A towering spire, a rounded dome, a Wizard looking down from above, and two bewildered groups beneath the tower.
Ruger kept himself under control, but Mona still noticed that fleeting change in him. She looked over of her own accord, wearing the same faint smile as always, like a silly girl who never hurried or worried about anything and thought only about what to eat for dinner and breakfast.
At that moment, Mona's eternally unchanging smile gave him an inexplicable sense of reassurance.
But Ruger was certain he could not have mistaken it. That had been pure, intense malice-not some petty dislike for someone, but a desire to destroy, to tear apart. Judging by that sweeping glance, Ruger concluded that the malice was not aimed at him alone. The old Wizard had bestowed it generously on everyone present.
As Ruger instinctively turned toward Mona, understanding also dawned on him.
This old Wizard, his contemplation, his power, his silence.
And that momentary surge of malice toward everyone.
All of it said he was about to take a desperate risk, to make a mad decision in silence.
Barry Danton's words inexplicably flashed through Ruger's mind. The madness of the weak. As a weak man, he had to have a madness that belonged to the weak. Those few words, spoken with a smile, were Barry Danton's summation of the first half of his life, his verdict on the life he had lived.
Those words were especially fitting here, too.
Even the strongest at the One-Ring level was indisputably weak when measured against Wizards as a whole. Even if he was special-or perhaps precisely because he was special-he could understand that fact more deeply and live in torment because of it. He was still weak, someone who recognized his own weakness more deeply and