A grubby curtain partitioned off a sort of closet, where the Guards had stored their spare provisions in wildest disorder. Stepping through the grimy divider, Rudy blinked at the dimness, for barely any of the greasy yellow illumination managed to leak through from the room beyond; he had the impression of heaped sacks, scarred firkins, a floor mucky with mud and old hay, and an overwhelming smell of dusty cheese and onions. Across the back of that narrow cell somebody had excavated a makeshift bed on the fodder-sacks. On the bed, looking like a dead hobo, lay Ingold.
“You’re crazy, do you know that?” Rudy said.
The blue eyes opened, drugged and dreamy with fatigue. Then the familiar smile lightened the whole face, stripping the age from it and turning it impish and curiously young.
“You could have got killed.”
“You have an overwhelming capacity for the obvious,” Ingold said slowly, but his voice was teasing, and he was obviously pleased to see Gil and Rudy alive and well. The wizard’s hands were bandaged in rags and his face welted and snow-burned, but on the whole, Rudy thought, he looked as if he’d live. He went on. “Thank you for your concern, though the danger was less than it appeared. I was fairly certain I could keep the Dark Ones at bay until I released the spells over the storm. I knew I could escape them under cover of the storm, you see.”
“Yeah?” Rudy asked, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “And just how the hell did you plan to escape the storm?”
“A mere technicality.” Ingold dismissed the subject. “Is it still snowing?”
“It’s coming down pretty heavy,” Gil said, drawing her knees up like a skinny grasshopper and settling herself beside the head of the bed. “But the wind’s stopped. Tomec Tirkenson says this is the coldest it’s been in forty years. The Icefalcon said he’s never seen the snow pile up in the canyons like this so early in winter. You’re gonna have one chilly trek over the Pass.” Barely visible in the smoky darkness, her face looked thin and haggard, but at peace.
“I’ll wait until it actually stops snowing,” Ingold said comfortably, and folded his bandaged bands before him on the moth-eaten wool of the coverlet. Half-hidden in the gloom, he looked white and ill. Rudy didn’t like the dreamy weakness of his voice, nor the way he lay without moving, propped on the sacks of grain. Whatever he said, the old boy had had one hell of a close call. “I can’t delay much longer than that,” the wizard continued. “Things have happened about which it has become imperative that I consult Lohiro, quite apart from the fact that, so far as I know, Alwir still proposes to assemble his Army here, for the invasion of the Nests of the Dark.”
“Look,” Rudy began. “About your going to Quo … “
But before he could finish, the muted voices outside rose to a quick babble, followed by the hasty scuffle of too many people all trying at once to get respectfully to their feet in too small a space. The ragged curtain was thrust aside, and a towering shadow blotted the infalling light. Alwir, Lord of the Keep of Dare, stepped through. At his side, dark and slender as a young apple tree newly come to blossom, was the Lady Minalde.
The Chancellor stood silent for a moment, gravely regarding the old man lying on his bed of sacks. When he spoke, his melodious voice was quiet. “They told me that you were dead.”
“Not much of an exaggeration,” Ingold said pleasantly, “but not strictly accurate, as you see.”
“You could have been,” the Chancellor said. “Without you, we might all have been, back by the river. I have come—” The words seemed to stick in his throat like dry bread. “I have come to say that I have wronged you, and to offer you my hand in friendship again.” He held out his hand, the jewels of his many rings flaming in the shadows.
Ingold stretched out a grubby, bandaged hand to accept, a king’s gesture to an equal. “I only did as I promised Eldor I would,” he said. “I have taken his son and seen him to safety. My promise is fulfilled. As soon as the weather permits, I shall be leaving to seek the Hidden City of Quo.”
“Do you think, then, that it can be found?” Alwir’s frown was one of troubled concern, but his eyes were calculating.
“I can’t know that until I seek it. But the aid of the Council of Wizards is imperative: to your invasion, to the Keep, to all of humankind. Lohiro’s silence troubles me. It has been over a month, without word from him or from any member of the Council. Yet it is impossible that they cannot know what has happened.”
“But you still think Lohiro isn’t dead?”
Ingold shook his head decisively. “I would know it,” he said. “I would feel it. Even with the spells that surround the city like a ring of fire, I would know.”
Minalde spoke for the first tune, her eyes dark with concern. “What do you think has happened, then?”
Ingold shook his head and said simply, “I don’t know.”
She looked down at him for a moment, hearing, as no one else in the room did, the undercurrent in his voice of helplessness and fear—not fear for the world’s wizardry, but for his friends in Quo, the only people in the world to whom the old man truly belonged. She had seen him before only in his strength and command, and sudden sympathy clouded her face. She said, “You would have sought them weeks ago, but for your promise. I’m sorry.”
Ingold smiled at her. “The promise had nothing to do with it, my child.”
She stepped quickly forward and bent to kiss the top of his rough, silvery hair. “God be with you,” she whispered. She turned and fled the room, leaving lover and brother staring after her in bemused surprise.
“You seem to have made a conquest,” Alwir chuckled, though, Rudy thought, he didn’t sound a hundred percent pleased about it. “But she is justified. Your service to the Realm goes beyond any payment we can possibly make.” He looked around him at the grimy, low-ceilinged room with its dirty walls, the smells and steam from the guardroom outside drifting in, along with Gnift’s cracked, tuneless voice singing of love in cornfields. “It certainly deserves better than a back room in the barracks. The Royal Household is a regular warren—we can put you up there in the comfort that befits your state, my lord.”
The wizard smiled and shook his head. “Others could use the space there better than I,” he excused himself. “And in any case, I shall be departing soon. As long as there is a spare bunk in the Guards’ quarters, I shall have a home.”
The Chancellor studied him curiously for a long moment. “You’re an odd bird,” he said finally, without resentment. “But have it as you will. And if you ever get tired of your gypsy existence, the offer will always stand. The quarrel between us has wasted your talents, my lord. I can only ask your leave to make restitution.”
“There is no leave,” Ingold said, “nor restitution. The quarrel is forgotten.”
Chancellor Alwir, Regent of the Realm and Lord of the Keep of Dare, bowed himself from the room.
A moment later the Icefalcon slipped in to give Ingold a cup of the tea he had been brewing. The steam had a curious smell, but it was supposed to prevent colds. It occurred obliquely to Rudy that, although he’d been frozen, wet, half-starved, and nearly dead of exhaustion, at no time had he felt even mildly ill. Probably there was no time for it, he decided. And what I’ve been through would scare any self-respecting bacteria into extinction.