Uneasy Alliances

"But he is Ilsigi, and a commoner!" Lalo fought to subdue a bitterness he thought he had forgotten.

"Oh, it is not that!" Rhian said quickly. "What does all that matter, now? But before I met Wedemir, I had given my word-"

"To a mageling-" Lalo remembered now. "Wedemir was telling me. Did you love him so much, then?" He stopped, wondering why he dared question her so sharply. Was it perhaps just because he could not see her? And was she answering so freely because she did not fear to read condemnation in his eyes?

Rhian sighed. "Wedemir is very warm and alive. When I am with him, I feel safe. I know that I am loved. But I gave Darios my word." "Death cancels such pledges," said Lalo. "Darios is not dead." "She keeps on saying that!"

Lalo started, realizing that Wedemir had come in from the other room. "Rhian, if he is not dead, he has deserted you! You owe him nothing either way!"

"I can feel his presence! If he is dead, then his spirit is haunting me!" Her tone had sharpened, and Lalo's sense other presence grew clearer. She was turning from him to Wedemir, her gaze more luminous, as if her eyes had filled with tears. Or was it only the pain in her voice that made him think so?

"In my dreams I see him, Wedemir - . . Darios is trapped in darkness, and he ca

Trapped in darkness! thought Lalo. Like me! Like me! For a moment a terror that was not his own washed through him. But he could hear voices, feel the sun on his face and breathe in the wind. It occurred to him for the first time since he had been blinded that there were worse fates than his own.

"He is not dead yet," Rhian continued. "But he is dying. He has been buried alive, and if I can't find him, he will starve to death in the dark. He has lost hope, but still he thinks of me... ."

Again, the sense of panic washed through Lalo's awareness, as if what the girl was feeling had somehow been transmitted directly from her to him.

"But where?" exclaimed Wedemir, humoring her. "Most of the wreckage from the riots has been cleared away."

"Not all of it-" said Rhian slowly. "No one has dared to touch the parts of the Mageguild that fell down. That's where Darios was living. What if he sought shelter in the cellars and was trapped there? The possibility comes between me and sleep!"

"Well that's easily checked out!" Wedemir laughed. "I'll get a permit from the Palace to excavate, go down there with a fe^ of the lads and some picks and shovels and dig the nibble out. We'll lay your ghost for you, Rhian."

Lalo could feel the sudden hostility between them. He understood Wedemir's reaction-he was fighting for his love. But beneath her Rankan elegance this woman was the true steel. The boy would ruin his chances with her if he went on this way, no matter what the diggers found. Why couldn't Wedemir see that? Lalo felt himself straining, as if a look could silence his son. But he knew that he was seeing through both of them, seeking, like Darios, to pierce the dark.

Darios knows when he is dreaming, because in his dreams, he can see. But when he opens his eyes into darkness, he is afraid. He is going to die... . Why does he keep trying to keep his body going when there can only be one end? He will go through the only door that will open for him now, and hope the gods will forgive him all the petty deceptions and angers of a student mage.

I have done nothing really bad, he tells himself. Nor anything particularly good, either, his thought goes on. But he has done one thing for which the Judge might indeed condemn him, though he supposes that hardly a man in the Mageguild or out of it would care. He has deceived a woman in order to compel her love.

Was that evil? He asks himself. What would that deception do to meto us-if I were to live? He thinks of Rhian's bright beauty, and knows that his own falsehood would stain it for him, in time. As outer vision is denied, his i

Is this knowledge why he is suffering? But now Darios knows his sin. Surely he has been punished enough. Once more. he tried to remember the SigH on the door, the pattern which he must trace in order to be free... . But he ca

And there is no use in praying for rescue. Darios remembers only too well how the Spell that seals the vault is set to respond if anyone tries to open it by physical means... .

Lalo knew that he must be dreaming, because he could see. He dreamed with a clarity of vision that had never been his in waking life, or even in sleep, before his sight was taken away. In his dreams, he ranged through Sanctuary at will, invisible, invulnerable, as if all the energy that had no outlet by day was fueling his nocturnal wanderings-nocturnal in their begi

It was morning now. The clear light glowed in the faces of the young, who woke wondering what the new day would bring, and revealed without pity every line and shadow in those of their elders, who knew only too well. Still, there was a welcome freshness in the air, and the sunlight gleamed cheerfully from the temple domes. For a moment Lalo thought that he had gone back to his own youth, when the great caravans used to bring the town a rough prosperity. But as he looked more closely he saw the mended cracks the new gilding tried to hide, and turning a corner, recognized the jagged outlines of the Mageguild. This was the present then, or perhaps the future, for the City walls beyond it were perceptibly higher than he remembered them.

For such an early hour, the place seemed very active... . Lalo moved closer, and saw a familiar curly head-his own son Wedemir, with a crowd of his friends from the garrison, big, bronzed men, who laughed and traded good-natured obscenities. But they were carrying picks, not pikes, and instead of swords they swung shovels. Wedemir was trying, with indifferent success, to get them organized. A short distance away Lalo saw his daughter Vanda, and with her another girl whose auburn hair glinted beneath her veil. R h ian- suddenly Lalo was certain who this must be. But how had he known?

He moved toward them, calling a greeting, but they looked through him, no more able to see his spirit than he had seen their bodies when they visited him.

Sight and vision are not necessarily the same... . The awareness came to Lalo like the answer to some long-debated question ... He was on the edge of understanding when a shout distracted him. The soldiers were attacking the rubble at the edge of the Mageguild's great hall. Dust puffed up as the first of the great stones was moved. Wind lent the moving particles form and substance. Figures for which ordinary humans have no names seemed to hover for a moment above the workers, then the wind swirled them away. Was that a trick of the light, or was Lalo perceiving the elementals that had been bound to those stones?

Sight ... or vision?

That first success had encouraged the diggers. Picks shattered stones into fragments small enough to be carried away. Now they had bared the ground level. Someone shouted, and the men crowded around a rubblechoked depression next to the wait.

"What have they found?" Vanda asked her friend.

"It should be the stairs to the vaults beneath the Mage hall," answered Rhian. "Darios boasted that he knew the way-he should not have told me, I suppose, but he would never believe he did not need to impress me... ."