Rudy shouted, "For a lady who'd use the Rune of the Chain, you talk mighty big about magic!"
The monks, startled, looked curiously at their Bishop, and her flat black eyes narrowed dangerously. "Silence me this liar."
"Is he a liar?" a soft voice inquired from the corridor. The warm white light of the room reflected off a shaved skull in the darkness, and Govannin swung around, her lips growing tight with anger.
"What affair of yours is this, you peasant upstart?"
"Peasant or not," that gentle voice replied, "I am duly ordained and chosen Bishop of Penambra, and if you, my lady, have indeed tampered with a thing as God-cursed as the Rune of the Chain, it is fully within my powers, both sacerdotal and actual, to place you under arrest for heresy."
Maia of Penambra, followed by half a dozen of his ragged warriors, limped into the brightness of the room. In his shadow walked two others who were not warriors: a slender, dark-haired woman, the black smudges of exhaustion like bruises beneath her eyes; and a stocky young man, barefoot and shivering in a dust-streaked hair shirt, carrying a little bundle of medicines under his arm.
Even a few days ago, Rudy knew he would probably have thrown his arms around Alde and kissed her-not only for locating Brother Wend but for having learned enough of Gil's political savvy to get a military backup first. But now their eyes only met, and she turned hers away. Though he was bruised and aching in spirit as well as in body, Rudy understood. She had made up her mind, and there was far too much at stake now to confuse the issue. They each had a clear duty, though it would destroy forever whatever chance they might have had to rejoin their love.
Govannin's eyes flickered from one to the other in baffled hate, then to Brother Wend, who bent over Eldor's bed. "Heresy!" she jeered. "You talk of heresy to me, you ignorant butcher! What shall we say of a prelate who deals with mages? Or of a monk who has sworn himself to lifelong solitude, but who cannot wait three days before violating his vows?"
Brother Wend flinched at that, as if at the flick of a whip, but he did not look up from the sick man.
Maia turned back from helping Alde to a chair in the shadows of the hearth and replied calmly. "We shall say, my lady, that neither the prelate nor the monk can be proven to have tampered with black magic-as the Rune of the Chain, according to the unanimous ruling of the Bishops at the Council of Gae, undoubtedly is."
"All magic is the same!" she snarled at him furiously. "It is all the dealings of the Devil!"
"Not," the Bishop of Penambra said, "according to the Ecumenical Councils."
"Solipsistic hairsplitting!" she cried. Looking at her eyes, Rudy was reminded of a rattlesnake about to strike.
Brother Wend glanced up, his sick, dark eyes filled with misery. "It was not she who drew the Rune on the door," he said wretchedly. "It was I. She isn't mageborn; she could not have drawn and spelled the Rune of the Chain..."
Govannin whirled on him. "Be silent, you filthy heretic!"
"What door?" Gil asked suddenly. "The Rune of the Chain was on a seal. It was hundreds of years old, by the look of it."
"Be silent, on penalty of eternal hellfire!"
Gil gripped the young monk's sleeve, and there was desperate urgency in her voice. "What door did you draw the Rune on?"
But Wend was looking up at Govannin, confused. "Seal? What seal?"
Rudy supplied the answer. "Govannin had the Rune drawn on a seal-and it wasn't the first time she'd used it, either. Alde can testify to that. Your Bishop gave it to Alwir at the place of execution tonight."
Wend's eyes grew huge, staring up at his terrible preceptress, the sick man on the bed before him momentarily forgotten. "You used it yourself, then," he whispered. "The door that Bektis and I sealed- It wasn't the first time that you tampered in black magic."
"What door was this?" Gil demanded. "Where?"
"If you speak," Govannin whispered, and her eyes held Wend's like a snake's, "I swear to you, by my power as Bishop of Gae..."
"Get her out of here," Maia said. There was not a Red Monk who moved in protest as the Penambran soldiers surrounded the enraged Govannin. "Where is this door, Wend? What cell did you seal? It could be Eldor's life or death."
Wend shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. It was on the first level, in the Church territory. We were blindfolded and taken there. The cell had been spelled before. It was a small one, but no magic could be used therein. Bektis and I only renewed things that were already there."
Maia glanced over at Gil. "Gil-Shalos? You know the back corners of the Keep. Will you take my men and search?"
Gil nodded briefly and stood up. Though it was hot in the royal bedroom, with its fur rugs and braziers of coals that burned redly in the shadows about the bed, the door let in a draft of icy air from the hall. Rudy stripped off the shabby black surcoat Gil had lent him and threw it to her. She pulled it on loosely over the slashed and blood-smutched shirt and headed for the door.
"Gil- Shalos?" Maia stayed her and turned her face gently to the light with one crippled hand. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine," she said. Most of the wounds Alwir had dealt her had stopped bleeding, probably including the biggest one, which was in her right side and which Rudy had patched crudely before starting to examine Eldor. It had surprised him a little that Gil literally could not remember receiving most of the wounds-only the first one, which was on her cheek. By the look of it, Rudy could tell already that she'd be scarred for life.
The few Penambrans who had remained after Govannin's removal followed Gil silently into the dark hall, accompanied by the Bishop's confused and whispering monks. Brother Wend looked up from his patient, his hollow eyes tortured by doubt.
"Who is it?" he whispered. "Whom do you seek?"
"Yeah," Rudy said, confused. "Who do they have sealed up?"
The Bishop of Penambra raised an eyebrow, and wrinkles laddered all the way up his high, narrow forehead. "You have not guessed?"
The sensitive hands resting on Elder's wrist trembled. In a shaken voice, Wend murmured, "She told me that he was dead. I killed him. I..." He bowed his head, unable to go on.
"I sincerely doubt," Maia said, bending down to touch the priest's shoulder in a faint rustling of patched brocade, "that with your small skill you would be capable of concocting a poison strong enough to kill Thoth the Scribe. Nor do I believe that my lady Govannin would permit any wizard simply to die painlessly - It was painless, wasn't it?"
Wend nodded wretchedly.
"To die painlessly or quickly, if it were in her power to make it otherwise. So take courage, Brother-her spite may well have been her undoing in this." He straightened up and moved back toward the door as Wend returned shakily to his task. Only to Rudy did Maia turn a worried face, in the shadows that shrouded the doorway. "By the look of my lord Eldor," he said in a low voice, "it will take all Thoth's great skill to save him. I pray that he can be found."
But the night hours wore into morning, and Gil and her squad did not reappear. Rudy and Brother Wend did what they could, using Wend's stock of herbs and Ingold's medicines and working with their combined magic to hold soul and body together, but Rudy could feel Eldor's life slipping away.
His own mind and body were numb, and his hands fumbled at their tasks. He was barely cognizant of the passage of time or of his surroundings, scarcely aware of hunger or thirst. All he knew was the task before him and a weariness that became a dull torture. The golden flicker of the fire on the embroidered hangings around the bed began to swim before his tired eyes, and his occasional speech with Wend grew less and less connected. He wondered that it had been only yesterday morning that the messenger had ridden to the steps of the Keep- a little over twenty-four hours since the Army of Alketch had departed.
Alwir must have begun to plan it then , Rudy thought, and he had been mere bait, the ostensible trigger for the larger trap. With what feeling remained to him, he felt a dull anger at Alwir, lying stiff with cold and rigor mortis in puddles of frozen blood on the hill. He would have stamped me out like a cockroach, disgraced - maybe killed - his own sister, and slain Gil more or less in passing - all as a cover-up for the real thing .