'What is it?' Aide asked.
Winna shook her head. 'It seems to be the night for nightmares, that's all. First Lydris, then Tad, and now Prognor.'
'I didn't have a nightmare,"Tad protested, anxious to set himself off from his inferiors.
'No,' Winna corrected, 'you're too old for it to be called a nightmare - but a bad dream, anyway. How can I help you, Aide?'
Here was another one, Gil thought, who, with all her own griefs, had concern to spare.
Winna listened gravely to Aide's whispered explanations and Lolli's less coherent fears, nodding her head and stroking the fair hair of the child in her lap. The pale
faces and wide eyes that floated disembodied in the thick shadows of the room were those of the orphans whose parents had perished in the ruins of Gae and the massacre at Karst. Peter Pan's Lost Boys, Gil thought; tough little survivors of the ruin of the world. As she and Aide left, her last sight of the cell was of Winna chivvying a place among the children for Lolli to sleep, and Tad and some other child volunteering to share their blankets.
'What do you think?' Gil asked as she and Aide headed back into the darkness of the mazes. The single bobbing flame of their lamp threw monstrous gargoyle repetitions of them in the walls behind, trailing them like inept spies.
Aide shook her head, her fingers working loose the main coil of her hair, the braided knots of it falling like skeined silk over the blackness and fire of her gown. 'I don't know,' she said quietly. 'But Lolli's afraid. Is it possible that the mere fear of the Dark could have driven Snelgrin mad?'
'It's what I was afraid of,' Gil said. 'And believe me, the idea of a madman wandering around the Keep at night does not do wonders for my sense of well-being.'
'And you're armed,' Minalde added. 'I think the next thing we should do is talk to Janus. But if Snelgrin is mad, what then? Do we lock him up? Feed him through the winter on rations that could cut into the spring seed? Have someone cut his throat, like -' She broke off, but Gil could finish the sentence. Like the Icefalcon cut Medda's. Medda, whose mind the Dark had devoured, had been Aide's nurse from childhood. On the road from Karst to Renweth, no one could have looked after a stumbling zombie, and there would have been no point'to it. Aide knew this, and had known it at the time. But Gil realized that she had never forgiven the Icefalcon for being the one assigned to the job.
'Is he dangerous?'
'I don't know. Is there a way to find out?'
'Sure,' Gil said cynically. The authorities in my part of the world used it all the time. If a man flipped out, they'd wait till he actually killed somebody, then lock him up. Otherwise they couldn't know for sure.'
Aide stared at her in disbelief. 'You're not serious.'
'Cross my heart.'
'That's abominable!'
Gil, who'd had a grandmother murdered by known drug addicts in a parking lot for the contents of her purse, shrugged. 'Yeah.'
They passed a makeshift stairway that led to the upper levels, the hole where it pierced the ceiling hung with laundry to catch the rising drift of warmer air. There was no light from above, but the next stairway, also a rickety wood one, leading down, admitted a faint glimmer of candlelight from a curtained cell door, and a man's voice singing a lullaby. The girls climbed down, the darkness of the corridor below yawning like a well to receive them. As the winds of the ventilation stirred at their long hair, Gil felt it again, that sense of impending evil - shivering horror like a
subsonic note, just below the level of perception. She remembered what Winna had said about three of the children having nightmares.
'Aide,' she asked quietly, 'can you feel anything?'
'Like what?' Aide stopped. The shadows of the hallway closed around them.
'Just stand still a minute.'
Perhaps forty seconds trickled by. The silence was as audible as the drawing of breath in a room that should be empty. Gil felt an intruding consciousness of the vastness of the Keep and of the darkness filling its halls and cells. Aide shivered. 'No,' she said. 'Let's go, Gil. What do you feel?'
'I think the Dark are in force outside,' Gil said. 'It felt like this the night of their attack. Rudy felt it, and so did Ingold. Tad told me later he'd had nightmares that night.'
Aide looked around quickly. 'What about the gates?' she whispered. 'Will they hold?'
'I think so. Ingold's spells are still on them.' But remembering the terrible darkness of that roaring tunnel, Gil shuddered nonetheless. More than anything else now, she wanted Ingold back at the Keep for his power against the Dark and for the simple strength of his presence, his power against her own fears.
'Where would Janus be?'
'The barracks.' They were walking again, hurrying past doorway after dark doorway, around blind corners concealing yet more darkness, then down another flight of stairs, this time of the original stone of the Keep, broad and black and smooth. The green eyes of cats flashed in the lampflame, swift, gliding movement beyond the circle of light. Gil found herself fighting the panic urge to draw her sword. 'We should wake Alwir and tell him, too.'
'Yes.' Aide moved along quietly before Gil, holding the lamp, its flame leaping in answering glitters of gold from the embroidery of her gown. 'He should not have long gone to bed. And if the Dark are outside - Oh!' she gasped as they turned into the main corridor of the Royal Sector and saw something small and white that moved determinedly toward them at floor level. 'You little beast, you!'
Even down the length of almost pitch-black corridor, Gil could recognize Tir, crawling with his usual terrapin-like fixity of purpose toward the nearest precipice. He could not quite walk yet, but he had mastered the technique of escaping his cradle. Only his white gown showed through the darkness as a bobbing blur, like a bunny on a dark night.
Then they saw movement in the darkness behind him.
At first Gil wasn't sure - a man, she thought. He had something in his hand, and he had emerged without a sound from the room that was Minalde's. She never knew how she saw his eyes in the dark, but she did.
By the time Aide screamed, Gil was halfway up the corridor, her sword in her hand. Blurredly, she recognized Snelgrin, and saw that what he had in his hand was a hatchet. He must have seen her coming and heard Aide's screaming, but those fixed, empty eyes were on the baby a few yards in front of him, and he moved quickly. Gil wasn't sure how she managed, but she caught the hem of Tir's gown and bowled him out of the way against the corridor wall as the hatchet cracked sparks from the stone floor where he had been. Too close for blade work, she turned the sword in her hand and pommelled the man across the face with the weighted grip. She saw his nose break and the flesh gape open, but the dead eyes never blinked. Cold and paralyzing fear went through her. She tried to step back, but he caught her by the hair, his strength making nothing of her weight, and she felt her head hit the wall with a crack. Tir was screaming now, too, wild, shrill screams of terror, as Snelgrin turned back toward him with his hatchet, his empty face all glittering with blood.
Someone wrenched the sword from Gil's stunned hands. Like a berserker, Aide fell on the man, hacking inexpertly but fiercely in burning rage. Snelgrin staggered back, raising his arms jerkily to protect his face. People were pouring into the corridor, voices shouting, lights jigging crazily over the walls. Tir's screams spiralled through the darkness like a drill. As if in a fever-dream, Gil saw the thickset Snelgrin swat Minalde out of his way as if she had been a moth, duck his head, and race blindly into the darkness that swallowed him.