Kristen Britain - Green Rider 1 - Green Rider

Green Rider

Kristen Britain

GRAY ONE

The granite was cold and rough against the gray-cloaked man's palms. It was good, solid granite, from

the bones of the earth itself. He traced barely perceptible seams between the huge blocks of the wall. It

was the seams, he believed, that held the key. The key to the wall's destruction.

The wall towered above him to some unknown height. It was many feet thick, and it followed Sacoridia's

southern border for hundreds of miles, from the East Sea to Ullem Bay in the west. It protected

Sacoridia and the rest of the lands from Kanmorhan Vane, which in the common means Blackveil

Forest.

The wall had endured for a thousand years. It had been built after the Long War at the turn of the First

Age. For a thousand years, the denizens of the dark forest had grown restless, had festered, trapped

behind the wall.

Now the Gray One must call on them and end their exile. He would bring these nightmares back into the

daylit world. He would bring them slowly. Slowly at first.

The wall was bound with such deep magic that it prickled his hands. The magic was ancient and

powerful, even for the works of those long-ago humans. Today humans understood none of it. They

knew little of what their ancestors had been capable of. Nor did they know what they, the citizens of

present-day Sacoridia, were still capable of.

A good thing.

He brushed the layers of magic with his mind. Magic had been melded into each block of granite from the

moment it was quarried, through its cutting, finishing, and placement. The mortar had been inlaid with

strengthening spells not only to ensure that the wall stood for all time, but to prevent magic from breaking

it.

Oh, the spell songs the stonecutters must have sung as they hammered drills into the rock and refined the

mortar mixture. The wall was magnificent, really. A great accomplishment that had taken generations of

humans to complete. A pity it must be destroyed.

The Gray One smiled beneath the shadows of his hood. He would return the world to a state it hadn't

known since before the Long War, far beyond the First Age, a time lost to memory; a time when humans

lived in primitive bands that stalked herd beasts and game. There had been no kings back then, no

countries, no organized religions. Just superstition and darkness. During the Black Ages, as that long-ago

time was now called, they had had a better understanding of magic than they did today.

The Gray One looked up. The pink clouds of dawn were fading, and birds squabbled in the trees. His

collaborators would be growing impatient for his return. He supposed they had every right to be

impatient: they were mortal.

He closed his eyes and shielded himself. He began to follow songs of quarrymen and stonecutters

wrought in a tongue modern Sacoridians would not recognize. The music sprang from the earth's bones;

it wove strands of resistance, barriers, and containment.

The echoes of hammers wielded by stonecutters centuries ago clamored in the Gray One's head. The

blows jarred him, rang deep in his mind. He gritted his teeth against the pain and probed deeper.

Men and women sang in unison. Their song intensified as his thoughts rippled along the seams. He caught

the harmony of their ancient voices, allowed the cadence of the hammers to invade his mind, and he sang

with them.

His body swayed to the rhythm, and dripped with perspiration. But his body was a distant thing now, an

afterthought, for his mind was deep within the granite. He flowed within the pink feldspar and crystalline

quartz, within the pepper flecks of hornblende. He felt powerful enough to withstand the Ages, untouched

by the weathering forces of nature. He could endure anything. But he must surpass this power. He must

become stronger than even the granite to break the wall.

His voice found its own harmony running counter to the rhythm within the wall. All great things must

fall, he sang. Sing with me, follow me.

Far away, his forefinger tapped the new rhythm on the wall. It wasn't enough yet to disturb the hundreds

of hammers, but it helped create discord. But did he detect uncertainty in the song? Did some of the

hammers lose the rhythm?

A splintering akin to the spring cracking of lake ice scattered his thoughts. He lost his bearing. The song

and rhythm faded, his solidarity with the wall wavered.

His body absorbed his mind like a sponge. The force sent him flailing backward, stunned and unwieldy in

his corporeal form. When he remembered how to use his legs and arms, he inspected his handiwork.

