They had found fuel less, everlasting lamps and the component parts of flame throwers; they had found the ancient machinery that the Keep's builders, the wizard-engineers, had used to power the air and water pumps; they had found riddles as enigmatic as the frosted gray polyhedron crystals that littered the lower labs in such useless numbers. But they had discovered no evidence that the vast hydroponics gardens had ever been used, no records of the early days of the Keep, and no sign of how the wizard-engineers had so suddenly vanished.

There was no evidence of how Dare of Renweth, builder of the Keep and founder of the line of High Kings, had defeated the Dark-nothing at all as to why the Dark Ones had ceased their ancient depredations upon humankind and returned to the black abysses that had spawned them.

Rudy stepped cautiously around an oblique corner and through a dark complex of cells where, even at this late hour, a soft flicker of greasy yellow lamplight winked through a crack in a door and quarreling voices brushed his awareness like wind as he passed. Rodent eyes sparked redly at him from the murk; somewhere a chicken clucked loudly, followed by the sodden thump of a thrown boot.

Had it been the flame throwers that defeated the Dark?

He didn't think so; the pieces he'd found in the labs were few and incomplete. Besides, the Dark had been around for centuries after Dare's time. Had some other champion of humankind arisen, some other warrior who had dealt the Dark Ones so crippling a blow as to render them unwilling to continue the attack?

How had humankind defeated the Dark?

The question is the answer , Ingold always said.

The question is always the answer.