Confused, he looked down, and with a shock saw that his hand wasinsidethe stone. His arm looked as though it simply ended at the wrist, and he realized that the wall here wasn’t solid.
It was an illusion.
He stretched his arm forward and watched it slowly sink into the black stone. His forearm disappeared, then his elbow; and when he was up to his shoulder, he took a deep breath and plunged through with his entire body.
On the other side of the illusion, he found a small alcove, barely wide enough on either side to fit his slim shoulders, but fairly deep. On the wall of the alcove directly opposite him had been carved a series of wide rectangular holes… holes that led up to the top of the wall far above him.
He looked back and saw nothing but a blank gray space—the back of the illusion. Up and to the right, though, was a small eagle inscribed in the black stone, head pulled back and screeching defiantly at the sky.
Geofred’s sign. So hehadbeen involved in creating the Wall.
The Prince turned back to the wall and began to ascend, keeping his eyes on the hand-and-footholds in front of him and trying to ignore the knowledge that he was almost a hundred feet in the air now. This was made more difficult by the fact that though the wall behind him was nothing but gray haze, the windonly increased in force as he climbed. Before long, his hands were raw from clutching the harsh stone, and his arms and legs, particularly the ankle that had been twisted in the fight with the Death Watchmen, began to ache and shake with the effort of climbing.
The golden glint he’d seen was indeed the falcon—and it stared balefully down at him as he panted and gasped his way up toward it. When he reached the top of the wall, he hauled himself over the edge and found himself inside an abandoned watchtower. By the light of the moon shining through a large lookout window as it rose over the Elmist Mountains, he could see that the tower had been cordoned off. There was no way into it through the two barred doors on either side, and the only objects of note around the tower’s interior were the opening through which he’d come and a black hole in the opposite wall, at the entrance of which lay a single golden coin.
Three.
He crossed and bent to pick it up. He straightened, feeling the cold weight of the golden disk in his hand, and put it in the pocket where he had stored the other two.
“What do you seek?” a voice asked behind him.
He whirled around to find a man dressed in the garb of a simple soldier, the black and gold of the Banelyn watch, with a sword of good quality held ready in both hands, and a stance that suggested he knew how to use it. He had stepped out of a small alcove hidden in the shadows, and the Prince silently cursed himself for not sensing him.
“I seek the one who seeks the light.”
“How do you mean to seek him?”
“By following the Path myself.”
“How do you hope to see the one who seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened tothe Light.”
The man nodded and sheathed his sword. He motioned with his chin toward the opening in the wall and the Prince crossed to it. The hole was large and circular, just slightly shorter than he was and wide enough for him to stretch out an arm to either wall. He entered, and found that inside was a sharp right turn, around which could be seen a long sloping path that led diagonally down to another sharp turn. Halfway along the path was a torch in a wall bracket, casting an eerie half-light on the black stone so that it was hard to tell where the shadows ended and the floor and walls began.
Seeing no other option, the Prince made his way through. As he turned the second corner, there was a faint crash of metal from behind him, and he pulled up short.
What had that been?
But only silence followed. A minute passed… then two… but no further sounds came to him. He shook his head and continued on. His only concern was the Seeker. A guard dropping his sword was not his problem.
There were five more turns along the steeply sloping passage through the wall, and then the Prince found himself in front of a large wooden door with a simple wrought-iron latch-handle. He pulled the latch and pushed the door, which swung open easily on oiled hinges.
He found himself in a storage barn. Bales of hay lay around him and up in rafters, as well as sacks of what he assumed to be oats or some other type of horse-food. Across the small barn was an open door, through which the Prince could see people moving. He quickly crossed the threshold of the door in the wall, which swung closed behind him. He turned to look at it and found that the wooden door was actually part of the back wall of the barn—and even though he knew it was there, he could see no way to open it, and could just barely make out where it ended and the wall began.
Moving quickly, he left the storage barn and found himself in the middle of a huge stable yard in the shadow of two large, beautifully wrought stonebuildings. The men and women moving in the yard—few, and dressed in good quality clothing—must be the night stewards. One of them looked up and saw him, and the Prince’s heart jumped into his throat, but the man didn’t seem to find his presence to be anything out of the ordinary, and he continued on without raising any kind of alarm.
The Prince looked down at himself and realized that he looked very much like a Common stable boy. Apparently it was a fairly effective disguise. He drew the hood of the cloak up over his head and continued on, making his way across the yard, looking as he did at the horses in the stalls around him. He knew precious little about horses—the beasts had never truly interested him—but he knew enough to know that a good number of them had the markings of Tynian stock, thoroughbred chargers that were prized by the Most High. The rest were all the type of horse meant for parades and public showings.
He was heading in the right direction.
He walked quickly out of the stables past two guards, who stood straight and tall at the entrance and gave him no more than a passing glance. They were there to keep suspicious people out, not dirty stableboys in.
The Prince passed into the city itself and noticed immediately that in direct contrast to the Outer City’s maze of narrow streets and dangerously tilted wooden structures, Banelyn City proper had long, straight roads lined with beautiful trees and well cared-for shrubs, and the buildings were tall and strong, with elegant facades carved in tasteful designs. Some even had marble sculptures outside of them of mythical creatures, while others had large family crests above their front doors.
Something struck him as strange, something he couldn’t place at first. After several more steps, though, it came to him: there was no evidence of the Visigony’s industry here. No clockwork servants cleaning the streets, no industrial towers slowly burning through the night. All of the streetlamps were oil-based. It was like walking through something he’d seen in a history book.
He needed to find the next sign, the seven-pointed compass. He walked down the street, which was eerily deserted, looking everywhere. But everything was either marble or stone, and the only gold among it was gilding.
