The High King's Tomb by Kristen Britain
When all four of Ero’s feet were firmly planted on the ground once again, Karigan wiped her face with her sleeve, and caught Fergal staring at her with a glower.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Well what?”
“What was all that about? The vanishing?”
She scratched absently behind Ero’s ear, not really certain herself. “I saw the stallion—the patron.”
“You had to vanish to do it?”
“I guess. I don’t know. For part of the time.”
Fergal continued to frown. “I didn’t see him at all.”
“It’s all right, lad,” Damian said, squeezing his shoulder. “Only a few do. You heard Gus say he doesn’t, though I ’spect that’ll change with time, and your captain never has.”
Fergal brightened. “She hasn’t?”
Damian gave him a solemn shake of his head. “And something more important happened today.” He gestured over Fergal’s shoulder, and there was the colt, taking tentative steps from his mother toward them.
Karigan watched as Fergal’s face rippled from surprise, to anger, to uncertainty. He glanced to Damian for guidance. Damian reached into his pocket and found a piece of apple.
“Was saving this for my foxy Fox,” he said, “but I think you should offer it to that young one and make a truce of sorts.”
Fergal took the apple, and with a serious expression on his face, marched toward the colt.
“Softly, lad,” Damian called after him. “Go softly. No sudden moves.”
Fergal modified his pace, but even so, the colt retreated behind his mother. When Fergal glanced over his shoulder, Damian called, “Be patient.”
Fergal stood in one place, and it wasn’t long before the colt grew curious, first peeking around his mother’s rump, then stepping away from her protection. Fergal stood his ground and Karigan wondered what was going through his mind, what thoughts were at war there. Would the colt win him over?
The colt moved forward, halted, took a few more steps, then halted again. He must be as unsure as Fergal. Fergal held the bit of apple in his palm before him.
It took a few more steps before the colt came close enough to stretch out his neck and reach the apple with his lips. Fergal still did not move. Karigan wished she could see his face.
The colt lipped the apple into his mouth and crunched into it. In moments he swallowed it down and was inspecting Fergal’s hand for more. With a movement as tentative as the colt’s had been, Fergal reached with his other hand and stroked the colt’s neck. The colt did not flinch or run, too interested in the lingering scent of apple on Fergal’s hand. With more assurance, Fergal continued to stroke him.
“Now that’s a vision,” Damian said in a soft voice.
Karigan couldn’t agree more—her cheeks ached from smiling so hard. As stunning as her vision of the stallion had been, this was the more miraculous sight.
They let Fergal and the colt get to know one another until the shadows began to lengthen and a frosty chill descended on the valley. The colt’s dam hovered nearby, tail swishing, as if to say it was time for junior to end play and come home for the night.
Damian walked over to Fergal and put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got a good friend there, and no mistake, but now it is time to take our leave, for it will soon be dark and my Lady awaits us for supper.”
When Fergal hesitated, combing his fingers through the colt’s brushy mane, Damian added, “Not to worry, Fergal, lad, I’ll bring him to you in the spring, and you’ll have a long summer of training ahead of you. For now, trust in Sunny. She is as fine a beastie as one could wish for.”
Fergal gave the colt one last stroke down his nose before turning away, Damian’s hand still on his shoulder.
Lady greeted them in the doorway, lamplight gleaming around her. Her arms were crossed and she held a ladle. Aromatic scents of roasting meat and apple pie wafted past her into the night air.
“It’s about time,” she said.
Damian danced up the porch steps. “Lady, my lady, my dear, but we’ve had an eventful day on the plains among the wild ones.”
She rolled her eyes and stepped aside. “If you find my roast tough tonight, you may blame yourself.”
Karigan and Fergal went to their respective rooms to clean up, and when they returned to the kitchen they found Gus and Jericho already seated at the table, and Ero sprawled in front of the hearth. Damian carved a roast of lamb and as the juices flowed from it and the cutting revealed pink meat, Karigan did not expect it would be tough. Her stomach rumbled in anticipation.
Lady, trying to work around the hearth, placed her hands on her hips and declared, “Ero, you are not a hearth rug.”
Ero’s only response was to yawn and stretch his long body even longer. Lady shook her head.
Everyone ate as though famished. Ero abandoned hearth duty to sit beside the table. He was more than tall enough to rest his chin on the tabletop and gaze longingly at food as it was consumed by his people. Damian and the boys slipped him some scraps.
Meanwhile, Damian recounted to Lady the day’s events.
“Did you see the patron, too?” Lady asked Karigan, her blue eyes intense.
“Yes.”
Lady nodded as though she had expected all along that she would.
“I didn’t,” Fergal said.
Lady reached across the table and patted his wrist. “Maybe another time. You are both welcome to visit whenever you want.”
Fergal brightened. “Really?”
“Really,” she said. “As your duty to the king allows.”
When dinner was finished and Karigan stood up to help clear the table, Damian motioned her to remain seated. “We have business, you and I.”
Karigan nodded in understanding and excused herself to retrieve her message satchel from her bedchamber. By the time she returned, most everything had been cleared, and Lady was directing the boys to take a bucket of scraps out to the pigs. Karigan sat next to Damian at the quietest end of the table.
