The Walls of the Air

by Barbara Hambly

  "Maybe it has been put up since you were here last?"

  "At the beginning of this summer? I hardly think so, with all the moss that's grown on it Look at how worn the stones are, there along the railing. The bridge looks as if it were there from the beginning of time. And since I know it wasn't…" He shrugged. "It was never there at all."

  "I seem to remember," Rudy said judiciously, "something you once said to me about disbelieving your own senses because of something you believe to be true…"

  Ingold laughed, remembering their first conversation in the old shack in the California hills. "I am paid," he said humbly. "If, when we cross by hardier means, the bridge proves to be real and not illusion, you may revile me in any terms you please, and I shall bow meekly to the lash." But when they scrambled, scratched and bleeding from forcing the recalcitrant Che up the impossible trail out of the gorge, Rudy looked back and saw that the stone bridge was only a single strand of willow withe, as frail as a spider web, on which the wizards had threaded their illusion. From there he could see the bone dump, too, at the bottom of the cliff below.

  Kara had come this way, Rudy thought. And Bektis, too, and Ingold, in his youth. Had it been this bad then? It was one hell of a price to pay for safety.

  "Hey, Ingold? If Quo stands on the Western Ocean, and the walls of air defend the landward side—has anybody ever tried to assault it by sea?"

  "Oh, yes," the wizard said. "It's been tried."

  Rudy thought about it and of his horror of the ocean and of deep water and of the many things that could happen out on those dark depths. The thought wasn't pleasant.

  This, then, was the other side of power—the power that isolated wizards, that made them vagabonds, exiles in their own world, the power that drew them together. He remembered the look in Alde 's eyes the first time he had called fire from cold wood:

  You sought wizardry, he told himself. And here it is. A bridge of illusion and the bones below.

  They traveled for hours through narrow canyons or followed rock ledges on the high peaks, slippery with ice. Twice they tried to force shortcuts over the bare, tawny flanks of the mountain, only to be driven back by the steepness of the ground. In the end, the trail petered out entirely, vanishing into the stony wastes. As they stood panting on the dark slope of a tumbled ruin of shale, Rudy looked up toward the pass, only to find that somehow he and Ingold had overshot it by miles, and it now lay to the south of them, the glaciers that crowned it gleaming palely in the heatless sky.

  Ingold leaned on his staff, as motionless as a statue, with only the tautness of his mouth and the angry glitter of his eyes betraying him. Somewhere in the distance, Rudy heard the whine of the wind and the angry buzz of a rattlesnake. Other than that, the world was utterly still, as barren of life as it had been when the sun had first sung the world up from the sea. The wizard turned on his heel and started back along the false trail without a word.

  Early evening found them in a deep, narrow valley thick with trees, at whose lower end lay a black tarn of still and oily water. "This place is not familiar to me at all," Ingold said quietly, eyeing the gloomy wall of tangled trees that all but covered the trail. "I think the wood is wider than we suppose. Can you see there, that blurring along the farther edge? It deludes the eye. I should be surprised if we can cross it before full dark."

  Rudy glanced uneasily over his shoulder for perhaps the thousandth time that day. He hated the smell of the woods, but he found he loathed the water more. A wet, white mist had begun to curl from its dark surface. Wreaths of it floated among the first of the trees. "Yeah," he said slowly. "But I'd sooner try that than camp near that water."

  "So would I, if you want the truth." Ingold gathered the lead-rope to hand and led the way into the woods, spells of clearing on his lips.

  The black trees grew very densely, the space between them choked with glossy-leaved holly, dark ivy, and wild grape that spilled across the path, tangling the pilgrims' footsteps. The valley mists seemed to follow them, sliding among the thorny trunks like white cats. Darkness thickened in the woods, and Rudy, tentatively adding his own clearing-spells to Ingold's, felt the magic that bound this place together into a single murky entity, a knot of hostility and evil. Twice they lost the path entirely, and Rudy began to wonder if the trees themselves were moving.

  "This is getting monotonous," Rudy panted, after the fourth time they had to halt and hack Che's packs clear of brambles with the little hatchet. The burro stood in shivering panic, the whites of his eyes showing all the way in a gleaming rim. "We gotta back out of this and try going around. We're never gonna get anywhere this way."

