The Walls of Air Page 0,80

spots.'

Ingold fell silent, deep in thought, and thus they came to the entrance of the home of the Dark.

It was the first such place Rudy had seen, an entrance such as all must have been before humankind had used the deep-founded stones to bear the weight of early temples and forts. A vast plaza, hundreds of feet to the side, lay before them, like a football field floored in black and shining glass. In its centre gaped a rectangle of shadow, like an open and screaming throat pointed at the sky. From it, worn stairs led down to the depths of the world. Rudy shivered, at once repelled and curiously attracted, a fear that was oddly like acrophobia coming over him. He felt an uneasy desire to cover that inky pit, to cover it and chain down the cover, and to mark it with the rune of Darb, the rune that would not let evil pass. But side by side with the repugnance was the fear that, if he got too near, he would descend those stairs and, against his conscious will, go freely to the Dark.

The riders drew rein where the snowy ground sloped downward to that glassy pavement. Ingold nudged his horse forward down the slope, and the hooves clicked loudly on the stone as he rode to the very brink of the pit.

There he dismounted and took his staff from where it had been tied across the horse's withers; he had fetched it when they'd brought the burro Che into the camp last night. From the bank of snowy ground where he sat his horse among the Raiders, Rudy watched him, feeling a kind of eerie uneasiness as Ingold stood for a few moments on the lip of the stair, his head turned, listening as Zyagarnalhotep had listened to the wind. Then he descended a few steps and listened again, his hands in their incongruous blue mittens folded around the wood of the staff, the white sky vast above his head.

Hoofprint of the Wind called out, 'What think you,

Desert Walker?'

Ingold looked up and pushed his hood back from his face. 'I hardly know what to think,' he said. He came back toward them, like a ghost himself in the blowing wasteland of cold, and his horse- followed him like a dog with its single rein trailing. 'I feel that they are gone. In fact, I do not believe there is anything living down there, good or evil. Will you come down with me, Hoof print of the Wind, to see this for yourself, or will you remain on guard up here while I go?'

The Raider looked uneasy, a feeling which Rudy heartily shared. He trusted Ingold implicitly and had never seen him err. If the wizard said there was nothing down there, he was probably right. On the other hand, Rudy knew that the Dark had magic of their own. There was just the outside chance that Ingold was wrong. And if Rudy was jumpy about it, somebody who knew the old man only by reputation could hardly be expected to follow him down to the very heart of the darkness, no matter how macho he was.

'If you are right, and there is nothing below,' the chieftain

said, 'better would it be that we remain to guard the road at your back.'

'Even so,' Ingold agreed without irony, since this was, after all, his expedition to begin with. 'Rudy?'

'Uh - ' Rudy said. 'Yeah. Sure.' He slid down from his horse's back, astonished at how sore he was. Nine hours of fast, steady riding was no joke for a novice. He wondered if he'd be crippled for life. He disengaged the spear shaft he'd been using for a walking stick from behind his saddle blanket and limped down the bank to join the wizard on the pavement below.

Ingold turned back toward the stairway. Then he froze, like a wolf startled by some sound, raising his head as if at some far-off scent of smoke. The daylight reflected, flat and white, off his eyes as he scanned the sky. 'It can't be,' he said softly to himself. Rudy looked about nervously. 'What can't be?' 'We're much too far south.' Ingold swung around, scanning the horizon, his brows drawn down with worry and puzzlement. At the same time one of the horses on the bank threw up its head with a snort and began to prance fretfully.

Too far south for what?

Ingold turned back to the Raiders. 'I'm not sure,' he said