Anger black and aching and filled with loneliness.
Not one of them remembered. Not one of them remained. She did not come.
The Icefalcon tried to assemble in his mind what Gil-Shalos would have made of the story, how she would have threaded together the half-guessed clues of Tir's dreams, of the apports, of Vair's and Bektis' words and things Hethya had told him or Loses His Way.
"Le-Ciabbeth tried to come to you, Zay," he said slowly, as before him the shape grew into being again, solidifying with a horrible gradualness from shadow and darkness and the choking smolder of the fires in the room.
"When the transporter, the Far-Walker, would not work, she tried to come overland. She died in the badlands, far to the south of here."
The weight of the anger focused, mad but calm. Conscious as he had never been in his life of his naked helplessness, the Icefalcon reflected that the problem about keeping a wizard talking to you was that you called yourself to his attention, and there was very little use in being a perfect warrior if one was going to be so stupid as to do what he was doing now.
The whispering was within his mind, but he knew it came from the sick-gleaming silver speck of a moist eye, peering at him out of shadow.
How did she die, barbarian? How do you know this? Gil would ask, Was she a mage or not a mage? It was important to the telling of the tale.
Also, the Icefalcon reflected, to his continued survival. After this he would stick to the truth. It was easier. He thought about tracks and trails long left cold. "I do not know this, Ancestor of wizards," he said. "My people found her bones in a stream cut on the hill that lies three days' walk west of the great pass of Renweth; her bones, and her jewels, green as spring leaves with hearts black as summer night, jewels such as none of us had ever seen. These we buried with her bones..." Did the Ancestors of the Times Before bury their dead? Why hadn't he ever asked Gil that? He didn't know why, but something made him add, "At the far end of a box canyon, near a stream, where the wild roses first show themselves in spring." And he saw the place again in his heart. Long stillness, slowly deepening-they can find rest in some image, Hethya had said, until they can think clearer and find a way through.
There was a sort of whisper in the darkness, a little sound, Ah... The stillness spread like the ripples of a pond, to all the corners of the Keep. The Icefalcon said-for himself, for the Dove, and for that vanished lady-"Forgive her that she failed." She never came. She never came.
But now there was only deep sadness in the thought, and that deepening calm, as if the whole Keep might slide over into sleep and dreaming.
The Icefalcon saw again those years in the Keep of the Shadow, the knockings in the darkness growing louder and more angry, the unexplained little fires, the things falling down, disappearing, moving. The madness that was Zay's only refuge from regret.
"You waited a long time for her, Zay," came Ingold's voice, gentle out of the darkness, like the voices heard in one's mind in dreams. "No one could blame you for your anger. But now it is she who waits for you.
Black rage swelled again, suffocating; the air lambent with fire. The chain where it hung down the side of the pit jerked and rattled, and for an instant the smoke collecting ever thicker above their heads bellied and dipped, whirlwinds reaching down. Then that silence again, and stillness, as Zay let his anger go. I don't know the way out.
"I do," The mage's deep, flawed voice was genuinely sad. "And I will show you." The Icefalcon wasn't sure then what he saw-but then one wasn't, dealing with the Wise. He thought Ingold made a gesture with one hand, sketching lines of light that stretched out from his fingers, past where the wall had to be, into zones of the air that glittered as if jeweled. He thought he saw stars, but they were deep in the earth and that was impossible.
The lines were already fading when a voice said, far away, Thank you. Darkness streamed back, darkness heavy and breathless, darkness without relief-darkness dead, at rest after three thousand years of madness and pain. From the last flicker of light the voice whispered, Repay? Ingold started to shake his head and to lift his hand in benediction, when the Icefalcon spoke up again. "As a matter of fact," he said, "there is one last thing you can do for us."
"I have never in my life," whispered Ingold, as he and the Icefalcon, with Tir scurrying between them, strode up the dark stairs to the Keep of the Shadow above, "heard such a farrago..."
"Don't give me that, old man. I've heard worse from you in drinking games with the Guards." He wiped a trickle of blood off his forehead.
"And you're making a lot of assumptions about what everyone is able to do in that scheme of yours."
Ingold was digging around in his various satchels and pockets for something to bandage his hands.
"Particularly me."
The Icefalcon raised his eyebrows. "Are you not the greatest wizard and swordsman in the West of the world?"
"What, out of twenty-five survivors? There's an honor for you. And given the fact that..."
Ingold stopped short on the stairs, looking upward, and the Icefalcon, following his gaze, felt a sinking dread.
Red light smote their faces as they rounded the curve of the stair, a crimson glare that illuminated from below the billows of smoke that drifted in the dead black air. Heat condensed in the narrow spaceheat and the soft far-off roaring, like the beat of the sea.
The Icefalcon whispered, "Damn."
Ingold nodded. "Damn indeed." There was no need for further words between them: they both knew what had happened.
The fires started by Zay in his battle with Ingold had spread. The Keep of the Shadow was burning.
Chapter 22
"You have to hold them." Ingold stopped, leaning on his staff, which had appeared as an apport at the bottom of the first flight of steps. He was gasping for breath in the heat, and even here, at the far back of the third level, the orange glare of the Icefalcon's torch illuminated ropes of smoke twisting overhead.
"The blaze will reach the Aisle soon. Vair must know already that he has to leave by the transporter or die."
"How much time will you need?" Though he would have died rather than admit it, the Icefalcon was grateful for the halt. He was shaking with fatigue, the sweat that poured down his face stinging in the cuts.
They had been forced repeatedly to turn aside, to seek ways past corridors or stairways that were already infernos. Twice Ingold had put forth the power of his spells to get them through red holocausts of flame, but after hours in the pit his own strength was half spent and there was more to accomplish.
The wizard shook his head. "If Zays instructions were accurate, not long." He coughed, pressing a hand to his side, sweat-mixed blood and soot a glistening mask on his face.
"But Bektis will almost certainly be in the control chamber. Do what you can." He slapped the Icefalcon's arm, as if the request concerned the polishing of boots before suppertime. "Altir? I think it's best if you come with me."
Tir nodded. He had been silent through the battle in the subcrypt, the race up flight after flight of steps, clinging to Ingold's hand. His blue eyes, nearly black in the torchlight, streamed tears from the smoke, and the breath sawed audibly in his lungs, but his face was expressionless, filled with a stoic resignation.
"You'll keep Vair from getting to the Keep?"
"I will, my Lord." The Icefalcon laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. "That I promise you."
Watching them hurry down the corridor, wizard and child together in the faint glow of blue witchlight that Ingold summoned before their feet, the Icefalcon reflected that the past month of Tir's life would have been considered rough even for a child of the Talking Stars People, and the boy had acquitted himself well.
He couldn't track as well as a child of the Real World, of course. The Icefalcon turned and headed for the transporter at a run.