Ingold shut his eyes and nodded tiredly. 'Yes,' he said.
'And Lohiro?'
'Dead.'
Thoth's eyes flickered to the staff, to the bundles of books that Rudy and several volunteer helpers were placing on a small cleared corner of the table, and back to the ravaged face of his friend. 'So,' he said.
Ingold's eyes opened. He studied the other man's narrow face. 'What happened, Thoth? Lohiro said you had been killed.'
'No.' The Recorder of Quo laid a long, bony hand on Ingold's shoulder. 'The others... yes. Your girls have been telling me,' he went on slowly, 'of their - findings - regarding the fortunate places of ancient times. These were similar to your own discoveries, I am sure.'
Ingold nodded wretchedly.
'But deeper, since they had access to things to which you did not.'
Only those who stood nearest heard Ingold whisper, 'I should have guessed.'
'Perhaps,' the tall wizard said evenly. 'But you are wrong if you suppose that Lohiro did not have such knowledge.'
Ingold looked up quickly; though all reason for fear was past now, the reflection of it suddenly aged his sunken eyes.
'From the outset, as you know, I sought the oldest of the records for reference to the Dark - largely without result,' Thoth continued. 'The records there did not go much farther back than Forn's time, but your mention of Nests at Gae, Penambra, and Dele - all the great centres of the wizardry of old - seemed to fit into a disquieting pattern. Shortly after Lohiro and the Council closed Quo to all, I went to him with my suppositions, and he,
Anamara, and I searched the town and the Seaward Mountains for miles. We suspected that a Nest lay under the tower itself, under the subfloors of the old vaults, though we could find no sign of it. Still we three spelled and respelled the foundations of the tower. Believe me, Ingold, not even the winds of the Dark could have risen through the cracks in the floor, had we not been betrayed.'
Those strange eyes rested for a moment on the old man's haggard face. 'It was when we were spelling the mountains, I think, that Lohiro first spoke of the Dark as being of asingle essence. We found little concerning them in the books, though my students turned the libraries inside out, breaking spells of opening on volumes whose very languages had been long forgotten and combing for something, anything - to little avail. But Lohiro watched in Anamara's mirror and saw the Dark Ones fight at Penambra and Gae. He said that their strength lay in their numbers and in their movements. He said that what one of them learned, they all then knew. He said this was clear when they left their northern Nests in the plains to join the assault on Gae.
'At first, he spoke of it only in terms of the maze - that we could not afford to let so much as a single Dark One slip through its windings. But later, as cities and towns fell to the Dark and we found ourselves no nearer to an understanding of them that would enable our magic to work against them, he said that we must, at all costs, learn what their nature, their essence, was. He said that until one of us studied them by transformation, we could hold no hope for their defeat.'
Ingold's face went white. That was madness.'
'So I told him,' the Recorder said drily. 'But remember also that our backs were to the wall. There had been talk of going forth from Quo willy-nilly, to battle them without plan and ultimately without hope. Lohiro said that it would be madness for a weak man to take on a strong one, but he did not feel himself to be that much overmatched. He was proud, Ingold. Proud and desperate. You know he was ever one to throw his
whole strength into a battle. Perhaps he thought that his own death was the worst that could befall.
'Then Gae fell. We watched it in Anamara's mirror; we saw you and Eldor and all the others cornered in the flaming Palace and we looked no more. It was deep night, close on to dawn. Lohiro left us sitting in the library, and my heart was so heavy I did not mark whether he went upstairs to his own study or down. I think it makes no difference.
That day was bitter for us, Ingold. We sought you in the crystals throughout the daylight hours, Anamara and Hasrid and I, and we could find no sign of you. We mourned you for dead.'
'I might as well have been dead.' Ingold sighed. 'I had passed the Void I was in another universe entirely, I and Prince Tir. Did Lohiro seek me?'
Thoth shook his head. That I do not know. None of us saw him that day. Toward evening, there was talkofgoingto Karst, where we saw the refugees gathering. We knew the Dark would strike there and that the only wizard within hundreds of miles was Bektis. We were still speaking of this when darkness fell.'
The old Recorder fell silent again, his queer yellow eyes grown distant and pale. In the flickering witchlight, others had gathered around, silent, hardly breathing. Ingold's mouth was taut, his face drained of blood as if from some internal wound. Through him, Rudy saw again the ruin of that small and peaceful city, smelt the autumn sweetness of the vines grown wild over coloured stones, and heard the hushed rumbling of the sea.
'I do not know at what time that day Lohiro took the form of the Dark,' Thoth went on quietly. 'I only know that in the deeps of the night we were still gathered in the tower, talking of what was best to do. Then the walls shook with the echoes of a blast that sounded as if the foundations of the tower itself were ripping asunder, as if the earth beneath us were exploding. I think I rose, but no one else had time to move. The doors of the library were flung open, and I saw Lohiro framed in them, his
eyes blank and empty, like blue-green glass; behind him lay such a storm of the Dark as I have never seen. He was the Archmage - he held the Master-Spells over us all.' He shook his head. 'And it was over.
'I think Anamara tried to fight him. I saw her face outlined for an instant in a burst of light against the darkness. But I knew there was no hope if Lohiro had taken into himself the essence of the Dark. So, as that terrible whirlwind of power fell upon the room, I turned myself into a grass snake, the lowliest and swiftest creature I could think of. My perceptions of what happened after that are not human perceptions. I knew only darkness and cries, fire and bursting lights. The tower crumbled around us. Lohiro faded into one of the Dark and whirled away into the night. From the rubble, I saw darkness covering the town and great columns of fire, smothered and sapped by blackness and magic. Hasrid was a dragon. Others took different forms to fight, but Lohiro's power and the Dark confounded them all. But none of that was important to me then. I was a serpent, with only a serpent's fears and hungers. I was cold and I hid in the rubble until dawn.'
There was silence again. In the dim bluish shadows, Rudy could see several of the other mages in tears - for the Archmage, for the world whose fringes they had been on, and for the dream of that vanished city to which they had once all aspired. But Ingold's tears had been shed in the Seaward Mountains, and he looked only empty and exhausted, as he had looked in the desert.
Thoth's golden eyes returned to an awareness of the present. 'Have you ever spent time in another being, Ingold!'
Ingold nodded. No one else moved.
Then you will understand that, after that, time meant very little to me. How long it took me to leave the Seaward Mountains, I do not know. The eaters of little insects do not count days. In part of my mind, I knew I was a man and a wizard, but there was very little in me that cared. Perhaps it was
only mourning. I hid in the rocks and moved alone through wet grasses and rain. I was nothing... nothing. But I must have known I was a man, for I travelled slowly east, and I was far out in the desert when the yearning came to me to seek the Keep of Dare in Renweth at Sarda Pass. It was a man's yearning, far beyond what a snake could feel or accomplish. Yet such was its force that I knew that I could go there only as a man. So a man I became.
'I did not know,' he finished quietly, 'that the call came from you, my friend.'