01 THE TIME OF THE DARK d-1

by Barbara Hambly

  They worked swiftly in the darkness of the vaults, soundlessly, with drawn swords, their efficiency impaired by the need to keep together. Following the bobbing chain of weak yellow lights, Gil found herself almost afraid to breathe, straining every nerve for the glimpse of some anomalous motion in the blackness, the breath of alien wind. In the deeper vaults where the food was stored, the endless darkness was all a whisper of tiny pattering feet and a sea of glaring little red eyes, gray bodies swarming soundlessly away from the light of the torches; but beside the fear of the Dark, that was of no more moment than a cockroach on the wall might have been. They carried burden after burden back toward the light, sacks of grain, cured meats, great waxed wheels of cheese, treading the swiftest path they could under their loads, with Ingold flitting beside them like a will-o'-the-wisp, sword in one hand, the tip of his upraised staff throwing clear white light that dispelled the crowding shadows.

  It was hard labor, and they kept it up all the forenoon. Gil's arms ached; her blistered hands were smarting, her nerves humming like a plucked bowstring every time she dumped a burden of corn or dried fruit or an unwieldy slab of cheese onto the pile at the top of the steps and turned back down to the waiting darkness. Her head throbbed with hunger and fatigue. Toward afternoon she was trembling uncontrollably, the stairs, the vaults, and the men and women around her blurring before her eyes. She stopped, leaning against the carved pilasters of the great doorway, trying to get her breath; someone passed her in a black uniform, bearing a torch, and laid a light, companionable hand briefly on her shoulder. Blindly, she followed him back into the vaults.

  It was well into afternoon when the job was done after a last, sweating hour of loading the carts. Lightheaded and sick with weariness, Gil wondered if it were only a hallucination on her part or if they were really watched from every black window by unseen eyes-if the prickling on the back of her neck were some premonition of real danger or only the result of fatigue whose like she had never before known. That last hour she had noticed no one and nothing, only the pain that throbbed with every movement of her tired arms.

  When someone said that Ingold was gone, she could not remember when she had seen him last.

  "He was with us on the final trip out of the vaults, I think," Seya was saying to the Icefalcon, wiping sweat from her brow with the sleeve of her damp undertunic.

  "But not after?"

  The woman shook her head. "I really don't remember."

  "Did anyone see him above the ground?"

  Glances were exchanged, heads were shaken. No one could recall. The fat carter in brown said, "Well, he's a wizard, and he's got his tricks, to be sure. Likely he'll meet us halfway up the mountains. Let's go, I say, if we're to make Karst in the daylight."

  The remark evidently didn't merit reply-Guards were already picking up the smoldered ends of doused torches and rekindling them from a little fire someone had lit in a corner of the court for warmth. Gil joined them as a matter of course, though she knew that there was no question of staying together for this search. Janus saw her as she was going down the steps and called out. "Gilshalos!" But before he could go to her, the fat carter caught him by the arm and started a long expostulation, about reaching Karst before night. Quietly, Gil slipped into the shadows.

  It was different, entering the vaults alone. Her single torch called forth leaping, distorted shapes on the low groinings of the ceiling, her own footfalls multiplied eerily in the darkness, as if she were being stalked by a legion of goblins. The red gleams of wicked little eyes blinked momentarily from the impenetrable gloom around her, then were gone. All the stillness seemed to breathe. Some instinct warned her not to call out, and she continued alone in silence, scanning the maze of dark pillars for some sign of that bobbing white light or the soft tread of booted feet-though now that she thought of it, Ingold was a man who could move as noiselessly as a shadow. She left the trampled way the salvagers had taken and turned toward the deeper vaults, wandering down identical aisles of dark stone pillars, granite trees in a symmetrical forest, her torchlight calling no reflection from the smooth black basalt of the floor.

  She felt it grow upon her gradually, imperceptibly; a sense of having passed this way before, a lingering sense of unnamed dread, an uneasy feeling of being watched from the dark by things that had no eyes.

  How she could have helped Ingold she could not have said, for she was unarmed and less familiar than he with the haunts of the Dark. But she knew he had to be found and she knew that he was exhausted, pushed far past the limits of his endurance; she knew that, wizard or not, in such a state mistakes were fatally easy to make.

  She had almost given up the hope of finding him when she saw the faint reflection of white light against the dark granite of the pillars. She hurried toward the light, coming at last to a cleared space in that stone forest, where her torchlight gleamed on the dark sweep of the red porphyry Stair that curved upward to the blown-out ruin of cyclopean bronze doors, with nothing but darkness beyond them. Among the rubble of disused furniture and dusty old boxes, she could make out the shapes of skeletons, bones scattered among the pillars, stripped of their flesh by the Dark. Almost at her feet, a sword-split box had disgorged its contents, and dried apples lay strewn among the skulls.

