"Now, the reason we don't have any Keep records much before two thousand years ago is that literacy had fallen to such a low level that few records were kept and records-or anything else flammable that wasn't in use as furniture- ended up being burned. That allows us to date the end of the record-burning period at least approximately-and it falls right around the time of the last retreat of the ice from the Northern Plains.
"But the Times Before weren't cold. In the record crystals you can see that the climate was very warm and that tropical ferns grew in the lagoons around Gae. The people dressed for hot weather, and you can see the kind of bright-colored birds in them that you can only find in the jungles of Alketch now. Minalde's memories-the memories that she, as a descendant of the House of Dare, inherited-are memories of snow and storm, of blizzards burying the Pass-two hundred miles south of tropical Gae! The change was sudden enough that some of the refugees who took shelter in the caves on the north cliffs were still wearing warm-weather clothing and sandals. And I think," Gil said, "that the same thing is happening now.
"You see, the world I come from is much warmer than this one. So when everyone around me has been saying that this is the worst winter anyone can remember, I never knew how much worse it was. But from things I've read- descriptions of life as it was two hundred years ago-I realized that this world was probably warmer even than my own. The novels Alde brought down from Karst describe-pretty accurately, Thoth tells me-costumes that couldn't possibly be worn now-thin silks and muslins. In the novels, most of the people spend much of their time trying to cool off. Even people like Ingold and Govannin, who knew Gae thirty or forty years ago, say the same. Gae's a pretty temperate place now, but Karst was originally a summer resort, a place to escape the heat. They tell me Gae also used to have one hell of a mosquito problem; Aide, Janus, and the Guards who came to Gae in the last five or ten years say that's no worse than anywhere. And now this year, mammoth have been sighted in the river valleys, where they haven't been for seven hundred years. Rudy and Ingold, crossing the desert, were driven underground by an ice storm not seventy miles north of the Plains Road -three hundred miles farther south than any ice storm has ever been reported. Isn't that so, Thoth?"
"It is so indeed," the serpentmage replied.
" Sarda Pass has been snowed shut for weeks on end this winter," Gil continued, "and, according to the chronicles of both Gae and Renweth, there has never been any record of the Pass being blocked for more than a day or so, and that in dead winter. But of the times that it has been blocked, two of them were within the first hundred years of the chronicle, and four have been within the last twenty years. The first time was twenty years ago-the same year Ingold saw the Dark hunting aboveground in the deserts of Gettlesand."
"It snowed in Penambra that year," Blid the Soothsayer said suddenly. "It had never snowed there before, though it has twice since. I remember standing in the courtyard of our house, while everyone was running about and whispering and catching snowflakes in their hands. The dooic slaves were terrified. They had no idea what it was."
"Perhaps they did," Ingold murmured, "and that was what terrified them."
There was silence, as each tried to remember back to those lost years: a boy standing in the muddy court of his home in that city of palms and flowers, catching snowflakes in wondering hands; and a fugitive spell weaver lying in the darkness of a desert cave, seeing the Dark drop on an old dooic who had shuffled in for shelter from an unnaturally icy night. Rudy thought, That was the winter before I turned five, when I began to have visions of magic .
Kara spoke up suddenly. "There was an epidemic in Ippit then. I was only a little girl, but mother always said it was because of the cold."
"We marked the increasing number of famines and sicknesses," Ungolard said, his earrings flashing as he raised his head. "I was in the College of Astrologers in Khirsrit. These things were noted there, but not, as you have said, my fair lady, their meaning."
"Me granddad disappeared that winter," Ilae whispered, looking up from stroking the cat. "Uncle says he went out to look for't' pigs of an eve, nor never came back."
"I think what we're dealing with," Gil said slowly, "is a weather cycle, a-an alternation of hot periods and cold, governed by the growth and retreat of the ice in the north. The ice doesn't have to move very far south to change the climate. When it does, for whatever reason, when the temperature stays too low for too long, the moss in the Nests of the Dark starts to die. The herds start to die. And then the Dark Ones begin to hunt on the surface of the earth."
She rolled her notes together and rested them endwise on the table, her hands folded upon them.
"There was a short cold spell twenty years ago. I think, that the climate has been gradually cooling for at least the last hundred years. The short spell affected only the most exposed Nests-those of Gettlesand, the plains, and the far North. The one we're in now-a far deeper one-has affected all the northern Nests-at Gae, Quo, Dele, and Penambra. It will be only a matter of time before the herds in the southern Nests begin to die as well.
"And that's the answer." Gil shrugged and scanned the faces of the mages ranged around the table. "The answer is that there is no answer. We've never found anything that indicates that Dare of Renweth ever fought the Dark at all. The cold spell then lasted six to eight hundred years. This one could easily do the same. The Dark Ones will go away when the weather warms and their herds build back to strength-not before."
"That's a lie!" Alwir's voice cracked across hers like the stroke of a leaded whip. He surged to his feet, a storm of rage darkening his face. "The whole idea of the world getting colder or warmer is utter nonsense! Foolish drivel and treason against the allies of the Realm! The world is the world, the earth is the earth. It is fixed, stable. The sun is set in its orbit and the earth in its shape. Your talk of- of the sun getting colder or swamps covering the West of the World-it is impossible!"
"But it isn't," Gil protested unwisely. "Just because a thing is created doesn't mean that it's immutable. Look at a man's body. It changes and grows old, grows a beard in its proper time or loses hair, and gains or loses flesh-"
"Don't quibble with me, girl!" the Chancellor roared, towering over her like an enraged bear. "This idiocy about women's fashions and rocks and plants and where it snows and when-pah! What proof have you that these had anything to do with the first rising of the Dark?"
"Aide's memories..." Gil began-and stopped. She felt slow heat rising to her face, realizing that that, at least, was one source of information that could never be revealed. Particularly not now, when Alde had put herself in defiance of her brother and publicly as much as announced her intentions of wielding at least a certain degree of power in the Keep. "The record crystals..." she began again.
"Don't speak to me of them unless you can feel the air of those times!" Alwir sneered bitterly. "Women would parade the streets naked in a snowstorm if fashion dictated they must! And as for your memories, my sister..." He bent his scathing gaze upon the girl who sat, head bowed in wretched silence, across from Gil. "You know as well as I do that only men bear the memories of the House of Dare. A convenient departure from custom," he went on, swinging around to face Ingold, who had risen and gone to Gil's side. "And how well it proves your point!
"So I am to give up the reconquest of the world from the Dark and the alliance that will rejuvenate our civilization, not because you and your amorous student wish to keep the power in the Realm between you, not because you have had a price on your head in the Empire since you fled from there as an escaping slave, not because my sister scorns to marry a true man or because our allies will not tolerate seeing the likes of you in power-but because this other student of yours has foreseen that the Dark Ones will destroy Alketch-in divinations based upon ladies' millinery!"