ENTOMBED

She lay entombed in stone and dark. Light did not exist here, the blackness snuffing out whatever memory of sunshine and moonglow she carried within her, as surely as the thinning air stole her breath and suffocated her. She kicked and pummeled the close walls of her prison again and again, heedless of causing even more harm to injuries she had suffered in Blackveil.

But no one heard her. No one came to her rescue and opened her tomb. Spent by her efforts, she fell limp and lay gasping in the dark.

Karigan G'ladheon wondered what she had done to deserve such a death. The last she remembered was having been in Blackveil--Castle Argenthyne. She'd shattered the looking mask to prevent Mornhavon the Black from possessing it and then dreamed or imagined she'd fallen through the heavens. Perhaps it had been no dream. Otherwise, how had she ended up here, wherever here was?

She found no difference in the darkness when she closed her eyes. She was tired, her mind dulled from lack of air, and she wished to just keep her eyes closed and sleep, but then she remembered her moonstone and pulled it out of her pocket. Its light was a dim, sputtering orange as if the darkness of her tomb were too great, was killing it, too. It cast just enough light to confirm what she felt and sensed: she was trapped in a rectangular stone box like a sarcophagus. She was seized by a new wave of panic that sent tremors coursing through her body, but this time she was too weak to kick or scream.

Instead, she grew listless in the wan glow of the moonstone, caring little about hands bloodied from pounding on unyielding stone, or that the arrow shafts that splinted her broken wrist had shifted in their bindings. Shards of silver protruding from her flesh and glinting in the light, the remnants of the looking mask, elicited only faint interest.

Her bonewood cane, she observed, had also made the journey with her, and lay beside her reminding her of how warriors were often buried with their weapons.

As she lay weakening and starved for breath, none of it seemed to matter anymore. Her hand fell slack and the moonstone rolled off her fingers, extinguishing immediately. She faded, faded away into darkness . . .

* * *

Crack.

Scrape, scrape.

Dirt showered Karigan's face. It was a distant sensation. She hadn't the energy to wipe it away.
Scrape, scrape.

Her nose tickled. A faint freshening of the air. Music seeped in, almost as if she were hearing it from under water. A graying of the dark, a crack forming around the lid of her tomb. The tip of a tool pried into the crack, widening it further.

"Help!" she cried, but it came out only as a harsh whisper. Someone must have heard her pounding, after all. She was going to be rescued. She would be free of this death box.

The tool nosed farther in, more light penetrating the dark, the brassy music growing louder. A second tool was shoved into the crack.

Karigan's heart thudded, and she tried to push up on the lid, but she hadn't the strength.

The tools paused their work and the music faded. Light shifted. "No," Karigan moaned. "Don't stop--keep going! Please . . ."

A thrum vibrated through the stone and rose in intensity until she realized it was drumming, a fast rolling rhythm.

The tools went back to work, the crack widening and widening until the lid teetered on one edge and then scraped over the side, thudding to the ground. Karigan wiped grit out of her eyes and took a deep breath, relieved at no longer having to strain to fill her lungs. The drums silenced and an expectant hush suffused the air. A pair of shadowed faces peered into her tomb, then jerked away as if startled.

Guess they weren't expecting me.

Another deep inhalation took in a mixture of scents--soil, horses, sweat, smoke, cooked foods . . . She sat up, head spinning, and was blinded by light that beamed into her face. She heard a collective gasp from a large crowd of people surrounding her, but at a distance. She groped after her moonstone, and with the aid of the bonewood cane, she stood. Screams and murmurs greeted her rising.

Definitely not expecting me.

She squinted against the light, held her hand up to shade her eyes, but discerned little, only that she seemed to be in the middle of a sort of arena, with many people seated around its circumference.

"Behold the marvels of the underworld!" a man's voice boomed. "The dead walk again!" The announcement was followed by stuttered applause, which grew into thunderous approval.

Where am I? Karigan wondered again.

The brassy music started up once more and the light swept away revealing men in white face and motley, tumbling, juggling and battling one another with wobbly swords. One rose up from the ground, arms stretched out before him, walking as if asleep or aroused from the dead. Mimicking her? Their antics were met with clapping and laughter by the audience.

Clowns? A circus? Karigan was trying to put together the notion of a circus with her tomblike entrapment--and when she glanced behind herself she saw it was indeed a sarcophagus with a weathered crescent moon and some script on its side--into some coherent form, when both of her arms were grabbed by a pair of strong clowns with snarling demon visages on their faces. Maybe she was actually dead and this was one of the five hells.