  "Again with your never," Ingold reproached. But in the deepening darkness, Rudy could see that the old man's face was lined with concentration and weariness under the bleeding thorn scratches. Having pulled the donkey free, they advanced a few feet and looked back. The path behind them was gone.

  Rudy cursed. Ingold sighed patiently and shut his eyes as if in meditation, bowing his head like some strange species of moss-grown tree himself. After a moment, Rudy saw his brow tighten in concentration and heard the deepening draw of his breath. Darkness seemed to tighten like a net. Rudy became aware of restless rustles and scurryings in the gloom around them. Things whistled in the trees, signaling, he thought.

  Finally Ingold's tense shoulders relaxed, and his eyes opened. "In my day there was an enchanted wood in these hills," he said, "but not like this. Unfortunately, as you may have seen, the wood fills this valley from end to end, and the mountains on both sides are steep. But at this rate, if we went on, we would stand a chance of being trapped farther in. If that happens, I would rather it happened in daylight."

  They turned back, and Rudy saw that the path they had taken into the woods had now disappeared ahead of them. He muttered a few choice curses at Lohiro and company and followed them up with clearing-spells that Ingold had taught him. The woods proved no easier to get out of than they had been to enter, and it was fully dark by the time they reached the edge. They made camp among the thinner trees by a stream, and Ingold drew the protective circle double and triple wide on the musty leaves underfoot.

  It had been a great many nights since Rudy had called up Alde 's image in the flames. But Ingold still studied his crystal by the flickering glow of the fire. Exhausted in body and spirit, Rudy watched him, following the movement in the blue hawk eyes as they sought whatever they sought among the glinting facets. His own visions in the crystal table at the Keep came back to him—bright blue eyes, as wide and cold as the sky, seemed to stare into his, glittering like the diamond surge of foam over raw bones. The image followed him down into a restless sleep.

  He dreamed of bones—bones lying in darkness, though in the dream he could see in the dark; the faint gleam of witchlight touched the ever-repeating curve of skull, rib, and pelvis in thin slips of ghostly silver. The dry, brown moss that the bones lay upon was slimy here, wetted with corruption and crawling with nameless and unspeakable white life. Around him, the red eyes of scavenger rats flickered in the dark. Something moved, hopping awkwardly. An eyeless white toad burped greasily at him from the top of a deformed skull. More toads hopped among the bones, slipping in the muck as they fled the touch of the witchlight. Rudy moaned, trying to fight his way clear of the horror of the dream, to turn his eyes from the hideous spectacle that he now saw covered the blackness of the uneven cavern floor for miles like a rotting swamp. Stalagmites rose through the filth like ghostly trees, and red eyes flickered and dodged around their bases. He heard the sticky scrambling of furtive feet in the dry, brown moss that was decaying and turning to dusty gray powder, where it was not horribly damp. He moaned again, sickened and faint. This time, however, it was not he who cried out, but the man he saw leaning against the dark entrance to some cavern beyond. His face was turned from Rudy, but Rudy knew him—would know him anywhere, whatever happened. The witchlight gleamed on white hair and on the galled ring of flesh visible between mitten and sleeve.
Then there was silence, broken only by the rustling of millions of tiny feet among the moss and bones…

  … among the leaves of the forest floor!

  Che's squeal of terror brought Rudy up, sweating. The burro was tugging wildly at his tether, ears flattened back along his narrow skull, eyes staring. Beyond him, Rudy could see Ingold on his feet, at the edge of the pale glimmer of the protective circle. And still beyond, among the trees, was a limitless sea of red eyes.

  "Holy Christ!" Rudy rolled to his feet and groped for his staff.

  "No light," Ingold said softly without turning his head. There was no wind, but the whisper of those tiny clawed feet was like the forerunner of a storm in the forest. Even where the darkness hid them, Rudy could sense the squirming of their packed bodies. Their dry, fetid smell was everywhere.

  "Can they come through the circle?" Rudy whispered. He thought the white flame of it flickered brighter, dancing among the fallen leaves.

  "No," Ingold said softly. There was a creak and rustle overhead. Rudy looked up. The branches of the trees were furred with the rats, like foul fruit.

  "Ingold, we gotta get out of here."

  "We'll do nothing of the kind," the wizard stated in a voice like stone. "As long as nothing breaks the circle, we are safe."

