BRACING FOR A STORM

Alton stood outside Tower of the Heavens and stared at the granite ashlars. He steeled himself for entry. He didn’t really want to go in, but currently, with Dale not yet returned from her errand to King Zachary, he was the only one able to. The towers were particular about who they allowed in. At one time, there had been D’Yerian keepers who watched over the wall, and they may have had some level of magic, or some other affinity, that allowed them access, but long ago, the clan had stopped maintaining the wall. So, there were no keepers. The towers permitted Green Riders, Eletians, and one particular and special minstrel inside. Alas that Estral was not here and that her voice had been stolen.

You can do this, he told himself.

It wasn’t that he was worried the tower might reject him as it had in the past, no. It was what he’d find inside. He took a deep breath. He had to get in there to commune with the wall. After another deep breath, he made himself step through solid stone. The sensation was much like passing through water—slight resistance, a certain fluidity, and a moment of breath holding.

When he emerged on the other side into the tower chamber, his worst fears were realized when the little monsters pounced on him—all five of them at once, wings aflutter, tiny claws piercing through his clothes into his skin.

“Ow! Achoo!”

His sneeze sent the gryphlings wheeling through the air with many a squeak and meep. He glared at Mister Whiskers in his orange tabby cat form who lay sprawled on the long table licking his paw. There was no sign of Midnight. She could be up in her nest—it was too far up and shadowed to tell at the moment, or she could be out hunting. He did not blame her if she had decided to take a break from the little darlings.

The place was a disaster. It smelled of cats and dead things, and there were bones and patches of animal hide strewn everywhere. Maybe having gryphons reside in the towers as a defense against an invasion of powerful and deadly dark Sleepers wasn’t the best idea, after all, but Merdigen had thought the gryphons could take them on. Alton had fought a dark Sleeper once and almost perished, so he’d been eager to gain any edge he could against the enemy.

The dark Sleepers were Eletians who had not escaped Argenthyne after Mornhavon the Black conquered it. They had been peacefully sleeping the great sleep in the massive boles of trees, as Eletians who were tired of their eternal lives were wont to do, and were left behind as their folk fought and fled the forces of Arcosia. They slept on oblivious to the woes of the outside world, but, in time, absorbed the corruption Mornhavon wrought in the land and became tainted themselves. Their hearts turned black. All that was beautiful and light in Argenthyne succumbed to his rot, and the realm became known as Blackveil Forest.

The towers of the D’Yer Wall were fussy about who and what they admitted. Among those allowed to enter were Eletians. Unfortunately, Alton had learned, nearly at the expense of his life, the towers did not distinguish between ordinary Eletians and dark Sleepers. It was how, he believed, Blackveil would invade Sacoridia, by sending those creatures through the towers. With a heavy sigh, he supposed he could put up with the messes the gryphons made if they proved as useful against the dark Sleepers as he hoped.

Since there was no time like the present to do a serious house cleaning, he set to, telling Whiskers, “You need to teach your offspring to go outside. And no more eating in the tower.”

Whiskers rolled onto his back and purred.

“Big help,” Alton grumbled.

The youngsters zoomed around him as if to see who could fly closest without crashing into him while he worked. They skimmed his head and careened beneath his arms. Yelling at them only seemed to encourage them.

“Zag!” he cried, almost tripping over the gryphling. Zag was one of the four who took after his mother. He was completely black and, in his gryphon form, had the body of a panther cub and the visage of a raven.

His partner in mischief was Zig, also black, but the tips of her toes were white. The other two black gryphlings were Soot and Shadow. The fifth looked like his father with a tawny catamount cub’s hide and raptor visage in gryphon form, and was a roly-poly orange tabby as a kitten. He was named Whiskers the Junior, but was just called Junior for short.

Alton gagged over a recent pungent pile of regurgitated fur, bone, and . . . whatever that was. At least Bob, the bobcat gryphon, did his business outside. Of course, he did not dare enter the domain of two adult gryphons who were very protective of their young.

Alton continued to sweep and clean, and after dumping the debris outside, he found Merdigen moving about the tower chamber.

“Ah, boy, there you are,” the great mage said. “What are you up to?”

“Cleaning,” Alton replied.

Merdigen gazed about. “Doesn’t look so bad.”

“That’s because I’ve been cleaning, and you don’t have a sense of smell.”

“Sadly, that is true.”

“Not so sad in this instance,” Alton replied. He was still feeling a little green after his encounter with the gryphling puke.

Merdigen, a great mage of a millennium past, and long dead, described himself as a “projection of the great mage, Merdigen.” Some essence of his being, his consciousness, perhaps, resided in the large egg-shaped specimen of tourmaline that sat on a pedestal in the center of the chamber. The tourmaline Soot and Shadow were currently trying to bat off the pedestal.

Merdigen shrieked and ran across the room. “Shoo! Shoo!” he yelled at the gryphlings. “Bad kitties!” He created an illusion of a moth to distract them. They bounded after it in kitten form, mewing and meeping.

“You have got to have a talk with Whiskers and Midnight about taking the gryphlings out more and getting them to behave,” Alton told Merdigen.

“Yes, I see that now. They’ve clawed up some of my books.”

Alton glanced at the stacks on the table. He had already discarded two that had been shredded beyond repair. He shook his head and entered beneath the eastward arch of the chamber that led to a short corridor. The corridor intersected with the wall. It was time to do what he had originally intended when he’d entered the tower: commune with the wall.

He pressed his hands against granite. Runes flickered on stone, and he closed his eyes. His mind traveled among the crystalline structures that pulsed with power. He heard the steady song of the wall guardians—the souls of magic users who had been slain during the Scourge to strengthen the wall. Forever trapped in stone, their song kept the wall strong. Alton lent his voice, and it helped, but he wasn’t Estral Andovian.

