Doggedly he shaped the strong blue Lines of the Quinaltine in his thoughts. He remembered that tangled set of Lines within them, remembered them down to the smell of the incense, the sound of the singing.
He stopped with his foot on a step, and beneath that step was no slight fall. The Edge was under it, and he could all but hear the crack of Mauryl’s staff, his stern reprimand to know where his feet were—flesh as well as spirit.
Flesh had obligations, and hazards, and he had risked too much overrushing Owl, thinking he knew where he was going. He meekly wished the bird back to him, and stood patiently until he felt the brush of Owl’s wing above his hair.
To the left, or what passed for left: there was the place of smoke and incense. He stood where the Holy Father had stood, the last time he had been in this place.
Above him was the roof the lightning had riven.
Behind his back was the hallowed place with the mismatched Lines, the trap for Shadows.
They seethed in a mass here, many, many Shadows roiling in confusion at the intersections of those Lines, Shadows trapped within the vicinity of the Quinaltine, forced over the centuries to endure prayers to gods they did not acknowledge, the gods of those who had usurped their power. Angry, frustrated and frightened, they ran along the rails, down beneath the altar. They flowed away like spots of ink, they skittered into the masonry, and under benches.
There was no sound here until he took a step, the scrape of metal-guarded leather on stone.
Tristen drew a sharp breath, perceiving another presence. Owl flew toward the doors, and up, and up.
And of a sudden a fierce crash of metal rang from the left of the shrine to echo to the heights: a priest in the columned side aisle had dropped a great platter, and fell to his knees, and to his face.
“I came to speak with Prince Efanor,” Tristen said, and that priest scrambled up and ran for the outer door.
He had no way to know whether that frightened man would bear his message as he had asked. He had no time to wait. He sent Owl out the opened door, out and around to the high walls of the Guelesfort, to a place midway in the west wing of the palace.
There, there, Efanor slept, closely guarded. It was an easy passage in the gray place, knowing exactly where Efanor was.
And Efanor, unlike his brother, had some slight presence in the gray: his dreams were very much within reach.
—Prince Efanor, he said. Come to the Quinaltine. Don’t delay for anything. Have your servants bring your clothes.
Efanor leapt into bright awareness, within a gray space he had only skimmed in his meditations.
—Tristen? Is it Tristen? Gods save us!
—Come quickly. I’ll not tell you until we meet face-to-face. Come to the Quinaltine.
Efanor doubted his own reason. Fear and denial colored his presence: good Quinalt that he was, the gray space should not be open to him, or so he believed, and strove halfheartedly to deny his own senses.
But Tristen drew out the little book of devotions Efanor had given him.
—Know me by this. Come. Believe me. And hurry.
Efanor believed. Confidence flared. Hope did, and curiosity, and Tristen left the gray space quickly, aware of the hovering Shadows, old Shadows and new ones, hateful and hating. It was no good place to linger, not for the space of a breath. But he knew now that Efanor would come.
Another priest had arrived, and ran back. Then a third, and a fourth, and all fled.
Shadows prowled the confused Lines meanwhile and tested the strength of them, pressing at the tangle in the wards: Tristen felt their fear and their desperation, and saw the wound in the Lines they made.
He drew his sword and with it traced a Line of his own on the stones, slowly, surely, drawing the Line with the touch of the metal on stone, securing it with the touch of his boots on the floor and the strength of his wishes in the stones.
Past this Shadows should not come. This was what they should agree on, this was what they should guard, one Line, one defense. He wished it so, and the ward flared behind him.
The Shadows just at arm’s length writhed and seethed, imprisoned in the tangle of Lines that had been, and now so great a panicked number of them pressed against those old wards that one failed at last, as it might have failed under the enemy’s assault. The breach let forth a great rush of them.
But they came up instead against the new Line, a moiling confusion that set his teeth on edge. They brought death, and cold, and anger, but his Line held.
He chose the broken Line and dispelled it, freeing more reticent spirits, as easy as a pass of his hand and a wish. He dispelled one misdrawn Line after another, until long-pent Shadows, rushing forward to freedom, found his Line, and knew their boundary, and found a straight path along it. They flowed along that perimeter, and rushed back and forth, back and forth, no few violently trying its strength. But without the crossed lines channeling their anger, those attacks came at random, in isolated areas along the line, and posed little threat. Some, finding order in their movement, sang to him, and made the Lines sing, the music of stone, the music of the Masons’ making.
Still he brandished the sword up and around until the blue fire of the ward flared along the walls, and up among the rafters, along the threatened roof and down again, past statues in their niches and down again to completion against the pavings.
And those Shadows older than Men, those filled with the greatest anger and contempt, cowered back from that fire, knowing well its potency, and listening to the music.
One Shadow, one of the newest disturbances and blind to magic, challenged the barrier, and battered aside the weaker Shadows, and attempted harm; but it, too, could not break forth… a Shadow that held something vaguely of Cefwyn and of Efanor, a strong presence, full of powerful emotions.
Yet it was fear, not anger, that drove it to challenge the barrier.
It feared and fled something deeper and darker, something barriered in older Lines, far back across the floor that now was, that knew nothing of the music—but this Shadow, that had been a warrior and a soldier, and a king, knew the danger there, and tried to rally the others.
There was the real danger in this place. The tangle of Lines he had resolved, and freed the trapped spirits to an easier flow. But there was a reason, deep within, that the tormented Shadows had so persisted at the barrier, a deeper dark where something moved, or many things moved, like so many dark serpents, shapeless and powerful, and unwilling to be confined.
The collective presence in that depth, behind wards grown old and weak, had the coldness and the power of the stone faces, as adamant and as terrible, and what dwelt there was neither resigned to its prison, nor completely contained by the Lines that great Masons had drawn, even before later, lesser, masons had compromised those Lines.
Now, those ancient Lines far back, blue and red, grew weak and sickly at the points of its attacks, and the music faltered.
It did not augur well if that welter of dark breached the ancient barrier and assailed the new Line—if the Shadows of that darkness, full of malice, gained power such as the Shadows had at Althalen. Armed men had fallen under the assault of the haunts at Althalen, finding no substance their swords might strike and no protection in their armor or their skill. Only Auld Syes moderated the anger of those spirits, and ruled them.