'Ingold,' Rudy said uneasily, 'I think I've seen the Archmage.'

The old man's attention narrowed and focused like the beam of a laser. 'Where? How?'

'Here, in the Keep. In this crystal kind of thing. I -I got lost.' The wizard raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Rudy hesitantly described the room, the table, the crystal, and the visions he had seen.

Ingold listened intently until Rudy was done and then asked him, 'Where was this room?'

'I don't know,' Rudy said helplessly. 'Someplace on the second level is all I know.'

Ingold was silent long enough for Gil to wonder what arcane curses revolved through his mind. Finally he sighed. That is Lohiro,' he said. 'I have seen him walk so, down the beach at Quo. But the thing that you speak of I have never seen before.' They stopped before the doors of the barracks. Ingold glanced over his shoulder, back into the darkness of the Aisle. Flickering lights ran to and fro there on hurrying ghostly feet, like spooks on a deadly earnest Hallowe'en. He turned back to them. 'I have sought for some word, some contact with Lohiro for a month now, ever since the

fall of Gae.'

'Could you put off your departure? Gil asked. 'Worstcase, it wouldn't take more than two days to find that room.'

The old man hesitated, obviously torn. At last he shook his head. 'In two days, the storms will have moved down from the high glaciers to bury the Pass again.' He sighed. 'If we leave tomorrow, I shall be turning them back the last day down the foothills as it is. After that it will be weeks before we can get out.'

'Wouldn't it be worth it?' She glanced around, as if at the bleak world beyond the windowless walls of the Keep. 'If you could make contact with him, he could start on his way here tomorrow and you'd cut your time in half.'