Memory 002: GR - Dead Rider (Sig Neu)
Jun. 30th, 2014 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
justariderGame Received: Eliza's Brother's scrap book game, Day 362, sunset
Team Played With: n/a (Knight game)
Memory Form: a page of the scrapbook, memory received when the page is torn out
Karigan G'ladheon awakened to the chitter of waxwings and chickadees.
Mourning doves cooed and jays defended their territories with raucous
song and fluttering wings. Above her, the sky opened up like an expansive
dusky canopy that winked with stars. The moon hung low in the west.
Karigan groaned. She lay at the edge of a fallow farmer's field, behind a
hedgerow, and her back wasn't taking it well.
She pushed damp hair away from her brow. Everything was wet with
dew and her clothes stuck to her like a cold and clammy second skin. She
remembered aloud why she was here.
"To get away from Selium."
Her own voice startled her. Aside from the birds, the countryside was
wide open and empty and silent. There would be no tolling of Morningtide
Bell here, nor the familiar creaking of floorboards as her fellow students
moved around in her old dormitory building preparing for a day of classes.
She stood up and shivered in the chill spring air. Indeed, she was
"away" from Selium, and would get farther away still before the day was
done. She gathered her blanket and things, stuffed them into her pack,
stepped over the hedgerow, and started walking. She carried little more
than a hunk of bread, some cheese, a change of clothes, and some jewelry
that had belonged to her mother— the only objects precious enough to her
to carry away. All the rest had been left in the dormitory in her haste to
leave Selium.
She walked briskly to stave off the chill, the gravel of the road
crunching beneath her boots. The rising sun, with its bands of orange and
gold, drew her east.
As she walked, the glistening grasses of farm fields transformed into
thick stands of fir and spruce blotting out the newly risen sun and
darkening the road.
This was the edge of the Green Cloak she entered, an immense wood
that grew thick and wild in the heart of Sacoridia. Its more tame borders
marched in snatches and thickets right down to the shores of Ullem Bay
and the foothills of the Wingsong Mountains. The bulk of the wood was
dense and unbroken, save for villages and towns that made islands of
themselves in its interior, and the occasional woods road that, from an
eagle's view, she thought, must cut through it like a scar.
Such roads were often in conflict with their surroundings. It didn't take
much for saplings to start growing in the middle of woods roads and
winter blowdowns to topple across them, eventually obscuring the least
used. A carpet of rusty pine needles softened Karigan's footfalls and gave
this road an abandoned look, though it was the main thoroughfare leading
into Selium from points east.
Karigan walked till her stomach growled. She sought out a warm patch
of sun surrounded by solid, cold shade, and washed down chunks of bread
and cheese with handfuls of water from a gurgling stream next to the road.
It wasn't the choicest water, but it would have to do.
Afterward, she splashed cold water on her face. She felt altogether
bedraggled after just one night on the road, and she longed for the hot
baths and full meals the school served up.
"Don't tell me I miss it…" She glanced over her shoulder as if the entire
campus, with its templelike academic buildings looming over the city
from atop its hill, might pop into view.
It was curious how a night on the road made yesterday's events seem
somehow less significant, less hurtful. Karigan half-turned, gazing back
down the road which, within a day's walk, ended at the school. Her hands
tightened into balls and she clenched her jaw. She would show the dean.
Kick me out of school, will you? Let's see how you like confronting my
father. She grinned, imagining her father, his expression livid, towering
over a shrinking Dean Geyer.
Then her shoulders sagged and her grin faltered. It was no good. She
had no control over her father. What if he agreed with the dean that her
punishment was just?
She kicked the ground and pebbles skittered across the road. Gods, what
a mess. She hoped to reach Corsa before the dean's letter did, so she could
tell her father her side of the story first. Either way, she would be in deep
trouble. Maybe she ought to hire herself out on a merchant barge and stay
away for good. After all, that's what her father had done when he was a
boy.
She jammed her hands into her pockets, and with head bowed, ambled
along the rutted road at a reluctant pace.
She startled a baby squirrel sitting on an old lightning-racked stump. It
pipped and squealed, its tail abristle. It stamped in place, then darted from
one edge of the stump to the other, as if too frightened to decide which
way to go.
"Sorry I scared you, little one," Karigan said.
Chittering, the squirrel dashed into some underbrush and scurried
noisily through the leaf litter of the forest floor, sounding like some much
larger beast.