The clowns hauled her across the arena and through a curtain into the back. She cried out in pain as they pushed and shoved her, jarring her injuries. She grayed out, and they dragged her. She barely perceived gaudy performers warming up, a prancing white horse, rigging, platforms, and balance beams cluttering the space.

The clowns threw her into an alcove formed by trunks and crates. Before she could get her bearings and sit up, a third man thrust his way between the clowns and glared at her. He pointed a riding crop in her face. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Who put you up to this?"

He was a small, round man in dark business attire, though in a cut she had not seen before, and his hair carefully trimmed. His cheeks and nose flushed pink.

Karigan rose to her elbow. "Where am--?"

The crop snapped down at her. She raised her arm just in time to avoid being struck across her face. It was her broken wrist that caught the blow. The splint mostly protected her, but pain burned up her forearm and she cried out.

"I ask the questions. Was it Josston who put you up to this? Hmm? He is ever wanting to ruin me, embarrass me."

"Dunno, boss," one of the clowns said. "Crowd liked it. Walking dead and all."

"Thanks to the ringmaster's quick thinking," the man growled. He turned his anger back on Karigan. "What did you do with the goodies inside--keep 'em for yourself, eh?"

Goodies? What was he talking about? With a great deal of effort, she rose to her feet. The man raised the crop again.

"You should not assault a king's messen--"

This time when the crop descended, she broke the blow with the bonewood.

"Try that again and you shall be sorry," Karigan said, hoping it would be enough.

"Insolence! I will not have it!"

She pressed the trigger embedded in the shaft of the bonewood and extended it from cane length to staff length with a shake. When the crop lashed at her again, she thrust the butt of her staff into the man's belly. The wind oofed out of him and he crumpled away. The clowns caught his arms before he hit the ground. Karigan took her chance and shoved by them, looking for the nearest way out.

"Stop her!" the man cried.

In her condition, she'd never outrun the man's henchmen. Henchclowns? She kicked over a bucket of soapy water behind her and pulled down a tower of empty packing crates. The soapy water merely soaked into the dirt and sawdust floor, but the crates impeded them. She rushed for an opening in the tent as fast as her limping gait allowed, dashing past a bear attached to a chain, and a contortionist bent over backward, watching Karigan from between her knees.

Karigan shook her muddled head and escaped into the dark of night.

EXCAVATIONS

Karigan fled from the big tent, her injured leg slowing her little in her desperation. She passed smaller, billowing tents, and cages filled with roaring lions. She dodged past performers and lingerers, and veered away from tough looking circus jacks and roustabouts. When she left the circus behind, she found herself skittering down unfamiliar streets of flagstone and brick paving, walled by faceless, brick buildings that rose sharply into the night sky.

Where am I? she wondered not for the first time.

The circus boss had sounded Sacoridian, but she did not recognize this place. Steady, bright light welled beneath plain, wrought iron lampposts--much brighter than what she was accustomed to in her own Sacor City. She avoided the light, pausing in an alleyway to rest and think.

The air she inhaled tasted acrid, smoky, leaving an ache in the back of her throat. The moon above the tall buildings looked smudged by soot. She had not seen the moon since the eve of the spring equinox, before she and her companions had crossed over the D'Yer Wall and into Blackveil--unless one counted the silver full moon that had hung over Castle Argenthyne back through a piece of time.

And her companions, what of them? Had they survived the shattering of the looking mask? She prayed it was so, refused to consider the alternative. If they indeed survived, had the force of the mask's destruction cast them from Blackveil, or did they remain, even now, in the nexus of Castle Argenthyne wondering where she was?

Her body trembled in exhaustion. If her friends had ended up here, wherever here was, she needed to help herself before she could help them. She did not know how much longer she could go on. In fact, taking a nap in the alley did not sound unappealing.

No, need help. Need to find out where I am.

She peered out into the street and when she saw no clowns in pursuit, she limped away from the alley. The only sign of life she spotted was a pale cat darting down another street. No lights shone in the tiny, regular windows lining the brick walls. She was alone.

She turned down another street. Each ran straight and precise--she'd never encountered anything like it, and it was a sharp contrast to the winding ways of the Eletian roads she'd so recently wandered along in the ruins of Argenthyne. This street ended at a smaller building, constructed not of brick but of clapboard, light spilling from windows and a pair of doors left open and welcoming.

