“Tell me, Crayn!” she panted. “Tell me.”

Concentrating, he answered:

—I do not understand. I heard the gates. Now I hear hooves. Other hooves. Iron-shod. Their clang cuts through the thunder.

Then he exclaimed:

—No horse is that heavy.

The gates had been opened? How would that help the Repository?

From his post on the balcony outside the librarian’s workroom, Magister Rummage studied the racing cavalry.

From the outer wall of the balcony with its crenellations and its sheltered vantage points, he could see the whole extent of the road. With approval, he noted the discipline of sub-Commander Waysel and General Klamath as they waited for his signal. More bitterly, he marked the progress of the priests leading the horde.

They were coming faster than he had anticipated. More and more of the fanged strangers crowded behind the priests. The others spread out on both sides, panting and ravenous.

Still, they were not an immediate threat. Arriving when they did, they would be forced to pause while the cavalry passed. Until their way was clear, there was little that they could do except expend their globes on an apparently empty hillside. In any event, they were General Klamath’s problem. Magister Rummage faced a more pressing danger.

Despite his fury and desperation, he held Magister Avail’s hand loosely. He had the strength to break his friend’s fingers, but he had taught himself not to do so.

He was useless without Avail’s voice.

As the leading cavalrymen rounded the curve to his left and pounded upward, Rummage told his friend to give the first signal. The enemy was in position. The road there ran along the rim of a dangerous drop-off on one side and the steep rise of the foothills on the other. The cavalry had nowhere to go except up the road.

At Magister Avail’s command, sudden force slammed open the Repository’s gates. At once, the Knights of Ardor clattered out of the mustering hall onto the upper plateau.

This was their choice, not the hunchback’s. They were only five. By now, hundreds of cavalrymen were on the final ascent. But the Knights were warriors by trade, and they valued the Last Repository. They had insisted on their right to fight for it.

Magister Rummage had to admit that they were needed. The gates were made of heavy timbers and bound with iron, but they were not granite. They had to be defended somehow—and Rile had too many priests. Rummage could not afford to exhaust his Magisters against cavalrymen.