'Maybe,' the wizard said quietly. 'If we find the room again. And if the crystal there is actually a means of communication, rather than simply observation. And if the image that you saw, Rudy, was not merely the echo of events long gone, or part of the illusions that surround Quo. Divination by crystal is by no means sure. You remember the Nest of the Dark in the valley to the north of here, Gil. By fire and crystal, it is still shown as blocked up, when you and I have been there and have seen that it has been open for years. And after all that,' he continued sombrely, 'we may still have to set out on this journey, when deep winter has locked down upon the plains. But I will ask you this, Gil...'
Their eyes met, and he grinned suddenly, as rueful as a schoolboy. 'It seems to be my night for asking things of you.'
She grinned back. 'I'll ask you something someday.'
The old impish expression flitted briefly across his tired eyes. 'God help me.' He smiled. 'When we are gone, as your duties with the Guards give you time - look for this room for me. Lohiro will certainly want to see it when he comes.'
'All right,' Gil agreed quietly.
'Yeah, but she'll have a hell of a time finding the place,' Rudy argued. 'I mean, since she isn't mage-born...'
Ingold and Gil exchanged a glance, a quick glitter of eyes in the light of the staff that stood between them. Then Ingold smiled. That's never stopped her.'
There was a moment of silence, then the wizard turned abruptly and vanished through the barracks door.
Gil sighed and looked back out into the random flurries of dark and light in the Aisle. In repose, Rudy noticed, her face had acquired a network of fine-penned lines around the eyes that hadn't belonged to the shy, gawky scholar in the red Volkswagen. It had been a long night, and was wearing on toward dawn. Outside, if the Dark Ones waited, they waited in silence.
Nothing like starting out on a walk of more than fifteen hundred miles with only two hours' sleep, he thought tiredly and prepared to turn into the barracks to see to his
packing. But another thought crossed his mind, and he stopped. 'Hey, Gil?'
Her attention came back from other things. The pale schoolmarm eyes turned to him.
'What would you think of somebody who - who'd leave someone he loves, to go after something he wants?'
Gil was silent for a moment, considering. 'I don't know,' she said finally. 'Maybe that's because I don't understand love very well. I see people act out of what they say is love, but it's like watching someone act from a really deep religious conviction -it's incomprehensible to me. My parents - my mother - wanted certain things for me and couldn't understand that all I wanted was to be a scholar.
Couldn't see that I'd rather live in a crummy little office in the history department of UCLA than in the classiest hundred-thousand-dollar home in Orange County. And she said she loved me. Over and over and over. So I'm the wrong expert to ask about love, Rudy. But as for leaving someone to go after something you want... Leaving them for how long? How badly do they need you to stay? It's all situational. Everything's situational.'
Manlike, Rudy shied from the specific. 'Well, like if you had only a short time together and had a choice of spending it with this person you loved or being separated from them because of - of something you wanted. Something you wanted more than anything in the world, except them.'
Gil shook her ravelled braid back over her shoulder. 'What makes you think you have a choice?' Rudy gulped. 'Hunh?'
Her voice was as chilly and neutral as her eyes. 'Only a wizard can find the City of Quo, Rudy. Ingold's got the Dark Ones on his trail, God only knows why. He needs another wizard to back him up. If you hadn't volunteered to go looking for the Archmage with him, Rudy, you'd probably have been drafted.'
A long moment of silence followed while Rudy digested that one. Love and the loneliness of exile fought in him against the burning memory of that first instant of the knowledge of his own power, the instant he had called forth fire from darkness. The double need in him for love and power seemed to rise over him like the tide, with a confusion of memories: Ingold standing in a shining web of runes; the darkness of Minalde's watching eyes; and the sweep of pearlescent waves washing overa half-buried skill. In the end it all meant very little. He would go because it was required of him that he go.
'You got a great way of putting things, spook,' he muttered tiredly.
Gil shrugged. 'Booklearning,' she explained. 'It rots the brain. Get some sleep, punk. You have a long walk in the morning.'
It was a small and very tired group that gathered on the steps of the Keep three hours later in the grey chill of dawn. Standing, shivering, beside Ingold in the misty snowlight, Rudy reflected to himself that in some cases it was better to have no sleep than too little. As far as he knew, Ingold hadn't been to bed at all. Every time he'd
woken up through the confused remainder of the night, he'd seen the old man sitting beside the fire with the demon-smoke of his foul-smelling tea in wreaths around his head, staring into the yellowed chip of crystal he carried, while Gil and the Icefalcon assembled provisions for the journey with their usual silent efficiency.
After three days of storms, the Vale of Renweth lay bleak and snowbound all around them, a white, rolling sea breaking against the black rocks of the surrounding cliffs. To the west, the shallow trace of the road climbed toward the dark notch of Sarda Pass, almost hidden in roiling grey cloud; to the east, it wound, descending through what a week ago had been sun-tinted meadows of long grass and a scattering of woods, on out of the Vale past the broken bridge of the Arrow Gorge and down to the Dark-haunted lowlands by the Arrow River. Northward the land rose, mile after forested mile, like a fjord between the high cliffs of the Rampart Range and the greater bulk of the Snowy Mountains, to meet the cold meadows of the timberline and the white walls where the glaciers began.
But around the Keep itself, the ground was clear. Hunks of snow mixed with chopped dirt had been ripped up by the violence of the Dark Ones' assault and lay scattered, like the spew of a frozen volcano, hundreds of feet from the walls. The walls themselves were unmarked, the black gates that had roared like gongs under that power and fury unscratched.
Winds sneered down the Vale, roaring in the trees. Rudy shivered wretchedly in his damp cloak and wondered if he'd ever be warm again. Beside him, the Icefalcon was saying to Ingold, 'I hope you packed shovels, unless you plan on turning yourselves into eagles and flying over the Pass. Winter's hardly begun and they say Gettlesand across the mountains is buried deep in snow.'
Even as a rank novice in the arts of wizardry, Rudy knew that few mages would risk changing their being into the being of a beast, and then only under conditions of extreme emergency. But to nonwizards, magic was magic; and from the outside, shape-craftiness looked much the same as simple illusion. On the other hand, Rudy did think longingly of conjuring up a snowmobile.
The Icefalcon continued in the same light, uninflected tone. 'I imagine my own journey will be easier - provided I don't get my horse stolen.'
'Your journey?' Gil asked, surprised.
Pale eyebrows elevated fractionally. 'Hadn't you heard? I'm the one who has been chosen to ride south to the Alketch with my lord Alwir's letters to the Emperor, asking his help with troops.'
Ingold laid a hand gently on Gil's shoulder to stop her next angry words. 'It was a logical choice,' he said smoothly. 'Alwir picked the messenger with the best chance of survival.'
Who coincidentally happened to be the man who kept him from shutting the doors on you last night, Rudy added. But, like Gil, he held his peace.
Unruffled, Ingold searched through his voluminous robes and eventually located a small hand-worn token of carved wood that he gave to the pale captain. 'I leave you