Ingold frowned. 'How could they? The mazes extend for miles above the town.'
Lohiro paused, then shook his head wearily. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I don't know.'
'Were you taken by surprise?' Ingold asked quietly.
The Archmage nodded. Behind him, his staff was stuck upright in the sand like a spear, the firelight glimmering off its points.
'By the Dark Ones from the Nest in the plains as well?'
'No.' Lohiro raised his head, a little surprised at the question. 'No, they had left their Nest to join the assault on Gae. Didn't you - Of course you wouldn't know.' He sighed and rubbed his eyes. 'We knew they'd left the plains to attack Gae -oh, the night it happened, I think. We'd all been going crazy for weeks. We had councils, committees, and research throughout the watches of the night. Teams of first-year students dug through the old records in the library. Thoth the Recorder turned out his most ancient documents, things so old they were held together by cobwebs and spells alone. It reminded me of that old joke about the miser whose favourite camel had swallowed a diamond.' He shrugged. The points of his shoulder bones stood out sharply under the dark cloth of his robe. 'But we turned up nothing much to the point. Only...' He hesitated, as if struggling with himself, and the dark, swooping brows were knotted in momentary pain.
'Only - what?'
Lohiro looked up again and shook his head. 'It was very late. Thoth, Anamara, and I were still awake, but I think almost everyone else had gone to his bed. We'd all seen the fall of Gae, one way or another. There was a great heaviness over the town. Still, I don't think any of us were uneasy for our own safety. It happened - suddenly.' He snapped his long fingers. 'Like that. A great explosion -I've never seen the like. You saw what it did to the tower.'
Ingold nodded, and his voice was very tired. 'Like the experiments Hasrid used to do with blasting powder,' he agreed. 'You remember the stone house he wrecked?'
Lohiro grinned wryly. 'That was nothing,' he said, 'compared to this. This was like - I don't know. It shook the foundations of the tower to its roots. I don't think I did anything, just sat there like a fool, and that probably saved me. Anamara ran to the door and threw it open... The darkness rolled over her like a big wave. I don't think she had time to make a sound.'
Ingold looked away, and Rudy could see by the amber glow
of the fire every small muscle, from temple to jaw, thrown suddenly into harsh prominence.
Lohiro went on. 'I think Thoth called one burst of light -I don't know. Then...' He stopped, seeing Ingold's face. 'I'm sorry,' he said quietly, looking down at his hands. For a long moment the terrible silence was unbroken except for the surge of the waves on the shining wetness of the sand. 'I didn't know.'
Ingold turned back to him. His face was calm, but something had changed in his eyes. 'It's nothing,' he said. 'It never was.' And Lohiro, catching his eye, half-smiled, reassured.
Like a fine beading of diamonds, Rudy could see the sweat that suddenly glittered along the curve of the old man's temples.
'And that was it,' the Archmage continued quietly. 'I threw the strongest cloaking-spell I could find around myself and went under the desk and prayed.' His long fingers wound together, unconsciously caressing the strong bones of those too-thin hands. 'The next second there was a roar as if the whole side of the tower were going out - which it was, of course - and from where I was, I could see nothing but a kind of dark hurricane as they ripped the room to shreds. There was nothing else I could do, not even come out and fight them, for the room was a buzzing blackness of them, swarming like monster bees. Through the break in the wall of the tower, I could dimly see that the whole town lay under a cloud, as if I looked down into a storm.' Wind blew in from the sea, a sudden gust of it stirring the thick, shining hair. Lohiro shook his head and raised those tired, empty eyes to meet Ingold's. 'They never had a chance,' he said softly. 'I could see lights, fire. I could smell the power, thrown out into that storm and burned. But there were so many of the Dark - so many. Someone turned himself into a dragon. From where I lay, I could see it, like a giant red eagle surrounded by hornets. But mostly - they were taken in their beds so suddenly that none of them knew.'
The sea wind blew stronger, the voice of the waves
imperceptibly louder on the offshore rocks. Rudy saw the clouds piling together to blot the blazing moon.
'And after,' Ingold said quietly, 'why didn't you get in touch with me?'
'I tried.' The Archmage sighed. 'The makers of the maze are dead, but the maze lives. I've been trying to contact you for weeks.'
Ingold started to say something else, then stopped himself. By the firelight, he looked suddenly harsh and old,. and the dark lines of bitter care cut like wire into his mouth and eyes.
Darkness was drawing like a curtain over the beach as the moon was lost in swift, smothering clouds. Its dying light glinted on the white crests of the driven waves. Even in the shelter of the rocks, their small fire began to thresh wildly in the wind.
'Yeah, but why couldn't you...?' Rudy began.
Ingold cut in. 'What have you been living on?'
Lohiro chuckled bitterly. 'Moss.'
'From the Nest?'
Lohiro nodded, his long, triangular mouth twisting unexpectedly into a wry grin. 'Oh, there was a certain amount of salvage, if you wanted to fight the rats for it. I lived on that for a while. But I went down into the Nest of the Dark at last and lived on the moss, like their poor, wretched herds. Not that it's done me any more good...' He stopped again, wincing as if at sudden pain. The long hands shut on each other, bone crushing bone.
'Yes?' Ingold asked softly.
The changeable eyes flickered up at him, startled and empty. 'What was I saying?'
'About the moss.'
'Oh.' Lohiro shrugged again. 'Sometimes I wondered-I lived like a beast. Alone. In the dark, like a mole. There were times I thought I'd go mad.'
'Yeah,' Rudy broke in. 'But why didn't you...?'
'Rudy, be still!' Ingold snapped, and Rudy, startled at the hardness of the tone, relapsed into silence. Ingold was profiled against the dark sea, and Rudy saw the old man's nostrils flare slightly, as if in anger, or as if his breath had quickened in fear. But he went on calmly. 'What about the herds of the Dark?'
Lohiro's eyes shifted. 'What about them?'
'Were they down there?' The smell of the storm front moving in off the sea was suddenly strong, a cold rushing of winds.
'No,' Lohiro said after a moment. 'No. They were gone. I don't know where or how. There was no trace of them.'
Ingold thought about that briefly, then leaned forward and picked up a stick of driftwood to poke at the fire. The embers leaped and the wind twisted at the ribbons of flame. 'You were right about the dragon,' he remarked casually. 'It was caught in the maze as well. We had to kill it.'
'Do you know who it was?'
'Hasrid, I think,' Ingold said. 'He always did like dragons.'
The Archmage nodded. 'So he did.'
Puzzled, Rudy looked from face to face in the firelight. Unsaid things and sentences unfinished hammered at his consciousness; for no reason he could think of, he was suddenly afraid - afraid of Ingold, harsh and distant and drawn in upon himself, and afraid of the tall, slender Archmage, restlessly twining his long fingers as he sat on the very edge of the circle of firelight. Rudy was afraid of the tension that lay in the silence between them, of the things they were obviously not saying to
each other, and of something he could not name. 'Look,' he said, 'I'm going to go check out the town...'
Ingold didn't even glance around. 'Shut up and stay where you are!' He looked up from the fire to Lohiro again. 'Although, mind you, Rudy did a good job helping me. He worked decoy as well as you did against the dragon we slew in the north.'
Lohiro nodded. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'd forgotten that.'