MOONFIRE
Karigan did not hesitate. Her training had prepared
her to act first and think later until it was instinctual. Before
the tainted one reached her, she cracked him in the head with the
staff’s steel handle. It slowed him down, but did not stop him, and
she followed up with a low sweep to his knees. He fought for
balance, his arms wheeling in the air. A third blow knocked him off
the bridge.
Karigan clenched her
jaw at his scream as it trailed behind him. Through the bridge she
saw him plummet, become smaller and smaller and smaller until he
wasn’t even a speck.
The second one did
not charge her, perhaps learning from the other’s mistake. Karigan
adjusted her grip on her staff. Licked her lips. Waited. The
tainted one stared at her with a malicious half-smile, his eyes
like pitch.
Karigan felt time
rushing away as she faced the dark Eletian. Laurelyn told her she
could hold the bridge for only so long.
In a blink, the dark
Eletian dove for her legs. Karigan got in only a glancing blow to
his hip before he knocked her off her feet. The staff flew from her
grasp and rolled down the bridge, teetering on the edge. She hit
the bridge so hard that air rushed out of her lungs. The dark
Eletian grabbed her legs; she thrashed and kicked, but his grip was
like steel, his claws digging into her wounded leg, ripping open
the old injuries and creating new ones.
She desperately
glanced toward her staff, but it was out of reach. The Sleepers
stood on the island as a mute audience to her struggle. She tugged
on the hilt of her long knife, drew it, and gashed the creature’s
face. He grabbed her wrist and squeezed. Before she felt it, she
heard bones snap. She screamed. Her knife clattered to the bridge
and over the edge, twirling tip over hilt into the
chasm.
Karigan had been
trained to handle blades with either hand, but the scabbard of her
saber was entangled in her legs and her position made it impossible
to draw. She’d only one other weapon left to her. It was awkward
getting to it. Even as the tainted one wrestled with her, she
flipped her hips, thrust her good hand into her trouser pocket, and
drew out her mother’s moonstone. Brilliant light flared out and she
blinked. The dark Eletian averted his gaze and loosened his grip.
She kicked. as hard as she could.
The dark one fell
back, and the moonstone’s light grew in intensity and ferocity,
driving him still farther back. Karigan kept kicking, landing one
booted foot squarely on his jaw. This time it was not her bones she heard breaking. Blood rushed from his
mouth. Another blow sent him flailing on the edge. He did not
regain his balance and he fell.
She’d barely begun
to register what happened when the dark Eletian grabbed her bad leg
as he fell. She slid half off the bridge, grasping the opposite
edge with her good hand. The dark Eletian dangled from her leg, his
weight dragging her down. Her fingers faltered, started to slide.
She kicked at the Eletian and he slipped down her leg, claws
scrabbling for a hold in her flesh, but failing. And suddenly, his
weight was gone.
With a grunt Karigan
swung her legs back onto the deck of the bridge, breathing hard,
all her hurts colliding at once. Tears pooled on the translucent
bridge beneath her.
A thread of
Laurelyn’s voice came to her. Karigan, you
must get off the bridge now!
Karigan looked up
and understood Laurelyn’s urgency. Three more dark Eletians emerged
onto the arch.
Karigan crawled,
taking up the moonstone that had miraculously not rolled off into
the depths. She crawled, leaving smears of blood on moonbeams. The
moonstone bought her time—its fierce glow flashed into the faces of
the dark ones, making them hesitate. The bridge flared and seemed
to be ablaze with moonfire.
She scrabbled along
the bridge as fast as her battered body allowed, grabbing her staff
as she went. She rolled the rest of the way, with the dark Eletians
sprinting after her. When she reached the island, the bridge
vanished. The three dark Eletians hung in the air for a moment
before plunging into the chasm.
There are no others, came Laurelyn’s distant voice,
and the bridge flickered back into existence.
Karigan rolled onto
her back panting, gazing into the milky sky. She wondered if she
had anything left in her to get to the next bridge, much less cross
it and return. She could stay in
Eletia, perhaps get her wounds tended. Would it be so great a
betrayal if she did not return to her companions in Blackveil?
Surely they could find their way back to the wall as easily without
her, if any of them survived ...
No, she couldn’t
abandon them, especially Yates. Yates, her friend who had gotten
into more than he reckoned for when he had volunteered to join the
company. Thinking of him made her climb up onto her feet. No matter
how her leg hurt, wrenched and torn, she knew she had to return to
Blackveil to ensure Yates made it home.
She slipped the
moonstone into her pocket and leaned heavily on her staff, blessing
the Weapons for the foresight of their gift. With her broken wrist
held close to her, she hobbled across the island, a shepherd to the
Sleepers who followed her like silent specters.
