Marcus Stoneguard had stood on the same wall for three hundred and twelve years, and tonight something was climbing it that he could not name. It moved like smoke along the vines. It struck like a dropped anvil. He watched a chunk of mortar fall from the parapet and understood two things at once. The drifting thing and the hitting thing were not the same creature. And he could not wake his brothers to help him. The other gargoyles crouched along the wall in a long grey line, wings folded, eyes shut. Marcus had tried everything he knew. He had shouted their old post names. He had struck the stone beside their feet. He had bled onto the closest one's claw and waited until dawn. Nothing. Three centuries of sleep, and he did not know the key. A voice came from the vines below his boots. "Stop shouting. You're loosening my roof." Marcus looked down. A small grey figure pushed out from a seam in the mortar, moss on his shoulders, a leaf stuck to one ear. Marcus had seen him before. Never spoken to him. "Pebble Groutstone," the troll said. "I live here. You're the loud one on top." "Something is breaking the wall," Marcus said. "I felt it. Two hits. Third course, north face." Pebble climbed onto the parapet. "Your stone brothers won't wake for noise. Wrong key." "You know the key." "I know what wakes stone." Pebble tapped the nearest gargoyle's foot. "Not sound. Not blood. Threat to the thing they were carved to guard. Real threat. Named." Marcus stared at him. "Named." "Speak what's coming. Out loud. To them. They'll hear it in the stone." "I don't know what it is." "Then you can't wake them." A second voice came from the air behind him, quiet and even. "I can name it." Marcus turned. A pale girl stood on the walkway, black eyes, white hair drifting though there was no wind. A ghost. She did not step; she was simply closer. "Selene Nightshade," she said. "I've watched this wall longer than you think. The thing at your stones is a dragon's shadow. The dragon sleeps under the hill. Its shadow walks first. That's your smoke. The strike is the dragon reaching through it." "Why tell me?" "Because it wakes toward my grave." She tilted her head. "Do you want the name or not?" "Give it." "Vashkareth." Marcus turned to the sleeping gargoyle beside him. He pressed his palm to its cold shoulder. "Vashkareth," he said. "A dragon under the hill. Coming for the wall." The stone under his hand grew warm. A crack ran down the gargoyle's chest, then opened into a slow breath. One eye slid open. Then another, further down the line. Then a third. Below, in the vines, something enormous shifted and began to climb.

The first gargoyle to open its eyes fell forward off the parapet. Marcus caught its wing before it dropped. The stone was warm and shaking. Three centuries of sleep had left the gargoyle boneless as a wet cloth. Down the wall, six more were waking the same way, groaning, swaying, one already on its knees. Below them, the vines shifted in wide sheets as something long and heavy climbed. Marcus counted the waking line. Seven, then nine, then eleven. Not enough, and none of them steady. The nearest one blinked at him without recognition. "Post," Marcus said. "You're on the wall. Third course, north face. Hold." The gargoyle's mouth moved but no sound came. A tremor ran through the parapet as something struck the stone twenty feet below. Mortar dust puffed from the seams. Pebble Groutstone climbed up from a crack near Marcus's boot. "They're drunk," he said. "Sleep does that. Two minutes, maybe three, before their legs work." He looked down over the edge. "You don't have two minutes." "Then give me something." "Bugs in the third course. Been there four generations. They know the wall's shakes better than you." Pebble whistled low into the seam. A cluster of pill bugs rolled out onto the stone, small and round, wrapped in what looked like scraps of knitted cloth. "They'll feel where he grips. Watch them." A small voice came from Marcus's shoulder. "I can hold a light for a few seconds. Not more." He turned. A bug the size of his thumb stood on his pauldron, cape trailing, a faint glow starting at her back. Glimmer Shellsworth. She had climbed the wall to reach a field east of here and stopped when she saw the gargoyles stirring. "A few seconds is what I have. Tell me where to aim it." Marcus watched the pill bugs scatter along one line of stones. They bunched at a single seam and froze. "There," he said. "That's his hand." "Then that's where I'll point." Glimmer stepped onto the parapet's edge. Her light bloomed, thin and white, and fell straight down onto a coil of black smoke gripping the wall. The smoke flinched. Inside it, something solid twisted away from the glare. "Now," Pebble said. Marcus grabbed the nearest waking gargoyle by the jaw and turned its face toward the lit patch. "Vashkareth," he said. "There. Strike." The gargoyle's eyes cleared. It shoved off the parapet and dropped, wings snapping open halfway down. Two others followed, ragged but falling in the right direction. Stone hit stone hit smoke. The dragon's shadow tore loose from the wall and slid twenty feet down the vines before it caught again. Glimmer's light went out. She sat down hard on Marcus's shoulder. "That's all I had." Below, the shadow gathered itself. It began to climb again, slower now, and higher up the wall a fourth gargoyle finally stood on its own feet.