At the moment, it was the question uppermost in Rudy's mind as well.

He knew he was still somewhere on the second level, but that was about all he could be sure of. Having missed the turning for the stairway he sought, he had tried to double back along an allegedly parallel corridor, with disastrous results. A makeshift

hall through what had once been a large cell beckoned, only to dead-end him in a black warren of crumbling brick and dry rot that spiralled him eventually into the centre of the maze, a long-deserted outlet for the Keep's indoor plumbing system. Cursing those who had designed the Keep and those who had felt called upon to improve it alike, he crossed through the dark, water-murmuring privy and out into the corridors beyond.

He walked in the darkness without light. This was another ability which had surprised him, like being able to call fire from cold wood, or light to the end of his staff. Ingold had told him that this wizard's sight had been born in him, like his other talents, the seeds of a magedom that could bear no possible fruit in the warm, lazy world of Southern California.

And still he felt it - the building of tension, like water mounting behind a weakening dam, the brooding horror that seemed to fill the dark mazes through which he walked. His step quickened with his heartbeat. The conviction grew in him that the Dark were outside, focusing inhuman lusts and will upon the smooth, impenetrable walls of the Keep. Beyond human magic or even human comprehension, their numbers and power were so great that their presence could be felt through the ten-foot walls wrought of time and stone and magic. He had to find Ingold, had to find his way somehow out of this maze...