"When you come to think of it, my Lord, there never is an opportune moment for Ingold to go scavenging. I mean, hell, nothing ever happens in the winter because the bandits and the White Raiders are as locked down by the weather as we are, but then Ingold can't get out, either. The only times he can get to the ruins of the cities is in summer. Are you saying you'd rather he didn't find stuff like sulfur and vitriol to kill the slunch in the fields? Or books?"

"He could leave the books for another time," responded the stout Lord Sketh. "There are things we need more."

"Like a new brain for you, meathead?" muttered Gil under her breath.

"Be that as it may," Minalde intervened, with her usual artlessly exact timing, "the fact is that Lord Ingold is at Gae just now and can be contacted easily by any of the mages here. Wend? Ilae? Have either of you heard tell of such a thing, that one of the wizards of the Trnes Before should possess the mind and soul of someone in our times?"

Both the dark-eyed little ex-priest and the slim young woman shook their heads. Their ignorance was scarcely a surprise, as neither had received formal training in wizardry. The Dark Ones had been hideously efficient in wiping out the schools in the City of Wizards and everyone else with obvious ability in the art.

"Well, I've never heard of such, either," said Hethya. "And believe me, your Ladyship, I've looked."

"It is a rare-a very rare-phenomenon." Uncle Linok spoke for the first time, from the corner by the hearth. He adjusted the shawls and blankets wrapped about him, wool and fur and the combed and spun underwool of the mammoth, yak, rhinoceros, and uintatheria that the Keep's hunters trapped and speared in the winter when the great lumbering animals migrated from the North.