01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  "He should," Ingold said. "But it's a gamble, for we do not know for certain if-and what-he will remember. His father remembers-remembered-" There was a slight shift, almost a crack, in the wizard's rusty voice as he changed the tense. "-things that happened at the time of their most remote ancestor, Dare of Renweth. And, Gil, it was Dare of Renweth who was King at the time of the rising of the Dark Ones."

  "The who?" Rudy asked.

  "The Dark Ones." The touch of that heavy-lidded, blue gaze gave Rudy the uncomfortable feeling of having his mind read. "The enemy whom we flee." His eyes shifted back to Gil, the light from the western window slanting strong and yellow on the sharp bones of her face. "Unfortunately, I fear the Dark Ones know it. They know many things-their power is different from mine, of a different nature, as if from a different source. I believe their attacks were concentrated on the Palace at Gae because they knew that Eldor and Tir were dangerous to them, that the memories the King and Prince held were the clue to their ultimate defeat. They have-eliminated-Eldor. Now only Tir is left."

  Gil cocked her head and glanced across at the pink-cheeked baby, gravely manipulating a bunch of motorcycle keys in Rudy's lap, then at the wizard, profiled against the cracked and grimy glass of the window through which the hills could be seen, desolate, isolated, dyed gold by the deep slant of the light. Her voice was quiet. "Could they have followed you here?"

  Ingold looked up at her quickly, his azure-crystal eyes meeting hers, then shifting away. "Oh, I don't think so," he said mildly. "They have no notion that the Void exists, much less how to cross it."

  "How do you know?" she insisted. "You said yourself you don't understand their powers, or their knowledge. You have no power at all in this world. If they crossed the Void, would they have power?"

  He shook his head. "I doubt they could even exist in this world," he told her. "The material laws here are very different. Which, incidentally, is what makes magic possible-a change in the ways the laws of physics operate... "

  As the conversation turned to a discussion of theoretical magic and its relation to the martial arts, Rudy listened, puzzled; if Ingold had his end of the script down pat, Gil sure as hell had hers.

  After a time, Ingold took charge of Tir to feed him, and Gil made her way quietly out onto the porch, seeking the silence of the last of the westering sunlight. She sat on the edge of the high platform, her booted feet dangling in space, leaning her arms along the bottom rail of the crazy old banister and watching the hills go from tawny gold to crystal, like champagne in the changing slant of the light, the air luminous with sunlit dust one moment, then suddenly overlaid with the cool of the hills' shadow. The evening wind slurred softly through the lion-colored grass of the wastelands all around. Each rock and stunted tree was imbued by the light with a unique and private beauty. The light even lent something resembling distinction to the sunken wreck of the blue Impala and the nondescript VW, half-hidden by the screen of whispering weeds.

  She heard the door open and shut behind her then and smelled the dark scent of tallow and wool permeated with smoke as Ingold settled down beside her, once more wearing his dark mantle over the pale homespun of his robe. For some minutes they didn't speak at all, only watched the sunset in warm and companionable silence, and she was content.

  Finally he said, "Thank you for coming, Gil. Your help has been invaluable."

  She shook her head. "No trouble."

  "Do you mind very much taking Rudy back?" She could tell by his voice he'd sensed her dislike and was troubled by it.

  "I don't mind." She turned her head, her cheek resting on her arm on the rail. "He's okay. If I didn't know you, I probably wouldn't believe a word of it myself." She noticed in the golden haze of the light that, though his hair was white, his eyelashes were still the same fairish gingery red that must have been his whole coloring at one time. She went on. "But I'm going to drop him off at the main highway and come back. I don't like leaving you here alone."

  "I shall be quite all right," the wizard said gently.

  "I don't care," she replied.

  He glanced sideways at her. "You couldn't possibly help, you know, if anything did happen."

  "You have no magic here," she said softly, "and your back's to the wall. I'm not going to leave you."

  Ingold folded his arms along the rail, his chin on his crossed wrists, seeming for a tune only to contemplate the rippling tracks of the wind in the long grass below the porch, the rime of sun-fire like a halo on the distant hills. "I appreciate your loyalty," he said at last, "misguided though it is. But the situation will not arise. You see, I have decided to risk going back tonight, before it grows fully dark."

