01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"As to how it was built-Lohiro of Quo, the Master of the Council of Wizards, has made a study of the skill of that time from such records that survived, and he says that the walls were wrought and raised by magic and machinery both. The men of those days had skills far beyond our own; we could never create something like this."

They crossed a narrow bridge over one of the many straight channels that led water from pool to pool down the length of the echoing hall. Gil paused for a moment on the railless span, looking down into the swift, black current below. "Was that why he made such a study?" she asked softly. "Because he knew the skill might be needed again?"

Ingold shook his head. "Oh, no, that was years ago. Like all wizards, Lohiro seeks understanding for its own sake-for his own amusement, as it were. Sometimes I think that is all wizardry is-the lust for knowledge, the need to understand. All the rest-illusion, shape-craft, the balance of the minds and elements around us, the ability to save or change or destroy the world-are mere incidentals, and come after that central need."

"The trouble with this," Ingold grumbled much later, after they had shared the meager supper of the Guards and been shown to a tiny cell next to those of the garrison, "is that I can only look for what I know. It's absolutely useless for what I don't know." He glanced across at Gil, the pinlight-sparkle of triangular lights thrown by his scrying crystal scattering like stars across the roughness of his scarred face. They had kindled a small fire on the tiny hearth to take the chill off the cell. To Gil's surprise, no smoke came into the room itself-the place must be ventilated like a high-rise. Her respect for its builders increased.

Ingold had sat watching the crystal for some time now. Gil, fortified with porridge and warmth, was sitting with her back to the corner, meticulously sharpening her dagger in the manner the Icefalcon had shown her, sleepy and content in the wizard's presence. From the first, she had felt that she had always known him. Now it was impossible to conceive of a time when she had not. She held the blade up critically to the light and tested it with an inexperienced thumb. For all the terror she had undergone, for all the burden of constant physical weariness and the unending pain in her half-healed left arm, for all her exile from the only world she had known and the only thing she had ever truly wanted to do, she realized that there were compensations. She never felt the weight of her exile when she was with him.

And soon he'd be gone. She'd be here for endless weeks while he pursued his solitary quest across the plains to Quo, in search of the wizards, his friends, the only group of people who really understood him. She wondered what he would find there. She wondered, with a chill, if he'd even return.

He will, she told herself, looking across at the old man's still profile and calm, intent eyes. He's tough as an old boot and slippery as a snake. He'll make it back all right, and the other wizards with him.

She shifted the ball of her wadded-up cloak a little more comfortably behind her aching shoulders and blinked out at the room. After last night's trek over the bare backbone of the world, even a watch fire by the road would have looked good; this nine-by-seven cell in which she could hardly stand was a little corner of Paradise.

The place, viewed by more critical eyes, would have been called dingy; the warm gold of the firelight probing into the cracks of the rough-plastered walls and flagged floor cruelly revealed the unevenness, the shoddy workmanship, the patina of stains and soot-blackening, and the dents and scratches of hundreds of generations of continuous habitation and a thousand years of neglect. The cell would be awfully crowded for a family, Gil reflected. Unbidden to her mind leaped Rudy's picture of his own boyhood home, shrill with the bickering of acrimonious female voices. She grinned as she wondered what the incidence of sibling murder had been in the Keep's heyday.

The shadows by the fire shifted as Ingold put aside his crystal and lay down across the other end of the room, drawing his mantle over him as a blanket. Gil prepared to do likewise, asking him as she did so, "Could you see the convoy?"

"Oh, yes. They're settling in for the night, under double guard. I don't see any sign of the Dark. Incidentally, the crystal shows the Nest in the valley of the Dark as being still blocked."