'Damn the boy,' Ingold whispered, and Gil thought that he looked very white in the wild jumping of shadows. The first blow of that incredible power smashing at the outer gates had jarred the torches in their sockets, and they guttered nervously, as if the light itself trembled before the coming of the Dark. Behind her in the Aisle, utter chaos prevailed.

Men with torches ran to and fro, calling mutually contradictory rumours to one another and brandishing makeshift weapons in frightened hands. Little flocks of children and old people, the nuclei of small families, huddled like frightened birds along the watercourses, as close to the centre of the great space as they could get, having fled their cells in terror when the pounding started. Others, mothers and fathers who had left their dependants back in the close darkness of their cells, crowded around Janus and the small knot of Guards who had remained in the Aisle, waving their arms, demanding what was being done, pleading for even lying assurances of safety. Janus towered above these lesser people in the torchlight, his voice deep and intense, allaying fears and recruiting patrols as best he could in that whirling chaos of noise and lamplight.

It was a scene out of Dante's Hell, Gil thought, with darkness like velvet and a random frenzy of flickering light. Thank God, the Keep is solid stone. Maybe we can get out of this'without immolating ourselves by morning.

If the Dark don't get us first, she added.