THE SHADOW OF LIGHT
Laurelyn’s accusation reverberated up into the
heights of the tower. Grant bolted, but the Eletians were quicker
and grabbed him. He fought, hitting, biting, kicking, and it took
Telagioth, Solan, Lhean, and Lynx to subdue him.
You must . . . Laurelyn began.
Grant howled, an
inhuman blood curdling sound. Karigan clamped her hands over her
ears. Grant brushed off his captors like they were nothing and
staggered forward. He ripped the sleeve from the arm he’d been
favoring for so long and Karigan stepped back, resisting the urge
to retch.
The flesh of his arm
was stark white, bloodless. Angry, bloated veins flowed into
blackened pustules the size of eggs. They twitched like something
writhed inside them.
“My nythlings,”
Grant crooned, his expression rapturous.
They all stared at
him in horrified fascination.
Grant howled again,
a rending cry of pain. The pustules burst and Karigan did retch.
Black glistening creatures, like armored reptiles, clawed their way
out of Grant’s flesh, fluid sacs splattering to the floor. The
creatures shook out membranous wings.
Behind Grant,
Telagioth drew his sword.
“My nythlings!”
Grant exulted.
The tip of
Telagioth’s sword emerged through Grant’s chest. Grant wailed, then
slid off the blade and to the floor. Telagioth stood there with
blooded sword, a grim expression on his face.
“Kill the
creatures!” Ealdaen sprang to and Karigan made to follow. If only
they could have helped Grant before it came to this.
Wait, Laurelyn commanded her.
Karigan hesitated. A
couple of the creatures dipped their sharp beaks into Grant’s
corpse and fed. The others stretched their wings and launched into
the air, flocking around her companions.
It is time, Laurelyn said. You
must help the Sleepers.
“But—” At that
moment, Karigan felt something change, something in the atmosphere,
a rending of the air; she felt the castle brace
itself.
The light of
Laurelyn flickered and her back arched, arms flung out. She opened
her mouth in a silent scream.
No . . . Laurelyn whispered.
“What is it?” A
creature darted at Karigan and she whacked it away with her
staff.
Laurelyn shone
again, but darkness blurred her edges.
Another power in the grove has awakened the
Sleepers.
Karigan was
confused. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
No, child. Laurelyn’s eyes were wild. The forest has blackened their hearts as they slept. They
have awakened as dark, vile creatures that hate the
light.
“Then why did you
want me to rescue them?” Karigan batted another of the nythlings
with a satisfying crack. It hit one of
the statues and fell to the floor into a crumpled
heap.
Stand on the moon. Laurelyn’s image fluctuated
again. Stand on the moon and I will show you.
Hurry! They will soon be upon us.
Lynx cried out as
one of the nythlings dove and attacked. Lhean leaped to aid
him.
“I can’t abandon my
friends.”
If you hesitate, that which has awakened will swarm out of
Blackveil and into your country, a terrible, savage enemy. Do you
wish this?
“No, but . . .” She
glanced at her friends hacking at the flying creatures. Telagioth
cut one out of the air.
Stand on the moon, child. We haven’t the time to
debate!
Ealdaen ran toward
Karigan, grabbed her arm and dragged her to the very center of the
chamber to stand directly on the crystalline moon.
“Do as she says,
Galadheon,” he hissed, “or else all is lost. We will protect you as
well as we can.”
Sleepers poured from
the corridor into the chamber like a dark wave, thin and ragged and
wild, but unmistakably Eletian. Ealdaen did not pause, but pivoted
and dashed back to face them. Karigan screamed when they started to
tear Solan apart.
Child! cried Laurelyn. Your
moonstone.
Karigan turned her
back on the savagery to face Laurelyn’s dim form. “I want to help
my friends.”
No. You’d be lost alongside them. You still have time to
help others beyond Blackveil, and it may be, that by doing as I
ask, you will change the outcome for your
friends.
Karigan’s heart
leaped with that kernel of hope and she removed the moonstone from
her pocket. Unwavering light flared up around her. The nythlings
flew away from it, the Sleepers did not cross it.
I need you to stand just so, for you will be the gnomon.
The moonstone will cast your shadow on the correct
phase.
Karigan tried to
block the cries and screams of her companions while obeying
Laurelyn’s instructions, stretching one arm straight out in front
of her and adjusting her stance.
Use your ability, daughter of Kariny, it is the key. Use
your ability to cross the threshold, the liminal
line.
Karigan touched her
brooch and the world changed around her, like the turning of a key.
The winged statues rotated, grinding on their pedestals like the
tumblers of a lock, so they all gazed down on her. The walls of the
tower revolved and at its apex, it irised open to the sky.
Blackveil’s vapor tumbled inside.
Karigan’s chest
cramped and she fell to her knees gasping. The light flaring up
around her turned blinding, absorbing Laurelyn so that she was
barely perceptible.
The sky above had
changed, cleared. A silver moon shined down on them.
“What . . . what?”
Karigan didn’t even know what to ask.
Laurelyn smiled.
A piece of time. You have crossed the liminal
to a piece of time graced by a silver full moon, a gift of the
Moonman.
The Moonman, legend.
Karigan’s mind raced. It was too much.
Let us go, Laurelyn said.
“Where?”
