He drew a black arrow from his quiver and nocked it to his bow.
“Oh, gods,” she whispered. Connly had told her how F’ryan died. Two black arrows in his back.
She had only to touch Red Wing to send him flying into a gallop. She veered off the road, crouching low in the saddle. There was nowhere to hide, though. The woods were clear cut.
Red Wing stretched his legs downslope where a boggy pond was rimmed with a thicket of trees. In the trees, bow and arrow would be next to useless. The gray rider’s horse pounded after her, his hoofbeats like an echo of Red Wing’s. The gray rider drew abreast of her even over the uncertain ground, plunging over snags of wood, and across slippery granite.
The gray rider dropped his reins, guiding his horse with the touch of his legs and knees. He drew his bowstring and an arrow sang.
Red Wing stumbled beneath Joy, fell away like her own footing lost. She rolled clear as he tumbled haunches over head, the air thick with his screams, his hooves flailing up toward the sky. Then he stilled. Dust drifted and settled about him where he lay dead, an arrow in his throat.
Joy hauled herself behind him, face wet with tears, and grief jammed like a fist in her throat. Her leg was twisted at the wrong angle, her thigh bone protruding through ragged muscle and skin like an ivory bull’s horn. She could not feel it, but darkness hovered at the edges of her mind. She drew her saber though it would be no defense against arrows.
The gray rider sat still and silent on his steed. He nocked another arrow and aimed it at her. She heard whispers issue from his hood as if he spoke invocations over the arrow. Or maybe it was the gods calling her.
Pain exploded in Joy’s chest. “Connly,” she croaked. The world became gauzy around her, and she could feel life leaking away and a darkness spreading in her chest like a disease.
The gray rider sat silhouetted on his horse. He drew out yet another arrow and nocked it to the bow.
She clutched her wound and blood gouted out as if to fill her hands like cups. “Why?” She mouthed the word more than spoke it.
The gray rider drew the bow string. “You shall serve me.”
His voice, she thought, was melodic.
He loosed the arrow.
Joy seemed to be looking at the night sky filled with bright pinpoints of stars where the gods awaited her. She drifted; was drawn upward. Somewhere above her, vast wings fluttered—it was Westrion come to take her soul to the heavens. Cares fell away from her as she floated light and incorporeal.
Then, as if a hand reached into her chest and clenched her heart, she felt pain all over again, and cold. She was wrenched earthward, against the forces of the heavens.
No! she cried. Westrion!
She was echoed by an angry screech. The flutter of wings grew more distant and soon vanished.
“You shall serve me,” the melodic voice said.
Joy’s feet were planted on the ground. She looked skyward, but the starry night was gone, and the air was hazy gray and dull, lifeless. The arrows projected from her chest like porcupine quills and she tried to pull them out, but only enveloped herself with pain.
“They mark you as mine. Think of them as your collar, slave.” The gray rider still sat upon his horse, but he was no longer gray. His cloak and hood shimmered with the colors of the rainbow, and he almost looked as if he sat upon the air, for his horse blended in with the gray and lifeless world.
Her corpse, and Red Wing’s, lay insubstantial, ghostly. Her body was splayed and broken, her blood had saturated her shirt and coat with darkness. It was not red in her vision. Only the winged horse brooch had any color. It blossomed with a cold, golden gleam. She reached for it, but her hand passed through her body.
She looked at her hands.They were flesh colored, they flexed open and closed into fists. They seemed alive. Was this what it was like to be a ghost? The living world became dead?
Joy.
Joy looked behind her, and there stood F’ryan Coblebay, more real than anything in the midst of the gray world. His green uniform was almost vibrant. Take my hand, he said. He stretched his gloved hand toward her.
Behind him stood a host of Green Riders dressed in uniforms from centuries gone by. They whispered and shifted like shadows. Take his hand, they whispered to her. Red Wing stood there with him, his mane and tail flowing in no natural wind.
Joy reached for him, the pain constricted around her chest, the darkness spread.
Come, F’ryan said. You are one of us.
What has happened? She gasped.
This is a between place, F’ryan said. The Shadow Man keeps us from going beyond. His arrows, they are anchors. Take my hand.
Take his hand, the others whispered.
“Do not listen,” the gray rider said. “Or you will be tormented forever by pain. It would be worse than any hell wrought by your mythologies.”
Take my hand, F’ryan said.
Joy fought the pain, her fingers touching his. They were warm, felt like real flesh. He grasped her hand and held it. The arrows seared her chest. If she went to the gray rider, she would be relieved of the pain. But it was not right for her to join him.
NORTH
Karigan awoke with the echo of hoofbeats fading with her dreams, and all but forgotten as she attacked her morning tasks. The Horse was promptly fed, watered, and rubbed down. Breakfast was prepared and eaten with dispatch. She took up a broom which had stood hidden in a dark corner and swept the cabin thoroughly.
She checked her packs to make sure all was in order. She found F’ryan Coblebay’s love letter to Lady Estora in the message satchel. Maybe Torne and Jendara had thought any document was valuable and so saved it. Certainly they weren’t being sentimental. Karigan herself had forgotten all about it. The important thing was that the message to King Zachary was still intact, the seal unbroken.