Karigan walked on humming an off-key tune. However, when the
sounds of the squirrel did not abate but, in fact, grew much louder, she
froze.
The racket shattered the woods. Trees and shrubs shook as if some wild
creature— many times larger than a squirrel— thrashed in the twined
branches and undergrowth. Crazed catamounts and rabid wolves played
through her mind. She hadn't a weapon with which to fend off the beast,
and she couldn't run either; her feet seemed to have taken root in the
ground.
She drew a ragged breath. Whatever the nameless beast was, it charged
her way, and fast.
It burst from the woods in an explosion of branches. Karigan's breath
hissed in her throat like a broken whistle.
The creature loomed huge and dark in the tree shadows. It huffed with
great wheezings through flared nostrils like some infernal demon. Karigan
closed her eyes and stepped back. When she looked again, a horse and
rider, not some evil dragon of legend, staggered onto the road. Twigs and
leaves fell from them to the ground.
The horse, a long-legged chestnut, was lathered with sweat and huffed
as if from a hard run. The rider slumped over the chestnut's neck. He was
clad in a green uniform. Branches had lashed trails of blood across his
white face. His broad-shouldered frame twitched with fatigue.
He half dismounted, half fell from the horse. Karigan cried out when
she saw two black-shafted arrows impaled in his back.
"Please…" He beckoned her with a crimson glove.
She took one hesitant step forward.
The rider was only a few years older than she. Black hair was plastered
across his pain-creased brow. Blue eyes blazed bright with fever. With the
two arrows buried in his back, he looked as if he had fought off death
longer than any mortal should have.
He was of Sacoridia, Karigan was certain, though the green uniforms
were far rarer than the black and silver of the regular militia.
"Help…"
Each step she took was shaky as if her legs could no longer support her.
She knelt beside him, not sure how she could aid a dying man.
"Are you Sacoridian?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Do you love your country and your king?"
Karigan paused. What a curious question. King Zachary was relatively
new to the throne and she knew little of his policies or methods, but it
wouldn't do to sound disloyal to a dying servant of Sacoridia.
"Yes."
"I'm a messenger… Green Rider." The young man's body spasmed with
pain, and blood dribbled over his lip and down his chin. "The satchel on
the saddle… important message for… king. Life or death. If you love
Sacor… Sacoridia and its king, take it. Take it to him."
"I— I…" One part of her wanted to run screaming from him, and
another part felt drawn to his need. Running away to Corsa, instead of
waiting for her father to collect her at Selium, had held an irresistible air
of adventure that she had anticipated. But real adventure now looked at
her with a terrifying visage.
"Please," he whispered. "You are—"
The last words died inaudibly as blood gurgled in his throat and sprayed
his lips, but she thought she caught a breathy the one. The one what? The
only one on the road? The only one to take the message?
"I—"
"Dangerous." He shuddered.
Everything around fell silent in an expectant hush, as if the world held
its breath for her decision.
Before Karigan could stop herself, she said, "I'll do it." She heard the
words as if someone else had drawn them from her.
"You s-swear?"
She nodded.
"Sword. Bring it to me."
The horse shied from Karigan, but she caught his reins and drew the
saber from the saddle sheath. Its curved blade flickered in a patch of sun
as she held it out before her. She knelt beside the messenger again.
"Wrap your hands around the hilt," he said. When she did, he placed his
hands over hers. It was then she saw his gloves were not dyed crimson, not
originally. He coughed, and more blood flecked the corners of his mouth.
"Swear… swear you'll deliver… the message to King Zachary… for love
of country."
Karigan could only stare at him wide-eyed.
"Swear!"
It was as if she already looked upon a ghost rather than a living man. He
would not allow himself to die until she swore the oath. "I swear… I'll
deliver the message for the love of my country."
Although she had sworn, the Green Rider was not ready to die yet.
"Take the brooch… from my chest. It will ident…" He squeezed his eyes
shut in pain till the spell passed. "Identify you as messenger… to other
Riders." The words were gasped as if he were forcing air in and out of his
lungs by sheer will to extend his life. "Fly… Rider, with great speed. Don't
read m-message. Then they can't tor-torture… it from you. If captured,
shred it and toss it to the winds." Then, because his voice had grown so
faint, she had to lean very close to hear his final words. "Beware the
shadow man."
A cold tremor ran through Karigan's body. "I'll do my best," she told
him.
