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“That had nothing to do with you.”
“No?” Like a spark rising, his eyebrow was tipped with reflected gold. “One of them I deserted in the hour of his death; another I killed with my own hands. I don’t see how much more I could have had to do with it.”
“Either of them would have commanded you to do what you did, and you know it.” When he tried to turn away from her, she caught at his robe, the rough homespun bunched in her fist. “You were all trapped together by forces you couldn’t control,” she whispered savagely. “Don’t torture yourself because you were the survivor.”
Still he was silent, except for the thick draw of his breath. In the fading ember light, he was only a dim shape to her, but she was aware of him as she had never been aware of anyone or anything in her life. The touch of the patched wool clenched in her hand, the scent of sweet herbs and soap and woodsmoke that permeated the cloth, the stippling of fire outlining the edge of his white hair – with a heightened consciousness, she felt that she would have known him anywhere, without sight or hearing, merely by his nearness alone. When he raised his fingers to touch her wrist, she felt it like an electric shock.
In a softer voice, she said, “Quit tearing at yourself, Ingold. None of it was your fault.”
“But your death here would be.”
“Do you think that matters to me?”
“It matters to me.” Then suddenly her hand was empty. She heard the dry swishing of the curtain that covered the door of the alcove where he slept, but her eyes could not pierce the gloom at that end of the room. His grainy voice came to her as a disembodied murmur from the shadows. “Good night, Gil. And good-bye. Forgive me, if I should not return from Gae.”
Elsewhere in the Keep, other good-byes had been said.
The hour was late. Rudy thought he had heard the changing of the deep-night watch some time ago; but though he was more aware than most people of the span of time that had elapsed since then, it cost him conscious effort to translate it mentally into hours and minutes. He knew, in one sense, that it was two-thirty or so in the morning. But this was something that had lost its importance. He had lost his impulse to check the time, just as he no longer automatically felt for a light switch when he walked through a door.
The calling of light was an easy matter, like whistling. Seeing in the dark was easier still.
He trod the lightless corridors of the second level soundlessly, taking his memorized turnings as surely as he had once known that you got off the San Bernardino Freeway at Waterman Avenue, and two right turns got you to Wild David Wilde’s Paint and Body Shop. He threaded his way along a black, dusty passage between the cells that housed Alwir’s private guards and a storeroom where he was sure the Chancellor was illegally storing undeclared food for one of his merchant buddies. He passed through a closetlike cell that had been partitioned off an old scriptorium and turned down a cutoff through a dark, disused latrine.
Alde had shown him this route after he’d returned from Quo. It was the quickest way from the Wizards’ Corps commons to her rooms, allowing for a detour to avoid Church territory. Alde and Gil had spent weeks exploring the Keep, digging out the mysteries of its building, and either of them could get through the stygian warrens of jerry-built walls, spiraling mazes of old brick and grimy plaster and up and down the drunken spiderweb stairways with the swift, unthinking ease of a second-grader getting through the Pledge of Allegiance. As for the mysteries whose answers they had sought, they had uncovered no answers, but only more mysteries.
They had found fuelless, everlasting lamps and the component parts of flame throwers; they had found the ancient machinery that the Keep’s builders, the wizard-engineers, had used to power the air and water pumps; they had found riddles as enigmatic as the frosted gray polyhedron crystals that littered the lower labs in such useless numbers. But they had discovered no evidence that the vast hydroponics gardens had ever been used, no records of the early days of the Keep, and no sign of how the wizard-engineers had so suddenly vanished.
There was no evidence of how Dare of Renweth, builder of the Keep and founder of the line of High Kings, had defeated the Dark – nothing at all as to why the Dark Ones had ceased their ancient depredations upon humankind and returned to the black abysses that had spawned them.
Rudy stepped cautiously around an oblique corner and through a dark complex of cells where, even at this late hour, a soft flicker of greasy yellow lamplight winked through a crack in a door and quarreling voices brushed his awareness like wind as he passed. Rodent eyes sparked redly at him from the murk; somewhere a chicken clucked loudly, followed by the sodden thump of a thrown boot.
Had it been the flame throwers that defeated the Dark?
