First Rider's Call

I suppose there is only one way to find out.

She grasped the brooch, and pressed her other hand against the stone. The brooch tingled beneath her fingers, and the stone absorbed her.

She emerged into the central chamber of the tower, a place she had not laid eyes on for three ages. She gathered the keepers hadn’t maintained their vigil from the towers in many a year, so it was with a little surprise that she found the chamber brightly lit, and a figure pacing back and forth across it, his long beard bristling. He halted when he noticed her.

“Well, well, well,” he said, “as I live and breathe. I can see you, Liliedhe Ambriodhe.”

“You do not live, nor do you breathe,” she said.

“Hmph! Neither do you, for that matter.”

“At least I’m accepting it.”

Merdigen grumbled to himself. “Then what, may I ask, are you doing possessing the body of this young woman, hmm?”

“I’m not possessing it, I’m just borrowing it—to help save this Rider’s life.”

“Hmph.” Merdigen tugged on his beard and drew his bushy brows together. “Well, don’t bother.”

“Hey? I don’t believe I heard you correctly.”

“I said, don’t bother. The wall is going to fall and all will be lost.”

At Lil’s incredulous silence, he added, “One of those Riders of yours claimed he intended to mend the wall. Instead, he’s undermining it.”

Lil wanted to speak, wanted to say it couldn’t possibly be so, but just then, her energy began to falter and fluctuate, straining her bond with Karigan. As she felt Karigan slipping away, across the chamber a hand grew out of the stone wall, followed by another. Then there was a face molded into stone, molded around a figure. Finally a person emerged into the chamber, an Eletian in white armor.

PENDRIC

At first, after Pendric’s father was killed in Blackveil, the soldiers tried to watch over him. Captain Reems offered him an escort if he wished to accompany his father’s remains back to Woodhaven.

He’d have liked nothing better than to leave, but traveling away from the wall, he knew, would only shred his mind. The voices were ever more persistent, ever more desperate as they clawed away inside his head.

So Pendric stayed. Initially the soldiers deferred to him because of his rank, but he had nothing to offer them, no leadership, no wisdom, nothing. He had nothing but the voices in his mind.

He entered the encampment only for food and wine, and the soldiers began to look upon him as something strange, a feral beast, and they kept their distance.

The voices screamed at him for help, pleaded him to come.

“I am mad, I am mad!” He banged the heels of his hands against his head trying to dislodge the voices.

It was all Alton’s doing—he knew it. Alton had always hated him, and now Alton was making him go mad. It wasn’t good enough he had killed Lady Valia and Landrew. Now he had to destroy Pendric’s mind, too.

Suddenly there was a voice he recognized twining through his mind. A calm, rhythmic voice from which all the others recoiled.

Alton!

If the other voices recoiled from Alton, then surely they were not the evil ones. And they were calling for help. Yes, all they had wanted all along was his help.

He allowed the voices to lead him along. He walked until he came to a tower embedded in the great stone wall. He blinked in surprise to find Alton’s horse standing beside it, its dark coat dull and tail snarled with burdocks. Its ribs were sharp against its sides.

Alton, Pendric determined, was somehow in the tower wreaking his evil. He had no choice but to enter and stop him.

ELETIAN ARROW

Karigan!heard her name called from afar,

She heard her name called from 4 afar, threading through the snowy forest. She kneeled in the snow, arms wrapped around herself, one shoulder leaning against a tree trunk. She closed her eyes. She was beyond freezing.

The call was too far away, and she too drowsy to respond. She wanted to rest and sleep. She sank deeply into darkness and peace.

A horn bellowed, and clumps of snow fell from branches above and plopped on her head. She fluttered her eyes open. The horn blared again, and she recognized the call, the Rider call.

Why wouldn’t it leave her alone? First it had made her join the Green Riders, now it was forcing her to leave this place of tranquility. She decided to ignore it and close her eyes. She had ignored it before, and she could again.

But it wasn’t to be so. It was as if somebody grabbed her by her shortcoat and slapped each cheek. Her cheeks stung and light assaulted her eyes. She found herself kneeling not in snow, but in a chamber of stone, and leaning not against a tree, but against a fluted column.

She gasped, trying to make sense of everything.

Columns ringed the whole of the chamber, and a green oval of stone glistened on a pedestal at its center. Above the pedestal a dark cloud floated glistening with . . . stars? An old man paced beside it. He was twisting his fingers in his long whiskers, and for some reason she had a sort of secondary vision of him pacing back and forth on a vast plain cloaked by night.

“Terrible, oh, most terrible,” he was muttering to himself.

Beyond both the old man and the pedestal, on the far side of the chamber, stood an Eletian. Karigan did not know where she was, or why she was there. She had no idea of what was going on or why, but she did recognize the Eletian, with the tines protruding from the forearms and shoulders of his armor. He held an arrow nocked to a bow. The tip of the arrowhead glinted, and she could feel his line of sight searing into her heart. 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">