Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

C'mon, heart, do your stuff...

In his hand he formed the illusion of a little purple fireball and set it on the floor.

"Okay, Lassie," he said to it. "Go get the Icefalcon."

The fireball rolled away down the corridor in a trail of violet sparks.

Rudy listened behind him. Nothing.

Slowly, he began to drag himself toward the stair.

He sat on plank scaffolding in a corner of the Keep... The Keep? Dawnlight surrounded him, dove-colored and chilly. But everything within him knew that he was in the Keep.

He seemed to be sitting at the outer edge of a maze of scaffolding, miles of it stretching away in both directions, thousands of feet along black glass walls that rose up unevenly against that orchid sky.

He looked down and saw a chasm of shadow hundreds of feet deep, from which the spiderweb framework rose: planks and what looked like bamboo, rope bridges, all wreathed and woven with lines of magic.

Machinery rested on some of the platforms, unfamiliar black shapes that glistened with cold crystal appurtenances in their circles of silver and smoke; more power-circles had been drawn on every jerry-built bridge and catwalk, their curves and lines reaching off into the twilight air to form a lace of unsupported magic. And on every one of those platforms and bridges and catwalks, he could see the bodies of sleeping men and women, like sentries felled by plague. Beside one, two cats were; sleeping, too.

It is the Keep, Rudy thought. The Keep before it was finished. And the woman who sat bowed, defeated, curled within herself on the black plinth that rose out of the center of the foundation-it was the Bald Lady.

The scaffolding where he sat he could feel the edge of the damp planks sharply against his thighs, smell the oil of the machine next to him and the heartbreaking cold-was close enough that he could see her face when she raised her head at the sound of hooves, close enough to see the stoic pain in her eyes at the sight of the man framed within the open square of what would be the Keep doors. "Rudy?"

Alde's voice. She sounded scared. As well she might, he thought. He opened his eyes to a brief vision of her, sitting on the edge of the bed where he lay. Then he slipped back to find himself once more in the darkness of the corridor, with strange chalky creatures like legless scorpions rolling pillbug fashion down the dirty floor, and the dead herdkids standing in a row in front of him, hand in hand, watching him... "Rudy!"

Pain went through his head as if it had been split with wedges, and he rolled over fast-someone barely got him a slop bucket before the tsunami of nausea hit. "Well, there's a waste of good rations," remarked the Icefalcon's voice. Rudy made a weary but universal gesture and after a moment ventured to open his eyes again. He was in his own small chamber. Somebody had brought in half a dozen glowstones, so the place was fairly bright, and about two-thirds of the population of the Keep seemed to have packed itself into the seven-by-fifteen cell. He revised the number downward to a score or so, including the Bishop Maia, Varkis Hogshearer and his repellent offspring, Philonis Weaver-who was one of the several nonmage Healers in the Keep patronized by those whose religious scruples kept them from consulting wizards- Lord and Lady Sketh, Koram Biggar, a whole squad of fifth level-north types and another phalanx of Sketh and Ankres henchmen, and about half the Keep Council. All of them were talking.

''Did you see them?" Biggar demanded. "Do you know who they were?" "The Icefalcon found you near the Brass Fountain Stairway on the fifth north,"

Minalde said. "It's a deserted section; nobody Janus has questioned saw anything. It wasn't a... a gaboogoo, was it?"

"I tell you there's none such in the Keep!" Old Man Wicket snapped, and Biggar groaned.

"Don't tell me you're going to want the whole level searched again!" "Who else would do such a thing?" "Some I could name."

Rudy didn't see who in the back had made that remark. Alde said quickly, "Whoever did it has to know that without a trained wizard in the Keep, the Keep itself is doomed."

"Doomed is what it is anyway, begging your pardon, lady." Bannerlord Pnak Nenion pushed his way to her side, with several of his third-level-north dependents. "I tell you, there will be no good in remaining in this place, not if we had a hundred wizards."

"And my daughter's trained," Hogshearer snapped. "Smart as a whip, she is-aren't you, Princess?-and picking up the Knowledge like she was taught from babyhood. Show them how you call fire. Show them, girl."

"But show them outside, please," Philonis Weaver said in her soft voice. "Outside the Keep entirely, if you would, dear. Look at me, Master Rudy. Are you seeing double?" He shook his head. Her fingers rested on his wrist, cool and competent, then shifted to take the second, inner pulse.

Weaver and two or three others in the Keep operated out of the long Church medical tradition, a combination of anatomical study, herbalism, and dream interpretation, which Ingold had learned and Rudy was learning: Weaver, though devoutly religious, was willing and happy to teach them.

She checked under his eyelids and pressed his nails and gave him a bitter draught of betony and a tiny breath of foxglove as a stimulant, and herded out everyone except Minalde, who remained sitting quietly on the edge of Rudy's bed. As they passed through the door he saw Lady Sketh put an arm around Scala Hogshearer's shoulders and smile with toothy noblesse oblige. The draught cleared Rudy's mind. He was able to lay spells of healing on the deep wound in his side, though he could tell there was no infection and that the internal bleeding had already been competently stopped. He could feel traces of the poison still in his system, but even that was below danger level.

He was naked to the waist, no real discomfort in one of the warm inner rooms of the Keep-with a bandage over the stinging wound on the back of his right arm and a mass of dressings and plasters bound on his side.

His head ached like a thousand hangovers and his mouth tasted like a peat bog. "My vest over there, babe?"

She made a long arm for it, where it lay with his bloodsoaked shirt on top of the chest. By the way she picked it up, he knew it still had the Cylinder in it and some if not all the ensorcelled potatoes. It clattered faintly as she set it down. "What on earth do you have in there?"

He fished in the pockets, found the Cylinder unharmed, and scooped out the glassy dark nuggets he'd retrieved from the niche. "The Spuds of Doom," he said. Her blue eyes got huge. He'd told her what Gil had said about food and history-she knew the importance of what he'd d found. She whispered, "Oh, thank God," and closed her eyes, all the tension in her body seeming, in that one moment, to ease. "Thank God."

"God and the Guy with the Cats." Rudy counted them quickly; all were there, as well as the smaller, unidentifiable beads. "I took enough to experiment with and left the

rest where they were. I don't think there's a soul in the Keep but me who can get to them."

Her hands pressed over his. "Thank God. They've been talking about leaving the Keep, you know. In Council. Bannorlord Pnak and his people, mostly..." "Leaving the Keep?" Rudy half made a move to sit, and immediately gave up the idea. "For where? Escorted by what army?"

"For the Alketch." Minalde's voice was shaky. "Enas Barrelstave wants us to throw ourselves on the mercy of the Emperor."

"Alketch is a war zone, and anybody who heads down there is just asking to end up dead or a slave."

"Master Barrelstave says our only source of that information is Ingold, who might very well be a lunatic. He says, why send someone with whatever wealth can be scraped up, to buy cattle and run the risk of being robbed, when we can go there..." "Like we're not gonna be robbed wandering around in the wilderness on foot? We're fine here."