He didn’t think so; the pieces he’d found in the labs were few and incomplete. Besides, the Dark had been around for centuries after Dare’s time. Had some other champion of humankind arisen, some other warrior who had dealt the Dark Ones so crippling a blow as to render them unwilling to continue the attack?
How had humankind defeated the Dark?
The question is the answer, Ingold always said.
The question is always the answer.
But Rudy had cudgeled his brains over all possible answers and had found himself faced with only that question.
Maybe Tir would remember how. Maybe his father Eldor would have remembered eventually, had he not perished in the blazing ruin of the Palace at Gae. Though Tir was yet too young to speak, the baby prince gave evidence of having inherited that terrible and mysterious legacy common among the descendants of Dare of Renweth, not only from his father, but – by carrier, as it were – from Minalde as well. Her memories were vague – recognition rather than recall – but if the flame throwers were the answer, wouldn’t she have known it?
And if not the flame throwers, what?
White light gleamed palely before Rudy, reflecting against the slick, black stone of the walls. He passed the head of one of the main stairways of the Keep, its smooth construction announcing that it had been built at the time of the founding of that colossal maze itself. In a cage over it hung a single glowstone, a warning to the unwary.
How else had humankind defeated the Dark? Had the wizard-engineers stood at the top of those hellish stairways that led down to their hideous domains and dumped barrels of glowstones into that chasm?
Unlikely. Early experiments had shown that sufficient numbers of the Dark Ones could damp the light of glow-stones, just as they killed fires or sucked the strength from a wizard’s spell of light.
Some other weapon, buried in the deeps of time? Something Ingold might have learned of in his years of study and wandering? Some piece of knowledge that lay like an unexploded bomb in the depths of that complex mind?
Rudy would have swapped several of his younger siblings for the answer to that one.
A drift of warmer air rose from the stairway, stirring his long hair. It bore on it the soft, musical chanting of the night offices of the Church, and Rudy turned away, uneasy at the thought of the minor empire that filled the first-level warrens around that fluted Sanctuary. He had heard too many tales from the other mages in the Corps – rumors of rooms where magic would not operate and where a wizard could be imprisoned, as Ingold had been imprisoned in the doorless cell of Karst. There were whispers of black magic or such things as the Rune of the Chain, which bound and crippled a wizard’s power and left him helpless to his ancient, ecclesiastical foes.
Rudy had seen the Rune of the Chain. The memory was not a pleasant one.
He turned down another corridor, past a guardroom where voices hummed above the rattle of a dice cup. For a moment the haughty, intolerant face of Bishop Govannin floated through his memory, as he had seen her in the dawn light on the steps. It pays to count one’s enemies.
There was one he sure as hell didn’t need a magnifying glass to find. But what, after all, could she do?
He found what he’d been seeking – a jury-rigged, ladderlike stairway leading down to a back corridor of the level below, at a healthy distance from the Church. Not even a glowstone marked it, for few people came this way; below lay only a chasm of darkness, stinking of dust and mice. The crazy rungs creaked under his weight. Steadying himself against the splintery wood, he jumped the last few feet to the floor.
It was only when he landed that he saw movement. His wizard’s sight caught the glint of velvet and jewels; then, as faint as a whiff of the orris root perfume, he heard the unmistakable clink of a sword hilt on a belt buckle and the slurring whisper of a heavy cloak.
A rich, mellow voice spoke from the shadows. “Don’t be so apprehensive, my dear boy. I have no intention of doing you harm.”
Rudy let his breath out slowly. “That’s nice to know,” he remarked. “I mean, you know, halfway through the deep-night watch, you kind of wonder about the people you meet wandering around the back corridors.”
“Indeed you do.” Alwir opened a single pane of the lantern he bore, and dim, dappled white light filtered through the fretwork slides that surrounded the enchanted stone within. “You have let Ingold make you suspicious.” He set the lantern on a ledge of projecting bricks and turned back to face Rudy, his handsome, fleshy face very white within the raven masses of his hair. “Yes,” he continued, “one cannot but wonder about those who walk in the night.”