  Gil was startled, both relieved and uneasy. "Will Tir be okay?"

  "I can put a spell of protection over us both that should shield him from the worst of the shock." The sun had touched the edges of the hills already; the evening breeze wore the thin chill of coming night. "There should be a good two hours of daylight left in my own world when Tir and I return-there seems to be a disjunction of time involved in the Void, your world and mine not quite in synch. We should be able to come to cover before dark."

  "Won't that be an awful risk?"

  "Maybe." He turned his head a little to meet her eyes, and in the dimming evening light she thought he looked tired, the shadows of the porch railings barring his face but unable to hide the deepened lines around his mouth and eyes. His fingers idled with the splinters of the wood, casually, as if he were not speaking of danger into which he would walk. "But I would rather take that risk than imperil your world, your civilization, should the Dark prove able to follow me through the Void."

  Then he sighed and stood up, as if dismissing the whole subject from his mind. He helped her to her feet, his hand rough and warm and powerful, but as light and deft as a jeweler's. The last glow of the day surrounded them, silhouetted against the burning windows. "I am entitled to risk my own life, Gil," he said. "But whenever I can, I draw the line at risking the lives of others, especially those who are loyal to me, as you are. So don't be concerned. We shall be quite safe."

  CHAPTER THREE

  "Where you headed?" Gil carefully guided the VW in a small circle, bumping slowly over stones and uneven ground, and eased it back onto the road again. The road, the hills, the dark trees of the grove had turned gray-blue and colorless in the twilight. In her rear-view mirror, Gil saw Ingold's sword blade held high in salute. She could see him on the cabin porch, straight and sturdy in his billowing dark mantle, and her heart ached with fear at the sight. Rudy, chewing on a grass blade, one sunburned arm hanging out of the open window, was about as comforting as reruns of The Crawling Eye on a dark and stormy night.

  "San Bernardino," Rudy said, glancing back also at the dark form of the wizard in the shadows of the house.

  "I can take you there," Gil said, negotiating a gravel slide and the deep-cut spoor of last winter's rains. "I'm heading on into Los Angeles so it's not out of my way."

  "Thank you" Rudy said. "It's harder than hell to get rides at night."

  Gil grinned in spite of herself. "In that jacket it would be."

  Rudy laughed. "You from L.A.?"

  "Not originally. I go to UCLA; I'm in the Ph.D. program in medieval history there." Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed his start of surprise, a typical reaction in men, she had found. "Originally I'm from San Marino."

  "Ah," Rudy said wisely, recognizing the name of that wealthy suburb. "Rich kid."

  "Not really." Gil objected more to the label than to the facts. "Well-I guess you could say that. My father's a doctor."

  "Specialist?" Rudy inquired, half-teasing.

  "Child psychiatrist," Gil said, with a faint grin at how well the label fitted her.

  "Yow."

  "They've disowned me," she added with a shrug. "So it doesn't matter." Her voice was offhand, almost apologetic. She turned on the headlights, and dust plumed whitely in their feeble glare. By their reflection Rudy could see
that her face wore the shut, wary look again, a fortress defended against all comers.

  "Why the hell would they disown you?" He was indignant in spite of himself for her sake. "Christ, my mother would forgive any one of my sisters for murder if she'd just finish high school."

  Gil chuckled bitterly. "It's the Ph.D. mine objects to," she told him. "What up-and-coming young doctor or dentist is going to marry a research scholar in medieval history? She doesn't say that, but that's what she means." And Gil drove on for a time in silence.

  The dark shapes of the hills loomed closer around the little car, the stars emerging in the luminous blue of the evening sky, small and bright with distance. Staring out into the milky darkness, Rudy identified the landmarks of his trip into the hills, rock and tree and the round, smooth shapes of the land. The green eyes of some tiny animal flashed briefly in the gloom, then vanished as a furry shape whipped across the dark surface of the road.