  She knew the place; the familiarity of it made her heart pound and the blood din in her ears. But no granite slab broke the ancient regularity of the smooth basalt of the floor. Only a great rectangular hole gaped where it had lain, black and yawning, the blasphemous gate of the abyss. And down from the pavement black stairs led, unspeakably ancient, cold with the ruinous horror of uncounted millennia, looking as she knew they would look, even in her dreams-as they had looked since the beginning of time. The damp chill that breathed out of that darkness brushed her cheek like the echo of primordial chaos, an evil beyond comprehension by humankind.

  And up from that unspeakable chasm, like the distant glow of a far-off lamp, shone the soft white light she had been seeking. It picked out the curves of the ceiling arches, echoed in the lines of a skull and the delicate roundness of the bone over the eye socket. Hands shaking, Gil stooped and picked up a long sword that lay on the floor amid a tumble of acid-eaten handbones. With the balanced weight of the hilt in her hand she felt better, steadier, and less afraid. She held the torch aloft and walked to the edge of the abyss.

  Far down the stairs, outlined by the soft brightness of his staff's white radiance, she could see Ingold. He stood as unmoving as a statue some fifty steps below her, just at the point where the stairs curved and were lost to sight in the black throat of the earth. His face was intent, as if listening for some sound which Gil could not hear. He had sheathed his sword, and his right hand hung empty at his side. As she watched, he moved with the slow hesitance of one hypnotized, down one step, and then another, like a man in a trance following enchanted music. She knew that after another step or two she would lose sight of him utterly, unless she chose to follow him down. He took the next step, the shadows closing him around.

  "Ingold!" she called out in despair.

  He turned and looked Inquiringly up at her. "Yes, my dear?" His voice echoed softly, ringing against the darkness of the overarching walls. He stared around him, at the stairway and the walls, and frowned, as if a little surprised to find he had come that far down. Then he turned thoughtfully to look at the deeper chasm below him again, and Gil remembered with a shiver that he had once told her that curiosity was the leading characteristic of any wizard, and that a mage would pursue a riddle to the brink of his own grave. For a moment she had the terrible impression that he was toying with the notion of descending that eldritch stairs, of walking willingly into the trap to see of what it consisted.

  But he turned away and came up toward her, the darkness seeming to fall back at the advent of his light. He emerged to stand beside her on the top step and asked quite calmly, "Do you hear it?"

  Gil shook her head, mute and frightened. "Hear what?"

  His blue g
aze rested on her face for a moment, then moved away, back toward that endless dark. There was a slight frown between his white brows, as if his mind worried at a riddle, oblivious to the danger in which they stood. She sensed that danger all around them, watching and waiting in the shadows, pressing behind them as if it would drive them into the accursed pit. But when he spoke, his rusty voice was calm. "You don't hear anything?"

  "No," Gil said softly. "What do you hear?"

  He hesitated, then shook his head. "Nothing," he lied. "I must be more tired than I thought. I-I thought-I didn't think I had descended the stairs quite that far. I hadn't meant to."

  That, more than anything else, shocked her-the note of exhaustion in his voice, the admission of how close he had come to being trapped. He frowned again, looking down at the darkness that gaped below his feet, puzzling at some new knowledge, disconcerted, not by the darkness, but by something else.

  Then he sighed and let the matter go. "You came alone?" he asked.

  She nodded, a curiously forlorn figure in her grubby jeans, with her guttering torch and the borrowed sword heavy in her hand. "The others are searching, too," she explained-no explanation, really, as to why she had come alone.

  "Thank you," he said quietly, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "It's extremely likely that you just saved my life. I-I feel as if I have been under a spell, as if-" He broke off, and shook his head as if to clear it. "Come," he said at last. "This way out is quicker. Keep the sword," he added as she moved to lay it down where she had found it. "You may need it. Its owner never will again."

  By the time the convoy reached Karst the air was cold, and the late, weary day was drawing down to evening. They traveled slowly, for the underfed horses were deadbeat and the road steep and foully muddy. The closer they got to the town, the more often they were stopped by men and women who had been camping in the woods and who came hurrying down the steep banks to them, begging for something to eat. Only a little-it was always only a little.

  Janus, riding in the lead, shook his head. "There'll be shares given out at Karst."

  "Bah!" A woman in a torn purple gown spat. "Karst-if you can get into the town! And them as are there'll be sure they get first pickings!"

  The Commander only looked down with stony eyes. "Move aside." He kneed his sweat-darkened horse forward, past her. The wagons had not even stopped.

