Dale’s forgiveness had made him feel all the more guilty. He did not deserve it. Somehow he would make all this up to her. Somehow…
“Lord D’Yer!” one of the guards shouted. He pointed at the tower wall. “Look!”
A distortion rippled in fluid waves along the wall’s facade. He approached cautiously, not daring to avert his gaze, apprehension gnawing at his gut.
A hand punched through the wall. He jumped back in shock. It was not a hand of flesh and blood, but a hand of granite. Apprehension turned to dread that filled his belly with ice.
“Dale? Dale?”
A bulge protruded above the hand; a face pressed against the inner surface of the wall, a face of familiar features. Dale’s, molded in stone.
“Dale?” Alton’s voice was scarcely a whisper.
The undulating ripples of the distortion calmed and receded, until they died out altogether and the surface of the wall smoothed to its normal state.
And solidified.
“No!” He grabbed at Dale’s hand, but it was cold, grainy, hard. He pummeled the wall, tears streaming down his face. “No! You can’t have her!”
Soldiers and laborers trotted over to see what the matter was and stopped in horror. “Gods!” one of them gasped. Several of them made the sign of the crescent moon.
Ours, ours, ours… came the voices into Alton’s mind.
“Let her go!” Blood splattered the wall as Alton pounded, soaked into the pores of granite. “She’s not yours! Let her go!”
All at once the wall around Dale warped and ruptured. It disgorged her and she spilled to the ground, a shell of granite that encased her crumbling from her body, a body of flesh and blood, not a statue. Alton dragged her clear of the wall and Leese pushed through the crowd with her apprentice and fell to her knees beside the lifeless Dale.
Alton watched as they examined her, blood running down his fingers, dripping off fingertips, and soaking into the ground. Was she alive? He couldn’t see her breathing. Leese worked on her for a few moments more and suddenly Dale’s body jerked and she coughed and gagged, fighting for air. When the fit passed and her breathing eased, Dale grabbed Leese’s tunic and pulled her close to whisper to her.
When Dale released the mender, Alton demanded, “What? What did she say?”
Leese looked over her shoulder at him, her expression unreadable. “She said something about knowing what it’s like to be a fossil.”
Alton paused outside Dale’s tent with his bandaged hand raised to knock. It was a measure of his anxiety that he forgot there wasn’t really anything solid to knock on. A stiff, cold breeze ruffled his hair and bowed the tent walls inward. Fallen leaves rushed around his ankles. He cleared his throat to announce himself.
“I know you’re out there,” Dale said before he could speak. “Come in.”
He parted the tent flaps and stepped inside. Through the gloom he could see Dale seated on her cot, rubbing oil into a boot that lay across her knees.
“Have a seat,” she said.
He dragged a stool over next to her cot, watching her while she worked. Her one arm was still bound to her side from the old injury, but he could discern no new hurts from her alarming passage through the tower wall. He would not forget her hand of stone reaching out, reaching toward him. Even in his dreams he could not forget and just thinking of it made him shudder. According to Leese, Dale had come to little harm, but he needed to make sure of that for himself.
He also wanted to find out what she learned from Merdigen. That and…He hated himself for having to come to her after all she endured, for having to ask her to risk her life all over again and return through the tower wall. One guilt layered upon another. If only the wall would let him through.
Dale paused her oiling and looked up at him, her mouth a narrow line. “You may stop feeling guilty. I’m fine. Whatever happened in there rattled my bones and frankly scared me to all five hells, but I am alive.”
Alton opened his mouth and shut it.
“I can see it in your face. Your guilt.”
He nodded and stared at his feet.
“You want me to go back in, don’t you.” Dale’s voice was flat.
“How…? Have you become a mind reader?”
“Like I said, I can see it in your face. For a noble, you’re utterly transparent. You might want to work on that.”
“Uh…”
“Of course you want to hear about what Merdigen and I chatted about all that time first,” Dale said, “but you also need me to find out what went wrong when I tried to come back, which means I have to go back and talk to Merdigen, because I sure as five hells don’t know.”
“Yes.”
Dale did not respond, but she scrutinized him from head to foot, eyes narrowed. He squirmed in discomfort. “Your boots look terrible. What would Captain Mapstone say?”
“What? I—” He glanced down at his boots. They were caked with dry mud, scuffed, and dull. Clearly they were unacceptable, but there had been more urgent matters demanding his attention. Clean boots just hadn’t seemed all that important in comparison.
“The water’s still warm.” Dale tapped her toe against a bucket on the floor beside her. “And I’ve a cake of saddle soap.” She tossed it to him and it spurted out of his grasp, and when he reached after it, his stool tipped over sending him sprawling across the tent floor. He lay there feeling undignified, the amber soap at rest next to his face. Dale looked as though she was desperately trying to suppress laughter.