The Walls of Air

by Barbara Hambly

Chapter 5

  'Holy Christ!'

  'Really, Rudy,' Ingold returned, in the mildest of tones. There's no need for concern. They're only dooic. '

  'Famous last words. ' Rudy stood irresolutely in the sunken roadbed, warily scanning the filthy host of semihumans that had appeared with such suddenness on the banks above. 'That's what Custer said about the Indians. ' Ingold blinked at him in surprise. 'Never mind. ' He drew his sword and set himself for a fight.

  Back in Karst, Rudy had seen tame and enslaved dooic shambling along after their masters with frightened, doglike eyes; he had thought them pathetic. Feral and naked, baring their yellow tusks along both sides of the empty road, they were an entirely other matter. There must have been twenty or more big males in the band; the tallest of them, standing in the centre of the road with a huge rock grasped in one distorted hand, was close to Rudy's own height. Ingold had told him once that the dooic would eat anything, including burros - possibly even including human beings, if they could kill them. He wondered how much effect his and Ingold's swords would have against so many.

  Ingold clicked his tongue reprovingly and placed a comforting hand on Che's head. The burro was on the verge of hysterics - not that it ever took much to reduce him to that state - but he quieted under the old man's touch. Rudy, who stood a little in the lead, risked a glance back at them.

  'Would those things attack people?'

  'Oh, possibly. ' Ingold took Che's headstall in one hand and brushed past Rudy, making his way calmly toward the half-

  dozen or so hairy, two-legged animals blocking the route. 'In this part of the country they're hunted and put to work on the treadmills in the silver mines. I don't believe the wild ones know where the captives are taken, but they associate humans with horses and nets and fire, and that is enough. '

  The big male in front of him raised its weapons with a threatening shriek. Ingold pointed unconcernedly toward the main mass of the band, the females and infants, grouped on the hillside above. 'You see how the weaker members of the tribe travel in the ring of the stronger? It's for protection against the prairie wolves or the hrigg, the horrible birds. '

  Rudy took a deep breath, something seldom advisable in the vicinity of large numbers of wild dooic. Okay, man, it's your game, he thought grimly and hefted his sword, prepared to sell his life dearly.

  Several paces in front of him, Ingold didn't even turn his head. 'Gently, Rudy. Never fight if you can pass unseen. ' As he came close, the dooic seemed to forget why they were standing in the roadway. Some began looking aimlessly at the sky, the ground, and each other; others wandered off the road, scratching for vermin or picking among the skimpy brush for lizards to eat. Ingold, Rudy, and Che wound their way among them, but the only assault was olfactory.

  'Always take the easiest way out,' Ingold counselled pleasantly, scratching the burrow's ears as they left the subhumans behind them. 'It saves wear and tear on the nerves. '

  Rudy glanced back at the scattering Neanderthals, who had returned to the usual primate occupations of hunting bugs and picking lice. 'Yuck!' he said succinctly.

  Ingold raised his brows, amused. 'Oh, come, Rudy. Barring rather crude table manners, they aren't the worst company I can think of. I once travelled through the northern part of the desert with a band of dooic for nearly a month, and though they weren't particularly elegant company, they did take care that I came to no harm. '

  'You travelled with those things?

  'Oh, yes,' Ingold assured him. This was back when I was village spellweaver for a little town in Gettlesand. It was hundreds of miles from their usual runs, but they evidently knew I was a wizard, for when the single water source in the midst of their territory went bad, they came south and carried me off one night to go there and make it good again. '

  'And did you?' Rudy asked, both fascinated and appalled.

  'Of course. Water is life in the desert. I couldn't very well force them to come in closer to the settlements for it, else they would have been trapped or killed. '

  Rudy could only shake his head.

  They had left the high plains and had passed the borders of the desert itself. They

  moved through a dry, cold world where marches were measured from water to water and the wind whipped dust-devils across a barren horizon. In the great sunken flats that were like the beds of abandoned lakes, the wind played skeleton-tunes in the rattling bones of thorn and jumping cactus. But the high lands between were bare rock, clay, and lava, scoured into fantastic shapes by the unbroken cruelty of the elements, or ground to rock and pebble and sand. In places, dunes covered the road entirely, the sand printed with the laddering tracks of enormous sidewinders, six to eight feet long. Once Rudy glimpsed what looked like huge, two-legged birds dashing weightlessly along the red skyline. It was an eerie land, where for days, unless one of them spoke, there would be no sounds but the persistent whine of the wind, the tap of the burro's hooves on the roadbed, and the hissing slur of moving sand. It was like the silence of the hills back in Rudy's California home, the silence he had sought there on his solitary expeditions with shotgun or bow. In that unending stillness, the whirring of an insect was like the roar of an airplane engine and the only noises heard were those of the listener's own making - the creak of belt-leather and the draw and release of breath.

