STORMS AND NIGHTMARES
Thunder shattered the night and Karigan sat up, eyes wide open and heart pounding. Sudden pain lanced through her right eye as it often did when left uncovered. She clapped her hand over it with a small cry of agony until she could pull on her eyepatch. Covering it helped, but it remained a source of irritation even then due to the nature of the injury.
Lightning flashed the plain lines of her room into bright relief, then faded. She threw off her blankets and rose, shivering as the air cooled the perspiration on her skin. She padded over to the window. Rain pattered against the clouded glass.
She did not know whether it was the storm or the nightmares that had roused her. The storm was certainly bad enough on its own to unsettle her. Thunder and lightning never used to bother her, but she’d grown sensitive to it and other loud, sudden noises. This one was bad enough to make her hands tremble.
More lightning crackled across the sky, and in the corner of the room, it revealed the shadowed figure of her torturer as dream merged into waking nightmare. Nyssa Starling gazed at her, whip in hand.
“No,” Karigan murmured, stepping back.
Nyssa smiled at her with sadistic pleasure before darkness absorbed her.
An ear-splitting peal of thunder rattled the window, thunder like the crack of a whip. Karigan cried out and sank to the floor, and drew her knees to her chest. She shook all over. These visions, or visitations, were becoming more frequent. She closed her eyes and there was Nyssa again, with her sick grin, the thongs of her whip writhing like snakes and trailing blood, the same as in her dreams.
“Go away, go away, go away,” she whispered.
I am always with you, Greenie, Nyssa told her. You are mine.
Nyssa was dead, and logically Karigan should have nothing to fear from her, but logic seemed not to matter, for the torturer’s reach extended from beyond the veil of death. Enver had taught her how to use a sort of meditation to seek the peace of a starry meadow where Nyssa could not reach her, but she’d been unable to do so since their parting, as if a barrier blocked her way. As the avatar of Westrion, god of death, she should have been able to banish Nyssa to the hells, but that power, too, appeared to be lost to her.
The wailing of an infant leaked through the wall, the poor thing also awakened by the storm. The family—four children, their parents, and a granny—had arrived late, and now she could hear voices and the creak of floorboards as they attempted to soothe the baby.
The thunder rumbled in the distance, the storm’s intensity spent. Karigan sighed and returned to bed. She closed her eyes before once more removing the eyepatch, not only to avoid the pain, but to prevent unsettling visions, for no ordinary injury had stolen the sight of her right eye. The shard of an arcane device, a looking mask, had lodged into it and turned the whole of it into a mirror. Anyone who gazed into her mirror eye saw visions reflected back to them as if it were a miniature looking mask, and caused her to see, on occasion, a blur of images, of fates past, and those yet to come, all intersecting and diverging across the loom of the heavens as brilliant threads, weft and warp.
Visions, she thought in derision. Between the nightmares and being haunted by the ghost of her torturer, the last thing she needed was the shard inflicting more visions on her.
There were still a few hours before dawn and she needed to try to sleep no matter how bad the dreams. It was not until the storm diminished completely that the baby quieted, and that she drifted into a gray, uneasy sleep.
The family left at dawn. Karigan had heard them chattering and yelling to one another and banging around as they packed, and so she’d been deprived of yet more sleep. At breakfast down in the common room, she lingered over her tea and gazed out the window. The rain had stopped, but tree limbs hung heavy with their burden of rainwater.
“Waldron is doing fine,” Elda was telling Karigan. “He’s still abed sawing wood. Of an entire forest, or so it would seem.” She grinned. “Now how about more eggs?”
“No, thank you.” Karigan was glad to hear she was leaving Waldron in such good hands.
“If you don’t mind my saying, you look like you could use some meat on your bones. What would your mother say?”
Karigan had no idea. Her mother had been gone since she was a small child. She knew Elda was right, though. Her clothes were loose, and even her hands looked boney. Message errands usually took the weight off her, but this was worse than usual.
“No eggs,” she said, “but I’d have more tea and another cinnamon muffin.”
Elda looked delighted and bustled to the kitchen. At that moment, Omey stepped into the common room from outside, bundled in an oilskin coat and wearing mud-caked boots.
“We’re ready,” she said.
“Ready . . . ?” It took Karigan a moment to remember she was to accompany Omey to the farm that had been hit by the raiders. Actually, she had not forgotten, but had hoped Omey would, and had pushed it to the back of her mind.
“We’re going out to the Ferris place so you can see what was done.”
Karigan nodded and stood.
Elda hurried over with muffin in hand. “Omey, she hasn’t finished breakfast.”
“She can bring it with her.” Omey turned on her heel and headed for the door.
Elda made a disparaging noise and handed Karigan the muffin. “There will be more when you return.” Then she returned to the kitchen.
Karigan shrugged and took a bite of the muffin. It was still warm from the oven. She did not hurry, and by the time she reached the horse yard, she found Omey there, mounted up on a fat pony, an old sword that looked too long for her girded at her side. A man in a battered helm and leather jerkin, and armed with an ax, sat on a mule.
“Are we expecting trouble?” Karigan was not ready for a fight if it came to that. She had not healed enough.
“It is a precaution. I do not think there is anything of value left at the Ferris place to draw the raiders back, but I’m bringing Clem along just in case. He fought in the Under Kingdoms with my husband.”
