ropy neck muscles. It occurred to Gil that in her youth Govannin Narmenlion must have been a strikingly lovely woman, the toast of a regiment -except that women with that kind of cold and driving intelligence were very seldom the toast of anything.
'Your Grace? she asked softly, and the dark eyes returned to her as if from a reverie. 'How was the Keep built?'
The Bishop considered the matter carefully, not as Gil's friends among the Guards had. Finally she said, 'I do not know. Which in itself is strange,' she added, her long fingers moving to caress the black stone of the doorway at her side. 'For it is our shelter and our home.'
'Does anyone?'
Govannin shook her head. 'Not to my knowledge. I was considered grossly overeducated for an heiress, yet I can recall no word of that.'
Gil had to smile. 'Yeah, I was - grossly overeducated, too.'
A ghost of an answering smile touched those full ungiving lips. 'Were you?'
'Oh, yes. I was a scholar in my own lands. I suppose in a way that's what I will always be. Would the Church records have any mention of the building of the Keep? How it was done, or by whom?
The Bishop folded her arms, thinking. Past her, Gil saw movement in the sanctuary, grey-robed monks ascending narrow steps, dimly lighted by the amber glow of a censer. They vanished in shadows, but their voices remained, like the sound of winds in the rocks. 'Perhaps,' Govannin said finally. 'Most of the Scripture comes from the Times Before, but it contains teaching and wisdom, rather than engineering. The records that, no thanks to my lord Alwir, we brought here to the Keep go back to the time when the see was here at Renweth, but I do not think they extend into the Time of the Dark itself. But some
might.' She must have seen the brightening of Gil's face. 'Is this important to you?'
'It could be,' Gil said. 'Those records could contain in them some clue, some information, not only about the Keep but about the Dark. What they are - why they came -why they left.'
'Perhaps,' the Bishop said again, after a long moment's thought. 'But for the most part, I think you will find them simply tales of how much the harvest was, who was born and who was buried, and if the rains were light or heavy. As for the coming of the Dark to the Times Before...' She frowned, her dark, fine brows drawing together and the lines in that strong, crepy face hardening. 'I have heard that the civilizations of Before were wicked and debased. Amid their pride and their splendour, they practised abominations. It is my belief, now as then, that the Time of the Dark was just punishment, which lasted for the span allotted by God. The Book of lab tells us that God will let the Evil One have domination for a time, for the Lord's own purposes.' She shrugged. 'I have lived a long time and have learned never to question the motivations of God.'
'Maybe,' Gil said. 'But it seems like a lot of suffering and pain to go through, when perhaps it could be averted. If God didn't want us to learn from history, we wouldn't have hands to write with, nor eyes to read.'
'A wizard's sophistry,' the Bishop replied calmly. 'One by which they are all tempted and all fall. No, I do not criticize the argument, though I do know you are loyal to your wizard friends. But I doubt the utility of struggling against the intent of God. His ways are slow but as sure and inescapable as the coming of the ice in the north.'
'But who,' Gil insisted, 'can know the intent of God?'
'Not I, certainly. And I do not think it evil to learn from history. I am not yet one of those monks who preach the burning of all books and the telling of Scripture from memory alone. Knowledge is power, whether over the Dark Ones, over Kings who would usurp unto themselves what is rightfully
God's, or over sorcerers and mages who do not believe in God at all and whom the Devil uses for his own ends. We can combat knowledge with knowledge and their power with ours.'
'Like the Rune of the Chain? Gil countered a little bitterly. She got a dark, enigmatic look in return.
'The use of such devices is unlawful,' the Bishop said. The Rune of the Chain can be spelled to bind and cripple a wizard's power, and I have heard of its being so used. But using evil's work in any way defeats the good of the cause. Only evil can come of this quest for the Archmage of Quo."
'You don't think a wizard's power might be given to him by God?'
Her tone was perhaps more heated than she had intended. Govannin regarded her for a moment expres-sionlessly, seeming through the fog of fever and lamplight to be nothing more than a bodiless shadow and a fiery gleam of eyes. 'You rush to his defence,' she said at last, and her voice had only the calm interest of a python that watched the world and chose what prey it would. 'Beware of him, my child. He has great ability and much personal charm for a man who has traded his soul to Satan - which is what he has done, though he will not own it. Satan uses such men also, who from ignorance or pride will not see what they have done by giving in to the temptation to power. But I am old, Gil-Shalos. I have seen the other kind of wizard, evil wizards, renegades, headstrong, ambitious, and self-seeking. If you had ever met such a one, who worked for and openly welcomed the powers of Crookedness, you would never again think that the talents of a mage come from or have anything to do with God.'
'But he isn't like that!' Gil protested hotly. Images rushed to her mind and unwise words to her lips. She remembered Ingold standing in the brilliance of the magelight, holding blizzard and darkness at bay until the Guards could get Tir and Aide to the Keep, the old man walking into a tunnel of sounding blackness, surrounded by runes of power that no one else could see, and
the look in his eyes when he had handed her his glowing staff and asked her to guard his back. 'He would never bend to evil, never use his powers for ill. There can be good and bad wizards, the same way there are good and bad men...'
Govannin raised dark, elegant brows. Gil stumbled and broke off her words, her cheeks suddenly hotter than even fever could account for, glad of the veiling shadows. 'I'm sorry,' she stammered, confused. 'I spoke disrespectfully, and all you have done has been kindness to me.' It had doubtless been decades, Gil reflected, since any member of hoi polloi had so lashed out at Govannin Narmenlion.
But the Bishop was only silent for a time, a curious, considering light in her eyes. When she spoke, her dry, cracked voice was kind. 'I like you, my child,' she said. 'You are a warrior as you are a scholar, single-minded, and never without purpose. Your heart is very pure - pure in its scholarship, pure in its violence, and pure in its love. Such hearts can be hurt and can do measureless good and measureless evil, but they cannot be bought or cowed.' She put out her hand, her fingers ice-cold against Gil's cheek. 'I shall send you the Church records, if you desire it, and also someone to interpret the writing for you. The knowledge is my gift to you, with the consequences of what that knowledge shall bring.'
She held out her bony hand, and Gil dropped to one knee to kiss the dark bezel of the episcopal ring.
Later, waking in the barracks from feverish sleep, Gil wondered if this, too, had been a dream. But after supper, Minalde appeared in the barracks, bearing a heavy book which, she said, the lady Govannin had asked if she would take to Gil-Shalos.
'I was coming over anyway,' she explained, seating herself at the foot of Gil's bunk.
Through the doorway beyond her, Gil could hear the noises of the night watch going out, the creaking of leather, the faint clink
of buckles, and Melantrys' light, bantering chaff.
Minalde ran her fingers along the metal-clasped edge of the cover. 'What is it?'
Gil explained briefly her desire to probe the origins of the Keep to learn something of its secrets. 'I mean, hell,' she said, 'there's so much more to the Keep than meets the eye. Like -how come there's a flow of water in the latrines and fountains? Even if the Keep was built over an underground river, the stuff doesn't run uphill. Why is the air fresh in most places, not foul and stuffy? How was the Keep built in the first place? I know it was built three thousand years ago by Dare of Renweth, at the time of the first rising of the Dark,' she went on, 'but how long did it take? Where did everybody stay during construction, if they didn't start on it until after the Dark began appearing? Or were the Dark only down in the river valleys and the mountains safe?'