01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  "To avoid the hunter," Ingold replied in that same quiet tone, "the deer shun the towns of men, but men seek them in the forest. The Dark never stalked the high country because there was no profit in it. When their prey flee there, thither they will come, to take them in open ground, scattered broadcast halfway to Gettlesand, without wall or fire, believing themselves safe."

  The sapphires flashed in the torchlight as the Chancellor shifted his weight, and his cornflower-blue eyes were as hard as the jewels. "Two days ago there was a King at Gae," he said. "And now there is none. This situation is temporary. Believe me, Ingold Inglorion, a city of people cannot come and go as lightly as you do yourself. We obviously could not remain in Gae... "

  "Why not?" the wizard bit at him.

  The slipping temper showed in the steel that suddenly edged his voice. "It was chaos there. We... "

  "That will be as nothing," Ingold said slowly, "to the chaos you will find when the Dark Ones come here."

  In the silence that followed, Gil was conscious of the rustling presence of the onlookers and eavesdroppers, chance-camped around the parchment-littered table that was all the headquarters the Realm of Gae now had-men and women, with their children or bereft of them, sitting or curled uncomfortably on their blankets, drawn against their will into the vortex around the tall, elegant Chancellor and this shabby pilgrim whose only possession seemed to be the killing sword at his hip. Though all around them in the obscure, pillared fastnesses of the hot, murky hall there was subdued talk and movement, here there was none. The duel was fought perforce in the presence of witnesses.

  Alwir seemed to remember them, for the tension in him eased perceptibly, and his voice was lighter, with just a trace of amusement, as he said, "You run ahead of yourself, my lord wizard. The Dark have not come to Karst-of all the cities in this part of the Realm, it is without trace of their Nests. As I have said, this state of affairs is temporary; it takes time to relocate and reorganize. Those who have refugeed here have nothing to fear. We shall make of Karst the new heart of the Realm, away from the danger of the Dark; it is here that we shall assemble an army of the allies of mankind. We have sent already to Quo, to the Archmage Lohiro, for his advice and aid, and south for help, to the Empire of Alketch."

  "You've what?" It was Ingold's turn to be shocked and as angry as Gil had ever seen him.

  "My dear Ingold," Alwir said patronizingly, "surely you don't expect us to sit on our hands. With the aid of the armies of the Empire of Alketch, we can carry the fight into the Nests of the Dark. With such aid and that of the Council of Wizards, we can attack the Dark in their own territory, burn them out, and rid the earth once and for all of that foul pestilence."

  "That's nonsense!"

  Alwir hooked his thumbs in his jeweled belt, clearly satisfied that he had taken the wizard off his usual balance. "And what would you propose, my lord wizard?" he asked silkily. "Returning to Gae, to be devoured by the Dark?"

  Ingold recovered himself, but Gil could see, from her post by the stairs, how shaken he had been by the Chancellor's suggestion. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet. "I propose that we go to ground," he said, "at Renweth."

  "Renweth?" Alwir threw back his head, as if uncertain whether to explode into rage or laughter. "Renweth? That frozen hellhole? It's ten days' journey from the end of the world, the jumping-off place of Hell. We might as well dig our graves and bury ourselves in them. Renweth! You aren't serious!"

  The Bishop shifted her black, lizard's gaze to Ingold curiously and spoke for the first time. "The monastery there closed twenty years ago, during the Bad Winter. I doubt there's even a village there anymore." Her voice was a dry, thin whisper, like the wind whistling through bleached bones in the desert. "Surely it is too isolated from the heart of the Realm to establish as its capital?"

  "Isolated!" Alwir barked. "That's like saying Hell has an unseasonable climate. A backwater pit in the heart of the mountains!"

  "I am not concerned with the Realm," Ingold said, his scratchy voice uninflected now, but his eyes glittering in the murky torchlight. "There is no Realm anymore, only people in danger. You deceive yourself to think political power will hold together when every man's thoughts are on refuge alone." The Chancellor made no reply to this, but along his cheekbones Gil saw the flush of anger redden the white skin. Ingold went on. "Renweth Vale is the site of the old Keep of Dare. From the Keep, whatever else you choose to do, you can hold off the Dark."

