Karigan had slugged him in the shoulder. She assumed it was his shoulder. It was hard to tell in the dark. In any case, she found it immensely satisfying.
“Now move over,” she ordered, “you’re hogging all the space.”
When he complied, she crawled into her bedroll.
“What? You aren’t going to change?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m on second watch, so why bother?”
“Such a disappointment,” Yates said with a tsk, tsk. “But we will have many more nights together to—”
She kicked him, but this time it just made him laugh.
It was so strange, she thought, to hear laughter. It was as if once they entered the forest, and especially after Porter’s grim death, such a thing as laughter could not exist here.
“Do you suppose,” he asked after some moments, “the Eletians sleep in their armor?”
For that she had no answer—she wasn’t even sure if Eletians slept, but she joined Yates in his laughter, eventually falling asleep feeling much lighter than she had since entering the forest.
A PIECE OF TIME
Karigan awoke with a grunt and a jerk, caught in a dream where a black tree root had snaked from the ground and grabbed her foot. She cried out.
“Karigan,” Lynx whispered, reaching through the tent opening and shaking her foot.
She groaned, tatters of dream lifting from her. It must be time for her to go on watch. She unwrapped herself from her tangled bedroll, then backed out of the tent dragging her saber with her.
“It’s been relatively quiet,” Lynx said.
Their meager campfire, and the glow of two moonstones, accented the craggy lines of his face. Something wailed in the forest’s depths.
“Like I said, relatively quiet.” Lynx gave her a grim smile before heading for his own tent.
The moonstones belonged to Lhean and Spiney. Lhean strode around the terrace, looking out into the night, obviously on watch. Spiney stood motionless, gazing at the moondial. The light reflected from the crystalline engravings flared up around his feet like white fire.
Karigan shook off the last residue of sleep and approached Spiney. He still did not move, did not even seem to blink. A statue he was in his white armor.
When she stood beside him, the moondial looked no different than before.
“The forest does not permit the moon to shine here,” Spiney said unexpectedly. “No matter the phase. Without it we cannot experience a piece of time.”
“And your muna’riel is not enough.”
“It contains a moonbeam, not the moon.” He lowered his moonstone and placed it in a pouch on his swordbelt. Darkness draped them. As Karigan blinked to adjust to the change, the Eletian left her.
Karigan fingered her own moonstone in her pocket. She had yet to reveal it to the darkness of Blackveil, and wishing to take a closer look at the moondial herself, she did so now, wondering if her mother could have ever imagined it would be used here, in this the forest of darkest legend. Its light flooded the terrace, and once more the moondial glistened.
Her chest cramped beneath her Rider brooch. She gasped and doubled over in pain, clenching the brooch. Shafts of light beamed up from the moondial, trapping her like the bars of a cage, and the world blurred and changed around her. There was the Blackveil as she left it and the tents of her companions, but layered over it was another forest; the forest before it became Blackveil, smelling of green life, with the stars shining above.
There was smoke.
The valley bloomed with gold and orange fire, smoke pluming into the sky—or was it just the mist of Blackveil’s present?
Screams of the past came to her even as some creature in the present screeched. Ghostly figures ran up the stairs onto the terrace, which appeared as pristine as if the stone had just been laid, and yet, in the doubling of her vision, it was blanketed by the taint of time and neglect.
The people ran in terror, crying, carrying children, shepherding and supporting the wounded. Eletians.
Who else would it be? This was Argenthyne. And it was Blackveil.
Hulking figures swarmed the terrace after them, their guttural war cries assaulted Karigan’s ears. Arrows flew from their bows. Eletians fell. The groundmites gave chase like a pack of feral dogs driven mad by the scent of blood.
Others—not groundmites, but men—climbed up the terrace at a more leisurely pace behind them. Karigan recognized the crimson and black uniforms of the Arcosians and among them was a power. She could feel it emanate from him from across the ages. He was black cloaked and black hooded.
Peripherally she heard Lhean calling to her. He sounded so far away.
The one with power looked at her, saw her. He lowered his hood, watched her with eyes blackened by wild magic. His striking face with its strong cheekbones and chin, the curl of raven hair. Mornhavon.
She would know him anywhere. She had borne his consciousness in her body across time, and that power—it was like a wall slamming into her.
Others began calling for her, telling her to come back . . .
Mornhavon smiled. Reached toward her with his crimson-gloved hand.
The cramping of her brooch turned into a dagger twist. She cried, fell to her knees, and her moonstone rolled from her grasp. The light died and Karigan was absorbed into the darkness of her mind.
A tumult of voices penetrated the dark.
“What in five hells just happened?” Grant demanded.
“A piece of time,” Graelalea replied.
“She nearly crossed into it,” Spiney added.