Yes, yes, yes! A hairline fracture in the mortar. The wound would grow, and he could come back and

break the D'Yer Wall!

Now he must return to the camp where the humans awaited him. Cracking the wall had sapped a great

deal of his energy—there was barely enough left to transport him. He would be in bad shape for the rest

of the day, but the soldiers would be impatient to hunt down the Green Rider.

Soon he would be done with this intrigue the humans so valued, but for now, it served his purpose.

As he slung the longbow and quiver of black arrows over his shoulder, he felt someone's gaze upon him.

He looked wildly about but saw only an owl roosting on a branch above. It blinked, extinguishing its

moon eyes, and twisted its head away, as owls do.

The Gray One had nothing to fear from an owl preoccupied with its early morning hunt. He spread his

arms wide to begin the summoning. They trembled from the effort of having cracked the wall. "Come to

me, O mortal spirits. You are mine to hold, bound to me in this world. Walk with me now and take me

where I must go."

He willed them to him, and they couldn't resist his call. A host of spirits, like a watery blur, gathered

around him. Some sat mounted on horses, others stood afoot. Among them were soldiers, old men,

women, and children. Ordinary citizens stood beside knights. Beggars huddled next to nobility. All were

impaled with two black arrows each.

"By the arrows of Kanmorhan Vane, I command you to walk with me now. We will walk on the quick

time roads of the dead."

DEAD RIDER

[Image]

Karigan G'ladheon awakened to the chitter of waxwings and chickadees. Mourning doves cooed and

jays defended their territories with raucous song and fluttering wings. Above her, the sky opened up like

an expansive dusky canopy that winked with stars. The moon hung low in the west.

Karigan groaned. She lay at the edge of a fallow farmer's field, behind a hedgerow, and her back wasn't

taking it well.

She pushed damp hair away from her brow. Everything was wet with dew and her clothes stuck to her

like a cold and clammy second skin. She remembered aloud why she was here.

"To get away from Selium."

Her own voice startled her. Aside from the birds, the countryside was wide open and empty and silent.

There would be no tolling of Morningtide Bell here, nor the familiar creaking of floorboards as her fellow

students moved around in her old dormitory building preparing for a day of classes.

She stood up and shivered in the chill spring air. Indeed, she was "away" from Selium, and would get

farther away still before the day was done. She gathered her blanket and things, stuffed them into her

pack, stepped over the hedgerow, and started walking. She carried little more than a hunk of bread,

some cheese, a change of clothes, and some jewelry that had belonged to her mother—the only objects

precious enough to her to carry away. All the rest had been left in the dormitory in her haste to leave

Selium.

She walked briskly to stave off the chill, the gravel of the road crunching beneath her boots. The rising

sun, with its bands of orange and gold, drew her east.

As she walked, the glistening grasses of farm fields transformed into thick stands of fir and spruce blotting

out the newly risen sun and darkening the road.

This was the edge of the Green Cloak she entered, an immense wood that grew thick and wild in the

heart of Sacoridia. Its more tame borders marched in snatches and thickets right down to the shores of

Ullem Bay and the foothills of the Wingsong Mountains. The bulk of the wood was dense and unbroken,

save for villages and towns that made islands of themselves in its interior, and the occasional woods road

that, from an eagle's view, she thought, must cut through it like a scar.

Such roads were often in conflict with their surroundings. It didn't take much for saplings to start growing

in the middle of woods roads and winter blow downs to topple across them, eventually obscuring the

least used. A carpet of rusty pine needles softened Karigan's footfalls and gave this road an abandoned

look, though it was the main thoroughfare leading into Selium from points east.

Karigan walked till her stomach growled. She sought out a warm patch of sun surrounded by solid, cold

shade, and washed down chunks of bread and cheese with handfuls of water from a gurgling stream next

to the road. It wasn't the choicest water, but it would have to do.

Afterward, she splashed cold water on her face. She felt altogether bedraggled after just one night on the

road, and she longed for the hot baths and full meals the school served up.

