The beaten regret in his voice shocked her. "That isn't true," she said.

In the darkness he was only a darker shape, edged with the tawny colors of the fire. "You think not?" With his face hidden, the pain and irony of his words sounded all the clearer. "Rudy has inherited the staff of one of my dearest friends, child, and the widow of another."

"That had nothing to do with you."

"No?" Like a spark rising, his eyebrow was tipped with reflected gold. "One of them I deserted in the hour of his death; another I killed with my own hands. I don't see how much more I could have had to do with it."

"Either of them would have commanded you to do what you did, and you know it." When he tried to turn away from her, she caught at his robe, the rough homespun bunched in her fist. "You were all trapped together by forces you couldn't control," she whispered savagely. "Don't torture yourself because you were the survivor."

Still he was silent, except for the thick draw of his breath. In the fading ember light, he was only a dim shape to her, but she was aware of him as she had never been aware of anyone or anything in her life. The touch of the patched wool clenched in her hand, the scent of sweet herbs and soap and woodsmoke that permeated the cloth, the stippling of fire outlining the edge of his white hair- with a heightened consciousness, she felt that she would have known him anywhere, without sight or hearing, merely by his nearness alone. When he raised his fingers to touch her wrist, she felt it like an electric shock.

In a softer voice, she said, "Quit tearing at yourself, Ingold. None of it was your fault."

"But your death here would be."

"Do you think that matters to me?"

"It matters to me ." Then suddenly her hand was empty. She heard the dry swishing of the curtain that covered the door of the alcove where he slept, but her eyes could not pierce the gloom at that end of the room. His grainy voice came to her as a disembodied murmur from the shadows. "Good night, Gil. And goodby. Forgive me, if I should not return from Gae."