The Walls of the Air

by Barbara Hambly

  The orphans' compound was up on the fourth level. Lamps had been lighted there. Winna, a girl of seventeen, sat among the heaped blankets in a ragged nightdress, trying vainly to comfort a sobbing child of not much more than Tir's age. Other children huddled sleepily around them, upset and uneasy, as all children were in the face of a nightmare. Winna looked up quickly as her second in command, Tad the herdkid, admitted the newcomers.

  "What is it?" Alde asked.

  Winna shook her head. "It seems to be the night for nightmares, that's all. First Lydris, then Tad, and now Prognor."

  "I didn't have a nightmare," Tad protested, anxious to set himself off from his inferiors.

  "No," Winna corrected, "you're too old for it to be called a nightmare—but a bad dream, anyway. How can I help you, Alde ?"

  Here was another one, Gil thought, who, with all her own griefs, had concern to spare.

  Winna listened gravely to Alde 's whispered explanations and Lolli's less coherent fears, nodding her head and stroking the fair hair of the child in her lap. The pale faces and wide eyes that floated disembodied in the thick shadows of the room were those of the orphans whose parents had perished in the ruins of Gae and the massacre at Karst. Peter Pan's Lost Boys, Gil thought; tough little survivors of the ruin of the world. As she and Alde left, her last sight of the cell was of Winna chivying a place among the children for Lolli to sleep, and Tad and some other child volunteering to share their blankets.

  "What do you think?" Gil asked as she and Alde headed back into the darkness of the mazes. The single bobbing flame of their lamp threw monstrous gargoyle repetitions of them in the walls behind, trailing them like inept spies.

  Alde shook her head, her fingers working loose the main coil of her hair, the braided knots of it falling like skeined silk over the blackness and fire of her gown. "I don't know," she said quietly. "But Lolli's afraid. Is it possible that the mere fear of the Dark could have driven Snelgrin mad?"

  "It's what I was afraid of," Gil said. "And believe me, the idea of a madman wandering around the Keep at night does not do wonders for my sense of well-being."

  "And you're armed," Minalde added. "I think the next thing we should do is talk to Janus. But if Snelgrin is mad, what then? Do we lock him up? Feed him through the winter on rations that could cut into the spring seed? Have someone cut his throat, like—" She broke off, but Gil could finish the sentence. Like the Icefalcon cut Medda's. Medda, whose mind the Dark had devoured, had been Alde 's nurse from childhood. On the road from Karst to Renweth, no one could have looked after a stumbling zombie, and there would have been no point to it. Alde knew this, and had known it at the time. But Gil realized that she had never forgiven the Icefalcon for being the one assigned to the job.

  "Is he dangerous?"

  "I don't know. Is there a way to find out?"

  "Sure," Gil said cynically. "The authorities in my part of the world used it all the time. If a man flipped out, they'd wait till he actually killed somebody, then lock him up. Otherwise they couldn't know for sure."

  Alde stared at her in disbelief. "You're not serious."

  "Cross my heart."

  "That's abominable!"

  Gil, who'd had a grandmother murdered by known drug addicts in a parking lot for the contents of her purse, shrugged. "Yeah."

  They passed a makeshift stairway that led to the upper levels, the hole where it pierced the ceiling hung with laundry to catch the rising drift of warmer air. There was no light from above, but the next stairway, also a rickety wood one, leading down, admitted a faint glimmer of candlelight from a curtained cell door, and a man's voice singing a lullaby. The girls climbed down, the darkness of the corridor below yawning like a well to receive them. As the winds of the ventilation stirred at their long hair, Gil felt it again, that sense of impending evil—shivering horror like a subsonic note, just below the level of perception. She remembered what Winna had said about three of the children having nightmares.

  "Alde ," she asked quietly, "can you feel anything?"

  "Like what?" Alde stopped. The shadows of the hallway closed around them.

  "Just stand still a minute."

  Perhaps forty seconds trickled by. The silence was as audible as the drawing of breath in a room that should be empty. Gil felt an intruding consciousness of the vastness of the Keep and of the darkness filling its halls and cells. Alde shivered. "No," she said, "Let's go, Gil. What do you feel?"

