“Of all the impudent—” Javian began.
“Easy, Castellan,” Tallman said. “Sir Karigan’s reputation precedes her.”
“Gentlemen?” the king said. “If you would?”
Tallman bowed. “As you wish, Majesty.”
He started down the runner, gesturing for the sputtering Javian to follow. It was an indication of how much the king valued Karigan that he did as she wished. Mara had been around long enough to suspect there was more going on between king and Rider. Nothing illicit—that sort of thing never remained a secret—but something deeper. Karigan had never opened up to her about it, and Mara respected that silence.
Mara was not asked to leave, so she stood some paces behind Karigan to listen, and to help if needed. The Weapons, as usual, stood along the length of the throne room. Their presence did not appear to perturb Karigan.
A chair was brought for her, but she disregarded it, instead pacing in circles as Mara had seen before.
“Cade, Cade, Cade . . .”
The king glanced at Captain Mapstone, and she back at him, both clearly unsettled. When the robe arrived, Karigan allowed it to be placed over her shoulders. She had to be freezing with all the bitter drafts from the storm that still howled outside and the cold stone beneath her bare feet, but she didn’t show it.
“Karigan,” the captain said, “you wished to speak with us?”
Karigan halted and looked up. “Yes, before it all becomes a forgotten dream.” Without waiting for further prompting, she began with Blackveil, describing events that paralleled what Lynx had described of the expedition. She spoke of smashing the looking mask. The rest was new to them, how she was transported to a future version of their world. “I ended up in a circus,” she said. “That is, stuck in a sarcophagus in the circus.”
The king and captain exchanged incredulous looks, as they would often do over the next couple of hours. Karigan told a halting, but astonishing, tale. She paused to recollect missing memories. She pounded her forehead with the heel of her palm as if to shake them loose. She consulted the scrawlings on her arm and nightgown, and muttered she should have brought her papers with her.
Despite the disjointed unfolding of the tale, it depicted a chilling picture of their future. Mara shuddered when Karigan described the ruins of Sacor City and the castle. She went on, trying to explain the machines and weapons of that time, but when she did so, nonsense came out of her mouth, like some other language, like the unreadable scrawlings on the wall Mara had seen.
When the king and captain merely looked on in confusion with eyebrows raised, Karigan said, “You think I’m insane, don’t you? That I’ve turned mad after what I’ve been through.”
“No, Karigan,” the king said quietly. “We do not think that. We are just having trouble understanding what you describe. Try again. It may be that knowing about these weapons, if we can replicate them, will give us an advantage over our enemies.”
She tried again and again. The nonsense flowed like a fluent foreign language, sometimes interspersed with words of the common tongue like “horrible,” “loud,” and “smoke.” She grew frustrated when they did not understand.
“You told us,” the king said, maintaining his reasonable, calm tone, as if Karigan did not look and sound mad, “that the god Westrion intervened to take you forward in time. Is it not possible the gods are intervening again, preventing us from knowing certain details of the future? A future in which they were discarded?”
Karigan exhaled a long breath. “Yes. Yes, of course. That’s it. I was prevented from handling—”
And whatever it was that she hadn’t been allowed to handle came out as another garbled word. Now relieved, she dropped into the chair.
“What will be, will be,” she said passing her hand over her eyes.
The points she obviously wished to convey were that the king’s cousin, Lord Amberhill, would use some powerful weapon to betray his king and country, to become emperor, and that there was possibly an artifact in the tombs called the “dragonfly device” that might help stave off Amberhill’s weapon. Karigan, apparently, never saw Amberhill’s weapon, only its cataclysmic aftermath. Nor did she know what the dragonfly device was, except that it might be found in the tombs.
At one point, she turned to Captain Mapstone. “You gave me riddles.”
The captain nodded slowly. “Yes, but the riddles came from Prince Jametari. Somial brought them and instructed me to leave them for you in the tombs.” Her face fell. “I never thought . . . I never thought they’d lead to your return.”
“I had help.” Karigan spoke of Lhean, a dream of Laurelyn, of Fastion who had somehow survived all those years into the future, and of Cade Harlowe. But she was circumspect when she spoke of Cade, hiding details, while still making him an important part of the tale.
When she came to the end, her head rested in her hands as though it hurt. “He was torn from me,” she murmured. “Torn from me.”
He had been more than just an ally in Karigan’s quest to escape the horrific future. Much more. Mara could tell the captain saw it, too, and although it was often difficult to read the king, Mara was pretty sure he saw it as well. How could he not?
Oh, Karigan. She attracted trouble enough for ten Riders, and after all the things she had seen and done, she did not, Mara believed, deserve heartbreak, too.
The king knelt before Karigan’s chair. “You came back to us. To me. I never doubted.”