"Don't tell me I miss it…" She glanced over her shoulder as if the entire campus, with its templelike

academic buildings looming over the city from atop its hill, might pop into view.

It was curious how a night on the road made yesterday's events seem somehow less significant, less

hurtful. Karigan half-turned, gazing back down the road which, within a day's walk, ended at the school.

Her hands tightened into balls and she clenched her jaw. She would show the dean.

Kick me out of school, will you? Let's see how you like confronting my father. She grinned,

imagining her father, his expression livid, towering over a shrinking Dean Geyer.

Then her shoulders sagged and her grin faltered. It was no good. She had no control over her father.

What if he agreed with the dean that her punishment was just?

She kicked the ground and pebbles skittered across the road. Gods, what a mess. She hoped to reach

Corsa before the dean's letter did, so she could tell her father her side of the story first. Either way, she

would be in deep trouble. Maybe she ought to hire herself out on a merchant barge and stay away for

good. After all, that's what her father had done when he was a boy.

She jammed her hands into her pockets, and with head bowed, ambled along the rutted road at a

reluctant pace.

She startled a baby squirrel sitting on an old lightning-racked stump. It pipped and squealed, its tail

abristle. It stamped in place, then darted from one edge of the stump to the other, as if too frightened to

decide which way to go.

"Sorry I scared you, little one," Karigan said.

Chittering, the squirrel dashed into some underbrush and scurried noisily through the leaf litter of the

forest floor, sounding like some much larger beast.

Karigan walked on humming an off-key tune. However, when the sounds of the squirrel did not abate

but, in fact, grew much louder, she froze.

The racket shattered the woods. Trees and shrubs shook as if some wild creature—many times larger

than a squirrel—thrashed in the twined branches and undergrowth. Crazed catamounts and rabid wolves

played through her mind. She hadn't a weapon with which to fend off the beast, and she couldn't run

either; her feet seemed to have taken root in the ground.

She drew a ragged breath. Whatever the nameless beast was, it charged her way, and fast.

It burst from the woods in an explosion of branches. Karigan's breath hissed in her throat like a broken

whistle.

The creature loomed huge and dark in the tree shadows. It huffed with great wheezings through flared

nostrils like some infernal demon. Karigan closed her eyes and stepped back. When she looked again, a

horse and rider, not some evil dragon of legend, staggered onto the road. Twigs and leaves fell from them

to the ground.

The horse, a long-legged chestnut, was lathered with sweat and huffed as if from a hard run. The rider

slumped over the chestnut's neck. He was clad in a green uniform. Branches had lashed trails of blood

across his white face. His broad-shouldered frame twitched with fatigue.

He half dismounted, half fell from the horse. Karigan cried out when she saw two black-shafted arrows

impaled in his back.

"Please…" He beckoned her with a crimson glove.

She took one hesitant step forward.

The rider was only a few years older than she. Black hair was plastered across his pain-creased brow.

Blue eyes blazed bright with fever. With the two arrows buried in his back, he looked as if he had fought

off death longer than any mortal should have.

He was of Sacoridia, Karigan was certain, though the green uniforms were far rarer than the black and

silver of the regular militia.

"Help…"

Each step she took was shaky as if her legs could no longer support her. She knelt beside him, not sure

how she could aid a dying man.

"Are you Sacoridian?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Do you love your country and your king?"

Karigan paused. What a curious question. King Zachary was relatively new to the throne and she knew

little of his policies or methods, but it wouldn't do to sound disloyal to a dying servant of Sacoridia.

"Yes."

"I'm a messenger… Green Rider." The young man's body spasmed with pain, and blood dribbled over

his lip and down his chin. "The satchel on the saddle… important message for… king. Life or death. If

you love Sacor… Sacoridia and its king, take it. Take it to him."

"I—I…" One part of her wanted to run screaming from him, and another part felt drawn to his need.

Running away to Corsa, instead of waiting for her father to collect her at Selium, had held an irresistible

air of adventure that she had anticipated. But real adventure now looked at her with a terrifying visage.

