Green Rider (60 page)

Holding her sword before her, Jendara charged down the corridor after the Greenie, but when she rounded one corner into another corridor, she discovered it was darkened and the air thick with candle smoke.

Jendara peered through the hall and into the shadows.
Careful
, she thought. The Greenie could be armed.

The shape of a person loomed up on her left and in the ' blink of an eye she swung her sword into it. A suit of armor crashed to the floor. The helm rolled down the corridor. Jendara narrowed her eyes as she stepped over a leg of armor and extended every sense into the gloom, but she heard nothing, saw nothing, felt not even a shift in the air. She smelled nothing but candles.

Even then, however, another sense awakened in her, like a peripheral vision of the mind. She perceived the Greenie to her right, tight up against the wall. Jendara shifted her eyes, but could see no one. Maybe there was a deepening of a shadow against the wall.

She took a deep breath, and held her gaze straight ahead, defying her greatest urge to take a direct look. That would only alarm the Greenie. Instead, she slashed out with her sword.

A cry of pain from the shadows confirmed her instinct had been true, and she laughed in triumph. Now she spun toward the Greenie, just in time for another suit of armor to topple down on her.

It took Jendara some moments to realize she was on the floor. Her body hurt, pummeled as it was by age-old plate armor. She groaned and pushed the breast piece away and untangled herself from the arms and legs.

She felt around for her sword on hands and knees, and her hand fell into something wet. She brought her fingers to her lips and dabbed them with her tongue. Blood!

Jendara raised herself to her feet and trotted back to the lit corridor. She grabbed a candle and took it into the dim corridor. She found her sword next to the twisted wreckage of armor. She looked in satisfaction at the blood on its tip, and the drips of blood leading in a trail down the corridor. Candle and sword in hand, she followed the trail like a hound on a scent.

BLOOD TRAIL

Karigan leaned in a darkened doorway, sucking in painful breaths. One hand clutched the door frame, the other closed on the wound beneath her ribs. It was not too deep, but it bled profusely and stung painfully.

Dim light glowed in an adjacent corridor, but she had to drop the invisibility to preserve any energy she had left. The slash to her side was not helping matters. She looked down, and in the darkness, discerned an even darker stain spreading across the front of her shirt. Crimson oozed between her fingers and pattered on the floor.

She leaned her head against the door frame and tried to catch her breath. Sweat poured down her face and burned her eyes. It would not be long before Jendara found her. She feared she would have to confront her this time, in a clash she had little hope of winning.

Light shimmered at the far end of the corridor. No
time to rest
. She shook off her light-headedness and reached to touch her brooch. It was her only—

Disembodied hands reached from behind through the darkness of the doorway. One clamped over her mouth before she could utter a scream, and the other grabbed her around her chest. Weakly she struggled against the iron grip. It drew her slowly, inexorably inward, into the night dark room behind.

Shhh
, someone breathed into her ear.

She began to think she had fallen into the darkness of the unconscious realm, or it was simply the unlit room, but her body fell limp and felt as if it floated upward and away to the night sky, perhaps to the heavens to meet the gods.

Jendara smashed her hand into the wall until her knuckles bled. She had followed the Greenie swiftly, but the blood trail simply ended in the doorway of an empty storeroom. She scoured every inch of the room, but it remained undisturbed. No strange shadows, no invisible presences, no telltale drips of blood.

Jendara had to face it: she had failed.

She was thankful she had not told her lord of her little errand. She had no wish to exact more punishment from him. She was tired, so tired. But what else was there? She had been devoted to Amilton and his cause for years. She knew he could be cruel, but he had never punished her before the way he had the night of the silver moon. He was a different man, a different man from the smooth, dashing prince she had sworn her life to protect so long ago.

She had once been an innocent much like the Greenie when she was younger and a swordmaster in training. She was proud to serve Sacoridia and King Amigast. When she became a Weapon assigned to protect Prince Amilton, he swept her away with his charm. She lost her innocence then. She had made a choice. Reflecting on that choice and others, she knew she would still make them if she could do everything over again. That was where she and the Greenie differed, she supposed. The Greenie learned from her mistakes.

She left the empty room and stumped down the corridor, the candle light like a shield around her.

