She climbed to her feet, all too conscious of the surrounding arrowtips following her movement. The woman was stillness itself, but finally she spoke.
Her voice was songlike, though it did not speak in friendly greeting. It spoke in quiet command, but Karigan did not understand the words.
“I’m Karigan G’ladheon,” she said, interrupting the Eletian. “King’s messenger, Green Rider.”
Silence.
She wondered if they understood her.
The woman spoke to those who ringed them. Arrowtips lowered to a less threatening position.
Glittering eyes surveyed Karigan, and she was aware of her blanket fluttering against her leg, of the cold that still numbed her limbs.
“Your name is known in the Alluvium,” the woman said. Her voice was not quite cold, but neither was it welcoming.
Karigan and the woman regarded each other at length.
Another of the Eletians spoke and the woman responded quietly to him, her eyes never straying from Karigan. She released the tension of her bowstring, and to Karigan she said, “You will come with us.”
“I—”
The Eletian raised her palm to her lips. Moonlight pooled there, and she blew. A cloud of silvery sparkling motes of dust billowed into Karigan’s face, and after that, she was unsure of what happened next.
When Karigan came back to herself, she was sitting cross-legged in a clearing of emerald grasses, the dawn raising a golden mist from stark white birches that ringed the clearing, their branches knit together like a net. Glimmerings of crystalline light winked among the birches, some close, some far off, deep in the woods. They were like a galaxy of stars, silvery amid gleaming leaves.
Moonstones.
Karigan shook her head for her mind was layered with a complex interweaving of cobwebs she could not seem to break through.
Moonstones and Eletians . . .
The Eletians had brought her to the clearing. It was an assumption, not a memory.
Why?
Were they just going to leave her here? Was she a captive, and if so, why? The one who had spoken to her—last night?—had said her name was known. What did that mean?
Eletians emerged from the woods as though the slender birches had come to life, arrows once again nocked. They did not step into the clearing, but rather stood in the fringes of the woods. She tried to discern them, but the color of their attire shifted with their stance, blending them in with their surroundings.
One did step into the clearing—the woman. Her armor, too, changed color subtly in the light with the iridescence of a hummingbird. Her flaxen braids gleamed brightly in the daylight, the snowy feathers drifting behind her as she walked. Her eyes were as emerald as grass newly grown in the spring. She was beautiful, but exotically so. And she possessed an edge, cold and dangerous.
She carried her longbow with a full quiver of arrows strapped over her shoulder. Girded at her side was a long, narrow blade.
The Eletian simply looked down at Karigan, her expression hard to read. Was it haughty? Searching? Disinterested?
“Yes, we are tiendan,” the Eletian said, as if no time had elapsed since Karigan’s query.
Angry at having been dragged from her campsite, horse, and her own concerns without explanation, Karigan tried to stand, but the cobwebs that clouded her mind confused her, and she could not rise.
“Why have you brought me here?” she asked.
The Eletian did not answer. She circled Karigan looking her over, evaluating her, making her feel like a beast in a zoo.
The wrath built so within her that her face flushed with heat. “I am a king’s messenger, and your interference will find only ill will with my king. Laws protect Green Riders—”
“Your laws hold no power over us, and the regard of your king no meaning.”
A rush of angry retorts surged into Karigan’s mind, but before she could open her mouth to speak them, the Eletian drew her blade and knelt before Karigan.
Karigan’s angry words scattered like ashes before a wind. The blade was of the same gleaming steel as the arrowheads, perfect and radiating cold light in the dawn’s golden glow. Would the Eletian slit her throat or stab her in the heart before she could take another breath?
The Eletian slashed, ripping through her left sleeve, but not her flesh.
Karigan looked at her unhurt, exposed shoulder in disbelief. The slash revealed a tiny scar, like a cold white puncture wound.
The Eletian, hesitantly, touched it with her fingertip. Warmth, brief and fleeting, flowed inward from her touch. Something twitched within Karigan, and she shifted uncomfortably.
A vertical line appeared between the Eletian’s eyebrows. She glanced sideways at Karigan. Concern? Fear? Surprise?
“Please,” Karigan said. “I—”
The Eletian drew her palm to her lips and blew. Karigan faded into a haze of sparkling dust motes gone golden with the sun.
MIRROR OF THE MOON
Karigan sat cross-legged in the night. As far as she could tell, she hadn’t moved since—since her last awareness. But now a cloak draped her shoulders and kept her warm. It was of a soft weave, almost more a membrane of skin than cloth, with veins of green like a leaf.
Moonstones still shone among the trees, casting light into the clearing. No Eletians stood within sight, but they had left her food, laid out on platters like a feast amid the stars. She sniffed the contents of a flask and sipped. A warming fluid, like a fine liquor, spread throughout her body, chasing away the last chill of the traveling. It invigorated her and lifted her spirits.
She unfolded her legs, surprised they were not cramped from sitting this way for—for however long it had been. Minutes? Hours? Days? She ate of the wild roots, berries, and honey cakes. She had not realized how famished she was. She drank deeply of the flask, which never seemed to empty.