Green Rider (70 page)

At the sound of humming, Karigan pivoted just in time to see Agemon scuttling away, his legs working beneath his long robes.

"Agemon! Wait!" She darted after him, but no matter how fast she ran, she could not gain on him. He grew smaller and smaller as the gulf between them expanded, his aimless humming fading until he disappeared altogether.

"Agemon!" Karigan wailed, but the heaviness of the white air muted her voice.

Behind her, the vaporous mist, noiseless and suffuse, billowed in again and obscured the funeral slabs. When the cloud wafted away, nothing remained save the endless white plains.

Out of breath, Karigan collapsed to the white ground. She drew her legs up close and rested her head on her knees. She sat like this for a time, resting, willing herself to stave off despair. It could have been minutes she sat there, it could have been hours.

Eventually she stood up and walked. There was nothing else to do but walk across the colorless plain. Short, white grass crunched beneath her feet. Otherwise, nothing fed her senses. She wondered if she simply walked in place for she could not identify any changes in her surroundings.

She recalled the sprig of bayberry she carried tucked away in an inner pocket of her greatcoat and took it out. A gift given to her so she could remember the vast expanses of the northern forest and the green, living things. So she could remember friends.

The sprig of bayberry defied the bleaching effect of the world and Karigan's eyes feasted on it. She rubbed a smooth leaf between her fingers. Its sweet scent brought back the bright blueberry blue eyes of the Berry sisters, and the green needles of a giant pine tree which had towered over Abram Rust. It brought back the earthy smell of the forest after a rain, and of pine needles baking in the sun.

Karigan rejoiced in the reawakening of her senses, of touching something real in this dull unreality.

As if in response to her rising spirits, a dark blotch appeared on the plain before her. Her pace quickened into a trot. Her strides brought the splotch closer as though she had taken great leaps instead of steps. The splotch turned into two figures who sat hunched over a table.

Karigan slackened her pace, hope turning into dismay. Amilton sat in one chair and the Eletian in another. A third chair was left unoccupied. The table and chairs were made of ordinary wood, or appeared to be. On the table, a game of Intrigue was set up. Like the bayberry sprig, the pieces retained their true colors: blue, green, red.

Amilton leaned over an army of red pieces, his eyes darting here and there over the board. He wrung his hands anxiously, reached out to move a piece, hesitated, and snatched his hand back. He muttered to himself unaware of Karigan's presence. Shawdell the Eletian, in contrast, leaned casually back in his chair, watching her approach with interest.

"Won't you join us?" he asked.

Karigan adjusted her grip on the sword. "Why are we here?"

The Eletian smiled his dazzling smile. In this place he was not bloodied or injured from their previous encounter at the Lost Lake, nor was he the ghostly image she had seen overlapping Amilton in the throne room.

"Would you believe anything I told you?" he asked.

"I will judge your words for myself."

"You will not like what you hear."

"Just explain," Karigan said.

"All right." Shawdell's voice was quiet. "With your actions, you have released wild magic and it has torn the wall between the worlds. You brought us here."

"What do you mean between the worlds?"

"This is a place of passage, neither here nor there. It is not of the earth, nor of your mortal heavens. You have touched it before when you rode with the ghosts, but only the borders. You did not cross over. Many others touch it with their dreams or in death. Some find their way here with magic, but that is rare. This place is not always of the corporeal, but often of images and symbols."

"I don't believe you."

Shawdell shrugged. "As you wish, though I suspect if you consulted Captain Mapstone's brooch, you would know the truth of my words. How else would you explain all this?"

The brooch was gone, and it did not speak to her, but it did not matter. All that mattered was leaving this place, getting back to the king. "How do we get back?" she asked.

Shawdell mocked her with his light and musical laughter. "You would trust me with the answer? You who will not believe the truth about where we are?" She glared at him, and he stopped laughing. He leaned forward and drew his eyebrows together in an expression of the utmost gravity. "To leave, we must finish the game. You must sit down and play. Won't you have a seat?" He gestured at the empty chair.

Karigan ignored the proffered chair but looked the game board over. On her side of the board, green pieces stood in formation. She looked closely, for their features were familiar. One carried a great ax on his shoulder—Abram Rust. Miss Bayberry leaned on a cane. Somial, Softfeather, Arms Master Rendle, the little boy Dusty, and others she knew all had their places. King Zachary sat upon the green throne. Weapons stood behind him with hands on the hilts of their swords. Captain Mapstone and Beryl Spencer faced one another with their swords drawn.

Several pieces lay in the dead position: F'ryan Coblebay, Joy Overway, and numerous other Green Riders, Weapons, and soldiers.

Amilton's pieces consisted of Mirwellian soldiers and mercenaries. There was one-handed Captain Immerez flanked by Sarge and Thursgad. Mirwell faced the battling Captain Mapstone and Beryl Spencer. Jendara stood just outside the action.

The very image of Amilton sat on the red throne. Likewise, Shawdell sat on the blue throne. The two pieces were close together. A black thread of energy flowed between them. One more piece stood before them, a green piece. Karigan did not need to look at it closely to know who it represented.

Shawdell's pieces thronged on the borders of the green king's realm. They were groundmites and other twisted creatures with hideous faces, wings, and claws. Denizens, no doubt, of
Kanmorhan Vane
.

"I don't want to play," Karigan said.