When she reached the throne room, she found the merchant still sagging on his bench with the cargo master sitting stiff and resolute next to him, his arms crossed. Jendara thrust her bloodied sword tip in front of the merchant. He looked at it with bleary eyes.

"This is the blood of your daughter," she hissed. "She is no ghost."

She did not await his reaction and strode down the runner past the thinning ranks of defiant nobles. Among them was her old teacher Devon Wainwright, a mighty warrior in her day, but now blind as a possum and reduced to being Zachary's advisor in her dotage. Jendara shook her head. She had once admired Devon, but now saw only a wrinkled and bent crone. Jendara did not wish herself such a long life.

Crowe and King Amilton were speaking with a Mirwellian soldier and did not note her presence, for which she was grateful.

"What did they say?" Amilton's cheeks were flushed, and his eyes flashed. Energy crackled about his clenched fists.

"M-monarchy is tyranny, my lord." The soldier licked his lips and his eyes darted uncertainly from Crowe to Amilton.

"Who are they?"

"The Anti-Monarchy Society, my lord." It was Castellan Crowe who answered. He leaned on his staff of office, untroubled by the news. "Your brother spoke of them from time to time, but they were a nuisance at best and nothing more. He did order the leader arrested, but didn't pursue the matter. He became a little more concerned when they found much support in North, but other matters demanded his attention."

"Do they malign my name?" Amilton asked.

"Yes, my lord," the soldier said. "They wish to abolish rule by a monarch at all. This they shout into the night, and their leader attracts an audience with her speeches."

The crackling on Amilton's hands ceased, and he stroked his mustache. "You have archers up on the walls, don't you, Sergeant?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Then let them practice their aim."

"Very good, my lord." The soldier bowed and left the throne room at a trot.

Ignoring Jendara, Amilton's eyes fastened on the small group of nobles still standing before him. "Well, well. If my eyes do not deceive me."

He walked among them and circled the tall blonde in black, looking her up and down. "Lady Estora, how good to see you again."

Jendara watched as Amilton took the woman's pale hand in his and kissed it. The woman looked straight ahead, coolly ignoring him.

"You are beautiful as ever, my lady," Amilton said. His other hand trailed along her cheek and down her neck.

Jendara's knuckles whitened in clenched fists. It had always been this way, he looking at others than she.

"My lady," Amilton said in soft tones, as his face came unbearably close to the woman's. "My dear, dear heir of Coutre Province, I have some interesting ideas for you."

Karigan was falling, falling from the sky, and she jerked convulsively to stop herself.

She opened her eyes to the soft glow of a single candle. She had been asleep or unconscious, and lay on stone. The hard, cold surface made her back ache.

The candle did little to reveal the room she was in. It was stone, like everywhere else in the castle, and though she could not discern dimensions, she sensed the walls to be close and the space vaultlike. The candlelight glinted on glass—vials and jars on a shelf. The room smelled faintly of herbs and mustiness; the air was thick as if it had been closed up for some time.

The candlelight splayed across the ceiling. Glyphs and runes were carved there, so ancient they surpassed the old Sacoridian language. Crudely wrought images of Aeryc and Aeryon were also carved there, and others. One was of a creature—part man, part bird—the god Westrion who escorted souls to the stars; and another was of his great steed, Salvistar, the harbringer of strife and battle.

She lifted her head up to look around some more, but it throbbed and she moaned. "Where am I?"

"The preparation room," someone said.

Karigan's heart skipped a beat. "Who's there?"

The disembodied hands returned, this time accompanied by a disembodied face with familiar, stony features aglow in the candle light.

"Fastion!"

The Weapon, who had so often guarded her door at Rider barracks, drew closer and she could make out the outlines of his broad frame. His black uniform had created the illusion of disembodiment.

"You are awake, then," he said.

"Yes. What do you mean this is a preparation room?"

"It is for the dead," he said. "It is here the royal death surgeons prepare the bodies of kings, queens, and the special chosen to reside in the Hall of Kings and Queens, or along Heroes Avenue. It is here they open the body from chin—" He put his finger to his chin and drew a line with it down to his stomach. "—to the gut so that the soul may escape the body and float to the heavens. It is an ancient rite."