“Not chaos, but some other way of governing ourselves. Our current system works if we have, as you say, a ‘good king,’ but what about those who follow me? History has shown that the throne has often represented tyranny.”

Laren gazed hard at Zachary. He’d always been a deep thinker, but she’d never heard this line of radical thought from him before. He’d always been so sure of his place and the role of the monarchy. She hoped no one else heard him talking like this.

All she was certain of was that he was a fine king who put his country before himself. With serious danger threatening the land, they needed him more than ever.

PATHS

Karigan did not return to the Rider wing to work on accounts. How could she after what the captain had told her? She headed instead to the stables, barely acknowledging the others now done with their riding lesson and untacking their horses. She saddled up Condor and rode off castle grounds in a daze, unaware of the winter owl gazing at her from the limb of a towering pine, and not knowing that her king observed her from the castle roof.

Condor was full of himself, feeling the sun on his back and the change in the weather. He pranced and puffed and tossed his head. Karigan focused on holding him in as she traveled the city streets taking shortcuts, carefully wending her way through crowds, until finally they passed through the last set of gates.

She let him have his head and he sprang into a gallop down the road, kicking up slush and mud. She paid little attention to direction, just letting Condor run. When finally she pulled him up to rest, they had come well east of the city to a grouping of squat, rounded hills. On maps they were called the Scangly Mounds, but Mara simply called them the Pimples.

Some thought the mounds contained lost treasure and the tombs of forgotten kings, but all anyone found when they dug into them was dirt and rocks. They’d been made by nature, not the hands of people. All that Karigan knew was that they were good for riding and she brought Condor here now and then for exercise. The hills were barren, except for clumps of snow and coarse grass, and Karigan urged Condor up the nearest and tallest, which provided a good view of the odd terrain, but what drew her gaze lay to the west. Rising above the forest, wrapped in its granite walls, was Sacor City, the castle sitting at its pinnacle, its pale gray walls almost white in the sunshine.

It occurred to her she could just keep riding, run away from all obligations. The idea of traveling when and where she willed held a seductive quality, but if she were ever caught, the punishment for desertion would be severe. Besides, she doubted the call would allow her to abandon her duty. And things had changed. She had changed. There was a time when running away was her answer to everything—a way of evading responsibility or confronting difficult problems—but she had come too far, had grown up enough to realize running away was no answer. Not anymore. Not even when it meant having to enter Blackveil Forest.

She shuddered. Even on this day of sunshine, with the promise of spring not far off, a shadow touched her. She recalled little of the forest itself, but it remained a threatening presence on the edge of her awareness. And she remembered Mornhavon, the incorporeal darkness that had invaded her mind and body.

“Why me?” She had meant to shout, but it emerged as a whisper.

Maybe because she knew it had to be her. Not because the captain told her she must go to Blackveil, but because all the paths she’d been traveling were leading her there. Somewhere inside she’d known it was inevitable.

The words destiny and fate felt too weighty, and she did not like the idea of some external power directing her life. No, it was as much an internal force, like she had to see something through. Find completion. Whatever completion meant for her.

She removed her mother’s moonstone from her pocket, and even in the sunshine it cast a sharp, silver glow. Her mother had passed it on to her, and this she would take into Blackveil. It would help force back the dark. As she gazed into the light, it wavered like a flame. You must come, she thought she heard, as some distant whisper, and she shuddered. Then she decided it was only the breath of the wind blowing among the Scangly Mounds that was making her hear things.

She tore her gaze from the moonstone and looked out upon the landscape around her thinking there was a rightness to her mission, but it did not mean she wanted to go or that it didn’t frighten her. She’d have her mother’s moonstone at least, and she was not the only one doomed to go into Blackveil, yet that created another complication: Eletians.

The prince of the Eletians, Jametari, had once explained that the tainted wild magic that had burrowed into her veins created a duality within her, a capacity for much good or great evil. The prince warned her that, as a result of this conflict, there were those among the Eletians who wished her ill because she posed a possible threat to the D’Yer Wall. Some desired to just eliminate the threat. One had tried.

The wild magic was gone from her, but she feared some Eletians still wanted her dead. In the fall, while she and Fergal had traveled west on errands, there’d been that illusionary arrow in her chest she’d received like a message after Eletians had passed their campsite in the night.

How would those Eletians who thought her a threat react to her being a member of this expedition?

She supposed it was just one more danger among the many she’d be facing.

Condor shifted beneath her, and she nudged him to a walk. When they reached the base of the hill, she clucked him into a canter. She rode among the Scangly Mounds, adhering to no set path, moved only by the joy of her horse running.