And though he’d felt nothing and found nothing when he checked within, he still shivered, gazing out over low grey stones in the late-day light. His gran used to say shivering like that meant a ghost was passing. He didn’t say that to Kate.

It was bigger than he’d expected, though he couldn’t say exactly what he had expected. The path they were standing on ran alongside the ruins on their eastern edge. Ahead of them, a long way, Ned saw that the plateau ended in a cliff. To their left, the ground sloped down past trees into a meadow.

On their right and in front was Entremont, what was left of it.

He really didn’t want to stay here. There were a lot of reasons not to stay. But he found himself walking forward with Kate, looking out over the stones. They weren’t holding hands now; her own mood had grown quieter, less feverish.

That was the word, Ned decided. She’d been feverish before.

He stole a sidelong glance at her. She looked pale, like the stones, as if taken aback by what she’d done, where they were. She stopped, so he did.

They were entirely alone here. In the wind, among the ruins.

He looked left. The site ended, not far away, in that short slope down to olive trees and the meadow. Tall grass there, wildflowers. On their other side were the crumbled, excavated ruins. Beside where they’d stopped were low stones, barely knee high. The wall of a house, he realized; there were others like it all around, defining small rectangular spaces.

“This was the lower town,” Kate said softly. There was no need to be quiet, but it felt right. “There’s an olive press over that way, under the tree.” She pointed past the low walls. Her manner was more like what he remembered.

Ned nodded. He walked past her, taking the lead now. They went farther south alongside what remained of those one-room houses. This had been a street once, he realized. It rose a little as they went. He could see, ahead of them, where the upper town began. There was a wider east-west roadway, big blocks of stone beyond it.

Just before they got there, he stepped up on one of the knee-high house walls to look out over the site, and then he stepped down into the space that would have been a home for someone, with a roof and walls, over two thousand years ago. And as he did, as he entered, something happened inside him again.

Ned stood still. The wind was blowing, but they were somewhat guarded from it by the trees to the north and what remained of the settlement wall.

Kate looked at him from the path. “What is it?” she said.

He didn’t answer. This wasn’t like any of the sensations he’d had before.

“Ned, what is it?” he heard Kate Wenger ask again.

He took a breath. “There’s just…a lot of power here,” he said.

“What does that mean?” He heard her fear.

“I’d tell you if I knew.”

It was true: he didn’t understand this, only that from these stones a feeling like a heartbeat in rocks was coming into him. No sense of someone actually here, more a—

“It’s waiting,” he said abruptly.

Then, as he looked ahead, towards the higher ruins across the wide east-west street, he added, pointing, “What was that?”

Kate turned to look. She cleared her throat. “That was the guard tower at the upper town entrance. I saw a layout on their website. Beside it is where the religious sanctuary was. Just there. See the bigger stones? That was the tower.”

Ned saw the stones. Thick, grey, heavy. Only the base was left, everything else was down, had been down a long time. But at some point back then, between the part where they were and the section ahead of them, architecture had changed.

You changed, as a people, bit by bit, learned things. Then someone brought war engines to your walls, and it didn’t matter any more what you’d learned.

He went forward to look, almost involuntarily now.

Up on a low wall, back down, up and over another, and then he was on the dusty street that divided the upper and lower parts of Entremont. It ended to the east, he saw, on his left, where the slope ran down to the meadow.

This road was wider than anything behind them or ahead. Main Street, he thought. Just across it lay the base of the guard tower. He looked at the big stones, imagined a tower. Catapults and time, he thought. He still had a pulsing in his mind, as if the stones were trying to vibrate.

We should go now, Ned thought. He knew they should go.

Beside the tower base, to the right of it, was a large, rectangular space.

“What kind of sanctuary?” he asked.

“Well, Celtic, of course. They found skulls here,” Kate said quietly. “You know they worshipped the skulls of their ancestors?”

“I heard. And the heads of their enemies, too. Preserved them in oil. Or made them into drinking cups,” he said. “Nice people.”

Maybe it was right that these walls had come down, if that’s what they’d been like. Or maybe it wasn’t. And maybe it didn’t matter at all what Ned Marriner felt or thought about it, two thousand years later.

And then, finally—because they were quite close to it now—ahead of them, in the dusk, Ned noticed a column standing upright towards the back of that sanctuary space where Kate said skulls had been found.

It was as if he was being pulled that way.

He stepped over another low wall into what had been a holy place. He walked up to that column, stood before it, and looked more closely.

The pillar was about seven feet high. Tallest thing here, easily. Carved on it, from the base to the top, were a dozen primitive, unmistakable renderings of human heads.

Ned swallowed hard, and shivered again.

“Look at this,” he said.

He heard Kate behind him. She was still on the roadway, hadn’t stepped inside.

“Ned.”

“Can you believe this?” he repeated, staring at it in the twilight.

“Ned,” she said again.

He turned to look back. She was really pale now, ghost-like. Her arms were crossed tightly on her chest as if she were cold.

“Ned, this shouldn’t be here.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“I saw pictures…on the website. Of the dig. This was found here, but it was lying down, not standing, and…Ned, they moved it, into the museum, like fifty years ago. That’s where it’s supposed to be.”

Slowly he turned back. The stone column wasn’t lying down and it wasn’t in the museum. It was in front of him, in the shadows of this quiet, gathering darkness.

Ned froze. He didn’t breathe. He felt his heart begin to pound, very hard. His mouth was suddenly dry.

It took an effort to move his left arm, turn his wrist, so he could see what he already knew he would see. He looked at his watch.

It was just after six.

He turned to look at Kate.

“Why is it dark?” he said.

CHAPTER IX

After a blank, rigid moment, during which he could see her absorb what he’d just said, Kate put a hand to her mouth. She looked fearfully around her in the great and gathering dark—which had come down upon them hours too soon.

“Ned, what’s happening?”

As if he’d know. As if he had any hope of knowing.

Gazing past her, still trying to accept the reality of this, Ned saw torches. He tried to swallow; it felt like there was sandpaper in his throat. His heart thumped again, so hard it was painful.

Fires were burning in the meadow east of the entrance through which they’d just come. Torches in a long line—a procession moving towards the ruins.

Unable to form words, Ned just pointed. Kate turned to see.

“Oh, God. What have I done?” she whispered.

No good answer for that. No time for one. Ned looked desperately around for a hiding place, but except for the one column beside him everything in Entremont was flat, levelled. Catapults and time.

He stepped quickly back out of the sanctuary, grabbed Kate by the hand and, bending low, started running east along that wide main street between the upper and lower towns. They went straight out of the site and down the shallow slope. He pulled her to the ground behind a tree.