01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  "Gnift will also be sorry, to hear that," the Icefalcon said.

  "Gnift?"

  He gestured toward the bald man in the square. "He is the instructor of the Guards. He watched you in the vaults at Gae and last night. He says you could be good."

  She shook her head. "If I stayed," she said, "it would only be a matter of time until I died."

  "It is always," the Icefalcon remarked, "only a matter of time. But you are right." He looked up as another shadow loomed beneath the low, shingled roof.

  "Hey, Gil." Rudy took a seat on the hay bale beside her. "They said you were hurt. Are you okay?"

  She shrugged, the movement making her wince in spite of herself. "I'll live." In the dimness Rudy looked shabby and seedy, his painted jacket a ruin of mud and charred slime, his long hair grubby with sweat, though he'd managed to come up with a razor from someplace and was no longer as unshaven as he'd been yesterday. Still, she reflected, she couldn't look much better.

  "Their council meeting's broken up," he informed her, scanning the wet, dreary court before him with interested eyes. "I figure Ingold should be around someplace, and it's high time we talked to him about going back."

  Across the court a small group emerged from the shadows of the tall gatehouse. Alwir, Govannin of Gae, Janus of the Guards, and the big, scarred landchief someone had said was Tomec Tirkenson, landchief of Gettlesand in the southwest. The Chancellor's cloak made a great bloody smear of crimson against the grayness of the murky day, and his rich voice carried clearly to the three in the shadows of the barracks: "... woman will believe anything, rather than that she left her own child to die. I am not saying that he did substitute another child for the Prince, if the Prince were killed by the Dark-only that he could have done so easily."

  "To what end?" the Bishop asked, in that voice like the bones of some animal, bleached by desert sun. Under the white of the bandage, Janus' face reddened. Even at that distance, Gil could catch the dangerous gleam in that rufous bear-man's eyes.

  Alwir shrugged. "What end indeed?" he said casually. "But the man who saved the Prince would have far greater prestige than the man who failed to save him, especially since it is becoming obvious that his magic has little effect upon the Dark. A Queen's gratitude can go far in establishing a man's position in a new government. Counselor of the Realm is quite a step for a man who started life as a slave in Alketch."

  Anger flaring clearly in his face, Janus began to speak, but at that instant the Icefalcon, who had detached himself from the shed and made his way unhurriedly over to the group, touched the Commander's sleeve and turned his attention from what could have been a dangerous moment. They spoke quietly, Alwir and Govannin listening with mild curiosity. Gil saw the Icefalcon's long, thin hand move in her direction.

  Alwir raised graceful eyebrows. "Going back?" he asked, surprised, his deep, melodious voice carrying clearly across the open court. "This is not what I have been told."

  There was no need to ask of whom they spoke. Gil felt herself grow cold with shock. She threw off the cloaks under which she lay and got to her feet, crossing the court to them stiffly, her arm throbbing at every step. Alwir saw her and waited, a look of thoughtful calculation in the cornflower depths of his eyes.

  "What have you been told?" Gil asked.

  The eyebrows lifted again, and the cool gaze took her in, shabby and dirty and bedraggled beside his immaculate height, wordlessly expressing regret at the type of people Ingold chose as friends. "That Ingold cannot, or will not, let you return to your own land. Surely he spoke to you of it."

  "Why not?" Rudy demanded. He had come hurrying, unnoticed, in Gil's wake.

  Alwir shrugged. "Ask him. If he is still in Karst, that is-sudden arrivals and departures are his specialty. I have seen nothing of him since he left the meeting, quite some tune ago."

  "Where is he?" Gil asked quietly. It was the first time she had spoken with Alwir, the first time, in fact, that she could remember the tall Chancellor taking even a passing notice of her, though there was an uneasiness in her mind associated with him, quite apart from her suspicions about who had ordered Ingold's arrest.

  "My child, I haven't the slightest idea."

  "He's been staying in the gatehouse," landchief Tirkenson grunted, his big, grimy hand gesturing toward the narrow fortification that overspanned the court gate. "I haven't heard he's left town yet."

  Gil turned on her heel, making for the tiny door of the gatehouse stair without a word.

