The Walls of Air Page 0,10

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, colourless 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!' Alwrr'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