But as they wriggled from the last rubble-clogged stairway into the broken vaults, Rudy understood why Ingold had come.
The bluish glow of witchlight slowly filled the long, narrow
hall. It picked out the gold on the bindings of the books there, the smooth sheen of cured leather covers, and the spark of emerald or amethyst on decorated clasps. Like a ghost returned to the land of the living, Ingold moved down the rows of the reading tables, his blunt, scarred hands touching the books as a man might touch the face of a woman he had once loved.
It was obvious they couldn't take all. There were hundreds of volumes, the garnered wisdom of centuries. But, fatally incomplete as it had been, knowledge was the heart of Quo, as it was the heart of wizardry. To protect that knowledge was the reason for the city's existence, the justification for the rings of spells that circled the place so tightly that even after the death of every person there, the image of Quo could not be called in water or fire or gem.
Silently, Ingold touched the locks and chains that bound the books to their slanted desks, and the chains clattered faintly as they fell away. He brought two volumes back to where Rudy waited in the doorway and handed them to the younger man as if he were a nameless servant. 'You'll have to come back for more,' Ingold said curtly and turned away.
In all, they salvaged two dozen books. Rudy had no idea which they were, or why these were chosen and not others, but they were all large and heavy and loaded Che down unmercifully. Ingold scavenged material from a curtain to make rough satchels for himself and Rudy to carry what could not be put in the packs; after one look at the old man's face, Rudy dared not complain of the extra weight. When they crept from the rubble for the last time, Ingold turned back and wove spells of ward and guard over the whole of the ruin, that neither rain nor mould nor beasts should enter there, that all things should remain as they were, protected, until he should come again.
By then it was dark.
They camped on the open beach. If the Dark still lurked in that dead city, the ruins offered too many hiding places for them. And, Rudy thought, as line after line of the spelled circles
of protection faded, glittering, into the air around the camp from the tips of Ingold's moving fingers, too many ghosts walked those silent streets for comfort. The night was cool, with the smell of distant rain; but over the ocean, the clouds broke to reveal a moon as rich and full as a silver fruit, its light frosting the billowed clouds into ski slopes of dazzling white. The crackling of the driftwood fire mingled with the slow surge of the waves in an echoing whisper of California.
Home, Rudy thought. Home.
He took the harp he'd found from its makeshift wrappings and ran hesitant fingers over its dark, shapely curves. The fire caught in the silver of its strings and touched the patterns of red enamel inlaid in the black wood of the sounding board. Like most Californians of a particular generation, Rudy had mastered sufficient guitar chords to get himself through epics like 'Light My Fire'; but this instrument, he sensed, was designed for music of a kind and beauty beyond his comprehension.
He caught the glint of Ingold's watching eye. 'Do you know how to play this?' Rudy asked hesitantly. 'Or how it's tuned?'
'No,' Ingold said harshly. 'And I'll thank you not to play it, either, until you know what you're doing.' He turned and looked out to sea.
Quietly, Rudy wrapped up the harp again. Maybe Aide can teach me, he thought. Anyway, somebody at the Keep should know. He felt as if he half-knew already what its sound should be and understood Ingold's not wanting to hear it bastardized.
'Its name is Tiannin,' Ingold added after a moment, still not looking at him.
Tiannin, Rudy thought, the way-wind, the south wind on summer evenings that sowed restlessness and yearning in the heart like wind-borne seeds. He strapped the harp into the packs, with mental apologies to the hapless Che, and started back toward the fire. In the dark beyond their camp, he could see the broken line of the colonnade, his wizard's sight picking
the merged patterns of flowers, hearts, and eyes that flowed down the coloured stone. Against the sky, the dark bulk of Forn's Tower rose, like the burned stump of a dead tree under the azure glow of the sea horizon. Westward, moonlight gleamed on the surge of the waves, opal lace on the white breast of the beach.
Against the black wall of the cliffs, the elusive wink of starlight flashed on pointed metal.
Rudy's breath, his heart, and time itself seemed to stop. As if he had heard something, Ingold looked up, then out into the darkness that even to Rudy's sharpened perceptions revealed nothing more. The leaping brightness of the fire showed hope in his face that was almost terrible to behold. But for a long while, there was nothing in the night but the surge of the ocean and the wild hammering of Rudy's heart.
Then in the outer dark, that twinkle of pronged gold came again, with a stirring in the shadows along the beach. Rudy started to move, but a hand touched his wrist, stilling him, and he felt Ingold's fingers shaking.
A distant flicker of moonlight shone on the crescent end of a staff and was echoed still more brightly on loose, fire-coloured hair. The wind picked up the motion of a dark cloak, billowing it briefly behind the man who walked along the ocean's edge, his tracks dark, enigmatic writing in the sand behind him.
Rudy knew their camp was wreathed in cloaking-spells fully as elusive as the walls of air that still circled the tomb of Quo, but the man looked straight toward them; in the moonlight, he could be seen to smile. The long stride quickened. Ingold's hand closed like a crushing vice on the bones of Rudy's wrist.
A dozen yards from the camp, Lohiro broke into a run. Ingold was on his feet instantly, striding out to meet him, catching his hands in greeting. Moonlight showed the old man and the young together, and gleamed on silver hair and gold and on the gnawed skeleton that lay half-buried in the sand at their feet.
'Ingold, you old vagabond,' Lohiro said softly. 'I knew you'd come.'
'Why did you stay?' Ingold asked later, when they'd drawn the Archmage into the circle of their fire. Lohiro glanced up from the meal of pan bread and dried meat he had been devouring. To Rudy's eyes, he looked thin and hunted; the sharp face was worn down to its elegant bones. In the bright gold mane that fell almost to his shoulders, scattered streaks of silver caught the firelight. His eyes were as they had been in Rudy's vision in the crystal - wide and variegated blue, like a kaleidoscope, flecked all through with dark and light, and containing that odd, empty expressionlessness Rudy had noticed before. After seeing Ingold before the ruins of Forn's Tower, it made sense.
'Because I couldn't get away.' Lohiro laughed, briefly and bitterly, at the sharpness of Ingold's glance. 'Oh, the Dark are gone,' he reassured them, in a taut, ironic voice. 'They left the same night, clouds of them, their darkness blotting the stars. But I - It took the lot of us to weave the maze, my friend. One man couldn't pick that mesh apart.'
'Yet they left?'
The skeletal white fingers gestured upward. 'Through the air,' he said. 'Over the maze itself.'