But Ingold was there, and Gil had never found it possible to be truly afraid when she was at the wizard's side.

So she felt only a kind of cold detachment, though her blood rushed violently through her veins and her body tingled with a cold excitement. The separation was physical as well as emotional, for she and Ingold stood together on the steps before the gates, with the pounding, sounding roar of the beaten steel at their backs; none would come near them there.

The noise in the Aisle was tremendous, the repeated bellowing clang mingling with the wild keening of voices, to rise and ring in the huge ceiling vaults until the whole Aisle was one vast sounding chamber. Men and women rushed wildly about, purposeful or aimless, the bobbing of the torches and lamps in their hands like the storming of fireflies on a summer night. Behind Gil, the pounding of the Dark upon the gates was a bass vibration that sounded in her bones.

Ingold turned to her and asked quietly, 'Is Bektis here?' He named the Court

Wizard of the Chancellor Alwir, the only other mage in the Keep.

'Surely you jest,' Gil murmured, for Bektis had a most solicitous concern for his own health. Ingold did not smile, but the quick flicker of amusement that lightened his eyes turned his whole face briefly, elusively young. It was gone as quickly as it came, the lines of strain settling back again.

'Then I fear that I shall have no choice,' the wizard said softly. The blue-white glow from the end of his staff touched his face in shadow; the flicker of'the torches beyond might have been responsible for the illusion Gil had of bitter self-reproach in the old man's expression, but she could not be sure. 'Gil, I had not wanted to ask this of you, for you are not mageborn, and the danger is very great.'

That doesn't matter,' Gil said quietly.

'No.' Ingold regarded her for a moment, and a curious expression that she could not read overlay the serenity of his face. 'No, to you it would not.' Taking her hands, he placed his staff in them. The wan white glow remained at its tip, though she felt no sense of power or vibration in the staff itself. It was only wood, grip-smoothed over decades of use, and now warmed from his hand. The light may fade if the spells of the Dark draw off too much of my power,' he warned her. 'But don't desert me.'