The Walls of Air Page 0,28

between the trees.

'Please go on back,' Aide said hastily, brushing the stray ends of her hair away from her face. 'I'm not going far,

and...' 'You'll never make it there and back by dark,' Gil said bluntly.

'I - I'm not going to the refugee camp.' The younger girl drew herself up, standing on her dignity. Her expression reminded Gil of her own younger sister when she lied.

'And you shouldn't be going there alone,' Gil went on, as if she hadn't heard.

Aide would never make the big leagues as a liar. 'But I have to,' she protested. 'Please don't stop me. There's plenty of time...'

'They're camped outside the Vale, down at the Tall Gates,' Gil stated unequivocally. 'It will be dark in a little over two hours. And besides...' She took a step toward Aide, and the girl fell back, like a deer on the edge of flight. Gil stopped herself and spoke more softly. 'And besides,' she continued gently, 'if they learned who you were, you might never make it back at all.'

They won't know,' Aide insisted, still keeping her distance. 'I'll be all right.'

Gil sighed. 'You can't know that.' She took another step, and Aide retreated warily.

Rudy had said once that Minalde's crazy courage was equalled only by her

stubbornness. Gil saw now what he meant. 'At least don't go alone,' she said.

Aide flushed a little and began contritely, 'You don't have to...'

'Christ knows, somebody should!' Gil turned on her heel and started back toward the entrance to the Vale, cutting through the snowy woods. 'This way's quicker, and we can circle to avoid being seen from the watchpost on the road.' Aide followed in her wake without a word.

It took the girls a little over an hour to reach the camp. As Gil had surmised, the newcomers had taken over the Tall Gates, ancient watchtowers that in former times had guarded the principality around the Keep from the smaller, less organized realms of the valleys below. As the Realm had spread, the towers had ceased to be a frontier and had been allowed to fall into ruin. As ruins they remained, vine-grown cliffs of mortared stone dominating the narrow neck of the muddy road, strongholds only of bird and beast.

The girls were met on the road by a thin, grey man - who had once been very fat indeed, to judge by the sack-like wrinkles of his deflated chins - carrying a spear and wearing over a scarecrow assortment of rags a soiled cloak of gold-frogged velvet. Aide gave their names as Aide and Gil-Shalos, from the Keep of Dare, and asked to speak with his lord.

Ankle- deep muck pulled at their feet as they crossed the square before the northern watchtower. The place smelled like a privy, wreathed in a perpetual haze of woodsmoke. The pitiful flotsam of flight littered the ground. Meagre bundles of possessions, stray cook pots, and little heaps of firewood were scattered over the dirty snow. Men and women sat huddled miserably around their fires or moved among them slowly. The place seemed very quiet, except for the weak, persistent crying of a child. Gil felt ashamed of her cloak, her strength, and the marginal ration of food she'd wolfed down at noon. Beside her, Aide looked very white.

Their escort halted before a brush shelter. In the shadows at the back of it, Gil thought she could discern a small, stiff figure, lying completely covered by a ragged quilt; a man sat on a bed of cut pine boughs near the open end of the shelter, quietly holding the hands of two boys who with tear-blotched faces slept huddled at his side. He looked up inquiringly as the shadows of Gil and Minalde fell across the light.

'M'lord.'

The man got slowly to his feet, careful not to wake the boys, and limped from the shelter. Gil recognized him at once as the monk who had spoken for the refugees when Alwir had turned them away at the gates of the Keep. 'Yes, Trago?* Dark eyes sunk into leathery hollows moved past him to Gil and Aide, then rested for a moment on Aide's face. 'Yes,' he said quietly. 'You may go, Trago. Get someone to stay with the boys, if you would.'

Trago saluted and moved away through the camp.

The man turned back to them, and Gil noticed how waxy his skin looked under the black tangle of unkempt beard. 'I am Maia of Thran,' he introduced himself in that same quiet voice. 'Bishop of Penambra.' Aide