01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  She whispered, "All right," and turned her eyes away. A moment later he heard her footsteps flying lightly down the hall.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A long time ago and perhaps in a previous incarnation, Rudy recalled seeing a movie called The Ten Commandments which, among other things, had contained a memorable scene of the Children of Israel getting their butts out of the Land of Egypt. Charlton Heston had lifted up his staff and they'd all been organized and ready to go, and the whole clear-out had taken about three minutes of screen time, goats and granddaddies and all, leaving not so much as a crumpled bread wrapper or a pile of dog droppings on the tidy streets of Thebes.

  Karst had been stirring since several hours before dawn. Rudy, standing by the cart in which the rations earmarked for the Guards would be hauled, had a good view of most of the square, and it didn't look to him as if anybody would be going anywhere until damn near noon, if then. It had begun to rain again, and the ground was like porridge. The cart wheels bogged in it; people running back and forth on aimless errands churned it to ever-deeper ooze. Mud and rain covered everything, soaked Rudy's cloak and his clothing underneath, and plastered the clumped, dirty agglomerations of depressed-looking refugees who stood or sat around that scene of sodden chaos. Even Alwir, storming his elegant way among them, was beginning to look shopworn and dirty.

  By midmorning, the square was a total confusion of people, goods, and makeshift transport. Children wandered from their parents and got lost. Escaping pigs had to be chased through the standing carts, pack beasts, and little mounds of personal belongings, upsetting everything in their flying path. The larger families and groups, and the households of minor nobles, were engaged in last-minute problem-solving sessions, among much cursing and the waving of arms, arguing whether to go north to the Keep of the landchief Harl Kinghead, south to Renweth in the mountains, following Alwir and the Council of Regents, or beyond that, over Sarda Pass, to Gettlesand, to risk the threat of the White Raiders in the minor Keeps of the landchief Tomec Tirkenson. Rudy could see Tirkenson, big, scarred, and ugly, cursing his followers into line with a vocabulary that would have curled a bullwhacker's hair.

  Rudy himself could have left town at a moment's notice. From the leavings of the dead, he'd collected himself an outfit of warm clothes-a brown tunic, shirt, breeches, and boots, a hooded cloak that was too large, and a pair of gauntlet gloves stitched with gold and emeralds. His California clothes he carried in his pack, along with shaving things scrounged, like everything else, from those who had not survived the coming of the Dark to Karst, his American-made buck-knife, a horn spoon, and his big blue plastic comb. The unfamiliar weight of a sword dragged at his hip.

  Leaning his shoulders against the tall wheel of the cart, shivering in the wind that drove the rain and tossed the dark trees that were visible above the black, gabled roofs, he surveyed the milling chaos before him. Mud-slathered people negotiated for space in two carts, tied dirty little bundles onto muleback or into crude wheelbarrows or travois, and argued about what to take and what to leave. Watching them, his face stinging in the icy wind, he remembered California as if his whole life there had been something that had happened to someone else.

  "There," the cool, husky voice of the Icefalcon said at his elbow. He turned to see the tall captain pointing out to Gil the small train of wagons drawn up outside the Bishop's palace, adjacent to the Church on the opposite side of the square. Red-robed monks were loading two of them with chests that were obviously filled with something heavy, under the arrogant direction of the Bishop herself. "I find that typical," the Guard went on. "They claim to work for the salvation of souls, but from all I've seen, they only collect the tithe, and keep records of how much is owed and what souls have been born and baptized and confessed and died, like a miser counting gold. Fleeing for their lives, they will carry paper rather than food."

  "They?" Gil echoed curiously, and glanced up at the tall young man with the incongruous pale braids lying rainslicked over his dark shoulders. "You're not of the Faith?"

  A disdainful sniff was all the answer she got.