  "Oh, I suppose we could, if the Keep's still standing," the Chancellor admitted brusquely. "We could also hold them off if we lived in the wilds like the dooic, hiding in caves and living on bugs and snails, if you wanted to go that far. But you're not going to fit the entire population of the Realm into the Keep of Dare, for all your vaunted magic."

  "There are other Keeps," the Bishop put in suddenly, and Alwir shot her a look black with anger. She ignored it, refolding her long, bony fingers, her parchment-dry whisper of a voice thoughtful. "There is a Keep in Gettlesand that they still use as a fortress against the incursions of the White Raiders; there are others in the north... "

  "That they've been using to cure hides in for the last three thousand years," Alwir snapped, really angry now. "The Church might not suffer much, my lady Bishop, in the breakup of human civilization; your, organization was made to hold sway in scattered places. And you, my lord wizard, think your own kind wouldn't be hurt-wanderers and brothers to the birds. But it's a long trek to Renweth." He jerked his head at all those watching eyes, that blur of faces in the blue fog of smoke-the girl with the cat, the old man with his crates of chickens, the fat woman in her nest of sleeping children. "How many of these would survive a half-month of nights in the open, journeying through the river valleys where the road runs down to Renweth Vale? We are safe here, I tell you-safer than we'd be on the way."

  There was a murmuring among them, a shoal-whisper of agreement and fear. They had fled once from comfortable homes and pleasant lives in a city now deteriorating into lawlessness by day and nightmare terror by dark-a weary climb up muddy roads, burdened by all they could carry away with them. Frightened and confused, they had no desire to flee farther, and there was not one of them who, by hope of Heaven or fear of Hell, could have been induced to spend the night in the open.

  Alwir went on, his voice dropping to exclude all but those closest in the smoky glare that surrounded the foot of the stairs. "My lord Ingold," he said quietly, "you held a great deal of power under King Eldor, power based on the trust he had in you from the time he was a child under your tutelage. How you used that power was your own affair and his; for you had your secrets that even those of Eldor's family were not privy to. But Eldor is dead; his Queen lies raving. Someone must command, else the Realm will destroy itself, like a horse running mad over a cliff. Your magic cannot touch the Dark-your power in the Realm is over."

  Their gazes met and locked, like sword blades held immobile by the matched strength of their wielders. The tension between them concentrated to a core of silence unbroken save by the sound of their breathing; blue eyes looking into blue, framed in darkness and the smoldery glare of jumping torchlight.

  Without taking his eyes from Alwir's, Ingold said, "King Eldor is dead. But I swore to see his son to a place of safety, and that place is not Karst."

  Alwir smiled, a thin change of his lips that neither touched nor shifted his eyes. "It will have to be, won't it, my lord wizard? For I am his Regent now. He is under my care, not yours." Only then did his eyes move, the entire stance of his body changing, and his voice lightened, like that of an actor stepping out of a role-or into one. His smile was genuine then, and deprecating. "Come, my lord," he said pleasantly. "You must understand that there are conditions under which life is definitely not worth preserving, and I'm afraid you've named one of them. Now-" He held up his hand against the wizard's next words. "I'm sure we will get off with less drastic consequences than the complete dismantling of civilization. I admit we are hard-pressed for certai
n things here, and I do not doubt that there are more refugees from Gae and the surrounding countryside coming up the mountain tomorrow. We're sending a convoy of the Guards down to the storehouses under the Prefecture Building at the Palace of Gae as soon as it grows light. As for getting in touch with the Archmage Lohiro, I'm afraid your colleagues seem to be in hiding, and it is beyond even Bektis' powers to get through to them."

  "There is a glamour thrown over the City of Quo," Bektis said stiffly, looking down his high, hooked nose at Ingold. "With all my spells and the magic of fire and jewel, I have been unable to pierce it."

  "I'm not surprised," Ingold said mildly.

  The Bishop's flat black gaze rested briefly upon them both. "The Devil guards his own."

  Ingold inclined his head toward her politely. "As does the Straight God, my lady. But we wizards are of neither world and so must protect ourselves as best we can. As the stronghold of the teachings of wizardry, Quo has always been guarded against invasion and destruction. I doubt that any wizard, however skilled, could pierce the town's defenses now."