  Trust him, Rudy thought desperately, fighting the urge to run. He knows more about it than you do. Throughout the dark woods the rats shifted; the ferns were alive with their unholy scampering. He saw them clearly now, flowing in a gray-brown stream over the humped knees of the tree roots and through and around hollow logs. They swarmed in the stream bed and slithered in the deep, matted leaves, wrinkled noses pulled back from sharp, white teeth. Che squealed once again, jerking at his lead, his nostrils huge with terror.

  Rudy saw the picket pin start from the ground and grabbed for the rope. The burro gave an almost human scream and flung himself backward, the pin tearing loose in a small fountain of leaf mold and dirt. The rope slid through Rudy's fingers. The burro put his head down and bolted over the edge of the circle and into the darkness.

  It was as if the circling white flame had never been. The kicked leaves had not finished pattering down when the rats poured forward like a dirty river, hissing and squealing with rage. Rudy heard Che screaming and ran after him, striking with sickened horror with his staff at the vicious furry things that stuck like burrs to his boots, his coat, and his arms. One of the things launched itself from a tree in the darkness and struck his face; he thought he screamed, but later he wasn't sure, for at that moment he heard behind him the unmistakable roar of fire, and the light of it streamed over him. Flame splattered across the backs of the gray sea that seemed to be on the point of engulfing him. Turning, he saw Ingold swing his staff like a weapon, fire erupting from the length of it like a spewing banner of napalm.

  Che was squealing frantically, his coat matted with running blood in the firelight, three huge rats hanging like terrier dogs to his lacerated muzzle. Rudy struck them off with his staff, feeling at the same time claws and sharp little teeth ripping at his calves. He beat them away and grabbed the lead-rein, paralyzed with disgust and panic, desperate to fight free of the filthy things.

  The fire was spreading, rushing uncontrollably through the autumn-withered ferns. The leaves underfoot were catching, their moldering dampness throwing forth immense billows of sooty smoke. The flame in the ferns licked through that blinding curtain like the burning backdrop of Hell. Blazing rats fled this way and that, their fiery coats igniting the dead underbrush, their shrill screams forming an overwhelming metallic chattering above the smothered roar of the blaze. Smoke seared Rudy's eyes and seemed to clog his lungs, blinding him and trapping him in a wall of heat from which he could find no escape. Screaming in panic, Che twisted at the lead, and Rudy felt the stickiness of blood on his hands as he fought to drag the terrified animal out of a closing trap of heat, suffocation, and flame.

  Out of the rolling fog of the smoke Ingold burst, gasping, his muffler wound over his nose and mouth. He caught Rudy's arm and dragged him along the path. They waded through a surging inferno, floored in fire and roofed in blinding smoke, and echoing with the chattering shriek of rats burning alive. Against the blazing underbrush, the damp tree trunks stood like black, smoking pillars in the murk. Unable to breathe, unable to tell one direction from another, Rudy was conscious only of a desperate fight for air against the blinding heat and of Ingold's hand like an iron shackle on his arm. As they left the woods behind them, they could see the reflection burning in the dark waters of the tarn, like a thick stream of blood and gold.

  They did not stop until it was almost morning. The light from the forest fire was far behind them now, but the smell of smoke and rats stuck to their clothing, and the roar of the blazing underbrush carried for miles. Half-unconscious from asphyxiation, Rudy could only follow where Ingold led, up and down stony trails in blind darkness and through streams that bit their feet with cold. Dawn found them lying, scorched and exhausted, on level, stony ground. Rudy was too weary to flee farther, his hands and face burned, unable to sleep because of the terror of his dreams. The gray light that leaked slowly into the sky revealed the road before them, its hexagonal silvery blocks all but hidden under the accumulated drift of the dirt of ages. Above them loomed the massive darkness of the Seaward Mountains, plumed in billows and ostrich feathers of smoke and mist that caught the first coral tints of the morning. Behind them lay the rolling, lizard-colored sands of the high desert, the thick rust-red scrub nodding in the chill backwash of the northern winds.

  They were where they had been three days ago, before entering the walls of air.

  Rudy sighed, scarcely caring. All right, man, have it your way. I didn't want to visit your lousy town in the first place. Next year I'll go to Disneyland instead.

