At her back, the bricks of the hearth were warm. It was night, everything dark and hushed. Had the menials finished their tasks and gone to bed? Yet it wasn’t the quiet that had woken her. A weight pressed on her, as if the air had grown heavy and torpid. She had felt this eerie intrusion before. Magic.

Was it the haunt’s doing? Or something else? Something terrible? Something she couldn’t escape? She certainly wasn’t going to lie here and wait until the threat leaped on her!

She swung her feet out, tucked them into her boots, pulled on her cloak, and crept out to the kitchen. The lamps still burned. By their light she saw the cook, assistants, servers, and charwoman, all draped across tables, slumped on the floor, sleeping peacefully. Elen added wood to the fire, which was starting to die down.

Slipping outside, she scanned the plaza. There was no moon, but some of the clouds had cleared off, and stars shone in patches. Lamps burned: one at the entrance into the Heart Temple, one at the portcullis, and one by the closed doors into the tower. Two sentries lay slumped on the ramp, fast asleep. She padded over and tucked their cloaks more tightly around them to keep in their body heat. The doors into the Vigil were locked, so she descended to discover that, in her visual search, she’d missed Fulmo. The gagast stood at the gap where the road reached the wall. His face was once again lifted toward the sky, and he did not stir or seem to see her. Not unlike the statues at the Spires, Elen realized. Why hadn’t she noticed the similarity before?

Most importantly, the iron portcullis had been raised, and one of its thick metal pickets was lodged on a large block of stone high enough that a person could crawl beneath it. What human could have managed this feat alone?

The road’s witchery hummed in her bones. Here in the Vigil compound, the road lay almost level to the ground, with a narrow edge of foundation stone laid a hand’s span lower. This edge was just wide enough for her body. She was able to wiggle through along its narrow width rather than squirm painfully along on the road itself.