Alton thought it a ludicrous question. He nodded.

“Good,” Merdigen said, and he walked into the wall, merging with it, leaving Alton in the dark.

Alton licked his lips, tasted salty sweat and the grit of stone dust, and groped forward to press his hands flat against the wall. With his mind he announced who he was and his consciousness flowed into stone, leaving his body behind.

L eave, Pendric’s voice thunders, the force of his will almost dislodging Alton’s contact.

Alton braces himself as if facing into a windstorm and with his own strong resolve impelling him forward, he drives his mind past his cousin and deeper into the wall.

The song is in complete disarray. Crackling fills Alton’s awareness and he almost retreats, for it feels like it’s his own mind that is breaking. It hurts.

The guardians do not welcome him or deny him, nor does the stone tell him stories of its birth and weathering, its quarrying and shaping as once it did. He is surrounded by a forest of crystals—symmetrical trees of feldspar and quartz and blades of black hornblende. The limbs of the trees vibrate with violence and one by one they explode into fragments, the granite a sandpaper scream in his head. The very constitution of the wall is breaking down.

We are breached. She passes, she passes, she passes. We are breached…

The wailing shreds his mind and the once unified beat of the stonecutters’ hammers is out of time.

Broken. Lost. Dying.

Alton does not know what to do now that he is here. He joined with the wall once before and sang with the guardians, but it was a song of unmaking, a deception given to him by Mornhavon the Black. He realizes he does not know the true song. He cannot discern its refrain from the chaos.

Betrayed. Broken. Unweaving.

Then Merdigen is with him, and the other mages, too.

“You must sing,” Merdigen says. “Try to get them to sing with you.”

Another tree explodes nearby and Alton feels it as if the fragments cut and puncture his flesh.

“I do not know the words.”

“Then listen.”

The mages begin to sing. Alton strains to hear them amid the clamor. They are not harmonious singers, but they have the words and melody.

From Ullem Bay to the shores of dawn,

we weave our song through stone and mortar…

Alton listens hard, trying to block out the cries of the wall guardians. Note by note he joins the mages, stumbling over words, trying to capture the tune and rhythm.

A surge from the wall guardians counters him with their lament: Our song unravels, erodes stone and mortar. We are breached. Our song weeps.

Alton wants to shout, No! but Merdigen says, “Sing. It is the only way. Sing so they hear you.”

So Alton does, forcefully, allowing his voice to gather volume. He sings with surety, for now it feels instinctual, as if he’s always known the song, as if it has always flowed through his veins. His birthright.

We shield the lands from ancient dark.

We are the bulwark of ages.

He perceives a nearby cluster of crystals vibrating and prismatic colors flaring from geometric planes. The cluster does not tremble with the turmoil of the guardians, but resonates his song, enlarges it. Encouraged, he sings with more confidence and more crystals resonate. It is as if there is more than one of him singing. He is singing in harmony with himself. His voice spreads calm outward in ripples, like rings on a lake.

We stand sentry day and night,

through storm and winter,

and freeze and thaw.

Merdigen and the mages buoy him, hold him steady, ground him. They are his bedrock.

He opens fully to the wall. Feels the emptiness of the breach, the pain and destruction around it, the suffering and deaths of guardians. But he feels also, away from the breach, a tide of unity and strength, and if those guardians once felt uncertainty and despair, now they hear him and add their voices to his, the blows of stonecutter hammers in sync with his heart. Slowly they reweave the song, preserving crystals that have not broken. Those that have been destroyed, however, cannot be remade.

From Ullem Bay to the shores of dawn,

we weave our song through stone and mortar,

we sing our will to strengthen and bind.

Alton stretches his consciousness as far as he can, trying to flood each fracture with song, like filling a dry river bed with water. More guardians take up the song and echo him. The forest flares with red pulsing light, like blood flowing through veins.

The song grows and builds until he hits a barrier of seething hate. Pendric.

Leave. Pendric’s voice is like the tolling of a ponderous bell. Crystal trees shudder with the tone. Alton’s song falters.

Betrayer.

“No,” Alton says, his voice small by comparison. “You are the betrayer. You are killing the wall.”

Do not trust. Hate him.

Hate, hate, hate…pounds through the wall.

Alton senses uncertainty in the guardians, the song weakening. The underlying chaos surges while the order he restored ebbs.

We are breached.

We are broken.

We do not trust.

Pressure crushes Alton, entraps him so he cannot move forward or backward. Crystals vibrate with so much anger they slice into his mind.

“You are killing the wall!” Alton cries. Then he remembers who and what he is, and from deep within he calls upon his special ability. Though he has never used it before from within stone, it rises from him, builds a wall around his mind that shields him from harm and thwarts his cousin’s attack.

Pendric screams his rage, battering Alton’s shield, but it holds.