Rudy's voice broke that magical stillness. "Hell," he said rather shakily. "I wanted to do that."
Gil drew a deep breath, as if she were waking up, then expelled it in a tremulous laugh. She bent and cleaned her hands in the snow, wiping her blade on the corner of her dead foe's cloak. By the time she reached Rudy, she was trembling uncontrollably.
"Can you walk?" she asked him.
"Christ, lady, I should be asking you that!"
She pulled him to his feet, staggering a little at his weight against her. He drew the cloak around both their shoulders; under the sweat-drenched, blood-daubed shirt, he felt her flesh like ice. A moment ago she had been almost terrifying to him, a coldhearted, deliberate killer; but now he felt protective of her as she nestled gawkily against his side beneath the warmth of the cloak.
"How long has it been since I was put out here?" he asked.
Gil frowned, her concentration bent on negotiating the slippery snow of the hill. "Three hours or so."
"Then I might still be able to save Eldor, if I can get hold of some medicines."
She looked up at him, startled. "But the gates won't be opened until dawn."
"You think so?"
Color rushed into her bone-white cheeks. Keep Law was knitted into her nerve endings. It had never occurred to her that Alwir would have violated it. But she didn't even need to follow Rudy's gaze to the darker slit among the shadows of the Keep's western face to know the truth. "That-" she began, and continued at length. Rudy noted that swordsmanship wasn't all Gil had learned in her training with the Guards. Looking back toward the prostrate body, she delivered the final, crushing judgment. "It figures. Let's go, punk. We've been lucky so far. If..."
Her words stuck in her throat. At the same instant Rudy turned, knowledge and awareness like a chill smoke twining around his heart. Around them, the moonlight failed.
Gil's arm tightened around his body, not in fear, but in a businesslike effort to drag him toward the Keep before they were overtaken. Rising wind whirled at their hair, and it seemed that all the trees in the Vale began to toss and whisper. As they stumbled across the road, the sense of the awful numbers of the Dark Ones rose like the rising tide. Over his shoulder Rudy could see the river of illusion and death pouring down from the somber trees that hid Sarda Pass; unguessable numbers of the Dark Ones swirled the snow in glittering eddies, killing the light.
His feet caught on the edge of the lowest step and he fell, bringing Gil down with him. His every muscle cried out at the jarring blow. After that fight, she wouldn't be in much better shape than he was, he thought as they both struggled to rise. The winds stung his face, the smell of them harsh, acid, metallic...
... and looking up, he saw the Dark Ones turn aside.
Within a dozen yards of the half-open gates of the Keep they flowed, filling the earth, covering the sky like a cloud. But they paused for nothing, howling past the silent fortress and away like an elemental storm.
"What's happening?" Gil whispered, kneeling on the snow-covered steps above him, her fingers nerveless on the hilt of her sheathed sword. "I didn't know there were that many Dark Ones in the Nests of Gettlesand. You don't think the-the wizards-had anything to do..."
"No," Rudy said softly. "No wizard in that group, or all of them together, could touch the Dark."
"Then what is it?" she murmured as the directionless winds tore at the cloak they shared and stung their faces with blown snow. "Where are they going?"
With a wizard's understanding, Rudy knew the answer, though he shuddered to think of the reasons for what he knew. He glanced sideways at Gil and replied unwillingly.
"They're going to Gae."
"Christ, I wish I knew more about healing." Rudy stood against the light of the banked glowstones, looking down at the fevered body that writhed on the narrow bed. Without the mask, Eldor's face was hideous, not only from the sunken masses of shiny, twisted scars but from the marks of the last extremities of suffering. "I'll tell you one thing, though-poppy wouldn't do anything like that." He knelt beside the King and felt the racing pulse under the hot flesh of the wrist. Eldor regarded him unknowingly, the glazed eyes half-hidden under lashless lids. His breath came in a fast, steady whine through his teeth.
"Where did Alde go?"
Gil shook her head. "When I told her what was going on, she stuck around only long enough to wrap up Tir before she took off at a run."
"Can't say I blame her," Rudy muttered. He dragged the covers away from the restless body. "You know where Bektis keeps his medicines?"
She glanced up from the hearth, where she had been setting a kettle of water to heat. The firelight glittered on the half-dried blood on her drawn face. "The Inquisition destroyed everything of his," she said, and Rudy muttered something savagely about the Inquisition. She added, almost shyly, "But I have all of Ingold's stuff. It's-it's under my bunk, where I stashed your harp. I'll go get it." She rose to her feet, brushing ashes from her hands.
Rudy slung the covers back where they had been. Outside the closed door, the Icefalcon's cool voice could be heard, turning away servants, clerks, and Guards who had been drawn by the commotion. Rudy tried to think, his mind clouded by the long exhaustion of that horrible night. "I think you'd better stay with Eldor, Gil," he said at last. "I'll see what kind of purgatives I can find in the commons and stop by the barracks on my way back here." He shivered, realizing for the first time how damp his own clothes were. He couldn't look much better than Gil did.
From the darkness of the hall came the sudden, muffled tread of many feet and the Icefalcon's light, warning voice. "It's Govannin!" he called, and Rudy groaned.
"Christ, that's all we need," he said. A hoarse, dry voice rapped out an order, and he heard the rattling of scabbards and mail. A moment later the door opened, and the Bishop of Gae stepped into the room.
Bitter, dark eyes under those graceful, curving brows studied him, like a gardener contemplating a snail. "So you returned, mage."
He stood up, conscious of the smarting of his bruises, the ache in his shoulders, and the sting of the life returning to his frostbitten fingers. The weariness of the eternal night seemed to be grained into the flesh of his body, but anger stirred in him, like a swig of fiery brandy. In a shaking voice he said, "I was told there was a man sick here, my lady."
She gave a single dry sniff of contemptuous laughter. "I should think he is the last man you would aid."
"Yeah, you would think so," Rudy said tiredly. "And considering he's tried to break your power over the people of the Keep, he might be the last man you would aid. But whatever else I am, I'm a wizard; and though we don't make any vows and we don't preach about what people ought to do, there's an understanding among wizards that we hold our power as a trust and we help whoever needs it, whether that person has just got done cursing us, or whether it would be more convenient for our love lives if he died, or whatever. Now, if you're not going to help me, lady, you get the hell out of my way."
Govannin glanced over her shoulder at the Red Monks who filled the doorway at her back. "Arrest him."
There was a thin metallic whine as Gil pulled her blade free of its scabbard, and the light of the glowstones sang along its edge. The Red Monks hesitated visibly.
Govannin's vulture eyes never shifted. "Arrest them both. Eldor's illness is a judgment upon a man who would choose to deal with magic and the work of wizards."