When the woman and Clyde halted before them, she waved the letter in Alton’s face. “Your father’s personal mender has told me the nature and extent of Rider Littlepage’s injuries, my lord, and I cannot approve of you putting her straight to work when she’s barely arrived after an arduous journey.”
“I—” Alton said.
“Yes, I know how terribly frustrating it has been for you to wait, Lord Alton, but really, you must take others into consideration.”
“But—”
“I’ve the right to override your decisions when they relate to health and welfare, and this is one of those occasions.”
Alton held up his hands, hands with their own pink, healing injuries on them, and said, “Of course, of course. I wouldn’t—I would never—”
“Good then.” The woman then turned to Dale. “Welcome,” she said, a smile warming her face and her voice softening. “I am Leese, the encampment’s chief mender. Tomorrow will be soon enough to begin work, yes?”
Dale was tired. She nodded and Leese began to lead her away.
“We’ve some soldiers setting up a tent for you, and Clyde here has agreed to help you with your things.”
Dale glanced over her shoulder only to discover Alton as she found him: hands on hips and his back to her as he stared at the wall. This thin, intense man was not the Alton she remembered.
Once Dale’s tent was set up and Leese had examined her, she dropped onto her cot and remembered nothing of the intervening hours until she awoke sometime late the next morning. She had been exhausted, but the rest did her wonders. Not even black wings intruded on her dreams.
Leese came to check on her while she breakfasted, the sunshine on the tent warming the air within to the point it became stuffy. Dale was glad of the inrush of fresh air with Leese’s entrance.
“Lord Alton has been pacing a trench between the tower and your tent, waiting for you to wake up,” the mender said. “Do you feel up to working with him? If not, I can put him off…”
“No, no. I feel good,” Dale said.
A little later she slipped through the tent flaps and blinked at the sun in her eyes, and found herself face to face with Alton. He had been waiting.
“Uh…” he began.
Dale looked him over. He was as disheveled as the day before, and she decided she would have to do something about it. “Good morning.”
“Morning. You can come to the tower?”
“Yes, of course, that’s what I’m here for.” He turned and started walking toward the tower as if expecting her to follow. “But first I want to look in on Plover.”
Alton halted and turned about. Was that guilt on his face? She soon saw why, for when they reached the pickets, Alton’s gelding, Night Hawk, was so overjoyed to see his Rider that he nearly yanked his picket stake right out of the ground. Not only had Alton neglected himself, but his horse as well. She watched as he patted the gelding, looking abashed, then she moved on to her own Plover. She checked that the mare was rubbed down, comfortable, and had enough water, and joined Alton where he awaited her on the other side of the picket.
He said nothing, but strode off again, expecting her to follow. She did so, shaking her head. The Alton of old would have asked how she was, joked with her. However, this was not the Alton of old, but a haunted specter of him. She had no idea of what had befallen him while he was trapped in Blackveil. Perhaps with more time, he would come around; if not unchanged, at least more like his old self.
When they reached the wall, Alton took up the stance that was becoming all too familiar—his hands on his hips, and his gaze hard, as if he could break through the stone facade by pure will alone.
“You know about Merdigen?” he asked her.
“Garth filled me in. He’s a magical something-or-other.”
For the first time, humor lit Alton’s eyes. “I wouldn’t say that to his face.”
“And you’re sure he’ll be there?”
Alton shrugged. “It’s where he exists. Did Garth describe the tower to you?”
Dale paused a moment before replying. Garth described the tower as ‘’impossible,” that there were vast plains of grass within, an image she found difficult to conceptualize. “He tried,” she said.
“Yes.” Alton rubbed the bristles on his chin. “It takes seeing it to understand. Are you ready?”
“Yep. If the tower lets me in, what do you want me to do?”
“Get any information about the wall’s condition you can from Merdigen. Ask him if there is a way to circumvent the guardians so I can enter.”
