'Ingold, we gotta get out of here.'
'We'll do nothing of the kind,' the wizard stated in a voice like stone. 'As long as nothing breaks the circle, we are safe.'
Trust him, Rudy thought desperately, fighting the urge to run. He knows more about it than you do. Throughout the dark woods the rats shifted; the ferns were alive with their unholy scampering. He saw them clearly now, flowing in a grey-brown stream over the humped knees of the tree roots and through and around hollow logs. They swarmed in the stream bed and slithered in the deep, matted leaves, wrinkled noses pulled back from sharp, white teeth. Che squealed once again, jerking at his lead, his nostrils huge with terror.
Rudy saw the picket pin start from the ground and grabbed for the rope. The burro gave an almost human scream and flung himself backward, the pin tearing loose in a small fountain of leaf mould and dirt. The rope slid through Rudy's fingers. The burro put his head down and bolted over the edge of the circle and into the darkness.
It was as if the circling white flame had never been. The kicked leaves had not finished pattering down when the rats poured forward like a dirty river, hissing and squealing with rage. Rudy heard Che screaming and ran after him, striking with sickened horror with his staff atthe vicious furry things that stuck like burrs to his boots, his coat, and his arms. One of the things launched itself from a tree in the darkness and struck his face; he thought he screamed, but later he wasn't sure, for at that moment he heard behind him the unmistakable roar of fire, and the light of it streamed over him. Flame splattered across
the backs of the grey sea that seemed to be on the point of engulfing him. Turning, he saw Ingold swing his staff like a weapon, fire erupting from the length of it like a spewing banner of napalm.
Che was squealing frantically, his coat matted with running blood in the firelight, three huge rats hanging like terrier dogs to his lacerated muzzle. Rudy struck them off with his staff, feeling at the same time claws and sharp little teeth ripping at his calves. He beat them away and grabbed the lead-rein, paralyzed with disgust and panic, desperate to fight free of the filthy things.
The fire was spreading, rushing uncontrollably through the autumn-withered ferns. The leaves underfoot were catching, their mouldering dampness throwing forth immense billows of sooty smoke. The flame in the ferns licked through that blinding curtain like the burning backdrop of Hell. Blazing rats fled this way and that, their fiery coats igniting the dead underbrush, their shrill screams forming an overwhelming metallic chattering above the smothered roar of the blaze. Smoke seared Rudy's eyes and seemed to clog his lungs, blinding him and trapping him in a wall of heat from which he could find no escape. Screaming in panic, Che twisted at the lead, and Rudy felt the stickiness of blood on his hands as he fought to drag the terrified animal out of a closing trap of heat, suffocation, and flame.
Out of the rolling fog of the smoke Ingold burst, gasping, his muffler wound over his nose and mouth. He caught Rudy's arm and dragged him along the path. They waded through a surging inferno, floored in fire and roofed in blinding smoke, and echoing with the chattering shriek of rats burning alive. Against the blazing underbrush, the damp tree trunks stood like black, smoking pillars in the murk. Unable to breathe, unable to tell one direction from another, Rudy was conscious only of a desperate fight for air against the blinding heat and of Ingold's hand like an iron shackle on his arm. As they left the woods behind them, they could see the reflection burning in the dark
waters of the tarn, like a thick stream of blood and gold.
They did not stop until it was almost morning. The light from the forest fire was far behind them now, but the smell of smoke and rats stuck to their clothing, and the roar of the blazing underbrush carried for miles. Half-unconscious from asphyxiation, Rudy could only follow where Ingold led, up and down stony trails in blind darkness and through streams that bit their feet with cold. Dawn found them lying, scorched and exhausted, on level, stony ground. Rudy was too weary to flee farther, his hands and face burned, unable to sleep because of the terror of his dreams. The grey light that leaked slowly into the sky revealed the road before them, its hexagonal silvery blocks all but hidden under the accumulated drift of the dirt of ages. Above them loomed the massive darkness of the Seaward Mountains, plumed in billows and ostrich feathers of smoke and mist that caught the first coral tints of the morning. Behind them lay the rolling, lizard-coloured sands of the high desert, the thick rust-red scrub nodding in the chill backwash of the northern winds.
They were where they had been three days ago, before entering the walls of air.
Rudy sighed, scarcely caring. All right, man, have it your way. I didn't want to visit your lousy town in the first place. Next year I'll go to Disneyland instead.
But Ingold got slowly to his feet, leaning on his staff with singed hands, looking westward to the dark backbone of the mountains. Rudy thought the old man looked half-dead and felt suddenly concerned for him as he swayed like a drunken man on his feet. The first gleams of rare sunlight glinted in the wizard's hair. Ingold raised his head, and his voice rolled out over the wooded expanse of the foothills. 'LOHIRO!' he called, and the echoes boomed it in the rocks. 'LOHIRO, DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?' Scrub and stone and water whispered a reply to his words. Somewhere a jay screamed. High up, a feather of smoke caught the new sun, like a vagrant rosy cloud. His shout leaped from rock to rock.
'LOHIRO, WHERE ARE YOU?'
But the echoes died, and the silence mocked their passing.
They climbed throughout the day.
At first the road was the same as on the previous day, swifter and easier because they knew the spells laid on it, though occasionally some branching trail that he had not seen before would catch Rudy's eye. The weather turned bad again, the sky heavy with the threat of rain. Rudy sent the cold front concerned several miles to the north, to dump its pent-up waters on the stony gullies of the foothills. He figured they had enough troubles without that. They reached the wooded vale with its burned trees and tarn of still water well before sunset and began the climb over the flanks of the mountain at its sides.
Clouds still masked the high peaks. The grey rocks were damp and icy. Rudy scrambled wherever Ingold led, exhausted and half-frozen, dragging the unwilling burro behind. Night found them in a mist-drowned wood far above the valley. Rudy was so weary he could barely stagger. He mumbled something about being waked at midnight to take the second watch; but when he finally rolled over, stiff and smarting and aching in every limb, he found himself wet with the dew and frost of morning, and the world was opalescent in the clinging fogs.
'Hey, you shoulda kicked me or something,' he apologized, sitting up amid a soft crackling of ice on his blankets.
'I did,' Ingold replied easily. 'Repeatedly. I could have beaten you with a stick with much the same results.' He'd built a small fire and was making griddle cakes on the iron tripod they used for cooking. The dark smudges under his eyes had turned to bruises. He looked as if he'd been in a fight. 'It doesn't matter,' the wizard added kindly. 'I needed the time to think.'
Rudy wondered how much the old man had slept since seeing the empty Nest in the plains. He sat up, stretching his shoulders gingerly, and thought with dread of breaking the ice in the
nearby stream to shave. The world smelt of newness, of wet grasses and snow and sky. But from the valley below, the wind brought up another smell, and Rudy turned his head quickly, not knowing what it was or liking it. He glanced over at Ingold. The old man was digging in the packs for the dried meat with which Hoofprint of the Wind had stocked them. His movements were slow and tired. You may have needed time to think, Rudy decided grimly, but it's gonna be a damn long day of rock climbing, and you look as if six cups of coffee, ten hours of sleep, and a handful of whites wouldn't do you any harm.