She removed a packet of papers and handed them to Damian, waiting while he inspected them.
“Ah, a letter from your captain.” He read along, then, “Hee hee.” He glanced up at Karigan. “I am to remind you not to drive a hard bargain. I had not realized you were from an important merchanting clan.”
“We don’t trade in horses,” Karigan said with a smile, remembering the captain’s admonition that she agree to whatever Damian asked for anyway.
“Heh, I guess that’s lucky for me.”
He read on, and when he got to the documents of trade, both he and Karigan signed in the appropriate places, and Karigan dripped wax on the document, which she imprinted with the winged horse seal of the Green Riders.
“Delivery will be late spring, early summer most like,” Damian said. “There’ll be some yearlings in the mix, including Fergal’s little colt, as well as older beasties, which the boys and I will gentle over the winter so they are ready to train for service with their new Riders. The Riders will have to see to the overall gentling of the yearlings themselves beyond some halter training, but that’s nothing new.”
It was all new to Karigan. She wondered who would be in charge of training.
“I’ll write Red a letter to confirm it all. It’ll be ready by the morning.”
The business concluded, the Frosts surprised Karigan and Fergal by entertaining them with music. Jericho fetched a beat-up fiddle and Gus took a pipe out of his pocket. Damian, muttering to himself, searched through the kitchen till he stood triumphant holding two silver spoons.
“Damian!” Lady cried. “My mother’s good spoons!”
He grinned. “They make fine music.”
Lady sighed and shook her head, and the music began. While the Frosts did not possess the finesse of the students of Selium, they played well-known, rollicking tunes to which all could sing. Lady’s voice was a lovely counterpoint to Damian’s gruff baritone and even Fergal sang well. Karigan, tone deaf
The last song of the evening was sung solo by Lady, with only Jericho accompanying her on the fiddle. The song was slow, full of long notes textured by a haunting melody. The lyrics took Karigan back to the plains, past the broken towers of Kmaern where the wind blew in mournful voices. She returned to the valley with its trickling stream, and farther beyond the song led, to the wide open and lonely expanses, touched by lightning and blanketed by blue-black storm clouds. Then came winter and sheets of blizzard snow shrouding the scene, a band of wild horses trudging through it, heads bowed against the wind, their coats plastered by snow and ice. Then it was spring again in the valley, newborn foals taking their first shaky steps.
On the song went, through a full cycle of seasons and from life to death. When Lady stopped singing and the last note on the fiddle sighed to fading, Karigan sagged on her seat, exhausted. No one spoke and everyone looked as though they were awakening from a dream. Except Ero who snored by the hearth.
It was no wonder Lady could sing the horses in, considering the spell she’d put them under.
Karigan regretted that in the morning she and Fergal would have to take leave of the Frosts to continue on their journey.
After the music, Karigan stepped outside for some fresh air. Wrapped in her greatcoat against the piercing cold, she sat on a weathered plank chair that faced the nothingness of night. The porch roof obscured much of the sky, but just below the eave hung a few stars.
Legs stretched out before her and hands tucked beneath her armpits for warmth, she wondered about her day, about the wild horses, and about the stallion. Had she really seen what she thought she saw? Had it been some sort of dream? And if not, could it have been Salvistar for real?
She’d never felt one way or the other about the gods, mostly because her father hadn’t. He supported Corsa’s chapel of the moon, but mainly to enhance his standing in the community. No one had made her attend chapel, not even her aunts, and the prevailing G’ladheon wisdom seemed to be, “We don’t bother the gods, so they don’t bother us.” That wisdom held, until now.
Karigan was torn. Part of her wished she’d been made to attend chapel so she could better grasp what she’d seen, or hadn’t seen, this afternoon. The other part felt that she’d rather not invite god-beings into her everyday life by invoking them in chapel. No good could come of drawing the attention of gods to oneself. And yet it may have happened anyway.
The front door creaked open and in the flash of lamplight, Karigan saw Lady draped in a heavy shawl.
“May I join you?” she asked.
“Of course.”
The door closed and all was darkness again. There was a scraping as Lady pulled a bench near, then a groan of old wood as she settled onto it. At first neither of them spoke, and silence reigned but for the sigh of the wind and an owl hooting somewhere in the distance. They were content enough in one another’s company that they did not have to fill the night with chatter.
After a while though, Lady did break the silence. “I can only guess what you are thinking about, but I should not be surprised if it’s about what you saw on the plains today.”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. The plains are not just grass and sky, though it may seem so on first appearance. They are different, powerful, dangerous even. I have always believed that some echo of the war magic used during the last great battle of the Long War remains in the land. The land does not easily forget the death and suffering, the blood that was spilled onto it, and sometimes I can feel it through the soles of my feet, the power that still remains in the soil. There are the lost Kmaernians, too, whose cries I sometimes hear in the wind.”
Karigan could make out Lady’s shape, but not her features. “You don’t think it’s just the wind?”
