The Walls of Air Page 0,100

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 grey 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 grey-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 mould 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 atthe vicious furry things that stuck like burrs to his