The Walls of Air Page 0,62

wild movement of tossing sagebrush and cloud. Despairing, he cried against the winds, 'INGOLD!' The winds threw his voice back upon him again.

The cold up here was incredible, burning like a sword of ice run through his lungs. Raging winds ripped the sound of his cry from his lips, throwing it at random into the darkness. He yelled again, 'INGOLD!' His voice was drowned in the maelstrom of the night.

What was he to do? Return to the camp to wait? For what? Beat his way back to the road a few dozen yards away to look for some sign of the old man? Wait for morning? But he might as well give up hope then, for tonight's storm would scour all sign of Ingold from the face of the earth. A kind of frenzy took

him - the terror of being alone in the dark. He knew he was helpless without Ingold, unable to go on and probably unable to return to Renweth either, set down in the midst of a hostile and terrible place. He fought off the overwhelming urge to run, to flee somewhere, anywhere. The wind shrieked curses in his ears and tore at his face with claws of frozen iron. Ingold was gone -and Rudy knew he could never survive without him.

Then he heard the wizard's harsh, powerful voice, torn and twisted on the deceiving fury of the winds, calling his name. Rudy swung around, facing what he thought was the direction of the sound. He strained his eyes, but could see nothing in the utter darkness of the howling desert night. The winds were screaming so fiercely that he could barely have heard himself shout, but he heard the call again.

Leaning against the force of the wind, he struck off into the darkness.

It took him less than half an hour to realize he had been a total fool. Wherever Ingold was, whatever had become of him, searching for him in the wild blackness of the storm was tantamount to suicide. Staggering blindly under the flail of the elements, frozen to the bone and gasping with the mere effort of remaining upright, Rudy cursed the panic that had sent him away from the hidden camp in the arroyo. He had utterly lost sight of it, wandering helplessly, chasing every will-o'-the-wisp of movement he fancied he'd seen or a sound on the wind that he took for his name...

Turning around in despair, he struggled back toward where he thought the camp ought to be. But nothing in all that wind-ripped landscape was familiar. Wizard or no wizard, he could not see in the dark when the wind blinded his eyes. Against his numbed cheeks, he could already feel the stinging bite of powder snow.

If you lie down, you'll die, he told himself grimly. Keep moving till daybreak, for Chrissake, or it's one more contribution to the Starving Jackals' Benevolent Fund. But the

lure of sleep enticed him, the thought of that warmth beyond the dark wall. He thought of Minalde, of the sweetness of her arms, of the warm, golden afternoons of California, and of talking endless rounds of nothing with his buddies, throwing beer bottles at the trash can... Keep going, turkey, he commanded, forcing his mind from those soft temptations. Think about fingernails on the blackboard. Think about jumping in water. Think about anything but sleep.

He made himself move on.

There was no question of going anywhere or finding anything now only of putting one foot in front of the other, of keeping his blood circulating until morning. In the morning there would be time enough... For what? To find Ingold, when in all probability the old man was walking straight away from him and would continue to do so for however many hours it would be until dawn? To sleep, out in the middle of nowhere, exposed to the dangers of the desert without the old man's cloak of magic and expertise to cover him? He wondered if this was the ice storm Ingold had spoken of, the searing hurricane of cold that could freeze-dry a grazing mammoth complete with the buttercups in its mouth...

He fought back the urge to sleep. Gil's image returned to him, shouting through that other snowstorm that had covered their last flight to the Keep of Dare three weeks ago? A month ago? He pictured Gil dragging him up out of the snow and forcing him to move on when he would have lain down and died. / don't care if you