  In all this empty vastness the travellers met no one, and the solitude, far from bringing loneliness, created a kind of measureless peace in Rudy's soul. They seldom spoke these days, but neither seemed to feel the lack. Sentences uttered two and three days apart took on the flow of conversation. Ingold would point out the burrow of the tarantula-hawk or the tracks of the little yellow cat-deer; sometimes Rudy would ask about an unfamiliar cactus or type of rock. Twice they felt the presence of the Dark Ones, seeking them on nights when the wind died down. But for the most part, they were utterly alone.

  'How long were you in the desert?' Rudy asked, after a long time of walking in silence.

  'Forever,' Ingold replied and smiled at the startled look Rudy gave him. Since the start of their journey, the pale cloud-cover had not broken; in the shadowless light, the wrinkles in his windburned face seemed very dark. 'You see, the desert is my home. Quo is my heart-home, the place of my belonging. But I was raised in the desert. I have travelled it from one end to the other, from the borders of the Alketch jungles to the lava hills that rim the northern ice, and still I do not know it all. '

  'Was this when you were village spellweaver?'

  'Oh, no. That came much later, after King Umar, Eldor's father, had me exiled from Gae. No. For fifteen years I was a hermit down in the split-rock country, the land of empty hills and sky. I would be months alone there, with nothing but the wind and stars for company. I think I once went for four years without seeing another human being's face. '

  Rudy stared at the wizard, horrified but uncomprehending. It was inconceivable to him. Like most of his generation, he had seldom spent more than twelve hours alone at any one time. He could literally not imagine being alone, absolutely alone, for four years. 'What were you doing?

  His feelings must have crept into his voice, for Ingold smiled again. 'Looking for food. You do a lot of that in the desert. And watching the animals and the sky. And thinking. Mostly thinking. '

  'About what?'

  Ingold shrugged. 'Life. Myself. Human stupidity. Death. Fear. Power. This was -oh, years ago. There was another hermit there then, a man of great power and kindness, who helped me at a time when I needed help desperately. ' He frowned, remembering. Rudy saw in his eyes the brief echo of the young man he had been, wandering the solitudes of the wastelands alone. Then Ingold shook his head, as if dismissing an impossible thought. 'He is very likely dead by this time, for he was quite old when he first found me, and I was only a little older then than you are now. '

  'Can you contact him?' Rudy asked curiously. 'If h
e's a wizard, he might have some word about the wizards at Quo. '

  'Oh, Kta wasn't a wizard. He was -I don't know what he was, really. Just a little old man. But no, it would be impossible for me or anyone to contact him. He would be found, if he wanted to be found, and if not. . . ' Ingold spread his hands, showing them empty. 'I haven't seen him in a good fifteen years. '

  They walked on in silence for a time, Rudy's thoughts chasing one another randomly, his eyes picking out tiny tracks in the sand, patterns of wind, and the shapes and natures of plants that flickered dry and yellow against the empty sky. He was trying to picture Ingold as a young man, trying to picture any situation in which the wizard would be in desperate need of help, trying to envision someone capable of giving the old man what he could not find for himself.

  The road mounted a small rise, coming out of its sunken bed to crest a barren ridge above yet another flat of salt-bush and stone. The veer of the wind whipped Rudy's long hair into his eyes. For a moment he wasn't sure if he saw or only imagined the distant glitter of something far out in the flatlands. Even when he paused to shade his eyes, he wasn't sure what it was - only that vultures circled over it, high in the wan air.

  'What is it?' he asked softly as Ingold came back to stand beside him.

  The old man didn't reply for a time. He stood, his eyes narrowed against the distance, showing no visible reaction. But Rudy could sense a tautness that grew in him, as if in readiness for a surprise attack.

  'White Raiders,' Ingold said at last.

