The Walls of Air Page 0,96

madness of black feathers and a beak that gored into his cheekbone and narrowly missed his eye. He struck at the tearing claws and heard the whine of Ingold's staff slashing down inches from his face. With a hoarse, mocking caw, the giant crow eluded the blow. With a bloody beak it went flapping heavily back toward its native trees. Rudy stood trembling in the road, gasping with shock and idiotically remembering a

Hitchcock film he'd seen on the late-late show. Blood dripped down his fingers as he touched the wound. Beside him, Ingold scanned the trees with cold fury in his face. Whirlwinds of black crows rose from their bare branches. Their obscene laughter drifted back down like stray black feathers, along with the dead leaves dislodged by their wings.

'Are you all right?' Ingold turned back to Rudy, dug a kerchief from somewhere in his robes, and dabbed at the cut.

'Yeah,' Rudy whispered. 'Fine, I guess. What the hell did that bird attack me for?'

The wizard shook his head. That happens here, if you take your guard off. That, or something like it.'

Rudy's hands were shaking as he took the cloth. The wound stung in the chilly air. In a way, even getting his leg slashed open by the dooic hadn't been this bad. He'd been ready for that.

There was no way to be entirely ready for the walls of air that encircled the City of Quo.

Often there was only a sense of being followed. Rudy caught himself constantly looking over his shoulder, uneasy in the silence of the dripping woods. Sometimes he had the conviction that he did not see things that were there. He would stop in such places, letting his mind drop into that state of unconcern that saw all things with crystal clarity, as once in the desert he had seen his own soul - the shapes of dead leaves, straw-coloured against the sepia background of decay, and the roll of the land under its cloak of fern. Often, while he sensed the illusion of such spots, he could not fathom it, though once he did find another path, threading away from the main one, winding around a thicket of thorn-choked aspens that he had thought lay wider and higher than was later proved. Ingold followed him down this new path without a word. Still other times, the illusion-spell took the shape of a curious, irrational fear, a loathing to continue at all, or a vile detestation at passing a certain tree. Once past it, Rudy looked back to see the faint

outlines of the Rune of the Chain all but obscured in the overgrowing bark.

'If you ask me, it would be damn easy to get lost in these woods,' Rudy muttered, after Ingold had stopped him from going on and had shown him a side turning through a dark glen that he had, for some reason, been completely unable to notice. Once on the path itself, it was completely visible, and he was not even sure that it had ever been out of his sight.

Ingold mimed a man shielding his eyes from too-brilliant light. 'Dazzling,' he murmured. The boy's intellect is simply dazzling.'

'What are they afraid of?' Rudy went on, ignoring him.

'Afraid?' Ingold raised his brows.

'I mean, they have their magic to protect them in case of trouble. If it came down to a fight, I mean, which it wouldn't. I mean, who'd take on a bunch of wizards?'

'Never underestimate human motivations,' Ingold advised. 'Especially under the impulse of the Church. Remember that the Archmage has been called the Devil's Left Hand. It wasn't so long ago that the Prince-Bishop of Dele mounted a major war on the Council and sent an expeditionary force to torch the town and burn as many wizards as might be found in the ruins.'

'Did the wizards fight them off?' Rudy asked, awed at the thought.

'Of course not. The expedition never came anywhere near Quo. There was rain and fog, and the army became lost in the foothills. It was eventually deposited back on the main road, miles from where it had entered the hills. Wizards can fight, if need be. But we are all very good at evading the conflict. Stop a moment.'

Rudy halted, puzzled. Ingold took him by the arm and led him forward along the narrow path toward the edge of a cloud-filled gorge visible through the smooth, bare boles of the grey trees.

Ingold kept a little in the lead and advanced with what Rudy considered ridiculous caution