  "I think the Dark are to force outside," Gil said. "It felt like this the night of their attack. Rudy felt it, and so did Ingold. Tad told me later he'd had nightmares that night."

  Alde looked around quickly. "What about the gates?" she whispered. "Will they hold?"

  "I think so. Ingold's spells are still on them." But remembering the terrible darkness of that roaring tunnel, Gil shuddered nonetheless. More than anything else now, she wanted Ingold back at the Keep for his power against the Dark and for the simple strength of his presence, his power against her own fears.

  "Where would Janus be?"

  "The barracks." They were walking again, hurrying past doorway after dark doorway, around blind corners concealing yet more darkness, then down another flight of stairs, this time of the original stone of the Keep, broad and black and smooth. The green eyes of cats flashed in the lampflame, swift, gliding movement beyond the circle of light. Gil found herself fighting the panic urge to draw her sword. "We should wake Alwir and tell him, too."

  "Yes." Alde moved along quietly before Gil, holding the lamp, its flame leaping in answering glitters of gold from the embroidery of her gown. "He should not have long gone to bed. And if the Dark are outside— Oh!" she gasped as they turned into the main corridor of the Royal Sector and saw something small and white that moved determinedly toward them at floor level. "You little beast, you!"

  Even down the length of almost pitch-black corridor, Gil could recognize Tir, crawling with his usual terrapin-like fixity of purpose toward the nearest precipice. He could not quite walk yet, but he had mastered the technique of escaping his cradle. Only his white gown showed through the darkness as a bobbing blur, like a bunny on a dark night.

  Then they saw movement in the darkness behind him.

  At first Gil wasn't sure—a man, she thought. He had something in his hand, and he had emerged without a sound from the room that was Minalde's. She never knew how she saw his eyes in the dark, but she did.

  By the time Alde screamed, Gil was halfway up the corridor, her sword in her hand. Blurredly, she recognized. Snelgrin, and saw that what he had in his hand was a hatchet. He must have seen her coming and heard Alde 's screaming, but those fixed, empty eyes were on the baby a few yards in front of him, and he moved quickly. Gil wasn't sure how she managed, but she caught the hem of Tir's gown and bowled him out of the way against the corridor wall as the hatchet cracked sparks from the stone floor where he had been. Too close for blade work, she turned the sword in her hand and pommeled the man across the face with the weighted grip. She saw his nose break and the flesh gape open, but the dead eyes never blinked. Cold and paralyzing fear went through her. She tried to step back, but he caught her by the hair, his strength making nothing of her weight, and she felt her head hit the wall with a crack. Tir was screaming now, too, wild, shrill screams of terror, as Snelgrin turned back toward him with his hatchet, his empty face all glittering with blood.

  Someone wrenched the sword from Gil's stunned hands. Like a berserker, Alde fell on the man, hacking inexpertly but fiercely in burning rage. Snelgrin staggered back, raising his arms jerkily to protect his face. People were pouring into the corridor, voices shouting, lights jigging crazily over the walls. Tir's screams spiraled through the darkness like a drill. As if in a fever-dream, Gil saw the thickset Snelgrin swat Minalde out of his way as if she had been a moth, duck his head, and race blindly into the darkness that swallowed him.

  Gil scrambled to her feet and ran to gather Tir from where he huddled, shrieking, by the wall. He appeared to b
e unhurt. Then a wild-haired madwoman with blood trickling from her cut lip tore him from Gil's arms and crumpled slowly to the floor, clutching him to her breast.

  "Alde ," Gil whispered, putting her arms about the girl, "he's okay, he's fine. Are you all right?"

  The dark, tangled head nodded, and somebody grabbed Gil roughly by the arm. "What is it?" Alwir demanded, his face drained of blood. Behind him, his troopers came milling into the corridor, not all of them dressed, but all of them armed. Stiarth was there, the smell of woman still on him, hurriedly wrapping himself in a night robe, his dignity much impaired.

  "Snelgrin," Gil said shortly. "He's mad."

  "Who?" the Imperial Nephew demanded.

  "The man who was outside that night has gone mad," Gil explained breathlessly, as Alwir went to his knees to gather his sobbing sister into his arms. He made no attempt to lift her, only held her as she clung to him in storms of hysterics.