  "But that is what you propose to do?" Alwir asked, a note of genuine curiosity stealing into his trained melodious voice. He had won his battle-or at least this particular gambit. He could afford now to drop pose and ploy that Gil sensed were habitual with him.

  "It is what I propose to try. As soon, as I said, as I have seen the Prince to a place of safety. But first, my lord Alwir, I need rest, for myself and my two young friends. They have journeyed far from their homes, and will set out on their return before today's sun sets. And, by your leave, I would like to see the Queen."

  There was a stirring in the hall beyond; someone opened the postern door, and the sudden, sharp draft of fresh, biting air threw smoke over them, making the Bishop cough, a dry, rasping sound. Beyond the door, the darkness was stained with paler gray.

  As if the opening of that small door had let in an unfelt wind that stirred the crowded multitude like leaves, ripples of movement eddied restlessly throughout the dim, smoky chamber. Some people settled down to sleep at last, secure for the first time in the long night; others got up and began to move about, the rise in their talk like the voice of the sea when the tide turns. The draft from the door caused the torchlight to flicker jerkily over stone arches and haggard faces. Men and women who had hitherto kept their distance from the red-lit circle of power and danger surrounding the great of the Realm edged stealthily closer, and Gil could hear the murmuring whisper in the shadows behind her as she stood against the banister with the flushed, sleeping child in her arms. "That's his Little Majesty himself?... That's his little lordship, and a sweeter child there never was... Praise God he be safe... They say old Ingold stole him clean away from the Dark-he's a caution, ain't he?... Tricky old bastard, I say. Mirror of Satan, like all them wizards... He has his uses, and he did save the Prince that would have been dead, sure as the ice in the north... King, now; Lord Eldor's only child... "

  The great unwashed, Gil thought, and straightened her cricked back against hours of standing and the accumulated weight of the sleeping child in her arms. People came as near as they dared-for she, too, was an outworlder and uncanny. She could smell on them the stench of old sweat and the grime of travel. At her movement Tir woke, grasped at a handful of her hair, and began to whimper fretfully.

  Rudy, who had been slumped, dozing, on the granite steps at her feet, glanced up at her, then stood up stiffly and held out his arms. "Here," he said, "I'll hold him for a while. Poor little bugger's probably starving."

  Gil started to hand him over, then stopped in mid-motion as Alwir turned toward them. The close-crowding people fell back. "I shall take the child," he said, speaking to Gil and Rudy as if they had been servants, "and give him to his nurse."

  "Let the Queen see him first," Ingold said, materializing quietly at his elbow. "That, I think, will help her more than any medicine."

  Alwir nodded absently. "It may be that you are right. Come." He turned away and moved up the stairs into the shadows, the child beginning to fret and cry weakly in his arms. Ingold started to follow him, but Janus caught the sleeve of his brown mantle and held him back.

  "Ingold- can I ask a favor of you?" His voice was pitched low to exclude all but those nearest him-Govannin had already gone to speak to a couple of shaven-headed monks in scarlet, and Bektis was ascending the stairs in Alwir's wake, his long hands tucked in his fur-lined sleeves and a look of pious despair on his narrow face. Ordinarily, Gil thought, the Commander of the Guards would be a big, roaring man, like an Irish cop; but strain and worry had quieted him, aging his square pug face. "We're riding for Gae in half an hour. The Icefalcon's already rounding up the troops. We've got as many of the Guards as we can spare and Alwir's private soldiers. The woods are full of bandits, refugees, people who'd kill for food, now it's so short, and in Gae it will be worse. The law's destroyed, whatever Alwir says about holding the Realm together-you know that, and so do I, and so does he, I think."

  Ingold nodded, folding his arms against the cold that was blowing in from outside. With that cold came the growing murmur of voices, the rattle of cart wheels on cobblestones, and the far-off creaking of leather.

  "I know it's hell to ask you," Janus went on, "after all you've done. God knows, whatever Alwir says, you've done a hero's part. But will you ride with us to Gae? The storage vaults are underground, and we may need you, Ingold, to get the food clear safely. You can't touch the Dark but you can call the light and you're the finest swordsman in the West of the World besides. We need every sword we can get. I asked Bektis to come, as a wizard, but he won't." The Commander chuckled wryly. "He says he won't risk leaving the Realm without a wizard to council its rulers."