Everything seemed well with the eastern section of the wall, though there was, he thought, an underlying tension. He was not surprised, not with the restlessness of Blackveil. There had not been any incursions through the breach of late, but the sense of waiting for the inevitable was there.

He disengaged and returned to the main chamber only to find Merdigen and the gryphons were not alone. Dale sat at the table with all five kittens curled up on her and sleeping contentedly. She was having a cup of tea with Merdigen, though Merdigen’s was illusory, of course.

“You’re back!” Alton exclaimed.

She smiled and raised her cup to him. “I am. Did you know it smells kind of catty in here?”

“You picked up on that, did you?”

They exchanged greetings, and she said, “The king’s message for you is in my satchel.” She nodded to where it lay on the table so as not to disturb the kittens. “Lots of news when you’re done reading, and not a lot of it is good.”

He took the satchel and pulled the king’s message out, addressed to Rider Lord Alton D’Yer. He broke the seal and read the contents with growing dissatisfaction. King Zachary wrote: The quills you sent me impress upon me the urgency for more troops to be stationed at the wall. I have not forgotten you, but unfortunately, until such time as hostilities with Second Empire cease, I just cannot spare them.

Alton tossed the message onto the table in disgust.

“Bad news?” Merdigen asked.

“He can’t give us any troops because of the war.”

“I was under the impression that was the case,” Dale replied, “though I wasn’t told directly. They were still waiting out Second Empire, holed up in the Eagle’s Pass Keep when I was there, and there are detachments north and west fighting factions, not to mention the Darrow Raiders.”

News of the Darrow Raiders had reached the wall. They had hit some farms in D’Yer Province, and people had fled the countryside for the relative safety of Woodhaven.

“What else?” he asked.

“You should know that the colonel has been abducted.”

“What?”

Dale then launched into an incredible tale of the Raiders, a magical travel device, whisper wraiths, great gray eagles, and the secretive realm of Varos.

“Well, well,” Merdigen said, “so my pupil, Duncan, somehow survived all these years.”

Alton just sat there stunned.

Dale shifted a kitten and poured him a cup of tea. “I know. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Is the king just going to leave her there, a captive of the Varosians?”

“Karigan seemed to think he had some plan in mind, but he had not revealed it to her.”

Whiskers rose to sniff at Alton’s teacup. When he raised his paw to dip it in the cup, Alton shooed him away and sneezed. His eyes were watering and he just wanted to claw them out.

“I’ve heard of such travel devices,” Merdigen said. “There were one or two present during the Long War. Surely the king could use it to rescue your colonel.”

“Well,” Dale said, “that brings us to the next part of the tale.”

“There’s more?” Alton asked.

Dale nodded and moved Junior as he climbed up her coat. The next part of the tale was as remarkable as the first, and involved an attack by elite Arcosian warriors who called themselves Lions, more whisper wraiths, and Karigan ending up in Eletia and being put on trial.

“I assume she was exonerated,” Alton said.

Dale laughed. “More than that; they named her the heir of King Santanara.”

“What?” Alton almost spewed his tea. His outburst elicited an annoyed meep from Whiskers.

“They call her Lady Winterlight,” Dale said, “though she just wants to be known as Rider G’ladheon.”

“That is unheard of with a non-Eletian,” Merdigen said. “It’s extraordinary. I do not understand what could have prompted the Eletians to bestow this upon her.”

“Karigan doesn’t understand either,” Dale said. “Apparently, the Eletians looked ready to convict her, and then something made Prince Jametari drop the accusations and basically name her his sister. The other Eletians, she said, were astounded, too.”

“Karigan,” he murmured, and he shook his head.

“I know what you mean.”

Dale then told him how Connly had demoted Karigan and made Tegan the new Chief Rider.

“He finds Tegan more reliable,” she said.

Alton thought he could see Connly’s reasoning, considering all the madness Karigan got herself into. Eletian royal status? That would certainly change her life going forward. If the two of them were still together, it would have made her a more suitable match for him as the heir of Clan D’Yer. Though their relationship had never panned out, a part of him always felt some regret. She’d been much different from the noble girls and women who had thrown themselves at him, and he found that maybe he still loved her a little.

“How is she?” he asked.

Dale stroked Zig, who kneaded her chest with little mews, her gaze thoughtful before she answered. “I’m not sure. She is much as I remember her, yet not the same. She’s thinner, harder, and yet more fragile. Tegan says she has lots of nightmares.”

Alton nodded. He knew something of Karigan’s nightmares.

“There is another thing,” Dale said.

“More?”

She nodded. “Sad news. It’s believed that Beryl is dead.”

“Dear gods.” He had hardly known Beryl, but it was always a punch to the gut when one of their own died. “How?”

“We don’t know, and only know of her death because Karigan saw her ghost.”

When they finished catching up and Dale left the tower to visit Captain Wallace, Alton decided he needed to commune with the western part of the wall. Of course, he could only check the section between the tower and the breach. He’d have to physically travel to the breach or one of the towers on the other side of it to access the rest.

The impression he got from the wall guardians this side of the breach was a great deal of worry. They were always nervous near the breach, but this time it seemed a little more intense. He hoped he wasn’t leaking his own emotions into the wall after all the things Dale had told him. He tried to calm them with song, carefully tapping the cadence like the beat of hammers cutting stone that had been used to form the granite blocks of the wall. Slow and steady.

His efforts helped, but when he parted from his connection, he had a strong sense that the guardians were bracing themselves for a storm. What kind of storm, he did not know, except that it would come from Blackveil.