Green Rider (62 page)

Karigan dismounted, relieved but weary, and led Condor toward her.

"I'm sorry," Captain Mapstone said. "I wasn't expecting you just then. Connly found this cloak in the city while you were gone, and we thought it might prove useful for Beryl's plan."

The others emerged from the woods.

"At least we know it works," Beryl said.

The king looked Karigan up and down. "You've been hurt," he said. He took her elbow apprehensively.

Karigan then realized she was on her knees. A line of blood had seeped through Fastion's bandage. Helping hands lifted her to her feet, and led her into the woods.

"It looks worse than it is," she said. "It's the brooch… I'm exhausted."

The mender pushed between Captain Mapstone and the king. "I'll be the judge of that," she said.

They sat Karigan down on a blanket, allowing her to lean against the trunk of a tree. The mender checked her wound with gentle hands.

"I have a terrible headache from the brooch," Karigan said.

"I've roots for you that should help the pain." The mender rebandaged the wound and said, "It is not deep, but if you keep riding around the countryside, it won't knit together."

"Couldn't help it," Karigan said.

The mender rolled her eyes. "You Riders are all alike. You make the worst patients. Next to other menders, of course." Then she gave Captain Mapstone a stern look. "I know you have questions to ask, but she is in need of rest. Don't push her."

Karigan eased herself against the tree trunk, glad at least, to be visible and among friends again.

"Do you feel able to talk?" the king asked. His eyes were wide with concern as he gazed down at her.

I must look beyond redemption
, she thought with some amusement. The exertion of battle and having walked through those old, dusty castle corridors made a hot bath seem a heavenly dream. "I have a lot to report," she said.

The king and captain glanced at one another, then beckoned Horse Marshal Martel, Beryl Spencer, and Connly over. They sat in a semicircle about Karigan as she told them, as briefly as possible, of her adventures. When she described her encounter with Mel, Captain Mapstone's face fell and she looked away. She seemed little relieved when Karigan told her Mel was safe when she last saw her.

"The castle… Rider barracks is no place for a child to grow up," Captain Mapstone said.

Beryl placed her hand on the captain's shoulder. "She loves you, and that's what matters."

Karigan told of Prince Amilton and how he used magic to torture, kill, and coerce the nobles. "Magic surrounded his hands and… and it was like what the Eletian used."
On me
, she did not add. "My father was in the throne room with the others. He seemed fine, but I didn't dare talk to him."

She recounted her narrow escape from Jendara and how she received the wound. She told of Fastion's help.

"The Heroes Portal," Zachary murmured. "I remember. Yes, it's perfect. Good old Fastion! His years as a tomb guard have served him, and served us, well."

The others did not understand what he was talking about, and he didn't enlighten them other than to say, "It is another way in."

When she told of the attack on the Anti-Monarchy Society, Zachary said, "My brother has turned into a despot of the worst sort. I fear that he will not confine his brutality to those within and around the castle. The city may be in peace right now, but how long before he extends his reach among ordinary citizens and into the provinces?"

While the king, the captain, and the others talked among themselves, Karigan dozed off. Their distant voices became the babble of ghosts, hanging on the fringes of the living world. Her dreams followed dark routes, dim passages of stone and earth. The ghost babbles shivered up and down the walls in whispery echoes. She entered a vaultlike room where pale blue light hovered over a stone slab. Glyphs and carvings of funerary rites on tablets covered the walls. Similar figures ornamented the base of the slab.

Karigan walked over to the slab, sat on it, swung her legs up onto it, and lay down. Disembodied hands pulled a gauzy shroud over her.

"No!" Karigan sat up, wincing at the soreness of her side.

"You're all right," said a soothing voice.

Karigan blinked. She felt the fresh air of night blowing through her hair and made out the outlines of branches against the starry night. The king was sitting beside her, pulling a blanket over her.

"I thought you might get cold," he said.

Karigan pushed her hair out of her eyes. "Th-thanks. I had a dream…"

He nodded. "You have been through a great many things today. I shouldn't be surprised if you do have dreams."

"Where are the others?"

"Major Spencer, Captain Mapstone, Connly, and Mirwell are preparing to enter the city."

"What?"

The king absently ran his hands through his hair. His silver fillet was missing. Without it, he seemed an ordinary man with a shock of amber hair falling into his eyes, but he was a haggard man, tired and careworn. He seemed to have aged years over the course of a day.

"They are taking my head and crown to my brother." He smiled impishly.

"What?"

"It is part of Beryl's plan to infiltrate the throne room.

My brother knows little of her true affiliations… as of yet. Captain Mapstone will be cloaked as the Eletian, and Connly volunteered to take the part of the Mirwellian guard. You see, with our outnumbered forces, our only hope is to win the castle from within."

"But the lord-governor," Karigan said, "how will he cooperate?"

"Beryl said she would see to it."

"Is that it? I mean the whole plan?"

