A long moment of silence followed while Rudy digested that one. Love and the loneliness of exile fought in him against the burning memory of that first instant of the knowledge of his own power, the instant he had called forth fire from darkness. The double need in him for love and power seemed to rise over him like the tide, with a confusion of memories: Ingold standing in a shining web of runes; the darkness of Minalde's watching eyes; and the sweep of pearlescent waves washing overa half-buried skill. In the end it all meant very little. He would go because it was required of him that he go.

'You got a great way of putting things, spook,' he muttered tiredly.

Gil shrugged. 'Booklearning,' she explained. 'It rots the brain. Get some sleep, punk. You have a long walk in the morning.'

It was a small and very tired group that gathered on the steps of the Keep three hours later in the grey chill of dawn. Standing, shivering, beside Ingold in the misty snowlight, Rudy reflected to himself that in some cases it was better to have no sleep than too little. As far as he knew, Ingold hadn't been to bed at all. Every time he'd

woken up through the confused remainder of the night, he'd seen the old man sitting beside the fire with the demon-smoke of his foul-smelling tea in wreaths around his head, staring into the yellowed chip of crystal he carried, while Gil and the Icefalcon assembled provisions for the journey with their usual silent efficiency.

After three days of storms, the Vale of Renweth lay bleak and snowbound all around them, a white, rolling sea breaking against the black rocks of the surrounding cliffs. To the west, the shallow trace of the road climbed toward the dark notch of Sarda Pass, almost hidden in roiling grey cloud; to the east, it wound, descending through what a week ago had been sun-tinted meadows of long grass and a scattering of woods, on out of the Vale past the broken bridge of the Arrow Gorge and down to the Dark-haunted lowlands by the Arrow River.