When he spoke of her return, she looked quickly up from that shining well to meet his eyes.

"And that, my dear, is why I am here tonight," he repeated, as gently as he could. "For you are right. I do not know what awaits me in Gae. Danger, certainly, and perhaps my death. I had hoped to return you to your own world tonight, lest you should be trapped here forever."

Gil whispered, "Tonight?" She was shocked at the suddenness of it, the fact that she might eat her dinner in the bleak Vale of Renweth and finish the evening with a midnight snack at a cafe on Westwood Boulevard. Indefinable emotions beat upon her, and she could only stare at him with blank, startled, stinging eyes.

Ingold took her hands gently and said, "I am sorry, Gil. Was that why you sought me out?"

She could not reply. Beside her, his voice went on. "Since the night the Dark Ones tried and failed to break the gates of the Keep, you know that they have haunted the Vale of Renweth. It may be that they are waiting for our guard to slacken or that they look for the opportunity to trap me outside the walls. But it could be that they are waiting for me to tamper again with the fabric of the universe, to open a gate through the Void. And that I dare not do."

Still she remained silent. Below her, the crystal had gone dark, and the room was drowned in shadow. But it seemed to her that she still could see vague infinities of dark spheres and the suggestion of slow, turning movement through blackness. Quietly, she said, "It's all right."

His hands rested upon her shoulders, warm and comforting, banishing fear as they always had the power to do. "I am sorry," he said again.

"It isn't that."

Out of the darkness that surrounded them, a faint thread of bluish light flickered into being.