  Past the Church wagons, Alwir's household and the remnants of the government of the Realm were holding what appeared to be a Chinese fire drill on the steps of the Town Hall. Rudy saw Alde seated in the front of one of the carts there, muffled in black fur, her eyes peeking from the shadows of her streaming hood. On her lap she cradled a great bundle of dark, trailing blankets, in which no round pink baby face was visible; but once he saw the blankets squirm. That would be Tir. Medda, her round face swollen with weeping, clambered up to take her place at the Queen's side. Alde turned her head, her gaze searching the crowd. Across the milling confusion she met Rudy's eyes, then quickly looked away, as if ashamed to be caught seeking sight of him. Beyond her, Bektis was climbing into another wagon, his narrow face framed in a great collar of expensive marten fur, looking down his elegant nose at the bedraggled mob in the square.

  Then someone was calling out orders, Commander Janus' harsh, braying battle voice rising above the sluicing drum of the rain and the clamor of argument and preparation. Alwir appeared from around the corner of the Town Hall, mounted on a slim-legged sorrel mare. His great cloak flapped in the wind as he bent from the saddle to exchange last-minute instructions with someone on the ground. The Guards moved into line, a ragged double file on either side of the Chancellor's wagons. Like a kettleful of oatmeal coming at last to a boil, the people in the square, alone or by couples, families, or clans, caught up their few possessions and jostled for a place within that doubled line, or, failing that, as close to its protection as they could get. Those who weren't ready to go yet redoubled their preparations, hastening in the hope of catching up on the road. Whatever their ultimate goal, the north or Gettlesand or Renweth, sticking with an armed convoy was far preferable to taking that long road alone.

  Rudy was a little surprised at what a mob there was, once they got out on the road. They moved almost without order, a vast confusion of provision wagons, transport carts for the furniture of Alwir's household and the records of the government of the Realm, small herds of cattle and sheep, here and there coveys of spare horses for those fortunate enough to be riding to Renweth, the shambling rabble of household servants, and the few remaining dooic slaves that an occasional wealthy family had brought out of the ruin of their world. Families straggled behind and around the main body of the royal wagons, with their crated chickens and barking dogs, their pigs and their milk goats; it was astonishing how many families had actually succeeded in holding together through the chaos of the last few weeks, though many of them, Rudy knew, were missing members. Fathers and mothers were carrying the bulk of the load, older children carrying those too young to walk, others leading or driving such livestock as they'd been able to save or acquire. There were not a few grannies and grandpas of startlingly venerable years, too-Rudy wondered how some of those old people had managed to run fast enough to escape the Dark. But they were there, leaning on walking sticks or on the shoulders of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren, chirping to one another with the equable calm of those who have long since ceased being surprised by fate. And as they departed from Karst, that great straggling mob passed an infinitely greater number of half-assembled households, still loading the last of their belongings onto donkey back or dog travois, or trying to sort out the least essential essentials, arguing and watching with apprehensive eyes as the convoy slopped past in the driving gray rain. By the looks of it, Rudy calculated, people would be drifting out of Karst all day.

  A mud- spattered old man with a shabby bundle and a stout walking stick fell into step with Rudy as they passed the last outskirts of the town. The path dipped steeply in a treacherous slide of black muck. Rudy's feet slithered on it, and a strong hand grasped his elbow. "Cut yourself a staff from the woods," a familiar scratchy voice advised. "The roads aren't going to get any easier, once we reach the mountains around Renweth."

  "We're leaving the mountains,
though," Rudy said, picking his way more carefully in the wizard's tracks. "Are these the same mountains we're heading for, or different?"

  "Different," Ingold said. "We're picking up the Great South Road outside Gae and following it down the valley of the Brown River, which runs through the heartlands of the Realm. The road up to Sarda Pass crosses it, and we'll take that up into the Big Snowies, the great wall of mountains that cuts the Realm, the lands of the Wath, in two, dividing the river valleys from the plains and the desert of Gettlesand. Renweth stands above Sarda Pass. Watch the ground."

  Rudy scrambled over slippery autumn-yellow grasses around a noxious patch of black quicksand. The road from Gae up to Karst had been graded and cut so as to be easily negotiable in good weather, but the constant coming and going of the refugees, combined with the rains and the steady departures that had been taking place from the town since dawn, had reduced the way to a treacherous river of slop. Those refugees who waited until the afternoon to quit Karst would have to wade all the way to the plain. Rudy looked around at the darkness of the misty gray woods and pictured what the land would be like for those who got bogged in the road when night began to fall. He shivered.

