“Damn my sight,” Yates said. “We’re lost in Blackveil and it’s all my fault.”
“No,” Karigan said heavily. “It’s not your fault. It’s the forest. It’s probably affected your ability, warped it.” Their Rider abilities had been considered an asset for sending them into Blackveil, but now those very abilities were working against them. Perhaps they should have known better. After all, when the wild magic of the forest had leaked into Sacoridia last summer, it had wrought havoc with their abilities. Was that why she was able to travel back in time last night?
“If I hadn’t been so eager to come, we wouldn’t be lost. You would be with the rest of them.”
Karigan shrugged, then remembering he couldn’t see her, she laid her hand on his shoulder. “We can’t say what could have been. We’ll make the best of this, and I’m sure the others will come looking for us.” But of course she was not.
He gave a rattling sigh and slumped his shoulders.
“Oh, Yates.” She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed hard. “We’re Green Riders. We’ve been through worse.”
“I don’t know,” he said. Then smiling slightly, he added, “Maybe you have.”
Karigan lowered her pack off her shoulder and sat at the base of a tree she thought looked safe enough to begin working the thorns out of her leg. She wasn’t sure she’d been through worse, either. Tears of pain welled in her eyes and she tried not to cry out so she didn’t worry Yates.
Yates sat beside her. “What are we going to do about a camp?”
“Camp?” She pried out another thorn, its barbs tearing out flesh with it. She swallowed back the pain.
“Yeah, since our tent was with my pack.”
She hadn’t thought about it. As if to mock her, the drizzle turned into pouring rain. It at least washed away some of the blood.
“Well?” Yates asked.
“I guess we make a shelter.” She knew there was no we. Without his sight, Yates was not going to be able to provide much help.
Karigan tentatively rose, grimacing as she placed weight on her right leg. “I’m going to go look for sticks. Stay here.”
“Don’t—don’t leave me!” He sounded so desperate.
“I’m not going far. You’ll be in my view the whole time.”
Yates huddled his knees to his chest looking miserable. Karigan limped off, leaning on her bonewood cane and using it to tap sticks on the ground. Most simply crumbled apart revealing writhing insects and worms. She’d have to hack branches off trees. She returned to Yates.
“That you, Karigan?” he asked.
“Yep.”
“Is there something you’re not telling me? You sound different. Like you’re not moving right.”
Karigan picked through her pack for her hatchet. “So now you claim your hearing is that good?”
“Well, if I can’t see, I can focus on my hearing.”
“I got poked by thorns is all. Aha!” Hatchet now in hand she turned to their tree, gazing at it with trepidation. Might she disturb something dangerous, even deadly, by hacking into it? She shrugged. They needed sticks for their shelter, and that was that. She swung the hatchet, chopping at the lowest branches, which were bare of needles. She hoped for the best—that she wouldn’t dislodge any creatures that lived among the branches, or that the tree wouldn’t awaken and retaliate against them in some way.
When nothing happened and Karigan had acquired the desired limbs, she sighed in relief. Sometimes a tree was just a tree.
“If only I had some twine,” she muttered.
“I’ve a ball of string,” Yates said, “for measuring. Would that help?” Despite losing his pack in Telavalieth, he’d retained the old message satchel slung over his shoulder that held his journal and writing materials. He felt around inside it and pulled out a ball of string.
Karigan laughed. “I knew I brought you along for a reason.”
“For my string and not my good looks obviously.”
“Obviously.”
She used the string to bind the branches into the rough frame of a lean-to, and covered it with her oilskin cloak. She placed it at the base of their tree, the tree shielding them from the worst pounding of the rain. They had to huddle close together to fit beneath the lean-to.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be dry again,” Yates said. “I wish we had Mara here to light a fire.”
“I wouldn’t wish this on her,” Karigan replied, “or any of the others. And if Blackveil is warping Rider abilities, I can’t imagine what it would do to hers.”
“Burn the forest down maybe,” Yates said. “Wouldn’t be such a bad thing.”
Karigan wrapped one of her blankets around the both of them. It, too, was damp, but she thought it might help insulate them from the chill. They leaned together, their combined body heat helping.
She knew she needed to apply some priddle cream to her thorn punctures, something she ought to have done immediately, but getting the shelter up had seemed more important at the time. She also thought about their food supply. She’d have to share what remained in her pack with Yates, breaking it into half-rations, because there was no telling when or if the others would come for them.
The gray and damp oppressed her more than ever. She wondered how things were back in Sacor City, at the castle. Was the weather fair there? What was Mara up to? The new Riders? She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the pasture full of messenger horses, but all she saw was shadows.