  But Ingold got slowly to his feet, leaning on his staff with singed hands, looking westward to the dark backbone of the mountains. Rudy thought the old man looked half-dead and felt suddenly concerned for him as he swayed like a drunken man on his feet. The first gleams of rare sunlight glinted in the wizard's hair. Ingold raised his bead, and his voice rolled out over the wooded expanse of the foothills. "LOHIRO!" he called, and the echoes boomed it in the rocks. "LOHIRO, DO YOU HEAR ME? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" Scrub and stone and water whispered a reply to his words. Somewhere a jay screamed. High up, a feather of smoke caught the new sun, like a vagrant rosy cloud. His shout leaped from rock to rock. "LOHIRO, WHERE ARE YOU?"

  But the echoes died, and the silence mocked their passing.

  They climbed throughout the day.

  At first the road was the same as on the previous day, swifter and easier because they knew the spells laid on it, though occasionally some branching trail that he had not seen before would catch Rudy's eye. The weather turned bad again, the sky heavy with the threat of rain. Rudy sent the cold front concerned several miles to the north, to dump its pent-up waters on the stony gullies of the foothills. He figured they had enough troubles without that. They reached the wooded vale with its burned trees and tarn of still water well before sunset and began the climb over the flanks of the mountain at its sides.

  Clouds still masked the high peaks. The gray rocks were damp and icy. Rudy scrambled wherever Ingold led, exhausted and half-frozen, dragging the unwilling burro behind. Night found them in a mist-drowned wood far above the valley. Rudy was so weary he could barely stagger. He mumbled something about being waked at midnight to take the second watch; but when he finally rolled over, stiff and smarting and aching in every limb, he found himself wet with the dew and frost of morning, and the world was opalescent in the clinging fogs.

  "Hey, you shoulda kicked me or something," he apologized, sitting up amid a soft crackling of ice on his blankets.

  "I did," Ingold replied easily. "Repeatedly. I could have beaten you with a stick with much the same results." He'd built a small fire and was making griddle cakes on the iron tripod they used for cooking. The dark smudges under
his eyes had turned to bruises. He looked as if he'd been in a fight. "It doesn't matter," the wizard added kindly. "I needed the time to think."

  Rudy wondered how much the old man had slept since seeing the empty Nest in the plains. He sat up, stretching his shoulders gingerly, and thought with dread of breaking the ice in the nearby stream to shave. The world smelled of newness, of wet grasses and snow and sky. But from the valley below, the wind brought up another smell, and Rudy turned his head quickly, not knowing what it was or liking it. He glanced over at Ingold. The old man was digging in the packs for the dried meat with which Hoofprint of the Wind had stocked them. His movements were slow and tired. You may have needed time to think, Rudy decided grimly, but it's gonna be a damn long day of rock climbing, and you look as if six cups of coffee, ten hours of sleep, and a handful of whites wouldn't do you any harm.

  "I've been up this trail a little farther already this morning," Ingold continued, returning to the fire. "The trail itself ends about two miles from here; from there the ground gets worse. You and I might make it, but we'd have to leave Che. And aside from the fact that he would surely die in this wilderness, we shall have troubles enough before us without trying to live off the land as well."

  Rudy sighed. His whole body ached with the thought of a trailless scramble over terrain worse than yesterday's. For one thing, he hadn't thought terrain could get worse than yesterday's. Gritting his teeth, he asked, "So what do we do?"

  "Go back."

  Relief flooded Rudy's muscles like the hot bath that was rapidly replacing food, California, and Minalde as the object of his most wishful fantasies. "I'm game," he said. "Maybe the woods will be easier to get through in daylight."

  They weren't.

  From the stream back for some distance into the woods, the fire had seared off the underbrush, though the wet bark and damp leaves of the trees themselves had defied its heat. Beyond the burned woods, the trees yielded at first to Rudy's spells. But through his magic he felt their strength, and the implacable power of it frightened him. In time, the trees crowded in thicker, brambles tangling at the travelers' clothing and vines catching at their feet, until it was all Ingold could do to force a path. Even so, it seemed that the underbrush closed in after the old man, and Rudy found himself struggling through the clutching hedges simply not to lose sight of his guide. The cloudy light of the overcast day sickened to murky gloom here, choked by mats of thrusting branches and tangled creepers, until the woods were almost as dark as evening.