There was no response from the messenger this time though his eyes
still stared at her, bright and otherworldly. She gently pried his fingers
from her hand and closed his eyes. She hadn't seen the winged horse
brooch before, but now, pinned over his heart, it glowed golden in the sun.
Absently she wiped bloody finger marks off her hands onto her trousers
and then unclasped the brooch.
A curious sensation, not at all unpleasant, as if all her nerves sang in
unison, tingled throughout her body. The gold warmth of the sun
embraced her, and drove the shadowy chill away. There was a fluttering
like great white wings beating the air, and the sound of silver-shod hooves
galloping…
Moments later, the sensation receded, and she realized the sound was her
own excited heartbeat, and the sun had risen sufficiently to widen the patch
of light she stood in. Nothing more. She pinned the brooch to her shirt.
She then sensed, like a breeze whispering through a hundred aspen
trees, invisible lips that seemed to murmur, Welcome, Rider.
Karigan shook her head to clear it of such fancies, and turned to
practical matters. What to do with the messenger's body? She couldn't just
leave it lying there in the middle of the road exposed to carrion birds and
passersby, could she? She wouldn't want to stumble across a body in the
middle of the road during her travels. It just wasn't right to leave it there.
She grimaced. The body was too heavy for her to drag into the woods
by herself, and how would she bury it? She most certainly hadn't packed a
shovel. It seemed wrong to leave the body out in the open, but… she had
to try. Then, as if a voice said to her, Don't waste the time, she backed
away from the body and took up the reins of the horse.
And still she hesitated. The least she could do was leave the saber with
the messenger to show how bravely he had died. But what if she met up
with the people who had struck him with the arrows? She would need
some kind of defense, even if a saber wasn't any good against arrows.
Practicality won out, and she slid the blade back into its sheath.
The messenger had told her to fly, but running the horse to his death
would serve no purpose. She would walk him and mount up only when he
seemed at least partially recovered.
The horse was a sorry-looking beast. His legs were long but thick;
obviously he had been bred to run fast for distances with no thought to
aesthetics. His neck reminded Karigan of her father's descriptions of some
long-necked wild beasts he had seen on one of his voyages. The horse's
coarse chestnut hide was crisscrossed with old scars.
"I wish I knew your name," Karigan told him as they plodded along.
The horse curved his neck to look, not at her, but behind her. She
glanced back, too. The messenger's body had already fallen behind a bend
in the road, and there was nothing to see besides the pointy shadows of
spruce trees shrinking as the morning progressed.
She shuddered. The messenger's twisted, tortured form would stay in
her memory for some time to come. She had helped lay out the corpses of
old aunts and uncles for funerals, but they had died peacefully in their
sleep, not with arrows driven into their backs.
This message business was a huge change of plans. Home was out of
the question. Karigan bit her lip. Her father would be aggrieved enough by
her suspension from school, and now she was running off on some
reckless errand without having considered the consequences.
She could almost hear her aunts enumerating her deficiencies: Feckless,
Aunt Gretta would say; Willful, Aunt Brini would add; Impulsive, Aunt
Tory would declare. Aunt Stace would sum it all up with, G'ladheon, and
all the aunts would nod knowingly in mutual agreement.
Karigan thrust a strand of hair behind her ear. She could not help but
concur with her aunts' assessment. It seemed she always made the wrong
choices— the kind that got her into trouble.
It was too late to turn back now, though. She had made a promise. She
had sworn to the Green Rider she would take the message to King Zachary
himself.
She had visited Sacor City once as a young child, and at the time,
elderly Queen Isen, Zachary's grandmother, reigned over Sacoridia.
Zachary's father had ascended the throne only to fall ill and die a short
time later. Zachary's ascension to the throne had been challenged by his
brother, Prince Amilton, but why, she did not know. She assumed all
royals engaged in squabbles whenever power and prestige were at stake.
Now her ignorance annoyed her. What could be happening in the land
that meant a life-or-death message for the king? What did the message
contain that was so vital someone was willing to kill for it? She longed to
look at the contents of the message, but the Green Rider had ordered her
not to.
Belatedly, she wondered how much danger she had put herself in. She
was all alone amidst the wild forest lands of Sacoridia. She carried a
message for which a man had been pursued and killed. She let out a
trembling sigh, suddenly yearning for home; to be held in the safety of her
father's arms and to hear her aunts gossiping in the kitchen. She missed the
big old house in Corsa and the predictable and unimportant concerns of
everyday life that pulsed and flowed through it.