  "So they kicked you out just because you want to get a Ph.D.?"

  She shrugged. "They didn't really kick me out. I just don't go home anymore. I don't miss it," she added truthfully.

  "Really? I'd miss it like hell." Rudy slouched back against the door, one arm draped out the window, the wind cool against wrist and throat. "I mean, yeah, my mom's house is like a bus stop, with the younger kids all over the place, and the cats, and her sisters, and dirty dishes all over the house, and my sisters' boyfriends hanging out in the back yard-but it's someplace to go, you know? Someplace I'll always be welcome, even if I do have to shout to make myself heard. I'd go crazy if I had to live there, but it's nice to go back."

  Gil grinned at the picture he painted, mentally contrasting it with the frigid good taste of her mother's home.

  "And you left your family just to go to school?" He sounded wondering, unbelieving that she could have done such a thing.

  "There was nothing there for me," Gil said. "And I want to be a scholar. They can't understand that I've never wanted to do or be or have anything else."

  Another long silence. Up ahead, yellow headlights flickered in the dark. Long and low, the cement bridge of the freeway overpass bulked against the paler background of the hills; like a glittering fortress of red and amber flame, a semi roared by, the rumble of its engine like distant thunder. The VW whined up the overpass; Rudy settled back in his seat, considering her sharp-boned, rather delicate face, the generosity belying the tautness of the mouth, the sentimentalism lurking in the depths of those hard, intelligent eyes. "That's funny," he said at last.

  "That anybody would like school that much?" Her voice held a trace of sarcasm, but he let it go by.

  "That you'd want anything that much," he said quietly. "Me, I've never really wanted to have or do or be anything. I mean, not so much that I'd dump everything else for it. Sounds rough."

  "It is," Gil said, and returned her attention to the road.

  "Was that where you ran into Ingold?"

  She shook her head. Though it hadn't seemed to bother the wizard that Rudy thought him a candidate for the soft room, she didn't want to discuss Ingold with Rudy.

  Rudy, however, persisted. "Can you tell me what the hell that was all about? Is he really as cracked as he seems?"

  "No," Gil said evasively. She tried to think up a reasonable explanation for the whole thing that she could palm off on Rudy to keep him from asking further questions. At the moment a queer uneasiness haunted her, and she didn't feel much in the mood for questions, let alone obvious disbelief. In spite of the occasional lights on the highway, she was conscious as she had never been before of the weight and depth of the night, of darkness pressing down all around them. She found herself wishing vaguely that Rudy would roll up his window instead of leaning against the frame, letting the night-scented desert winds brush through the car.

  Billboards fleeted garishly by them, primitive colors brilliant in the darkness; now and then a car would swoosh past, with yellow eyes staring wildly into the night. Her mind traced the long road home, the road she'd seen in last night's aching dream of restlessness that had told her where she must come, then had framed awkwardly the next chapter of her thesis, which had to be worked on tonight if she were going to make her seminar deadline. But her mind moved uncontrolledly from thing to thing, returning again and again to that silent, isolated cabin, the salute from the blade of an upraised sword...

  "You believe him."

  She turned, startled, and met Rudy's eyes.

  "You believe him," he repeated quietly, not as an accusation, but as a statement.

  "Yes," Gil said. "Yes, I do."

  Rudy. looked away from her and stared out the window. "Fantastic."

  "It sounds crazy... " she began.

  He turned back to her. "Not when he says it," he contradicted, pointing his finger accusingly, as if she would deny it. "He's the most goddam believable man I've ever met."

  "You've never seen him step through the Void," Gil said simply. "I have."

  That stopped Rudy. He couldn't bring himself to say, I have, too.

  Because he knew it had just been a hallucination, born of bright sunlight and a killing hangover. But the image of it returned disturbingly-the glaring gap of light, the folding air. But I didn't see it, he protested; it was all in my head.

  And, like an echo, he heard Ingold's voice saying, You know you did.

  I know I did.

  But if it was all a hangover hallucination, how did he know it?

  Rudy sighed, feeling exhausted beyond words. "I don't know what the hell to believe."

