“... woke the Sleeper. Tried to . . . am sorry. Found me . . . tried to trap. Inside.”

The flame that was Haurris died. He did not reappear and a crack resounded through the chamber. His tempes stone split in half, the tourmaline blackened.

Merdigen sighed, his shoulders sagging. “I’m sorry, too, old friend.”

Alton covered the halves of Haurris’ tempes stone with the blanket, then stood. “The Queen of Argenthyne? Laurelyn? How did she talk to him?”

“We shall probably never know,” Merdigen replied.

“Haurris was awake and corporeal longer than the rest of us, but it does not add up, for Laurelyn was lost when Mornhavon took Castle Argenthyne so very long ago.”

“He seemed to think she told him to help with the Sleepers. He must have awakened the one somehow.”

“But he was not able to leave the tower,” Merdigen said. “None of us were, even when we were corporeal.”

“You’ve left the tower plenty of times,” Alton reminded him. “When you went looking for the mages on the other side of the breach, or to talk with Booreemadhe and the others in their towers.”

“But—”

“And I took you out of your tower to go to Haurris’.”

A mortified expression crept over Merdigen’s face at the last. “Yes, you did, but the other times, I did not leave the tower in the conventional sense and my tempes stone remained here. I will have to think on what may have happened, but we probably will never know the how or what of it with Haurris gone. What matters most is that the influence of Blackveil has corrupted Argenthyne’s Sleepers, and if they are awakened . . . well, we have seen the result.”

Alton shuddered, remembering the spidery limbed creature leaping on him.

“They can pass through the towers, my tower,” Merdigen continued. “And I no longer possess the magic to trap them as Haurris did.”

“Karigan is in Blackveil, with Yates and Lynx and the Eletians,” Alton said, thinking that if even one of those creatures was abroad in the forest, it made their expedition all the more perilous.

“Yes.” Merdigen stroked his beard. “It makes me wonder ...”

“What?”

“It makes me wonder why it was so important for the Eletians to go in there at this time. I hope they were not planning to awaken the Sleepers.”

Alton felt the blood drain from his face, and even Merdigen looked pale.

“My boy,” Merdigen said, “we must find a way to fortify the towers.”

THE QUEEN’S RIDERS

“The first thing I must do is see that the king is informed,” Alton told Merdigen. He swung away and strode toward the wall.

“Where are you going?” Merdigen asked.

“To get Dale ready to ride out.”

“Did you not tell me there was one with mind sense among the Riders you’ve stationed in the towers?”

Alton’s cheeks warmed. In all the excitement over finding out the truth about Haurris’ tower, he’d forgotten about the other Riders. Mind sense? He must mean Trace.

“Right. I’ve sent her to Tower of the Ice.” He had taken two more steps toward the wall when Merdigen loudly cleared his throat.

“Now what?” Alton demanded.

“Where are you going?”

“To send Dale to Tower of the Ice to inform Trace to—”

“You are not thinking, my boy,” Merdigen said. “I can contact Itharos much more quickly myself.”

Alton brushed his fingers through his hair and gave Merdigen a cockeyed smile. “I keep forgetting. Trace may not have reached Tower of the Ice yet.”

“Tell me exactly what you’d like your message to the king to say, and I shall relay it to Itharos, who will in turn pass it on to Trace as soon as she arrives.”

Alton did, and when Merdigen vanished, he left the tower thinking that centuries ago, when the Green Riders had been at full capacity, there must have been a number of Riders who could speak mind to mind like Trace and Connly, and who enabled messages to be conveyed almost instantly. In that long-ago time Riders wouldn’t have had to saddle up and rush off in a cloud of dust.

Depending on the pace Trace had set, it could be a day or two before she reached Tower of the Ice, and waiting to hear confirmation that his message was received was going to feel like years, no matter that it was being delivered at the speed of thought.

Instead of waiting around and fretting, Alton left the tower to share his and Merdigen’s revelations about Haurris and the Sleeper with Dale, Estral, and Captain Wallace. Estral was more determined than ever to work out the measure of music in the Silverwood book, and he knew enough not to get in her way when she ran off to fetch her lute.

“I hope the king will send us more troops,” Captain Wallace told Alton. “Especially now that we know each tower is a potential passage to these Sleepers. I haven’t the manpower here to watch the breach and all ten towers.”

“Nine,” Alton said. “Haurris left defenses around Tower of the Earth that should keep any Sleepers out, or at least trap them.”

“Do you want to rely solely on the tricks of some old, dead mage?”

“Point taken,” Alton replied. “Tell me what you need, and I’ll put in a request.”

Alton also took time to inspect the cracks in the wall radiating from the breach to see if Estral’s music really was having an effect. Since the summer he’d been taking periodic measurements and recording changes in his journal. He discovered incremental improvements—the cracks appeared to be diminishing, if only minutely. The changes were not dramatic, but were, all the same, miraculous.