The Winding of Worms
K arigan was proud of herself. She was going to get herself out of this ridiculous Turval situation without a fight, but sadly, Edwin, and then his men, tried to grab her.
Without thinking, she swiped the staff from the priest’s grasp and her training took over.
In moments they all lay on the ground either unconscious or with the wind knocked out of them from swift strikes of the staff.
They hadn’t stood a chance against her superior skill.
Clare stared agog, and the priest held himself up against a nearby tree eyeing the jug of wine on the altar. Vernas cowered before her but tried to look tough, torn between losing face or finding himself at the mercy of her staff.
Cold damp oozed through Karigan’s stockings. She did not take her eyes off Vernas in order to locate her shoes. When he gathered his courage enough to take a step toward her, she demanded, “Wanna try me?” The staff whistled into an attack position.
Vernas licked his lips and backed off.
“Whore!” Edwin cried. “I’ll teach you—”
She fixed her grip on the staff. He would teach her?
Her dark self wanted him to try. The trouble with men like Edwin was that they never learned.
And they called her stubborn. She liked to think she learned from her mistakes, at least sometimes.
As for Clare, she found herself pitying the woman for being married to the nitwit.
A tart response was on the tip of her tongue when the air iced over. Her breath steamed from her mouth and her skin prickled. Shadow seeped into her vision, and crushing hope lessness and terror made her want to just give up and curl in a ball on the ground.
“Edwin,” Clare whispered.
A hiss behind Karigan made her heart stutter. It was not an animal, nor was it entirely human. The priest dropped to his knees and started to pray.
Dread engulfed her. It carried a familiar tang of rot, of all that molders in the grave.
“ Galadheon. ” The voice rasped like rusty hinges, a voice belonging to one long entombed in the deeps of the earth who knows intimately the windings of worms. “We seek the Galadheon.”
Shaking, she turned and saw the wraith, its dead, flinty eyes boring into her, its rags wavering in a breeze.
“You seek the Galadheon, and you have found her,” she replied, trying to keep her voice from breaking.
“You must come.” Its mouth was a bloodless crack in a face of cockled parchment. “Our master calls.”
So Mornhavon was truly awake. And he wanted her for what? Revenge? To account for her ancestor, Hadriax el Fex, who had betrayed him so long ago? Or for the times she had outwitted or injured him?
“He is no master of mine,” she said. “Begone, wraith of rags. I ended Varadgrim and I can do the same to you.” Actually, it had been the First Rider, Lil Ambrioth, occupying her body, who had killed the wraith, Varadgrim. Unfortunately, Lil was not present to help her now.
The creature hissed and drew a dagger ornamented with foul symbols. The blade gleamed with a cold, blue light. “You will come, betrayer .”
“I will not.” She adjusted her grip on the staff.
Neither the Turvals, their crew, nor the priest were going to be of any help, so she was on her own.
She did not think her staff, or the knife strapped to her leg beneath her skirts, would be much of an aid against the creature, but there was another item she carried in a concealed pocket she’d had specially sewn into the gown, and when she took it out, silvery white light blazed and flooded the area around the shrine, turning night into day.
The wraith recoiled, unable to bear the light for it was that of an ancient silver moon that had once shone over the lost Eletian realm of Argenthyne caught in the crystal she held.
It was a moonstone that the Eletians called muna’riel.
The wraith squinted at her. Smoke threaded from its eyes, the purity of the light too much for its shadow existence to endure.
Though it quailed, it did not flee. Instead, it threw its head back and howled in abject pain.
How many centuries had it lain imprisoned in its tomb? How long since it had seen such light?
The howl changed with intonations of a language she did not know. It was foul and throbbed in her ears. The stone altar of Goltera split in two with a thunderous crack . Tendrils of poisonous shadows rose about the wraith and pushed the light away. Her moonstone sputtered, faltered.
Hoofbeats throbbed within and without her.
Knowledge came to her on a supernatural wind carried by the steed of the death god.
Knowledge that this wraith had once been Terrandon, Lord of the South, and that in ancient times, he had practiced dark arts and brought death upon his own people by the hundreds of thousands.
In exchange for such power and unending life, he and his brethren had forfeited their souls when they swore allegiance to Mornhavon the Black.
At the conclusion of the Long War, King Jonaeus judged them traitors and they were buried alive, condemned to lie in deathless torment imprisoned in their graves for all eternity.
Salvistar’s hooves pounded like her own heartbeat. The knowledge his presence infused in her came from the death god himself, for she was his avatar, and the avatar must end the existence of the deathless wraith.
However, even as Salvistar arrived, before she became clad in the star steel of the gods, arrows sang through the air, flaring as they passed through the radiance of her moonstone and drew silver tails behind them like shooting stars.
They soared into the wraith’s shadows. Dozens of white arrows, Eletian arrows, impaled the Terrandon wraith, volley after volley until it exploded into ashes and its empty rags rustled to the ground.
Just like that, the confrontation was over. She leaned on the staff in relief.
She perceived Salvistar on the edge of her vision. He tossed his head before turning on his haunches and galloped away, vanishing into the dark. Soon his hoofbeats receded. The intervention by Eletians spared her the duty of serving the death god this night.
A group of Eletians stepped into the light. Three immediately moved to inspect what remained of the wraith. Nine others came before her and went to their knees.
“Dama,” said the foremost Eletian. His name was Telagioth and his eyes of cerulean blue glistened in the silvery light. “We were on our way to the city when we saw the muna’riel flare and felt the presence of the dark one.”
