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 all: 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.

“I can see the path!” he called out and, Tasien willing or not, he took the lead and stayed there, leading them by a twisting path along old walls, through ruined doors, and sharply around an old cistern that gaped in their path. The wind was blasting into their faces. Rain spattered him, stung his eyes. He heard—in one realm or the other—the clash of weapons, horses running over stone—shouts and outcries of men fighting for their lives behind them while the earthly wind shrieked like a multitude of voices. He felt all his senses assaulted at once, and Petelly shied under him, trying to bolt, just when a wall loomed up ahead.

He did not know himself how he made the jump. They lost two men.

The horses came past him riderless. But the rest were with him, and Petelly threw his head, fighting to see in the gusts that flared in their faces.

He rode continually south. He encouraged Petelly with his hands and his knees as he saw masons’ lines ahead of them and turned instead down a brushy slope where there was only darkness—south again, as the wind wailed with voices in his ears, and Shadows streamed about them.

“Where is he?” he heard someone call out in fear.

“This way!” He called out, heard a man swear, and waited at the bottom of the slope, with Petelly trembling and panting for breath.

Tasien and the lady came down. Lightning flickers showed others coming down behind them as quickly as they could. He knew he had to do better. He had to keep their company together, not let them fall behind and not let the Shadows take them. He was certain that, of all who might pursue them, those in the gray world were the deadliest and the ones hardest to outrun.

Then came the sound of horsemen passing above the bank, and all of theirs were here. That was, he thought, pursuit narrowly missing them or their own riders trying to rejoin them. His companions reined in, their horses wild, panting for breath, and all of them alike looked up in fear, trying to find the source of that sound, but the brush and the storm hid whatever riders were up there, heading for the blind end he had led his company away from.

“Follow me!” he said to them. And they did.

Emuin had gone off to bed, in the numbness of the air that had followed such dread confidences. Limping, hurting this evening to the point of outrageous temper, Cefwyn paced the length of the room and back again, goading himself to an outburst he had no moral courage to make otherwise, and Idrys must sense it, since Idrys did not remind him he had warned him.