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cold and crystalline clear, the sky bejeweled with stars. Bringing an extra blanket from below, Arnault
bedded down beside the Stone, pillowing his head upon it as Jacob had done, worrying and listening to
the creak of the ship's timbers as she squatted aground. Eventually weariness got the better of worry or
listening, and he dozed off.
But his sleep was ?tful, and after a while he became dimly aware of a far-off rushing sound, like the roar
of the sea heard through a seashell. The roaring became mingled with other noises-a strange,
deep-throated chorus of hoots and groans that sent a faint tingle up his spine, though it was not the tingle
of fear. Puzzled, his dream-self stood up to investigate.
Gone were the wintry stars. The galley lay softly swathed in a blanket of silvery fog, though far at its bow
he could sense a white-robed form standing with arms outstretched into the milk-white blankness.
Beyond, he sensed huge primordial shapes swimming just at the edge of vision, long serpentine necks
cresting and dipping as the creatures converged on the galley in a herd, calling out to one another with
eerie, moaning cries.
A broad, glistening back broke the fog off the galley's port ?ank; a second creature surfaced to
starboard. A series of heavy bumps from below caused the deck to lurch and shudder, and Arnault
clutched at the railing as the ship suddenly lifted beneath him-though he could not seem to move farther,
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or to summon up enough will even to try.
But the ship moved. Borne up on the creatures' backs, teetering and swaying, the vessel slowly began to
edge forward. Other long-necked beasts ?anked the ship on either hand, propelling themselves with
supple sweeps of their long tails. The rolling surge of their movement was hypnotic, soothing, and carried
Arnault back into heavy sleep.
He woke to the cries of excited voices, and rolled free of his blanket to scramble to his feet, hand
reaching for his sword. To his astonishment, the galley was ?oating free on a broad sweep of open water
that stretched mirror-silver into predawn mist. Torquil was standing at the railing nearby, and glanced
back at him in wonder.
"I have a feeling you won't be at all surprised," he said, "but I do believe we've found our way into Loch
Ness! The captain says that some freakish turn of the tide must have moved the jam of seaweed and ice
and carried us through."
Remembering his curiously vivid dream, Arnault only smiled faintly.
"Stranger things are possible, I suppose."
They rowed southward down the loch while the daylight lasted. Arnault stayed with the Stone, one hand
resting lightly upon it as if in reassurance-whether to it or himself, he could not have said. All the day long,
Ninian stood gazing ahead in the bow of the ship like the apparition of the night before, though Arnault
sensed it had not been Ninian then, but the saint the Columban brother served.
Toward dusk, they at last caught sight of the slighted towers and walls of ruined Urquhart Castle,
emerging from the shadowed shoreline to their right. The water before it was still as a mirror, its
bottomless depths re?ecting the castle ruins and the snow-covered peaks to the north and east. Behind
them, the V of their gentle wake followed like a trail of glory, embellished with the rhythmic ripple the
oars made. Gazing out across the water, Arnault could almost imagine that he stood on the brink of some
strange rift in the fabric of the material world, where sprites and faeries and other creatures, far stranger,
could pass freely back and forth into the realm of spirit. He wondered again what had carried the ship
into the loch, and whether it-or they-still followed in the depths below.
Just before sunset, they put the bulk of the crew ashore at Urquhart, retaining only half a dozen to man
the oars-Templars, all, the captain among them. From the ship's stores, preserved against this hour,
Torquil brought out two white Templar mantles, which he and Arnault donned after girding on their
swords-God's monks of war once more, ready to do Him service, for the glory of His name. A chill haze
was settling above the water as the crew remaining on land gave the galley a push to send it on its way
from shore, as winter shadows edged across the loch and the short day began slipping into twilight.
"Not long now," Ninian murmured to Arnault, gazing out across the black mirror of the water.
Clumsily, those remaining bent to the oars, less than a dozen of them, propelling the big galley slowly into
the center of the loch. They reached the appointed position just as the sun was dipping behind the hills. A
deep blue twilight rolled across the landscape and the surface of the loch as the rowers shipped their oars
to let the craft glide to a halt.
As Arnault and Torquil began winching the Stone high enough to clear the rail, and let it balance there,
the crew came from below to line up along the opposite rail-except for the captain, who went to the mast
with a bundle of something under his arm and ran up a sea version of Beauc ant: a long, swallow-tailed
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pennon of black and white, horizontally divided, that lifted brie?y on a faint breath of air and then was
still.
In the silence, it seemed that all creation held its breath, waiting. Quietly Arnault and Torquil stood to
either side of the Stone, hands upon it as they waited for the rising of the moon. Ninian stood between
them, behind the Stone, gazing out at the lunar glow building beyond the mountain peaks to the east.
Presently, a shimmer of silvery brightness broke behind the eastern horizon as the disk of the rising moon
began to emerge. In that ?rst ?ush of moonlight, Ninian raised his hands in invocation from their Celtic
heritage.
"In name of the Holy Spirit of Grace,
In name of the Father of the City of peace,
In name of Jesus Who took death off us,
In name of the Three Who shield us in every need,
Be thou welcome, thou bright white moon of the seasons."
In the silence that followed these words, Arnault took the Shard from inside his tunic, clasping it between
his hands, point downward, and raising it above the Stone as he likewise lifted his eyes and his heart.
"In the beginning was the Word," he murmured, "and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
He drewa deep breath and let it out.
"Lord, may Your Holy Word ever be our foundation, and Christ Himself our chief cornerstone." He
slowly brought the Shard down so that its point rested against the center of the Stone.
"Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomine Tua da gloriam," he said boldly-and was not surprised when
the Stone yielded before the Shard of the Law like ice melting under the sun's warmth, or a bride
welcoming her beloved.
When he lifted his hands, he could see no sign of the Shard, but when he laid his hands on the Stone
again, he could feel the puissance of their union as a quickening that ?lled his heart with gladness.
He let Torquil help him steady the Stone as they lifted it enough to swing out over the side. His voice rang
true and clear as he spoke from the heart.
"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain," he said, quoting from the Psalms. He could feel the cosmic connection as
he lifted his face to the glow that would be the rising moon, as a focus for the prayer he now offered.
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