First Rider's Call

And she slammed the door shut.

Abashed, Karigan headed back for the castle. Not only had she lost Alton, but now the captain as well.

Guilt washed over Laren, adding to her torment. She slid down the door to the floor, her head in her hands, her ability commenting on each and every thought and emotion as she experienced it.

She no longer lived, but merely existed, with the mental battering in her mind. It would be better to die.

True.

Not even when she had been so ill after the knife wound that had left the brown scar down her neck and all the way to her belly, not even when she had lost the man who had meant the most to her in her life, had she so seriously considered ending her own.

Her eyes roved over her saber and longknife hanging from her swordbelt on a hook on the far wall. The leather scabbards were shiny black, but she knew precisely the bright, sharp steel they concealed.

She loosed a trembling sigh, knowing she hadn’t the reserves to actually stand and cross the room to draw her knife. Instead, she reached into her pocket and withdrew the stone butterfly she kept close by at all times. Each feature, each pattern and texture, was perfectly preserved. Life literally captured in stone. It only reminded her of how trapped she was as well.

“I have never been so low,” she sobbed.

True.

She was a terrible captain—she had let down so many of her Riders—Ereal and Bard, Ephram and Alton . . .

True.

Let someone else make all the difficult choices and carry the weight of it. She was hopelessly incapable of it herself.

True.

She just wanted to bang her head against the wall, bang it bloody.

Laren.

Or, there was the honed edge of her longknife.

Laren.

“What?” She looked up, blinking rapidly.

Her quarters were dim. She didn’t care to see the squalor she lived in. It seemed somehow fitting, for her mind moved in dark places. She had no covering, however, across the narrow arrow slit window, and dusty sunlight glared in her eyes when she looked in that direction.

I want to help you, he said.

She shielded her eyes and barely made out a figure.

“Who—who are you? How did you enter?”

He stepped closer, but his outline was fluid. The one who was first of us all sent me here from my long rest.

His words did not send an assault upon her mind. In fact, there was an easing, a sense of peace that overcame her. The voice of her ability was slowly closed off. Tears of joy ran down her cheeks.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

He came closer, but remained translucent. He was garbed in green, and there was the glitter of a golden winged horse brooch upon his chest. She barely made out ritual tattoos tracked across his cheeks. A gleaming mane of black hair fell down his back.

He was the half-breed Rider captain who helped deliver King Smidhe Hillander to his throne. “Gwyer Warhein,” she murmured.

He nodded. We share a brooch, you and I. It augments a singular gift, a rare one. It is something to rejoice in, not despair.

“The pain—” The words wrenched from her gut.

I know.

All of Karigan’s dealings with ghosts had not prepared Laren for this moment, but having the shade of one of Sacoridia’s hero Riders in her quarters did not frighten her or make her question her sanity. No, it awakened her sense of wonder, and uplifted her spirits from the blackness of despair in which she had wallowed for so long. She stood, her legs trembling.

I have left my rest to help you, he said. He reached out with a translucent hand to her. Will you let me show you how you may control your gift?

“Yes, oh yes.”

She felt a fluttering against her palm. Miraculously, a butterfly lifted from it, and into the air, free of stone.

Journal of Hadriax el Fex

Alessandros has turned his back on God. He has decided there is no God. If there were a God, he explains, his father would not have abandoned him here in these lands. If there were a God, he’d have conquered the barbarians by now. If there were a God, Alessandros would have brought a cure to ailing Arcosia and become the blessed ruler of the Empire.

So, he has declared himself the god. “Look at my powers,” he tells me. “Are they not the powers of a god?”

Indeed, he uses his powers to alter the world to his own designs—the creatures he has made, the lives he has taken. All I see is ruin. When first we came to the New Lands, they were so full of potential, unspoiled and primeval, so unlike Arcosia, which was wasting away from the drain on etherea and the wear of a populous and long-lived civilization. Now Alessandros destroys everything he touches—the people, the creatures, and the land itself, which has turned brown and bleak as though wilting in despair. He misuses etherea in great quantities. The land is all toppled forests and battlefields. He has wrought more damage in the New Lands in less time than ever occurred in Arcosia with its large population of mages.

Tonight Alessandros proclaimed himself the one god before the assembled troops. The priests among us were tortured and flung into the fires. He said the sacrifice was essential to cleanse us of their blasphemous teachings. Anyone caught worshipping the former god would endure a similar fate.

I have never seen morale bleaker among the troops. Desertion is at its highest level ever. Inevitably these men are hunted down and slain, their bodies displayed for all to see, as an example of the wrath of Alessandros the god.

There are men I know of who still devote themselves, in secret, to the one true God, but I will not report them, because I am one of them. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">