"Please," he whispered. "You are—

The last words died inaudibly as blood gurgled in his throat and sprayed his lips, but she thought she

caught a breathy the one. The one what? The only one on the road? The only one to take the message?

"I_"

"Dangerous." He shuddered.

Everything around fell silent in an expectant hush, as if the world held its breath for her decision.

Before Karigan could stop herself, she said, "I'll do it." She heard the words as if someone else had

drawn them from her.

"You's-swear?"

She nodded.

"Sword. Bring it to me."

The horse shied from Karigan, but she caught his reins and drew the saber from the saddle sheath. Its

curved blade flickered in a patch of sun as she held it out before her. She knelt beside the messenger

again.

"Wrap your hands around the hilt," he said. When she did, he placed his hands over hers. It was then she

saw his gloves were not dyed crimson, not originally. He coughed, and more blood flecked the corners

of his mouth. "Swear… swear you'll deliver… the message to King Zachary… for love of country."

Karigan could only stare at him wide-eyed.

"Swear!"

It was as if she already looked upon a ghost rather than a living man. He would not allow himself to die

until she swore the oath. "I swear… I'll deliver the message for the love of my country."

Although she had sworn, the Green Rider was not ready to die yet. "Take the brooch… from my chest.

It will ident…" He squeezed his eyes shut in pain till the spell passed. "Identify you as messenger… to

other Riders." The words were gasped as if he were forcing air in and out of his lungs by sheer will to

extend his life. "Fly… Rider, with great speed. Don't read m-message. Then they can't tor-torture… it

from you. If captured, shred it and toss it to the winds." Then, because his voice had grown so faint, she

had to lean very close to hear his final words. "Beware the shadow man."

A cold tremor ran through Karigan's body. "I'll do my best," she told him.

There was no response from the messenger this time though his eyes still stared at her, bright and

otherworldly. She gently pried his fingers from her hand and closed his eyes. She hadn't seen the winged

horse brooch before, but now, pinned over his heart, it glowed golden in the sun. Absently she wiped

bloody finger marks off her hands onto her trousers and then unclasped the brooch.

A curious sensation, not at all unpleasant, as if all her nerves sang in unison, tingled throughout her body.

The gold warmth of the sun embraced her, and drove the shadowy chill away. There was a fluttering like

great white wings beating the air, and the sound of silver-shod hooves galloping…

Moments later, the sensation receded, and she realized the sound was her own excited heartbeat, and the

sun had risen sufficiently to widen the patch of light she stood in. Nothing more. She pinned the brooch to

her shirt.

She then sensed, like a breeze whispering through a hundred aspen trees, invisible lips that seemed to

murmur, Welcome, Rider.

Karigan shook her head to clear it of such fancies, and turned to practical matters. What to do with the

messenger's body? She couldn't just leave it lying there in the middle of the road exposed to carrion birds

and passersby, could she? She wouldn't want to stumble across a body in the middle of the road during

her travels. It just wasn't right to leave it there.

She grimaced. The body was too heavy for her to drag into the woods by herself, and how would she

bury it? She most certainly hadn't packed a shovel. It seemed wrong to leave the body out in the open,

but… she had to try. Then, as if a voice said to her, Don't waste the time, she backed away from the

body and took up the reins of the horse.

And still she hesitated. The least she could do was leave the saber with the messenger to show how

bravely he had died. But what if she met up with the people who had struck him with the arrows? She

would need some kind of defense, even if a saber wasn't any good against arrows.

Practicality won out, and she slid the blade back into its sheath.

The messenger had told her to fly, but running the horse to his death would serve no purpose. She would

walk him and mount up only when he seemed at least partially recovered.

The horse was a sorry-looking beast. His legs were long but thick; obviously he had been bred to run

fast for distances with no thought to aesthetics. His neck reminded Karigan of her father's descriptions of

some long-necked wild beasts he had seen on one of his voyages. The horse's coarse chestnut hide was

crisscrossed with old scars.

