The Walls of the Air

by Barbara Hambly

  The noise in the Aisle was tremendous, the repeated bellowing clang mingling with the wild keening of voices, to rise and ring in the huge ceiling vaults until the whole Aisle was one vast sounding chamber. Men and women rushed wildly about, purposeful or aimless, the bobbing of the torches and lamps in their hands like the storming of fireflies on a summer night. Behind Gil, the pounding of the Dark upon the gates was a bass vibration that sounded in her bones.

  Ingold turned to her and asked quietly, "Is Bektis here?" He named the Court Wizard of the Chancellor Alwir, the only other mage in the Keep.

  "Surely you jest," Gil murmured, for Bektis had a most solicitous concern for his own health. Ingold did not smile, but the quick flicker of amusement that lightened his eyes turned his whole face briefly, elusively young. It was gone as quickly as it came, the lines of strain settling back again.

  "Then I fear that I shall have no choice," the wizard said softly. The blue-white glow from the end of his staff touched his face in shadow; the flicker of the torches beyond might have been responsible for the illusion Gil had of bitter self-reproach in the old man's expression, but she could not be sure. "Gil, I had not wanted to ask this of you, for you are not mageborn, and the danger is very great."

  "That doesn't matter," Gil said quietly.

  "No." Ingold regarded her for a moment, and a curious expression that she could not read overlay the serenity of his face. "No, to you it would not." Taking her hands, he placed his staff in them. The wan white glow remained at Hs tip, though she felt no sense of power or vibration in the staff itself. It was only wood, grip-smoothed over decades of use, and now warmed from his hand. "The light may fade if the spells of the Dark draw off too much of my power," he warned her. "But don't desert me."

  "No," Gil said, surprised that he should even mention the possibility.

  Ingold smiled at the self-evident tone in her voice. "I am not saying that either of us will survive this," he went on. "But if the outer gates go, the inner ones will crumple like thin tin. Icefalcon!" he called, and the thin young captain ran to them from where he had been among Janus' Guards.

  It was thus that Rudy saw them as he dropped the last few feet down a makeshift ladder from a rickety second-level balcony. They looked like scouts in enemy territory, framed in the sooty jumping shadows of the gate torches, their faces revealed by the white light of the staff. The clamor of the gates redoubled, the separate blows merging into one continuous assault, roaring like an earsplitting cannonade that set the inner gates visibly vibrating and stopped Rudy's breath with horror.

  Someone close to him screamed. The Icefalcon mounted the steps at a light-footed run, braids white in the shadows against his black surcoat, and began to turn the locking rings that closed the inner gates. The thought of the pounding fury in the night outside made Rudy's blood run cold, but he would not for any reason whatever have gone close enough to the gates to stop them. The gates moved open, inward on their soundless hinges; the bellowing roar of the assault on the outer gates rolled from the ten-foot passage between, a howling tidal wave of sound. The black square gaped, a clanging maw of darkness and roaring horror.

  In the white circle of the magelight, Ingold and Gil stood like lovers, wizard and warrior, their nicked, bruised swordsman's hands joined on the wood of the staff. Then Rudy, his soul cringing, saw Ingold turn away and mount the steps. Gil followed with the glowing staff upraised like a lantern in her hand.

  She can't be doing that! Rudy thought desperately, running to the foremost edge of the scattered and horror-struck groups that stood in the Aisle. She hasn't got any magic of her own. If the Dark break through the gates and swamp Ingold's power, she has nothing!

  But he could not go toward them. He stood helplessly on the edge of the darkness.

  The blackness of the passage framed the old man in his stained and rusty brown mantle and the girl in faded black with the white emblem on her shoulder and the wan light glowing above her head. The bawling roar of the power of the Dark surrounded them in the midnight of that enclosed space, but neither Gil nor Ingold looked around. Ingold's eyes were on the gates, Gil's, unquestioningly calm in the midst of that unearthly roaring, on Ingold's back.

