They all stood there in the castle entrance, overcome by a heavy silence—no dripping of water, no screeching of forest creatures, nothing. And it was not dark. A dull glow shone through the walls, like being inside an eggshell, and yet the castle had thick walls, didn’t it? No, not an eggshell, Karigan decided, but a seashell. The walls gleamed with a pearlescent sheen, not unlike Eletian armor.
The chamber they had entered was the bottom of one of the great towers and they could look up into its seemingly infinite heights, stairs and walkways winding up along the walls, bridges crisscrossing at various levels. Doors opening to who-knew-what lined the walls. The decay of the forest did not permeate the tower. Rather, Karigan had the sense of a place long sealed off from the rest of the world, abandoned and lifeless, but still a bulwark against the dark.
Lynx had lain Graelalea on a blanket on the floor and he and Ealdaen were tending her wound.
“No,” Graelalea gasped. “Need Galad . . .”
Yates nudged Karigan. “What do you see? What’s happening? Where are we?”
But she did not answer him. She left him and took halting steps toward Graelalea as though some will other than her own drew her.
“Galad . . . Galadheon,” Graelalea whispered.
Karigan dropped to her knees beside the Eletian. Blood stained the blanket beneath her and trickled from the corner of her mouth. Her eyes had dulled.
“I’m here,” Karigan said.
“As foretold,” Graelalea said, her voice scarcely a whisper. “I shall not be leaving Blackveil.”
Ealdaen protested in Eletian.
“No, peace, Ealdaen,” she replied. “It is a death wound. Hear me, the Galadheon . . . the Galadheon must complete . . .” She raised her hand and reached for her hair, and in a gesture that appeared to sap all her remaining strength, she tugged a feather loose from a braid and handed it to Karigan. “Enmorial. Remember. Must cross thresholds, Galadheon. Go with the moon.”
Graelalea’s body slackened, the life extinguished from her eyes. Ealdaen and the other Eletians took up a cry of despair that soared upward into every recess of the tower.
“Good-bye,” Karigan murmured to Graelalea, and even as she watched, the Eletian’s armor dimmed, darkened, as if it, too, were dying.
The Eletians settled Graelalea’s body in the very center of the round chamber and covered her with her gray-green cloak. They placed her moonstone upon her chest and it gave off a dim, gentle glow, and they sat around her in silent vigil.
“This won’t do,” Ard muttered, pacing back and forth. “What are we gonna do? Stand around forever waiting for them?” He jerked his thumb at the Eletians.
“She was their princess and leader,” Karigan said, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her chest felt thick with sorrow, but she was unable to shed tears for the feather captivated her, diverted her thoughts. She twirled it before her eyes. It was so white it almost glowed, except for the spray of blood, crimson on pure white. It was causing something to awaken inside her.
“I don’t care,” Ard replied. “Telagioth said those groundmites have magic and they might find a way in here soon.”
“The nythlings don’t like it here,” Grant said. He sat curled up against the wall. The pale light of the castle gleamed on his sweaty face. “Almost time, but they don’t like it here.”
“Hey,” Yates said, his voice, in contrast, excited. “I . . . I think I can almost see. Just shapes, mostly gray, but . . .”
Karigan was glad, but in a distracted way. Just as something was awakening in her, perhaps it was in Yates, too. The castle. The castle must be nulling the backlash effect the forest had on Yates’ ability, but that did not explain what was happening to her.
Then suddenly she understood, for she began to remember. It came to her as a light touch on her brow, feather-light, like flurries of snow falling and flashing in the silver glow of her moonstone. She remembered standing in the snow beside her father’s sleigh where a figure of light had told her she must travel to Blackveil to help the Sleepers, that if “the enemy” awakened them they would become a deadly weapon.
The figure had told Karigan she could cross thresholds and that she was “the key.” Somehow all of this could aid the Sleepers.
The feather of the winter owl, given to her by Graelalea, had opened her memory, but memory did not serve her. How was she to help the Sleepers? What did it mean she was the key?
Pounding startled her. The groundmites were banging on the doors. One thing was clear: “the enemy” was without and she had to figure out how to prevent them from awakening the Sleepers.
SEEKING BLOOD
Grandmother and her groundmites had toiled their way around the black lake and through the remains of the city. The chronicles of her people had prepared her for the odd aesthetics of the Eletians and their ever spiraling streets, but the groundmites disregarded the streets, using rough trails through the ruins they must have broken and learned about over the generations. If there were obstacles or some predator in their path, they lunged forward with unbridled enthusiasm and battered down whatever was in the way.
The castle towers loomed over the craggy, dark ruins, sometimes seeming to float, depending on the whimsy of the fog. It was not absolutely clear in the chronicles if Mornhavon occupied the castle after defeating Argenthyne or left it to rot. Even if he had occupied it, the chronicles suggested he preferred his fortress in the west, on the shore of Ullem Bay. She could not blame him, for the towers here were otherworldly, disquieting, exuding the taint of Eletian power even after so much time.