  Rudy turned his eyes from the gruesome remains of the Raiders' sacrifice. It was nearly a week old. What the vultures and jackals hadn't got, ants had. But it was still fresh enough to be revolting. He concentrated instead on the cross that had been erected beyond the head of the stretched victim; it was seven feet tall and wreathed in complicated streamers of feather, polished bone, and glass. The cross itself was wood, rare in this treeless land, with a skull nailed in the join of the beams. The tufts of feathers and knotted grass twirled skittishly in the wind, reminding him weirdly of the candy skulls with roses in their eyes of the Fiesta de los Muertos.

  'It's a magic-post. ' Ingold walked around it, cat-footed, leaving barely a trace of tracks on the dry crumble of the turned-up earth. His fingers caressed lightly the smoothed wood, as if to read something there by his touch, then brushed the dangling

  glass. That's odd. ' He said it half to himself, like a man who found in his garden flowers not of his own planting. Rudy shivered and scanned the horizon, as if expecting to see the Raiders materialize like Apache from the pale wastelands of sand and thorn.

  'Did the Raiders make it?'

  'Oh, yes. ' Ingold went over to the remains of the sacrifice, hunkering down to examine the loathsome bones. Rudy looked away. The Raiders will make a sacrifice in propitiation of something that they fear - you saw that in the valleys below Renweth - and usually, but not always, put up a magic-post to hold the soul of the tormented dead. ' He straightened up, frowning. 'Generally they will make the propitiation against the ice storms, which they consider to be evil ghosts; lately they have begun to do so against the Dark. But this. . . ' He came back to the cross, like a ghost himself in the pallor of the shadowless afternoon. This I have not seen. ' He moved a little way off, poking with his staff at the hard, cracked clay of the ground, the knobby yellow twigs of the catclaw snagging at his mantle and the blown dust blurring his tracks. They fear something, Rudy, and fear it enough to sacrifice one of their own band to divert its rage. But it wouldn't be an ice storm this far to the south -and it isn't the Dark. '

  'How can you tell?' Rudy asked curiously.

  'I can tell by the pattern of the streamers and the marks scratched in the wood. This isn't the regular hunting ground of any tribe of Raiders that I know - they do not range the desert at all, but stick to the plains, following the bison and mammoth. Only the extreme bitterness of the winter and perhaps the coming of the Dark have driven them here. ' He came back and collected Che's lead-rope again, for all the world like a ragged old prospector hunting for the motherlode among the cactus and ocotillo. 'We shall have to be careful and cover our tracks,' he went on, turning back toward the road. The Raiders prize steel weaponry and would in all probability cut our throats to steal our swords. '

  'Great,' Rudy said fatalistically. 'One more thing for us to worry about. '

  Two,' Ingold corrected him. The Raiders - and whatever it is that the Raiders fear. '

  But in the two empty days that followed, they saw no sign of White Raiders. Toward afternoon of the second, Rudy thought he could discern a dust-cloud and movement on the road ahead and he suggested concealment.

  'Nonsense,' Ingold said. 'Any Raider who raised dust higher than his own knees would be expelled from the band and left for the jackals. '

  'Oh. ' Rudy shaded his eyes and gazed into the clear greyish distance. That's a hell of a dust for just one family, though. '

  As they drew nearer, Rudy saw that this was indeed far more than a single family, or even several families. An entire town was on the move, as the refugees from Karst and Gae and the ragged survivors of Penambra had moved. A long line of swaying wagons was surrounded by a skirmishing ring of riders and a broad scattering of scouts afoot. The creak of leather and the barking of dogs sounded weirdly unfamiliar

  to Rudy's ears. He had not been aware of how used he had grown to the silence of the desert. At the head of the wagon train, a cloaked woman walked afoot, and it was she who hurried her steps to meet them as the mounted scouts drew in from both sides. Something in the arrangement of the band reminded Rudy of the way Ingold had said the dooic travelled, and he smiled to himself at the thought.

  The woman threw back the hood of her cloak as she came toward them, revealing a long, plain face that had been just short of homely before it had acquired whip-cut scars from the tails of the Dark and the blotched burn of acid. Her warriors fell in behind her, grim, dusty men and women in sheepskin jackets with seven-foot longbows in their hands. The woman herself carried a halberd, which she seemed to use as a walking stick, its enormous blade glittering in the pale daylight.