  She's crazy, Rudy thought in horror. Never, never, never…

  Ingold had reached the end of the narrow tunnel. By the swift-waning glow of the witchlight, Rudy saw him put out his hands, touching the shaking steel of the outer gates. Only inches of metal separated him from the wild blood-hunger that haunted the night outside—separated everyone in the Keep from instant and hideous destruction. The witchlight flickered, fading…

  And like fire, spreading from Ingold's fingertips, Rudy could see the runes that spelled the gates. They seemed at first to be only a faint reflection, swimming within the metal like schools of fish below the surface of clear water, visible only to his wizard's sight. But under Ingold's touch they brightened, flickering into life in a webwork of shining graffiti, spread over the gates from top to bottom and across the walls beside them. They were incomprehensible in their complexity, meshing tighter and tighter as more of those faint silver threads glimmered into view. The light from them outlined the old man in silver and bathed his scarred hands in a quivering foxfire glow. Silenced by the beauty of it, Rudy forgot the danger and the wrath of the Dark outside. He watched Ingold's hands move across the surface of that phosphorescent galaxy, his touch calling forth the woven names of ancient mages, tracing his own name among those lattices of light.

  Impossibly, under the harsh, wild roar, Rudy could hear him speaking, his scratchy, velvet voice weaving his own spells of ward and guard there, placing his power on the doors. As he had felt it on the road down from Karst, Rudy felt again the force of the power filling and surrounding that nondescript little man.

  "What the hell does that old fool think he's doing?"

  The words were screamed out a foot from Rudy's ear. He could barely make them out above the din of the gates. His concentration broke. For an instant he saw Ingold as nonwizards would see him, an old man in a patched brown robe, standing alone in the darkness, tracing imaginary patterns on the door with his fingers. Then Rudy swung around to see the Chancellor Alwir at his side, the man's face dark and clotted with anger.

  "He's spelling the doors!" Rudy shouted back.

  The Chancellor brushed past him, striding forward up the steps. "He'll have us all killed!" Alwir strode through the darkness and the roar of sound like a man facing blinding rain, to seize the edge of the great door in order to shove it to. The counterweighted steel moved easily, swinging smoothly before another hand stayed it. Cool and arrogant, the Icefalcon looked across into the Chancellor's jewel-blue eyes.

  Rudy couldn't hear what passed between them. Alwir's shout was lost in the roaring fury from the passage beyond, and the Icefalcon did not raise his voice to reply. The cacophony was hardly so much sound anymore as an elemental force that blotted sound. In the sickly pallor reflected from the staff in Gil's hands, the scene before the gates had an air of nightmare unreality blurred by the dirty redness of the torches. The two black-clothed men faced each other soundlessly, the one raven, the other pale as ice.

  Though Gil, within the tunnel of the gates, must have known what was taking place, Rudy could not see that she so much as turned her head. The light of the staff she held was dying.

  Looking beyond Alwir and the Icefalcon into the darkness, Rudy saw to his horror that the light of the runes had entirely died. Ingold stood alone in a dark hollow of sounding metal, the only marks visible on the shivering steel the silver tracing of his own spells. Still Rudy saw him moving in the darkness, tracing signs that flickered and were swallowed by the malice of the Dark. Over the furious hail of blows on the gates, Rudy heard Alwir yell, "Shut the gates! I order you to stand off and shut them!"

  The Icefalcon only stood, regarding him with cold, colorless eyes. Behind him, the tunnel had grown utterly dark.

  The Chancellor cried something in his great battle
voice, and his hand went to the hilt of his sword. Metal flashed in the reddish shadows of the torches as it swept free of its scabbard…

  … and the faint hiss-ching of the edge singing clear was as audible and distinct as a note of music.

  The sudden, utter silence that fell upon the hall was like a roaring in the ears. It was like an outdoor silence in so huge a place, for the first second unbroken even by a drawn breath among the several hundreds of people who had come to take problematical refuge in the Aisle. So deep was the hush that lay over them all that Rudy could hear clearly the soft, light tread of Ingold's returning feet.

  The wizard stepped through the dark gate, with Gil moving quietly at his heels. The old man took the door edge from Alwir's clench and pushed it gently to. The faint, hollow boom of its closing reverberated to the ends of that soundless hall.

  "The gates will hold against the Dark now." Like the sound of the gates, Ingold's grainy voice was low, but it carried to the farthest corners. "It may be that they will try to break in elsewhere tonight, but… I think the main danger is past."

