02 The Walls of Air

'Well, look,' Gil reasoned. 'If Stiarth gets his nose out of joint and pulls out completely - which he won't, since the Emperor would love to have somebody else fight his battles for him what have we lost? The whole scheme of invading the Nests is a gamble to begin with.'

Aide's cheeks got very pink, and she looked away quickly. That's what he said,' she murmured. That I - I wanted to ruin the expedition.'

'Why?' Gil asked, more startled than sympathetic. A lack of sympathy was one of her less endearing traits, she told herself bitterly a moment later.

Aide leaned her face on her hands. 'He says that Ingold's poisoned my mind. And maybe he's right. A year ago...'

'A year ago you had somebody else to carry the ball for your people,' Gil said roughly.

Aide shook her head miserably. 'Gil, he knows more about this than I do.'

'Like hell! He knows a lot, but he knows only what he wants to know, and that's the truth.' When Aide neither moved nor spoke, Gil went on more gently. 'Look -have you eaten anything this evening?... Then your blood-sugar level's bottomed out hours ago. I'll scrounge something for you in the barracks, and you should have a glass of wine and go to bed.'

But Aide still didn't move. Almost in a whisper, she said, 'He cared for me, Gil. He used to care for me.'

He cared for you the way a man cares for a twenty-dollar screwdriver, Gil thought coldly, because it's a good tool. But since that was what lay at the heart of her friend's wretchedness, she did not add to it by saying so. Instead she asked, 'How did Maia take it?'

Aide looked up, her eyes suddenly almost frightened. 'He was furious,' she said softly. 'I've never seen him so angry, not even when Alwir turned them away from the gates. He never showed it, not while Stiarth was there, but afterward... He's usually so gentle. Govannin will use that against Alwir.' She shook her head again tiredly. 'So that's one more thing,' she went on. 'I can't cause schism in the Keep by siding with them against him. I don't know why I'm still upset about it...'

You're upset because he wants you to be, Gil thought sourly, then turned, her quick ears catching the soft tap of feet in the passage outside. 'Who's there?' The walk was that of a woman, not one of the Guards.

'Gil- Shalos?' A grimy little blear of flame appeared in the dark doorway, shining on an unkempt twist of dark-red hair. 'They say my lady Aide's here.'

'Come in, Lolli,' Aide sat up straighter in her chair as the big Penambran woman came quietly into the room. 'How's Snelgrin?'

It never ceased to surprise Gil how even the most humble of the Keep's inhabitants seemed to accept Minalde as Queen and friend at once. She'd seen Aide making her rounds of the Keep by day, usually with Tir on her hip, sitting on the benches by the pools along the watercourses of the Aisle, talking to the women as they did their washing. Gil had come into the barracks of the Guards, or those of the troops of Alwir's household, and found Aide sitting deep in sympathetic conversation with some scarred old veteran of a dozen sacked towns.

'My lady, he's not good,' Lolli said quietly. 'I had to come and see you. You know about people, about sickness, maybe?'

Aide shook her head.

'But you're learned? You've read books?'

'Some. A little. But I couldn't...'

'I've spoken to Maia, but he had no answer for me. And that Bektis, that wizard... Begging your pardon, my lady, for he's of your House, but he couldn't so much as charm away warts, much less - this.'

'What?' Aide asked gently. 'What's the matter with Snelgrin? Is he ill?'

'No!' the woman cried in despair. 'He's fit as a fiddle, he's strong - but he's different. He changed, after that night.'

'If he spent the night outside,' Gil remarked in a quiet voice, 'it's no surprise.'

'No,' Lolli insisted. 'Bektis may say that, but not like this.' Her brown eyes sought Aide's, pleading for her to understand. 'It - sometimes there are times I think it ain't Snel there at all. That it ain't him.'

'What?' both girls cried in approximate unison, and Aide asked, 'How can you tell?'

'I don't know! If I knew, it would be easier.' Lolli buried her face in her big, red-knuckled hands, and her voice came muffled through her palms. 'He forgets things, things he should know, like - like passages around the Keep, or why he was out that night. Sometimes he just wanders. I don't know what to do, my lady! And he won't hardly speak. Only now and then, and it's - different.'

Gil's eyes met Aide's over the bowed red head. 'Shock?' she asked softly, and Aide nodded.

'It's not just the shock of it.' Lolli raised her face to them, her eyes pleading. 'It's not just the night he went outside, waiting for the Dark to have him. When he touches me...' A look of loathing passed across her face, her lips squaring back from her teeth in shuddery horror. 'I can't stand it. We haven't been married but a few weeks, and we only wanted to be happy. Now it seems I can't stand for it to touch me. It isn't him, and, by God, I don't know what it is. Oh, Snel,' she whispered hopelessly. 'Snel.'

Aide's hands rested on the woman's shoulders, rubbing the taut, quivering muscles. Lolli lowered her head again, sobbing quietly under Aide's touch like a frightened beast. For a long time there was silence, broken only by her moans, but something in the quality of the silence prickled Gil's hair, as if she felt herself being watched. Gold slivers of light moved in the tangled copper hair and picked out the knuckles of Aide's hands and the deep iris blue of her eyes as her gaze crossed Gil's. Her look was troubled, seeking advice.

'Lolli,' Gil asked after a moment, 'where is he now? Where's Snel?'

The woman only shook her head wearily. The Lord, He knows,' she murmured. 'Walks all the time, nights. Just walks. Dead eyes in a dead face. He's my husband and I loved him, but I won't be alone with him in bed.'

'No, of course not,' Aide agreed. 'Listen, Lolli, are you still in the same cell you were, up on the fifth level? Then what I suggest you do for now is move. Take your things and find another cell, preferably with someone else. Do you think Winna would let you sleep on her floor for the night?' She named the girl who was the head of the Keep herdkids, in whose company she and Gil had often seen Lolli. 'I'll ask Janus to have his Guards keep an eye out for Snel, and when someone finds him, Gil and I will talk to him. Maybe it's just that he's still strange from the shock. It was only a day or two ago...'

'Two days,' the woman whispered. 'And two ghastly nights.'

'Come.' Aide reached under Lolli's arms and coaxed her to her feet. 'You need rest now.'

Aide's just had a political knock-down-drag-out and been cursed by the one man whose opinion of her she took as her own, Gil thought wonderingly, and she's still got sympathy and more to spare for other peoples' marital problems. Following in the wake of the two other women, with lamp in hand to locate the rabbit warren of the orphans, Gil could only shake her head in amazement at the young Queen's capacity for helping others.

At this hour the corridors were deserted, the cells that lined them silent. Gil shivered, oppressed by that terrible darkness, at the same time wondering at herself. She had walked deep-night watch many times and never before felt the weight of this eerie dread. Twice she started, turning in her tracks like a frightened cat, but the lamplight showed nothing in the massed shadows behind. Still she found herself prey to a curious sensation of impending horror and shrank from every blind turn of the twisting passageways.

The orphans' compound was up on the fourth level. Lamps had been lighted there. Winna, a girl of seventeen, sat among the heaped blankets in a ragged nightdress, trying vainly to comfort a sobbing child of not much more than Tir's age. Other children huddled sleepily around them, upset and uneasy, as all children were in the face of a nightmare. Winna looked up quickly as her second in command, Tad the herd kid, admitted the newcomers.