01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  Ingold looked like an overage imp when he smiled like that. "No, thank God. No. Wizards are really a very individualistic crew. We are formed by what we are, like warriors or bards or farmers-but we're hardly alike."

  "What's Lohiro like?" The Archmage, Master of the Council of Quo-Rudy found it difficult to picture a man whom Ingold would call master. He wondered just how this tough old maverick got along with the leader of the world's wizardry.

  "Ah." Ingold smiled. "That's a good question. No two people who have known him have the same answer. They say he is like a dragon, in that he is the boldest and most guileful, the bravest and the most calculating-and that, like a dragon, he seems to those who meet him to be made of light and fire. I hope one day that you will have the opportunity to judge for yourself."

  They paused in the doorway. Beyond them lay the court of the Guards, drowned under the drenching rain; to their left, the shadow of the gateway, and the broken street beyond. The gutter down its center was roaring like a millrace. The ground in the square would be nothing but sucking ooze. Rudy asked, "Do you like him?"

  "I would trust him with my life " Ingold said quietly. "I love him as if he were my son." Then he turned away and vanished into the shadows of the street, a stooped, weary form in his hooded robe. Rudy watched him disappear into the sodden darkness, and it occurred to him that this was the first time Ingold had come out with a straight answer about his personal feelings. Shining wetness picked out the peak of the old man's hood as he passed under the glow of a lighted window far down the lane. The light was dim, the soft glow of a single candle or a shaded lamp. Rudy's eyes were drawn to the window, and he saw a wavering shadow pass across the mullioned panes within.

  He knew that window.

  After a moment he thought, What the hell? Why not?

  He stepped from the shelter of the gate and hurried down the black lane in the rain.

  Alde looked up, startled, as he tapped at her open chamber door. Then she recognized him, and her violet eyes darkened with pleasure. "Hello."

  "Hi." He stepped hesitantly into the room, made uneasy by the dead stillness of the house below. The room itself was in wild disorder, curtained in shadow; bed, chairs, and floor were strewn with clothes, books, and miscellaneous equipment; dusky blood-rubies glittered on a pair of combs in the shadow, and white gauntlets lay nearby, like wrinkled upturned hands. Minalde herself was wearing the white gown in which he'd first met her; it was evidently a favorite, like an old pair of jeans. Her black hair, unbraided, lay in great crinkled swatches over her slim shoulders. "I came to see if you might like a hand with your packing."

  "That was kind of you." She smiled. "I don't need a hand so much as an extra brain, I'm afraid. This-chaos... " She gestured eloquently at the confusion all around her.

  There was a clicking tap of hard-heeled shoes in the hall behind him, and the short, stout woman Rudy remembered from the terrace-Christ, was that only yesterday evening?-came bustling in, dragging a small chest behind her and carrying a pile of empty sacks thrown over her arm. She bestowed a glance of withering contempt upon him, but didn't deign to speak. To Alde she said, "This was all I could find, your Majesty, and bless me if I don't think it's all we'll have room for in the cart. That and the great chest of my lord Alwir's."

  "That's fine, Medda." Alde smiled, taking the sacks from her. "It's a miracle you could come up with this, in all this confusion. Thank you."

  The older woman looked mollified. "Well, it's truth that the house is like a shambles, and I could barely find this. What you're coming to, your Majesty, I don't know-forced to ride in a cart, and hardly the clothes on your back and all. How we'll reach Renweth alive I'm sure I can't think."

  "We'll make it," the girl said. "Alwir will get us there."

  Without a word or a second glance for Rudy, Medda scurried to the corner of the room, where she began folding blankets and sheets, packing them firmly into one of the sacks. Alde returned to her own packing, folding the great mass of flame-cut crimson velvet that Rudy recognized as the cloak Alwir had worn that afternoon. "Most of this is Alwir's," she said to Rudy, nodding to the tumble of cloaks, tunics, and robes that half-covered the big bed. "He asked me to sort his things for him. It's hard to know what to take and what to leave behind." She packed away the cloak and picked up a quilt of star-embroidered silk, the colors of it changing and rippling as it moved. Rudy came over to give her a hand with it, being well-versed in the ways of laundromats, and she smiled her thanks.

