They passed within a few feet of the wizards, murmuring among themselves, their glances flitting here, there, and everywhere but toward the spot where the wizards stood. Rudy heard the leader whisper, "That mothereating scout said the downriver people had moved up into this neighborhood someplace." The pregnant woman enlarged on the subject of the scout in terms that would have brought blushes to the cheeks of some Hell's Angels Rudy had known. Close to them, holding his breath against their reek, he could see that none of them looked very healthy. The youngest girl's face was blotched all over with savage scars-like huge vaccination marks, he thought stupidly, then realized that they must be from smallpox. The smaller of the two men sniffled and blew his nose on his already dripping sleeve; the other cursed him and told him to shut up if he didn't want to end up in the pot himself.

As the white vapors swallowed them once again, Rudy grasped who these must be.

They were the citizens of Gae who had not followed Alwir's convoy to the south -who had remained in Gae to loot the empty houses and live in wealth among the ruins. They'd taken the weapons from the charred hands of corpses buried under the wreck of the Palace-weapons that, as in the case of King Eldor, had proved the only means of identifying the burned bodies-and robbed the clothes from the backs of those dead in the cellars and streets. They'd clung to the city rather than trade it for the hardships of the road, making rats' burrows of homes in the majestic remains of the villas of the rich and fighting the former dooic slaves and one another for the dwindling supplies of food that were left.

It occurred to Rudy, as the mists swirled suddenly around Ingold's abrupt departure, that, if the old man had known the town in its heyday, he might just have recognized one of the ghouls as someone he had once known.