“Ingold,” Gil said quietly after the Guard had left. “About your going to Quo … “
“Yes,” the wizard said. “Yes, we shall have to talk about that.”
Rudy shifted his position at the foot of the bed. “I don’t think you should go alone.”
“No?”
“You say it’s dangerous as hell—okay. But I think you should take me, or Gil, or one of the Guards, or somebody.”
The old man folded his arms and asked detachedly, “You don’t believe I can look after myself?”
“After that stunt you pulled last night?”
“Are you volunteering?”
Rudy stopped short, with a quick intake of breath. “You mean—you’d take me?” He couldn’t keep the eagerness out of his voice or, to judge by Ingold’s expression, off his face. The prospect of going with the old man, no matter what the dangers—of learning from him even the rudiments of wizardry—overshadowed and indeed momentarily obliterated everything he had ever heard or feared regarding White Raiders, ice storms, and the perils of the plains in whiter. “You mean I can go with you?”
“I had already considered asking you,” Ingold said. “Partly because you are my student and partly due to … other considerations. Gil is a Guard—” He reached out to touch her hair in a wordless gesture of affection. “—and the Keep can ill spare any Guard in the months ahead. But you see, Rudy, at the moment you are the only other wizard whom I can trust. Only a wizard can find his way into Quo. If, for some reason, I do not make it as far as Quo, it will be up to you.”
Rudy hesitated, shocked. “You mean—I may end up having to find the Archmage?”
“There is that possibility,” Ingold admitted. “Especially after what I learned last night.”
“But—” He stammered, suddenly awed by that responsibility. The responsibility, he realized, was part of the privilege of being a mage; but still … “Look,” he said quietly. “I do want to go, Ingold, really. But Gil’s right. I am a coward and I am a quitter and if I didn’t screw you up or get you into trouble on the way—if I had to find the Council by myself, I might blow it.”
Ingold smiled pleasantly. “Not as badly as I would already have blown it by getting myself killed. Don’t worry, Rudy. We all do what we must.” He took a sip of his tea. “I take it that’s settled, then. We shall be leaving as soon as the weather breaks, probably within three days.”
Three days, Rudy thought, caught between qualms and excitement. And then, to his horror, he realized that, faced with the chance of continuing his education as a wizard, he had forgotten almost entirely about Minalde.
I can’t leave her! he thought, aghast. Not for the five or six weeks the journey will take! And yet he knew that there had never been any consciousness of a choice. To go with Ingold, to study wizardry under the old man, was what he wanted—in some ways the only thing he wanted. He had known, far down the road when he had first brought fire to his bidding, that it might lose him the woman he loved; even then he had known that there was no possibility of an alternative course. And yet—how could he explain?
Long ago and in another life, he remembered driving through the night with a scholar in a red Volkswagen, speaking of the only thing that someone wanted to have or be or do. He looked across at her now, at the thin, scarred face with pale schoolmarm eyes, the witchlike straggle of sloppily braided hair. It had been hard for her to leave something she disliked for something she loved. Harder still, he thought, was it to leave something you loved for something you loved more.
Sorely trouble in his mind, he returned his thoughts to what Gil was saying. “So you’ll be bunking here until then?”
“I don’t take up much room,” Ingold remarked, “and I far prefer the company. Besides,” he added, picking up his teacup again, “I never have found out who ordered my arrest in Karst. While I don’t believe Alwir would put me out of the way as long as he had a use for me, there are cells deep in the bowels of this Keep that are woven with a magic far deeper and stronger and far, far older than my own, cells that I could never escape. The Rune of the Chain is still somewhere in this Keep—in whose possession I cannot tell. As long as I remain in the Keep of Dare, I would really prefer to sleep among my friends.”
Rudy’s fingers traced idly at the moldy nap of the blanket. “You think it’s like that?”
“I don’t know,” the wizard admitted equably. “And I should hate to find out. The wise man defends himself by never being attacked.”
“You call that business last night not being attacked?”
Ingold smiled ruefully. “That was an exception,” he apologized, “and unavoidable. I knew that I could draw the Dark away from Tir and hold them off long enough to let you get close to the gates. There weren’t very many of them left by that time, too few to split up and still have enough power among themselves to work counterspells against me.”
“I don’t understand,” Gil said, tossing the end of her braid back over her shoulder. “I know there weren’t a lot of them—but why did they let us go? They’ve been following Tir clear the hell down from Karst. They know what the Keep is and they knew last night was their last chance to get at him. But they turned back and went after you. Why?”
He didn’t answer at once. He lay watching the curl of the steam rising from the cup in his bandaged hands, his face in repose suddenly old and tired. Then his dark-circled eyes shifted to meet hers. “Do you remember,” he said slowly, “when I almost became—lost—in the vaults at Gae? When you called me back from the stairways of the Dark?”
Gil nodded soundlessly; it had been the first day, she remembered, that she had held a sword in her hand. The darkness came back to her, the stealthy sense of lurking fear, the old man standing alone on the steps far below her, listening to a sound that she could not hear, the white radiance of his staff illuminating the shadows all around him. It had been the last day she had been a scholar, an outworlder, the person she had once been. The memory of that distant girl, alone and armed with a borrowed sword and a guttering torch against all the armies of the Dark, brought a lump to her throat that she thought would choke her.
He went on. “I guessed, then, what I know now—that Prince Tir is not their first target. Oh, they’ll take him if they can get him—but, given a choice, as I gave them a choice last night, it isn’t Tir they want.
“It’s me.”
“You?” Rudy gasped.
“Yes.” The wizard sipped his tea, then set it aside. From beyond the curtain, Gnift’s voice bitingly informed someone that he had less stance than a wooden-legged ice skater. “I can evidently be of more ultimate harm to them than Tir can. I suspected it before, and after last night there can be no other explanation.”
“But how—I mean—your magic can’t touch them,” Rudy said uneasily. “To them you’re just another guy with a sword. You don’t know any more about the Time of the Dark than anybody else. I mean, Tir’s the one who’ll remember.”
“I’ve wondered about that myself,” Ingold said calmly. “And I can only conclude that I know something that I’m not yet aware that I know—some clue that hasn’t fallen into place. They know what it is, and they’re concerned lest I remember.”
Rudy shuddered wholeheartedly. “So what are you going to do?”
The wizard shrugged. “What can I do? Take elementary precautions. But it might be well for you to reconsider your offer to accompany me to Quo.”
“To hell with that,” Rudy reconsidered. “You’re the one who should reconsider.”