Graelalea caught the feather before it could touch the ground and smiled. “Memory,” she said, and she tucked the feather into one of her braids.

They left behind Porter’s grave and trudged on along the road, the damp air thickening into a pervasive drizzle that drip-drip-dripped through the trees of the forest and onto their hoods. The gloom and the loss of Porter dragged down Karigan’s spirits. She could not help wondering who would be next. Who would be the next one for whom the rest built a cairn.

Only the occasional lumeni broke the spell of darkness, welcome beacons along their path. Few lumeni still held globes in their stone hands, but those that retained even a shard cast at least a little light, and that light seemed to brighten as the Eletians passed near them.

As they approached another of the lumeni, liquid light splashed across the mossy cobbles before them, and Ard sourly muttered, “Magic.”

Karigan thought the light beautiful and was glad something like the lumeni could endure in the forest for so many centuries, and she tried to imagine a different time, a different forest, when Eletians ruled this land, traveling this road freely and without fear.

“Magic?” Telagioth asked. “They collected light of sun and moon and stars. The lumeni would have been brilliant in the time before the Cataclysm.”

“He means the Long War,” Karigan said in response to Ard’s perplexed expression.

“Oh,” Ard replied. “Well, magic is magic, and you can see what good has come of it.” He swept his arm to take in the whole of the forest.

“An outside influence,” Telagioth said. “This land existed in light and harmony for many millennia before the coming of Arcosians. If you could see Eletia, you would understand.”

“Eletia is nothing compared to what Argenthyne once was.” This from Spiney, who came forward to join their conversation. He spoke as if he knew, as if he’d once tread Argenthyne’s ways during the lighter times before Mornhavon.

“I suppose I’d like to at least see your Eletia, then,” Ard said.

“You would not find your way in,” Spiney replied. “No mortal has been permitted beneath Eletia’s canopy for centuries, though some have tried.” He gazed at Karigan, a glint in his eye. “The last mortal to travel within Eletia was a Green Rider. It is still spoken of in the Alluvium.” With that pronouncement, he dropped back to walk in the rear with Hana.

Before Karigan could ask Telagioth who, he also left them and strode to the front to walk with Graelalea. Much Green Rider history had been forgotten over the years and so she liked it when she could find out more about the messengers who had come before her. Perhaps she could ask Telagioth more later.

They continued on until the gloom grew into impenetrable dark. Graelalea chose to camp on the road beside a headless lumeni, its light aiding them as they pitched tents and built a fire. The tent of the Eletians was a dark, mottled gray, and it blended so well with the environs that Karigan thought she’d fall over it if she didn’t know exactly where it was. It also seemed too small a tent for six people.

“How they all going to fit in that?” Ard asked.

“Don’t know how they do it,” Yates replied, “but when they camped outside Sacor City last summer, their tents held a lot more than you’d think possible. That’s what I heard anyway.”

Graelalea told the company not to stray far, probably an unnecessary warning with the forbidding forest all around them. Everyone stuck close to the light of the campfire and lumeni as they ate their rations and prepared for the night.

Karigan was assigned first watch with the Eletian Solan. When everyone else turned in, Solan stood unmoving on the very fringe of light, gazing into the night in the direction from which they’d come. Karigan sat with her back to the dwindling campfire, her staff across her lap, and gazed in the opposite direction, down the road they had yet to travel.

Now that the company had come to such stillness, the sounds of the forest grew louder, the clacking of bare tree limbs and the patter of water spilled from branches, the wild screeches of creatures near and far. During her time as a Rider she had spent many a night alone in the wilderness, but the sounds of those nights had been more subdued, held less of an edge to them. Those nights had not been so black.

Being on watch was almost laughable, because she could not see anything beyond their light. Would something come upon them before she could warn the others? Another cloud of hummingbirds, or something even worse? She squeezed her fingers around the smooth wood of her staff. All of her old worries and problems now seemed far off. She did not dwell on Alton and Estral, and not even on King Zachary.

When she was younger and read The Adventures of Gilan Wylloland, she’d dreamed of a hero like Gilan coming to her rescue, sweeping her away on his magnificent war horse.

Stupid, she thought with a bitter edge. Little girl dreams.

How many times had she fought her own way out of trouble? No one was going to rescue her. Certainly not King Zachary, and not just because she was currently out of reach. Even when she was within his reach, she was, so to speak, out of reach.

She had only herself to rely on and as pretty as the little girl dreams were, it was time to dispose of them. Perhaps it was the forest that inspired such bleak thoughts that dampened hope. She did not care. After Porter’s random and bizarre death, those old dreams lacked the weight they once held. Maybe if she left the forest alive she’d care again, but for the time being, survival was the priority. No hero to sweep her away from danger. Just herself.