Ingold nodded. "Yes," he murmured, half to himself. "Yes, it should do."

"I can bring you food and blankets," she went on. "Just tell me when you'll be there."

"I don't know that yet," the wizard said quietly. "But you'll know, at the time."

"All right." Though Gil was normally a suspicious person, it never occurred to her to question him, and this did not even surprise her about herself. She trusted him, she found, as if she had known him for years.

Ingold reached across the table and took her hand.

"Thank you," he said. "You are a stranger to our world and you owe us nothing-it is good of you to help."

"Hey," Gil protested softly. "I'm not a stranger. I've been in your world, and I've seen the Dark. I just about met King Eldor, as a matter of fact." Then she paused, confused at her blunder, for she remembered that the King and the wizard were friends, and that Eldor was almost certainly going to die before the week was out.

But Ingold passed over her error like the gentleman he was. "I know Eldor would have been pleased to make your acquaintance," he said. "And you shall always have his gratitude, and mine, for... "

Some sound in the night made him suddenly alert, and he broke off, raising his head to listen.

"What is it?" Gil whispered.

Ingold turned back to her. "I'm afraid I must go," he said politely. His voice seldom betrayed worry or fear-he might have been making his excuses because of a prior engagement for tea with the Queen of Numenor. But Gil knew that something was happening, across the Void, in the embattled Palace at Gae.

He rose to go, the straight dark line of his mantle breaking over the sword at his hip. Gil thought of the danger and of the Dark waiting on the other side of the Void. She caught at his sleeve. In a voice smaller than she meant, she said, "Hey, take care."

His smile was like the coming of the sun. "Thank you, my dear. I always do." Then he walked a few paces to the center of the kitchen and put out his hand to push the fabric of the universe aside like a curtain. As he did so, he drew his sword, and Gil could see the cold light that burned up off the blade as he stepped into the mist and fire beyond.