“Away!” whispered Theido. The urgency in his voice made him sound small and far away. He wheeled his horse around and passed the word back. Quentin slapped Balder and let the animal have his head. They dashed into the darkness with a clatter.

Through the twisting gorge they rode, Toli holding onto Quentin with a stubborn grip. He shouted something unintelligible into Quentin’s ear, and Quentin looked forward to see the banks on either side sloping away as they began to climb a shallow incline. A final burst and they were out of the valley.

Rising in front of them was the massive, undulating shape of Celbercor’s Wall, a looming rampart of astonishing dimensions. Quentin urged the horse forward as overhead the moon broke through the low overcast. Now he could see the vast bulwark of the Wall towering above them, although they were still some distance from the foot of it.

The moon disappeared again as they turned, following Toli’s instruction, and began running along the face of the Wall at an angle toward it. From the sound of hooves behind him Quentin knew the others were close behind.

They galloped down another steep ravine and started up the opposite side. They had just gained the top of the further bank when the moon again peeped out, scattering light across the wild landscape. To Quentin’s horror he saw in that fleeting stream the glint of steel and two riders wheeling toward him. Toli tugged at his arm and he threw the reins to the side and headed straight for the Wall.

A piercing shriek cut the night; at first Quentin thought it a woman’s scream and then recognized it as the hunting cry of a hawk. A rider bolted past him and he heard Theido shout, “To the Wall! Lead the others to the Wall!” He saw the moonlight shimmer on the thin line of Theido’s uplifted blade.

Toli yelled and waved his arm for the others to follow as they started upon the Wall.

“They’re upon us!” cried Trenn. His horse stumbled on the loose rock and he went down.

The Queen just ahead of him turned and started back, but Durwin propelled her forward, saying, “I will help him-go on!” Her quick horse flew over the uncertain footing as nimbly as a shadow, and in an instant she was beside Quentin and Toli.

Just ahead, but hidden from them by an outcropping of rock, Quentin could hear the clear, cold ring of steel upon steel and the wild cry of the horses as they engaged one another. They reached a sheltered hollow and Toli threw himself to the ground and ran directly up to the very face of the Wall. Quentin blinked his eyes, for in the shifting moonlight he thought he had seen the young Jher disappear right into the huge foundation stones of Celbercor’s Wall.

He was back almost at once, shouting and pushing them forward. Quentin heard the scream in the air above him once more, this time very close. He spun around instinctively throwing an arm over his face as Toli, leaping like a cat, caught his other arm and pulled him to the ground.

There was a rustle in the air and a tearing sound as he went down. Then he felt a sharp pain high up in the arm he’d thrown over his head. He saw Durwin come pounding in and Trenn, hanging sideways over the back of his horse, slumped to the ground. Quentin rolled his eyes and saw two white wings lifting away in the night. He looked at his arm and saw that his tunic had been ripped and blood was oozing out of the wound.

“Here is the tunnel!” someone called. Quentin felt hands lift him to his feet and then he was running for the wall. A rider thundered up from behind them and he heard Theido’s voice bellowing. Quentin suddenly thought it strange that he should be running like a scared deer; he wanted to sit down. The voices around him buzzed and the air became warm. He slowed and turned. Theido said something and Quentin cocked his head, puzzled, for Theido had begun speaking in an unknown language.

He stopped and looked up at the twin moons hovering just overhead. He reached up to touch one, as if to pluck it and hold it in his hand. He heard music: the ringing of temple bells far away. Then the black sky turned blood red. Quentin blinked his eyes and sat down marveling at this queer wonder. He felt his head slam down against the smooth stone of the Wall and the last thing he saw was Durwin’s face peering down upon him as if from a great height, speaking to him in a confused tongue. A tear rolled down Quentin’s cheek and he knew no more.

THE TWINKLING, shifting light spun in bright globes. Quentin could see them even though his eyes were closed. He traced their play on his eyelids for hours, half-waking, half-dreaming. From somewhere far away, in another room or in another world perhaps, he heard music. High-pitched bells tinkled sharply, pricking his ears with their thin melody.

How long he had lain watching the dancing lights and listening to the crystalline song of the bells he did not know. Maybe hours. Maybe days. Maybe forever.

Quentin, in his twilight world between darkness and light, drifted in and out of consciousness almost at will and was aware of nothing but the shifting globes of light, sometimes red or blue, but most often a rosy golden hue. He perceived nothing but the lights and the intonation of the tiny chimes.

The room where Quentin lay commanded a western view of a range of low, forested mountains. They rose and fell in gentle folds like the thick, bristly fur of some mythical beast sleeping peacefully through the ages. From the balcony’s high parapet one could look to the west and the fiery descent of the setting sun.

And every afternoon the earthward trail of the falling sun brought the light full through the arched double doors which opened onto the balcony. The light washed over Quentin’s inert form, transfiguring him from a pale, waxen image into a creature of living light. A wind chime hanging at the apex of the arch danced in the light breeze which capered now and then in through the open doors.

An old woman in a white woolen shawl sat near Quentin’s high wide bed. She held in her hands a small jar of aromatic unguent which she periodically applied to a spot just over Quentin’s heart, and to his temples. At these intervals she whispered a few brief words under her breath, holding her hands over the young man’s still, barely breathing form.

A steady train of visitors throughout the day came to stand at the foot of Quentin’s bed, or merely to step inside the door. They looked to the old woman, always with the same question in their eyes, and always they left with the same reply in kind: no change.

Durwin relieved the old woman from time to time, sitting for hours gazing upon the motionless body stretched before him. In the evening he brought a cup of lukewarm broth which he administered to Quentin by means of a short, hollow tube of bone. Durwin let the broth trickle slowly down Quentin’s throat, careful not to choke him. There was never any response.

Durwin had just administered the broth one evening when Theido came to the room.

“Still no change?”

“None. He hovers between life and death. Sometimes I think he might awaken; he looks about to rise up-but the moment passes away and he is the same.”

“Can he recover, do you think? It has been nearly two months.”

“I do not know. I have never seen this kind of illness before. Certainly no one recovers from the poison of the Shoth. Still, the people of Dekra have many powers unknown in the world abroad. And had his wound been deeper, or closer to the mark, this old woman’s art would not have mattered-he would have died within the hour, or out on the trail.”

Durwin sighed as he looked sadly at the boy’s thin body. “We came for nothing. It is my fault that he is stricken so.”

“Do not blame yourself. If fault is to be found we need look no further than Jaspin. After all, it was Jaspin who loosed the Harriers.”