Three of his men stood beside him, holding up torches to drive back the mist that had swollen suddenly from the ground, a night-crawling fog that surrounded the stones. Light flashed within the stone ring. A chill wind stung his lips. A perfect crystal flake of snow spiraled down on the last of the wind and dissolved on his boot. Mist still clung about the stones.
“Shall we go up, my lord, and look for her?” asked one of his men.
“No. She is gone.”
He tucked the cloth into his belt and called for his horse. Mounted, he took the baby back into the crook of his arm and, with his entourage around him, began the slow descent of the hill. The baby did not cry, but its eyes were open, and it stared at the heavens, or at its father, or at the dragon banner. Who could tell?
A breeze swelled out from the stones, and mist rolled down over the ruins from the height of the hill, swathing the crumbling buildings in a sudden thick fog and hiding the moon. The men picked their way carefully, men on foot grabbing hold of horses’ harnesses, the rest calling out to each other, marking distance by the sound of their voices.
“You are better off without a woman like that,” said the old soldier suddenly to the prince in the tone of a man who has the right to give advice. “The church would never have accepted her. And she has power over the ways of nature which it were better not to meddle with.” The dragon banner hung limp, sodden with the weight of the fog, as if this unnatural mist was trying to drag the banner down.
But the prince did not reply. He kept his gaze on the torches surrounding him, like watch fires, light thrown against the gloom.
A ring of seven candles, light thrown against the gloom.
Watchers stared into a mist that rose from a huge block of obsidian set in their midst. Their faces were hidden by darkness.
In the mist they saw tiny figures, a young nobleman carrying an infant, ringed by his faithful followers. Slowly these figures descended through a fortress, seen half as ruins, half as the ghost of the fortress that was once whole. The tiny figures walked through walls as if they were air, for they were air, and it was only the memory of what was once there, in the minds of some few of the watchers, that created the ghostly walls, the suggestion of the past built anew.
“We must kill the child,” said one of the watchers as the mist faded, sinking into the black stone. With it faded the image of the prince and his retinue.
“The child is too well protected,” said a second.