  "But why?"

  "Because…" Gil began, and stopped, her mind leaping to other things. Scarcely aware that she spoke aloud, she said, "He's gone to open the gates."

  "What?"

  But she had turned and was fleeing down the black corridors like a madwoman.

  How well does Snelgrin know the ways of the Keep? she wondered, dodging blindly through the tangled mazes that weeks of investigation had made as familiar to her as the freeways of home. Will he risk cutting through the Aisle to save time? Will Melantrys be able to stop him at the gate? How mad is Snelgrin? Is he ahead of me, she wondered, or behind me now?

  There was no time to think. She ducked through an empty cell that she knew had a ladder down to the Aisle, heedless of her horror of heights or her knowledge that the wood of the thing was several hundred years old and crumbling with dry rot. It's the closest, she told herself grimly, and the most you can do is break your leg on the floor.

  Tho wood crunched faintly in her grip, and the ladder swayed drunkenly under her weight. The Aisle was a void of air around and below her, through which she could faintly hear voices calling, feet running, and the thin, distant cries of a terrified child. Training had improved her reflexes; when the rung cracked under her foot, she automatically jumped clear, landing lightly and turning, listening to the darkness.

  No footfalls. No panic flight. Torches burned by the gates, but there was no sign of the captain of the watch. Had she run to join the hunt? Gil wondered. God help us, she'd be right to do so. The idea of a homicidal madman wandering the labyrinths of the Keep was almost as terrifying as the thought of the Dark breeding there. If he went up instead of down, he could live for years on the fifth level without anyone seeing him at all.

  Except his victims, Gil thought.

  Yet she was certain he had not gone up. From where she stood now by the Church doors, she could see the gates, tiny and infinitely distant in their flickering halo of torchlight. Not quite knowing why, she broke into a run again.

  She was halfway up the Aisle when she saw him. He must have learned the mazes of the Keep well, for he slipped from a doorway to the right of the gates, his face still gouted and sticky with his wounds. She could see that he still had his hatchet and now carried a heavy ax as well. Crouching like an animal, he twisted the locking rings and pulled on the inner doors. They opened easily on their soundless hinges. He pushed them fully wide, shoved something under the right-hand door, and swung the axe. Metal clanged on metal.

  My God, he's wedging it open!

  Gil shouted, an incoherent animal sound of fury, and threw herself those last hundred feet.

  Snelgrin looked up, his body still bent. Sparks flew from the iron as he drove the last few blows at the wedge. Gil had a confused vision of his face, the expression all the more terrifying because of its oddness, as if a being without facial muscles were trying to counterfeit expression. Drool slobbered from the slack mouth. The man uttered a wheezing grunt and turned to plunge back into the pitch-darkness of the gate tunnel moments before Gil reached him.

  Can it see in the dark? she wondered as she sprinted up the steps and hurled herself into the darkness at his heels. But with the inner gate wedged open, there was time for neither speculation nor delay.

  She knew where the locking rings were on the outer gates, and her hands grabbed flesh there. She'd felt his strength before, and now in the utter blackness it was terrifying, overwhelming. Hands ripped at her, pushing and tearing; she felt the ax scrape her leg as she scrambled to catch hold of his arms and body. She was yelling, shouting wildly in the darkness, praying the other Guards would show up before she was overpowered. The heavy body thrashed against hers, breath rasping hoarsely in her ears, the stink of his unwashed jerkin filling her nostrils. For a moment, they were locked in unequal combat; then she felt herself falling; the breath was driven from her, and an avalanche of flaming stars seemed to roar before her eyes. As if those blinding constellations actually gave light, she could see Snelgrin's face twitching, piglike, above her own, the eyes popping with surprise. There was an arrow driven through his Adam's apple. He choked, pawed at it, and made soundless gobbling motions, sweat gleaming on his face. He staggered a step or two to maul at the locking mechanisms of the shut outer gates, and another arrow appeared as if by magic through his temple as he turned his head.

  Ten points for somebody, Gil thought and fainted.