Karigan proceeded cautiously. This city was strange, and not knowing the customs of the people here, she did not wish to rush headlong into trouble. Leaning heavily on the bonewood, she limped toward the lit building. As she approached, she heard voices within, mostly that of one man droning on and on. When Karigan reached the doors, she peered inside. On the far end a man stood on a stage pointing at a large map with a long slender stick. On a table next to him were a number of jumbled, dirt-encrusted items, including a rusty longsword and a cracked earthenware pitcher. There were several smaller objects she could not identify.

An audience of ladies and gentlemen filled the chairs in the large room watching the man intently. A few gentlemen stood along the walls, also watching. Like the circus boss, their clothing was of an unfamiliar cut, and mostly in conservative darks and grays. Arms and necks were not left bare. Most of the men wore beards, some with long drooping mustaches and bushy side whiskers. The ladies wore their hair tucked beneath hats and bonnets, and, most startling, gauzy veils draped their faces.

"So we have initiated our excavations in quadrant seven," the man on the stage said in his monotonous voice as he tapped the map, "which has shown much promise."

A man in the audience raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"It seems to me you shall only find more minor burials."

"But there is much to learn from even minor burials about--"

"Like you learned from the Big Mounds?"

There was some snickering in the audience. The man on stage frowned, then jabbed his pointer at the map again. "We excavated those mounds east of the Old City to put to rest all speculation they were not the burial sites of ancient kings, but simply deposits of sand and gravel shaped by the glaciers thousands of years ago. We have wanted nothing but to be exacting in our methods."

Could it be he was talking about the Scangly Mounds? Karigan wondered. She peered harder at the map. The bright hissing lamps helped her make out the lines and shadings. The landforms looked vaguely like the area around Sacor City, and the Big Mounds he pointed out certainly corresponded to where one would find the Scangly Mounds upon which she'd so enjoyed riding her Condor. The landmass in the center of the map, divided into a grid by precise intersecting lines, could very well be Sacor City, but . . .

Then a gentleman along the wall caught her eye. He stared at her. Karigan's heart leaped. She realized she'd been drawn almost across the threshold of the building, to get a better view of the map, and could be plainly seen by anyone who bothered to look.

The gentleman, whose gray-speckled brown hair swept luxuriantly across his brow, twitched his mouth, which wiggled his bushy mustache. He had full side whiskers, too. He touched the shoulder of a younger man beside him. When the second man turned to look, Karigan ducked from the lit doorway, shaking.

She did not know these people, this place. She was not ready to trust anyone until she learned more. She ran-limped away. Did she hear footsteps running after her, or was it her own that echoed against the canyons of brick walls?

She turned into another alley, breathing hard, sweat slicking down her sides. She decided to call on her fading ability, and in this way she could survey the city, town, or whatever this place was, without being observed. But when she touched the winged horse brooch clasped to her greatcoat, she felt no change. She glanced at her hands and down at her body. She remained solid--she had not faded out. She tried again, and nothing.

"What . . . ?" What had the looking mask done to her?

A scent of putrid, decaying matter wafted to her. She glanced down the alley. She thought she detected movement, but the alley was too shrouded in darkness. Hesitating but a moment, she withdrew her moonstone from her pocket, but it emitted only a weak, dying glow as it had in the sarcophagus.

Magic does not work here, Karigan thought. At least not much.

The moonstone emitted enough light to sketch out a heap of rubbish at the other end of the alley. There was more movement. A cat? An oversized rat looking for food scraps?

But then the heap stood and the low gleam of the moonstone caught in the whites of its--his--eyes . . . and on the metallic sheen of a knife.

Karigan gasped and pocketed her moonstone, intending to flee, but when she turned, her escape was blocked by two hulking figures.

She found herself wishing, absurdly, she was back in Blackveil. She raised the bonewood staff to a defensive position, thankful it had made the journey with her, but regretting the loss of her saber, which had served her so well since she became a Green Rider, and F'ryan Coblebay before her. Lost forever, she suspected, in the deeps of Castle Argenthyne.

Even as the two at the open end of the alley rushed her, so did the one with the knife from behind. Karigan did not think, she moved. With her right hand all but useless, she swept the staff at the two forward assailants relying on the strength of her left. She smashed the closest one in the chin. As he staggered away, she rammed the butt of the staff backward catching the knife-bearing assailant in the gut. He fell back with a grunt of pain.

She thrust the staff forward again, battering the metal handle into the bridge of the third assailant's nose. She felt warm splatters across her face, and he reeled away clutching at his bleeding nose.
Not bad, Karigan thought, for being one-handed and pretty much one-legged.

She made to retreat from the alley, only to find half a dozen more figures blocking her way.