"You're a woman," Ingold chided. "You haven't a man's strength. A woman's attack is in and out, before he has time to touch you... So."
"In a way," Kara's voice said softly in Rudy's ear, "I could almost be glad that- all this-came to pass. For I would have remained all my life in Ippit, were it not for the rising of the Dark. I would never have been able to study magic under him, as I have done here."
From the commons behind them, the warm reflection of the firelight woke mosaic fragments of color in the shawl she wore and glimmered like cornsilk in its long fringes. Rudy could not remember having seen that shawl before. Its oddly primitive embroidery looked like Gettlesand work.
"He said something like that once," Rudy remarked quietly. " Nothing is fortuitous ... There's no such thing as coincidence."
"He's right," Kara agreed. Rudy felt and heard, rather than saw, the movement of her gray dress as she leaned against the wall beside him. "Ingold had left Quo by the time I studied there. He was pointed out to me once at a distance,.
but I never had the nerve in those days to go up and speak to him. But I was always sorry I never had the chance to learn from him."
Rudy was silent, thinking of the learning that he would be leaving. His heart felt sick within him. "Was he a member of the Council, then?" he asked her. "I always thought he was kind of a maverick, but... There are times when I don't know what he is." The terrible strength of the Master-spell still lingered like a disquieting echo in his mind.
When she didn't answer, he looked back at her in the gloom and saw that her eyes were wide, startled and half-amused at his ignorance. "Ingold Inglorion," Kara said, "is the greatest wizard and swordsman in this age of the world. He was the Archmage of Quo and Master of the Council for twelve years-he retired in favor of his student Lohiro and turned over the Master-spells to him- oh, five, six years ago now. Even before the destruction of Quo, there was no one alive to equal him; there have been legends about him ever since he came out of the desert. He never told you?"
Rudy shut his mouth, which had unfortunately come open, and felt the hot color rise to his face. He felt like a fool. He had seen the way the others treated Ingold, even the haughty Thoth.
His eyes returned to the lighted room before him-to Gil, pursuing the wizard with genuine battle fury in her pale eyes, and to Ingold, parrying, sidestepping, drawing her on. Below his rolled-up sleeves, the wizard's forearms were heavy with muscle and striped with whitened scars. Rudy remembered the duel at Quo and how, even in the worst of the battle, Ingold had never feared Lohiro's magic.
There was a quick ghost of a smile in Kara's voice. "Believe me, the rest of us are as envious as a parcel of old maids at a wedding that he chose you to be his student. For myself, I can't understand how you could give it up and go back to your own world."
Rudy shut his eyes, feeling suddenly ill. At the thought of it, a black pit of despair seemed to open inside him, draining life and color from all things. He whispered, "Don't ask."
Behind him, Kara was silent.
"And anyhow," he went on, turning from the door and brushing past her to return to the common room hearth, "he didn't choose me. I asked him if I could be his student." He wondered whether he would have had the nerve, if he'd known.
Kara followed him into the dark room, sidestepping, with a wizard's dark-sight, a footstool and one of the Corps cats. She hitched the silken waterfall of her shawl up over her shoulders and bent to poke up the dying fire, the red light outlining the scars that striped her rugged features. "Maybe you did ask him," she assented. "But he picked you, all the same. My guess is that he chose you for his student the first time he met you."
Rudy paused, his hands resting on the dark curve of the harp Tiannin, the one thing that he had salvaged from the ruins of Quo. "He couldn't have done that," he said quietly. "He didn't know I was mageborn when he met me. Hell, I didn't even know it."
Kara smiled. "You're very certain about what he knows."
Tawny flame leaped up, chivied to life by Kara's poker. The warm light of it slid through the twining inlays of the harp, then, reaching into the inglenook, picked out the coiled, glossy hair of the girl who sat there so silently, her iris-blue eyes gazing into the glowing hearth.
"Aide," Rudy said softly and reached to take her hands. "What...?" Her fingers were like ice in his, the bones feeling incredibly fragile within the chilled flesh. "Is the Council over?"
She nodded. The play of the firelight showed up the tenseness of her face and the mauve stain of sleeplessness that tinted her eyelids. Looking down into her intent eyes, Rudy barely heard the tactful rustle of Kara's departure.
"Rudy, is Ingold here?" Alde whispered.
"Sure. He and Gil are making chutney of each other in the next room. What..."
"I want him to work the spell of gnodyrr on me."
Rudy looked quickly around. Though they were alone in the dim, golden room, there was no guarantee they had not been overheard. With the thinness of the jury-rigged walls and the twisting labyrinths of corners and side passages, spying was ridiculously easy in the mazes of the Keep.
"I want to see what I remember of the Time of the Dark."
"No."
Her chin came up, her eyes flashing.
"Aide, it's too risky," he pleaded.
"So was your going to Gae."
He fell back on the old standby. "That's different."
"Is it?" she asked softly. "Rudy, are you so sure that Dare of Renweth defeated the Dark Ones by burning out their Nests with flame throwers? Are you so sure that Alwir's plan will succeed?"
"We can't be sure, babe..."
"But we can be a lot surer than we are!" Her wide eyes held the same desperate glint that Rudy had seen on the night of the massacre at Karst, when she plunged back into the haunted galleries in search of her son-a passionate determination as difficult to deflect as a descending sword blade.
"If Alwir found out about it, you could lose your son," he argued, bracing for battle in the last ditch.
"And you could have lost your life at Gae," she replied in her low voice. "Gil could have, on the night that man had his mind taken over by the Dark and tried to open the Keep gates. Ingold could have, the night he got us here under cover of the blizzard. Rudy, Alwir won't admit it, but this invasion is a terrible gamble.
We have to know the answer. It doesn't matter what it costs."
Her hands tightened over his, the jeweled rings she wore only on ceremonial occasions digging into his flesh. The saffron light rippled over the dark colors of her brocade gown as she leaned forward, her face as intent as a point of flame. "Get Ingold for me," she whispered. "Please."
So much for the last ditch.
"You're as crazy as Gil is." Rudy sighed, rising. "But all right."
As he moved to go, she caught his hand again. Looking down, he saw alarm in her eyes, the desperate resolve melting suddenly into fears inculcated in her since childhood. He leaned down and kissed her icy lips. "Don't worry," he said softly.
"Ingold won't-won't really take over my mind-will he?"
"As stubborn as you are, I don't see how he could." Rudy helped Alde to her feet and led her toward the moving shadows of the lighted room next door.
CHAPTER SIX
"Minalde?" Ingold's voice was gentle, but, like the shadowy aura of his power, it seemed to fill the tiny room. "Do you hear me?"
In a toneless voice, she replied, "I hear you." In the dim blue phosphorescence that illuminated the underground observation chamber. Aide's face looked white but relaxed; her open eyes were empty.