"A force field?" Rudy looked across at Gil-the word he used was unfamiliar, in the tongue of their own world that neither spoke much anymore. "I'll be buggered. You ever hear Ingold mention that?"

She shook her head.

"And was it an apparatus," asked Minalde, folding small slim hands in her embroidered lap, "that you came to the Vale of Renweth to seek, Hethya?"

The woman hesitated for a long time, her eyes seeking Linok's. The old man nodded.

"I think we can trust these good people, my child."

One could have heard a snowflake fall in that lamp-lit golden room.

"She-Oale Niu-says there were caves or something in the cliffs an the western side of the valley." Hethya brought the words out hesitantly, as if dredging them from deep within her mind. "She says she and some other people, wizards I think, hid up there from the Dark Ones. They walled up things, weapons and... and other things I'm not understanding, to hide them there from enemies, after they got the Keep built."

The whole room was an indrawn breath. Hope, wanting, flashed between Rudy's eyes and Minalde's, palpable as the leap of summer lightning from cloud to cloud.

Lord Ankres said, "But we have all been to those caves, my Lady Queen." He leaned forward, narrow hands resting on his knees. "Lord Ingold himself has gone carefully over them and found nothing but marks and scratches on the floor."

Hethya looked puzzled, biting her lip.

Rudy asked her, "Whereabouts are these caves? Down near the old road?"

She shook her head immediately. "No, those were the ones the people stayed in, where there was the water. These were up higher, and farther on, I think. I'd know the place if I was to see it again."