  "Well, packing was an easy one for me," he said. "All I've got is a blanket and a spoon and what I've got on. For a Queen, you're traveling awfully light."

  She smiled at him and shook back the dark hair from her face. "Have you seen the cart I'm going to be riding in? It's about the size of that bed. I'm not usually this unencumbered; anywhere I go I always seem to end up taking carts and carts of things, books and clothes and spare cloaks and tennis rackets and a chess game. My maid takes-" Her voice caught suddenly on the words, as if she had physically stumbled in a swift run. It was thin and shaky when she finished the sentence. "My maid used to take more than this." Then, with a forced lightness, she continued. "On longer trips I'd have furniture and bedding and dinner service and windows... "

  "Windows?"

  "Of course." She looked at him in genuine surprise, forgetting momentarily, as the Icefalcon forgot when speaking to Gil, that he was an outworlder and a stranger in the land. "Have you any idea how much glass costs? Even we quality folks have to bring our own windows with us when we travel. One could never afford to glaze all the windows in all of one's houses." She smiled at his expression of dawning comprehension. A little ruefully, she went on. "But I don't think we'll need the windows in the Keep of Dare."

  "What's it like?" Rudy asked. "The Keep, I mean."

  She shook her head. "I really don't know. I've never been there. The Kings of the Realm abandoned Renweth so long ago; there was never even a hunting lodge there. Until-Eldor-" Again there was that hesitation, almost an unwillingness to speak his name. "Until the King went there some years ago, to have it re-garrisoned, I don't think a King of Darwath had visited it in generations. But he remembered it. My grandfather remembered it, too."

  "Your grandfather?"

  "Oh, yes. Our House, the House of Bes, is descended from Dare of Renweth, a side descent. Now and then the memories show up in our people, sometimes hundreds of years apart. Grandfather said he remembered mostly the darkness inside the Keep and the smoke and the smell. He said he had memories of twisting passageways lit by grease lamps, and rickety old makeshift stairways going up and down into darkness. He remembered himself-or Dare, or some ancestor-walking through the corridors of the Keep and not knowing whether it was day or night, summer or winter, because it was always lamplight there. When he'd speak of it," she went on, her hands pausing, still and white against the colors of the gown she was holding, "I could almost see it, it was so close to him. I could see the stairs, going up like scaffolding, and the fitful gleam of the lamps on the stone. I could smell it, damp and murky like old blankets and dirty clothes, and could feel the darkness surrounding me. It will be hard to live always by torchlight."

  "Always is a long time," Rudy said, and Minalde looked away.

  They talked a while longer of the Keep, of the Palace at Gae, of the small doings that had made up the life of the Queen of the Realm of Darwath. The fire sank in the open brazier that warmed the room, the flames playing in a small, steady amber glow over writhing scarlet coals; the soft smells of camphorwood and lemon sachet drifted from the folded clothes. "A lot of this will have to be left, I'm afraid," Alde sighed. "We have only three carts, and one of those has to be for the records, the archives of the Realm." She was sitting on the floor now, turning over in her hands book after book from the small pile beside her. The firelight sparkled off their jeweled bindings and spread gold, like a warm suntan, on the soft flesh of her chin and throat. "I'd wanted to take all of these, but some of them are
terribly frivolous. Books are so heavy, and the ones we take really ought to be serious, philosophy and theology. These may very well be the only books they'll have in the Keep for years."

  Behind the gentle run of her voice Rudy heard the echo of another voice, Gil's voice, saying, Do you realize how many of the great works of ancient literature didn't survive? All because some Christian monk didn't think they were important enough to preserve? He'd forgotten the context and the conversation, but the words came back to him, and he ventured, "Probably a lot of people are going to hang onto the philosophy and theology." And, God knows, I wouldn't want to be shut up for years with nothing to read but the Bible.

  "That's true," she mused, weighing the two books in her hands, as if measuring pleasure and emotional truths against fine-spun scholastic hairsplitting. Then she turned her head, the dark sheet of her hair brushing his knee where he sat on the edge of the bed behind her. "Medda?"