"I wish I knew your name," Karigan told him as they plodded along.

The horse curved his neck to look, not at her, but behind her. She glanced back, too. The messenger's

body had already fallen behind a bend in the road, and there was nothing to see besides the pointy

shadows of spruce trees shrinking as the morning progressed.

She shuddered. The messenger's twisted, tortured form would stay in her memory for some time to

come. She had helped lay out the corpses of old aunts and uncles for funerals, but they had died

peacefully in their sleep, not with arrows driven into their backs.

This message business was a huge change of plans. Home was out of the question. Karigan bit her lip.

Her father would be aggrieved enough by her suspension from school, and now she was running off on

some reckless errand without having considered the consequences.

She could almost hear her aunts enumerating her deficiencies: Feckless, Aunt Gretta would say; Willful,

Aunt Brini would add; Impulsive, Aunt Tory would declare. Aunt Stace would sum it all up with,

G'ladheon, and all the aunts would nod knowingly in mutual agreement.

Karigan thrust a strand of hair behind her ear. She could not help but concur with her aunts' assessment.

It seemed she always made the wrong choices—the kind that got her into trouble.

It was too late to turn back now, though. She had made a promise. She had sworn to the Green Rider

she would take the message to King Zachary himself.

She had visited Sacor City once as a young child, and at the time, elderly Queen Isen, Zachary's

grandmother, reigned over Sacoridia. Zachary's father had ascended the throne only to fall ill and die a

short time later. Zachary's ascension to the throne had been challenged by his brother, Prince Amilton,

but why, she did not know. She assumed all royals engaged in squabbles whenever power and prestige

were at stake.

Now her ignorance annoyed her. What could be happening in the land that meant a life-or-death

message for the king? What did the message contain that was so vital someone was willing to kill for it?

She longed to look at the contents of the message, but the Green Rider had ordered her not to.

Belatedly, she wondered how much danger she had put herself in. She was all alone amidst the wild

forest lands of Sacoridia. She carried a message for which a man had been pursued and killed. She let

out a trembling sigh, suddenly yearning for home; to be held in the safety of her father's arms and to hear

her aunts gossiping in the kitchen. She missed the big old house in Corsa and the predictable and

unimportant concerns of everyday life that pulsed and flowed through it.

The recklessness of her decision to carry the message truly set in. With a sinking feeling, she knew it

would be a long time before she saw home again.

[Image]

Three wooden arms branched from a cedar signpost planted in a grassy island in the middle of the

intersection. From the south arm hung a shingle indicating the River Road. More shingles, carved with the

names of towns along the way, hung beneath it. If Karigan were going home, she would take this road.

The middle arm pointed to the well-maintained King-way which bore east, the most direct route to Sacor

City and King Zachary. Her father had said the Kingway would one day be paved all the way from

Sacor City to Selium, increasing commerce and prosperity for all the villages situated along it.

The third arm pointed toward an ill-kept, overgrown track. The one shingle hanging from it bore one

ominous word: North.

Estral, Karigan's good friend at school—her only friend at school—had hinted there was more activity up

north in recent months and that King Zachary had reinforced the borders with armed patrols. But Estral,

who pursued the craft of the minstrels and seemed to come by incalculable amounts of information from

unguessable sources, never said exactly where the trouble was emanating from. Mysterious Elt Wood lay

due north, but somehow she couldn't fathom anything from that strange place deigning to bother

Sacoridia.

The horse had finally cooled down enough for Karigan to mount up. The saddle was a tiny thing

compared to what she was used to. A light saddle made sense if you wanted to travel speedily, which

she supposed most messengers did, but it would take some getting used to. It felt like there was nothing

between her rump and the horse's bony spine.

The message satchel was strapped to the front of the saddle, and a bedroll, two small packs, and the

saddle sheath to the cantle. She would investigate the contents of the saddlebags later when she was well

down the Kingway. Maybe there would even be food inside one of them.

