She didn’t even have a looking mask to smash, and she didn’t think trying to crush the few remnant shards that had come with her would have the same effect of launching her through time.

Frustration made her feel like smashing something, her window, maybe. There had to be a way home. Thinking of the looking mask made her remember her shard hidden behind the headboard of her bed. This time she propped her chair against the door to prevent anyone from unexpectedly entering, then she retrieved the shard and settled atop her bed.

She expected her mirror gazing to prove fruitless. She was prepared to sit for a long time and see nothing but her own reflection, so she was surprised when an image appeared almost immediately. At first it was abstract—all mottled greens, all blurred—but slowly it focused, and she found herself looking through leaves at a path down below, as if she were a bird perched on a branch. She felt a throb rising through the fingers holding the shard, through her arm and pulsing through her blood, the rhythm of hoofbeats like the Rider call.

She nearly cried out when two horses and a Green Rider appeared trotting along the path. Her vision swooped down from the birches to keep pace with them. There was her friend Dale Littlepage riding her mare, Plover, and ponying Condor alongside.

“Condor,” Karigan whispered in a shaky voice.

The shard allowed her to examine him from nose to tail, the dullness of his chestnut coat, his ribs more prominent than they ought to be. It was not from neglect, she knew, for her friends would never disregard his care. She’d left Condor under Dale’s stewardship, and she appeared to be exercising him. Did Condor pine for his Rider? Was he off his feed because she’d gone missing? She wanted to run her hand down his neck, but her finger only tapped on mirror.

“Condor, I am here,” she said in an anguished whisper.

Condor stopped short, and whirled, snapping the lead out of Dale’s hand. He did not bolt, he looked. Dale wheeled Plover around, expression perplexed. She spoke words Karigan could not hear.

Condor kept looking until he seemed to fix her with his eye, staring back at her through time, through the mirror shard.

“Can you see me, boy?” Karigan asked, wishing it were true. Something she’d heard before more than once came to her now: Sometimes the mirror goes both ways.

His eye filled the shard, the liquid brown, the pinpoint pupil. “Do you see me?” she asked again, but then the mirror reflected her own eyes as his melted away until he was entirely gone.

Karigan tried to summon back the vision, tried and tried but failed. She curled up atop the bed hugging a pillow and pressed her face into it, missing her horse and home terribly. Had he really seen her? Whether or not he had, she needed to believe it.

In the present: Dale and Condor

The lead rope snapped out of Dale’s hand. If not for her glove, it would have left a nasty rope burn across her palm. “Condor!” she cried.

She pivoted Plover around expecting to have to chase Karigan’s horse into the woods. She’d made a promise to care for Condor so he’d be in top condition for his Rider’s return, but Karigan’s fate remained unknown, and Condor was off his feed, his spirit discernibly low. He’d gotten thin, and no matter how much Dale groomed him, his coat repeatedly lost its usual vibrant chestnut sheen.

Normally he followed compliantly along on these exercise runs. Dale perceived that he did not care one way or another if he came along with her and Plover. She couldn’t make him care, but she could at least prevent him from declining into a worse state. So it surprised her, almost cheered her, that he was showing some sign of spunk.

She was further surprised when he hadn’t run off, and she and Plover didn’t have to chase him down. He whirled, and faced the opposite direction they’d been headed, his lead rope dangling from his halter to the path. He stared, angling his head this way and that, ears twitching. What did he see? Dale looked but identified only the usual forest sounds and signs—squirrels railing in the branches, a woodpecker chipping at a rotting tree. Insects clouded in the light, and on the forest floor, patches of sunshine wove patterns of golden green and shadow. Dale sensed nothing unusual or dangerous afoot or in the air.

“Something out there, Condor? What do you see?”

She knew animals sensed their surroundings differently than people, but Condor did not act alarmed—just vigilant. She was just glad he acted interested in something.

Yates’ horse Phoebe was even worse off. She’d colicked, almost died. The Riders at the wall encampment gave her what attention they could, and it appeared to Dale the other Rider horses lent support as well. What Phoebe needed was to return to Sacor City to find a new Rider. Yates was gone. They’d received the news through Trace’s psychic rapport with Connly: Lynx had returned from Blackveil, but Yates had not survived. Humans mourned, and so did their horses. Phoebe needed a new Rider, and the Riders needed seasoned messenger horses. Conflict was brewing with Second Empire, and though Damian Frost was due to deliver new horses to Captain Mapstone, they’d be young, untried, and untrained, and definitely not ready for message errands much less battle.

Phoebe needed to return to Sacor City as much for her own sake as that of the Riders. And Lynx needed his horse, Owl, so Alton decided that tomorrow, Fergal would pony Phoebe, Owl, and Condor back to the city. It was all very depressing—a pall hung over the encampment at the news of Yates’ death, and hope dwindled daily with no word of Karigan. The mood did not help Estral any, who remained without her voice, and her father’s disappearance still a mystery.