Inglorion-like all wizards in their arrogance and their ignorance-to
attempt to cheat Fate, to circumvent with will and illusion and this most subtle of snares called Magic, the fires intended to anneal the soul."
She settled back a little in her chair, and her eyes were a shark's eyes. "But a woman who brings drugs to her husband rather than let him suffer the pain of cleansing still sins. And for all your delusion of playing savior to the world, you are still the Hand of Evil and deliver all those whom you save over into Hell." "And you know better?" He spoke without irony, ashen gray and swaying slightly. "I know the law." The calm self-satisfaction in her voice made Gil's heart sink. "The law says that all things proceeding from magic proceed from Evil, no matter how good their seeming or how beneficial their ends."
It was the voice of one who will not be moved, who knows herself to be utterly right, killing others or dying herself without the smallest flicker of doubt as to her duty. From his low chair of ivory and rosewood the mage Bektis watched her, and Gil was struck by the whole souled absorption in his face, and his utter loathing and hate. "Evil is Illusion," Govannin went on. "Evil is Will. What else is magic but illusion and the action of a wizard's will upon the laws created for the physical world?" "As is art," Ingold replied softly. "As is medicine. The first woman who struck fire from steel and flint circumvented the laws of the gods of winter, lady; the first man who shaped a branch into a spear to hurl into the saber-tooth's mouth defied the shape of naked flat-faced clawlessness which he had been given. But I will not argue." He shook back the long white hair that had straggled down from his topknot, his eyes seeming very blue in the hollows of fatigue.
"Those same gods of winter have defeated me. I came south and sought the Blind King's Tomb, in hopes of working a great magic, a magic that would arrest the killing frost that spreads across the world. It would keep matters from growing worse, even if they could not be bettered immediately. In this I failed."
He put a hand out quickly, trying to catch his balance; the guards pulled Gil back when she tried to go to him. Where the chains crossed his back she could see a slow-spreading spot of red on the bandages.
"My lady, what I came here to do, I could not do. I had not the strength, and now I do not know what can be done. I can only ask your mercy, and your leave to go out of these lands, to return to the North, and help my own people there as best I can, until darkness falls."
Govannin tilted her head a little, and there was something ophidian in her movement, as if she were gauging distance for a killing strike.
"So learned," she said softly. "But ignorant, like a precocious child. I acquit you of malice, Inglorion. I know that you are beyond that. Had you a true soul, instead of only the self-blind shadow left you by Evil, I would say that your intent was good. You are indeed the greatest of the mages-"
Behind her Bektis stiffened indignantly and opened his mouth to protest. "-and your fall, therefore, is the farthest, entrapped by the subtlest of the Evil One's snares: the will to save those marked by God for testing to the uttermost. Take him away."
Her eyes moved to Gil. "You stay with him still, child?" Gil thrust her hands through the knot of her sword belt. "I don't think God has a problem with either loyalty or love."
"Don't you?" Govannin said conversationally, like the Devil at tea. "That is your error, child, and your sin. Take them both away."
She folded her hands upon her desk, the parchment on the floor stirring as the door was opened and the guards led Ingold through, Gil soundless in his wake. As soon as it closed behind them, he reached out for her, quick and desperate; the
guards pulled her back once more. Ingold groped for a moment, leaning against the tiled wall, like a man struck blind. Then he put his hand to his side and slowly slipped unconscious to the floor.
Chapter Twenty-One
''They're gonna attack the Keep." Rudy shaded his eyes against the dim glare of the morning sun, squinted up at the black