Barbara Hambly - 02 The Walls of Air

She shrugged. 'It doesn't matter.'

'No,' he said bitterly. 'God knows, I've done it often enough.'

The bleak guilt in his voice and the self-hatred troubled and frightened her. She caught his hand in her free one, to draw his eyes to hers. 'You do what you have to do,' she told him gently. 'You know I'd follow you anywhere.'

'And that,' Ingold said, his scratchy voice suddenly taut, 'is precisely why I asked you.' But the tension was caused by something in himself, and his tone softened again. 'You were the only one I could trust, Gil, not to flee.'

That's a lot of trust,' Gil said quietly, for somebody you'd known only a month.'

Ingold nodded. 'But there are times, my dear, when I feel that I have known you all my life.'

They stood thus for a moment longer, wizard and warrior, with Ingold holding Gil's fingers gently against the tips of his own. In his eyes she could read the tracks of the journey -pain and loneliness, and only the ghost of the old serenity which had once characterized him. A hint of another emotion was strange to her.

What he read in her eyes she did not know, but it made him look away quickly and drape his arm across her shoulders. He led her out through the maze to the voices and the lights.