  "Gilshalos!" Alwir's voice called her back. In spite of herself, she stopped, compelled by the command in his tone. She found she was breathing fast, as if she had been running. Wind stirred the tall man's cloak, and the blood rubies glittered on his hands. "No doubt he will have good reasons for what he does-he always does, my child. But beware of him. What he does, he does for his own purposes."

  Gil met Alwir's eyes for the first time, as if she had never before seen his face clearly, studying the proud, sensual features as if she would memorize them, the droop of the carved lips that showed his disdain for those beneath him, the arrogance in the set of the jaw, and the ruthless selfishness in the glint of the eyes. She found herself shivering with a pent-up rage, and her hands remembered their grip on the hilt of a sword. "All men have their purposes, my lord Alwir," she said quietly. She swung about and left him, with Rudy following.

  Alwir watched them go, vanishing into the black slit of the gatehouse door. He recognized Gil's hatred for what it was, but he was used to the hatred of his inferiors. He shook his head sadly and dismissed her from his mind.

  Neither Gil nor Rudy spoke as they climbed the black, twisting stair. It led them to a room, hardly wider than a hallway, situated over the gate itself; warped windows of bull's-eye glass admitted only the cool whiteness of the light and blurred swimming impressions of color and shape. The place had been built as the quarters for the gate porter, but was now used for the storage of the Guards' food. Sacks of flour and oatmeal lined the walls like sandbags on a levee, alternating with wax-covered wheels of scarlet cheese. Over a low pile of such provisions at the far end of the room a blanket and a fur rug had been thrown; a small bundle of oddments, including a clean robe, a book, and a pair of knitted blue mittens, was rolled up at the foot of this crude bed. Ingold sat in the room's single chair next to the south window, as unmoving as stone. The cold white window-light made him look like a black and white photograph, etched mercilessly the deep lines of age and wear that ran back from the corners of his heavy-lidded eyes to his shaggy temples, and marked with little nicks of shadow the scars on his hands.

  Gil started to speak, then saw that he was looking into a jewel that he had set down on the windowsill, staring into the gem's central facet as if seeking some image in the heart of the crystal.

  He looked up at them and smiled. "Come in," he invited.

  They picked their way cautiously through the clutter of the room to the small patch of clear floor space by the wizard's bed. They found seats on sacks and firkins.

  Gil said, "Alwir tells me you're not sending us back."

  Ingold sighed but did not look away from the bitter challenge in her face. "I'm afraid he's right."

  She drew in a deep breath, pain, fear, and dread twisting together within her. Crushing emotion under an inner silence that she could not afford to break, she asked quietly, "Ever?"

  "Not for some months," the wizard said.

  Her breath leaked out again, the slow release of it easing nothing. "Okay." She rose to go.

  His hand closed over her wrist like a snake striking. "Sit down," he said softly. She tried to pull her arm away, without replying, but his hand was very strong. "Please." She turned back, cold and angry; then looking down she saw something in his blue eyes that she'd never expected to see-that he was hurt by her anger. It shook her to the heart. "Please, Gil."

  She stood apart from him for a moment, drawn back to the length of her arm. His fingers were locked around her wrist as if he feared t
hat if he released her, he might never see her again. And maybe, Gil thought, he'd be right. She saw again the vision of her delirium: warm, bright images of some other life, another world, friends and the scholarship she had hoped to make her life, distant from her and guarded by some dark, terrible form that might have been the Dark and might have been Ingold; she saw projects, plans, research, and relationships falling into a chasm of absence, beyond her power to repair. Rage filled her like dry, silent heat.

  Behind her, Rudy said uneasily, "Months is a long time to play tag with the Dark, man."

  "I'm sorry," Ingold said, but his eyes were on Gil.

  Trembling with the effort, she let go of the rage. Without it to sustain her, all the tension left her body. Ingold drew her gently to sit on the bed beside him. She did not resist.

  "I should have spoken to you before the council," Ingold said quietly. "I was afraid that this would happen."

  Gil still could say nothing, but Rudy ventured, "You said something about that yesterday morning, when you were taking off for Gae with the Guards. About how, if the Dark showed up, we maybe couldn't get back."

