'That would sure kill the property values,' Rudy assented with a shiver. But something undefined stirred in his memory, something he had read, or had heard read to him... Wild David's Body Shop in Fontana came back to him, with himself slouched in the erupted mess of split vinyl and filthy padding of David's old swivel chair, leafing through decayed copies of the Reader's Digest while a crowd of the local bikers argued profanely about what they wanted him to paint on the tank of somebody's Harley...
'And if you haven't seen the effects of an ice storm,' Ingold continued, 'at least you have seen the work of the White Raiders.'
An almost physical memory returned to Rudy in a rush - the sweetness of the opalescent mist of the river valleys below Karst, and the sour tang of nausea in his throat. The drift of smoke in the foggy air, the bloody ruin of what had been a human being, the raucous laughter of the carrion crows, and Ingold, like a grey ghost in the pewter light, his robe beaded with dew and a tag of bloody leather in his hands, saying to Janus, 'This is the work of the White Raiders...'
Rudy shivered. 'Who are the White Raiders? he asked.
The old man shrugged. 'What can I tell you of them?' he replied. They are the People of the Plains, the kings of the wind. They say that once upon a time their home was only in the far north, in the high meadows along the rim of the ice. But they haunt all the northern plains now and, as we have seen, have begun to invade the river valleys at the heart of the Realm.'
On the edge of the narrow circle of the firelight, the donkey Rudy had named Che Guevara snorted and stamped at some sound in the distant night, his long ears laid back along his head. Distantly, Rudy caught the howling of prairie wolves. 'You know,' he said with forced casualness, 'I don't think the whole time we were on the road down from Karst I ever actually saw a White Raider.
I knew they were following the train, but I never saw one.'
'Well, they're most dangerous when you don't see them.' Ingold smiled. 'And you're wrong, in any case. You did see one. The Icefalcon is a White Raider.'
Of course, Rudy thought, more surprised by the fact that the Raiders didn't resemble the Huns or the Sioux than he was to learn that the Icefalcon was a foreigner among the dark-haired, blue-eyed people of the Wath. And now that he came to think of it, the Icefalcon wasn't of Bishop Govannin's Faith; at least he'd only sniffed in disdain at Gil's question on the subject. Rudy remembered the farmhouse in the mists again and shuddered.
'That's the chief reason Alwir sent him on the mission to Alketch,' Ingold continued, setting aside his herbs and rising. 'Of anyone, a Raider would have the best chances of surviving the journey.' He picked up his staff, preparing to make his usual brief inspection of their campsite before settling down to guard duty.
'Yeah, but if he's the enemy, how did he get to be a Guard?' Rudy protested uneasily, and Ingold paused in the act of turning away, a shapeless dark blur against the paler sand of the bank beyond.
'What is an enemy?* His scratchy voice seemed to come disembodied from the surrounding darkness. 'A great variety of strange people find their way into the Guards. I'm sure if the Icefalcon wanted you to know, he would tell you.' And though Rudy could not see him move, the wizard seemed to fade from sight.
Rudy shook his head in a kind of amazement. Ingold could be the least visible man he had ever met, seen when he wanted to be seen and otherwise all but invisible. It wasn't that he was shy, Rudy knew. The wizard observed the world like a hunter from an unseen blind; concealment appeared to be his second nature. Rudy wondered if all wizards were like that.
He huddled, shivering, next to the tiny fire. The cold of the night was so intense that he could feel only a little of the fire's warmth, even at a distance of twelve inches. Already in the treeless plains, wood was scarce, and they were burning brushwood and buffalo chips. Unlike the more volatile wood fires, the chips gave off a steady, cherry-red glow, and the heart of the fire was like a rippling amber well of heat. In that well, images took shape under his idle attention - the jewelled darkness of Aide's rooms at the Keep, with the single sphere of gold floating around the flame of the candle as pure and beautiful as a fruit of light or a single note of music, and Minalde's face, bent over a book, the sudden gleam of a tear on her cheek.
Although he was fairly certain the tear was not for him, but for the fate of the heroine of her book, Rudy still ached to go to her, to be with her and comfort her. At first he had shied from seeking her image in the fire this way, not wanting to spy on her. But his longing to see her, to know that she was all right, had proved too much for him. He wondered if Ingold knew.
For that matter, had Ingold ever sought the image of a woman he loved in the fire?
Sudden wind lashed at the fire, tearing the image from its heart. Like ripped silk in a cyclone, the fire twisted first one way, then another... And Rudy realized that the wind was not from the north.
It came from no direction - thin, cold, twisting. He looked up, light-blinded, at the sky; but by the time his eyes adjusted, he could see only the chaos of darkness. He started to rise, and a voice said quietly behind him, 'Stay where you are.'
Somewhere in the night, he saw the flutter of trailing muffler ends and the glint of eyes. Wind stirred at the fire once more, and the renewed light flashed in the burro's glassy green stare and picked out the shape of Ingold's cloak. Turning his eyes skyward again, Rudy saw them, black against the black of the churning sky, a sinuous ripple of movement and the glint of claws and wet, shining backs. The Dark Ones rode like a cloud, north against the wind.
Rudy realized his hand had gone to his sword hilt and slowly released it as they passed on by. His heart was hammering irregularly, his flesh cold. 'We were lucky,' he whispered.
'Really, Rudy.' Ingold stepped from the darkness to join him. 'Luck had nothing to do with it.'
'You mean you made us invisible?'
'Oh, not invisible.' The wizard settled down by the fire and set his staff within easy reach of his hand. 'Merely persistently unnoticed.'
'Hunh?'
Ingold shrugged. 'Surely you've had the experience of not noticing someone? Perhaps you turned your head, or were momentarily distracted by something else, or dropped your keys, or sneezed. It is very easy to arrange for that to happen.'
To all of them at once?' There was something a little awesome in such a collective lapse of vigilance.
Ingold smiled. 'Of course.'
Rudy shivered. 'You know, those are the first Dark Ones we've seen on the plains?'
'Understandably.' The wizard fished in his many pockets and located the yellowed crystal in which he was wont to seek the images of things far away. 'I have reason to believe those Dark Ones have followed us since we left the mountains, or at least have been patrolling the road across the plains.'
'You mean, looking for us?'
'I don't know.' The wizard glanced at him across the dim glow of the fire. 'Because if that were so, it would mean that they know that we have lost contact with the wizards at Quo.'
'But how could they?'
Ingold shrugged. 'How do they know anything?' he asked. 'How do they perceive? What is the nature of their knowledge? They are utterly alien intelligences, Rudy, strangers to the very pattern of human thought.'
Rudy was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'But I'm thinking that the easiest way for them to know we've lost contact with Quo is if they know what happened to the wizards there.' He looked hesitantly across the fire. 'You understand?' 'I understand,' the old man agreed, 'and I would say so, too, but for one thing. I do not know what has befallen Quo, nor how the Dark Ones have contrived to hold the wizards under siege there. But if Lohiro were dead, I would know it. I would feel it.'