“Has a date been set?”

“The king has the moon priests working on a forecast for an auspicious date. Won’t be before spring, I don’t expect.”

Alton leaned back in his chair considering the suitability of the match, a mug of tea warming his hands through the bandages. “I wonder what took so long for the king to agree, for surely Coutre put his bid in some time ago.”

“Gossip has it there was some other woman he had his eye on—a commoner of all things. Fortunately he’s come to his senses and is marrying a proper lady as he ought.”

“And strengthening his ties with the eastern lords.” Secretly, Alton sympathized with the king if the gossip was true. Hadn’t he himself desired Karigan, a commoner? Expressing that desire, however, would have displeased his clan. It was bad enough, they thought, that he served as a Green Rider and not, say, as an officer in the elite light cavalry. He had since explained to them about the Rider call, and because his clan had been founded on an alchemy of stonework and magic, they were more accepting of Rider magic than others would be. Especially if it meant his own special ability would help him mend the D’Yer Wall.

As the mound of sausage rolls and eggs disappeared, mostly into Garth’s mouth, their conversation came back to the purpose of the Rider’s visit.

“So what’s the problem?” Garth asked. “Why can’t you enter the tower?”

“I wish I knew. The wall—it won’t talk to me.”

“That’s odd,” Garth said, scratching his head. “I thought you had it all figured out—talking to it.”

“I do. I mean, I did, but it’s ignoring me now. It’s just like dead, cold…stone.” Alton knew how bizarre it sounded, but for a brief time, he had lived within the wall, within the stone, and had learned its stories, had heard and felt the pulse of the song that bound it together, aware of the presences of the guardians who also resided within. To him, the stone was anything but dead.

Garth sipped his tea with a thoughtful expression on his face. “I wonder…”

“What?”

Garth cleared his throat and straightened in his chair. “I assume if the wall doesn’t allow you into the tower, that it won’t let me in either, but it might be worth trying.”

Alton had long ago come to the same conclusion as Garth that the tower had closed access to all but, as the Rider suggested, it was certainly worth seeing if it were in fact true.

The two men polished off breakfast and left the tent for the outdoors. The morning sun was quickly warming the air and burning off dew. It cast a bronze glow onto the face of the wall. When they reached the tower, Garth craned his neck looking up and up and up…And he could keep looking up till he snapped his neck. The magic of the wall made it seem to stretch all the way to the heavens, when in fact the actual stone base of it stood only ten feet high. Yet the magic portion of the wall was as durable as stone, and looked just like it. There was no distinction between the two.

The Tower of the Heavens possessed no windows, not even any arrow loops, to break up its impassive facade. And there was no door.

“Let’s try it,” Garth said in a hushed tone.

He grasped his gold winged horse brooch, emblem of the Green Riders and the device that enhanced their magical abilities, and reached with his other hand through stone into the tower.

Alton’s heart thudded. The stone molded around Garth’s wrist as though he reached into nothing more innocuous than water.

“I’ll be back in a moment,” Garth said, and he plunged all the way into the tower leaving nary a ripple to indicate he had ever existed.

Alton was flummoxed. How in five hells had the wall admitted Garth so easily when it wouldn’t even respond to his touch? Maybe something had changed overnight—maybe the wall would let him pass now.

He fumbled for his brooch, the gold warm and oily smooth beneath his fingers, and pressed his other hand against the rough unyielding stone. He willed the wall to open for him, to allow him to enter the tower. He called upon his Rider magic, but to no avail. The tower remained impassible.

He found himself with fist clenched to hammer against the wall and stopped, recalling himself and the soreness of his bandaged hands. It wouldn’t do any good to injure himself again.

It was not easy waiting for Garth to return, and Alton paced madly. More than a moment had passed, much more, before the Rider poked his head out of the stone wall of the tower looking absurdly like a hunter’s mounted trophy. All Garth needed was a pair of antlers.

“Well?” Alton demanded.

“I’ve been speaking with Merdigen.” Garth rolled his eyes. “He’s been wondering why we abandoned him again—he’s been waiting for us to return and didn’t we know that the wall is growing more unstable as each day passes. When I told him you were trying, he checked with the guardians himself.” A strange expression fell over Garth’s face. “After he did so, he told me that the wall doesn’t like you very much. It doesn’t trust you.”

Alton stumbled backward, realizing how much sense it made. While under the influence of Mornhavon the Black, he had almost destroyed the wall, though at the time he believed he was strengthening it. And his cousin Pendric, his cousin who hated him, had merged with the wall and became a guardian. Could Pendric have influenced the other guardians against him?

“Damnation,” Alton muttered. How was he supposed to mend the wall if it wouldn’t trust him?