"Oh, no." Zachary seemed to enjoy telling her the plan. Despite his haggard appearance, there was a light in his brown eyes. "Horse Marshal Martel, a good number of his soldiers, and I will enter the Heroes Portal and infiltrate the castle that way. Alas, unlike Connly and Captain Mapstone, we have no disguise. Upon reaching the throne room, I shall reclaim the crown, and Mirwell will order his troops to regroup and return home."

"What about me?" Karigan asked.

"Hmm?"

"What part do I play?"

"You have already done more than your share," he said. "You will rest here with the day's other wounded and the remainder of Marshal Martel's troops. Should we fail… well, I can depend on you to move these people out of harm's way."

"No," Karigan said.

The king raised a brow. "No?"

Karigan shoved the blanket off and raised herself to her feet. "I'm going with you. King or not, you can't stop me. My father is being held in the throne room."

"You are wounded and exhausted," Zachary said. "I don't want you to slow us down."

"You have a broken arm," Karigan retorted. "Who will be slowing who?"

The king's eyebrows shot up, and his mouth was quirked in a half smile he couldn't quite hide. It was as if he wanted to laugh, but he knew better than to do so.

"I see," he said.

Horse Marshal Martel appeared at the king's side, his face impassive. "I told you, my lord, we should have left her while she was asleep."

"I should have listened more closely," he said.

"I suppose she would have followed us," the marshal said. "Captain Mapstone tells me the girl operates on pure spunk, and from what I've seen, I cannot argue."

Karigan glowered at both men. "The appreciation I get for—“

The king bent close to her, and in a sober tone, he said, "I am indebted to you, brave lady, more times over than I can count. I did not wish to belittle your accomplishments. If you wish to join us, I will not deny you. But also know, I could be leading you to your death."

Without his fillet, she had almost forgotten he was king. Just as seriously as he, she said, "I must go."

The moon was at its apex and beginning to slide into the western sky as King Zachary, Karigan, Horse Marshal Martel, the Weapon Rory, and about twenty-five cavalry soldiers rode in a circumference around the outskirts of Sacor City, far enough to be out of eyeshot and hearing of guards on the walls. They rode in silence, and they rode without light save that cast by the moon.

High on its hill, the castle sat at the center of it all, its stony facade rotating, changing angles as they rode. Tiny lights twinkled about it, making it appear as some celestial palace of the night rather than a behemoth of granite constructed by mere humans and anchored firmly to the earth.

On the northeast side, they slowed their horses to a walk. The king and his Weapon Rory rode in front, quietly consulting with one another.

A single white obelisk, cracked and splotched by yellow lichens, marked the spot where an age-old road began. Horse hooves clicked and clattered on blocks of granite paving stones. Grasses and saplings grew up through the cracks between the stones. An ancient grove of hemlock bowed over the path, plunging it into an even deeper darkness than the bare night.

They came upon a stone slab set beside the path, and all at once, Karigan could feel the cold stone on her back, like the slab in the preparation room. Only this one was covered with thick mosses, lichens, and a layer of dead leaves. A fern grew from the base.

This was a coffin rest, the king explained. A rest for those who bore the one to be interred in Heroes Avenue.

The group rode on, like silent mourners until they came to a rock ledge that loomed above them and was overhung with dripping mosses. Another obelisk stood like an accusing finger next to a round portal of iron embedded in the ledge.

King Zachary faced those who followed him with a grim smile. "You follow the ancient path only the dead, royalty, and those who care for the dead are permitted. This entrance has been forgotten by most and has lain mostly unused for a century at least. The dead, alas, keep their own company."

He sat without speaking for some moments as water trickled down the ledge to a puddle beside him. "When I was a boy, my grandmother, Queen Isen, brought me here so I could learn the stories of Sacoridia's bravest heroes. I was terrified then, and I am none too comfortable now. To say the least, it is disturbing to see the inside of your tomb while you still live and breathe."

Karigan shifted uneasily on Condor's back. The night seemed to crackle with premonition: the accusatory obelisk telling them to turn back, the iron portal with the glyph of Westrion on it.

"Beyond this portal," Zachary said, "lies the domain of the dead from which only members of the royal family and weapons may re-emerge. All others who trespass must spend the remainder of their lives along its somber avenues tending the dead, never to see the light of the living day again."

The cavalry soldiers exchanged worried glances and whispered among themselves.

"However," the king said, "I am in a position to change the rules for one night under these circumstances in which we ride. It would be different, perhaps, if we were entering the Halls of Kings and Queens where the royalty sleeps. Heroes Avenue is slightly more permissible; more forgiving to an intrusion of the living." He looked at each person as if he could look right into their souls. Karigan was not warmed by his gaze. "Here we shall leave the horses."

As one, the soldiers dismounted. They gathered together bundles of torches they had brought with them, and King Zachary smiled. "Leave them," he said. "We enter a tomb, not a cave."