  The stout servant, who all this time had worked in silent disapproval in the darker corners of the room, came forward now, and her manner softened imperceptibly. "Yes, my lady?"

  "Could you go up to the box room and see if you can locate another trunk? A small one?"

  The woman bobbed a curtsy. "Yes, my lady." Her heavy tread with its clicking heels diminished down the dark hall. Rudy thought to himself, Score one for Gil and ancient lit.

  Alde smiled at him across the gemmed fire-glint of the gilded bindings. "She doesn't approve of you. Or of anybody, really, who isn't sufficiently impressed by my being Queen. She was my nurse when I was small and she puts a lot of store in being the Queen's Nurse. She isn't like that when we're alone. Don't let her worry you."

  Rudy grinned back at her. "I know. The first time I saw the two of you together, I thought you were some kind of junior servant, the way she bossed you around."

  The fine, dark eyebrows raised, and there was a teasing light in her eyes. "If you'd known I was the Queen of Darwath, would you have spoken to me?"

  "Sure. Well, I mean-" Rudy hesitated, wondering. "Uh-I don't know. If somebody had said, 'Look, that's the Queen,' maybe I wouldn't even have seen you, wouldn't really have looked at you." He shrugged. "We don't have kings and queens where I come from."

  "Truly?" She frowned, puzzled at the incomprehensible thought. "Who rules you, then? Whom can your people love and honor? And who will love and guard the honor of your people?"

  To Rudy, this question was equally incomprehensible, and since his major area of success in school had been evasion of classes, he had only a sketchy notion of how the United States Government worked. But he gave her his perceptions of it, perhaps more informative than political theory, and Alde listened gravely, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. Finally she said, "I don't think I could stand it. Not because I'm Queen-but it all sounds so impersonal. And I'm not really a Queen anymore."

  She leaned her back against the carved post of the bed frame, her head close by his knee. Profiled against the amber glow of the fire, her face seemed very young, though worn and fragile and tired. "Oh-they honor me, they bow to me. It's all in my name. And Tir's. But-it's all gone. There's nothing of it left." Her voice was small and tight suddenly, as if struggling to be calm against some suppressed emotion. He saw the quick shine of tears in her violet eyes.

  "And it all happened so suddenly. It's not the honor, Rudy, not having servants who wait on me. It's the people. I don't care about having to pack my own things, when all my life servants have done it for me. But those servants, the household at the Palace-they'd been around me for years. Some of them were from our House, from when I was a girl; they'd been with me since I was born. People like the Guards who stood outside my bedroom door-I didn't know them well, but they were like part of my life, a part I never really thought about. And they're all dead now."

  Her voice flinched from it, then steadied. "You know, there was one old dooic slave who scrubbed the floors in the hall at the Palace. Probably he'd done so for his whole life, and he must have been twenty years old, which is very old for them. He knew me. He'd grunt and sort of smile at me when I went past. In the last battle in the Throne Hall at Gae, he grabbed up a torch and went with it against the Dark Ones, swinging it like the men swinging their swords. I saw him die. I saw so many people I knew die." One tear slid down the curve of her cheek, those lobelia-dark eyes turning to meet his, seeking in them some comfort, some bulwark against the fear and grief she'd locked in.

  "It wasn't being Queen or not being Queen," she went on, wiping at her cheek with fingers that shook. "It's the whole life, everything. Tir is all I have left. And in the last fight, I left him, too. We locked him in a little room behind the throne, my maid and I. They needed every sword in the hall, though neither of us had ever handled one before. It was like a nightmare, some-some insane dream, all fire and darkness, I think I must have been half-crazy. I thought I was going to die, and that didn't matter, really, but I was terrified they'd get Tir. And I left him alone." She repeated the words in a kind of despairing wonder. "I left him alone. I-I told Ingold I'd kill him if he didn't take Tir and go. He was going to stay and fight to the last. I had a sword. I told him I'd kill him... " For a moment her eyes seemed to see nothing of the shadowy golden warmth of the curtained chamber, reflecting only relived horror.

  Rudy said gently, "Well, he probably didn't believe you," and was rewarded to his joy with a tiny smile of self-mockery and the return to the present of those haunted eyes. "And anyhow, I don't think you could have hurt him."

