The Mystery of Maddie’s Eye
M addie the mare watched with two eyes as the group of important people discussed her.
Captain Connly, Lieutenant Brennyn, Chief Rider Oldbrine, Horse Master Riggs, Uncle Hep, and the two Rider menders stood in a circle in front of her stall.
Darys chose to hang back, shovel in hand, to keep out of their way.
Anna stood with him watching the proceedings with an anxious expression.
“I swear,” said Rider Mason Harding, who was also an animal mender, “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Me, either,” Ben Simeon, a Rider and mender of humans, chimed in.
“Horses don’t just grow new eyes,” Lieutenant Brennyn said. “Clearly some magic or something is at work here.”
“And on just Maddie,” Horse Master Riggs said. “We checked all the others.”
“Mason,” Captain Connly said, “can you sense anything different about her?”
Mason cautiously approached Maddie. She flattened her ears for a moment but allowed him to lay his hands on her neck. To be honest, she seemed to be enjoying the attention. Mason closed his eyes and fell into deep concentration.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Darys whispered to Anna. “What’s he doing? Do Riders have . . . magic?”
She gave him a quick glance. Apparently the initial shock of Maddie’s new eye had worn off. “Not all,” she whispered back, and he saw that sadness in her gaze again. “But most. You are not to speak of it.”
He reckoned his uncle would lecture him about it.
Magic explained a lot of what he’d seen, but he’d been taught that it was evil and it sent a trickle of fear through him.
These Riders he’d been spending time with possessed magic and they didn’t seem to be evil.
He glanced sidelong at her and wondered if she had the power to change him into a toad or something like that as she saw fit, but all he could see was the same old Anna who had been kind to him since his arrival.
Surely the king would not use the Riders as his trusted messengers unless he was in fact evil himself, but Darys had never seen evidence of that in the realm.
According to his da, King Zachary was a fair and just ruler.
The moon priests, however, taught that evil often came in the guise of beneficent and seemingly wise persons. He shook himself. Of course the Riders weren’t evil. Of course King Zachary was a fair and just ruler just as his da said. He liked to think that if they were evil, he’d know it.
Mason stepped away from Maddie. “She is perfectly healthy with an entirely normal pair of horse eyes.” He sounded weary. “I detected no magic about, though I’m not sure I would have, anyway. Gonna sit down now.”
“Why is he sitting down?” Darys asked Anna.
“Using an ability is hard work,” she replied. “Now, hush.”
“I don’t recall noticing her having a new eye this morning,” Uncle Hep said. “I just try to avoid her teeth and hooves.”
“Anna?” Captain Connly said. “You didn’t see anything earlier?”
“No, sir,” she replied. “I didn’t get to see her till this afternoon. Last night she had only the one eye.”
“Darys,” Uncle Hep said, “you’ve been here all day.”
He stiffened when the important people all turned to him. “She was in the pasture most of the day. When I brought the horses in, I didn’t notice her eye, but then I wasn’t looking.”
“This is certainly a mystery,” Horse Master Riggs said, her hands on her hips. “Something is afoot, but it doesn’t seem malicious.”
Uncle Hep smoothed back his hair, his hand shaking. He seemed nervous, which was strange because Darys had never seen him nervous.
“I have to tell you,” his uncle said, “there has been something hanging around the pasture. Darys and I, we’ve sensed it, as have the other grooms. Darys thinks it’s a ghost horse.”
“You do?” Anna whispered.
Darys shrugged.
“And Master Riggs is right,” Uncle Hep continued. “It doesn’t seem malicious, but maybe...mischievous?”
“Is it something to do with the Eletians?” Lieutenant Brennyn asked.
“Don’t think so. It started before the Eletians showed up.”
“Gods above,” Captain Connly muttered, as if a supernatural something were an irritation rather than, well, a supernatural something. “Why didn’t you tell me, Hep?”
“I was going to, but I kind of wanted to make sure it wasn’t my imagination.”
Captain Connly shook his head. “I guess there’s not much we can do about it until this presence makes itself known. In the meantime, we keep a close watch on Maddie and all the horses. Tell me immediately if you notice anything unusual.”
“Aye, Captain,” Uncle Hep said.
“Anna,” Horse Master Riggs said, “looks like we’ll be doing some additional training. I don’t know how long Maddie was without her eye, but now she needs to grow accustomed to having both.”
Apparently having become bored with the human chitchat, the subject of their meeting turned in her stall to lip after stray bits of hay.
“Yes’m,” Anna replied. She made a quiet groaning sound.
“What is it?” Darys asked.
“I hope this doesn’t cause me as many bruises as the first time we trained.”
Darys watched as the meeting broke up, though his uncle stood in hushed conversation with Master Riggs. Anna went to Maddie’s stall and seemed reluctant to look in as if maybe the mare had grown scales or horns.
After the day Darys had had, he wouldn’t be surprised if she turned into a dragon.
“A nd then when we were walking back,” Tegan was telling Karigan, “Connly said he was surprised you weren’t in the middle of this.”
Tegan sat in Karigan’s chamber reiterating the discovery of Maddie’s new eye as Karigan folded freshly laundered uniform parts on her bed. She grabbed a sock from Ghost Kitty’s claws. He crouched on her pillow and whacked his tail against the headboard.