  "Believe what you choose," Gil said. "It doesn't matter. He's crossing back to his own world tonight, he and Tir. So they'll be gone."

  "That's fairy-tale stuff!" Rudy insisted. "Why would a-a wizard be toting a kidnapped Prince through this world on the way to someplace else anyway?"

  Gil shrugged, keeping her eyes on the highway.

  Annoyed, he went on. "And besides, if he was going back tonight to some world where he's got magical powers, why would he need to bum my matches off me? He wouldn't need them there."

  "No, he wouldn't," Gil agreed mildly. Then the sense of what Rudy had said sank in, and she looked quickly across at him. "You mean, he did?"

  "Just before we left," Rudy told her, a little smug at having caught the pair of them out. "Why would he need matches?"

  Gil felt as if the blood in her veins had turned suddenly to ice. "Oh, my God," she whispered.

  I am entitled to risk my own life... but I draw the line at risking the lives of others...

  As if a door had opened, showing her the room beyond, she knew that Ingold had lied. And she knew why he had lied.

  She swerved the Volkswagen to the side of the highway, suspicion passing instantaneously to certainty as the threadbare tires jolted on the stones of the unpaved shoulder. There was only one reason for the wizard to need matches, the wizard who, in his own world, could bring fire at his bidding.

  There was only one reason, in this world, that the wizard would need fire tonight.

  He hadn't spoken of going back until she'd offered to remain with him, until she'd spoken of the possibility of the Dark following him through the Void. He had refused to flee Gae until all those who needed him were utterly past help. So he would take his own chances, alone in the isolated cabin, rather than risk involving anyone else.

  "Climb out," she said. "I'm going back."

  "What the hell?" Rudy was staring at her as if she'd gone crazy.

  "He lied," Gil said, her low voice suddenly trembling with urgency. "He lied about crossing the Void tonight. He wanted to get rid of us both, get us out of there, before the Dark Ones come."

  "What?"

  "I don't care what you think," she went on rapidly, "but I'm going back. He was afraid from the beginning that they'd come after him across the Void... "

  "Now, wait a minute," Rudy began, alarmed.

  "No. You can hitch your way to where you're going. I'm not leaving him to face them alone." />
  Her face was white in the glare of the headlights, her pale eyes burning with an intensity that was almost frightening. Crazy , Rudy thought. Both of them, totally schizoid. Why does this have to happen to me?

  "I'll go with you," he said. It was a statement, not an offer.

  She drew back, instantly suspicious.

  "Not that I believe you," Rudy went on, slouching against the tattered upholstery. "But you two gotta have one sane person there to look after that kid. Now turn this thing around."

  With scarcely a glance at the road behind her, Gil jammed the accelerator, smoking across the center divider in a hailstorm of gravel, and roaring like a tin-pan thunderbolt into the night.

  "There," Rudy said, half an hour later, as the car skidded to a bone-jarring stop on the service road below the groves. Ahead of them on its little rise, the cabin was clearly visible, every window showing a dingy yellow electric glare. Gil was out of the car before the choking cloud of dust had settled, striding quickly over the rough ground toward the porch steps. Rudy followed more slowly, picking his way carefully through the weeds, wondering how in hell he was going to get out of this situation and what he was going to say to his boss back at the body shop. Dave, I didn't make it to work Monday because I was helping a wizard rescue a baby Prince out someplace between Barstow and San Bernardino? Not to mention explaining why he never made it back to Tarot's party from the beer run.

  He looked around him at the dark landscape, distorted by starlight, and shivered at the utter desolation of it. Cold, aimless wind stirred his long hair, bearing a scent that was not of dusty grass or hot sunlight-a scent he'd never smelled before. He hurried to catch up with Gil, his bootheels thumping hollowly on the board stairs.

  She pounded on the door. "Ingold!" she called out. "Ingold, let me in!"

  Rudy slipped past her and reached through the pane of glass he'd broken last night to unlock the door from the inside. They stepped into the bare and brightly lighted kitchen as Ingold came striding down the hallway, his drawn sword in his hand and clearly in a towering rage.