  'Welcome,' she called out to them as she came near. 'And well met on the road, pilgrims. ' Close up, Rudy could see she was about five years older than he was, with a long, straight mare's-tail of black hair and the hazel eyes so often found in Gettlesand. 'Where have you come from, that you're moving west? Are you from the Realm?' Hope, eagerness, and anxiety struggled in her face and in the faces of those behind her.

  Ingold held out his hand to her and inclined his head in mingled greeting and respect. 'We have come out of the Realm,' he replied. 'But I fear we bear ill news, my lady. Gae has fallen. King Eldor is dead. '

  The woman was silent, the hope stricken from her eyes. Around her, the warriors, men and women, exchanged quiet glances. Back in the train, a baby cried, and a woman shushed it.

  'Fallen,' she said after a moment. 'How fallen?'

  The city is a ruin,' Ingold said quietly. 'It is the haunt of the Dark by night, of ghouls and beasts and slave dooic gone feral by daylight. The Palace burned, and King Eldor perished in its ashes. I am sorry,' he said gently, 'to be the bearer of such news. '

  She looked down, and Rudy saw her big, rawboned hands tighten on the shaft of the halberd, as if to steady herself, or to cling to it for support. She looked up, and her eyes were sick with weariness. 'Have you come from Gae, then?' she asked. 'Because if you're bound for Dele in the west, if you'd hoped to find refuge there. . . ' She gestured behind her at the train, which was slowly coalescing around the strangers in the road. 'About two-thirds of these people are from Dele. The rest are from Ippit, or the country around the Flat River. I'm Kara of Ippit. I was -am - spellweaver of the village. '

  Ingold looked up at her sharply. 'You're a spellweaver?'

  She nodded. 'The priest
always understood. And I've been able to help, with what powers I have. . . '

  'Are you ranked?'

  'No. I had to leave Quo after my first year there because my mother was ill. ' Then

  she looked down at him with sudden eagerness, realizing what his question had meant. 'Are you a spellweaver?'

  'Yes. Is your mother?

  She nodded, and Rudy saw the quickening of new life from the dead exhaustion of her face. 'Have you had any word, heard anything at all, from Quo?' she demanded. 'I've been trying so hard, trying for weeks, but I can't even get sight of the town. You're the first wizard I've seen since any of this began. ' She reached out to clasp his hand. 'You don't know how good it is. . . '

  'I know very well,' he contradicted with a smile. 'I haven't had word or sign from Quo or news of any other wizard but yourself since Gae fell. We're bound for Quo. now, to find Lohiro and ask his help. '

  A faint stain of colour flushed up under the burnt brown of her skin. 'Well,' she said, 'I'm afraid your calling me a wizard is like calling that little burro of yours a battle-charger. In the same family, maybe, but different in kind. ' She looked at his face again, the black line of her brow kinking suddenly, as if she sought some lost memory.

  He smiled again. The colt of a battle-charger, perhaps,' he said. 'Where were you and your people bound for, Kara?'

  She sighed and shook her head. 'Gae,' she said simply. 'Or the river valleys, anyway. We left Ippit for Dele, which was the nearest city. We couldn't hold out in Ippit - too many buildings had been destroyed, and the raiding of the Dark was too heavy. Three days out of Dele, we met a great train of people fleeing that town, most of them half-frozen and starving. We shared what food we had. . . We've been on the road for three weeks. We thought if we could reach the river valleys. . . ' Her voice trailed off hopelessly.

  The valleys are alive with the Dark. They're far thicker there than on the plains. King Eldor's son Altir has been taken to the old Keep of Dare in Renweth at Sarda Pass, where Chancellor Alwir has set up the government of what is left of the Realm. But they are hard-pressed, too,' Ingold went on, passing over the scene that Rudy and he had both glimpsed in the fire, the sight of Alwir and his troops turning aside the refugees of Penambra.

  Kara nodded despairingly. 'I feared that,' she whispered. 'Have you heard of anywhere, anywhere at all. . . ?'

