Easy? Dale wondered. It was true that his burden was greater, and his frustration immense, but it was not so easy for her either, to play messenger between him and the party-happy tower guardians. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t know what was at stake—she knew all too well. She was not, however, going to feel guilty about it.
At least, not until reveille.
Alton had nowhere else to go. It was either back to his own tent or to the wall. He chose the wall.
He knew the way with his eyes shut, so walking through the dark with only weak illumination from the watch fires was not difficult. The guards nodded to him as he passed by. Otherwise the world was quiet and the air frosty, the encampment caught in stillness, stillness he could not bring to himself. He longed for that sense of peace, which he had not felt since the wall was breached. Back then, he’d known his place in the world and had no reason to doubt the future. The breach had changed everything, and all he could see in the future was disaster.
He paused before the tower wall. The granite shone in the starlight, and he slipped off the mitten his whiskey-distilling aunt knitted for him and pressed his palm against the rough, unforgiving stone. It was not fair that others should be able to pass through it and speak with the tower guardians. By all rights, by his birthright, he should be able to pass through the tower wall and communicate with the guardians, but now, as always, the stone before him remained mute in the serenity of the night.
He thought Karigan might understand his frustration better than Dale. She’d been on the other side of the wall; she’d dealt with the dark powers there. He almost reached for the letter still unread in an inner pocket and stopped himself. Yes, Karigan would understand the danger, he knew that. But he wasn’t sure she would understand him.
Alton sat on the ground, leaning against the wall, his cheek and ear pressed against it as if listening for a heartbeat, but he heard nothing, of course. In the morning he’d take a ride to inspect the wall and the breach. He had not seen the eyes in the wall since that one time, though he always felt watched and as if there were conversations going on about him just below his hearing. Maybe the eyes watched him when he wasn’t looking.
He gazed above the fringe of treetops, toward the heavens and there shimmering across the sky was the greenish hue of northern lights. Alton wondered if maybe the gods were relaying some message, and though the lore of the land interpreted the lights in many ways, from good fishing to a long, hard winter, the gods did not speak to him.
In the quiescence, Alton’s eyes started to close. He did not move, did not feel impelled to, and imagined himself turning to stone, a statue of granite, a memorial to the one who tried and failed.
He fell asleep there, leaning against the tower wall, the side of his face pressed against granite. Were he awake, he might have detected an answering gleam to the northern lights on the wall, an aura of green aglow around him that faded in a breath.
In the deepest places inside his mind, however, he did hear a heartbeat, his own in rhythm with that of the wall.
FLIGHT AND PURSUIT
Estora would never again bemoan her lot in life. If she were allowed to continue living it, that was. As far as she was concerned, her father, the king, or anyone else for that matter, could lock her in the castle and toss the key in the moat, and she would not complain. In fact, if she returned safely to Sacor City, she would obey her father, she would marry the king without argument, and light an extra candle at chapel in gratitude to the gods.
She rode with four ruffians. One of them usually scouted the way ahead, two rode with her front and back, and the fourth lagged to detect pursuit. Her hands were bound before her, numbing her fingers, making them swell, and her captors maintained a cruel pace, slowing only to spell the horses. She had never ridden so hard or for so long before.
She had lost track of the days since that horrible moment when the Raven Mask had appeared out of the fog to whisk her away to who knew where, only to be slain right before her eyes by the leader of the ruffians, who had then grabbed Falan’s bridle and swore that if she resisted, he would cause her grave pain. When she opened her mouth to scream, he’d slapped her across the face. She’d raised her riding crop to strike him, but he had wrested it from her hand and snapped it in half.
Her eye was still half-closed with the swelling, but the blow had not hurt as much as had the sound of crossbow bolts whizzing into the fog, followed by the screams of her entourage. Were her dear sisters all right? Lord Henley? What of the stalwart Weapon, Fastion? Lord Amberhill? Had any of them survived?
Every time she thought about what must have been a massacre, tears threatened to cascade down her cheeks, but she was determined not to give in to them. No matter how much she longed to release all the emotions that had built up within her, she dared not reveal her weakness to her captors; she must not weaken herself.
So she rode on, through vast stretches of woodlands, along deer trails and dry stream beds, and beneath the boughs of giant white pines. Once she would have found the scenery beautiful and wholesome, but now she saw only the dull hues of approaching winter, the rusts and browns, the dying vegetation, and the sky crisscrossed by branches like an enclosing net.
She knew they traveled west, for they followed the fading sun, riding into the narrow shadows of tree trunks like cavalry into the waiting pikes of infantrymen.
The ruffians spoke little to her, or to one another. In their demeanor she saw military men though none wore any device. They called their leader Sarge and he rode just ahead of her. He set the pace, determined the length of their ride for the day, and spoke only to bark out orders. They were soldiers on a mission—a mission to steal her—and they knew the king would send a swift and deadly force after them. They were driven by the knowledge that their capture by king’s men would result in the ultimate punishment.