DAYS OF GRAY
Karigan stirred and opened her eyes to gray, Yates’
head still resting on her shoulder. They’d both fallen asleep with
their backs against the tree. They ought to have organized a watch
between the two of them. Not that Yates could actually watch, but he could at least listen for
trouble.
Fortunately it was
not raining as hard as it had been. She yawned, then detected
movement from the corner of her eye. She looked, but saw nothing.
Then there was movement again in her peripheral vision, this time
in the opposite direction. She twisted around, but whatever it was
was gone. She put her hand to the hilt of her sword and tried to
stand, but the stinging pain ripped through her leg and she gasped.
When she looked down she found it crawling with insects burrowing
and biting into the wounds.
She screamed and
slapped at her leg.
Yates started to
wakefulness beside her. “What? What is it?”
Karigan kept
pummeling her leg, regardless of the howling pain, until she
realized there were no insects. None at all. Illusion? All she’d
managed to do was start the wounds oozing again through their
makeshift bandages.
“Karigan? What’s
happening?” Yates reached for her, clamped his hands around her
arm.
“N-nothing. I
thought . . . I thought I saw something is all.”
“Are you sure it’s
nothing?”
“I’m sure. Bad
dream, or the forest is playing tricks on me.”
Yates did not seem
to know what to say, so they sat in silence for some time, the wet
forest drip-drip-dripping all around
them. Finally he cleared his throat, looking uncomfortable. “Uh,
I’ve got a very full bladder. Think you can help me, er, find a
place?”
Karigan did not want
to stand. “I will tell you where to go.”
“Promise you won’t
make me walk into a tree? Or fall down a hole?”
“No promises,” she
said in a weak attempt at humor. “You’ll have to trust
me.”
“There is no one I
trust more,” Yates said very quietly.
A hollow place
inside Karigan ached at his words. He trusted her, he trusted her
to help him get through this, to get out of this forest. If she
were seeing illusions, how could she trust herself? How could she
take care of him when she was falling apart?
She took a deep
breath. First things first. She directed him away, step by step,
telling him when to lift his feet over a tree root or when to skirt
a boulder. When he was some yards away, she gazed in the other
direction to give him privacy while he took care of his needs.
She’d have to take care of her own soon, but she just did not want
to move her leg. She kept glancing at it to ensure there were no
insects on it, real or imaginary.
When Yates finished,
she guided him back. He remained standing. “I assume it’s
morning.”
“It’s gray out,”
Karigan replied, “so night is gone.”
“You still think we
should stay here?”
“Yes, in case the
others come looking for us.”
He
nodded.
And so began a day
of waiting, the mist wafting around as if it were a living mass
that coiled between the trees and encircled them. Karigan and Yates
ate their half-rations. Yates kept standing and sitting and
standing, and looked like he wanted to wander off, but one jolting
trip over a downed branch convinced him not to wander far. The
monotony of gray throughout the day overwhelmed Karigan with the
desire to nap and she had to shake herself awake more than once.
The pain of her leg was tiring, and she feared whatever ichor the
thorns contained had poisoned her. How bad? There was no way of
telling.
At least nothing had
come to make a meal of them. Yet. And there’d been no sign of the
illusory insects feeding on her leg. She swatted her neck and
corrected herself: real insects were indeed making a meal of them
one nibble at a time. She was astonished that the biters of
Blackveil seemed no worse than those on the other side of the wall.
Perhaps biters were already plague enough that the tainted magic of
the place did not affect them.
“They’re not coming
back for us, are they,” Yates said for perhaps the hundredth time.
He stood facing away from her, as if he could force his eyes to see
again.
“Don’t know,”
Karigan replied. “They certainly won’t find us if we’re stumbling
around the forest.”
“Waiting around
isn’t like you,” he said.
She supposed it
wasn’t, but a lethargy had settled over her, and waiting in this
instance seemed the sensible course. She laughed.
“What’s so
funny?”
“I was just thinking
that I’d made a sensible decision to wait, and then I wondered
since when had I started making sensible decisions?”
As the bleak day
passed, Karigan fell into a restless sleep filled with dark shapes
and a sense of loathing. A rustling awoke her. Yates was sitting
beside her and appeared to be half asleep himself. He hadn’t made
the noise—it was farther off. She glanced around and caught
movement, maybe a shadow, leaping between trees, and almost as soon
as she saw it, it was gone.
“What was that?” she
murmured, feeling muzzy-headed.
“What was what?”
Yates asked.
“Thought I saw
something.”
“Forest playing
tricks on you again?”
“Maybe,” Karigan
replied.
Some moments passed,
then Yates jerked his head up. “Now I think I’m hearing things.”
“What?”
“Horses.”
Karigan was about to
tell him he was hearing things until
she heard them herself, the sound of snorting and several hooves
muted on the forest floor. Then she saw them a way off through the
woods, six or eight dark gray horse forms ambling between the
trees, pulling at sparse vegetation from branches as they went,
moving with the mist, never straying from it, almost wearing it as
a cloak.
“You’re not hearing
things,” Karigan whispered to Yates.
The horses paused,
lifting noses to the air, no doubt scenting Karigan and Yates.
Karigan narrowed her eyes, wondering how prey animals like horses
had survived Blackveil. Then she discerned that perhaps they were
not simple horses. Their eyes gleamed amber-red through the mist,
and their underbellies and the bottoms of their necks were armored
with scales that rippled in the weak light. In fact their movements
differed from ordinary horses; they seemed more flexible, their
necks more sinuous. One shook its head and she realized even the
manes were not ordinary, but bristle-stiff. She shuddered, both
fascinated and appalled.
