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The Walls of the Air by Barbara Hambly


PROLOGUE
Gil Patterson thought her vision of the strange city was all a dream—until the
wizard Ingold Inglorion appeared one night in her kitchen, seeking a place to
bring the infant Prince of Dare from the ancient horror that was attacking the
city of Gae.
Rudy Solis didn't believe in wizards and magic—even when he saw Ingold emerge,
with an infant in his arms, beside the place where Rudy had stopped to fix his
car.
But when one of the monstrous, evil Dark crossed the Void in Ingold's wake,
their only escape was back with the wizard to the embattled world from which he
had fled.
It was a world where magic worked within a logic of its own. And it was a world
where the loathsome Dark were again ravening, after they had lain almost
forgotten in underground lairs for three thousands years. Gae had fallen, and
the city of Karst was jammed with refugees. The King was dead, and proud,
ambitious Alwir was now Regent for the infant Prince Tir, as brother to the
young Queen Minalde—or Alde , as most called her.
Then the Dark struck in massive numbers at Karst. In the fighting, Gil
discovered that even a graduate student of history could become a warrior. And
Rudy found himself aiding the young Queen to save her child again from the Dark.
At Ingold's urging, those who were left began the long, agonizing march toward
the Keep of Renweth through trails choked with snow and buffeted by mountain
winds. During that flight, dissension among the leaders was as much a danger as
the trailing Dark and the White Raiders, who were coming from the plains to
loot. Alwir and the fanatic lady Govannin, Bishop of the Church, were engaged in
a struggle for power. And both feared Ingold— the Bishop because all wizardry
was evil in her Faith.
To Gil and Rudy, unused to the hardships of freezing cold and day-after-day
marching, the trip was hard. But Gil found herself accepted as one of the
Guards, the elite fighting force of Gae. And Rudy found that Alde returned his
love. His joy in this was equaled only by his discovery that he could call up
fire—and by Ingold's promise to teach him to be a wizard.
In the end, through the efforts of Ingold, some eight thousand people reached
the monstrous, black Keep, built three thousand years before by wizardry as a
defense against the previous scourge of the Dark. There, in its vast chaos of
deserted aisles and chambers, they could make themselves a refuge for a time,
though the perils before them were many and terrible.
Yet somehow Gil and Rudy discovered that they no longer had any desire to return
across the Void to their own world.

CHAPTER ONE
The setting was the Shamrock Bar in San Bernardino on a rainy Saturday night.
Rain drummed softly on the plate glass window, and the tawdry gleam of lights
shone on the wet pavement outside. Two bearded bikers and a sleazy blonde were