Clem did not look any more ready for a fight than she or Omey, especially against these dangerous raiders.
Lori led a freshly groomed and tacked Condor from the stables. There wasn’t anything for it, so Karigan mounted up. The sooner they got this over with, the sooner she could be back on the road to Sacor City.
Once they left the village center, they urged their steeds into a steady trot and turned onto a dirt track bordered by a tangle of scrub alder and pines barely wide enough for a cart. Lori had done a fine job of grooming Condor, but mud already splattered his gleaming hide. The track was flooded where it dipped into a fold in the land, but they splashed through with no trouble. The farm, Karigan learned, was about four miles from the village. The ordinariness of chipmunks scurrying into the brush ahead of them, and the courtship songs of birds, relaxed her. Nothing felt off. It was just a normal spring morning.
She judged they were three miles in when Omey called a halt and said, “Around the next bend the path opens to farmland. If anyone is up at the farmhouse and looking, they’ll be able to see us coming.”
“What do you propose?” Clem asked.
“No one has been up there since we laid the Ferris’ to rest,” Omey replied. “I believe it would be wise if our Rider scouts the scene to ensure it is safe.”
Cold settled in Karigan’s belly, and when she did not respond, Omey asked, “Isn’t this the sort of thing you Riders do? Scouting and whatnot?”
“Yes,” Karigan replied in a flat voice. Then she shook herself. “Of course. I will check it out.” She reined Condor about to continue on alone.
“White as a sheet,” she heard Clem tell Omey. “The Greenies I knew back in the day were like steel.”
Karigan squeezed Condor into a trot so she would not have to hear more, but when she reached the bend in the path, she halted him before they lost the screening of vegetation.
What is wrong with me?
You are broken, Nyssa whispered.
Karigan tightened her hands on the reins in an effort to quell the voice of the torturer. She believed Omey was right, that the raiders would be long gone, never to return to the farm, that there was no danger ahead. And yet, she hesitated. She had chosen to journey by herself from the Lone Forest back home to Sacor City to regain her confidence after having been at the mercy of Nyssa Starling, but she’d only discovered that being alone with her thoughts for so long allowed inner voices to tell her how incapable she was, how vulnerable to harm, how weak.
The Karigan of old would not hesitate. The Karigan of now feared it would happen all over again, that she’d be held helpless as she was beaten nearly to death. A jolt of pain coursed up her back at nightmarish memories. The old Karigan could save herself from danger. Until Nyssa. With Nyssa, she hadn’t been able to save herself.
When she’d come upon the wreck of Waldron’s wagon yesterday, she’d almost turned Condor around and run away. It was like wanting to protect a wound, but all of her was the wound.
She closed her eyes for a moment, trying to clear her mind of doubts, of the internal voices that told her how unfit she was, how broken. Condor turned his head to look back at her and gave a gentle whicker. He was picking up on her distress. She patted his neck, and with a trembling exhalation, nudged him forward at a walk. When they passed from the concealment of the woods for the open expanse of farm fields, she fought an inclination to wheel Condor around and retreat. But she could not let Omey and Clem see her fear, so she continued on.
She scanned the landscape. Some fields were freshly furrowed and smelled of having been fertilized with dung. Stone walls rambled around the edges of the fields. The farmstead, or what was left of it, was located on a hillock, a haze of smoke hovering around the remains of the house and barn.
If anyone observed her from the hillock, there was not much she could do to conceal her approach in such openness during daylight hours. Whether she rode fast or slow, she would be spied by anyone watching. She had to go one way or the other, so she settled on moving Condor out at a crisp trot.
Other than smoke, nothing moved as she approached the farmstead. When Condor trotted into arrow range, she knew she made a fine target. Though no projectiles came tearing through the air at her, she found the stillness as she entered the farmyard disquieting. There should have been at least the song of birds. Only a few insects buzzed around her head. All else was silent.
She pulled Condor to a walk and drew her bonewood staff from its sheath across her back. The bonewood was light compared to her saber. Even if she wasn’t up to her full strength, its leather-wrapped iron handle could still do damage to an opponent. With a shake, she extended it to full length.
Her disquiet built as she halted Condor in the farmyard. No dog raced toward her barking a challenge. No chickens pecked the ground near their coop. Untended laundry rustled on a line.
The barn was a heap of ash and scorched timbers atop its foundation, smoke still lazily wafting above it. It would likely smolder for days despite the rain, before it finally burned out. When some of that smoke hit the back of her throat, she coughed until tears ran down her cheeks. She drew a handkerchief from her pocket and covered her nose and mouth to protect lungs made too sensitive from inhaling the smoke of a different fire. She reined Condor around toward the house. The chimney still stood, as did a portion of a wall with a window, its glass blasted outward from the intense heat. Beneath it was a planter of wilted flowers.
A cloying floral scent penetrated her handkerchief and drew her to the far corner of the house, where a fine specimen of a lilac bush that had been lovingly cared for bloomed in full spring glory. The blossoms closest to the house, however, were browned and wilted.
Nearby, a rope swing hung from an oak, swaying back and forth as if nudged by the small hands of children. Beyond were six freshly mounded graves. Two were very small.