  Ingold snorted with laughter or indignation, then was silent. Outside could be heard the voices of Guards and the sound of people coming into the square, new refugees already arriving in the town. In the corners of the smoky hall could be heard the muted rattle of cook pots, a man's complaining voice, young children crying.

  The wizard sighed deeply, but nodded. "All right. I can sleep in one of the carts on the way down-I must see the Queen first, though. Get as many carts and as many swords as you can." He turned toward the stairs, his white hair matching the gold of the torchlight as he moved. Gil took a step after him, uncertain whether to call his name, and he stopped, as if he had heard her speak. He came back down to her. "I shall be back before night falls," he said quietly. "By day you two should be safe enough, but don't wander about alone. As Janus says, the town isn't safe. Before sunset I'll return to send you back through the Void."

  "Isn't that a little soon?" Rudy asked doubtfully. "I mean, you were right about the Void crossing being rough, and that will be only-" He calculated on his fingers. "-fifteen or sixteen hours."

  "I understand the risk," Ingold said. "You're both young and strong and should take no permanent harm from it. And consider the alternative. By daylight, you're safe in Karst; so far Alwir seems to be right, and the Dark do not haunt these hills. But I have no surety what another night will bring. Our worlds lie very close; the Dark followed me across the Void once, and it would be too easy for one to do so again. I said once that I was the only one who understands the Void, and as such I have a responsibility. I cannot let them contaminate other worlds. Surely not one as populous and as undefended as yours. Another night could trap you here," he finished bluntly. "For if the Dark are anywhere near, I will not send you back."

  "So you don't believe Alwir," Rudy said, folding his arms and slouching against the great granite newel post.

  "No. It's only a matter of time until the Dark Ones come to Karst, and I want you well away from here before it happens."

  "Hey, affirmative, man. When you get back to town, I'm gonna be right here on the front steps waiting for you."

  Ingold smiled. "You're wise," he said. "You two alone have the option to leave this world. With what will come, believe me, you are to be envied." And he was gone, moving up t
he long stairway as lightly as if he hadn't been without sleep for two nights, and was swallowed by the shadows at the top.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first sensation in Gil's mind, as she stepped from the dark slot of the postern door into soft pearl daylight and bone-chilling morning cold, was relief. She had made it, somehow, through the bizarre terrors of the night; she had lived to see dawn. She could not remember when she had ever taken such conscious pleasure in simple daylight.

  The second sensation was dismay. As she came out on the top step, the noise and stink hit her like a wall. People were quarreling, arguing, yelling at the tops of their voices, demanding where food could be found, squabbling over the possession of ragged and frightened animals, and clustering in an arm-waving group around the doorways of buildings already jammed to the rafters with refugees demanding admittance; others were milling around the half-drained town fountain, bickering over water in voices sharp with the anger bred of fear. The growing light showed Gil faces pale and taut, wary eyes shifting like those of rats. They were physically and mentally angling for a toehold of position in this slipping world. The ice-breeze of the mountains bore on its cold breath the drifting stench of untended waste.

  Jesus, Gil thought, appalled, they're setting themselves up for cholera, plague... you name it. How much do these people know about sanitation and disease anyway?

  And her third sensation, as she stood shivering at the top of the steps in the biting cold, was ravenous hunger. She gave the matter some thought. The Commander of the Guards seemed to be on Ingold's side, and could probably be talked into giving her something to eat on the basis of her connection with the wizard. She made her way down the steps, having to pick her path around a middle-aged man in soiled broadcloth who seemed to have set up camp on the lowest step with every intention of staying there, to where half a dozen men and women in the black uniform of the City Guards were readying the transport carts to join the convoy to Gae. They were evidently under the command of a tall young man with ivory-blond braids that hung to his waist, who was currently engaged in a heated argument with a knot of civilians in dirty homespun. The chief of the civilians was shaking his head emphatically, the Guard gesturing to the mob in the square. As she came close, he dismissed the men in disgust and swung around to face her, regarding her from under colorless brows with eyes as light and cold as polar ice.