Politics makes strange bedfellows, and conspiracy even stranger ones . He wondered what the Bishop and the Court Mage would find to talk about on the long road south.
That evening he went to bid Alde goodby.
She was in her cell, sitting at the table which she'd cleared as a kind of work space, surrounded by wax tablets, glow-stones, rolls of scribbled palimpsests, and an abacus. She'd tied her hair back in a thick bun at the nape of her neck, and wore the gaudy ski vest he'd made for her over the worn white gown that she'd first had on when he'd met her in Karst and mistaken her for her son's babysitter. He paused in the doorway, watching how the lamplight flickered on the jeweled stylus, on the splinter of silver that gleamed in her hair, and on the little worry wrinkle between her brows that, like Gil's scar, would forever mark her face. He did not know quite how to speak to her, for there was no mistaking her for anything but a Queen now.
Then she looked up and saw him, and happiness kindled in her eyes like the coming of spring. She held out her hands to him, hesitantly, as if she, too, were uncertain of where and how they stood.
"I wasn't sure I'd recognize you," he said.
She smiled. "I'm not sure that I recognize myself."
Gently he drew her to her feet and kissed her lips. It was the kiss of a friend, but she held him from parting from her and returned the kiss of longtime lovers whose love had gone deeper than passion or change or grief. There was tightness and magic in it, like coming home to warm firelight after a sleet-ridden night journey. The sheer joy of being with her again mingled with and magnified the knowledge that whatever happened, he would always have a loyal partner in this odd, quiet woman who ruled the Keep of Dare.
"I've come to tell you I'll be leaving in the morning."
Her hands tightened where they locked behind his back, but she only nodded, accepting, as women who loved wizards must do.
"We should be gone three weeks, maybe a little more."
"We?"
"There's something that Gil and I have to take care of in Gae."
She nodded, her brows deepening slightly over eyes that had grown suddenly grave. "You would not be going all that way," she said softly, "if the cause were not urgent. Is there anything you'll need?"
"Only supplies for the journey. I don't think we'll need a pack animal. With the wolves in the river valleys, it would be more of a hindrance than a help."
"All right."
Looking down into her eyes, he could see there her weariness and confusion, the tangled emotions of mourning men who had long ago died in her heart. He kissed her again, and this time she clung to his warmth, her face pressed to the woolly collar of his vest For a long time the scented silence of the room enfolded them, broken only by the faint sounds of the embers on the hearth.
"Will you be all right?" he asked at last.
She nodded, standing still in the circle of his arms. "The work is good for me," she said. "Gil says that a tough project is the best drug the soul can take-and I think she's right. Thank God, Alwir's chief clerk kept the books decently."
He chuckled a little in spite of himself at this matter-of-fact epitaph for the Chancellor. He saw that Alde had her own work now, her unschooled hands picking up the reins of responsibility and power. He could no more understand it, no more have done it, than he could understand or have emulated Gil's cold and rational violence; but he saw that, like Gil, Alde was going to be very good at what she did.
He wondered, very briefly, what would happen to her-to Tir, to all of them-if he and Gil were slain. He pushed the thought from his mind. Time enough for that later , he told himself. If there is a later .
"Rudy?"
Her doubtful voice called him back with a start.
"You aren't-you will be back, won't you?"
He felt an impulse to wipe the troubled fear from her upturned face with a heartening assurance, to protect her from unhappiness as he had often, not very successfully, tried to protect her from harm. But he owed their love more than that; and he could not drive from his mind the memory of the rain-slashed ruins of Quo and the knowledge of what he was going to Gae to meet.
So he bent to touch her lips again and whispered miserably, "Babe, I don't know."
The journey to Gae was wet and bitterly cold. Rudy and Gil followed the track the armies had left, through slushy bottom lands, iron-gray in the frozen grip of winter, or over the stumpy summits of submerged hills. On the fringes of the vast, pewter-colored meres, they found evidence of bands of White Raiders; and once, in a hollow between three rocky hills, Gil found signs of some other large band of what she thought might be dooic, over a thousand strong. One night wolves attacked their spell-cloaked camp, and Gil killed three of them before they drew off.
"Pity about the skins," she said regretfully. "I always did want a wolfskin rug in my study. It would impress the hell out of my Ph.D. advisor."
It was one of the few times she referred to the life before her exile, and it already seemed incredible to Rudy that Gil had attended UCLA; or indeed, that she had ever been anything but a Guard. When they were on the road, she didn't speak much at all.
When the nights closed over the gray, crow-haunted land, Rudy spelled the camp against the Dark Ones, against wolves, and against bandits, while Gil built a hidden little fire to cook their meager rations of pan-bread and salt meat. Afterward Rudy played the harp, or they talked-of their journey, of the small doings of the people they knew at the Keep, of the possibility of Aide's restarting the hydroponics gardens, or of Maia's changes in Church policy. They plotted scenarios for Raider attacks, or what they would do in the event of another major assault by the Dark. They seldom referred to California, and then only in passing, as of a mutual childhood, half-forgotten.
"You'll be staying at the Keep now?" Gil asked one night as Rudy sat softly weaving the glimmering strains of a haunting, half-familiar melody that Dakis had sung.
He nodded. Neither spoke the same thought-that a week from now they might both be dead, the Keep shattered, and Tir's and Aide's bones mixed with the bloody snow that blew in through its broken walls. "I'm going to get in touch with the Gettlesand wizards and see if maybe some of them could come back to help out Thoth and Wend."
Gil made a noise of assent, not looking up from the dagger she was whetting. She did not ask what good all the wizards in the world would do if Ingold returned to the Keep.
Rudy was silent in thought. Now and then he touched stray notes from the harp strings that dropped like silver coins into the dark well of the night. Across the shallow lakes of the valley, the wolves howled, and winds stirred the mists that curled from the waters' dirty surfaces.
"How long have we been here?" he asked at last.
"Six months, or a little longer," Gil replied, turning her dagger edge to catch the light. "It's round about the middle of March, though you wouldn't guess it from the weather." It had snowed last night, a thin, icy scum on the ground.
Rudy sighed. "As soon as the weather breaks, I'm taking the road."
She looked up, startled.
He went on. "I'm going back to Quo." He put his hand to stop the quavering of the harp strings and looked across them at Gil. "Ingold always said that he was the only person alive who understood how the Void works and how to create the gates from one universe to the next. But he had to have learned that from somewhere. I'm going to have a look at the library of Quo and see if I can find something about how to bridge the Void and get you home."
The knife whined once more against the whetstone, then stilled. Gil did not look up. "Don't knock yourself out over it, Rudy," she said. "We wouldn't have had any more luck returning than Eldor had."