She walked and walked, but she might as well have been standing in place, for nothing changed around her, no landmarks appeared, and the plain remained level underfoot. All she could do was trust in the stallion and follow, watching the sway of his silken tail. She had an insane desire to pluck out some of those tail hairs for Estral to use in stringing the bow to her fiddle. She assumed, however, it was not wise to pluck the hair of any god-being. The absurdity of it made her laugh, and her voice rang sharp and disquieting in the emptiness. She hushed immediately.
At least this time she saw no corpses on funeral slabs, or Shawdell the Eletian trying to lure her into a game of Intrigue she could not win. Nothing of that nature thus far…
Until she saw the first bridge. It was an ordinary bridge of irregular, cut stone that spanned nothing, no brook, no chasm. It was as if some giant had picked it up from the real world and set it down here on the white plain. What was the purpose, she wondered, of a bridge that crossed nothing? She strode over to it, wanting to inspect it more closely, but the stallion darted in front of her and blocked her way.
“I just want to see it,” Karigan said.
The stallion laid his ears back.
“But—”
He scraped his hoof on the ground, raising a puff of white dust, then shouldered her away from the bridge as he might one of his mares, though perhaps more gently. She shuddered at the power she sensed lying just below the surface, and not just the physical power of muscle and sinew.
“All right,” she said, “I’ll leave it.”
She followed the stallion away from the bridge and glanced back at it, wondering why the stallion did not want her near it. She supposed she did not need additional trouble by pursuing it, but she couldn’t help wondering who might have built the bridge here and for what purpose. Maybe it was just an illusion.
The second bridge they came to was broken. This time the stallion did not prevent her from approaching it. The arch had crumbled away, leaving a gap between abutment walls. Blocks of cut stone littered the ground. She stood beneath the gap wondering what caused the arch to give away. Neglect? Weather?
Weather? What weather? Nothing changed here as far as she knew. Then she saw black scars on the bridge rocks, as if they had been scorched by some tremendous force. If only the stallion could speak and explain the ruins to her, but she could only find answers in her own imagination.
She left the broken bridge behind and followed the stallion toward the ever retreating horizon.
Just as one lost sense of time in a subterranean world that no sunlight reached, Karigan could not say how long she followed behind the stallion, only that she was growing weary and thirsty and her head throbbed anew. Nothing changed in the landscape or sky, there weren’t even any more bridges, just the same blanket of white.
When she had enough, she plopped to the ground and closed her eyes, trying to remember other colors and the smell of the forest after rain. She tried not to think about how tired and thirsty she was, or what food used to taste like. She touched the bandage around her head, felt the pain and heat of the wound. At least those things were real.
She opened her eyes to find the stallion’s velvety nose hovering just inches from her own. He blew a sweet breath into her face and she felt revived, no longer thirsty, no longer worn out. She gazed at him, startled, but then remembered what he was and figured he possessed even more remarkable abilities. In any case, she was grateful for this gift.
She rose to her feet to press on, but something caught the corner of her eye. In the distance a figure stood watching. The only details she could make out about him were a sword and quiver strapped to his back and the gleam of mail. She took a step in his direction, but he turned around and strode away, merging into the white. The white world, Karigan thought, was playing tricks on her and she wondered what else lay ahead.
She and the stallion set off again, and she soon found out. The delineation between land and sky grew hazy and a gauzy fog settled around them. She kept close to the stallion almost reaching out to touch him to make sure she did not lose him. But like her aversion to riding him, she feared tactile contact would draw her in and she’d lose herself in the vastness of the unending universe.
She tripped and fell to her hands and knees. Her surprise was supplanted by curiosity of what could have caused her to fall. She reached through the fog and felt around the ground. She touched something cold, but pliant, suspiciously like flesh. She recoiled and the fog swirled away first revealing an outstretched arm, a sword loosely gripped in its blood-spattered hand.
She hastened to her feet, a scream caught in her throat. Frantically she whirled looking for her guide, and just as she was about to cry out for him, he came back through the fog, pushing it aside.
As the clearing around him widened, it revealed the arm she tripped over was attached to the body of a soldier in Sacoridian black and silver with an arrow in his neck.
The lifting mist uncovered more. More dead twisted and sprawled upon the ground, impaled with pikes that jutted at angles above the landscape, or their heads cut off, or torsos skewered with swords and arrows and crossbow bolts.
Horses lay dead along with their masters, bloated and thick, and among the corpses was the debris of battle, pennants lying limp on the ground, broken weapons, shields, helms, bits of gear, shattered cart wheels, and there was the gore smeared across the white ground.
The stallion walked into the carnage, following some invisible path only he knew. Karigan fought with herself, clenched and unclenched her hands, trying to feel the pain of healing flesh to turn her mind elsewhere, to banish the scene from her vision.