“All right.” With some trepidation, she approached the tower, the windowless, doorless tower that nonetheless admitted Green Riders. She half listened to Alton’s instructions about how to enter, trying to hold her skepticism about walking through walls at bay.
She stroked the cold, rough stone. It felt ordinary enough. Then she patted it soundly. Definitely granite.
“Are you sure this will work?” she asked Alton.
“We won’t know until you try.”
She took a deep breath, touched her Rider brooch, and sidled toward the tower wall. She stretched her hand out to the wall, expecting to jar it on stone, but it sank right in. She stared incredulously at it, then said to Alton, “Wish me luck.”
MEETING MERDIGEN
Passing through the wall was pretty much as Garth had described, like floating through water, a mere moment of breath holding and darkness. But during Dale’s passage, voices rasped against her mind; distant murmurs. She could discern no words, but she felt from the voices curiosity and suspicion, a questioning of her presence, and lingering sorrow. So much sorrow…She gave a mental shudder and the voices whispered away.
She exhaled in relief when she emerged into the open air of the tower chamber, the wall clinging to her, then snapping away. On impulse she turned and rapped her knuckles on the section of wall she just walked through. Yep, pure solid granite. There was no sign of distortion in the stone, no hint of fluidity. She wasn’t sure if she believed what she had just done, but here she stood in the tower. The process had been as effortless as Garth claimed, but it nevertheless jangled her nerves. He had said nothing about voices. Maybe it had been her imagination.
A source of light that she could not identify dimly lit the tower interior, leaving darkness to fill in the edges of the chamber and the ceiling above. There were no grass plains she could detect, and she wondered if Garth had been imbibing a bit too much when he imagined them. In fact, but for a few details, the place was pretty ordinary. To her right was a big hearth, soot-darkened by many fires, its cooking irons and utensils rusty and strung with spiderwebs.
To her left along the wall was a stone basin with a brass fish, covered with the verdigris of age, perched on its lip. Garth had told her about this marvel as well, and when she passed her hand under the fish, water spouted from its mouth and poured into the basin. At least this hadn’t been a fancy on his part. Dale smiled, letting the water plash into her palm. Her special ability was to find water—specifically water born of the earth. Sometimes she could smell a good rain on the horizon, but her ability was tied groundward.
There were dowsers in her family in Adolind Province, but her ability went deeper. At least that’s what she’d found out when it had emerged after her first year as a Rider. She had been on a message errand to an island village on the verge of dying off during a drought. Most of the islanders’ wells had gone dry, and the rest were so low they’d turned bad, making countless members of the community ill. Without reliable and safe fresh water, Saltshake Island could not support a permanent population.
As if called upon by the need to save the lives of the islanders, her ability had blossomed to the point where, if she concentrated hard enough, she could feel the vegetation beneath her feet sucking up moisture. Maybe if she had not been called to the messenger service, if she had never become a Green Rider, she would have remained with her family, carrying on the business of dowsing, but
as a Rider, her brooch augmented her ability, made her more sure, more sensitive, and most important, completely accurate.
That day on the island she’d discovered a previously unknown spring that would tide the people over till the drought ended. She had also told them where to dig new wells, and how deep. In the end, she had left behind islanders relieved they would not have to be uprooted from the lives they knew and who were well pleased by this emissary of King Zachary’s.
The water that now played over her hand came from a deep, deep aquifer that sang of dark earth and pure sand and pebbles, of subterranean streams and falling from the sky. It sang as it drained from the basin, singing as it returned to the earth. Some mage, she surmised, had called the water to flow in this tower when beckoned, and over the millennia, it heeded his call. Such a feat required power far beyond her own meager ability.
Reluctantly she withdrew her hand and shook off the water. She had work to do. She had to find this Merdigen, the magical whatsit. She looked around. A table stood nearby with an unfinished game of Intrigue on it, the pieces draped with cobwebs, but there was no Merdigen in sight.
