She can't be doing that! Rudy thought desperately, running to the foremost edge of

the scattered and horror-struck groups that stood in the Aisle. She hasn't got any magic of her own. If the Dark break through the gates and swamp Ingold's power, she has nothing!

But he could not go toward them. He stood helplessly on the edge of the darkness.

The blackness of the passage framed the old man in his stained and rusty brown mantle and the girl in faded black with the white emblem on her shoulder and the wan light glowing above her head. The bawling roar of the power of the Dark surrounded them in the midnight of that enclosed space, but neither Gil nor Ingold looked around. Ingold's eyes were on the gates, Gil's, unquestioningly calm in the midst of that unearthly roaring, on Ingold's back.

She's crazy, Rudy thought in horror. Never, never, never...,

Ingold had reached the end of the narrow tunnel. By the swift-waning glow of the witchlight, Rudy saw him put out his hands, touching the shaking steel of the outer gates. Only inches of metal separated him from the wild blood-hunger that haunted the night outside - separated everyone in the Keep from instant and hideous destruction. The witchlight flickered, fading...

And like fire, spreading from Ingold's fingertips, Rudy could see the runes that spelled the gates. They seemed at first to be only a faint reflection, swimming within the metal like schools of fish below the surface of clear water, visible only to his wizard's sight. But under Ingold's touch they brightened, flickering into life in a webwork of shining graffiti, spread over the gates from top to bottom and across the walls beside them.