The stallion gazed at her with obsidian eyes. Nostrils flared to take in her scent. Somehow Karigan sensed the wings beating in the air, could feel the breezes they created curling against the back of her neck.

The stallion would carry her to Sacor City. She knew this. He would bear her more swiftly than an eagle and she would arrive in time—in time to do whatever needed doing.

She shuddered at what it could mean to ride the death god’s steed, the harbinger of strife and battle. What would happen to her? What might she become? Something less than human? She wanted nothing to do with gods, wanted them to watch after their own affairs and leave her out of them.

“Why me?” she demanded. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

The only reply she received was the rhythmic beat of wings—or maybe it was her own blood hammering in her ears. Many people, she thought, would be honored to serve the gods in such a way and would not protest or hesitate. Why couldn’t the gods choose one of them? Hadn’t she done enough already? All she had wanted was an ordinary message errand for once, and this is what she got.

She put her hand to her forehead and was startled by the heat. She was shivering and roasting at the same time.

And still the stallion waited.

She wondered if her earlier dreams were given to her to show her what was at stake if she did not act. Surely the collapse of the wall would be catastrophic. And surely the death god’s steed would not come to her if it wasn’t important.

“Damnation,” she muttered. And to the stallion she said, “I will not ride. If you want me to go, you’ll have to find another way.”

The stallion rose, and with a glance at her that plainly said follow, he headed off into the night.

“Damnation.” Karigan half hoped there was no other way, that the stallion would just leave her alone and seek out someone else to solve the world’s problems, but it was not to be. She was about to follow when she detected someone else watching. Through the haze of her ability she saw Lord Amberhill’s silhouette against her tent, his blood ruby intense in her colorless world. She said to him, with no small satisfaction, “You imagined all this.” And she hurried off to catch up with the stallion, wherever he may lead.

Amberhill could not believe his eyes at the sight of the magnificent stallion that put his Goss to shame. No, there wasn’t even any comparison…

And she but a shadow against the snow, talking to the stallion. He saw her leave her tent, unsteady on her feet and wan in the moonlight, then she faded to shadow and somehow the stallion appeared in his vision. The stallion was really too great for his eyes to take in. He was overwhelmed.

What was he to make of it? He was so taken with the stallion he almost forgot to listen.

“I will not ride,” the G’ladheon woman said. “If you want me to go, you’ll have to find another way.”

As if he understood the words, the stallion rose and walked off into the night.

“Damnation,” the Green Rider said.

It was all very perplexing. Unearthly. Amberhill thought back to the day he had fought the lovely woman in the museum over a scrap of parchment. He’d thought her brave but a fool. Though he’d detected her skill with a sword, hampered by her dress as she had been, he’d little understood what he’d really been facing. Not just a Green Rider, but someone who obviously dealt with powers, otherworldly powers. No ordinary messenger was she.

To his astonishment, the shadow turned to him and the moonlight illuminated the curve of her cheek and the flash of a bright eye. She said, “You imagined all this.”

With that the shadow hurried away until it was lost to the night, leaving behind footprints in the snow, but even these proved elusive, ending in midstride. He found no hoofprints. How maddening!

What was this Rider? Well, rude came to mind, but was she real?

Maybe her parting words were right. Maybe he in fact imagined it all. Hastily he strode back to her tent and peered in. The moonlight fell upon an empty cot, the blankets rumpled.

“Something wrong, my lord?”

Amberhill almost jumped out of his boots. The Raven Mask was truly slipping if he couldn’t detect the approach of another, but then these Weapons were uncanny. It was Donal who stood beside him.

“Please tell me,” Amberhill said, “it’s not my imagination that your Rider G’ladheon has left us. Disappeared.”

CROSSING BRIDGES

“Oh no,” Karigan said. “Not this place again.” She whirled to walk back to the snow-clad encampment, but the way was gone, like a door closed.

The stallion had led her into a white, white world of empty opaque plains draped by a milky sky. The terrain, if it could be called such, was flat and empty. It bleached the color from her clothes and flesh, but the stallion remained coal black. The contrast hurt her eyes.

She’d been conveyed here the last time by wild magic and learned it was a transitional place between the layers of the world, not of Earth or the heavens, but a place populated by symbols and images.

“Isn’t there another way?” she asked.

The stallion began to kneel.

“No—no, I won’t ride.” Her dread of riding him, what it might mean, was stronger than her dread of the white world. At least this time she had a guide, and maybe they wouldn’t be here long. Hah! As if time had any relevance in the white world. “Lead on,” she told the stallion.

He did so, plodding onto the featureless plain. She followed, her boots crunching on short, white grass. As she walked, she noticed the pain in her head subsided and she did not feel quite so fevered.