  "How far is it?" he asked suddenly. "How many nights are we going to have to spend in the open?"

  "Close to a hundred and seventy miles," Ingold replied, making his way through the wet brush on the firmer ground at the edge of the roadbed. "Eight or ten nights, if the weather stays good and the Arrow River isn't too high to cross when we get there."

  "You call this good?" Rudy grumbled. "I've been freezing my tail off since I came here. I don't think I'll ever dry out."

  Ingold held out his hand, and the rain collected, a tiny lake, in his calloused palm. "It could be far worse," he said mildly. "We've had harsh winters these last ten years, with killing snows on the plains beyond the mountains driving the White Raiders, the barbarians of the plains, to attack the settlements out of pure famine. This winter promises to be the worst yet-"

  "Fantastic."

  "- but it has been noticed that the Dark Ones seem to attack less in foul weather. High winds, heavy rains, or snow seem to keep them underground. Few blessings or disasters come unmixed."

  "Great," Rudy said, without enthusiasm. "So we've got a choice of the Dark Ones or pneumonia."

  The old man raised his eyebrows, amused. "So which would you prefer?"

  They turned a corner of the road, as Gil had done two days before, and the rusty woods seemed to part, revealing below them the dim, tawny plain and, half-hidden in the pearl of the river mist, the ruined city of Gae. Used to the megalopolis of Los Angeles, Rudy found the city very small, but there had been a grandeur to it, a walled unity with which the sprawling, featureless towns of his own experience could not compare. In his mind he pieced it together to put roofs on the burned walls of the close-set, half-timbered houses and leaves on the gray lace of bare branches. He remembered Minalde's low, gentle voice saying wistfully, "Now I'll always remember it in its beauty... "

  That thought brought others, and he stood for some time, looking out over the pastel vista of ochre and silver-gray, until a dimming of the noise behind him alerted him to the passing of the convoy, and he thrashed back to the road and hurried to catch them up, plowing his way through torn black mud in which white chicken-feathers were caught like flakes of fallen snow.

  Still more refugees joined them on the plain by the walls of Gae. The Karst-Gae road crossed the Great South Road a few miles from the multiple turrets of the city gates, in a great trampled circle amid the withered grass. Just north of the crossroads loomed Trad's Hill, named for some hero of ancient wars, the only prominence on that flat plate of land, and from that hill a lichenous cross of carved stone bestowed its arcane sanction on the joining of the ways. There they were met by a motley horde of fugitives from Gae itself, braver, or more foolish, or more conservative souls who had hung on in the looted ruin of the capital, hoping that the danger would somehow miraculously pass. They were far better provisioned and more heavily burdened than those who had fled to Karst earlier in the week; better clothed, leading carts and mules and horses, driving milk cows and pigs and chickens, carrying great satchels of books, money, spare bedding, and the family silver.

  "Where'd they get the cows?" Rudy demanded of Gil, who happened to be walking close by him at the time. "They didn't keep all them animals in the city, for God's sake,"

  Gil said, "People in New York, Boston, and Chicago kept cows and pigs clear up to the 1890s. How do you think you got milk if you lived in town?"

  As the two parties converged, he heard the buzz of talk pass down the length of the swelling caravan. "Is that really her Majesty? Is her Majesty really well and safe? And his Little Majesty?" People crossed themselves thankfully and craned their necks to see. As an American, and not a particularly well-informed one at that, Rudy had expected the subjects of a monarchy to fear and resent those who had such absolute power over them, and it surprised him to see the reverence in which they held Alde and Tir. He remembered what she had said last night, about love and honor-that people needed a ruler they could love, as well as a law they could follow. Offhand, he couldn't think of any member of his own government he even respected, let alone one for whose survival he'd offer up prayers of joy. It caused him to look with new eyes at the tall, hide-topped cart with its drooping standards of black and red and to think about the dark-haired girl inside.

