He looked up again. There was a wooden sign ahead, symbols on it. The sloped path gave out here to terraced, switchbacked ridges. Vera had told him this. It got harder, angling back and forth because it was steeper now. He saw people still coming down, left and right, left and right, along the switchbacks. It was going to be slower, narrower, hard to run through them. He took the first cut to the right, got out his water bottle again to drink.

His phone rang.

He fished in his pocket, saw who it was on the read-out.

“Dad,” he said quickly, “I’m okay, I’m running. Can’t talk.”

He flipped the phone shut. He was supposed to tell them Cadell was behind him now? Was it a tough guess what they’d say?

It was pretty simple, really. Way Ned saw it, if the big man didn’t catch him, he couldn’t stop him or do anything to him, right? So you didn’t let him catch you. It didn’t always have to be complicated.

He thought of letting his screening go, but he didn’t know what might hit him—flatten him—if he did. How much the screen was protecting him from the mountain. He couldn’t afford to lose any time now.

And there was the other man, too. Ned didn’t for a second imagine Phelan wasn’t up here somewhere. Probably screened, like Ned. Cadell was announcing himself, trying to frighten Ned, maybe warn him off. Phelan was just…coming.

Could scare you more, that thought.

It was still bright up here, the sun setting to his right, the wind picking up but blocked a little because he wasn’t completely above the trees yet. He looked back over his shoulder. There was a lake or reservoir of some kind below, glinting in the light, and another one farther beyond. He was high enough to see a long way. The view was beautiful, and he wasn’t even halfway up.

There had been a fire on these slopes, Ned saw, maybe more than one. The mountain was more bare than it looked in those paintings Cézanne had done. Time changed things, even mountains. Even a hundred years could make changes—or however long it was since Cézanne painted this peak. Was that a long time or a blink of time?

He thought he knew what the two men and Ysabel would say. But he also remembered his mother and aunt on the path from the tower last night, and it occurred to him that they might think of twenty-five years as heartbreakingly long.

He didn’t have answers. He amped up his music a little more and he ran, zigzagging up the mountain as the day waned towards an ending.

AFTER TWENTY MINUTES of laboured, driving work, back and forth along the terraced slope, twisting his way through the last of the day’s descending climbers, he smashed, hard, into the inner screening wall he’d been warned about.

Too soon! he thought, but even as the thought came his legs gave out and Ned felt himself falling. He didn’t slide, this was still more a steep hike than a climb, but he lay in the middle of the narrow switchback, exhausted, drained, and it felt for a long moment like he wasn’t going to be able to get up.

And that wouldn’t do. With an effort he pulled his earbuds out and rolled to one elbow. His small running pack felt massive, a burden on his back. He worked to shrug himself out of it. There was a taste of dust in his mouth. Better than blood, he thought.

Then, with apprehension coiling tightly within him, he released the screen, because there was nothing else he could do.

He cried out. Couldn’t help it.

The immediate pain in his head was brutal: a vise, not knitting needles or a hammer. He’d been right, not that it did him any good now—the screening had been keeping at bay the full impact of where he was.

Eyes tightly closed, gasping for thin, shallow breaths, aware that there were tears on his face, Ned realized he was going to have to phone down after all. He wasn’t even sure he could stay conscious till someone got here to him.

He opened his eyes, forced himself to look up from where he lay. And facing east, he saw the chapel below the summit’s great cross. It wasn’t even far; he’d gotten pretty damned close. They’d have to give him credit for that, wouldn’t they?

There was nobody else up here. No one had heard his cry. Every sane person had passed him already, going down the long slope towards drinks and a shower, sunset and dinner, out of the wind that was blowing here.

Ned felt something else then: a pulse like a probe in his head. He made himself, moving very slowly, sit up. Everything took so much appalling effort, hurt so much. He looked within himself. Cadell’s aura was still there. And the pulse, the signal, was coming from him.

Of course, Ned thought. You’re clueless, Marriner. A loon.

He’d been thinking of Cadell as chasing him, but he’d been screened. The Celt hadn’t been able to see Ned any more than Ned had spotted him down there. Cadell was just powering his way towards the summit, not knowing if Ned was ahead or behind, or anywhere at all.

Now, though, he realized it, and he was making sure Ned knew he was coming.

I should be afraid, Ned thought. He actually felt too weak for fear, as if all he wanted to do, all he could do, was sit here among dust and stones and scrubby little bushes and let the sun go down on these slopes, and on him.

Well, he could make a phone call first. Someone would come. His aunt was in the call-back. His dad was on auto-dial, and so was Greg. Well, not really, in fact. Melanie had done that very funny nine-or ten-digit auto-dial for Greg on Ned’s phone. Then Ned had rigged their phones with ringtones in the middle of the night.

He could almost smile, remembering when he’d called her the next morning at the cathedral. “You will be made to suffer!” Melanie had said, but she’d been laughing.

If they were understanding anything about this properly, she was somehow up above him right now, not that far.

He thought about her laughing that morning, and something in him altered with the memory. Anger, Ned thought, could drive you hard. It could ruin you or make you, like any other really strong feeling, he guessed.

Right now, it pulled him to his feet.

He realized, straightening carefully, that he could handle this pain too. It had been the contrast, the shock of it when the screen went down, that had flattened him. But he was really high now, far above the plain where the battle had been, and he could hold it together for a bit longer. The weakness in his legs was something else, one more thing. Like he really, really needed more. He could almost hear his friend Larry saying that, the guys laughing.

Cadell was coming, and he was aware now that Ned was ahead of him.

With an effort that cost him, Ned shouldered his pack again. Since when were these things so heavy? His legs felt rubbery, the way they could near the end of a cross-country race. But he’d done those races for three years now, he knew this feeling. It was new, and it wasn’t. You could build on what you had experienced, and he’d smashed into walls running before.

That’s what it was all about, the track coach had always told them. You find where your wall is, and you train to push it back, but when you hit it…you go through. If you can do that, you’re a runner. Ned could hear that voice, too, in his mind.

Ned went through. He was almost comically slow. Walking, not running. In places here—he was right below the chapel now—there were loose rocks on the path that could send you tumbling.

He looked back. And this time he saw someone coming, already on the switchback section, steady and strong and fast.

Ned felt like crying, which was really not going to help. He looked ahead. There were two zigzags left, or he could climb. He wasn’t sure he had the strength for that, but he was pretty certain he didn’t have the time not to. He clenched his jaw—an expression one or two people would have recognized—and left the path. He bent to the slanting rock face, using his hands now.