left him, with Rudy following.
Alwir watched them go, vanishing into the black slit of the gatehouse door. He recognized Gil's hatred for what it was, but he was used to the hatred of his inferiors. He shook his head sadly and dismissed her from his mind.
Neither Gil nor Rudy spoke as they climbed the black, twisting stair. It led them to a room, hardly wider than a hallway, situated over the gate itself; warped windows of bull's-eye glass admitted only the cool whiteness of the light and blurred swimming impressions of color and shape. The place had been built as the quarters for the gate porter, but was now used for the storage of the Guards' food. Sacks of flour and oatmeal lined the walls like sandbags on a levee, alternating with wax-covered wheels of scarlet cheese. Over a low pile of such provisions at the far end of the room a blanket and a fur rug had been thrown; a small bundle of oddments, including a clean robe, a book, and a pair of knitted blue mittens, was rolled up at the foot of this crude bed. Ingold sat in the room's single chair next to the south window, as unmoving as stone. The cold white window-light made him look like a black and white photograph, etched mercilessly the deep lines of age and wear that ran back from the corners of his heavy-lidded eyes to his shaggy temples, and marked with little nicks of shadow the scars on his hands.
Gil started to speak, then saw that he was looking into a jewel that he had set down on the windowsill, staring into the gem's central facet as if seeking some image in the heart of the crystal.
He looked up at them and smiled. "Come in," he invited.
They picked their way cautiously through the clutter of the room to the small patch of clear floor space by the wizard's bed. They found seats on sacks and firkins.
Gil said, "Alwir tells me you're not sending us back."
Ingold sighed but did not look away from the bitter challenge in her face. "I'm afraid he's right."
She drew in a deep breath, pain, fear, and dread twisting together within her. Crushing emotion under an inner silence that she could not afford to break, she asked quietly, "Ever?"
"Not for some months," the wizard said.
Her breath leaked out again, the slow release of it easing nothing. "Okay." She rose to go.
His hand closed over her wrist like a snake striking. "Sit down," he said softly. She tried to pull her arm away, without replying, but his hand was very strong. "Please." She turned back, cold and angry; then looking down she saw something in his blue eyes that she'd never expected to see-that he was hurt by her anger. It shook her to the heart. "Please, Gil."
She stood apart from him for a moment, drawn back to the length of her arm. His fingers were locked around her wrist as if he feared that if he released her, he might never see her again. And maybe, Gil thought, he'd be right. She saw again the vision of her delirium: warm, bright images of some other life, another world, friends and the scholarship she had hoped to make her life, distant from her and guarded by some dark, terrible form that might have been the Dark and might have been Ingold; she saw projects, plans, research, and relationships falling into a chasm of absence, beyond her power to repair. Rage filled her like dry, silent heat.
Behind her, Rudy said uneasily, "Months is a long time to play tag with the Dark, man."
"I'm sorry," Ingold said, but his eyes were on Gil.
Trembling with the effort, she let go of the rage. Without it to sustain her, all the tension left her body. Ingold drew her gently to sit on the bed beside him. She did not resist.
"I should have spoken to you before the council," Ingold said quietly. "I was afraid that this would happen."
Gil still could say nothing, but Rudy ventured, "You said something about that yesterday morning, when you were taking off for Gae with the Guards. About how, if the Dark showed up, we maybe couldn't get back."
"I did," Ingold said. "I feared this all along. I told you once before, Gil, that our worlds lie very close. Close enough for a dreamer to step inadvertently across the line, as you did. Close enough for me to step quickly from one world to the