The land was so level, and the trees so scattered, that it was possible to see landmarks a fair distance away. A diffuse, vertical line of soft white stuck up like a knife, still leagues away. The road speared directly toward it.

As the evening passed, and the moon sank into the west, the tower grew in size. Yet no lamps marked the bridge over the moat or the gate in the compound’s wall, as they should have done. More ominous still, the beacon light that ought to be clearly visible at the top of the tower was absent. The Vigil lay dark except for the eerie sheen of its holystone walls.

Near midnight, guided by a lamp hung from the Sun Chaser, the exhausted horses clattered across the bridge that spanned the moat. Their party passed gardens, and entered the Vigil compound through an open, unguarded gate.

The Vigil towers and their compounds were said to be as old as the roads, built to be checkpoints and watchtowers. It wasn’t the towers themselves but the layout of the ports-of-entry that dated from the reign of the Willow Emperor. As a terminal Vigil, Far Boundary Vigil had no street of administrative offices to keep track of merchants and travelers. Its buildings were military in look, suggesting it had once housed a large garrison rather than the small numbers Xilsi had mentioned. All of the outer buildings were boarded up, although a few had shutters hanging loose. There was a pervasive scent of ashy char.

The sound of their passage echoed strangely until they passed the inner gate into the inner plaza. Simo pulled up the carriage in the courtyard, and the riders came to a halt around it.

The lamps that should have been lit on either side of the door into the tower’s interior were dark. Everything was dark and still: the tower’s windows, the temple’s gate, the kitchen’s smokeless chimney and main door left ajar. No one came to greet them.

Simo raised a hand. Those in the carriage climbed down to the ground and the riders dismounted, weapons drawn as they scanned the courtyard, the surrounding buildings, the sky and the clouds. No sound penetrated the night except the soughing of a light breeze, the erratic tapping of a loose shutter, and a strange murmuring shush-shoom that Elen had not heard for years but recognized instantly, with a shudder. The viper licked at her heart. It wanted out. It sensed how close it was, after so long, to its birth Pall.

Kem whispered, “What is that sound? It’s creepy.”

“It’s the Pall,” said Simo gravely.

“The other Pall didn’t sound like that. It didn’t sound like anything.”

“This Pall marks the end of the world,” said the captain. “You may think of it as if we have reached an ocean’s shore.”

“I’ve never been to an ocean,” said Kem.