“Tell me,” she said, “did you die of the arrow?”
There was spectral blurring as Lil stood. She strode across the loft in agitation, then looked down upon Karigan, and as she faded away, she spoke. How did you die?
Karigan sank back into the hay stunned, and found comfort only in the king’s longcoat.
Karigan moved with great care atop the foundation of Rider barracks, side-stepping heaps of rubble. Laborers had knocked down the hazardous chimneys only this morning, and sawed down charred beams that had still been standing or hanging precariously.
All had been lost. She found only hints of the lives that had inhabited barracks: a boot heel, the charred pages of a book—when she touched it, the pages turned to ash and drifted into the breeze. She found deformed buckles and cutlery, and broken crockery protruding from the soot like fragments of bone.
Two hundred years of Rider history was gone, the corridors Gwyer Warhein once strode, the rooms in which Bard Martin and Ereal M’Farthon had slept, and the common room where generations of Riders had raised their voices in laughter and song.
She paused where her own room had once stood. The damage here was even more severe than other parts of barracks. Hep told her the fire had started in this vicinity. Gone were her few books and spare uniforms, and whatever other trinkets she had kept.
A sparkle in the rubble caught her eye. Stepping carefully on weakened floorboards, she squatted down and looked closely. More sparkles rippled in rainbow hues across the ruins in front of her. Moonstone fragments.
She took one into her hand. Sharp and clear, it refracted the sunlight in different intensities as she turned it over on her palm. She closed her fingers around it. It had been unblemished by the fire, and it was almost as if it had captured the light of the fire within itself. She dared not collect other fragments for fear of falling through the floorboards. In an odd way, it gladdened her that things of such beauty drew the sun to a place of such devastation. She dropped the fragment into the ashes.
Before she stood, she caught sight of something else, a pattern of black against black, an irregular circlet. Unable to reach it with her hand, she drew her longknife and retrieved it on the blade’s tip. It was a lead crown of twined branches. A crown like the wraith Varadgrim had worn. But how could a crown made of lead have withstood the heat of the fire? Before she could even contemplate its significance, it lost shape and writhed on the end of her blade. She cried out and dropped it onto the foundation, where it oozed and boiled like a live thing, blue-black and oily.
Wild magic. Tainted.
It slithered off the foundation to the ground, and burrowed beneath charred earth and vanished.
Karigan shuddered. What had the wraith been doing here, here at Rider barracks? In her own room? What had it been after? Had Mara or Ephram had the misfortune of encountering it? There were so many questions, and only Mara had the answers, if she lived long enough to give them.
Covered in soot and ashes, Karigan turned to jump from the foundation when her toe nudged a piece of metal. She picked it up. Blackened and contorted, she nevertheless knew exactly what it was: her mother’s mirror. Yet another piece of her own history destroyed. Never again would she gaze into the mirror as her mother once had, never would she see in it again the reflection her father said so resembled Kariny’s.
The first Rider to return from an errand arrived that afternoon. Karigan found Garth kneeling in front of barracks, his face stricken with a shock she knew only too well. She stood beside him, her hand on his massive shoulder. His mare, Chickadee, stood on his other side, head low and ears flicking back and forth.
“Wh-what happened?” Garth asked.
She told him best as she could, about the fire, Ephram, Mara. And the news about Alton, a quaver in her voice. She had never seen the big man cry before. There had been no gentle way to break the news to him, and maybe in retrospect, he’d appreciate her forthrightness.
Chickadee lipped at her partner’s shoulder, knowing something was greatly amiss. With Hep’s help, Karigan walked Garth to the mending wing, where he accepted a sleeping draught without argument. Once he was safely abed and snoring, Karigan sought out the mender, Ben.
She found him in a workroom aromatic with herbs, jars filled with powders for remedies lining shelves. At a table he crushed dried leaves with a pestle. When he noticed her entrance, he dropped the pestle and backed away.
Karigan frowned, and raised her hands to show him she was unarmed. He relaxed, but remained at a safe distance.
“I came to apologize,” Karigan said, “for my behavior last night.”
“Thank you. I understand you were under great duress.”
“I still am,” she said softly, “but it’s no excuse. I don’t know why I drew the sword. It was wrong.”
A period of awkwardness followed. “Rider Brennyn’s condition is unchanged,” Ben offered.
“I see.”
Her disappointment was so plain, he added, “It’s better than you think. She hasn’t declined.”
She smiled briefly. “Thank you. Will you continue to update me?”
“Of course, Rider.”
“Please, call me Karigan.”
This time Ben smiled.
Later, Karigan returned to the stable loft to sleep. She spread out her bedroll on the hay and laid down. She covered herself with the king’s longcoat. She knew she should have returned it, but she guessed he wouldn’t miss it for just one more night. Right now, it was the only comfort she had.
Early the next morning, she was summoned by a runner of the Green Foot to attend the king. Reluctantly she draped his longcoat over her arm and hastened after the runner.