The High King's Tomb (15 page)

“I don’t believe it,” he said at last.

“Which part?”

“All of it. There has got to be some way to make the wall listen to me. I mean, how likely is it that the book will be found? And if it is found, who’s to say it will offer any help?”

Dale shrugged. She was just the messenger. She had no answers. “Looks like we’re stuck.”

The two sat there in gloomy silence, a frown deepening on Alton’s face.

Dale fidgeted. “What is this Merdigen anyway? He called himself the projection of the great mage Merdigen, whatever that means. But what is his function? What is he there for?”

“From what I gather,” Alton replied, “he’s there to help the wallkeepers keep an eye on the wall. He can communicate with the guardians, and in turn relay information to the wallkeepers. When there were wallkeepers, that is.”

“Sort of like a messenger himself.”

“I suppose.”

Dale swallowed her tea, forgetting about the whiskey. She gritted her teeth as it flamed in her throat and made her eyes water. Her expression elicited another smile from Alton.

When she could speak again, she said, “All right, so Merdigen is a messenger of sorts, but he’s also not really a live being. An illusion?”

“As far as any of us can tell,” Alton said. “No one has really had a chance to question him, and certainly I’ve not been able to.”

“Well, maybe it’s time someone did thoroughly question him. Perhaps if we find out more about Merdigen himself, we will learn more about the wall.”

Alton straightened in his chair, hope plain on his face. “Surely he must know much about the construction of the wall if he lived during that time.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Dale said. She was tired, but game. Before she could rise, however, Leese appeared in the tent opening.

“If you don’t mind, Rider Littlepage, I’d like to make sure you aren’t straining yourself. If we could go to your tent?”

With an apologetic look to Alton, Dale abandoned her cup of “tea,” and followed the mender out.

K
arigan held the knife blade before her as she took aim at her target, just as Arms Master Drent had instructed her. She knew she should have returned the throwing knives to him as she had after every session; she knew Drent believed her a danger to herself and others when handling them, but she wanted to perfect the art of knife throwing, and the only way to succeed was through practice, and if she could do so unseen without every other trainee watching her and avoid the humiliation, all the better.

Besides, who could she hurt in the middle of the forest? She ensured Fergal was safely inside the waystation cabin working on the assignments Ty sent with him, and she put the cabin between herself and the paddock where Condor and Sunny munched on hay. Everyone should be safe.

Her target was an old grain sack she found in the cabin that she stuffed with leaves, pine needles, and moss. She tied it to a stout white birch with peeling papery bark. Most of its leaves had yellowed and fallen, its branches crooked bones against the evergreen backdrop.

Squinting at the target in deep concentration, she drew her hand back and threw. The knife whistled tip over butt well wide and high of the target. It clattered somewhere in the upper branches of the pine, arousing the ire of resident squirrels who bounded to the end of a limb to harangue her. The knife thumped to the ground at the base of the tree.

“Sorry,” she told the squirrels. So not
everyone
was safe…

She drew the second knife from its boot sheath and rolled the well-balanced weapon from hand to hand, considering the target. Then, instead of taking so much time to aim or think about her technique, she swiftly threw it. It nicked the birch above the target.

“Yes!” she cried. She jumped up and down in triumph.

At some point Karigan noticed Fergal watching her display from the front step of the cabin. She froze. Irritated she’d been spied upon, she demanded, “Don’t you have some more book work to do inside?”

“Finished.”

Karigan grumbled to herself as she went to retrieve her knives. Locating the first knife entailed bushwhacking through undergrowth to reach it. When she returned, she found Fergal where she had been standing, gazing at her lumpy target.

“It’s not as easy as it looks,” she said, guessing what he was thinking.

“Can I try?”

Reluctantly she passed him one of the knives. “You have to visualize where you want—” Drent’s advice barely left her tongue when the knife soared at the target and hit it with a solid
thunk.
Karigan’s mouth dropped open. She closed it, and handed him the other knife.

Once again he hit the mark square on. It was no accident.

“How?” Karigan asked.

“My da had lots of knives.” Fergal walked over to the birch to extract the blades from the target. “Sometimes I got bored and practiced throwing them. When he wasn’t around. These are better weighted though.” He tossed one into the air and caught the hilt with ease when it came whirling down. If Karigan attempted such a thing, she’d slice off several fingers. Deflated, she sat down on a tree stump.

