The lady stood beside Tasien and the other two lords, a quiet, small figure in mail and a man’s heavy, hooded cloak, her father’s, Tristen thought, as the crown was her father’s and the mail shirt was doubtless her father’s, worn over her gown and halfway to her knees.
She was not a tall woman: she would never tower over anyone—but she wielded force of will and wit. She was very young, and was accustomed but not acquiescent to Lord Tasien making decisions, as Lord Tasien had grown accustomed to giving orders, probably, Tristen judged, in the lord Regent’s decline and sickness. And Tasien seemed a good and faithful man, even if Tasien doubted his honesty and his intentions.
Tasien was trying to protect the lady, considering that she was young, while taking as many of her opinions as he dared, because she was her father’s successor.
And honestly seen, that Tasien wished to prevent the lady rushing off into the dark on a stranger’s advice was only sensible—unless Tasien were aware of the threat piling up more and more urgently around the ruin.
Nin6vrisi was aware. Tristen felt it. Having found that gray space-she kept worrying at it, and was too reckless, and very much in danger.
The old lines of the masons held against the Shadows thus far. The horses had begun to grow restive—they knew, and the men who had gone to saddle them and have them ready for departure were having difficulty with them.
There was no preparation to take the wagon: Tasien had sensibly agreed with him, saying they would be able to come back for it and all it contained if all went well, and that if things went badly, they would need nothing at all. But Tasien had ordered certain things taken from the tent, among them the banners, and various small boxes and at least some of the lady’s personal goods, the latter packed onto the backs of the two horses that ordinarily pulled the wagon. All that was going on while the burial proceeded.
But if his help had been at all welcome, Tristen thought, he would have taken up stones and put them in place himself. The men were building at a frighteningly deliberate pace, each one a measured clink of stone on stone as they first formed an arch and then, after the Regent’s body was laid inside, sealed up the opening—stone by stone, while in the awareness he snatched out of the dark around them the lines on the earth were weakening, disturbed by the breaking of an old pattern, and something-some presence coming up on them was pressing more and more insistently, searching, as he thought. It was not alone wizardry, but men, many men.
For such eyes, the lantern-light by which they worked was a beacon.
The place was overgrown round about, concealing them, but it equally concealed danger that moved against them as well, at least in the world of substance.
He dared not reach too often, too far into the gray, lest he guide trouble to them more quickly than he knew it was coming. But it had direction, now. He stood as respectfully, as quietly as the others stood, but he felt his flesh crawling with apprehension, a threat very strong in the same direction as the men taking down the rubble of that other arch to build this one. Stone after stone they brought, and the threat shivered in the air, out of the north, very definitely now from the north. He thought of warning the lady—but his welcome with them was already scant: he feared giving them cause to do something less wise than they were doing.
And possibly she felt it for herself, though awareness of that gray place had not come to him all at once. Reaching far off came with knowing one could do it. She did reach out at times, but he thought that that was an accident: she wanted her father—and that was a danger. She was a burning light in that other Place. She was angry and she was loyal to the old man, and that came through very surely.
But out there in the rainy dark was more than one presence, he thought. He perceived two subtly different sources, now, one wide and diffuse with distance and one terrifyingly, stiflingly close. One, elusive and strong and clever, was pulling the diffuse one, which he could feel only faintly—and which he could only see as a haze in the gray place, defined against the gray place itself. The elusive one was very, very close to them, very difficult to see, a presence tingling in the air, clinging to the stones, as if it possessed all the walls that protected them, and he had not felt it before they began to work.
Wind gusted. Trees down a little removed from the wind sighed and roared with it. The feeling of harm was very strong. Wind pulled at cloaks, seized edges, whipped them free, and the owners struggled to hold them. He had Cefwyn’s cloak about him again, and the wind pressed it against him and rocked him on his feet. A horse called out, a warning cutting through the dark and the spitting rain, and in a distant play of shadows men fought to hold it still.
But by now there remained only a small opening at the crest of the sealing wall they had built and the feeling was worse and worse. Tasien placed a large stone, and the lady came and placed one, and a second: the last. She pressed her brow against the rubble, then, speaking to her father, Tristen thought: he could feel that disturbance in the gray realm, as loud as the panicked horse a moment ago. He was thinking, too, Hurry, oh, lady, hurry, and let us go. Can you not feel it?
He thought she heard him. She turned with a frightened look. The sound of the trees down the slope from them, leaves blowing in the wind, all but overwhelmed the thunder.
But another sound had begun, not in the air, but in the earth, a thumping like horses running, louder and louder.
“Riders!” she exclaimed, and a man near them who had been pulling stones from the wall of the other arch leapt back as, with a rattle of stone and for no evident reason a section of wall crumbled.
Pale bones were in the rubble that fell out, bones sticking up among the tumbled stones. It was another burial they had disturbed, in their meddling with the stones. It had lain unguessed in the walls that protected them, and the feeling that came with that disturbance broke about them in a smothering fear.
The man protecting the lamp lost his battle to a watery gust of wind.
The light failed. The wind sent something noisy skittering across the parings, and in the gray world the lines of blue all faltered and began to fade.
“Lady!” he warned her.
“Let us go!” Ninévrisé cried, and Tasien seized her arm and hurried her toward the horses, the men running with panic just under their movements.
Tristen went, too, all but running among the others, biting his lip on pleas for haste for fear of another debate or anything to delay them.
Petelly was in the number of mounts waiting, rolling his eyes so that the white showed. He took the reins from the man who was managing four of the horses at once, and in his ears and in his heart alike he heard the arrival of riders through the brush to their north.
“Caswyddian!” he heard a man say, and Tasien: “Hold them off, sergeant! Hold them long enough—and join us as you can! The Regent has to live!”
“Aye, m’lord!” a man said, and rattled off the names of others to stay behind as Ninévrisé protested the order. “There is no choice, m’lady! Ride! Ride!”
The lords, the lady, and two of the men rode for safety, and Tristen turned Petelly’s head and rode with them, to the south of the enclosure, where a doorway in the ruined hall provided them a way out. A number of the men overtook them, but not alclass="underline" at least half the soldiers had stayed.
They had no hope, Tristen thought. It was impossible against what was coming. He might help them—but he had no weapon, they feared him as much as they feared their enemy, and the lady, Cefwyn’s lady, had to be safe. He knew where the road was—he could see the lines glowing in the dark, marking obstacles for the horses, and Tasien could not. He abandoned care for the men behind and sent Petelly forward as fast as Petelly could run, shouldering horses around him until he reached the fore.