She turned toward the center of the chamber. Columns stood in a circle, supporting the shadowed ceiling, and on either side archways gaped with blackness. What drew her attention the most, however, was the pedestal in the center of the circle. A gemstone of green gleamed atop it. Tourmaline. If she shifted her gaze just right, viewed it with her peripheral vision, she could almost see something clouded above it, like the greens and blues of grass and sky. It was there, but not, hovering on the edge of her vision.
Still she saw no sign of Merdigen, and she recalled Garth had mentioned using the tourmaline to draw him out. That didn’t sound so strange, considering she just walked through a wall of granite.
She strode toward the center of the chamber and between a pair of columns and—
With a yelp she leaped backward, her heart trying to pound its way out of her chest. She took a few moments to calm herself, surrounded by the ordinary chamber. Then, like a swimmer testing the water, she stuck her toe between the columns. When nothing dire happened, she followed with the rest of her body, and found herself amid a grassland.
Sunshine flowed down on her at the same autumn angle she had left outside, and the grasses hissed as a breeze flowed over them. Golden they were, with the season. Oddly though, there were no other structures or signs of civilization, and no D’Yer Wall within sight. All that remained of the tower were the columns standing in their ring, the arches east and west, the table with its dusty game of Intrigue on it, and the pedestal holding its gemstone.
So this was what Garth had meant by there being grasslands in the tower. But was she still in the tower? Her boot scuffed on stones, the same stone floor she had stood upon in the tower. The blocks that formed it looped outward in concentric circles till lost to the grasses beyond the columns, like ruins being reclaimed by nature.
She stepped back through the columns, and found herself surrounded by the stone of the tower chamber. She went back and forth a few times, testing the incongruity. She paused between the columns with one foot on each side to see what would happen. It was like standing in a doorway, she decided. When she looked at the foot outside the columns, she saw the tower chamber like the interior of a house. When she looked at the other foot, she saw the grasslands beyond stretching to the horizon.
Eventually she gave up the game knowing that Alton must be going mad waiting for her to report back. She advanced on the pedestal and circled it. The stone on top was pretty, she thought, sparkling in the sun, and looked harmless enough. What had Garth called it? The tempes stone.
She shrugged and put her hand on it. At first nothing happened, then a green glow rose from the stone and between her fingers. Fascinated, Dale removed her hand and surges of energy crackled within the stone, like lightning sealed in green amber.
“Finished playing?”
Dale leaped away from the pedestal as if it suddenly learned to speak.
“Over here.”
Dale glanced over her shoulder and discovered an elderly fellow seated at the table, one elbow propped next to the Intrigue board. Long ivory whiskers drooped from his jaw and he wore pale blue robes.
“M–M–Merdigen?”
“Of course I’m Merdigen. Who else would I be?” He rolled his eyes. Then he pressed his hand to his chest and bowed slightly. “More precisely, I am a magical projection of the great mage Merdigen. And who are you? You’re not the big oaf who was here last.”
“Garth—” she began.
“Funny, but that was the oaf’s name, too.”
“No! I mean the oaf—the Rider who was here last was named Garth.”
“That’s what I just said.”
Dale took a deep breath, feeling less startled, but more exasperated. “I’m Dale Littlepage, a Green Rider.”
“So I see.” He rose and crossed between the columns to stand before her. He looked her up and down in appraisal. “Well, Dale Littlepage, Green Rider, what have you to say for yourself?”
She fought the urge to jab him to find out if he had substance, or if he were a mere illusion. If he were illusion, what should he care? Still, she restrained the impulse because it just didn’t seem polite.
“Alton sent me.”
“The Deyer?”
“Alton D’Yer.”
Merdigen nodded. “Yes, the Deyer. That’s what I said.”
Dale put her hand on her hip and frowned. She could see this was going to take more than a little patience. “Right. The Deyer. He sent me in here because the wall won’t let him pass.”
Merdigen tugged on his beard. “That much I know.”
