Cellphones, solution to the problems of the world.

“Go!” Greg said, angling the van onto the shoulder, just behind a parked Citroën. He pushed the door-lock button.

Ned shoved his door back and jumped out with his pack. Shoved the door shut and scooted among the parked cars, keeping low.

He had no idea why he was doing this, as if someone might actually be spying on him here. It felt ridiculous, but on the other hand, after that encounter with the boar, he realized—more than ever—that he hadn’t a clue how to deal with any of this.

He took a fast look at the big signboard showing the various mountain trails, noted the symbol that marked the way to the cross at the summit, and then he started running.

One thing he could do. A thing he was good at. He was on the cross-country team, he was keeping a training log here, he could go fast for a long time.

Assuming he didn’t throw up from the pain behind his eyes.

It’s manageable, he told himself. Run through it. She’s up there. And there’s no one else who can do this.

Not that this meant that he could do it.

The trail began at a smooth slant upwards, gravelled, wide. People were coming down, some dressed for a picnic with packs and baskets, others wearing serious hiking gear, carrying sticks. He saw some kids; they looked pretty tired.

He glanced up, a long way, to the summit with its cross. The chapel would be just below that, and left. He couldn’t see it yet. He settled in, as best he could, to his pace. It was hard, because he hadn’t warmed up at all and because he felt dreadful. The smell was the worst; it was everywhere, more than the pain or the sickly red hue the world had taken on. David Letterman should do this one, he thought: Top ten reasons not to climb Mont Sainte-Victoire…

Through everything there was fear, a sense of urgency that kept pushing him to go faster. He checked his watch. It was supposed to be a two-hour walk-and-climb. He was going to cut that in half, or better, or break himself trying.

Unlucky thought. Pain lanced like a knitting needle behind his right eye. Ned cried out, couldn’t help it. He staggered, almost fell. He twisted to the right off the wide path, out of sight, and was violently sick in the bushes behind a boulder.

And then again. It felt as if his stomach were trying to force itself inside out. He was on his knees, leaning against the roughness of the big rock. He forced himself to breathe slowly. His forehead was clammy; he’d broken out in a sweat. He was shivering.

Another slow breath. And with it, through pain and nausea, Ned felt anger again, hard as a weapon. It was weird, a little frightening, how much rage he was feeling. He shook his head in grim denial, though there was no one to see, no one to be denying.

“Uh-uh,” he said aloud, to the mountain and the sky. “No way. Not going to happen.” He wasn’t leaving this time, he wasn’t going to call and have Greg drive him back to take a shower and lie down and have everyone in the villa tell him at least he’d tried, he’d done all he could.

It wasn’t all he could. He wouldn’t let it be. You could do more. When it mattered enough, you did more. There were stories of mothers lifting cars off kids trapped under them.

“Not going to happen,” he said again.

He wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of one hand. She was up there. He knew it as surely as he’d known anything. And there was only him here, Ned Marriner. Not his aunt—whatever she’d done once, she couldn’t do it now. Neither could his uncle. His mom could treat refugees in the Sudan but she couldn’t get up this mountain in time or do anything at the top if she did. Ned was the one linked to all this, seeing the blood, smelling the memory of bloodshed.

You didn’t ask for the roles you were given in life; not always, anyhow.

He realized that he was clenching his jaw. He made himself relax. You couldn’t run that way, and he had running to do.

He swung his pack off, fished his iPod out and put the buds in his ears. He dialed up Coldplay. Maybe rock would do what bracelets and rowan leaves couldn’t.

He shouldered the pack and stepped onto the path again. He must have looked pretty alarming because two people—a husband and wife, it looked like—stopped suddenly on their way down and stared at him with concern.

Ned straightened, managed a wan smile. Popped off his buds.

“You are all right? You should not be going up now!” the woman said in French, with a German accent.

“It’s fine,” Ned said, wiping at his mouth. “Bit of a bug. I’ve had worse. I do this run all the time. Training.” He was surprised at how good he’d become at lying.

“It will be dark,” the man said, shaking his head. “And the climb is harder above.”

“I know it,” said Ned. “Thanks, though.” He put the earbuds back in, turned up the volume.

He ran. Around a curve he reached back for his water bottle in the side pocket of the pack and rinsed his mouth, then splashed some on his face without slowing down. He spat into the bushes. His head was still pounding.

Not going to volunteer for an Advil commercial, he thought.

Amused himself with that. Just a little. He was in too much pain for more. He wondered about the screening he was doing—when the draining effect Phelan and his aunt had warned about would kick in. He had no idea.

He ran, twisting through and past weekend climbers making their tired way down the mountain at day’s end. Above him, way above, he could see the big cross at the summit. He was going there, then left, down a ridge, up another, down to the right.

Or so Veracook had said.

One woman looked at her watch as he approached and gave him an admonishing sideways shake of her finger, that gesture the French loved. His mother, he thought, should take that one up.

He knew it was late in the day. He knew it was going to be windy and get dark…this wasn’t being done for the joy of it. Maybe he should have printed leaflets to hand out to all the finger-waggers.

He ran. After almost thirty minutes on the steady upward slant he realized two things. One was that he was feeling better. He didn’t have that overwhelming sense of the world rotting all around him. He’d hoped that getting above the level of the battlefield would help, and it seemed to be doing that. He felt like offering a prayer.

His head hurt, the world was red-tinted, even behind sunglasses, but he didn’t feel any more as if he was going to empty his guts with pain in response to putrefaction.

The other thing, less encouraging by a lot, was that there was someone behind him—and it was Cadell.

The Celt was just suddenly there when Ned did one of his quick inward checks for an aura. Nothing, nothing, nothing…then there he was: golden inside Ned’s mind, as in life.

And coming up the mountain.

They won’t be at their best, his aunt had said. Meaning something a lot worse than that.

She had ordered Ned to stop if they came up to him, either of them, and told him to leave. He’d known she was right about that and he knew it now. They might mean him no harm, but that was only if he didn’t get in their way. They were alive in the world to do one thing only: find her. Two hundred thousand people and more had died in a single battle between these two. What was a Canadian kid against that?

His heart was pounding, for all the reasons that had to do with running as fast as he could up a mountain, fighting pain and nausea, and pursued by someone who had so many lifetimes of white and burning need to get to the chasm first.

It had been the boar that had called them, he was certain of it.

That’s how Cadell was here. He had no idea why the animal had done it. You sure got a lot of questions in the world, without exactly getting the same number of answers. In fact, there was a huge gap between the two numbers. It made him angry again. He needed that, to fuel him, drive him on, push back fear.