Blackveil

Then pray it is so for the others. Now, daughter of Kariny, we must get you on your way, because the more time that passes, the more my strength ebbs. First the bridge.

Laurelyn raised her hands to the moon and her palms filled with light. She then cast the light from her and it beamed in a glowing arc through the woods.

Moonbeams? “That ... that’s the bridge?” Karigan asked in incredulity.

Do not fear. It shall hold you, and the Sleepers, too.

Laurelyn began to sing, a melodious song without words, unearthly and unlike anything Karigan had ever heard before. She shivered. Laurelyn’s voice rose and expanded through the grove, flowing between the trees and up into the canopy.

Figures emerged from behind the trees and walked toward them, as though in a dream, unaware of their surroundings. These were not the creatures that had attacked Karigan and her companions. They were beautiful as all Eletians were, and untainted by the dark. Gradually hundreds stood arrayed before her and Laurelyn’s song faded. She spoke to them in Eletian, but they showed no signs of comprehension or wakefulness.

These are my people, Laurelyn told Karigan. All that remains of them. Among them are friends, confidants, and heroes of another age. Artists, poets, smiths, and architects. Please help them reach Eletia so something of Argenthyne lives on.

“I will,” Karigan said, only now fully appreciating the responsibility she was taking on.

Then cross the bridge. They will follow.

Karigan turned to leave.

Thank you, Laurelyn said. And remember, do not tarry in Eletia if you wish to return and aid your companions. My time is ending, and I shall not be able to hold the bridge for long.

Karigan nodded, then trotted down the terrace steps and walked between the Sleepers to reach the bridge. The Sleepers fell in behind, following her in silence. It was eerie.

When she reached the bridge, she gazed skeptically at it, or rather through it, for the moonbeams were translucent and she could see the ground beneath, which was not at all reassuring. She shook her head and took one step onto the bridge, and then another. It supported her just as Laurelyn said it would.

She continued with more assurance. It was as steady as walking on stone, but the bridge was narrow, and being able to see through it continued to disconcert her. She picked up her pace, and as she approached the apex of the arch, the way ahead grew cloudy, indistinct. She took a breath and plunged ahead.

The scents of the grove, the gentle air and sounds, vanished. Karigan emerged into the white world blinking. She’d begun calling it the “white world” the first time she’d passed through it, for the sky and the ground were both the same milky white color. She’d learned since that it was the space between the layers of the world, a transitional place just as Laurelyn had said. The two times she’d traversed its plains, she’d been confronted with visions, some metaphorical, some positively nightmarish. Once she had even seen the after-math of a battle, the ground strewn with the corpses of her friends . . . and the king.

At the moment she was enveloped in the white of the sky. The white world had a bleaching effect on her uniform as if color was not tolerated. And down below? She swallowed hard. Her previous passages through the white world had shown her a landscape of only featureless plains. This time she walked above a chasm so deep she could not perceive its bottom. She heard no water below, felt no updrafts or breezes, just saw the plunging depths where shades of white turned to shades of gray, and darkened beyond that.

Karigan had never feared heights, but she hastened her steps until she felt the solid white ground of the island beneath her feet. The Sleepers were right behind her, crossing the bridge in an orderly file. She thought them fortunate to be unaware of their surroundings.

It was the chasm that made the island an island; there was no milky sea or lake surrounding it. As Laurelyn had told her, the island was not even as large as the chamber that had housed the moondial. Karigan spotted the bridge on the other side that was supposed to cross into Eletia. It was a more ordinary looking bridge of stone and mortar.

She paced, waiting to ensure each and every Sleeper made it across the moonbeam bridge onto the island before she set off again. As each Eletian stepped off the bridge, she wondered if he or she were a poet or great hero. What had motivated them to take the long sleep? What were their names? What had they seen in their long lives? She cleared her throat and said hello to several of them, but none replied. They were entirely unaware of her, their eyes distant, filled with stars that did not exist here.

A gap opened on the bridge. A Sleeper hesitated on the arch, his posture different, less erect. Had he awakened while crossing? If so, he was probably startled to find himself on a translucent bridge spanning a strange chasm in the white world. Shocked was more like it. She decided she’d better help him.

She started back across the bridge. When the Sleepers started to follow her, she raised her hand and said, “No, stay.” For some reason, they obeyed and remained on the island.

Her relief was short-lived, for as she approached the arch, she realized it wasn’t one of her Sleepers standing there, but one of the tainted ones from Blackveil.

“Oh, no,” she whispered.

A second appeared through the haze behind him.

She started to back away, her staff held before her. How was she going to get her Sleepers across the second bridge to Eletia with these tainted ones behind them? It would be a massacre.

The first tainted one snarled and lunged.

MOONFIRE

Karigan did not hesitate. Her training had prepared her to act first and think later until it was instinctual. Before the tainted one reached her, she cracked him in the head with the staff’s steel handle. It slowed him down, but did not stop him, and she followed up with a low sweep to his knees. He fought for balance, his arms wheeling in the air. A third blow knocked him off the bridge.