She adjusted the stirrup irons to a comfortable length, settled into her seat, and squeezed the horse's

sides. He didn't budge. She kicked more insistently, but he stood his ground.

"You're a stubborn, ill-trained horse," she said.

The horse snorted and walked toward the North Road of his own volition.

"Hey!" Karigan pulled back on the reins. "Whoa. Who do you think is in charge here?"

The horse stomped his hoof and shook the reins. Karigan tried guiding him toward the Kingway again,

but he refused. When she let up, he gained a few more steps toward the North Road. She dismounted in

disgust. She would lead him onto the Kingway by foot if she had to. The horse tossed his head back and

jerked the reins out of her hands. He took off down the North Road at a trot.

"Hey, you rotten horse!"

More horrified than angry that the horse was running away with the important message, she chased after

him. He looked back at her as if to laugh and kept jogging for nearly a mile. Then he waited patiently,

cropping the grass that grew in the road, for an infuriated Karigan to catch up. When she was just within

an arm's reach of the reins, he swished his tail and trotted off again, leaving her to shout a number of

curses in his wake.

The third time, Karigan made no attempt to grab the reins. She stood huffing and puffing before him with

her hands on her hips.

"All right, horse. Maybe you know something I don't. Maybe the Kingway is more dangerous because

it's the most direct route to King Zachary. We'll try this road for a while."

At this compromise, the horse allowed her to gather up the reins and mount. He responded to her

commands as a well-trained horse should, and Karigan frowned at his duplicity.

"That's right, you rotten horse," she said. "Pretend nothing happened."

He then adopted an uncomfortable gait that jarred every bone in her body.

"I do believe you're doing this on purpose."

The horse made no indication he had heard her, and continued on in his ambling, bouncing, potato-sack

gait. Karigan clucked him into a canter which was equally jarring, but would make better headway. If

foes were on their trail, she wanted to keep as far ahead as possible.

Red squirrels raced across the road before them. "Road" was laughable. It served more as a streambed

when the ditches were too overgrown or filled with debris to drain properly. When Karigan reached

King Zachary, she resolved to inform him what a sorry state the road was in, and demand that taxes be

put to good use in repairing it. Well, maybe not demand. One did not demand anything of a king, but she

would make a strong recommendation nevertheless.

Later that afternoon, she slowed the horse to a halt and dismounted. She threw her pack to the ground

and searched through the saddlebags to see what would prove useful during her journey. To her delight,

she found not only dried beef, bread, apples, and a water skin, but a thick green greatcoat, caped at the

shoulders. Though it was a little long in the sleeves, it fit fairly well.

"Now I won't go cold." She took the food and water and plopped on the ground for a feast, and

groaned. "Am I sore." She glared at the horse who nibbled innocently at some grass.

After her light supper, Karigan wrapped herself in the greatcoat. She dozed off, and in a dream, imagined

that a filmy white figure approached the horse and spoke to him. The horse listened gravely to every

word. She heard nothing but a low whisper. Who are you? she wanted to ask. Why do you disturb my

rest? But her mouth would not work, and she couldn't shrug off her slumber.

A nudge on the toe of her boot woke her up. The horse gazed down at her and whickered. It was dusk.

"Are you telling me it's time to go?"

The horse waited for her on the road.

"All right. I'm coming, I'm coming."

They trotted along the road again, the flutelike song of thrushes echoing in the twilight. The horse

compelled Karigan to ride through the night. It was an uncomfortable ride although his gait lacked its

former tooth-rattling agony.

As she rode, the woods and the abandoned road began to take on a new, ominous character. Tree limbs

clinked together like old bones, and clouds blanketed the moon and stars. Her breath fogged the air, and

she was glad of the warmth the greatcoat provided.

A number of times she glanced over her shoulder thinking someone was following behind. When she saw

no one, she pulled her coat tighter about her and tried singing some simple songs, but they died in her

throat.

Kristen Britain - Green Rider 1 - Green Rider

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