To the grove. She extended a hand. Karigan clasped
it and found it surprisingly solid, warm. She rose and Laurelyn led
her from the moondial and through the wall of light.
Karigan recoiled at
her double vision, the vision of the tower as she left it, with her
companions clashing with the Sleepers, layered over by the vision
of the tower still and peaceful, the walls brilliantly aglow, the
obsidian floor free of dust, like black ice.
She felt as though a
boulder pressed against her chest as she abandoned her companions,
as Lynx was thrown against the wall, claw marks striating his face.
Ealdaen’s armor was splashed with blood as he relentlessly slashed
at the horde of Sleepers, a nythling latched to his neck, wings
flapping, tail lashing. Ealdaen tore it off and smashed it to the
floor, along with a chunk of his own flesh. She could not see
Yates.
“Oh, Yates,” she
murmured.
Even as she saw
these things, it was as though a great distance separated them from
her, layered over by the serene, silver washed chamber. Her tears
fell on the dusty floor strewn with footprints and blood. She left
tears on pristine obsidian.
She followed
Laurelyn into the winding corridor.
It grieves me, Laurelyn said, that your companions should suffer, but we cannot allow an
army of tainted Sleepers to enter the world outside Blackveil.
There would be much more suffering in your land and beyond. And as
I said, this unfolding may change the fates of your
friends.
“The Sleepers are
awakened,” Karigan said. “I don’t know what you expect me to
do.”
You shall see.
Laurelyn’s gown
trailed along the floor. More Sleepers, feral, snarling things, ran
by them, through them, emanating darkness that brushed against the
light of Karigan’s moonstone. The layering of visions nauseated
her.
“Then tell me,” she
said, trying to ignore her stomach, “did you give my mother this
moonstone?”
Laurelyn hesitated
before answering. Yes.
“Why?”
It contains the radiance of the moon we now walk beneath.
It helped you find this piece of time.
“B-but I wasn’t even
born when my mother received this!”
Laurelyn kept
striding along. You know by now Eletians can
sometimes see beyond the present. Ours is not always a linear
existence, but seeing is different from being able to move through
the layers of the world. I knew Kariny would conceive one with your
ability. I visited with her in that glade, and I sang to her. I
had not foreseen that your father was
going to be a descendent of one of Mornhavon’s folk, but there was
a symmetry in it I could appreciate.
“But
you—”
I am mostly not here, Laurelyn replied.
I am here less and less as time passes and the
forest assaults my strength. You see only the shadow of
light.
Karigan squinted as
she gazed at Laurelyn’s brightness. She could not say what she did
or did not see. She’d encountered so many strange things since
becoming a Rider that she shook her head and took whatever Laurelyn
was as one more for the list.
“I should just go
back in time to tell myself not to become a Green Rider,” Karigan
said.
But would you listen to yourself? Laurelyn asked
with a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“Probably not. But,
if I can do this, I could stop my mother from going to that fair
where she caught fever. I . . . I could have a sister or brother.
I—”
No. Laurelyn’s voice cracked like thunder, all hint
of amusement gone. It would be disastrous,
such meddling.
“It hasn’t stopped
you.”
I have not changed the course of what is to
come.
“You gave my mother
a moonstone.”
They stared at one
another, but Laurelyn’s brightness hurt Karigan’s eyes and she
glanced away.
They continued on,
emerging into the first tower. Karigan saw it filled with Sleepers,
Sleepers climbing the stairs, crossing bridges on the heights
above. Miraculously they had not touched Graelalea’s body or
moonstone. Its light reached out to Laurelyn and her, then
faded.
The Queen of
Argenthyne touched the feather in Karigan’s hair. Enmorial, she murmured. Remember.
Karigan paused
thinking back to that snowy evening in Arrowdale, a question
niggling at the back of her mind. “Why did you make me forget?” she
asked. “Why did you make me forget our first meeting?”
At first Laurelyn
did not answer. Then: I feared that if you
carried the memory of it, it would have left too great a burden of
dread upon you, perhaps causing you to resist my plea to come
here.
“Then why bother
appearing to me in the first place?”
I left my plea with you as an undercurrent, a summoning
that would bolster the wishes of those who command you. Now that I
see you, I know my fears were unfounded, and I am sorry I hid the
truth from you.
Karigan sighed,
beyond anger, at least for the moment, and she thought it true
Laurelyn had spared her the burden for a time.
Above all else, I wished to see you, Kariny’s daughter. Laurelyn extended her hand and
caressed Karigan with light. The one I awaited
for so long, and on whom all my hopes rested. Kariny, too, was my
heart friend and meeting you in the place where I so often visited
her answered a yearning of my spirit. She paused.
You are very much your mother’s
mirror.
The two worlds
Karigan traveled in, past and present, wavered and stormed in her
vision. She closed her eyes against it, and against the tempest
rising within herself.
I sang to Kariny unto her ending days, and when she was
gone, I was hollow with loneliness. Do know that as brief as your
mother’s time in this world was, Laurelyn said, she loved her life, and she loved you.
“Thank you,” Karigan
whispered, and when she opened her eyes once again, the vision of
the empty, shining tower folded over the dark one and obscured it,
the tower’s doors wide open to the grove awash in the light of the
silver moon.