She followed a winding corridor out of the chamber, her feet raising layers of dust, the bonewood tapping on marble. The curve of the corridor tantalized her—she wanted to see what was hidden around the bend—but around and around she went, and though she had a sense of spiraling inward, the curves grew no tighter, at least not in any way she could perceive. Her idea of a seashell, like one of the large conch shells her father’d collected from the Cloud Islands, remained apt, the smooth pearlescent walls scrolling inward to its core. What would she find when she reached it?
Very soon she had her answer. The corridor opened into a vast, round chamber that soared upward like the other tower, but unlike the other, it contained no stairs winding to the top, and no bridges crossing its heights.
Upon pedestals stood four statues of winged Eletians, each perfect in form, the feathers of their wings as delicate and airy as the real thing, not at all resembling the stone they were carved from. The statues aspired to flight and the tower was high enough. Somehow Karigan knew that only the open sky would free them, and she felt the conflict of yearning to ascend with them, but of being Earthbound.
On the floor were several clumps of bones, faded fabric, and shards of steel weaponry. A spider, a normal-sized house spider, spun a web in the rib cage of a nearby skeleton. There was no other evidence of creatures living or dead, not even mouse tracks in the dust.
The dust caused the floor to appear a dull gray, but when she scraped her boot across it, the floor shone obsidian underneath. More investigation revealed some pattern inlaid in crystalline quartz too large to uncover entirely. She thought she would move on and continue her exploration, to find out what other parts of the castle would be revealed, when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her.
She turned to find Ard emerging from the corridor with bow and nocked arrow pointed directly at her.
“Ard—what?”
“My true mission,” he said, “is to see that you don’t survive yours. I kept hoping something else might take you so I wouldn’t have to do this, but you kept surviving.”
At first Karigan could only gape, but then it dawned on her. “You ... you were there,” she said, her voice barely rising above a whisper, but carrying easily across the cavernous room. “You were really there, weren’t you, when I was caught in that creature’s web.”
Ard nodded. “I thought those monsters would finish you. No luck, so here I am. I regret this, but I’ve no choice.”
“But why? At least tell me that. What have I ever done to you?” Karigan stepped back, her heel nudging a pile of bones that rattled. A leg bone rolled away.
“Duty to my clan,” he replied. “To protect the marriage of my lady to the king. You are a threat, and anything that threatens my lady must be destroyed.”
Karigan’s heart thudded. Others knew of her feelings for the king? Someone high up thought her enough of a threat to murder her? The captain had warned her that with her knighthood she’d entered the thorny world of the royal court, but this went beyond politics! Or maybe she was just being naive.
Ard tautened the bow string. “I do this for my lady, and with her blessing.” He loosed the arrow, but it flew wild, hitting the wall behind her. Ard’s knees folded and he crumpled to the floor, a white Eletian arrow piercing his throat. Karigan’s own knees went weak.
Ealdaen appeared from the corridor with bow in hand, and he glanced briefly at Ard before stepping over the forester’s body.
“I saw him follow you out,” Ealdaen said. “He had an interest in you all along, but not knowing the ways of your people, I could not discern his intent. Until now.”
Karigan’s grip on the bonewood was clammy. It was too much betrayal to sort out all at once. Ard as murderer, with Estora’s blessing. Estora, who had been her friend.
And now she was alone with Ealdaen who’d once tried to kill her. He strode toward her.
“Did you kill Ard so you could finish me off yourself?” She extended the bonewood to staff length with a shake and stood in a defensive position.
Ealdaen paused, a bemused expression on his face. “You are truly difficult to understand at times, you and your people. I am not here to kill you, Galadheon, but to aid you. The reason for hunting you in the past no longer exists. You are free of the tainted wild magic.”
Karigan released a long breath and relaxed her stance.
“Omens and prophecies are not set in stone,” Ealdaen continued. “A river will change course. You’ve a particular unpredictability, Galadheon, one that all the prophecies of the crown prince cannot pin down.”
“Maybe Eletians are too set in their ways,” Karigan replied, not so ready to forgive one who almost killed her based on the unreliability of prophecy.
He bowed his head accepting her words without recrimination. “It is clear that you’ve a purpose here, which I’m only just beginning to understand. Graelalea must have known something of it for she passed to you one of her feathers. And you are Laurelyn-touched.”
He was right, she was here for a purpose, drawn by an apparition she’d seen one snowy night along the Arrowdale Road. Why she hadn’t remembered that purpose before, she did not know, but it galled her to learn that yet once again other forces were directing her life. She’d work out her feelings about that later—she’d more pressing concerns now.
“I am here to help the Sleepers,” she said. “I was told this.”
“By whom?”