01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Ingold glanced briefly at the sky, as if able to read the time by the angle of an unseen sun above the roof of clouds. The sky was no longer gray but a kind of vile yellowish brown, and the snow smell was unmistakable. "I think you did right," he said at last. "We're going on down, and I'll try to talk them into moving on. You'll have to fight the weather before you reach the Vale, but if you can, get them to open the gates and build bonfires on both sides of them, frame them in fire, and guard them with every man in the train. With luck, we'll be there sometime tonight."

"You'll need luck," the landchief grumbled. "I'll see you at the Keep." He raised his hand in the signal to go on. The train began to move like some great beast dragging itself along in the last stages of exhaustion. Tirkenson reined away from where Ingold and Gil stood, clicking encouragement to his tired horse. Then he paused and turned back, looking down on the two pilgrims in the frozen road.

"One more thing," he said. "Just for your information. Watch out for the Bishop. She's got it around that you and Bektis are leagued with the Devil-and Alwir, too, just coincidentally by association, you understand-and she's got Hell's own support in the train. I never held with it-wizards trading their souls for the Power-but people are scared. They see Alwir's helpless. You might say the powers of this world are helpless. So if they're gonna die anyway, they're gonna die on the right side of the line. Stands to reason. But scared people will do just about anything."

"Ah, but so will wizards." Ingold smiled. "Thank you for your warning. Good riding and a smooth road to you all."

The landchief turned away, cursing his exhausted mount and threatening to rowel him to dogmeat if he didn't get a move on. Gil glanced from the big man's wicked, star-shaped spurs to the untouched flanks of the tired horse and knew, without quite knowing how, that Ingold's parting blessing had contained in it spells to avert random misfortune, to shake straight the tangled chains of circumstance, and to aid the landchief of Gettlesand and those under his loud-voiced and blasphemous care.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was snowing in earnest when Gil and Ingold came within sight of the camp on the near bank of the Arrow. In the swirling grayness they could make out huddled shapes bunched around the feeble yellow flickers of campfires, the dark milling of small herds of animals, the restless activity on the bank of the gorge, and the shadowy comings and goings around the broken bridge. Across the gorge more activity was visible, lights moving here and there around the farther camp, and the distant threnody of bleating goats and a child's wailing cries drifting on the intermittent veering of the wind. Between the two camps lay the gorge, a sheer-cut chasm of darkness, filled with the greedy roaring of the river. On either bank of the gorge, great tongues of broken stone thrust out over the void.

"How deep is the gorge at that point?" Gil asked, squinting through the blurring gusts of snow.

"About forty feet. It's a difficult climb down the side and up again, but the water itself isn't very deep. As you can see, they've swum most of the stock."

Ingold pointed to where three men were driving a small herd of pigs up the trail. "From what you told me of your dream, it would seem that the Dark weakened the central pillars of the bridge, so that they gave way under the weight of the wagons-as pretty an attempt at murder as you're likely to see. And even though the attempt failed, Prince Tir is stranded in camp on the banks of the river tonight, cut off from most of the convoy, with the camp in confusion. Either way, the Dark could hardly have missed."

Leaning on his staff, he started down the steep slope toward the fires.

Rudy met them on the outskirts of camp. "What did you find?" he asked them.

As they made their way through the dark chaos toward Alwir's massive tent, Gil filled him in on the valley of the Dark, Renweth, the Keep, and what Tomec Tirkenson had said. In the end, she asked, "Why wasn't Alde in her wagon?"

"I talked her out of it," Rudy said. "I had a bad feeling they'd try something tonight, but I never thought about anything happening by daylight. We were only a couple feet in front of the section of the bridge that went."

"And you still believe in coincidence," Ingold chided reprovingly. "I'm surprised at you."

"Well," Rudy admitted, "not as much as I used to."

Alwir's was one of the few tents left in the tram. It was pitched in the lee of some trees, out of the wind; in the darkening of the late afternoon, yellow lights could already be seen glowing within. Gil could make out a confusion of voices coming from it, Bishop Govannin's harsh halfwhisper, and now and then Bektis' light, mellifluous tenor.