“Let us pause here,” he said, “and see what unfolds. I have no wish to get caught in the thick of things.”
“Yes, my lord,” Beryl said in a deadpan voice. She reined her horse in reflex and sat there staring straight ahead.
Then, as if on cue, a Weapon fell from his horse, impaled by two arrows. The drunken nobles hauled on the reins of their panicked steeds. At least a few lord-governors would die today, eliminating possible contenders for the throne and leaving their provinces in disarray. Mirwell had hoped more would join the hunt, but they knew from past years what a bore it was.
A bore no longer, he thought.
Twenty to thirty metal-clad figures swarmed over each ridge toward the valley floor. The brave little terriers charged the groundmites as if the instinct to attack the creatures had been bred into them. Nobles fell to the ground with arrows bristling from them like pins in a pin cushion.
“Who is that?” Alton asked. He pointed at the opposite ridge and passed Karigan the scope.
She trained it where he pointed. At first she saw no one among the trees and tall grasses, but then a solitary figure standing there became discernible. Just barely. He was dressed in gray. She nearly dropped the telescope.
“You know him?” Alton asked.
“I’ve encountered him,” she replied, overcome by shakiness. “A gray rider. The Shadow Man.” Condor shifted his weight and pawed the ground, his ears laid back. “We’ve got to do something.”
“I agree, but what? We would most likely get ourselves killed down there.”
Karigan grabbed only air where the hilt of her saber should have been. It was the one thing that had not been returned to her. “We must stop that gray rider. He uses terrible black arrows. They’re magic . . . and evil. We must stop him.”
Alton loosed his saber from his saddle sheath. “Well,” he said with a rueful smile, “I was tired of being left out of the action. My family will kill me if they find out about this. And if I survive.”
Karigan saw that he was about to charge down into the midst of the ambush. “Don’t go yet. I’m going to ask for help.”
She freed the little velvet pouch from her belt and drew out the bunchberry flower, now with only three petals left on it. Alton held himself taut, ready to ride into the valley to fight for the king, but watched Karigan with his head cocked at a quizzical angle to see how she hoped to find help.
She plucked a petal from the flower and threw it into the breeze. It floated into the sky and was whisked away by the air currents. “Please bring help,” Karigan said.
Alton snorted in disbelief. “If that isn’t the most outrageous—” Night Hawk reared, and he fought to keep his seat. “Now what?”
What Alton D’Yer considered to be outrageous was blown away by a gathering of wispy, shifting spirits who arrayed themselves before Karigan. F’ryan Coblebay, dead F’ryan, stood frontmost. The faces of his companions stirred and changed as if under water, their voices a breathy babble. Alton blanched, enabled by some whim of the shadow world to perceive the dead, too.
“F’ryan,” he said. “How—?”
F’ryan did not acknowledge the young lord, as if he must keep each movement to the barest minimum. Instead, he stood before Karigan. I have come to help one last time, he said. One last time for the Wild Ride.
The Wild Ride, the other ghosts echoed.
Alton glanced at Karigan, stricken, and she knew exactly how he felt.
In the valley, several nobles had been slain, though the rest attempted to repel the attackers, but mostly in vain. The remainder of the guards and Weapons left them unprotected and ringed the king, and though several groundmites lay dead, the odds were impossible.
You must end the pain, F’ryan said to Karigan. Soon I will fade and be enslaved by him. He swept his pallid hand across the valley where the gray rider stood unseen without the aid of the telescope. So many have already fallen to him. You must break the arrows. Break all the arrows.
Break arrows, the ghosts echoed.
It is the last time for the Wild Ride, F’ryan said.
The Wild Ride! The Wild Ride! The Wild Ride!
“Hang on for your life,” Karigan warned Alton. His wide eyes told her he was clearly frightened.
Condor and Night Hawk sprang down the hill after the ghosts, and it was as Karigan remembered. Everything wheeled past her as an indistinct blur in streamers of color. But this time the ghosts remained hushed and grave, intent upon their goal. Their passage was like a rustle of wind across the grasses, for this Wild Ride lasted only moments, and when it ended, they stood on the opposite ridge abreast of the Shadow Man. The ghosts seethed and wavered behind them. Alton was still white from the shock, his features taut, but he was in one piece.
The Shadow Man gazed into the valley. He leaned on his longbow and held in his hand in a casual, careless way, a black arrow. The spectral breeze of the ghosts fluttered his gray cloak. He turned to them, and although his features lay shrouded in the shadow of his hood, Karigan felt his gaze upon her.
She licked her lips, seized by fear and dread, wondering what it was the ghosts expected her to do against this one who possessed dark magic. She hadn’t even her saber to use.
Alton overcame his fears first. He sat tall in his saddle, and with the most aristocratic bearing he could summon, he commanded, “Call off your attack.”
Soft laughter trickled from beneath the Shadow Man’s hood. “What a pretty hero you make, Lord D’Yer.” The Shadow Man tossed his hood back, revealing deep golden hair that seemed to shine with a halo beneath the sun.