The Walls of Air Page 0,69

hundreds and hundreds of years.' And now here they were.

In the cold, pale wastes of the desert, they moved like perambulating haystacks, far more vast than any elephant Rudy had ever seen. They looked absurdly like the artists' reconstructions in picture encyclopedias - enormous shaggy bulks sloping down from huge, blocklike heads and mountainous shoulders, little fanlike ears, and recurved tusks like the soundbow of an ancient harp, with small, black, beady eyes above the tusks. Their brown fur was speckled with the white spits of snow that blew down from a bleak, featureless sky. Rudy identified the herd bulls, as massive as freight cars, the smaller cows, and the little calves, the smallest of which was still considerably larger than a Winnebago, clinging like Dumbo the Elephant to mamma's tail. A fresh gust of wind stung his face and flurried snow into his sheltering rocks. The mammoth turned their gargantuan backs to the snow and strode off southward, driven before it as they had been driven, Rudy thought, from their home on the high, brown grasslands of the north.

He shivered and wondered how much farther he could get on this futile quest. To

the west, the colourless horizon lay as straight as a ruled line. He doubted he would see the Seaward Mountains for weeks yet and he knew already that he would not be able to continue that long. Ingold was right, he thought bitterly. / should have reconsidered, sat tight back at the Keep. But, dammit, I didn't know then I'd lose him.

Ingold knew. He knew there was an odds-on chance of one of us buying it and he was afraid it was going to be he. And he knew there had to be someone else to finish the quest.

Despairing, Rudy leaned his forehead on his wrists against the stone and wished he were dead. Why me?

The question is the answer, Rudy. The question is always the answer. Because you're a mage. You wanted to come along to learn to be a mage. You came to be a mage, and he took you because only a mage can finish the quest. You still owe him.

I didn't want this! his mind cried.

You didn't want to realize that you can call fire from darkness?

Dammit, Rudy thought tiredly. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Even when he was gone - lost - devoured by the Dark - you never could win an argument with Ingold.

A change, a turning of the wind, brought to him the swift, steady drumming of hooves - horses, a troop of them. A distant beating murmur vibrated through the rock beneath his body. He inched his head over the lip of the crag once more and saw them, like ghosts streaming as grey as mist through the snow-flecked wind. White Raiders!

Ingold had been right. They were undoubtedly the people of the Icefalcon. Pale braids like Vikings streamed out behind the lean, long-legged warriors bending over the curved necks of their mustangs. They turned in a single fluid line, manes rippling and nostrils smoking, less than half a mile off, but barely visible except as a pounding sense of motion in the empty lands. There was nothing of them to catch the eye; the horses were mostly that wolfish grey-brown of the land; the riders wore the same colour. Even the fairness of their braids was the echo of sun-bleaching on dry grass. The fluttering of tags, feathers, and chips of bright-winking glass on their harness seemed like the random twinkling of wind and leaves. In a wide curve, they headed along the tracks of the mammoth and vanished, driven south by the winds.

Rudy sighed. He'd have to hunt again that day, for his rabbit meat was nearly gone. He changed the bandage on his ankle, cannibalizing another strip from the hem of his frayed surcoat for the purpose, and examined the wound worriedly. He had no idea what blood poisoning looked like or how long it took for red streaks to show up. Ingold had taught him emergency spells to keep gangrene at bay, but Rudy had no idea whether he'd executed them properly or not. It was borne upon him how gross was his own ignorance and how much he would have to learn, provided he ever got out of this mess alive. He cringed at the thought of all the knowledge he had passed blithely by in the good old days when he could go to a doctor, a grocery store, or -God forbid! the cops as a