01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  From where she stood in Ingold's shadow by the corner of the tent, Gil could see that this girl, wrapped in stars and darkness, was trembling. It couldn't have been easy to defy a man who, by all accounts, had run her life for years; Gil's respect for Minalde, who had been up to this moment merely a name and a silhouette in the darkness, increased.

  "Thank you for your trust, my lady," Ingold said quietly, and their eyes met for a moment. Gil knew from experience that the wizard's gaze could strip the spirit bare and defenseless; but whatever Alde saw in his eyes, it must have reassured her, for she turned away with a straight back and an air of resolution.

  Alwir caught her arm, drew her to him, and said something that none of them could catch, but his face was intent and angry. Alde pulled her arm from his grip and went inside without a word. It was just as well that she did, for she did not see her brother's face, transformed by cold rage into the mask Gil had seen when first she'd entered the tent, a mask all the more inhuman because it was so impersonal. But when he turned back to them, his smile was deprecating. "It appears," he said, "that we are moving on tonight after all."

  It was clear that this was the opening line to something else, but the Bishop cut him off so smoothly that the interruption had every appearance of being accidental. "If that is so," she said in her slow, dry voice, "I must go and make ready the wagons of the Church." And she was gone, far more quickly than anyone would have believed possible, before he could speak any command.

  It was almost fully dark by the time the camp broke. Snow was coming down harder now, the wind whirling little flurries of grainy flakes into the ashes of the stamped-out fires and coating the churned mud in a thin layer of white. Word had been carried across the river over the makeshift bridge, and families were crossing slowly, men and women balancing precariously on the shaky spiderweb of rope and cottonwood poles, with their bundles on their shoulders. Oddly enough, when Rudy walked down to the jerry-built bridgehead with Ingold and Gil to see about the single wagon Alwir had negotiated from one of his merchant friends, he found that a spirit of optimism seemed to have seized the train, grossly at odds with the circumstances. The grumbling wasn't any less prevalent, and the curses were just as loud and vivid. Men and women packed up their few belongings, rubbing chapped hands in the flaying cold, snapping, bickering, and fighting among themselves-but something had changed. The bitter desperation of the early part of the march was gone. An aliveness crackled through the blinding air that had not been felt before-a hope. This was the last march, if they could make it. They were within striking distance of the Keep.

  "That should do," Ingold remarked, watching Guards and Alwir's private troops dragging the half-disassembled wagon box up the crooked trail. "Granted, it should make Minalde and Tir a target, but in this case that's better than risking losing them in the snow. As for you two... " He turned to them and laid a hand on each of their shoulders. "Whatever you do, stay close to that wagon; it's your best hope of reaching the Keep alive. I'm going to be up and down the train; I may not see you. I realize none of this is any of your business-that you were hauled into it against your will, and neither of you owes me anything. But please, see that Alde and the child reach the Keep in safety."

  "Won't you be there?" Gil asked uneasily.

  "I don't know where I'll be," the wizard said. Snow lodged in his beard and on his cloak. In the failing light Gil thought he looked worn out. Not surprising, she thought. She herself was operating on nervous energy alone. "Take care of yourselves, my children. I'll get you safely out of this yet."

  He turned and was gone, the stray ends of his muffler whipping like banners in the wind.

  "He looks bad," Rudy said quietly, leaning on his staff as the snowy twilight swallowed the old man. "You guys must have had one hell of a trip."

  Gil chuckled dryly. "Never doubt he's a wizard, Rudy. He has to be, to get people to follow him on crazy stunts like that."

  Rudy gave her a sidelong, thoughtful glance. "Well, you know, even back in California I thought the setup was crazy, but I just about believed him. You do. You have to."

  And Gil understood. Ingold had a way of making anything seem possible, even feasible-that an aimless motorcycle drifter could call forth fire from darkness, or that a mild-mannered and acrophobic Ph.D. candidate would follow him over the perilous roof of creation to do battle with bodiless, unspeakable foes.

  Or that a ragged train of fugitives, split by dissensions, frozen half to death and at the end of their strength, could make a fifteen-mile forced march through storm and darkness to find at last a refuge they had never seen.