Rudy realized, with a sudden chill in the pit of his stomach, that Alwir had been waiting for him. There was nothing that he could possibly reply; the smell of Minalde’s perfume clung to his clothes. On the last night before we split, he thought, Alwir knew he’d be able to intercept me. Not that he’d have had much problem any other night since we got back from Quo. Rudy wiped his clammy hands on his breeches and waited in silence for what Alde’s brother would say.
“They tell me you’ve made excellent progress in the arts of magic,” Alwir went on in a conversational tone. “Your work on the flame throwers will, of course, be invaluable to us when we march against the Dark. Is it your belief that Dare of Renweth used something of the kind to invade the Nests?”
Rudy swallowed, put off balance by the small talk but unable to do anything except play along. “Uh – I don’t know. We’ve never even found evidence that Dare did invade the Nests.”
“Oh, come,” Alwir chided patronizingly. “We both know he must have done so. The Dark were defeated somehow. I feel sure that your reconnaissance to Gae will reveal to us exactly how it was done – and how we, allied with the armies of Alketch, may do likewise.”
“Yeah,” Rudy said warily, still trying to understand this cat-and-mouse game. “There are good odds, anyway.”
Alwir’s smile was wide and false and cold, like something he’d stapled on. “And afterward?”
“If I’m alive afterward,” Rudy replied, picking his words carefully, “we’ll see.”
“Indeed.” Alwir was still smiling, but the lobelia-blue eyes would have scratched diamonds. As if to change the subject, he said, “I assume your liaison with my sister is a well-kept secret? Not that I don’t understand her feelings,” he hastened to add, cutting off Rudy’s flaring words. “After all, she is young and lonely. She was grateful to you for saving her son’s life – as were we all, of course. And she could hardly have fallen in love with Gil or Ingold.” He sighed. “I would have prevented this if I could have. But the affair seems to have begun behind my back and was, I believe, well advanced by the time we arrived here. Was it not?”
His voice strained, Rudy asked, “What do you want?”
“My dear young friend.” The Chancellor sighed, his face never losing that determined smile. “I am not trying to trap you. But a man has a right to do a little plain speaking with the man who is lying with his sister. I wonder if you have considered the consequences to her?”
When Rudy made no reply, Alwir shook his head with mingled patience and disappointment. “Presumably, as a wizard, you can prevent her conceiving by you – or if that hasn’t occurred to you, I assume that she can get advice from her women friends among the Guards. And as far as I know, my sister was quite faithful to poor Eldor, and Altir is indeed the late King’s child.”
“As far as you know!” Rudy lashed, furious at the insult. “She worshipped him, dammit!”
“And mourned him intensely, I’m sure,” Alwir purred. Rudy felt his face redden. Alwir went on. “It would be putting it mildly indeed to say that her reputation would suffer, were the news to come out among the people that their Queen was less than two weeks replacing their – worshipped – lord in her bed. I could probably protect her from actual harm,” he mused, “but without a doubt she would be excommunicated.”
Govannin’s fanatic eyes seemed to glitter before Rudy. He swallowed, “You couldn’t …”
Alwir’s curved eyebrows lifted. “For lying with a wizard? In the South she would be burned for it.”
Rudy stared at him in shock. “You’re kidding.”
“Don’t treat yourself to false comfort at her expense,” the Chancellor told him mildly. “If the scandal became open, she would certainly be excommunicated and, as such, would no longer be able to hold the Regency or to have custody of her son.”
The words fell on Rudy’s ears without meaning at first; then understanding came and the slow kindling of fury deep within him. He was surprised at how steady his own voice sounded. “Which you would get.”
“Of course.” Alwir sounded amazed that there would be any question. He laid a patronizing hand on Rudy’s shoulder. “But believe me,” he went on, his voice low and grave, “I have no desire to create such a scandal.”
Through his teeth, Rudy said, “That’s nice.”
“I am quite fond of Minalde, you know. She’s a dear child, for all she’s headstrong; and I admit to a certain weakness for pretty young girls.”
Rudy remembered the agonies of remorse Alde had passed through, fighting her instinctive loyalty to her brother, and the disillusionment that stemmed from the strength of her love for him. He found himself literally trembling with rage, overwhelmed with a primal urge to smash the smirking big man’s teeth down his throat – not that that would help Alde any.