  "I did," Ingold said. "I feared this all along. I told you once before, Gil, that our worlds lie very close. Close enough for a dreamer to step inadvertently across the line, as you did. Close enough for me to step quickly from one world to the next, like a man stepping behind the folds of a curtain. In time this closeness will become less, as the conjunction between worlds comes to its end. At that time, Dark or no Dark, it will be safe enough for me to send you back through.

  "I am aware of the Void, always and subliminally, as I am aware of the weather. The first time I crossed it, to speak to you in your apartment, I was aware of a weakening all through its fabric in the vicinity of the gate, that I had made. Even then, I began to fear. The Dark Ones do not understand the Void, but I think then they were first aware that it exists. And after that, they watched. The second time I crossed, escaping the battle in the Palace at Gae, I felt the single Dark One follow me across. The opening that I made caused a whole series of breaks in the Void. Most of them would not have admitted a human, but the Dark, with their different material being, were able to use at least one. That was why I tried to get you away from the cabin, Gil. But naturally, you were both too stubborn to go."

  "I was stubborn?" Gil began indignantly. "You were the one who was stubborn... "

  "Hey, if you'd told me the truth, man... "

  "I did tell you the truth," the wizard said to Rudy. "You simply didn't believe me."

  "Yeah, well... " His grumbles trailed off into silence.

  Ingold went on. "I felt that sending you back yesterday would be marginally safe, with the Dark Ones fifteen miles off in Gae. But now it's out of the question. The single Dark One who crossed with me increased their awareness of the Void. And they know, now, that humans exist in the world on the other side."

  "How do you figure that?" The barrel staves creaked as Rudy changed position, bringing his feet up to sit crosslegged, leaning acid-stained elbows on his knees. "The one that followed you got fried on the other side. He never made it back to report."

  "He didn't have to." Ingold turned to Gil. "You saw last night how the Dark Ones fight, the speed with which their bodies maneuver and change position. How the communication between them works I'm not sure, but what one learns, I believe, they all then know. If we weaken the fabric of the Void, so that several of them pass through behind you and Rudy-if, as I suspect it may be, their knowledge of events is simultaneous rather than cumulative-it would be only a matter of time before they learned to operate the gates through the Void themselves.

  "As Guardian of the Void, I am responsible. At this time, I cannot endanger your world by sending you back."

  In the silence that followed his words, the drift of Janus' voice from the court below was faintly audible, along with the clear metallic tap of hooves on cobbles. Somewhere a dog barked. The light in the room faded as twilight drew down on the stricken town.

  Rudy asked, "So what can we do?"

  "Wait," Ingold said. "Wait until the turn of the winter, when our worlds will have drawn apart far enough to permit safe crossing. Or wait until I can speak with the Archmage Lohiro."

  Gil looked up. "You've talked about him before."

  The wizard nodded. "He is the Master of the Council of Quo, the leader of all the world's wizardry. His understanding is different from mine and his power greater. If anyone can help us, he can.

  "Before the Dark Ones broke forth at Gae, before the night I spoke with you, Gil, I spoke with Lohiro. He told me that the Council of Wizards, and indeed all the mages of the West of the World, were coming together at Quo. Wizardry is knowledge. Piecing together all wizardry, all knowledge, all power, we might come to a way to defeat the Dark. And until that time, he said, 'I shall ring Quo in the walls of air, and make of it a fortress that no darkness can pierce. Here we shall be safe, and from this fortress, my friend, we shall come in light.' " As he quoted these words, Ingold's eyes lost some of their sharpness, and his voice shifted, picking up the inflection and tone of another man's voice.

  "And since that time, my children, I have heard nothing. I have sought... " He touched the crystal that lay on the sill next to his elbow, and its facets flashed dimly in the light. "At times I think I can make out the shape of the hills above the town, or the outlines of Forn's Tower rising through the mists. But I have had no word, not from Lohiro nor from any of the wizards. They are surrounded in spells, ringed in illusion. And so they must be sought-and only a wizard can seek them."

  Gil said softly, "Then you'll be leaving us?"

  Ingold's eyes flickered back to her, growing brighter and more present again. "Not at once," he said. "But we will be leaving Karst. At dawn tomorrow, Alwir is leading the people south to the old Keep of Dare at Renweth on Sarda Pass. You may have heard us speak of it in council-it was the old fortress-hold built against the Dark by the men of the Old Realms, many thousands of years ago, at the time of the Dark's first rising. It will be a long trek, and a hard one. But at Renweth you will be safe, as safe as you would be anywhere in this world.