  She sighed and hitched her too-large cloak over her narrow shoulders. The wind still bit through, as it had torn at her all day. She felt tired to the bones. The night, she knew, would be terrible beyond thinking. She started to move off, seeking the Guards, then paused in her steps. "Hey, Rudy?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Take care of Minalde. She's a good lady."

  Rudy stared at her in surprise, for he had not thought she had known, much less that she would understand. Rudy still had much to learn about coldhearted women with pale schoolmarm eyes. "Thanks," he said, unaccountably touched by her concern. "You ain't so bad yourself. For a spook," he added with a grin, which she returned wickedly.

  "Well, it beats me why she'd hang out with a punk airbrush-jockey, but that's her business. I'll see you at the Keep."

  Rudy found Alde where the few remaining servants of the House of Bes were packing the single wagon. She herself was loading bedrolls into it; Medda, if she had still been alive, would have expired from indignation at the sight. He kissed her gently in greeting. "Hey, you were dynamite."

  "Dynamite?"

  "You were great," he amended. "Really. I didn't think Alwir would go along with it."

  She turned back, Hushing suddenly in the diffuse glow of the torchlight. "I didn't care whether he went along, as you say, or not. But I ought not to have called them fools. Not Alwir, and certainly not my lady Bishop. It was-rude."

  "So do penance for it at confession." He drew her to him again. "You got your point across."

  She stared in silence for a moment into his eyes. "He's right, isn't he?" she whispered intently. "The Dark are in the mountains."

  "That's what Gil tells me," he replied softly. "He's right. They're nearer than we think."

  She stood for a moment, her hands clasped behind his neck, staring up into his face with wide, desperate eyes, as if unwilling to end this moment because of all that must come after. But a noise from the cart made her break away and scramble over the tailboard to replace her wandering son in his little nest among the blankets. He heard her whisper, "You lie down." A moment later she reappeared around the curtains.

  "You're gonna need a leash for that kid once he starts crawling," Rudy commented.

  Alde shuddered. "Don't remind me." And she disappeared inside.

  The convoy began to move. The wind increased in violence, howling down the canyons to fall on the pilgrims with iron claws. Rudy stumbled along beside the wagon, blinded by the snow, his fingers growing numb through his gloves. The road here was disused, but better than the road from Karst had been, with pavement down the center where it had not been broken up by tree-roots or buried by neglect. Still, the drifting snow made treacherous footing, and Rudy knew that those at the tail of the convoy would be sliding their way through a river of slush. Wind and darkness cut visibility to almost nothing. The shapes of the Guards surrounding the wagon grew dim and chaotic, like half-guessed shadows in a frightful dream.

  Remembering Ingold's teachings, Rudy tried to call light to him. He managed to throw a big, sloppy ball of it about three feet in front of him to light his steps. But the effort took most of his concentration and, as he slipped in the snow or staggered under the brutal flail of the wind, the light dimmed and scattered. The snow thickened in the air, like swirling gray meal all around him, except where it passed, unmelting, through the witchlight, which transformed
it into a tiny roaring storm of diamonds that made his eyes ache. His cloak and boots dragged wetly on his limbs, and his hands passed quickly from insensibility to pain. Once, when the wind slacked like the slacking of a rope, he heard Minalde's voice from the wagon, singing softly to her child:

  "Hush, little baby, don't say a word,

  Papa's gonna buy you a mockingbird... "

  He wondered numbly how that song had ever leaked its way into the tongue of the Wathe.

  He lost all track of time. How long he'd been struggling through the blinding wilderness he had no way of knowing, could not even guess. He felt as if it had been hours since they'd broken camp, the ground always rising under his slipping feet, the wind worrying at him like a beast at its prey. He hung onto the wagon grimly with one hand and onto his staff with the other; at tunes it seemed as if those were the only things keeping him on his feet He knew by then that if he went down, he would die.

  At one point, Gil came up beside him, so thin and ragged he wondered dully why she didn't blow away. She yelled at him over the gale. "You okay?"