The recklessness of her decision to carry the message truly set in. With
a sinking feeling, she knew it would be a long time before she saw home
again.
Team Played With: n/a (Knight game)
Memory Form: a page of the scrapbook, memory received when the page is torn out
Karigan G'ladheon awakened to the chitter of waxwings and chickadees.
Mourning doves cooed and jays defended their territories with raucous
song and fluttering wings. Above her, the sky opened up like an expansive
dusky canopy that winked with stars. The moon hung low in the west.
Karigan groaned. She lay at the edge of a fallow farmer's field, behind a
hedgerow, and her back wasn't taking it well.
She pushed damp hair away from her brow. Everything was wet with
dew and her clothes stuck to her like a cold and clammy second skin. She
remembered aloud why she was here.
"To get away from Selium."
Her own voice startled her. Aside from the birds, the countryside was
wide open and empty and silent. There would be no tolling of Morningtide
Bell here, nor the familiar creaking of floorboards as her fellow students
moved around in her old dormitory building preparing for a day of classes.
She stood up and shivered in the chill spring air. Indeed, she was
"away" from Selium, and would get farther away still before the day was
done. She gathered her blanket and things, stuffed them into her pack,
stepped over the hedgerow, and started walking. She carried little more
than a hunk of bread, some cheese, a change of clothes, and some jewelry
that had belonged to her mother— the only objects precious enough to her
to carry away. All the rest had been left in the dormitory in her haste to
leave Selium.
She walked briskly to stave off the chill, the gravel of the road
crunching beneath her boots. The rising sun, with its bands of orange and
gold, drew her east.
As she walked, the glistening grasses of farm fields transformed into
thick stands of fir and spruce blotting out the newly risen sun and
darkening the road.
This was the edge of the Green Cloak she entered, an immense wood
that grew thick and wild in the heart of Sacoridia. Its more tame borders
marched in snatches and thickets right down to the shores of Ullem Bay
and the foothills of the Wingsong Mountains. The bulk of the wood was
dense and unbroken, save for villages and towns that made islands of
themselves in its interior, and the occasional woods road that, from an
eagle's view, she thought, must cut through it like a scar.
Such roads were often in conflict with their surroundings. It didn't take
much for saplings to start growing in the middle of woods roads and
winter blowdowns to topple across them, eventually obscuring the least
used. A carpet of rusty pine needles softened Karigan's footfalls and gave
this road an abandoned look, though it was the main thoroughfare leading
into Selium from points east.
Karigan walked till her stomach growled. She sought out a warm patch
of sun surrounded by solid, cold shade, and washed down chunks of bread
and cheese with handfuls of water from a gurgling stream next to the road.
It wasn't the choicest water, but it would have to do.
Afterward, she splashed cold water on her face. She felt altogether
bedraggled after just one night on the road, and she longed for the hot
baths and full meals the school served up.
"Don't tell me I miss it…" She glanced over her shoulder as if the entire
campus, with its templelike academic buildings looming over the city
from atop its hill, might pop into view.
It was curious how a night on the road made yesterday's events seem
somehow less significant, less hurtful. Karigan half-turned, gazing back
down the road which, within a day's walk, ended at the school. Her hands
tightened into balls and she clenched her jaw. She would show the dean.
Kick me out of school, will you? Let's see how you like confronting my
father. She grinned, imagining her father, his expression livid, towering
over a shrinking Dean Geyer.
Then her shoulders sagged and her grin faltered. It was no good. She
had no control over her father. What if he agreed with the dean that her
punishment was just?
She kicked the ground and pebbles skittered across the road. Gods, what
a mess. She hoped to reach Corsa before the dean's letter did, so she could
tell her father her side of the story first. Either way, she would be in deep
trouble. Maybe she ought to hire herself out on a merchant barge and stay
away for good. After all, that's what her father had done when he was a
boy.
She jammed her hands into her pockets, and with head bowed, ambled
along the rutted road at a reluctant pace.
She startled a baby squirrel sitting on an old lightning-racked stump. It
pipped and squealed, its tail abristle. It stamped in place, then darted from
one edge of the stump to the other, as if too frightened to decide which
way to go.
"Sorry I scared you, little one," Karigan said.
Chittering, the squirrel dashed into some underbrush and scurried
noisily through the leaf litter of the forest floor, sounding like some much
larger beast.
Karigan walked on humming an off-key tune. However, when the
sounds of the squirrel did not abate but, in fact, grew much louder, she
froze.