The band continued
along, fading away with the mist, vanishing utterly. She described
them to Yates.
“Just like
everything else in this place,” he grumbled. “Not normal.
Definitely not normal.”
“They must be
descended from the horses the Arcosians left behind,” Karigan
surmised. “Somehow they adapted to the forest.” Or else Mornhavon
had altered them as he had other creatures, she thought, but did
not add.
The mist horses did
not reappear and the interminable day began to fail.
“Maybe my moonstone
will help the others find us,” Karigan said, and she was sorry she
hadn’t thought of it the previous night.
By the time it was
full dark, it had started to pour again. The light of Karigan’s
moonstone flared out from beneath their simple shelter, turning the
rain into threads of silver fire.
Karigan awoke again
to a sense of movement. They’d made it through another night even
though, once more, both of them had failed to keep watch. Yates
snored softly beside her. It was gray again and Karigan began to
wonder if it was really the vapor of the forest, or if like Yates,
she was losing her eyesight.
And her
mind.
Movement. A black
figure floated among the trees. She thought of the mist horses, but
the form was human in shape. Had they been finally found by the
rest of their companions? “Lynx?” Her voice emerged as a raspy
whisper. Despite the wet of the forest, her throat was dry.
“Lieutenant Grant?”
No one
answered.
Using the bonewood,
Karigan struggled to her feet, ignoring the pain striating her leg.
When finally she stood, the figure ran off in graceful bounds,
fleet of foot and soundless, and then vanished. Karigan tried to
run after it, but her leg betrayed her and she fell with a
cry.
Yates was up
instantly, crawling toward her, his hands feeling the way. When he
reached her, he patted her arm, touched her face.
“What happened? Are
you all right?”
“I’m passable,” she
lied. “Thought I saw something—or someone—again, but it’s gone. I
think I’m going mad.”
“Please don’t,”
Yates said with a feeble smile. “We’ve enough
problems.”
He had, Karigan
thought, no idea.
They returned to
their shelter and the day passed much the same as the previous one,
though Karigan felt less well and gave Yates her half of the
morning ration. She did not feel up to eating, and with a sickly
languor weighing her down was more inclined toward
sleeping.
“You are very
quiet,” Yates said.
“Sorry. Not much to
say.”
“I wish you’d tell a
story or something to help pass the time.”
She thought about
the legends of Laurelyn and Castle Argenthyne because of where they
were, and because her mother always sang and told her stories of
Laurelyn to soothe her when she was little. She did not, however,
even possess the energy to tell a story.
The lethargy settled
in, took on a dreamlike quality. She saw the figure again. It
tumbled and leaped through the trees like an acrobat. She tried to
stir, tried to speak to Yates, but could not seem to do either.
Yates just sat there, gazing unseeing into the forest.
The figure
somersaulted right up to her and came to rest on bent knee. His
face and head were encased in a looking mask just like the tumbler
that had been at the king’s masquerade, but the mirror of this mask
was tarnished and corroded. She could barely see her reflection in
it.
The tumbler then
rose and backed away, and with a flourish pointed to others
stepping out from behind trees, ladies and gentlemen in ragged
finery, faded longcoats and yellowed lace. They wore masks of
grotesque horned demons and ferocious creatures with gaping, toothy
maws, the eyeholes empty sockets. They leered at her.
Discordant music
wafted through the woods and the ladies and gentlemen danced, their
movements jerky, dead. A mockery of the king’s masquerade
ball.
This is not real, she thought. Just the bent,
craggy trees with their crazy limbs seeming to drift in the fog.
Just her own madness making her see things.
She still could not
move or speak, but this time when the tumbler knelt before her, she
gazed at her wan reflection in his mask behind the tarnish—until it
changed. A vision took hold. Blood splashed the looking mask like
crimson rain on a window, then smeared away revealing a face. Not
her own, but one she knew well. The king’s. She swallowed hard. His
face was pallid, lifeless, the stained mask making it look
diseased. The vision pulled back. He lay in bed and people in black
surrounded him like mourners. And it was gone. The looking mask
returned to its dull countenance.
“No!” Karigan cried.
“Tell me!”
The tumbler leaped
away.
“Karigan?” Yates
said anxiously.
The dancers twirled
away into the mist, and with each blink, the tumbler became more
distant. Karigan staggered painfully to her feet with the aid of
the bonewood and attempted to pursue him.
“Karigan?” This time
Yates’ voice was sharper, alarmed.
She kept going, bent
on seeing more in the looking mask. Tears of pain and grief washed
across her cheeks. What was this vision of the king? What had
become of him?
But the tumbler was
gone. She searched the shadows, breathing hard, her body shaking
with exertion and pain.
Several pairs of
green glinting eyes stared back at her. The shadows came to life.
Large, bristling shadows.
Oh, gods, she thought.
“Karigan?” Yates
called, his voice quavering with fear.
She glanced back,
saw more pairs of eyes, dark forms snuffling near him. A pack of
Blackveil’s creatures had scented them out, two helpless people,
one blind and the other injured—easy prey.
But they were
not helpless. Karigan shook the
bonewood to staff length. “Yates,” she called, “draw your sword and
knife!”
With another glance
she saw he already had. She shifted her grip on her staff and stood
ready to defend herself.