Blackveil
Page 22

You must come. The voice held a desperate tenor. You cross thresholds.
Cross thresholds ... The words kindled some memory buried deep in Karigan’s mind and came to her like the shreds of a dream: the spirit of a Green Rider, a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, the royal tombs. When we fade, he said, we are standing on a threshold. Something about passing through the layers of the world.
She grasped at the shreds of the memory, but it dissipated until she could not recall even the ghost and was left with only an impression of something missing. Karigan rubbed her temple. Her head felt strange, full of cobwebs. “Where is it I must come?”
The figure extended her hand of quicksilver from the flame, and a globe, much like a snowglobe, hovered above her palm. Karigan stepped closer to see it better, squinting against the intensity of the figure’s radiance. The globe was a blotch of blackness in the light and as she neared it, she discerned in it the scene of a dark forest of decay and murk.
Karigan recoiled. “Blackveil?”
You must help the Sleepers, the figure said, her voice increasing in urgency. If awakened by the enemy, they shall be a deadly weapon. She cried again in pain and the light wavered. I am losing hold!
“Sleepers? What ... ?”
The dark on the edges of light began to close around them like a claw. Keep the muna’riel close, daughter of Kariny. It is your key.
The figure and her flame sputtered like a dying candle.
“Wait!” Karigan cried. “The key to what?”
You will recall our encounter only when you are given the feather of the winter owl.
The figure dimmed and waned, writhed as though in the throes of some agony.
“Please!” Karigan cried. “You must tell me more!”
I ... I cannot hold on, I— The figure screamed and her flame extinguished.
The world was cast into a midnight void and Karigan staggered back, her muna’riel dimming as if in sympathy. The globe that contained the scene of Blackveil hovered in the air for a moment before rupturing and, for a single instant, transported Karigan to the forest, its rotten tree limbs arcing over her, clawing for her, the mud of the forest floor sucking at her feet, the wild screech of some creature seeking blood piercing the thick, wet air. Then the vision was gone and the shattered pieces of the globe cascaded into the snow like crystals of ice.
There was a sigh upon the wind and an anguished whisper that came to Karigan from far, far away: Argenthyne.
Then silence.
Karigan stood there in the deep snow of the clearing, the muna’riel glowing on the palm of her hand. Before she had a chance to grasp the apparition and her words about Sleepers, thresholds, keys, and Blackveil, or even the reference to her mother, the filament of memory was drawn from her so it was as if none of it had ever happened.
“We are nearly home.”
Karigan started at her father’s voice. The sleigh was in motion, the brasses and silver of the harnesses jingling. The drays stepped at a good pace, knowing they were headed for the barn.
“What happened?” Karigan asked, looking about herself, but discerning little in the dark.
“All my talk put you to sleep, I guess.”
Karigan tried to remember back, but it was all so foggy. They’d stopped in a clearing. “We were talking about the moonstone.” She patted her pocket and felt the bulge of it there.
“Yes, and I was trying to apologize.”
They rounded a bend and ahead were the lights of the G’ladheon manor house. Her father halted the drays once more and turned to her.
“No matter what,” he said, “you are my daughter and I love you. I am trying to be at peace with the magic. Just know I am proud of you, and of the accolades you’ve received. I’m glad the king recognizes your worth—he is a good man, and our land is fortunate to have one such as he as our sovereign.”
He paused, perhaps gathering his thoughts, and rubbed his chin. “I just hope you can one day forgive me for the secrets I have kept, but also understand why I cannot apologize for the choices I’ve made in my life.”
Karigan felt depleted of anger. It was clear he had never stopped loving her mother, and if he did not exactly like magic, he was at least trying to accept that it was a part of her life. She did not like the secrets, but acknowledged all those she kept herself.
She could not pick and choose the parts of her father she liked and disliked. His dealings with the brothel and piracy were part of the same package as the successful merchant and loving husband and father. All of it made him who he was.
That’s what love was about, right? Accepting the bad along with the good and without condition?
“You and your mother were always the most important things in my life,” he said. “I lost her, and I do not want to lose you.”
“I know,” Karigan said.
They hugged, and being in her father’s arms once again made her life as a Green Rider, and all the battles and dangers she’d endured, seem very far off. She was once again a daughter, finding safety and comfort in her father’s embrace.
A couple days later, Karigan stood at the cairn of stones that covered her mother’s grave. Her father had seen Kariny buried in the old way, the way of the islands, with her head oriented toward the dawn. Karigan’s aunts said he’d erected the cairn himself in his grief, day after day bearing rocks and thrusting them onto the pile. Some were enormous and she wondered how he had managed it. According to her aunts, he would accept no assistance, and by the look in their eyes when they recounted the story, she could tell how difficult it had been for them to witness his pain.