“Your timing was very good,” she replied. An understatement, and fitting Telagioth should be the one to appear now, for she had first met him when Varadgrim freed himself of his tomb a few years back.
She recognized the others who accompanied him—Lhean, Idris, and others, but her gaze was drawn to one who hung back behind them. He would not meet her gaze and he shone less brilliantly in the moonstone light. Enver.
All at once she wanted to cry out in gladness to see him, and, yet, felt wary. Their parting after their emissary business with the p’ehdrose had been difficult and painful.
“Please, you need not kneel.”
“Ah, but we do,” Telagioth replied, “for you are the Cearing Asai’riel.”
The three who had inspected the remains of the wraith approached and bowed. “It is truly extinguished,” one of them said. “Its crown has dissolved into the earth.”
“Shoshan,” Karigan said in greeting. Shoshan and her companions had served briefly as her escorts last summer.
“It is a privilege to see you again, Dama,” the Eletian replied. Then she held the cruel dagger of the wraith upon her palm. “The wraith would have enslaved you with this, making you one of them.”
Karigan shuddered and took a step back. “A soul stealer?”
“Of a sort, but more a living death. The hilt is made of the black wood of Kanmorhan Vane.”
“We will unmake it,” Telagioth said. “It should have been broken when the creature that was Terrandon was interred in its tomb.”
At the sound of weeping, Karigan recalled the Turvals. Vernas was crying into Clare’s shoulder. A couple of the men appeared to be in a state of shock. Edwin shook his head muttering, “I didn’t believe him, I didn’t believe him...”
He meant, she was sure, King Zachary.
The Eletians set about aiding them, tending their hurts and providing them with sips of a heartening cordial from a flask. Karigan found her shoes and slipped them on and returned the staff to the priest who accepted it with thanks.
“The presence of the evil spirit was too much for Goltera.” He gestured at the broken altar. “I have been too lax in my duties.”
“What will you do?” she asked.
“I will repair or remake the altar, and wear a hairshirt. No food and only water for a fortnight.”
That would take some discipline, she thought, for it appeared he was accustomed to libations other than water, though the wraith seemed to have inspired something of a sobering effect on him.
“This is an old sacred ground of your people, holy man,” Telagioth said, joining them.
“From a time before the First Age. That altar was used as such even back then. There used to be a circle of stones near here that served the people as a calendar and a place of ritual.” He spoke as one who had witnessed its use in those eldest of days.
“Aye, bright one,” the priest replied. “One or two still stand in the woods. The others have fallen and disappeared beneath the forest growth. I will repair the altar stone. Would be a shame to replace it if that has always been its use. Stone may crack, but faith perseveres.”
With that, he ambled off through the woods toward his hut.
“We will escort you back to Sacor City,” Telagioth told Karigan, “for we desire an audience with your king.”
“I wondered why you were traveling this way.”
“We also wish an audience with you, Dama.”
“You do not need to be so formal.”
“You are our Dama,” he replied. “But what of these other people? We have helped them and can be on our way, unless there is a reason they are bruised as if by a stave. Is further intervention required?”
Karigan briefly explained the situation with the Turvals. Telagioth raised his eyebrows.
“I just need a word with them,” she added.
“If you are certain that is all,” he replied doubtfully.
“It is, for now.”
He bowed and stepped aside.
When she approached Edwin, he was seated on a rock looking dazed, his burned hands wrapped in gauzy bandages.
“I don’t rightly know what you are,” he told her. “On the island, the older folks always said your momma and her momma, and all the Gray women before them were fey, but I thought it was just talk, superstition. Turns out the rumors are true.”
“Edwin,” Clare chided, “don’t you go disrespecting the girl’s family—she put herself between us and that—that evil thing.”
“Which only proves my point,” he snapped. “She’s not normal. Cursed is what she is.” He turned his baleful gaze back on Karigan. “I don’t need my son marrying some cursed demon girl.”
Clare gave him an exasperated look and walked away, shaking her head.
Anger brimmed inside Karigan but she chose not to respond to his words about her mother or being a “cursed demon girl,” except to say, “What I am is the king’s own Green Rider, and a very annoyed one. You abducted me and—”
“You came willingly,” Edwin interjected.
“And if I had not?”
He did not reply. It was answer enough.
“You abducted me, tried to force me into a marriage without the consent of my father or me , and against the explicit wishes of our king, and then attacked me. You can be assured King Zachary will hear of it in detail. I suggest you return to Black Island with haste and await the king’s justice there.
And oh, yes, the king’s justice will find you no matter where you go.
You defied his direct command and broke his laws, including the one that protects Green Riders. May he show you mercy.”
She turned on her heel to walk away but halted and turned back. “One more thing. If you ever set foot near any member of Clan G’ladheon again, or if I see your likeness, I will not be so gentle next time.”
She strode back toward the Eletians.
“Are you sure you would not prefer us to execute these Turvals?” Telagioth asked.
“Execute?” she said in surprise.
“It is appropriate for the crimes they committed upon our Dama.”
She watched the Turvals as they climbed into their wagon and set off down the road. Her dark self thrilled at the idea of such retribution, but she quickly brushed it aside.
“No. No execution. They fall under the jurisdiction of king’s law.”
She felt very tired, and it would be a longer night still since they must walk all the way to Sacor City. Before they left, however, she had one more piece of business she wished to confront.
“Enver,” she said.