The second bridge
was, to Karigan’s relief, shorter, spanning a narrower section of
the chasm. The stones were cut in a rustic style, their earthy feel
was a source of comfort to her. At the arch she stepped through a
golden haze and into the sunshine of a forest glade that
immediately warmed and soothed her after all the time she’d spent
in the dark and wet of Blackveil. She sighed, closed her eyes, and
let the sunshine wash over her. Laurelyn said her piece of time
might not correspond to Eletia’s. She had left Argenthyne at night,
and here it appeared to be full afternoon. Karigan was
glad.
When she opened her
eyes again, she took in the burbling stream, the towering grove of
trees that surrounded the glade, star flowers and pink lady
slippers wavering against a backdrop of emerald, the warbling of
songbirds. She felt alive again.
A man knelt by the
stream trailing his hand in the water. Flaxen hair hung around his
face. He turned to gaze at her. He reminded her, with a start, of
Graelalea.
“Hui a ven?” he asked.
“I’m a Green Rider,”
Karigan replied, hoping that’s what he wanted to know.
“Are you an
apparition then?” he asked in strongly accented common tongue, his
voice rich and resonant.
Karigan glanced down
at herself. Because she was using her ability to cross thresholds,
she was also faded out, but the sunshine of the glade prevented her
from completely disappearing, leaving her appearance ghostlike. The
fading usually dulled her vision, but everything here was
vibrant.
“No,” she told him.
“I am not an apparition.”
The Eletian stood,
his hand dripping. He did not shake the water off, perhaps because
it would have been painful to do so. His hand was blackened with
the fingertips desiccated to the bone so that they resembled claws.
She had never seen such a disfigurement on any Eletian—not that
she’d met that many. The man himself was tall and radiated
brightness.
“Did your captain
send you? Speak quickly. There are arrows trained on you,
apparition or no.”
Karigan glanced
around the grove, but saw no one else. That did not mean the
Eletian archers were not there.
“Laurelyn sent me,”
Karigan replied.
“Laurelyn! But she
was overcome. I do not believe you.”
The Sleepers were
jammed behind her and obscured by the mist of the arch, so she
walked off the bridge, the Sleepers materializing into the sunshine
and following her into the glade.
“She wishes a safe
haven for these people,” Karigan said. “If they stay in
Blackveil—Argenthyne—they will be changed, and not for the better.
Laurelyn protected them for as long as she could. Until I came to
bring them to Eletia.”
As the man took them
in, his expression transformed from distrust to joy. “For how long
did she protect them?”
“About a thousand
years, I’d guess.” His question made Karigan wonder when she was herself.
“It sounds a strange
story,” he replied. He took a few steps closer to Karigan, glancing
at the Sleepers. They began to disperse on their own, instinctively
seeking out the grand trees of the grove. “You’ve the fading of Lil
Ambriodhe.”
“I wear her brooch,”
Karigan replied. Had this Eletian once known the First
Rider?
He glanced at the
Sleepers vanishing into grove trees to resume their rest. Karigan
felt her own strong impulse drawing her back to the bridge. If she
released her ability, it would not pull on her. She could
stay.
“I am grateful you
have brought these Sleepers to us through unknown dangers,” the
Eletian said. “Will you not sit with me and tell me your story?
About Argenthyne and Laurelyn? We’ve been so grieved.”
“I—” The brooch
pulled harder on her. She stumbled backward.
“We could tend your
wounds.”
Karigan thought of
Yates and the others back in Blackveil and she was overcome with a
sense of foreboding. “N-no, I can’t stay.”
He drew nearer
still. There was great age and great weariness in his eyes. They
were the blue of snow shadows and reflected ages past. Karigan
almost lost herself in them.
His gaze grew
unfocussed, far away. “Before you depart, I must warn you to be
cautious of the mirror man.” His voice carried the weight of
prophecy. “He is a trickster who will try to ensnare you for his
own amusement. Beware the choices that lie ahead, and choose
wisely. You have traveled great distances for one so young. Your
wits and skills have served you well so far. They will aid you in
the trials ahead.”
Karigan backed
toward the bridge, stepped on it, and immediately the glade in
Eletia began to grow more distant. The pull to return to Blackveil
increased, and even the immense attraction of staying in the
sunshine of Eletia and the presence of the remarkable man could not
anchor her.
The man, she
realized, who could only be Graelalea’s father, King Santanara, the
one who had defeated Mornhavon the Black at the very end of the
Long War. He’d become a Sleeper himself sometime after the war,
leaving his son, Prince Jametari, to lead Eletia.
The heady sensation
of meeting King Santanara made her shiver even as she hastened
across the bridge back into the white world.