Blackveil

Karigan wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but she couldn’t help asking. “Why not?”

“That last night in the forest when we were alone? You were kind of delirious. You talked.”

“Oh, gods.” She blushed and hid her face behind her hand.

He patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry. We all have our unattainable longings.”

Peeking between her fingers she saw his earnest, sad gaze, and her mouth dropped open, unable to say anything.

She was rescued by the sound of footsteps. Ealdaen, along with Lynx, Telagioth, and Lhean, entered the chamber, their expressions weary and grim.

“How are you?” Lynx asked Karigan when he reached them.

“All right, considering,” she said.

He sat on the floor beside her, leaning back on his hands, his legs sprawled out before him. “Where did you go when you left us?”

“To the past and then . . . and then to Eletia.”

“Eletia?”

Karigan nodded and explained how she’d gone back in time to lead Laurelyn’s Sleepers to safety in Eletia. The whole reconciliation of past and present, especially trying to explain it, bent her mind in odd ways, and left Lynx and Yates scratching their heads because they recalled nothing of overwhelming numbers of tainted Sleepers attacking them. The Eletians remained unperturbed. “I think I met King Santanara,” she added.

The Eletians exchanged glances among themselves.

“Did you notice anything in particular about him?” Ealdaen asked in a deceptively mild voice.

“His hand,” she replied, lifting her own splinted and bandaged wrist. “It looked very bad. Blackened and crippled.”

“You met King Santanara, then,” Telagioth said. “His hand was thus injured when he stabbed Mornhavon with the Black Star in the last battle of the Long War. It was a wound no one, not even true healers, could fully treat. It was a source of great agony for him.”

“Yes,” Ealdaen agreed. “His only escape was to take the long sleep. You, Galadheon, came to him as he contemplated staying abroad to lead his people and succor them after the depredations of the Long War, or sleeping to forget the agony of his wound and the dark that clung to his spirit.”

“You . . . you knew I was there?” Karigan demanded. “And you didn’t tell me what I was going to do?”

“No, I did not know, for you were but a blurring of the air. It was the king who told us a Green Rider brought the Sleepers. The last mortal to set foot in Eletia.”

Karigan opened her mouth and closed it. This was not just bending her mind, it was twisting it into knots.

“Why does Karigan get to have all the fun?” Yates demanded.

“Fun?” She thrust her injured wrist into his face, then returned her gaze to Ealdaen. “If you knew the outcome for the Sleepers, why didn’t you tell us?”

“We did not know. It had not happened yet. We were in a different thread of time. And as old memories vanish, different ones emerge. We had suspicions, however. There are those among us who can see across such threads. King Santanara was one, and his son, Prince Jametari, is another.”

“Paradoxes,” Karigan muttered. “So confusing.”

“Your species is limited by its linear and mortal mold. Eletians have eternity to contemplate such complexities.”

“In other words,” Yates drawled to Karigan, “give up trying to make sense of it.”

“If we had told you what we suspected,” Ealdaen said, “it might have created a false sense of confidence leading to failure. There are thousands of possible, ever-changing threads and we could have been wrong. This was but one.”

Threads or no, Karigan could not get over the feeling she’d been masterfully manipulated yet again.

REDBIRD

A shock of crimson darted through the bleakness of Blackveil, the wings of the redbird beating a steady rhythm. The redbird did not pause in its flight, was unwavering in its route, for as a creature of etherea, it required no rest or sustenance. Predators did not perceive it as prey, but as the impulse of magic, and therefore they did not hinder it. It sped bright and fleeting through the trees and murk of the forest, a spell venturing on its way to fulfillment.

Only when the redbird reached the break in the great wall did it pause, perching on a tree limb on the other side in the unfamiliar world of sunshine. It gazed upon the humans busy at work in their encampment, but the one it sought was not in this place.

And yet not far away. The redbird launched from its branch and flew eastward, the wall flowing along its wingtip. It would not be long now before the redbird’s reason for existing came to fruition.

Despite the welcome spring sunshine, a gloom settled on Alton’s shoulders as he left the pickets and headed across the encampment. It wasn’t Estral that darkened his morning, for she brought lightness and joy to his life. He now saw the world as more lovely than he’d ever perceived it before, and the music . . . How had he gone through life without music filling his hours? Estral woke him in the mornings with song, carried him through the days with lute music, and soothed him to sleep with lullabies.

It was not just Alton who was uplifted by her presence, but it seemed the entire encampment was as well. She inspired countless campfire sing-alongs and performances by normally taciturn soldiers and laborers discovering hidden talents.

The wall continued to mend in nearly imperceptible increments, tiny cracks filling in, retreating toward the breach. The hole in the roof of Tower of the Heavens continued to shrink, all thanks to Estral and her music.