The racket shattered the woods. Trees and shrubs shook as if some wild
creature— many times larger than a squirrel— thrashed in the twined
branches and undergrowth. Crazed catamounts and rabid wolves played
through her mind. She hadn't a weapon with which to fend off the beast,
and she couldn't run either; her feet seemed to have taken root in the
ground.
She drew a ragged breath. Whatever the nameless beast was, it charged
her way, and fast.
It burst from the woods in an explosion of branches. Karigan's breath
hissed in her throat like a broken whistle.
The creature loomed huge and dark in the tree shadows. It huffed with
great wheezings through flared nostrils like some infernal demon. Karigan
closed her eyes and stepped back. When she looked again, a horse and
rider, not some evil dragon of legend, staggered onto the road. Twigs and
leaves fell from them to the ground.
The horse, a long-legged chestnut, was lathered with sweat and huffed
as if from a hard run. The rider slumped over the chestnut's neck. He was
clad in a green uniform. Branches had lashed trails of blood across his
white face. His broad-shouldered frame twitched with fatigue.
He half dismounted, half fell from the horse. Karigan cried out when
she saw two black-shafted arrows impaled in his back.
"Please…" He beckoned her with a crimson glove.
She took one hesitant step forward.
The rider was only a few years older than she. Black hair was plastered
across his pain-creased brow. Blue eyes blazed bright with fever. With the
two arrows buried in his back, he looked as if he had fought off death
longer than any mortal should have.
He was of Sacoridia, Karigan was certain, though the green uniforms
were far rarer than the black and silver of the regular militia.
"Help…"
Each step she took was shaky as if her legs could no longer support her.
She knelt beside him, not sure how she could aid a dying man.
"Are you Sacoridian?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Do you love your country and your king?"
Karigan paused. What a curious question. King Zachary was relatively
new to the throne and she knew little of his policies or methods, but it
wouldn't do to sound disloyal to a dying servant of Sacoridia.
"Yes."
"I'm a messenger… Green Rider." The young man's body spasmed with
pain, and blood dribbled over his lip and down his chin. "The satchel on
the saddle… important message for… king. Life or death. If you love
Sacor… Sacoridia and its king, take it. Take it to him."
"I— I…" One part of her wanted to run screaming from him, and
another part felt drawn to his need. Running away to Corsa, instead of
waiting for her father to collect her at Selium, had held an irresistible air
of adventure that she had anticipated. But real adventure now looked at
her with a terrifying visage.
"Please," he whispered. "You are—"
The last words died inaudibly as blood gurgled in his throat and sprayed
his lips, but she thought she caught a breathy the one. The one what? The
only one on the road? The only one to take the message?
"I—"
"Dangerous." He shuddered.
Everything around fell silent in an expectant hush, as if the world held
its breath for her decision.
Before Karigan could stop herself, she said, "I'll do it." She heard the
words as if someone else had drawn them from her.
"You s-swear?"
She nodded.
"Sword. Bring it to me."
The horse shied from Karigan, but she caught his reins and drew the
saber from the saddle sheath. Its curved blade flickered in a patch of sun
as she held it out before her. She knelt beside the messenger again.
"Wrap your hands around the hilt," he said. When she did, he placed his
hands over hers. It was then she saw his gloves were not dyed crimson, not
originally. He coughed, and more blood flecked the corners of his mouth.
"Swear… swear you'll deliver… the message to King Zachary… for love
of country."
Karigan could only stare at him wide-eyed.
"Swear!"
It was as if she already looked upon a ghost rather than a living man. He
would not allow himself to die until she swore the oath. "I swear… I'll
deliver the message for the love of my country."
Although she had sworn, the Green Rider was not ready to die yet.
"Take the brooch… from my chest. It will ident…" He squeezed his eyes
shut in pain till the spell passed. "Identify you as messenger… to other
Riders." The words were gasped as if he were forcing air in and out of his
lungs by sheer will to extend his life. "Fly… Rider, with great speed. Don't
read m-message. Then they can't tor-torture… it from you. If captured,
shred it and toss it to the winds." Then, because his voice had grown so
faint, she had to lean very close to hear his final words. "Beware the
shadow man."
A cold tremor ran through Karigan's body. "I'll do my best," she told
him.
There was no response from the messenger this time though his eyes
still stared at her, bright and otherworldly. She gently pried his fingers
from her hand and closed his eyes. She hadn't seen the winged horse
brooch before, but now, pinned over his heart, it glowed golden in the sun.
