BRIA HAD risen long before daylight, and roused their bodyguard to begin readying the coach and horses for the day’s journey. In two days they had made good time through the soggy moorland between the low mountains of Dekra and Malmarby, and by night-fall had reached the place where they had abandoned the coach. There they made their camp for the night.

Upon leaving Dekra, there had settled over the Queen an unspoken urgency. With every step closer to Askelon she seemed to hear a plaintive voice. Hurry! Hurry, it whispered, before it is too late! And Bria, heedful of this inner urging, pressed the group to a greater speed.

Alinea, sensing this change in her daughter, had questioned her about it when they stopped the day before to eat along the trail. “What is it, dear? What is wrong?”

Bria confessed, her green eyes staring off toward Askelon, “Wrong? I cannot say. But I feel as if something is about to happen, and I must be there to help it or prevent it somehow, I know not which. But my heart tells me to hurry, and I feel we must pay it heed. We must not be slow, Mother.”

“Is it Gerin?”

Bria considered this in the way of a mother who knows when something is happening to her child though he be far away and removed from her sight. “No, it is not Gerin. I am at peace with him. It is more Quentin, I think.”

“Has it to do with Esme’s vision, then?”

“Yes, that must be it-at least in part. But what I am to make of that I hardly know. Still, I feel we must go with all haste and return to Askelon as soon as may be.”

Now, at the dawn of a new day, the feeling of urgency pressed Bria even more strongly, causing her to awaken and rouse the others so that they might break camp the quicker. The little Princesses, still yawning and rubbing sleepy eyes, splashed their faces with water and made a game of getting ready. Alinea herded them together and kept them out of the way of the men hitching up the coach. Bria flew to the task of repacking their sleeping bundles and helping the men stow the provisions on the coach once more.

Esme, for her part, helped too, if a little absently. Since leaving Dekra she had retreated more and more into herself-brooding, contemplative, and given to long periods of silence, her lovely features wrinkled in fierce scowls of concentration. What it was she was feeling inside or so fiercely thinking about which made her seem so sullen and aloof could not be determined. For when Bria attempted to draw her out, she simply replied, “I am a bit preoccupied. I am sorry; forgive me.” But following an attempt at rejoining the conversation of the others, she would slowly drift off into her intense reverie once more.

When at last they were ready to travel again, the sun peeped above the rim of mountains to the east-behind them. Esme turned and stared longingly in the direction of Dekra, then abruptly turned, mounted her horse, and fell in line behind the coach. By midmorning they reached Malmarby and, after greeting the entire village, arranged for Rol, the ferryman, to take them across the inlet to where the King’s Road awaited them beyond Celbercor’s Wall.

The coach was taken across first with the horses, and two of the bodyguard, whereupon Rol returned for the remaining passengers. Esme took a seat alone at the bow of the wide boat and turned to face outward, staring across the water. Malmar Inlet flowed deep and dark, its waters silent and clear. As Esme stared down she felt herself drifting off, floating on the water as it stretched its mirrored surface to the great wall rising out of its depths on the far shore.

The wall, she thought. There is something about the wall, but what? As she sat gazing at it the wall seemed to change, rising higher and higher, stretching across the entire realm, extending its mighty length until it encircled all Mensandor with a smooth, seamless face of black stone. And it grew ever higher and higher, blotting out the sun.

Oh, no! she gasped. We are cut off. Trapped! Soon there will be no more light. She looked again and saw robed priests walking along the top of the wall and realized that it was the priests themselves who caused the wall to grow, who encouraged its ever-increasing girth. She saw the wall change, forming other walls and pillars and a roof of stone-a temple, the High Temple. And there was a multitude of people moving along the road toward the temple, wending their way up the long, winding trail to the top of the plateau where the High Temple stood. Then there came a roar like a rushing wind and smoke rolled up, blotting all from sight; she peered through the smoke and saw not a temple any longer, but a field of stones and rubble, a desolate place overgrown with weeds and thorn thickets, where owls keened their lonely, spectral call

“Esme!”

The Princess started at the sound of her name. She turned and saw Bria sitting beside her; she had not noticed her friend approach.

“Esme! What is happening to you?”

Esme grasped Bria’s hands and held them, turning her eyes once more toward the wall. “I have had another vision; the god has spoken to me again.” She stared at Celbercor’s Wall rising bold and impervious before them and then shuddered as if with cold, looked around at Bria, and said earnestly, “We must go to the temple, Bria.”

Bria searched her friend’s face for a sign, for anything which would explain her words. “Are you certain? The temple? Why?”

Esme pressed Bria’s hands harder. “I am certain. Please, we must not return to Askelon. The temple-I saw it clearly.”

“What else did you see?”

“Just that. The wall changed and became a temple-and priests. Twice I have seen priests. This is the confirmation of my vision. Something is to take place at the temple, and we must be there.”

Bria nodded and said, “I, too, have felt uneasy since we left Dekra, as if I were being prodded along and urged to haste. But the temple-what about Quentin?”

Esme shook her head. “I do not know. I did not see him, but there was a throng assembled in the courtyard of the temple, and I knew that we must be among them.”

Bria bit her lip, then weighed the decision.

“Please,” said Esme, “the certainty of what I have seen is strong in me. I know it is a sign from the Most High.”

“Very well,” replied the Queen slowly. “We will turn aside and ride for Narramoor and the High Temple. And let us pray that we arrive in time to do whatever it is that the god intends for us.”

“Yes,” said Esme, “that will be my prayer.”

All day long Ronsard waited at his post on the edge of the field. He watched as the sun rose in the treetops, crossed the vault of the heavens, and began its downward descent toward evening, and still no word came from Theido. The main body of knights and fighting men waited restlessly, burnishing lance and sword and tending to their armor, making sure it was in good repair. When the signal came from Theido, Ronsard would lead his troops into battle to storm the walls of the castle.

For his part, Theido and his men were to come up through the castle by way of the hidden passage, sneaking in behind Ameronis’s troops to open the gates for their comrades. But the signal had not come, and that could only mean that the secret gate had not been breached.

So, as twilight lengthened the shadows of the forest encampment, Ronsard gave the order to stand down. “We cannot attempt the walls in the dark,” he said. “But tomorrow-secret gate or no-we must fight. There is no more time to wait.” He turned to his commander, gave him instructions for the men, and turned away from the field, saying, “I will be in my tent if any messages come.”

Throughout the camp men began taking off their armor and laying aside their weapons. Ronsard, too, removed his breastplate and gorget upon entering the tent, went to the basin standing on its tripod, dipped his hands into the cool water, and splashed his face.