  'Possibly. Tomec Tirkenson, the landchief of Gettle-sand, has rebuilt the old Keep at Black Rock. I don't know how crowded they are there or how well supplied, but it may be, if you went there and threw yourselves on his mercy, he could give some of you a home. '

  Kara glanced over her shoulder at the scruffy band of rangers at her back, and it seemed to Rudy that, without a word spoken, a motion was moved, passed, seconded, and voted a swift council of desperation that had nowhere else to go. Her eyes returned to Ingold. Thank you,' she said quietly. 'We will go there, and if he turns us away, at least it's better than remaining in Ippit to die. ' She straightened her broad

  shoulders and shook back her straight, heavy hair.

  Tirkenson has a bad reputation with the Church,' Ingold told her. 'But he is a man of what mercy he can afford as Lord of Gettlesand and he knows the value of having a wizard in his Keep. Is your mother with you also?'

  Kara nodded.

  'And did she go to the school at Quo in her time?'

  A rare glimmer of humour flashed behind those greenish eyes. 'And mix with all that highfalutin' booklarnin'? Not her. '

  Ingold smiled, and the swift, sudden warmth of his expression captivated her completely. She continued to study him as if trying to place him. Her eyes changed from puzzlement to surprise and then to awe. She whispered, 'You're Ingold Inglorion. '

  He sighed. That is my unfortunate fate. '

  She was instantly covered in gawky confusion, like Gil when told that she'd done something right. 'I'm sorry, sir,' she stammered. 'I didn't realize. . . '

  'Please,' Ingold begged her. 'You're making me feel horribly old. ' He reached out and took her hands. 'One thing more, Kara. There's a band of White Raiders somewhere in the area - I think a hunting band some thirty strong. We came upon a magic-post two days ago. I'd suggest you double your guard and widen your point-men. The Raiders are afraid. They may want one of your people for another sacrifice and they're certainly going to want your sheep. '

  One of the men in the group behind Kara asked worriedly, 'Afraid? What do they fear? The Dark? At the name of the Raiders, a whisper had passed through the train, like the smell of a wolf through a herd of cattle.

  Well, Rudy thought, they're desert dwellers. Maybe some of them have seen the leftovers from the Raiders' propitiations of the local spooks.

  'Possibly,' Ingold said. 'But the magic-post we found wasn't raised against the Dark. I have no idea what it is that they fear, but I do know that they fear it. '

  Kara frowned thoughtfully. 'It's the wrong time of the year for fires,' she said. 'And it w ouldn't be ice storms this far south. Unless they're a deep-north band with no idea how far south they've come. . . '

  'I should hesitate to believe that a band of Raiders, under any circumstances, has no idea where it is,' Ingold said. 'But I've seen the propitiations for all of those. It isn't any of them. Have you heard any rumour, any story, any hint of tracks or signs of anything else abroad in the lands?'

  A bearded farmer with a longbow grinned. 'That would scare the Raiders? Maybe a million stampeding mammoth followed up by a flock of horrible birds, or a sun-cat with a thorn in its paw. . . '

  Ingold shook his head and returned the grin. 'No - they don't make magic-posts against anything they can kill. '

  'Disease?' the woman suggested doubtfully.

  He hesitated. 'Maybe. But the Raiders have a rather simple way of dealing with disease. '

  'Well,' she admitted. 'But in a big epidemic you can't leave everybody behind. '

  'I seen 'em dump as many as twenty out of a band, ma'am, and that's a fact,' the farmer said, scratching his head. 'And there has been a lot of sickness and famine this winter, what with this consarn weather. '

  'Maybe,' Ingold said again. 'But on the whole, the Raiders regard disease as an internal weakness of the will, rather than as an incursion from the outside. The Raiders don't see things the way we do. Sometimes they fear some very odd things. But in any case, there is something out there; and against it - and against all other ills of the road may you be safe, Kara of Ippit, and those who walk in your shadow. ' Reaching out, he made a swift sign above her head. 'A good outcome to your journeyings. '

  She smiled shyly and repeated his sign. 'And to yours sir. '

  With this they parted, Rudy and Ingold continuing on their road, Kara and her village on theirs. The dust of the train swamped the two pilgrims, and they found themselves for a time surrounded in a white fog, moving among the crowding shapes of wagons, weaving among women, children, chickens, and goats. Craftsmen passed them with barrows full of tools, farmers bearing ploughs upon their backs, and makeshift warriors with swords and halberds. Dogs drove sheep along the fringes of the train, amid a faint, flat clatter of bells. More than one villager raised hands in greeting as the two wizards passed. An old granny knitting in the back of a wagon croaked cheerily, 'You're headed the wrong way, boys!' Kara's voice was faintly heard to exclaim in shocked disapproval, 'Mother!'