Absently she wiped bloody finger marks off her hands onto her trousers
and then unclasped the brooch.
A curious sensation, not at all unpleasant, as if all her nerves sang in
unison, tingled throughout her body. The gold warmth of the sun
embraced her, and drove the shadowy chill away. There was a fluttering
like great white wings beating the air, and the sound of silver-shod hooves
galloping…
Moments later, the sensation receded, and she realized the sound was her
own excited heartbeat, and the sun had risen sufficiently to widen the patch
of light she stood in. Nothing more. She pinned the brooch to her shirt.
She then sensed, like a breeze whispering through a hundred aspen
trees, invisible lips that seemed to murmur, Welcome, Rider.
Karigan shook her head to clear it of such fancies, and turned to
practical matters. What to do with the messenger's body? She couldn't just
leave it lying there in the middle of the road exposed to carrion birds and
passersby, could she? She wouldn't want to stumble across a body in the
middle of the road during her travels. It just wasn't right to leave it there.
She grimaced. The body was too heavy for her to drag into the woods
by herself, and how would she bury it? She most certainly hadn't packed a
shovel. It seemed wrong to leave the body out in the open, but… she had
to try. Then, as if a voice said to her, Don't waste the time, she backed
away from the body and took up the reins of the horse.
And still she hesitated. The least she could do was leave the saber with
the messenger to show how bravely he had died. But what if she met up
with the people who had struck him with the arrows? She would need
some kind of defense, even if a saber wasn't any good against arrows.
Practicality won out, and she slid the blade back into its sheath.
The messenger had told her to fly, but running the horse to his death
would serve no purpose. She would walk him and mount up only when he
seemed at least partially recovered.
The horse was a sorry-looking beast. His legs were long but thick;
obviously he had been bred to run fast for distances with no thought to
aesthetics. His neck reminded Karigan of her father's descriptions of some
long-necked wild beasts he had seen on one of his voyages. The horse's
coarse chestnut hide was crisscrossed with old scars.
"I wish I knew your name," Karigan told him as they plodded along.
The horse curved his neck to look, not at her, but behind her. She
glanced back, too. The messenger's body had already fallen behind a bend
in the road, and there was nothing to see besides the pointy shadows of
spruce trees shrinking as the morning progressed.
She shuddered. The messenger's twisted, tortured form would stay in
her memory for some time to come. She had helped lay out the corpses of
old aunts and uncles for funerals, but they had died peacefully in their
sleep, not with arrows driven into their backs.
This message business was a huge change of plans. Home was out of
the question. Karigan bit her lip. Her father would be aggrieved enough by
her suspension from school, and now she was running off on some
reckless errand without having considered the consequences.
She could almost hear her aunts enumerating her deficiencies: Feckless,
Aunt Gretta would say; Willful, Aunt Brini would add; Impulsive, Aunt
Tory would declare. Aunt Stace would sum it all up with, G'ladheon, and
all the aunts would nod knowingly in mutual agreement.
Karigan thrust a strand of hair behind her ear. She could not help but
concur with her aunts' assessment. It seemed she always made the wrong
choices— the kind that got her into trouble.
It was too late to turn back now, though. She had made a promise. She
had sworn to the Green Rider she would take the message to King Zachary
himself.
She had visited Sacor City once as a young child, and at the time,
elderly Queen Isen, Zachary's grandmother, reigned over Sacoridia.
Zachary's father had ascended the throne only to fall ill and die a short
time later. Zachary's ascension to the throne had been challenged by his
brother, Prince Amilton, but why, she did not know. She assumed all
royals engaged in squabbles whenever power and prestige were at stake.
Now her ignorance annoyed her. What could be happening in the land
that meant a life-or-death message for the king? What did the message
contain that was so vital someone was willing to kill for it? She longed to
look at the contents of the message, but the Green Rider had ordered her
not to.
Belatedly, she wondered how much danger she had put herself in. She
was all alone amidst the wild forest lands of Sacoridia. She carried a
message for which a man had been pursued and killed. She let out a
trembling sigh, suddenly yearning for home; to be held in the safety of her
father's arms and to hear her aunts gossiping in the kitchen. She missed the
big old house in Corsa and the predictable and unimportant concerns of
everyday life that pulsed and flowed through it.
The recklessness of her decision to carry the message truly set in. With
a sinking feeling, she knew it would be a long time before she saw home
again.