“I choose to believe that I hear more than the wind,” Lady said. “I think Damian does, too, but he will not speak of it readily, for the cries are full of despair. We both have faith in our perception of things, you understand. Damian’s gift of perception, and his trust in himself, makes him the horseman he is.”
The bench squeaked as Lady shifted her position. Starlight gleamed in her eyes. “Maybe we are crazy old coots, Damian and I. Maybe we’ve lived on the plains too long. Some say the plains can play tricks on you, like the desert lands where you see mirages shimmering in the sun. Maybe it’s just the wind on the grass making you see a horse running there, or storm clouds building castles on the horizon. Wind dreams, I call them, those things you think you see.”
Yes, wind dreams, Karigan thought. She preferred to believe her vision of the black stallion had been nothing more. Maybe they were all mad, sharing in the same delusions. It was easier to accept than to believe she came face-to-face with a god-being.
“There are wind dreams,” Lady continued, “but I choose to believe that not all you see out there can be discounted as such. Much happened on the plains and the land does not forget. And there are many layers of the world. It makes sense to me that in some places those layers are thin, or even intersect. Maybe that great battle of ancient times changed the natural order of things, thinning the layers, making them merge.”
Karigan shuddered, and it was not from the cold. She did not think she’d like to live anywhere near the plains. Too many shadows, too many ghosts. Yet her beloved Condor came from the plains.
She turned her thoughts to Lady’s words about choosing to believe her perceptions. Karigan wondered if she chose not to believe her vision of Salvistar, the experience would cease to exist. Somehow, she didn’t think it would work.
“Does your perception,” Karigan asked, “aid your skill in herb lore?”
Lady chuckled. “You are right to call it skill, for it has been taught down a long line of the women in my family. Well, some of the men, but mostly the women. I have no daughters to pass it on to, but Gus has taken a little interest, though both boys are more apt to chase after their father in pursuit of wild horses. Perhaps I’ll take on an apprentice one day, or one of my sons will give me a granddaughter.”
“Then it is skill,” Karigan said, feeling awkward. “I mean, after my fall, you helped me heal.”
“Skill, knowledge, and knowing,” Lady said. “My grand-mum started teaching me when I was just a bitty thing. Born in the lake country of Rhovanny, I was.”
Karigan heard no Rhovan accent in her speaking, and so was surprised.
“My father was Sacoridian and a farmer, and when I was young, we moved here to the western edge of Sacoridia. My mum continued to teach me all through my growing up.” Lady paused. “Are you worried I have more than mere skill?”
“Not worried, precisely,” Karigan said. “Wondering. We’ve a Rider…well, he doesn’t ride—”
“He what?”
“He’s afraid of horses.”
“Oh, my!” Lady said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. Damian will be most interested.”
“Yes, well, when he became a Rider, his special ability was to enhance the mending skill he already possessed.” Karigan didn’t feel she was betraying anything by discussing Rider magic since Damian already showed himself well aware of it. She assumed Lady must know as well. “I was wondering if maybe…if maybe you had that kind of ability.”
Lady did not respond immediately and Karigan thought she’d offended her hostess, but when Lady at last spoke she did not sound upset, just thoughtful.
“There are the seen and unseen. Skill and that which goes beyond skill. And that is all I can tell you.”
Lady suddenly declared herself chilled and rose to enter the house. Before she did so, however, she added, “Not all is certainty in our world, Karigan. If it were, there’d be no opportunity for faith, and then it would be a very dull existence.”
Lady left her confounded in the darkness. She had not received a definitive answer. The seen, the unseen, perceptions…She groaned. Maybe she was better off not mulling over such thin
Problem was, if she really saw Salvistar, it could only mean trouble. Like Karigan, the death god’s steed was a messenger, but he brought only one message: strife, battle, death.
THE WALL SPEAKS
From Ullem Bay to the shores of dawn, we weave our song in—
Disharmony.
From Ullem Bay to the shores of dawn, we—
Discord.
He is there. We feel it.
From Ullem Bay—
Can he hear us?
Do not seek his help. Do not trust.
Hear us. Help us. Heal us.
He does not hear.
See him. He betrayed us.
We see.
Look well. He is evil.
We watch.
Do not trust.
We see.
We watch.
We are blind.
PATTERNS
Ever since his experiences in Blackveil, Alton had slept poorly, if he was able to sleep at all. There were the fevers and nightmares, and those were augmented by the anxiety that glutted his mind with what-ifs and visions of everything ending in catastrophe. If he tried to sleep, the entire wall failed and Mornhavon rose above the rubble like a vengeful god who would bring all of Sacoridia to heel.
Often Alton was up before dawn pacing in his tent, the platform boards creaking beneath his feet, or he’d try to devise possible solutions in his journal, but the entries always ended in more frustration. He’d broken dozens of pen nibs by stabbing the pages.
Sometimes he went to the tower, the encampment as quiet as a sickroom, the third watch the only souls up and about. However, battering his will at the wall had proved just as futile as scheming in his journal had, so he decided to try something more productive. Sometimes he split wood for the cook fires; mindless repetitive work that allowed him to use his feelings of aggression productively. Grateful cooks made sure he received an extra hearty breakfast for his efforts.