Green Rider

Karigan G'ladheon, who is headed home from school after a brawl that would undoubtedly result in her expulsion, muses on her future while walking through the vast Green Cloak forest. Her reverie is cut short, however, as a charging horse leaps out of the forest, its rider draped over his horse's neck, both black-shafted arrows impaled. The young man informs Karigan, as he lays dying on the road, that he is a Green Rider, one of the fabled king's messengers, and that he has a "life or death" message for King Zachary. Karigan grudgingly agrees to help him convey his message, but he threatens to kill her if she reads it. He swears on his sword that he will finish the task "for love of country." With his last breath, he warns, "Beware the shadow man," as he gives her the office's emblem, a golden winged horse brooch.

Karigan's vow alters her life irrevocably. She too becomes a famous Green Rider, pursued by unidentified assassins, traveling a route that only her horse seems to know, and traveling with the quiet ghost of the first messenger. Karigan finds herself entangled in a realm of lethal peril and intricate sorcery, driven by unknown energies, and confronted by malevolent entities determined to ensure that the message, along with its unwilling messenger, never makes it to its intended target.