  "You—foolish—old—bastard!" Alwir's resonant voice grated over the words like a file. "Opening the inner doors could have been the death of us all!"

  "They would never have held if the Dark Ones had forced the spells on the outer," the wizard returned mildly. His face was very white, and his hair was matted dark with sweat, but only Gil stood close enough to him to see that his hands were not altogether steady. Quietly, she returned his staff to him and stood close by his elbow.

  Alwir spoke as cuttingly as a flaying whip. "And is that something else that you, as a wizard, speak of with sole authority? As the only wizard in the Keep, do you feel justified in every crackpot scheme you care to pursue?"

  Ingold raised heavy-lidded blue eyes to meet Alwir's. "Not the only wizard," he replied softly. "Ask your court mage Bektis."

  Alwir swung around. "Bektis!"

  The word was snapped in the way a dog-handler might crack a whip on his boot to bring his dog belly-down to heel. The court mage disengaged himself with great dignity from the crowd that had formed itself before the western doors and came forward, the jumping torchlight salting fire over the bullion embroidery of his velvet sleeves.

  "Whether the gates would have broken or not," he said, stroking his waist-length silvery beard with delicate fingers, "it would have been perhaps better, had you consulted with others before any course was decided upon." He looked haughtily down his nose at Ingold. Rudy could see his high, domed forehead all pearled with sweat.

  "Indeed it would have," another voice purred suddenly, low and dry and as thin as wind through bone, "had you been here."

  Bektis turned as if bitten. Govannin Narmenlion, Bishop of Gae, moved up the steps toward them at the head of a small company of the Red Monks, the bald-shaved warriors of the Church. Above the gory crimson of the episcopal robes, the Bishop's face was thin and bone-hard, a skeleton with living coals burning in the dark eye sockets. Only the fullness of her lips betrayed her sex. Her harsh voice rode easily over the court mage's indignant reply. "I commend your courage, Ingold Inglorion. But it is said that the Devil guards his own."

  Ingold bowed to her. "As does the Straight God, my lady," he replied. "You know better than I in whose hands rest the people of the Keep." He looked ready to pass out on his feet, but he met the chill, fanatic eyes levelly, and it was Govannin who turned away.

  "And he was not the only one conspicuous by his absence, my lady Bishop," Alwir added with sweet malice. "Indeed," the Bishop replied calmly. "Many were absent from their appointed posts. Others remained—to guard their stores of food, lest those be looted while they were gone."

  The Chancellor's brows shot up, then plunged, hooding eyes that were the same morning-glory blue as his sister Minalde's, but hard as the sapphires he wore around his neck. "Looted?"

  "Or inventoried," the Bishop went on softly, "to be marked for future—" Alwir's mouth hardened dangerously. "—reference."

  He lashed out, "And you think that in the midst of an attack by the Dark Ones—"

  "The Faith must protect itself as it can," she shot back at him. "To preserve our independence, we must be beholden to no secular power for bread."

  "As Lord of the Keep, I have the right to control—"

  "Lord of the Keep!" Govannin spat scornfully. "The brother of the Regent for the true King, my lord, and that only. A man who consorts with wizards, who seeks to bring the Archmage, the very left hand of Satan, here among us. If you expect the blessings of the Straight God upon your endeavors…"

  "The Straight God works in many ways," Alwir grated. "If our strike against the Dark in their Nests is to succeed, we shall need both the troops of the Empire of Alketch in the south and the wizards of the west."

  Like flint, his words struck fire from those steely eyes. The Straight God has no truck with the tools of Satan," she snapped, "nor with those who foul their hands with such tools."

  "We are beyond the time when a ruler can pick and choose his tools."

  "There is never a time when siding with the Crooked One is excusable."

  Quietly, Gil took Ingold's arm, and they descended the steps to the main body of the shadowed Aisle. The old man moved slowly, stiffly, leaning on his staff. Those who had crowded around to see the confrontation between wizard and Chancellor fell back from him, murmuring and making the sign against evil. Rudy fell quietly into step with them. He nodded back to where the Chancellor and the Bishop were still squabbling and shook his head. "I don't believe this."