When he offered her the knives back, hilts first, she waved him off. “You might as well keep them.”

“Really?”

Karigan nodded, and Fergal did a little dance of his own. When he paused, he asked, “Why?”

“You have a better, uh, aptitude for throwing, and if we ever get into a situation where those knives are needed, I’d rather they be in your hands.”

“I can teach you,” he said.

“Maybe, but in the meantime, I better leave them in your care.” She had no idea of what Drent would say to this—if he ever forgave her for taking the knives without permission in the first place.

“There’s one thing I’m not so good at,” Fergal said.

“Oh?”

“Arms Master Gresia wanted me to practice swordplay. She said you would coach me well.”

A smile formed on Karigan’s lips. “Fetch the practice blades, then.”

Karigan ran him through basic exercises, beginning to see him as any arms master might see the untrained as raw material with much to sculpt; technique to hone and skill to develop. Fergal was right: he was “not so good” at swordplay, and if she felt demoralized by his superior ability in knife throwing, the swordplay restored her self-confidence. She recognized, however, the potential for him to improve, and she resolved to return him to Sacor City a better swordsman than he left.

The wooden blades cracked through the forest as dusk swallowed late afternoon. When it was too dark to see, they retired to the cabin for a simple, but warm, meal.

Preble Waystation was more heavily used than others Karigan had stayed in and so was larger, with three beds instead of one, should chance bring in more than one Rider at a time, and its fragrant cedar closet was filled with more replacement gear than was usual. There was additional paddock space and fodder for the horses as well.

The waystations were for the sole use of Green Riders and had originally been built where no other lodging was available. Over the years, however, the number of Riders had declined, which meant fewer Riders able to stock and maintain the stations, and in some places, the growth of towns had reduced their necessity. As a result, the least used waystations, and those closest to population centers, had been decommissioned long before Karigan entered the messenger service.

Riders welcomed the waystations not only for the shelter they provided along the road, but for their sense of security. They had been built to blend into the landscape and had been warded with spells to keep out unwanted intruders. The wards didn’t keep the wildlife out, however, and it wasn’t unusual for Riders to have to dislodge squirrel nests from chimneys or chase bats out the door with brooms. On a few occasions, Riders had arrived at a waystation to discover a bear had broken in and made a terrible mess. And then there was Garth’s encounter with the Skunk…The poor man had been ostracized for weeks.

Even if none of these creatures had taken up lodging in a waystation, their littlest cousins were inevitable residents. Sweeping out mouse droppings was usually the first order of business for a Rider settling into a waystation for the night.

Karigan knew that Captain Mapstone dreamed of her Riders one day being permanently posted not at these simple waystations, but at larger relays built in Sacoridia’s towns and cities. Even if all the Rider brooches in the captain’s coffer were claimed, Karigan wondered if there would be enough Riders to fulfill her dream. If so, then relay stations would offer a more efficient use of Green Riders and swifter message delivery.

These were some of her meandering thoughts as she sat rocking before the cobblestone hearth, warming her stocking feet before the fire, a mug of tea cupped in her hands. It was, she thought, better to look ahead to a positive future rather than worry about Eletians or the wall. Here she was on an ordinary errand that, despite its rough beginning, was going smoothly and making good time. Of course, they had farther to go and hadn’t even reached their first destination. Anything could go wrong between now and then.

“Osric M’Grew was the last one here,” Fergal said. He was flipping through the waystation’s logbook. “He was here last month.”

Karigan nodded, her eyes half-closed as she watched the flames flare and twist. “I suppose you could sign us in.”

Fergal did so eagerly. Karigan had seen from his lessons that his handwriting was wobbly and his spelling atrocious, but he could spell his own name. She had to help him with hers. There was some blotting of ink and intense concentration as he recorded the date and wrote,
The weather is nice.

When he finished, he continued to leaf through the pages, pausing now and then to read. “Pretty boring,” he said. “Mostly dates and names.”

Karigan restrained the impulse to roll her eyes. “Our entry isn’t very exciting either.”

“I know.” Fergal sounded so disappointed that Karigan did roll her eyes.

