The Walls of Air Page 0,61

see a grid of fine-mesh wire. Evidently she wasn't the only person who'd worried about the Dark Ones getting into the air conditioning. 'And here's another one. What's the power source?' The what?'

'The power source, the - what makes it all move.' 'Maybe it just moves by itself because it is its nature to move.' Which, Gil reminded herself, was a perfectly rational explanation, given a medieval view of the universe.

'Nothing lower than the moon does that,' she explained, falling back on Aristotle and sublunary physics. 'Every thing else has to have something to cause it to move.'

'Oh,' Aide said, accepting this. The unseen walls picked up the murmur of their voices and repeated them over and over again, behind the sonorous whooshing of the pipes. 'Aide, do you realize...' Gil turned back, grubby and dusty in her black uniform, the lamplight glowing across her face. There could be other places in the Keep like this, other rooms, laboratories, defences, anything! Hidden away and forgotten. If we could find them... God, I wish Ingold were here. He'd be able to help us.'

Aide looked up abruptly. 'Yes,' she said. 'Yes, he would. Because - Gil, listen, tell me if this makes sense. Could the - the power source be magic?'

Gil paused, thinking about it, then nodded. 'It must be.' After three thousand years, she thought, // was an easier solution than a hidden nuclear reactor.

'Because that would explain why none of this was mentioned in the records.' Aide leaned forward, her dark braids falling over her shoulders, her eyes wide and, Gil thought, a little frightened. 'You say the Keep was built by - by wizards who were also engineers. But the Scriptures of the Church date from long before the Time of the Dark. The Church was very powerful even then.' Her voice was low and intense. 'It's so easy to fear wizards, Gil. If they held the secret of the Keep's building - once the secret was lost, there would be no finding it again. And that could happen so easily. A handful of people... If something -something happened to them - before they could train their successors -'

Gil was silent, remembering Ingold before the spell-woven doors of the Keep and the fanatic hatred in Govannin's serpent eyes.

Aide looked up, the lamplight shining in her eyes. 'I was raised all my life to distrust them and to fear them,' she went on. 'So I know how people feel about them. I know Rudy has power, Gil, but still I'm afraid for him. And he's out there somewhere, I don't know where. I love him, Gil,' she said quietly. 'It may be unlawful and it may be foolish and hopeless and all the rest of it, but I can't help it. There used to be a saying: A wizard's wife is a widow. I always thought it was because they were excommunicates.' She put her feet on the descending rungs of the long ladder back to the second level. Her eyes met Gil's. 'Now I see what it does mean. Any woman who falls in love with a wizard is only asking for heartache.'

Gil turned her face away, blinded by a sudden flood of self-realization and tears. 'You're telling me, sweetheart,' she

muttered. Aide, who had already started her descent, looked up. 'What?' 'Nothing,' Gil lied.
Chapter 8
The smothering sense of impending horror woke Rudy from a sound sleep. Wind screamed overhead, but the arroyo in which they'd made camp was protected and relatively still. He sat up, the rock against which he'd leaned to take his turn at guard duty digging sharply into his back, his breath coming fast, his hands damp and cold. His heart chilled with the knowledge that Ingold was gone. A hasty look around confirmed it. He could see nothing of the wizard in the shifting darkness of the fire.

Rudy scrambled hastily to his feet, the terror of being left to his own devices in the midst of the wind-seared desert night fighting the horror born of guilt for falling asleep on duty. A thin shiver of wind lashed down on him from above, but it wasn't that which made himshudder. He knew himself incapable of surviving without the wizard. And - who or what could have snatched Ingold so silently? Panic seized him. He caught up his bow and quiver and scrambled up the steep, rocky bank. At the top, the seething turmoil of the winds struck him, his wizard's vision showing him nothing but the