  "No." She laughed softly, shakily, as people do when they remember any desperate passion which has lost its importance. "But how embarrassing to meet him afterward." And whether, as Ingold had said, it was the sentiments or the social gaffe that made her smile, it was enough to break the grip of the horror and let its raw memory fade.

  The rain had almost ceased, its persistent drumming dimmed to a soft pattering rustle on the heavy glass of the window. Coals settled in the brazier, the glow of them like the last heart of a dying sunset. Minalde stood and moved through the dimness of the room to kindle a taper from the embers and transfer the flame to the trio of candles in the silver holder on the table. She blew out the touchlight, and smoke folded around her face as she laid it aside.

  "That was what I couldn't endure," she went on, her voice quiet, as if she spoke now of someone other than herself. "That I'd left my child to die. Until Ingold came to me, the night before last-until he brought Tir back to me-I never even knew if they'd survived or not. All the rest of it, the Dark Ones surging down on us over the torches, the-the touch of it, the grip of it, like an iron rope-the Icefalcon's face when he picked me up off the floor of the vaults-it doesn't even seem real. Only that I'd left my child, the one person, the one thing that remained out of everything else in my life... "

  Her hands and her voice had begun to shake again. Rudy came over to her in the halo of the candles, took her hands to still them, and felt the fragile bones in his own rough grip. His touch seemed to bring her back, for she smiled, half-apologetically, and looked down, away from his face.

  "Alwir tells me I was delirious with shock," she said softly. "I'm glad I don't remember leaving Gae. They tell me the city was ruined. Now I'll always remember it in its beauty." She looked up at him again, that soft little smile of self-mockery reappearing in one corner of her sensitive mouth. "That's why most of the things here are Alwir's and not mine. They're not the things I would have brought with me if I'd left Gae under my own power."

  "Don't worry about it."

  "But last night," Alde went on, "I think I would have killed you if you'd tried to stop me from going back for Tir. I wasn't going to leave him again. I'll always thank you for going with me, for staying with me through the vaults, for keeping us both safe. But I think I would have gone alone."

  "I still think you were crazy," Rudy said gently.

  She smiled. "I never said I wasn't."

  Outside, the rain had ceased entirely. Beside them the smoo
th, waxy glow of the candles lengthened into slim columns of yellow and white, the light growing stronger in the still deep silence. For a time the peace of the room surrounded them, bringing them a curious, isolated moment of happiness in the confusion and wreckage of all the world. Rudy was conscious, as he had seldom been so acutely conscious of anything in his life, of her fingers resting lightly in his. The smell of her hair came to him, a scent of sweetgrass and bay, and with it the soft tallow smell of the candles and the richness of cedar and lavender. Enclosed in the heart of a jewel-box of time they were alone and at rest with each other, her eyes gazing up at him, almost black in the shadows. Looking into them, Rudy knew-and knew then that she knew-what was inevitably going to be. The knowledge went through him like a bolt of lightning, but it was without any real surprise. It was as if he had always known.

  They stood thus for an endless single moment of time, consumed by that shared knowledge. The only sound in the room was the soft swiftness of their breath. Then an opening door downstairs stirred the air, and the flame of the candles dipped, making the shadows bow and tremble. On that incoming cold draft, Alwir's voice echoed mellowly in the unnaturally servantless hall. "... ponies around to the courtyard. It will take most of the night to load them. Your things will go in the third cart." And though no words were audible, they heard Bektis' light voice replying, a querulous interrogation from Medda, and the sharp, sudden jingle of sword belt and mail.

  Alde made a move to go, and Rudy caught at her hands. Their eyes met again, puzzled, seeking some answer to why what had been between them had happened. The liking between them had changed-everything had changed and was colored by what had passed. In her face Rudy saw desire, fear of this terrible newfound intimacy, and the reflection of his own bewilderment at a feeling he had never known himself capable of possessing. Then her cheeks flamed suddenly pink in the candlelight, and she pulled her hands away, stammering, "I-I can't-" She turned to flee.

  "Alde." He called her softly back, and at the sound of his voice she stopped, her breath quick and uneven, as if she had run a long way. "I'll see you on the road tomorrow."