Alwir continued pleasantly, “But, you see, it is in my own best interests to protect her reputation, as well as her son’s creditability, which scandal would certainly damage. I hope you appreciate my position.”
What Rudy appreciated, at the moment, was how someone could see red and do murder in blind passion. He fought for calm, then asked, “And what is your position?”
Alwir raised his brows. “Why, to offer you my protection, of course,” he said, as if the matter were self-evident. But his calculating eyes were on Rudy’s face, gauging that startled break in his anger. “To ‘cover’ for you, as I believe the vulgar say,” the Chancellor went on in a friendly voice, “until you depart from here to return to your own world.”
Rudy looked stupidly at him, like a man looking at his own spilled guts before it dawned on him that he was dead. Numbed, Rudy could only listen to that smooth, casual voice run on.
“I can countenance my sister’s passion for you, since it harms no one. It does not affect the succession and will in any case soon be at an end. Indeed, I think it good for a woman to have something to occupy her. Though I cannot approve of her actions, of course, it is better than mourning and brooding. And you did, in fact, always intend to make your stay among us temporary, did you not?”
“Yeah,” Rudy whispered helplessly. Before Quo, he thought. Before the desert. Before I knew what I was, and called fire from cold wood and darkness.
“Then it is well,” the Chancellor said contentedly. “And when Minalde marries again …”
“Marries?”
“She is, after all, only nineteen,” Alwir pointed out suavely. “I should hope, for the sake of your relationship, that you know her well enough to know that she cannot hold power by herself, particularly not in the sort of world which we are now entering. Even after the Dark are defeated, we will face a long war against them. It will be a time when the strong take what they can get. She cannot hold power under those circumstances – but a man could hold it through her.”
“As you do,” Rudy said bitterly.
Alwir shrugged. “I am her brother. Naturally, I would prefer that she remain single, but it is hardly fair to her. And I have no intention of letting her develop an affair with someone – wholly unsuitable.”
Or strong enough to make trouble for you, Rudy thought through a daze of misery. Oh, Christ, Alde, what have I done to put you in his power like this? In helpless rage, he cried, “Why can’t you just let her alone?”
“My dear Rudy.” Alwir chuckled softly. “You must know by this time that those who by their very existence hold power are never let alone by anyone. What have you to lose? I understand that your little affair is temporary and I have no objections to its continuing as such. But what happens after you have left her is no concern of yours. So what will you have lost?”
Only everything, Rudy thought, the stunned, empty numbness beginning to give way to a cold despair, like the touch of death upon his bones. Magic and love. Hope. Things that I found after never thinking I would have them. Like a well of inconceivable grief, the future yawned at his feet, the bleak, desolate world of car paint and barflies made a thousand times worse by the awareness of what he would lose. Since he had come to this world, he had often been in fear of death, but this was a fate that he had never even imagined – to be raped of the only two things that mattered in his life and condemned to live on without them in a world where they did not exist, and never had existed.
THREE
THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CITY in the West of the World – that was how Minalde had spoken of Gae.
A garden, the Icefalcon had called it.
But the Icefalcon was said to be dead, murdered by the representative of the Empire of Alketch, Alwir’s prospective ally. Minalde … Rudy did not want to think of Alde, though he had done little else for seven wretched days. And Gae sprawled, like the maggot-riddled corpse of a beautiful woman, with the bones starting to work up through discolored and falling flesh.
The wizards had entered the city at dawn, shadows in the dark mists that rose from the ice-scummed marshes. The swollen loops of the Great Brown River had engulfed the lower town, and even the upper, landward quarters bore foul evidence of the winter’s floods. Fungi and mosses slimed the fallen walls; the square below the shadows of the crumbling turrets of the gate was a steaming, knee-deep slough, stretching as far as Rudy’s eyes could penetrate the chill, pearlescent fog. In all that filthy, shrouded world, the only sounds seemed to be the distant drip of water and the cries of unseen rooks, quarreling over horrid prey.