  Rudy grinned. 'So that's an untaught mage, than which there's nothing in the world more dangerous?

  'She knows her own limitations. ' Ingold smiled at the memory of that shy, homely woman. 'As a rule, half-taught mages are worse even than the untaught, but she has the goodness of heart that wizards often lack. Among wizards she is an exception, in her way. '

  'Is she?

  Ingold shrugged. 'Wizards are not nice people, Rudy. Kindliness of heart is seldom the
leading characteristic of a mage. Most of us are proud as Satan, especially those with only a few months' training. That's the reason for the Council. Something must exist to counterbalance the effects of the knowledge that you can, in fact, alter the paths of the universe. Haven't you felt it that euphoria that conies with knowing that you can braid fire in your hands and twist the winds of Heaven to your bidding?'

  Rudy shot him an uneasy glance and met eyes that were far too knowing and a smile of wicked amusement at having read his mind. He grumbled unwillingly, 'Yeah -well - I mean, so what?'

  The last of the herds was passing them, the whitish dust skating on the wind. Under a featureless sky, the stony emptiness stretched away to nothing. 'So what indeed?' Ingold smiled. 'Except that the ecstasy of power has a terrible way of getting out of hand. The Council and the Archmage have their work cut out for them to hold in check, not the power itself, but the souls of those who wield it. '

  Rudy thought for a moment about that, remembering the feeling that had sprung to his heart when he called fire, the quick, gleeful sparkle of triumph when his illusions worked. And he saw suddenly the trailhead of a path that could lead to evil past contemplating. But it was evil he understood. It was seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge and power for power's sake, leaving Minalde to search for his own destiny, and staying in that hidden chamber to fathom a crystal's mysteries, while Ingold faced death and the Keep's destruction outside. He saw in himself the potential for unchecked power.

  Even as his mind shied from that thought, he wondered, Does Ingold feel it, too? Does Lohiro? Like a young and golden dragon, with those empty, glittering eyes, the picture of the Archmage returned to him. Has he wrestled with the ecstasy of unlimited horizons?

  He must have, Rudy thought, // they made him Archmage. The most powerful wizard in the world, master of all the others. You really have to have your act together to stay straight under the weight of that one. Power-pure power. The rush from that must outdo any drug ever formulated.

  'How long does it take?' he asked. 'How long do you have to study at Quo?'

  'Most people stay there three to five years,' the old man said, turning away from the vanishing dust-cloud on the backward road and setting his face to the featureless west once again. 'But, as you see, not all mages take their training there. In times past, there were other centres of wizardry, the largest of which were centred around Penambra. And then, other mages learn by apprenticeship to itinerant conjurers, as Kara's mother probably did. The third echelon, the firebringers and finders and goodwords, operates purely instinctively, if it operates at all. But the centre is at Quo. Its towers are our home. '

  The afternoon was wearing toward its pallid close, the darkness louring down upon the east. At the Keep of Dare they would be shutting the great doors soon, under Govannin's prayers and Bektis' mediocre spells.

  'So where does Bektis fit into all this?' Rudy asked idly. 'Did he go to Quo, too?'

  'Oh, yes; in fact, Bektis was about ten years senior to me. He feels I've come down in the world. '

  'So you learned to be a wizard at Quo, too. '

  'Well - not exactly. ' Ingold glanced across at Rudy, the evening shadows blurring

  his features within the shadows of his hood. 'I studied at Quo for seven years,' he went on, 'and I learned a great deal about magic, power, and the shaping of the fabric of the universe. But unfortunately, no one there managed to train me out of my vanity and stupidity and my fondness for playing God. As a result of this, my first act upon returning to my home was carelessly to set in motion a train of events which wiped out every member of my family, the girl whom I loved, and several hundred other perfectly innocent people, most of whom I had known all my life. At that point,' he continued mildly, into the silence of Rudy's shock and horror, 'I retired to the desert and became a hermit. And it was in the desert, Rudy, that I learned to be a wizard. As I believe I said once before,' he concluded quietly, 'true wizardry has very little to do with magic. '

  And to that Rudy had no reply.