Karigan said nothing. Mara could not see her expression from behind.

The king called on a couple of his Weapons to escort Karigan back to the mending wing. At the captain’s nod, Mara followed. She would stay with her friend, and explain to the master mender why her patient had written all over the walls.

As she made her way toward the doors, she overheard the king tell the captain, “She has done enough. More than enough for this realm. I will not have her ride into danger like that again. I won’t have it.”

As Mara left the throne room, she wondered if King Zachary ever argued so forcefully on behalf of any of his other Riders. She did not think so. Karigan wasn’t just another Rider to him.

MEMORIES FADING

Karigan was moved to a new room in the mending wing with a whole stack of paper, should she feel inclined to use ink again. In the meantime, clerks were dispatched by the king to transcribe her notes off the walls, bed sheets, and nightgown in her old room. She even let them copy the writing on her arm before she washed it off.

Despite the stack of paper, she still wrote one word on her arm: Cade, and wore it beneath the sleeve of the new uniform Mara had brought her, her old uniform pieces having been redistributed to new Riders upon her presumed death.

The captain checked on her in the evening. “We’ll send word of your return to your father once the weather clears,” she said, then asked questions to clarify aspects of Karigan’s experiences. Already, Karigan had forgotten much.

“Dr. Silk?” She pondered the name and felt a sense of unease about it, but she lacked even the basic knowledge of who he had been. It frustrated her unto tears, but Captain Mapstone promised her a transcript of her notes. What made it worse was that the memories were so dreamlike that Karigan questioned ever having been in the future at all.

It was the Eletians who helped.

The next morning, Somial arrived with his companions. “Do you remember me, youngling?”

“Somial! I could never forget!” Then she realized she could. Cade, Cade, Cade . . .

Somial smiled and introduced his companions, Idris and Enver.

“How do you do?” Enver asked, offering his hand.

She took it, bemused. “Er, fine. And yourself?”

“Very well, thank you.”

She might have pondered his very un-Eletianlike greeting, and the fact he did not look entirely Eletian, but she nearly leaped on what he carried with him.

“My staff!”

Enver presented it to her with a bow. She took it eagerly. “Where was it?” She wasn’t really sure she had known it was missing in the first place, at least not like her saber, which she’d lost in Castle Argenthyne in Blackveil.

“It came back with Lhean,” Somial replied, “when he returned from the future time.”

That’s right, Karigan thought, forcing herself to remember. Lhean had been there with her. Somial had just now confirmed that she had gone forward in time and that it wasn’t a dream. I’ve not gone mad.

“Lhean—is he well?”

“Yes. He arrived ahead of you, at the end of summer.”

She scratched her head, wondering how he had arrived so much sooner, then remembered Westrion. Westrion snatching her from Lhean’s side, flinging her through the heavens. “I would not have made it home without Lhean,” she said. Though she could not quite remember how it had all transpired, she was certain it was true.

“Nor he, you,” Somial replied. He leaned toward her more closely, peering at her. “I can sense the distance traveled upon you, youngling. Laurelyn and her moons have faded from the world, but stars shine upon your brow. Such travel is difficult enough for an eternally-lived one such as Lhean and can only be more disorienting for a mortal. And yet . . .”

Mesmerized by his voice and intensity, Karigan had to shake herself as if waking from a dream. “I—I am disoriented. Or, at least, I’m forgetting everything.”

“That is because, by returning, you have changed the threads proceeding forward. What you experienced will never happen. Therefore, your memories of events that never happened are fading and will cease to exist.”

She thought this might be so, had prayed it was the reason for her loss of memory. “But those things did happen.”

“Yes,” Somial replied. “They did. Your captain is ensuring that what you have managed to remember is recorded.”

He spoke of the other Eletian members of the Blackveil expedition. Ealdaen and Telagioth were also well, but all of Eletia still mourned Hana, Solan, and Graelalea.

“I lost the feather Graelalea gave me,” Karigan said sadly. “If I still had it, I might remember everything.”

“Even a feather of the winter owl has its limitations,” Somial replied, “but Graelalea’s gift was well given. That you no longer have it means it was not meant to be.”

Karigan rubbed at her bandaged eye. It itched and prickled. Even Ben, using his ability of true healing, had been unable to relieve it.

“Does your eye pain you?” Somial asked.

“It feels irritated most of the time.”

“May I see?”

“I don’t know . . .” Even the menders who tended it did not care to look too closely. She did not know what they were keeping from her, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. In any case, the new master mender had firmly told her to keep the bandage in place, and insinuated Karigan would find herself in considerable trouble otherwise.