Alde loved this town, he thought, surveying the leprous desolation before him. She was raised here; it was part of the life she loved, before the Dark … and before me.
Rudy hoped she would never have to see it as it was now.
He shifted his staff to his other hand – the six-foot, crescent-pronged staff that had once belonged to the Archmage Lohiro – and checked the weapon that hung holstered at his side. It was the only one of its kind, like a glass and gold Flash Gordon zap-gun – a hand flame thrower that could spit a thirty-foot column of fire. If he must enter the realm of the Dark, Rudy had resolved to enter it prepared.
The silence that hung over the town was frightening. Fog covered it like pewter darkness, masking the broken walls and fallen columns in opal veils of mystery. But it was not a dead silence that prickled Rudy’s hair and made him strain his eyes to pierce the mists. It was a silence that lived and watched.
Like a thickening of smoke, Ingold faded into being at his side. “This way,” he murmured, his voice scarcely louder than the skittering of rats’ feet on the broken stones before them. “Kara tells me the main path to the Palace is blocked. We can go by way of the Street of Oleanders.”
Other forms materialized – Kara of Ippit and the withered little hermit Kta, who had included himself, over Ingold’s protests, in the expedition at the last minute. Kara whispered, “I didn’t like the look of that street. It looked almost as if – as if a wall had been built across it out of rubble.”
Ingold nodded. “It could be that it had.” The wraith of his breath drifted for a moment like smoke about his head, then dissipated into the cloudy whiteness that surrounded the group. Within the shadows of his hood, his eyes had an over-bright, fagged look to them, the look of a man living on his nerve endings. Then he turned away, and chill, smoky darkness once more enveloped the wizards.
As they moved through the ruined town, Rudy came to understand the old man’s insistence that the party be accompanied by one who knew Gae. No map could have gotten them through the back-doubling alleys that avoided the open ground of the fog-locked marketplace or could have guided them through the leaden darkness to the weed-hung colonnades and shopping arcades whose denser shadows lent the wizards cover from seeking eyes. Ingold led them easily through ruined courtyards where tangled mats of vines ran riot over the charred commingling of stones and human bones, down half-flooded alleys whose walls were thick with pullulant green-black moss, and through the frost-furred muck of empty mews that skirted the wealthier parts of the town. Twice, as the milky vapors around them lightened toward dawn, Rudy glimpsed little bands of dooic, slipping through the vine-tangled side streets, half-obscured by fog. And once, as they passed the hoared bowl of a frozen fountain in what had been a fashionable square, he heard a baby cry somewhere close by, a fitful, helpless wailing that filled him with horror.
He reached to touch the wizard’s mantle. “Do you hear that?”
The sound had been quenched as suddenly as it had begun.
Kara glanced behind her nervously, her big hands tightening over the long-bladed halberd that she carried instead of the customary staff; Kta’s bright little bird-black eyes were sharp with interest. In the cold pewter light, Ingold’s face was impassive, but Rudy thought he looked rather white around the lips.
“Did you think that Gae was deserted, Rudy?” he asked softly. The steam curling from the fetid pool of ice-crusted brown water in the court blew between them, blurring him momentarily to a flat gray shape, featureless but for the glitter of his eyes.
Rudy whispered, “Dooic babies don’t cry like that. I’ve heard them, out in the plains.” When Ingold did not reply, he asked, “Do you know who it is? I thought there was nobody alive in Gae.”
“Nobody?” The wizard’s voice was soft; behind it, Rudy detected other sounds, distorted by the fog – squishing footfalls and the wet drag of something heavy over stone. He sensed the sudden change in the air and felt the fog condense around them, drawn by Ingold to shield them from hostile eyes. The pinprickle sensation of a cloaking-spell tingled on his skin. “Nobody whom we would recognize as human, perhaps.”
“You mean – the ones whose minds the Dark have eaten?” Rudy’s hand felt clammy on his staff; he groped for the flame thrower at his belt. “But I thought they became zombies and died – of exposure or starvation …”
“They do.” Ingold’s voice was a flicker of breath, blurring into the scritch of the vines on the wall at their backs. “Less innocent than that, I’m afraid. These, Rudy, will be ghouls.”
