Barbara Hambly - 02 The Walls of Air

'Wizardry is knowledge,' Ingold said one afternoon as they sat on the white boulders that lined the bottom of an arroyo where they had taken shelter from the wind. The land was growing higher and less grassy, the waving fields of long brown grasses giving way to short bunchgrass and huge, scraggy-barked sagebrush. Dry washes cut the land, scattering it with stone and gravel. At the bottom of this one, a thin trickle of water ran, edged with ice even at high noon. It burned Rudy's fingers through his gloves as he filled the drinking bottles. Ingold sat on the rocks behind him, idly drawing the dry, yellowish blossoms of a dead stalk of kneestem through his fingers as he scanned, without seeming to, the banks of the gully against the pallid sky. 'Even the most talented adept is useless without knowledge, without the awareness of every separate facet of the world within which he must work.'

'Yeah,' Rudy said, sitting back and stoppering the flask with stiff, clumsy fingers. 'But a lot of what you've been teaching me sometimes seems kind of useless. Like that kneestem you've got - I mean, it doesn't have anything to do with magic. It's just a weed. You said yourself it's worthless.'

'It is worthless to us and to animals, having no value either as medicine or as food,' Ingold agreed, turning the dry wisp in his mittened fingers. 'But we ourselves are useless to other forms of life - except, I might point out, as sustenance to the Dark Ones. Kneestem, like you and me, exists for its own sake, and we must take that into account in all our dealings with the world that we hold in common with it.'

'I see your point,' Rudy said, after a moment's consideration of how much of what he loved and valued was, objectively, pretty useless. 'But I didn't know jack about anything when I started magic. I called fire because I had to.'

'No,' the wizard contradicted. 'You called fire because you knew it could be done.'

'But I didn't know that.'

Then why did you try? I think you knew in your heart that you could do it. I think you might even have done it as a child.'

Rudy was silent for some time, sitting on the bleached bones of the rock. The wind

moaned faintly along the banks above them, and Che flicked his long ears at the sound. There was no wind in the gullies. It was so still he could hear the water clucking softly at the ice. 'I don't know,' he said finally, his voice small and a little frightened. 'I dreamed about it, I think. I used to dream about a lot of stuff like that when I was a real little kid, like three or four years old, I remember dreaming I think it was a dream - I picked up a dry branch in our back yard and, holding it in my hand, I knew I could make it flower. And I did. These white flowers budded out all over it, just from my holding it, just from my knowing they would. Then I ran and told my mother about it, and she hit me upside the head and told me not to imagine stuff.' The memory came back to him now, as clear as vision, but distant, as if it had happened to someone else. There was no sorrow in his voice, no anger, only wonderment at the memory itself.

Ingold shook his head. 'What a thing to tell a child.' Rudy shrugged it away. 'But I was always interested in how stuff was put together. Like cars - or anyway, I think that's why I was good with cars. How they work, and the sound and feel of whether they're right or wrong. The human body's the same way, I guess. And I think that's why I drew. Just to know what it was and how it all fits.' The wizard sighed and laid the dead plant stem among the rocks. 'Perhaps it's just as well,' he said finally. 'You could never have gotten the proper teaching, you know. And there are few more dangerous things in the world than an untaught mage.' New winds threaded down the gully. Ingold stood up, shivering, and pulled his hood over his face once more, wrapping his long muffler over it so that all that showed of his face was the end of his nose and the deep-set glitter of bright azure eyes. Rudy got up also, hung the water bottles over the various projections of the pack-saddle, and led Che up the narrow trail that had taken them down into the draw. Ingold moved nimbly ahead of him.

'Ingold?'

They scrambled up the last few feet to level ground and made their way back toward the road. A covey of prairie hens went skittering away almost under their feet. Che flung up his head in panic. The skies had darkened perceptibly, and in the distance Rudy could see the rain sheeting down.

'Why is an untaught mage so dangerous?'

The wizard glanced back at him. 'A mage will have magic,' he said quietly. 'It's like love, Rudy. You need it and you will find it. You will be driven to find it. And if you can't find good love, you will have bad, or what passes in some circles for love. And it can hurt you and destroy everyone you touch. That is why there is a school at Quo,' he went on, 'and a Council.

'The wizardry at Quo is the mainstream, the centrepoint of teaching. Since Forn the Old retired there and began to gather all the lore of wizardry in his black tower by the sea, the Archmage and the Council of Quo have been the teachers of all those who were capable of understanding what was taught. Its principles are the principles handed down from the old wizardry, the legacy of the empires that existed before the first coming of the Dark, three thousand years ago. They are older than any kingdom of the earth, older than the Church.'

'Is that why the Church has it in for us?'

Wind had begun to blow down rain upon them, mixed with hard, tiny spits of hail. Rudy pulled up his hood resignedly. He had long since got used to the idea that if it rained, he got wet. There was no shelter in the open plains.

The Church finds us unbiddable,' Ingold said mildly. They talk of the power as a manifestation of the illusions of the Devil, but it all comes down to the fact that we have the power to change the universe materially and we owe neither them nor their God allegiance. As you've already guessed, we are excommunicates, ranking with heretics, parricides, and doctors who poison wells to drum up" business for themselves. If the Church wanted to press the point, they could give Alwir considerable trouble for employing Bektis or even associating with me. The Church will make no marriage when one of the parties is mageborn; and when we die, we are buried like criminals in unhallowed ground, if we aren't simply burned like murrained beasts. Whatever happens, Rudy, remember that no law protects wizards.'

The darkness of the vaults beneath the palace at Karst came back to Rudy's mind -the narrow doorless cell and the Rune of the Chain, spelled to hold Ingold there until he starved. No wonder, he thought, those with only a single power choose to lie about it. The surprising thing is that anyone becomes a wizard at all,

Rain drummed down around them, black and freezing, from a dark sky. It pooled in the ditches beside the road, sheeted the low ground, and ran in rivulets down Rudy's cloak, slowly soaking him through. He tried to remember the last time he'd seen a clear sky and wondered wretchedly if he ever would see one again.

Ingold was still speaking, more to himself than to his companion. This is why the bonds between us are so strong. We are the only ones who truly understand each other, as Lohiro and I know one another's mind. It's why he and I travelled together, bound as allies against all the world, why he was like a son to me, and why he picked me to be his father. We are all we have, Rudy - wizards, and those very few people who, not mageborn themselves, understand. Quo is more than the centre of wizardry on earth; it is our heart-home. It is all we have.'

The cloudburst was slackening. Light and mists rolled in the lowering air, but no sign of sun or sky. It seemed as if all the world were blanketed in cloud and the sun would never break through again.