that inspired
such bleak thoughts that dampened hope. She did not care. After
Porter’s random and bizarre death, those old dreams lacked the
weight they once held. Maybe if she left the forest alive she’d
care again, but for the time being, survival was the priority. No
hero to sweep her away from danger. Just herself.
She sighed. For all
the darkness of her thoughts, it left her feeling somehow at peace
to acknowledge what was true and what was not.
Footsteps announced
the arrival of Lieutenant Grant wrapped in his cloak, his face
shadowed by his hood.
“You can go to
sleep, Rider. I’ll take the rest of your watch.”
“Sir?”
“It’s all right. I
can’t sleep. The damned dripping—it’s driving me mad. Go along now,
you’re excused.”
“Thank you,
sir.”
Karigan stood and
retreated to the tent she shared with Yates.
Dripping? she wondered as she ducked through the
tent flaps. Yes, there were the ever-present drops on canvas, but
it didn’t bother her. Now Yates’ snoring? That was something
else.
Not to mention the
occasional bloodcurdling scream of some creature meeting its end
deep in the forest.