The Walls of Air Page 0,133

as I do that God cannot remove temptation. It comes from inside you, and not from any outer cause. And you would

be tempted as long as you lived - every time someone called upon you to use your powers for healing, and in times to come, when one of your people begs you to put the runes on his door to keep the Dark at bay. How could you refuse?'

The young man raised his face from his hands. 'I never would,' he gasped. 'No?'

'I have no power,' the priest whispered hopelessly. 'I gave it up - sacrificed it. I have no power.' He faced Ingold desperately in the wavering shadows, his full lips pressed tight together and trembling. 'That power comes from the Devil, the Lord of Mirrors. Yes, God help me, I am tempted and will-forever be tempted. But I will not trade my soul for power, not even the power to help others. That power comes from the Crooked Side, and I will have no dealings with.it. And then -I dreamed -I saw that city that I have known in my heart all my life, how it would look... And you were there...'

'Do you know why you had the dream?' Ingold's voice was soft, coming from a form that was little more than a disembodied shadow among shadows, with a sunken glint of azure eyes.

'It was a summons,' Wend whispered. 'A need. A call. To go somewhere...'

To go to Renweth Keep at Sarda Pass,' Ingold said, and that deep, grainy voice, though quiet, seemed to fill the tiny room. To held me and Rudy - and whomever else we can find - to drive out the Dark.'

'And what else?' The young man's face shone with sweat, his eyebrows black against the whiteness of his high, shaven crown. To go openly to the Devil? To announce to my Bishop - if he survived - and to anyone else who cares to know that I am apostate?To put myself under judgement as a heretic?'

Rudy, remembering another pair of steely, dark eyes burning out of a shaven skull, reflected that the kid had a point.

'And wrongly,' Wend went on in a whisper. 'Wrongly. This world, when all is said, is an illusion. It will go on without me. My soul is all I have, and if I lose it - it will be forever.'

A long silence followed, with priest and wizard facing each other across the dying ripple of the hearthlight. They were curiously alike, Rudy thought, in their colourless robes. He remembered his own days as a drifter on the California highways, drawn by yearnings that could find no expression, an outcast because nothing made sense in terms of what he knew to be true. He tried to picture a life of fighting those yearnings, tried to imagine deliberately putting the powers of wizardry aside.

A mage will have magic...

He could not conceive of putting it aside.

Ingold rose. 'I am sorry,' he said quietly. 'You have temptations enough; to add to them would be poor payment for your hospitality. We will go.'

'No.' Brother Wend caught his sleeve as he moved to wake Rudy, though a moment before the priest would have cut off his hand rather than touch the old man.

'Wizard or devil, I cannot turn you out into the night. I -I'm sorry. It's only that I've fought it so long.'

Ingold moved his hand as if to lay it upon Wend's shoulder, but the young priest turned away, retreating into the shadows at the far end of the room where his own narrow pallet was. Rudy heard the creak of ropes as he lay down, followed by the slurred whisper of blankets. After a moment Ingold returned to his seat by the hearth, drawing his knees up before him and evidently preparing to stare broodingly into the fire until dawn.

Silence settled over the narrow cell as the fire burned low, but Rudy could hear no alteration in the young priest's shaken breathing and knew that he did not sleep.

'And he was right,' Rudy concluded, speaking of it many days later. 'That's the damn thing. You remember how Govannin's always saying, "The Devil guards his own." Well, he doesn't, not anymore.' Snow lay deep around them, covering the foothills through which they had trudged for two laborious days, blanketing the steep, rocky rise of the ground. Above them the black cliffs were criss-crossed with heavy, white ledges of snow, and the dark furring of trees was weighted with it. A smother