  Everyone in the Keep seemed to be around her when she came to. The roaring of voices was like the sea in a narrow place, pouring through the bare bones of her aching skull. The torchlight was blinding. She shut her eyes again and tried to turn her face away.

  A wet towel was laid over her forehead. Annoyed, Gil tried to strike it aside, and a bony hand grasped her wrist. "Easy, child," the paper-dry voice of Bishop Govannin whispered. Gil tried to rise, rolled over, and promptly vomited. The hard hands caught her shoulders and steadied her without a word.

  "What happened?" Gil asked when she finally could speak. Her head felt light, her body ached. Her face, she found, was covered with the scratches from Snelgrin's fingernails where he'd clawed her. She hadn't even felt that during the fight.

  "Snelgrin is dead." The skeletal fingers pushed aside the clammy straggle of hair from Gil's forehead. "As we all would be by this time, had you not followed him."

  Beyond the Bishop's grave, narrow face, Maia of Thran swam into being in the torchlight, his longbow still strung in his crippled hand. "Snel vanished through the gates just as I emerged from the Church," he said. "I was afraid I would not get in range in time."

  "Yeah, so was I." Gil looked around. It wasn't everyone in the Keep, just most of them, who crowded around her. All the watches of the Guards were there, it seemed, with most of the Red Monks, Alwir's whole private army, and most of Maia's. Melantrys' face was cut, and a lump the size of a walnut was forming on her left temple. Stiarth of Alketch now wore a kind of flowered sarong, and Alwir had his velvet cloak over his nightshirt, looking rather crumpled and human in his bare feet with their well-kept toenails. And apparently three-quarters of the men, women, and children of the Keep had all turned out in nightshirts if they had them and scantly draped in bedding if they didn't. Gil saw Tad, Bendle Stooft's rotund widow, and Winna with her yellow hair hanging in plaits over her back. And all were talking.

  Janus came back from the gate. Caldern and Bok the carpenter were still trying to hammer the wedge free with a counterwedge driven in from the other side. Snelgrin's body had been hauled out of the passage. His face lay where the torchlight could fall on it, but its expression was nothing human. Gil turned away, feeling she would be sick again.

  She heard Bektis' voice, speaking low and swiftly. "I am sure of it, my lord. The Dark are gathered outside in force. The emanations of their wrath must have driven him mad…" She turned her head and saw him standing with Alwir. Bektis was immaculate in his gray velvet gown, with every hair of his waist-length silken beard in place. Interesting, she thought. Alwir came pelting to the battle, even if he did have to do it in his nightie, while Bektis
hung tight in the Royal Sector until the all-clear sounded. Probably with a bed across the door. Well, well.

  "No," a soft voice said behind her, and she looked up, to meet Maia's eyes. The Bishop of Penambra sat back on his heels, watching Alwir, Bektis, and Govannin begin to squabble in the orange circle of the torchlight. "Snel never recovered from the night he spent outside the gates, did he, Gil-Shalos?"

  Gil shook her head. "His wife spoke to us."

  "She spoke to me as well," the Bishop said. He glanced over at Lolli, his dark eyes gleaming in the shadows. When he and his people had come to the Keep, he had resumed the Church fashion of shaving his face and head; Gil had only recently become used to seeing that long, narrow, hollow-cheeked face without its tangled black beard. "She is a Penambran and, like me, knows what it is to sleep outside and await the coming of the Dark. I thought it might have been because he was alone… but I knew Snel, a little. He was a man absolutely without imagination. It takes a degree of sensitivity to be driven mad. But I did not know." He folded his crippled hands on his knees and rested his chin upon them, his long body rolled into an ungainly ball of bones as he sat on his heels. Gil leaned back against the wall behind her, her head aching, her whole body shivering with reaction.

  The Bishop of Penambra went on in a lower voice. "Bektis, of course, is useless as a healer of minds. But I have heard that Ingold Inglorion is good at such things. It is heresy for me to say so." He grinned with his white teeth. "But I regret his absence."

  "You and me both, friend." Gil sighed.

  He looked at her curiously for a moment, then turned his eyes again to the sprawled body with its puckered, elongated expression and vacant eyes. "It is well known that the Dark devour the mind," he said softly. "But this is the first time that I have heard that they can put something else in its place."