She had weighed whether or not to tell him about the Eletians that passed their campsite some nights ago, but for some reason, she felt as though it had been a vision meant only for her. There was also the “personal message” at least one among them left her. Wasn’t it her duty to report any unusual sightings in the logbook as a warning to other Riders who passed this way?

She said nothing, did not request Fergal to pass her the logbook. She remained silent about the Eletians because it was
her,
not the other Riders, with whom they were playing games.

A snort from Fergal startled her back to the present.

“What?”

Fergal read slowly and carefully, not quite getting all the words right, an entry from Mara Brennyn:
“…I saved myself when my ability emerged for the first time; a ball of flame erupted from my palm and lit the kindling when my fingers were too numb to strike flint. Actually, I almost burned down the forest…”

Several miles north of Preble Waystation, at a campsite along a woods trail, Mara had broken through the ice of a pond in deepest winter. The emergence of her ability to create fire had saved her from freezing to death. Karigan once asked Mara what she had been doing on the pond, and the Rider had blushed. “Ice skating. I carry my blades with me during the winter. I thought the pond was safe.”

Karigan had learned early on that many of her colleagues had interesting and sometimes eccentric pastimes outside of the messenger service. When Karigan had laughed at Mara’s explanation, the Rider had said, “What? I grew up on a lake, and during the winter skating was the easiest way to reach the village.” Karigan hadn’t been laughing entirely at the idea of Mara ice skating, but at the fact the accident hadn’t been related to some danger of the job, which was most often the case with emerging Rider abilities.

“How far back does that book go?” Karigan asked.

“Seven years. It’s almost filled up.”

Mara had been called to the messenger service about six years ago. Riders often did not make it to five years, some because an accident befell them, others because their brooches simply abandoned them.

Fergal flipped through a few more pages before growing very still. Though Karigan continued to stare into the fire, she could feel his gaze on her.

Slowly, as though gathering courage, he asked, “When will I come into my magic?”

The plaintive question caught her off guard, but she supposed she should have anticipated it. If she were Fergal, she’d be curious, too. “It’s hard to say. It’ll make itself known when it’s ready to.”

“
I know.
That’s what Ty said. What does it mean?”

Karigan rocked more slowly. What
did
it mean? Her ability had surfaced before she’d even known or acknowledged herself to be a Rider. She’d never gone through a period of waiting and wondering.

“There’s no easy answer,” she said. “Your ability will become apparent when it needs to. They seem to require a crisis or some trauma to emerge, something that endangers the Rider or those around him, like when Mara fell through the ice. She’d have frozen to death if her ability hadn’t arisen to help her build a fire.”

“And like when you were being chased by Lord Mirwell’s men,” Fergal said.

“Yes.” The floorboards beneath her chair creaked as she rocked harder.

“Ty said they almost caught you.”

“Yes.”

“He said you turned invisible to escape them.”

“Yes. Well, more or less.” She would have to speak to Ty about how much he told the new Riders. It felt strange to have people talking about her.

“What was it like?” Fergal asked. “How did it happen exactly?”

He meant the emergence of her ability, but it was so tied up with other things, bad memories, that it was difficult to talk about even now. She turned the rocking chair to face him. Despite her reluctance, it was probably better to get this over with now so he wouldn’t plague her about it the entire journey.

“It was raining that day,” she began, “and a thick fog had settled into the forest. I had in my possession a message the Mirwellians dearly wanted to intercept before it could reach the king. At that point, I really had no idea of what it was all about, and since this was thrust upon me unexpectedly, I certainly knew nothing of the special abilities of Riders.”

“F’ryan Coblebay gave you his brooch,” Fergal said.

“Yes. I didn’t know what it meant at the time.” She remembered the dying Rider on the road. She remembered him pleading with her to carry his message to King Zachary and the blood that saturated his gauntlets as he reached out to her. She shook herself out of her reverie. It seemed ancient history, but now that she recalled it, it returned with startling clarity.

“Pursuit followed,” she continued, “and their captain found me. Immerez was his name. I was—I was terrified. I was caught, and I didn’t know what to do.”

“You cut off his hand, didn’t you?”

Karigan scowled. She would definitely have to have a talk with Ty. “That was later. This time I managed to escape. I wanted to disappear, I was so scared, and the brooch responded. I vanished from Immerez’s sight and that of his men.”