Barbara Hambly - 02 The Walls of Air

She held out her bony hand, and Gil dropped to one knee to kiss the dark bezel of the episcopal ring.

Later, waking in the barracks from feverish sleep, Gil wondered if this, too, had been a dream. But after supper, Minalde appeared in the barracks, bearing a heavy book which, she said, the lady Govannin had asked if she would take to Gil-Shalos.

'I was coming over anyway,' she explained, seating herself at the foot of Gil's bunk.

Through the doorway beyond her, Gil could hear the noises of the night watch going out, the creaking of leather, the faint clink

of buckles, and Melantrys' light, bantering chaff.

Minalde ran her fingers along the metal-clasped edge of the cover. 'What is it?'

Gil explained briefly her desire to probe the origins of the Keep to learn something of its secrets. 'I mean, hell,' she said, 'there's so much more to the Keep than meets the eye. Like -how come there's a flow of water in the latrines and fountains? Even if the Keep was built over an underground river, the stuff doesn't run uphill. Why is the air fresh in most places, not foul and stuffy? How was the Keep built in the first place? I know it was built three thousand years ago by Dare of Renweth, at the time of the first rising of the Dark,' she went on, 'but how long did it take? Where did everybody stay during construction, if they didn't start on it until after the Dark began appearing? Or were the Dark only down in the river valleys and the mountains safe?'

'No,' Aide answered simply. 'Because there's a Nest of the Dark not twenty miles from here, as you know.'

Gil remembered the tilted slab of black stone in the midst of those clinging woods and shuddered.

'And for the rest of it,' Aide went on, 'you've already told me more than I knew before. I have heard that the magic in Times Before was different from the magic now, but I don't know what that means. I do know that centuries ago there used to be magic places, sort of temples of wizardry, in many cities, not just at Quo - so maybe back then it was the same way. Rudy says that magic is fused into the walls of the Keep.'

At the mention of her lover's name, Aide's cheeks coloured faintly, and Gil hid a grin. In many ways this dark-haired girl reminded her of the freshmen she'd taught; she was sweet, shy, pretty, and very unsure of herself. At such times it was difficult to remember that this soft-voiced girl had passed through fire and darkness, had seen her husband die in the flaming ruin of the battle-broken Palace, and had gone against the forces of the night, armed only with a torch and her own wild courage. She

was the Queen of Darwath, the true ruler of the Keep, sitting at the foot of the disordered bunk with her legs crossed under her multicoloured peasant skirts.

'So anyway, the Bishop offered to lend me the books to look for the answers,' Gil said, edging herself up against her makeshift pillows. 'Gnift's already told me that training or walking patrol is out for at least three weeks... I suppose he's right,' she added regretfully, looking down at her strapped shoulder. 'I'll have to get someone to read them to me and teach me the language, though.'

'Oh, I can do that,' Aide said. 'Really, it would be no trouble. I know the Old Wath and the High Tongue of the Church, which is very different from the Wathe. It would be the first time, you know, that I've ever really used anything that I learned in school.'

Gil regarded her for a moment through the barracks gloom, fascinated. 'What did you learn in school?

Aide shrugged. 'Needlework,' she said. 'Songs, and how to write the different modes of poetry. I did an entire tapestry once of Shamilfar and Syriandis - they're famous lovers - but it nearly drove me crazy and I never did another. Dancing, and playing the harp and dulcimer. Something about the major parts of the Realm and a little history. I hated history,' she admitted, shamefaced.

'Most people do,' Gil said comfortingly.

'You don't.' Aide's slim, well-kept hands traced the curve of the leather cover's embossing.

'I always was a freak that way.' Rudy's teasing nickname of 'spook' was hardly a new one.

'Well, the way you talk about it, it's as if as if it has a point,' Aide said. 'As if you're looking for something. All they ever taught us about history was these little stories that were supposed to be morally uplifting, like the one about the man

who died in a valiant rearguard action for the sake of his comrades, or the story about all those old patriarchs who let the enemy slaughter them rather than be enslaved. That kind of thing. Things that I suspect never really happened.'

The image of a stiff little boy in a powdered wig confessing to his father about who axed the cherry tree floated through Gil's mind, and she laughed. 'Maybe.'

'But if you need someone to read to you, I'll be glad to do it.'

Gil studied Aide's face for a moment in silence. She herself had closed out the UCLA library, the way some people close out bars, far too many nights not to understand. And as for having a Queen as a research assistant - Alwir, Gil reflected, will hardly miss her. 'Sure,' she said quietly. 'Any time you can get away.'

They took over the little cubbyhole in the back of the barracks of the Guards, which Ingold had once used as his quarters. It was private, yet close to the centre of things, and, Gil noted to herself, at the opposite end of the Keep from the Royal Sector and its politics. Aide took to coming there every day, usually bringing Tir with her, to work laboriously through the ancient chronicles, while Gil scribbled notes on tablets of wood coated with beeswax that she'd found in an abandoned storeroom. In another storeroom she found a desk, spindle-legged and archaic, small enough to fit into the narrow confines of her study. She used a couple of firkins of dried apples for a seat.

Thus she entered into a period of quiet scholarship, her hours of transcribing and sorting notes alternating with long, solitary rambles through the back reaches of the Keep in search of some sign of the mysterious circular chamber Rudy had described before his departure. It was from one of these that she returned one day to find Aide sitting at her desk, studying one of the tablets in the dim light.

'Is this what you do?' the younger girl asked, touching the creamy surface with a doubtful finger. 'Is this all?*

Gil looked down over her shoulder. She habitually wrote with a silver hairpin as a stylus, in a combination of English and the runes of the Wathe. The tablet had written on it:

Swarl (?) s. of Tirwis, ss. Aldor, Bet, Urgwas -

famine, snows Pass 2, Tl Gts grsnd 4 (-) - no mtn Dk -

pop Kp 12000 + 3 stmts (Big Ring,??) buried gaenguo

(?) - Bp. Kardthe, Tracho

'Sure,' she replied cheerfully. That's from the chronicles you were reading to me yesterday. It's just a condensation - Swarl, whenever the hell he ruled Renweth, had three sons named Aldor, Bet, and Urgwas...'

'Bet's a woman's name,' Aide pointed out.

'Oh.' Gil made a notation. In the Wathe, pronouns had no gender. 'Anyhow, in the second year of his reign there was a famine, and snows heavy enough to close Sarda Pass. The population of the Keep at that time was estimated at twelve thousand, with three settlements in the valley, one of which was named the Big Ring - don't ask me why. There was no mention of the Dark in the chronicle, which isn't surprising, since we have yet to find any word of the Dark in any of these chronicles, and right around the fourth year of his reign there is a statement that the Tall Gates were garrisoned, though they might have been so for years. The Bishops during his reign were Kardthe and later a man or woman named Tracho -'

'That's the old spelling for Trago. It's a man's name.'

Thanks.' Gil made another notation. 'And in his reign they buried the gaenguo, which I meant to ask you about. Isn't gaenguo the old word for a - a lucky place, or a good place?'