  The day wore on, and they followed the Great South Road through the drenched green farmlands along the river. In contrast to the muddy track down the mountain, the road was wide and well-drained, with deep, weed-grown ditches on both sides and a pavement of worn, close-fitted hexagonal blocks of some kind of pale gray stone. As the centers of the blocks were more worn than the edges, they caught the rain in each separate hollow and turned the road into a shining scarf of fish-scale silver, stretching away into misty distance. The caravan left the wide sweep of the plain of Gae behind them and crossed a bridge beneath frowning, empty towers, to enter into the fertile bottom lands where the road sought its lazy way between meadow and farm and woods.

  No countryman, Rudy was nevertheless impressed by the solid appearance of prosperity that lay over the land. The farmhouses were well-built, most of them boasting more than one room, with separate quarters for the animals-not always the rule in nonindustrial societies, Gil remarked cynically. But the emptiness of the land was chilling. They saw very few people-only the eyeless stare of vacant houses, the abandoned cattle, and mile after mile of half-harvested corn, rotting in the rain. Those people they did meet were the farm families, or the remnants of them, who came out to the road with all their worldly goods-plow, seed, and poultry-and the youngest baby of the household piled haphazardly into ox carts, to swell the ranks of the moving army of refugees, with children and servants and herd dogs driving little bunches of sheep and cows in their wake. As they passed through those desolate farmlands, the Guards, or the Red Monks, or men and women acting on their own left the train to forage in the ruined fields and the oddly crushed, deserted barns for what they could find, though Rudy noticed they seldom went into the houses that they passed. Sometimes they came back with wagonloads of seed and grain, or livestock, pigs, and bleating sheep, or the small cobby farm horses-beasts whose masters would take no further interest in husbandry.

  And still it rained. The convoy had grown to an army, plodding along the silver road in the downpour. Rudy thought of the sheer number of miles involved-Hell, that's like walking from Los Angeles to Bakersfield-and wondered what the hell he was doing there. Above the dull overcast and slanting rain, the gray day was sickening toward twilight.

  He shaded his eyes and squinted out across the wet landscape; he saw, as he had seen several times that day, a person-man or woman, he couldn't always tell-wandering aimlessly in the distance, driven by the cutting wind. He wondered about those people, for none of them had made any sign that they saw the passing convoy, and none of the compa
ny on the road spoke or waved to them. Sometimes alone, sometimes two or three together, they moved like zombies, stood staring listlessly at nothing, or lay on the ground in the fields, looking blankly into the hollow sky.

  He grew more and more curious about these outcasts. Toward evening, when he saw a man and two young women standing at the bottom of the drainage ditch on the side of the road, gazing vacantly into space, he left the pavement and went scrambling down the side of the culvert, slithering through weeds and mud, and waded over to where they stood.

  The man wore a loose white cotton shift, plastered to his soft, paunchy flesh by the rain. His hands and mouth were nearly blue with cold, but he seemed to take no notice of the ankle-deep ice water in which he stood. The girls wore dripping silk rags, wilted flowers and colored ribbons braided into their wet, snarled hair. Their lobotomized eyes followed his motions, but none of the three made a sound.

  Rudy passed his hand cautiously across the man's line of vision. The eyes tracked, but registered no understanding of what they saw. The girls were the same-beautiful girls, dainty and sweet as lilies of the valley. Rudy would cheerfully have taken either or both of them to bed with him, except for the creeping horror of that empty stare.

  "This," Ingold's voice said behind him, "is the other thing that the Dark Ones do."

  Rudy swung around, startled; he hadn't heard the wizard approach, even through four inches of water. The old man's face looked taut and sick, barely visible in the shadows of his drawn-up hood. "We didn't see much of it at Karst; probably because the victims were trampled by those seeking safety, or lost in the woods around the town. But I know this from Gae. I daresay most people know it."

  "What's wrong with them?" Rudy looked from the wizard to the three shivering, empty-eyed automatons and felt a creeping of his flesh that, for once, had little to do with the cold.