  He nodded. A lady and a scholar, he thought. And tough as they come.

  Others passed them, or were passed by them, fighting the wind with desperate persistence. He saw the old man from Karst with his crates of chickens still piled on his bowed back, wrapped up in blankets and laden with pounds of trapped snow. The struggling band of camp orphans were roped together like goslings behind their chief. A stout woman leading a goat passed them; a little farther on he saw her lying face down in the snow, the goat standing wretchedly over her body.

  And still they pushed on. Rudy stumbled and fell, his body so numb he was scarcely aware of hitting the ground. Someone bent over him, hauled him to his feet, and shook him out of his stupor with a violence that surprised him-a ghostly, dark shape in a blowing mantle, with a bluewhite light burning on the end of his staff. Rudy staggered wordlessly back to the wagon, catching the cover ropes for support, and the shape melted into the dark. In the lightless chaos he could see other shapes moving, dragging stragglers to their feet, urging them on with words or pleas, curses or blows. He clung to the ropes grimly, reminding himself he'd promised to get Alde to the Keep, reminding himself that there was a goal, somewhere in this black universe of unending cold. He had learned already that, under certain circumstances, death could be very sweet indeed.

  Time had become very deceptive; every movement was ponderously slow, an incredible effort barely worth the trouble, like that old Greek guy who had to push the stone up the hill, knowing full well it was just going to roll to the bottom again. The night was far gone. He could tell by the changing note of the wind that they were coming clear of the deep gorges, coming into a more open space. Feebly, mind and will drowning in a blind darkness that was within him as well as without, he tried to call back a little of the witchlight, but raised not even a glimmer.

  Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, he told himself grimly. You'll get there. The wind struck him like a club; he went down and this time decided not to get up. They could make it to the Keep without him. He was going to sleep for a while.

  He drifted for a time in memories, chiefly of the warm hills of California, the rippling gold of the sunbaked grass, and the way the sun had felt on his bare arms as he hauled down Highway 15 on his chopper in the late evening, the wind streaming through his hair. He wondered if he'd ever get to do that again. Probably not, he decided. But even that didn't matter much. Who'd have figured that leaving on a beer run would end up with me freezing to death in a range of mountains that never even existed?

  Life is weird.

  A seven- foot giant with a kick like a mule loomed suddenly in the darkness and booted him in the ribs. Cold returned, and a thin leakage of pain spread into every muscle and joint. He mumbled, "Hey," protestingly, and the giant kicked him again.

  "Get up, you sniveler." Why did a seven-foot giant have Gil's voice?

  Arrogant egghead bitch. "No."

  Even a few weeks of swordmastery training had given her a grip like a claw. Surprising, too, that somebody wasted down to ninety-eight pounds of brittle bone could have the strength to drag him to his feet and throw him with such violence against the side of the moving wagon, so that he had to catch hold of it.

  "Now keep moving," she ordered.

  Stupid of her not to understand. "I can't," he explained groggily.

  "The hell with you!" she yelled at him, suddenly furious. "You may be a goddam wizard, but you're a coward and a quitter, and I'll be damned if I'll have you let everybody down by up and dying on the road. You die when you get to the Keep if you want to so bad. We're only a couple miles from it."

  "Hunh?" Rudy tried to keep a grip on the rope with his fingers, but they were too numb. He thrust his whole arm through the space between the rope and the flapping cover. "What did you say?"

  But as if in answer to his words, he felt a sudden change in the air. The titanic winds veered, and the relentless hammering force of them slackened, making him stagger, as if for a support suddenly lost. The snow, instead of peppering his body like bullets from a Tommy gun, fell straight for a few moments, then ceased. He could hear the roaring of the wind in the pines above the road and its shrieking whine in the rocks, but the air around him, though freezing cold, was still.

  The wagon team halted, one ox managing a plaintive low. Boots scrunched in the squeaking snow all about him; somewhere leather creaked. He could hear his own breath and that of the woman beside him.

  "What is it?" he whispered. "Has the storm let up?"

  "Not like that, it wouldn't. Besides, you can still hear it overhead."