  "I shall be going with the train to Renweth. Though I am no longer considered a member of the Regents, I am still held to the vow I made Eldor before his death. I promised to see Prince Tir to a place of safety and that I will and must do, whether Alwir wishes me to or not. I am afraid, my children, that you have leagued yourselves with an outcast."

  "Alwir can go to hell," Gil said shortly.

  Ingold shook his head. "The man has his uses," he said. "But he finds me-unbiddable. On the road to Renweth, Tir will be in constant danger from the Dark. I cannot leave him. But Renweth will be, for me, only a stopping place, the first stage of a greater journey."

  "Well, look," Rudy said after a moment's thought. "If we went with you to Quo, couldn't you send us back from there? If it's so safe, it would be the one place where the Dark Ones couldn't get through."

  "True," Ingold agreed. "If you made it to Quo. I wouldn't recommend the trip. In the height of the Realm's power, few people would venture to cross the plain and the desert in winter. It's close to two thousand miles, through desolate lands. In addition to the Dark, we would be in danger from the White Raiders, the barbarian tribesmen who have waged bloody war on the outposts of the Realm for centuries."

  "But you're going," Rudy pointed out.

  Ingold's blunt, scarred fingers toyed with the crystal on the windowsill. "And you might be safe, traveling with me. But believe me, your chances of seeing your own world again are far greater if you remain in the Keep of Dare."

  Gil was silent, her bony hands folded on her knee, staring into the murky gloom of the gatehouse. She tried to picture that fortress among the mountains, tried to picture weeks and months there alone, knowing no one, isolated as she had always been isolated. Her jaw tightened. "You will come back for us, though, won't you?"

  "I brought you into this world against your wil
l," Ingold said quietly. He laid his hands over hers, the warmth of his touch going through her, warming her, as it always did, by its vitality. "If for no other reason than that, I am responsible for you. Lohiro may have a better answer than I can give you. It may even be that he will be able to return with me to the Keep."

  "Yeah," Rudy said dubiously. "But what if you can't find the wizards? What if they're locked up so tight even you can't get in? What if-Suppose the Archmage is dead?" He hadn't wanted to say it, since Ingold seemed to be operating on the assumption that Lohiro was alive, but Ingold's frown was one of consideration rather than of anxiety or annoyance.

  "It's a possibility," Ingold said slowly. "I had thought of it, yes, but-I would know if Lohiro were dead." The last of the twilight glinted on his bristling white eyebrows as they drew down over his nose. 'The spells that surround Quo might mask it-but I think I would know. I know I would."

  "How?" Rudy asked curiously.

  "I just would. Because he is the Archmage, and I am a wizard."

  "Is that why Alwir kicked you out of the council?" Gil asked, remembering the cold eyes of the Bishop and the way Alwir had spoken of Ingold at the gate below. "Because you're a wizard?"

  Ingold smiled and shook his head. "No," he said. "Alwir and I are enemies of long standing. He never approved of my friendship with Eldor. And I fear he will never forgive me for being right about the dangers of coming to Karst. Alwir, as you may have guessed, has never thought much of the idea of retreating to the Keeps. The Keeps are fortresses, safe for the most part from the Dark, but limited in scope. To retreat into them will fracture the Realm beyond hope of repair and destroy thousands of years of human civilization. Such a fate is inevitable, in an isolated society, where transportation and communication are limited to the duration of the daylight; culture will wane, narrow-mindedness set in; the human outlook will shrink from urbane tolerance of all human needs to a kind of petty parochialism that cannot see beyond the bounds of its own fields. As you know from your own studies, Gil, private law begets a host of its own abuses. Decentralized, the Church will degenerate, its priests and theologians degraded into sanctified scribes and passers-out of the sacraments to a squabbling, superstitious peasantry. I fear that wizardry, too, will suffer, becoming more and more polluted with little magics, losing sight of the mainstream of its teachings. Anything that requires an organized body of knowledge will vanish-the universities, medicine, training in any form of the arts.