"Tonight," the man in black repeated somberly. His bitter eyes were a hard smoke-gray, like steel in the dense shadows of the little room. "What about tomorrow night, Ingold? And the night after? Yes, we pushed them back tonight, back down under the earth where they belong. We won-here. What about in the other cities of the Realm? What have you seen in that crystal of yours, Ingold? What has been happening elsewhere tonight? In Penambra in the south, where it seems now even my governor has been slain, and the Dark Ones haunt his palace like foul ghosts? In the provinces along the valley of the Yellow River to the east, where you tell me they hold such sway that not a man will leave his house after the sun goes in? In Gettlesand across the mountains, where the fear of the Dark Ones is so great that men will stay within their doors while the White Raiders ride down off the plains to burn and loot among them at will?

"The Army cannot be everywhere. They're scattered in the four corners of the Realm, most of them still at Penambra. We here in Gae cannot hold out forever. We may not even be able to hold the Palace, should they come again tomorrow night."

"That is tomorrow," the wizard replied quietly. "We can only do what we must-and hope."

"Hope." He said it without scorn or irony, only as if it were a word long unfamiliar, whose very sound was awkward upon his tongue. "Hope for what, Ingold? That the Council of Wizards will break this silence of theirs and come out of hiding in their city at Quo? Or that, if and when they do, they will have an answer?"

"You narrow hope when you define it, Eldor."

"God knows it's narrow enough as it is." Eldor turned away, to pace like a restless lion to the window and back, taking the room in three of his long strides.