“Alton—the Deyer—wants to know the latest on the condition of the wall—anything you can tell him. He also wants to know if there is some way to get around the guardians to let him enter.”
“Hah! As if the wall would talk to him even if he got in! Tell me, has the book been found?”
Fortunately Dale knew what book he was referring to thanks to Garth’s briefing. “I don’t know. I’m sure King Zachary will see to it that it’s looked for.”
“Zachary of Hillander,” Merdigen muttered. “At least another two hundred years have not passed while you people dillydally about, trying to figure out what to do.”
“What? Two hundred years?” Dale scrunched her eyebrows together. “Er, no.”
“Well, I can only tell you what I told that big fellow, Garth, is that the guardians will have nothing to do with the Deyer. He betrayed them.”
“He did no—”
Merdigen raised his hand to silence her. “Knowingly or not, he betrayed them and nearly brought the whole of the wall down in spectacular and utter ruin. As it is, the guardians are in disarray, confused, and even if the wall would talk to him, I could not guarantee his success in calming it down. And there is another thing.” He leaned toward her and lowered his voice as if afraid he might be overheard. “There is also a strand of hate and—and…” He shuddered. “And madness in the voices of the guardians.”
It was all beyond Dale’s comprehension. She knew the wall was inhabited by “guardians,” what she imagined to be spiritlike presences, and that somehow they wove the magical fabric of the wall together to keep it stable. What she didn’t understand was how the guardians accomplished this and what Alton had done to “betray” them. Once she finished with Merdigen, the two Riders would have a lengthy talk.
“Not only is there physical damage to the wall,” Merdigen continued, “but I think—I think the other Deyer, the Pendric who is now a guardian, I think it is his despair that is spreading to the others.”
Pendric, Pendric, Pendric… Then Dale remembered that Pendric was Alton’s recently deceased cousin. His name was mentioned in hushed tones in Woodhaven, but his death had not been explained to her, and she didn’t pry.
“So what does it all mean?”
“Hope that your king finds the book,” Merdigen sa
id, “because if the wall falls into despair and madness, then all is lost.”
Alton scrounged up a “nip of something” from his private stores and splashed it into both Dale’s teacup and his own. The concoction scoured Dale’s throat as it went down and she had several breathless moments before she could speak, and when she did so, she would not want to be next to an open flame.
“Good tea,” she said in a hoarse voice.
Alton grinned. “My aunt, on my mother’s side, distills whiskey. Got a couple casks among the packages my parents sent.”
That was one aunt, Dale thought, she would like to meet someday. Her tongue tasted the cool, mossy water used in the distilling process, even diluted by the tea. Perhaps it was an extension of her special ability to recognize it, or maybe it was just the taste of good whiskey.
She eased back into her chair, the concoction relaxing her. She was tired, more tired than she imagined she’d be after her trip from Woodhaven and dealing with the tower. Her bones ached and her wound was sore, but the whiskey helped. Her return through the wall was silent, much to her relief. No voices touched her mind, but she felt a watchful presence around her, like thousands of eyes observing her passage.
Alton sat across from her, his legs sprawled out. They left the tent flaps open to allow fresh air to circulate within, and considering the state of Alton’s tent and the stale taint that clung to its walls, it was probably a good idea. His blankets were rumpled upon his cot, and uniform parts were strewn about and hanging over the sides of his travel chests. Books were stacked on his table next to a lamp and a nub of a candle, the tent roof stained with a circle of soot. Apparently servants saw to removing his used dishes, and the cleaning of the lamp’s chimney, and probably they laundered his clothes, but the place was still shabby and unkempt.
The Alton of old had been meticulous—perhaps not to the extent of Ty’s zeal for perfection—but his boots had always shone and he’d worn his uniform without stain or wrinkle. He used to comb his hair and keep his face free of whiskers. Now he possessed the look of someone forgetful of the world around him, and perhaps he was, because of his obsession with the wall.