Some strides into the dark, she collided with a suit of armor standing in the middle of the corridor, and went down in a tangle of steel arms and legs. It seemed the cleanup crews hadn’t bothered to pass this way.
Uxton and the others were on her, grabbing her from the embrace of the armor. She fought like a cat, trying to keep their hands off her at all costs. Using a well-placed elbow here, a heel there, and a few fist blows helped. The club grazed her hip and a fist to her temple sent her crashing down into the snow and armor.
She scrabbled through the snow and her hand fell upon a weapon, a mace entangled in the armor. She whipped it up and crushed the woman’s hand holding the club, and jammed the haft behind Uxton’s knee. He fell onto his back.
The blacksmith held the lamp aloft and glared down at her. “You will regret your resistance.” He raised his sword.
A maelstrom of wind and flying shapes suddenly appeared in the corridor. Snow swirled in great gusts and pelted them, the lamplight leaping and sputtering. A dreadful moaning coursed through the very stone of the corridor itself.
Cold, invisible hands helped raise Karigan to her feet, and there was muttering in her ears. The blacksmith’s eyes widened in fear and Uxton darted glances in every direction, his hand clamped around the hilt of his sword. The woman curled into a fetal position.
Translucent shapes lunged around the assailants, their moaning increasing in intensity. Karigan began to discern words: Death to the empire, death to the Black One, death to the empire . . . And the ones who touched her, and urged her on, whispered her name: Galadheon, Galadheon, Galadheon . . .
She let the ghosts bear her away into the dark. The darker it grew, the more their shapes defined. She glimpsed among them all the races of the lands, from the Sacor Clans to the folk of the Under Kingdoms, and some she did not recognize. Briefly a Green Rider appeared before merging into the mass of formless shapes.
Death to the empire, death to the Black One, do not let the empire rise again, Galadheon . . .
They ushered her into a room, and in the unreliable spectral glow, she stood there, chest heaving from her exertions, and brushed snow off her shoulders. It had not snowed in this chamber.
Now what? she wondered.
She supposed, on reflection, she should have guessed, but the traveling took her off guard yet again. It latched onto her brooch and dragged her through time. She wailed with surprise and wondered if some residue of her cry, trailing across the ages, came to the inhabitants of those times as the wailing of a ghost.
What were ghosts, after all? Were they beings like her, simply passing through time, or truly the spirits of the dead?
When the traveling ceased, she fell to the floor as if a carpet had been yanked out from beneath her feet. She arose to her knees to find a somber scene, her nose itching at the suffocating smoke of incense and candles. Every reflective surface in the chamber had been shrouded with dark cloth.
A figure lay in a bed, blankets drawn to her chest, her hair splayed across a pillow. There was a deathly pallor upon her flesh, and her breathing was barely perceptible. With some shock, Karigan realized it was Lil Ambrioth.
Two men hovered over Lil, one of whom was Rider Breckett.
“Aye, all that can be done has been done,” the other man said, “magically and with herbs.” He was, Karigan decided, a mender.
“I’d best get the king then,” Breckett said.
The mender gazed down at Lil as if in an attitude of prayer while he waited. Karigan rose and moved closer, and discerned the tang of blood and illness beneath the incense.
King Jonaeus entered abruptly, paused to take in the scene, and rushed to Lil’s side. He fell to his knees beside the bed and took her hand into his, and held it against his cheek.
“Tell me,” the king said after many moments had passed, “the truth of it. Do not hold anything back.”
The mender and Rider exchanged glances, and eventually the mender said, “The babe could not be saved. The women are . . . they’re readying him for his rites.”
The king closed his eyes and squeezed Lil’s hand. “Rites,” he murmured. “Birth and death rites for my boy child.” Then he glanced sharply at the mender. “What else?”
“We—we have exhausted all our gifted menders and used all our skills to help save her. She is very weak, my lord, very close to death. The miscarriage, and the arrow wound . . . Well, she has lost considerable blood, and I fear the wound is festering. I have prepared . . .” The mender licked his lips, and had considerable trouble bringing himself to utter his next words. “I have prepared a draught to ease her on her journey to Aeryc’s embrace should you command it. It would relieve her of pain and suffering.”
The king shuddered.
No! Karigan cried.
Lil murmured and rolled her head. Her eyes fluttered open.
Karigan could not reconcile this sickly, fevered woman with the Lil Ambrioth she had come to know. This creature in the bed was but a pale wraith of her. Karigan did not recognize her, the hero of the Long War, the powerful leader.
Lil’s gaze took in Jonaeus, who shook as he wept at her side.
“Dearest . . .” she murmured. Taxed by speaking, she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, her gaze fell upon Karigan. “Are you here to take me to the gods?”
The others in the room exchanged glances, murmuring about delirium.
Thunderous, pulsating wingbeats descended into the chamber, a sound no living mortal should ever hear, the wingbeats of Westrion, the Birdman, god of the dead. Only Karigan and Lil heard it.