A raven squawked from a branch above, jolting Karigan in her saddle. Condor bobbed his head as if to laugh at her and say, “Look who’s nervous now.”
Karigan licked her lips and focused on the clearing ahead. What might await them there? Groundmites? Eletians? Which would be worse? She thought she knew. Through the trees she glimpsed a shape in the clearing’s center that did not look natural.
Ty signaled a halt. “Carefully,” he mouthed.
Karigan nodded and wrapped her fingers about the hilt of her saber. A soft breeze made the tall spruce trees sway and creak.
Ty motioned forward and they rode into the clearing.
Sunlight dazzled Karigan’s eyes and she blinked furiously, then an itchy sensation crawled across her skin.
“Wha—?” she began, and then just as quickly it passed.
“Did you feel that?” Ty said.
Karigan nodded. “It felt like a warding.”
She took stock of the clearing. Dominating its center was a great rock cairn from which no tree, grass, or moss grew, though the edges of the rocks appeared blunted by weathering as though over a great span of time.
Along the clearing’s perimeter stood obelisks like stern fingers admonishing them to turn back. There were no groundmites or Eletians lying in wait for them, but the loathing Karigan felt increased tenfold.
Ty edged Flicker over to one of the obelisks. “These must be ward stones.” He pressed his hand against the pale stone but quickly snatched it away. Then, more tentatively, he placed his palm against it.
“Come tell me what you think of this.”
Karigan reined Condor over to the obelisk, amazed that “Rider Perfect,” as the others liked to call Ty, requested her opinion.
The obelisk was carved with runes and pictographs like those they had seen earlier on the waymarkers. Some were so worn or encrusted by green and blue lichens that they were difficult to make out. Karigan trailed her fingers across the cool stone and immediately felt a tingling swarm up her arm. A faint hum sputtered in her mind. She withdrew her hand.
“The ward is dying,” she said.
Ty nodded in approval, still the mentor, though Karigan’s days as a messenger-in-training were well past.
“Doesn’t feel like it’s going to hold up much longer,” she added.
“I agree.”
Just like anything else in the world, it seemed even magical spells had only a certain lifespan before they wore out. It made Karigan think that the wards set around Rider waystations were much newer than these, though it had been a hundred years or more since a Rider had possessed the ability to work with spells of warding. If this were the case, then the obelisks must indeed be ancient.
They explored the clearing further, stopping to examine each obelisk, each of which looked much like the ones before. There were fourteen in total. Karigan gave the cairn a wide berth while they looked about. The loathing never left her, but she sensed no immediate peril.
“Do you suppose it’s a burial cairn?” she asked Ty.
He gazed hard at it. “I can’t think of what else it might be. Long ago, important people used to be buried with all their household goods beneath such cairns.” He rode around it, apparently unaffected, or at least unperturbed, by any sense of dread that might arise from it. “Those had ornamental seals over the entrances. This has no entrance, and it’s like all the rocks were just dumped on top of it for good measure.”
“Not exactly a sign of respect,” Karigan said. What it was a sign of, she couldn’t imagine. Maybe to discourage grave robbers? Why else ward a burial cairn? And why wasn’t Westrion, god of the dead, pictured on any of the ward stones? Even to this day, the Birdman’s visage was a common funerary emblem.
No, not Westrion, but . . . She passed her fingers across one of the faded inscriptions. A horse? Could it be Salvistar, Westrion’s messenger? Salvistar was the harbinger of strife and battle. It was said that wherever he appeared, battle, destruction, and death were certain to follow. She shook her head. It was impossible to know, for the figure could have meant anything to those who erected the obelisks. The pictograph of the horse might simply represent, well, a plain old horse.
Ty rejoined her, Flicker’s hooves clopping on the granite ledge. He glanced up at the high sun. “I’m afraid it’s a mystery we’ll never unravel. We should head back.”
They left the cairn behind, much to Karigan’s relief. The magic itched across her skin again as she passed between the ward stones, and a new thought occurred to her.
“Ty,” she said, “how do we know the wards were set to keep things out?”
“What do you mean? What else could they be for?”
“What if the wards were meant to keep something in?”
Ty had no answer for her.
The soldiers who served as outriders for the delegation had come up with the motto: “There is no road to Eletia.” And it was true. The North Road, which was the northernmost road that cut through the dense Green Cloak Forest, reached only so far, and after a certain point even the trails of foresters and trappers petered out.
The delegation had had to leave behind its carts and carriages in the village of North, loading all essential supplies onto a string of pack mules. Nobles, servants, soldiers, and Green Riders alike rode horseback, a pleasure for some, and a hardship for others unused to long days in the saddle.
The outriders had ended up being assigned the task of clearing the way for the delegation, though often enough the delegation moved freely through the woods thanks to the expertise of the bounder who guided them. At other times, however, deadfalls and underbrush had to be hacked out of the way.