Blackveil

“Be silent,” came Graelalea’s order down the line.

A screech pealed out overhead. Karigan’s toes curled in her boots. Eletian arrows nocked to bows tracked something overhead obscured by fog and trees. Another cry and the perception of vast wings beating the air. Water poured off branches.

It must be, Karigan thought, a flying creature, like the one that had crossed the breach last summer. An Eletian arrow sang and somewhere beyond their cloudy ceiling was impact and a screech that turned into a wail. The creature crashed through tree limbs as it fell to Earth somewhere beyond their sight.

“Good aim,” Yates said.

“A large target,” Solan replied. “An anteshey. It was hunting us.”

And just like that, they were off again. Off again and not stopping until the gloom deepened toward dusk once more. The Sacoridians staggered to a halt behind the Eletians in a slightly more flat and open space. There was stonework underfoot where not covered by black moss, and as Karigan took her bearings, she realized they were on a plateau of sorts with the far side giving way to a valley. She could only guess at its depth because of the fog. Granite steps descended into it, fading away as though leading into a different world.

Ard, who was the oldest among the Sacoridians, was bent double, still trying to catch his breath. He was very fit, but the pace had knocked the wind from them all.

“You trying to kill us?” he asked Graelalea.

“We made acceptable progress today.”

“Acceptable?”

Graelalea made no reply.

Lynx spoke quietly to Ard who nodded and said, “I’m all right. Thanks.”

Karigan slid her backpack to the ground and dropped down next to Yates whose legs were sprawled out before him.

“This must be one of the five hells,” he said.

“Told you,” Karigan replied half-heartedly, too tired to be smug.

“Don’t sit around too much,” Grant warned them, “or your muscles will cramp.”

He was right, of course, but Karigan could not bear the thought of standing on her feet again. They hurt unto numbness, and she had no idea what the blisters were doing. She’d beg Hana for some evaleoren salve before bed.

“I’ll get up if you do,” Yates said.

“Right.”

Neither of them moved, until clouds of biters found them and it became a feeding frenzy. They leaped up cursing and slathered on priddle cream from a tub Lynx passed them. The stuff stank, but it helped keep off the ravenous insects.

By the time Karigan and Yates finished raising their tent, someone had gotten a smoky campfire burning. Dark descended quickly, seeming to smother the fire. Without lumeni to give them light, night fell more densely than ever, until a couple of the Eletians produced their moonstones. The dark then peeled away from their campsite, and when Karigan gazed upward, she swore the trees recoiled from the light as if it burned them, the mist carrying the light like swirling smoke. Karigan did not pull out her own moonstone—she did not need to with the others alight. Idly she wondered when last a moonstone had shone in the forest.

“Ai!” cried Solan who knelt near the rim of the terrace, where the stone steps began their descent into the valley.

While the others gathered around Solan to see what the commotion was about, Yates stayed where he was.

“Tell me if it’s something that’ll eat us and then I’ll move,” he told Karigan.

She shook her head and joined the others. Solan was peeling back layers of moss from the terrace and wiping away dirt. Worms and centipedes squirmed away from the light. What Solan revealed were crystalline stars embedded into the flat terrace stone. They glittered brilliantly even beneath a film of grime. Further digging revealed a tree crowned by the phases of the moon.

“What is it?” Grant asked.

“It is a piece of time,” Graelalea replied.

“You mean a time piece, like a sundial.”

“More a moondial,” Karigan murmured and Grant glanced sharply at her.

“I mean a piece of time,” Graelalea said. “The Galadheon is somewhat correct, that the time is kept by the moon, though there is no moonlight to reach this one and it is missing its gnomon. It would have been placed here by the folk of Telavalieth whose village once lay down below.”

Curiosity got the better of Yates and he managed to rouse himself enough to come over, journal in hand. He deftly copied the design, ink bleeding on the damp paper. Solan cleared more moss, but there was no more to be seen. Eventually they all broke away to attend to camp duties and eat supper.

Later, when Karigan crawled into the dark confines of her tent, she detected Yates there still scratching away in his journal.

“Do you want a light?” she asked him, thinking her own moonstone could be of use.

“Nope.”

“Ah.” He was using his special ability to see in the dark. Now that she thought of it, he’d be able to see everything if she changed into the big shirt she liked to sleep in.

The scritch of pen on paper paused, and as if Yates knew her thoughts exactly, he said, “No need to blush. It’s not as if you have something I haven’t seen many times before. Not that I don’t enjoy it every time ...”

Karigan’s cheeks burned and Yates chuckled.

“You and your conquests,” she muttered.

“And you are one of my greatest challenges, impervious to all my charm and good looks. You are like an ocean that cannot be crossed, a mountain that can’t be climbed, a—oof!”