  "Oh, come, Rudy," Ingold said mildly. "They haven't any proof that I did more than endanger the whole Keep by opening the inner gates." He glanced sideways, sunken eyes amused.

  "But I saw the motherloving runes!" Rudy exploded, "They disappeared, goddammit!"

  "Did they?" Gil looked across at him curiously. "You know, I didn't see anything at all. I could feel—things, forces, in the air. But it was just—darkness."

  Frustrated, Rudy turned to Ingold for support. "Of course they did," the wizard said. "But you were the only person in the Keep capable of seeing—you and Bektis."

  "And it would be worth Bektis' job to say so," Gil added wryly.

  She looked tired, Rudy thought, and no wonder. Coming down from Karst and training with the Guards, Gil had begun to have the look of a half-starved alley cat. He had never understood her, either as an intolerant, intellectual scholar in California or now as a warrior of the Keep. But having seen her standing behind Ingold as he faced down all the armies of the night, Rudy felt an awe of her that amounted almost to fear.

  "That's how we wizards get our reputation for eccentricity," Ingold went on in his mild, scratchy voice. "We do things that people don't understand, for we see things differently and act as we deem fit. Those who are not mageborn cannot comprehend us and perforce must mistrust us or, rarely, trust us implicitly. It's no wonder wizards have few friends and that those few are mostly other wizards." They crossed a footbridge, fragments of lamplight glinting on the silent spill of ebony below. "And then, too, horrible things have been known to happen to those who befriend mages."

  The groups of people, the huddled families and restless, prowling watchers, were slowly trickling from the Aisle to return to the black mazes of the Keep. From the doorways on the lower levels, voices could be heard as patrols called to one another. Alwir and Govannin, each surrounded by a separate retinue, were making their way back up the Aisle, the venom in their voices audible, though distance and echoes blurred the words. By the gates a line of guards had been set, their drawn swords flickering eerily in the red torchlight. The opposed terrors of both noise and silence no longer filled the Keep. Rudy wondered how long it was until dawn.

  "I can't imagine what it's going to be like if you guys do bring the Archmage and the Council of Wizards here," Gil went on as they approached the darkness of the barracks. "Alwir's going to try to use them against the Bishop, even as he'll use the troops of the Em
pire of Alketch, if he can get them."

  "I have no doubt that he will get them," Ingold said quietly. "But since the Alketch is practically a theocracy, he will be lucky if his precious allies don't take his power and hand it over to the Church. He'll need Lohiro on his side to balance that threat if he hopes to invade the Nests of the Dark and still have any sort of kingdom to rule afterward."

  "Ingold," Rudy said uneasily, "I think I've seen the Archmage."

  The old man's attention narrowed and focused like the beam of a laser. "Where? How?"

  "Here, in the Keep. In this crystal kind of thing. I— I got lost." The wizard raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Rudy hesitantly described the room, the table, the crystal, and the visions he had seen.

  Ingold listened intently until Rudy was done and then asked him, "Where was this room?"

  "I don't know," Rudy said helplessly. "Someplace on the second level is all I know."

  Ingold was silent long enough for Gil to wonder what arcane curses revolved through his mind. Finally he sighed. 'That is Lohiro," he said. "I have seen him walk so, down the beach at Quo. But the thing that you speak of I have never seen before." They stopped before the doors of the barracks. Ingold glanced over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the Aisle. Flickering lights ran to and fro there on hurrying ghostly feet, like spooks on a deadly earnest Halloween. He turned back to them. "I have sought for some word, some contact with Lohiro for a month now, ever since the fall of Gae."

  "Could you put off your departure?" Gil asked. "Worst-case, it wouldn't take more than two days to find that room."

  The old man hesitated, obviously torn. At last he shook his head. "In two days, the storms will have moved down from the high glaciers to bury the Pass again." He sighed. "If we leave tomorrow, I shall be turning them back the last day down the foothills as it is. After that it will be weeks before we can get out."

  "Wouldn't it be worth it?" She glanced around, as if at the bleak world beyond the windowless walls of the Keep. "If you could make contact with him, he could start on his way here tomorrow and you'd cut your time in half."