"I thought you wanted to leave this place," Shawdell said. "You must win the game to leave."

"No," Karigan said.

"No? You are the Triad. You have been throughout, the unexpected player of the game, the player none of us knew how to counter—not Mirwell, Amilton, or myself. Zachary, however, managed to woo you to his side early on."

"Don't twist it," Karigan said. "I chose—"

"We never knew what you would do next," Shawdell said as if he had not heard her. "Other pieces supported you, and others hindered you. I suppose it is too late for me to coax you to our side? We would make an incomparable match."

His smile was charming, his eyes warm. He held his hand out to her. Karigan recoiled.

"I could show you things you never dreamed of," he said. "I could give you power a thousand times that of the horse trinket you wear. A simple mortal king like Zachary is not good enough for you. You've a temperament that requires much, much more." He folded his hands on the table, and with earnest eyes, he said, "It pains me to admit it, but I find you most intriguing for a mortal, Karigan G'ladheon. What do you think about immortality? I have the power to grant it."

Karigan sputtered, her mind awhirl and appalled by all he implied. "Is that what you offered Amilton? Immortality?" She glanced at the prince who was oblivious to everything but the game board.

"What I offered Amilton is between him and me, and needless to say, it is quite different than what I offer you."

This couldn't be happening, could it? Immortality? To spend all her days with Shawdell the Eletian? The one who unthinkingly killed so many for his own purposes? She could never cross over to his side. This one thing at least, she knew.

"I made my choice long ago," she said. "I made my choice free of false promises and coercion."

Shawdell's expression was one of genuine regret. "My promises are not false. I wish you would join me, for we could share more than power." He paused to allow his words time to sink in. "Since you have refused my offer, there is no alternative. I ask again, won't you finish the game?"

Karigan hated Intrigue. She always lost. By rising to Shawdell's challenge, she doomed King Zachary, her father, all her friends. She doomed Sacoridia.

She nodded toward Amilton who still muttered to himself and dithered over the game board. "Why doesn't he make a move?"

"He moves when I give him leave," Shawdell said.

"And when do you move?"

Shawdell crooked a golden eyebrow. "I move when you sit down to play."

"You mean everything is just… stalled?"

"It is a stalemate."

"And if I refuse to sit?"

Shawdell slowly smiled. "We share an eternity in this place. But if you play the game, you have a chance to win."

"Why don't you use your magic?" Karigan asked.

"Play the game," Shawdell said.

"Why don't you use your magic?" she repeated.

Shawdell's posture grew rigid. Amilton, too, tensed and his murmuring increased in urgency.

"Play the game," Shawdell said. "It is the only way you can leave."

Karigan laughed, giddy with sudden insight. The essence of her insight, the only truth to be found in this unreality, was far more mundane than simple magic. She was the Triad, the random element. She could spur the game on, or maintain the stalemate. She controlled the game.

"I won't break the stalemate," she said. The colorful game pieces reflected on the shiny blade of the First Rider. She bent close to Shawdell and whispered, "You are too weak to break it yourself."

And if this place was a combination of symbols, images, and the corporeal…

She raised the sword over her head. Shawdell quailed. The sword slashed down like a scythe.

It plummeted down between the enthroned pieces of Amilton and Shawdell, severing the black thread that linked them. The blade bit into the cork game board and green, blue, and red pieces scattered. The sword carved deep into the table and through it. A roar grew louder and louder in Karigan's ears like a great whoosh of air—the screams of Shawdell and Amilton.

The table split into two neatly sliced halves. Shawdell and Amilton, one the mirror of the other, brought their arms up as if to ward off some invisible blow, their faces averted. Cracks crazed their images and they shattered into thousands of tiny fragments.

Still the sword descended. It plowed into the white earth and sank deep. It kept sinking. The ground engulfed the blade, the hilt, her hand. It swallowed her wrist and forearm and elbow. Still the sword descended. The ground took her shoulder. It took her all the way.

The blade rang on the stone floor of the throne room.

Gold links from the chain that had held the black stone around Amilton's neck rained to the floor in pieces. The black stone bounced again, and when it struck the floor, it cracked.

Wild magic escaped from it.

The magic crackled and shot across the room in a black streak, hungry and vengeful. It found Karigan's sword and sizzled up the blade. She flung it aside, but still the tendrils leaped off it and lashed onto her like a live creature, a predator sustained by the screams of Shawdell and Amilton.

She added her own scream as the wild magic twined around her torso and around each limb. It pulsed on her flesh, strangling the life from her. The other faces in the throne room blurred in her tearing eyes.

Amilton's arms were outstretched to the ceiling as if he reached for his father painted there. Even without her brooch, Karigan could see the ghostly, bloodied figure of the Eletian being drawn out of him.

A black current of magic burrowed through Karigan's flesh and into her shoulder. She writhed as the black thing sank deeper, crawled under her skin, wriggled in her muscle.

Smoke drifted up from the fabric of her coat. She smelled her own burning flesh. Old hurts reignited: the burns on her wrists from the creature of
Kanmorhan Vane
, the bite of Immerez's whip on her shoulder, the countless knocks, bruises, scrapes, abuses… Her side was wet with blood.

The thing probed deeper, and she moaned with pain. She knew with some part of her that it sought out her heart and strove to twist and twine like poison through every sinew of her body.