  He blinked against the darkness and raised a shaking hand to scrape ice crystals from his eyes. "Then what... " Then he realized what must have happened. Shock and fear sent a jolt of adrenalin into his veins that cleared his groggy mind. "Oh, Christ," he whispered. "Ingold."

  "He stopped the storm, didn't he?" Gil said softly. "They must have been losing too many people... "

  "But you know what that means?" Rudy said urgently.

  "It means the Dark will be coming now." He took an experimental step away from the wagon and found he could stand after a fashion by leaning on his staff. "We gotta get moving."

  The Guards were closing in around them, some thirty strong; he could pick out their voices in the darkness. God only knew where the rest of the train was. They'd gotten so badly strung out in the storm, it was every man for himself. He flexed his right hand stiffly, trying to convince himself it was still really his; he heard Gil's voice speaking softly to the Guards around them and, brief and cold, the Icefalcon's breathless laugh. Gil came back to him. "Can you call up some light?" she asked. "The land flattens out from here on; we could lose the road completely. Look."

  There was, in fact, only one thing to look at: a tiny square of orange light, distant and sharp in the wastelands of cold.

  "Tomec Tirkenson's up at the Keep. That's the fire around the doors."

  "Okay," Rudy said. "We can make for that, if nothing else." He tried several times to call light, but his fatigue-drugged consciousness was unequal to the task. They were moving again, heading steadily toward that tiny orange star, the going impossibly rough over the steep, uneven ground. From the wagon behind him, he heard Tir's thin, protesting wails and Alde's voice, softly shushing him. He trod on something hard that rolled sickeningly underfoot, stumbled, and put his hand on it in falling. It was an iron cook pot. Despite the cold and danger, he grinned-others had made it this far. The whole Vale was probably littered with discarded household goods, flung away in a last, desperate effort to keep on going. Well, if they could do it, he could do it.

  And then he felt it-a breath of wind in the stillness, a wind not like the might of the storm, but a thin, directionless whisper that spoke of stone and damp, warm darkness, a faint stirring of air from above and behind and all sides. Turning, he saw the Dark.

  How he saw them he wasn't sure-perhaps
by some wizard-sense, grown from the exercise of his powers. They flowed over the snow toward the wagon, scarcely distinguishable one from the other or from the shifting river of illusion in which they swam. Whiplike tails steered and propelled, and they moved with a sinuous glide, the jointed legs tucked in folds like bamboo armor under the soft, dripping tentacles of the slobbering mouths. For a moment he stood hypnotized, fascinated by the changing shapes, now visible, now only wavering ghosts. He wondered in what sense they could be said to be material at all. What atoms and molecules made up those sleek, pulsing bodies? What brain, or brains, had conceived the stairways that led down to the blackness under the earth?

  Then one of the oxen gave a great bellow of terror and tried to leap forward; it fell, pulling down its teammate in a tangle of harness and splintering the wagon tongue under its threshing weight.

  "The Dark!" Rudy yelled in desperate warning, and tried to summon light, any light, for aid against the unseen foes. He heard Alde scream. Then from behind him a shattering blaze of witchlight pierced the darkness like a strobe, and that pouring river of shadow and illusion broke against it and swirled away like a great ring of smoke. Ingold came striding out of the unnatural stillness, his shadow thrown hard and blue onto the glittering snow at his feet.

  "Cut that ox loose, get my lady out of the wagon, and get moving," he ordered briefly. By the burning light, the Guards came running to them, faces haggard under the crusting of frost. "Janus, do you think you can make it as far as the Keep?"

  The Commander, barely recognizable under the ice that scaled his hair and cloak, squinted at the light in the distance, against which the tiny figures of men were now clearly visible. "I think so," he panted. "Again, you've saved us."

  Ingold retorted, "It's about a mile and a half too soon to say that. My lady... "

  He turned back to the wagon. The Icefalcon had cut the team loose, but the wagon was clearly beyond further use. From the curtains at the front, a white face looked out, framed in the darkness of a black fur hood and a cascade of crow-black hair.