He passed within a foot of Gil without seeing her, but Ingold the wizard looked up, and his eyes rested briefly, curiously, on her. Eldor swung around, his sleeve brushing Gil's hand on the windowsill. "It's the helplessness I can't stand," he burst out angrily. "They are my people, Ingold. The Realm-and all of civilization, if what you tell me is true-is falling to pieces around me, and you and I together cannot so much as offer it a shield to hide behind. You can tell me what the Dark Ones are, and where they come from, but all your powers cannot touch them. You can't tell us what we can do to defeat them. You can only fight them, as we all must, with a sword."

"It may be, there is nothing we can do," Ingold said, settling back in his chair. He folded his hands, but his eyes were alert.

"I won't accept that."

"You may have to."

"It's not true. You know it's not true."

"Humankind did defeat the Dark, all those thousands of years ago," the wizard said quietly, the flickering of the light doing curious things to the scar-seamed contours of his weathered face. "As to how they did it-perhaps they themselves were not certain how it came about; in any case, we have found no record of it. My power cannot touch the Dark Ones because I do not know them, do not understand either their being or their nature. They have a power of their own, Eldor, very different from mine-beyond the comprehension of any human wizard, except, perhaps, Lohiro, the Master of the Council of Quo. Of what happened in the Time of the Dark, three thousand years ago, when they rose for the first time to devastate the earth-you know it all as well as I."

"Know it?" The King laughed bitterly, facing the wizard like a beast brought to bay, his eyes dark with the memory of ancient outrage. "I remember it. I remember it as clearly as if it had happened to me, instead of to my however-many-times-great-grandfather." He strode to stand over the wizard, shadowing him like a blighted tree, the single lamp flinging the great distorted shape of him to blend with the crowding dimness of the room.