“He said that, did he?”
Tegan nodded.
“Hmm, well, he’s been irritated with me ever since the colonel was abducted.”
“You must admit,” Tegan said, “a ghost horse, or whatever it is, is the kind of thing you deal with.”
Karigan smoothed a white linen shirt across the foot of her bed.
It did sound like something that would involve her, but she was extremely glad that for once it had nothing to do with her.
And Maddie having her eye restored? That was a good thing, wasn’t it?
She paused and wondered if whatever was at work could restore her own eye back to normal.
Thinking of it caused a stabbing pain in it.
Mostly she was accustomed to the irritation and dull aching she must live with.
Ben gave her a salve to ease the pain, but it never truly went away.
“I, for one,” she said, folding the arms of the shirt, “am glad for Anna and Maddie however it happened.” She hummed under her breath, off key, of course, as she set the shirt onto a neat stack of folded clothes and reached for the next.
“You’re in an uncommonly good mood,” Tegan observed.
Karigan paused. “Uncommonly?”
“Yes. You seem lighter. It’s understandable with all you’ve been through that you’d be a little dour now and then.”
Karigan turned to her. “Dour?”
Tegan did not back down but nodded. “Like I said, it’s understandable.”
“Dour? Really?”
Tegan shrugged. “At least I didn’t call you Rider Crotchety.”
Karigan was about to retort when Ghost Kitty pounced on her freshly folded clothes. “Hey!” She scooped him up and dumped him on the floor.
“So how was your day?” Tegan asked. “Must have been a good one.”
“Well...” Karigan told her about her meeting with the Eletians.
“I want to see this longcoat,” Tegan said, “but I still think the gown—”
Karigan threw a sock roll at her. It bounced off her head.
“All right, all right. I take the hint.”
Karigan continued telling Tegan about her day, about how Zachary sent for her to meet him in the tombs. Tegan listened with a penetrating gaze.
“What?” Karigan demanded. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“The king wanted to see you?”
Karigan squinted at her friend, wondering what she was implying. She had a feeling she knew. “He wanted to look at the shield, the dragonfly device.”
“He needed you for that?”
Karigan crossed her arms. She hadn’t yet rolled up anymore socks to throw at Tegan. “Apparently he wanted to know if I could see how it was supposed to work. What are you getting at?”
“Anyone close to you with eyes and a heart can tell...” Tegan faltered. “There is a long-standing attraction between the two of you. Are you sure he just wanted you to attend him to look at that old shield?”
Karigan’s mouth dropped open. She decisively snapped it shut. “Of all the absurdities. Agemon was there, not to mention four Weapons.” She resumed folding a pair of trousers with a fury, her cheeks burning.
“I’m not suggesting anything untoward,” Tegan said. “It’s actually kind of sweet.”
“We were in the tombs, ” Karigan said, “with graves and dead people and stuff. You are reading too much into whatever it is you think you know.” The lie came across lamely.
“Don’t worry,” Tegan said. “We are discreet and it won’t go beyond us.”
“We?”
“Just the colonel originally, and Mara. Then I picked up on it. We’ve been aware of it for at least a couple years. Connly suspects but we don’t discuss it with him. Anna is pretty sharp, too.”
Karigan sat hard on her bed, causing the frame to creak and her stack of folded clothes to topple over. She did not know what to say.
“For what it’s worth,” Tegan said, “I’m sorry.
It’s a difficult situation, him being the king and married.
If you ever need to talk, seek me out, or Mara.
And be careful with the court. It would give those bored aristocrats nothing better to gossip about, which could be a disaster for the king’s authority. ”
Karigan had been in a good mood, but now Tegan’s warning, as well intentioned as it was, brought her back down to Earth.
She’d enjoyed being in Zachary’s company, tombs or not.
They had not, for once, been in the midst of some crisis.
Their conversation had been light and natural.
They’d even jested. It had been easy to forget the concerns of the world and the possible consequences of being with him.
And while she wished to tell Tegan all about it, about Estora’s permission, Tegan reminded her about discretion, even with a friend who knew there was something there.
Tegan wisely took her leave. Karigan sat amid her laundry, wondering how many “suspected,” how many tongues wagged about King Zachary and his Green Rider.
Her darker self leaned against her wardrobe. He could be yours in every way, she said. Who cares what anyone else thinks? He would protect you. He already does. You just need to take him.
Her darker self, she knew, wished to exert herself and be foremost, to take what she wanted. To “take” Zachary would require cunning and deceit, but it was not who Karigan was, or who she wanted to be.
You are thinking it, Dark Karigan said, therefore some part of you wants it. I am here when you are ready.
“Begone!” Karigan cried, and her shadow self vanished.
She dropped her face into her hands. She could not fall for temptation; to do so would not merely be scandalous, but it could destabilize Zachary’s rule when the realm most needed unity with the rising tide of darkness.
The afternoon she had spent with him no longer seemed a light enjoyable excursion, but terribly reckless.
We can’t do this anymore, she thought, no matter what Estora says. No matter what I feel.