"This one was found in the Vale of the Dark," Gil said. "In my world we call them fossils. Tell me, Thoth, do you know the plant whose leaves are printed in the rock?"
The Recorder examined the stone again and passed it across to Ingold, who shook his head. "It is similar to the ferns which grow in the swamps of Alketch," Ingold said, "But it is far larger. If such a thing exists elsewhere, I have never seen it."
"But it's a hot-weather plant; a swamp fern of the tropics."
"Undoubtedly."
Gil held out her hand, received the rock back, and returned to her seat. "Long ago," she said, "such things grew in the Vale of the Dark. Eons ago, I believe that the climate of this world was far warmer than it is now-warm enough so that tropical swamps covered most of the West of the World. But things changed, and gradually the world grew colder. Perhaps the sun became a little dimmer, or for some reason clouds thickened, year after year, cutting out most of the sun's rays. The ice in the north began to increase. The weather grew more violent.
"The Dark drift upon the currents of the air-they are not weather-wise, and are at the mercy of storms. Their retreat below the ground was gradual; the great stone pavements and stairways were the transition phase, while they themselves lived below the earth and allowed their herds to roam aboveground. The Dark did not go hunting on the surface much. Rather, they summoned their herds with spells- similar, I think, to the spell they used on you in the vaults at Gae, Ingold."
"Yes," the old man said quietly and looked down at his hands. "A-singing, is the closest I can come to describe it." He did not say more, but she saw the muscles of jaw and temple clench suddenly at the memory.
"In time the Dark called down their herds and abandoned the surface altogether. They had lived belowground themselves for a long while. I suspect the more intelligent, more deadly tribes of humankind were winning out against their herd-creatures in competition for food and territory. In any case, a long time ago, long before human beings first settled down into villages, the last of the herds were gone, and the memories of the Dark vanished from the earth. All that remained were the stairways and that indefinable aura of power that surrounded them."
She paused for a moment and shuffled through her notes, her hair falling down to hide her face. The wizards were now utterly silent; the hush in the room was as palpable as a weighted cloak upon her shoulders. Alwir's eyes burned as balefully as a plague-star above his folded knuckles. She straightened up. "Now," she said quietly, "about that aura of power.
"My first guess about the aura-the 'luck' that surrounds the Nests-was that it was deliberate on the part of the Dark Ones, to attract human settlement in the area of the Nests, thus ensuring the Dark an emergency food supply. One thing is clear from all accounts-the Nests have always been regarded as awesome places, fearsome at times, but at other times 'fortunate' or 'magic.' The records refer to some nests as 'gaenguo'-magic places. Scriptures contain references to the Old Religion and mention human sacrifice, though there is no specific reference to the stairways in the holy writings. But the word sacrifice itself- clarneach -comes from the ancient Wathe ecl'r naieg -literally, to send down . After the rise of the Straight Faith, many of the old holy places of the superseded cult were taken over. In any case, the major cities of the Times Before seem to have been built above or near the Nests of the Dark. After the Time of the Dark was past, citadels of wizardry were often built on these sites, again because of the aura that had the effect of magnifying the powers of the wizards, particularly those connected with healing.
"This leads me to believe that the power of the Dark, especially in the early days, was exerted in a positive or cherishing fashion toward their herds. The sense of dread and terror associated with the Nests was always there- hence the tendency to hide or bury the stairways themselves, which had such disastrous consequences at Quo- but the general area of the Nest enjoyed a kind of 'glow,' a by-product of the power of the Dark itself."
"This is all very interesting," Alwir murmured. He shifted his powerful weight in the carven chair. "Perhaps it is even true. But I fail to appreciate how this scholarly exposition of the history of the Dark Ones and their herds can be brought to bear upon the present problem. The past is all very fine, Gil-Shalos, but it is the present with which we are forced to deal."
"My lord is a busy man," Bektis amplified stuffily. "I hardly think..."
"You retain us as an intelligence corps, my lord," Ingold said quietly. "We have compiled a report of our findings, and you might at least listen to our conclusions."
"My lord has no need of intelligence..."
"Be quiet, Bektis." Alwir leaned forward, the opals that starred the dark velvet of his doublet catching the light like points of fire. "Continue, Gil-Shalos. Am I correct in assuming that these-these herds of filthy things that the Dark feed upon-feed themselves on the mosses that your friend Rudy found so flammable?"
"They do," Gil said. "They have done so, time out of mind, to the point where I think they can eat nothing else- or thrive on nothing else. You can keep a cat alive for a while on nothing but cereal, but in a short time it will fade and die. In the far South, I've heard about animals-little bears-that can live on nothing but the leaves of a single kind of tree; and if the tree should die, they would perish.
"Moreover," she went on, "we all know that you cannot grow good apples in Alketch or decent melons in Shilgae and that a wet winter or a cold summer will spread famine over half the Realm. If the cold itself doesn't kill a plant, there are parasites-some of them too small to be seen-that can only start growing once the temperature gets down below a certain point."
Gil paused, then picked up the scroll of her notes. There was total, mystified silence in the room. Even Kara's mother had ceased her low-voiced spate of commentary- no mean accomplishment , Gil thought. They were all watching her, puzzled and yet drawn. Historical methodology was not a subject taught at the School of Quo.
"I'm going to backtrack for a minute," she said, "and talk about the weather."
Alwir let out a short, harsh yelp of laughter. "The weather ? Really, this ends all..."
Gil frowned, deeply affronted. "The weather," she repeated. "That's what I've been doing for the last week or so-compiling, as well as I could from the Church chronicles and the books that Ingold retrieved from the library at Quo, a tally of good and bad winters, and as much information as I can about the ice in the north."
"I've never heard such useless-" the Chancellor began indignantly.
"It has a bearing," Gil said. "Believe me, it has a bearing upon the Dark.
"I assume everyone knows that the ice in the north is spreading-very slowly, supposedly. Everyone uses the expression 'as sure as the ice in the north' to mean something that cannot be stopped. But according to Ingold, the ice is moving southward at the rate of several inches a year. Kta and Shadow of the Moon both say that some years it's more than that.
"On the oldest maps of the Realm there's a range of hills called the Barrier Hills, clearly marked, twenty or thirty miles south of the ice. Well, they're just about covered now. The Raider legends speak in their earliest records of how the ice moved back to uncover the Northern Plains, which was their first home. By backtracking the generational lists that I got from Shadow, I'd put that time between twenty-five hundred and two thousand years ago-just about the first time records were being maintained here at the Keep after the Dark Ones had vanished for good.