  "Pig!" the woman yelled at him, and bent to pick up a stone from the roadway. It struck his back hard enough to raise dust. He didn't turn. "All of you, pigs!!"

  It wasn't what Gil had expected. Walking beside her horse's head, hanging grimly onto the cheekpiece of the bridle to keep from staggering, she'd half-expected to be cheered into town. But, she thought cynically, people are people-nobody cheers the lunchwagon unless he gets first dibs on the food. She looked back along the line of the convoy and saw none of her own feeling reflected in the strained and dusty faces of the other Guards. It's a hell of a thing, she thought, to risk your life to feed someone and have him pelt you with mud on your way into town. But she supposed the Guards had seen too much of human nature in this crisis ever to be surprised by anything again.

  They walked quietly along the blue evening road with a tirelessness and an endurance she bitterly envied. The civilians moved dully with fatigue, leading the overburdened horses in silence. The sun had already vanished behind the tips of the surrounding mountains, and the evening grew cold. It would soon be night. Someone had scrounged a heavy, hooded cloak for her from the ruins of the Palace, and it flapped awkwardly around her ankles, the folds of it catching on her sword; the rhythmic slap of the scabbarded weapon against her calf was curious, but somehow comforting. She would take the sword back to California with her along with the memory of this strange and terrifying place.

  Where in hell are all these people coming from? she wondered, as a dozen or more came scrambling down the ferns of the roadside and into the way of the carts. She straightened up and scanned the woods, picking out the hundreds of trashy little campsites that strewed the slopes all around Karst. Sweet Mother of God, do they think there's a magic force-field around the place? Did they really buy that line of Alwir's about how safe they all are? The refugees tacked themselves onto the train, keeping pace with exhausted horses and their Guards, tagging them through the blue rivers of shadow between the first outlying buildings. Some of the Guards drew their swords, but no move was made against them; the people simply followed, crowding one another but not the warriors, only making sure of being at the distribution point when shareouts began. Gil heard the murmur of voices thrown back by the moss-grown walls, a restless tension and discontent. So many people, so few wagons, so little food!

  And then they moved into the twilit square. Gil paused in shock, stiffening as if against a physical blow, and cold apprehension fisted in her chest. The square was nearly solid with people, all ages, both sexes, dirty, in rags or clothes soiled enough to be rags, and watchful as wolves. The great bonfires of last night had been kindled at the four corners of the square, and the leaping scarlet light repeated itself a millionfold in their glittering eyes, like the eyes of the rats in the vaults. The ugly tension was palpable; even Gil's horse, drooping with weariness, sensed it and threw up its head with a snort of fear.

  At the head of the convoy, Janus moved his horse toward the mob that was headed for the villa across the square where the food was to be stored. There was a slight movement, an uneasy convection current in the dark mass of eyes and faces, but no one stepped aside. The Commander's war horse fidgeted and sidestepped from that wall of hatred. Janus drew his sword.

  Then Gil felt the cart she was leading creak with a sudden motion, and Ingold, who had been dozing in the back, swung himself up onto the driver's seat. In the firelight, he was visible to everyone in the square, the hood falling back from his head to reveal his craggy face with its rough chaparral of white beard and his eyes as cold and hard as the storm sky. He said nothing, did nothing, only stood leaning on his staff, looking down at the mob in the square.

  After a long moment of silence, men shifted away from the doors of the villa. A pathway widened before the Guards, their convoy, and the wizard.

  Janus' voice was crisp on the chilly air. "Start unloading. Get the stuff indoors, under triple guard." But he himself did not dismount. Other Guards emerged from the villa, mixed with Alwir's red-liveried private troops and the warrior-monks of the Church, also in red, the bloodtroops of God. Gil leaned against the shoulder of the carthorse, feeling the sweat cold on her face, the warmth of the beast through cloak and jacket and shirt against her arm, tired and glad it was over. The mob in the square had fallen back, crowding one another around the bonfires, but they watched the moving lines of armed men stowing the food, and that restless murmuring never ceased.

  Gil heard someone call out. "My lord Ingold!" Turning, she saw someone beckoning urgently from the Town Hall steps. She saw the wizard scan the crowd, judging it, but few of the people were watching him now; all eyes were riveted, as by enchantment, on the food. He swung himself lightly down from the cart, and the crowd rippled back from where he landed on his feet. They moved, not in dread or fear, exactly, but in awe of something they did not and could not comprehend. He did not have to push his way through them to the steps.

  If Gil hadn't been watching him, following his path with her eyes, she would have completely missed what happened next. A man, cloaked and hooded in red, stood waiting for him on the steps of the Town Hall, holding a rolled parchment in one hand, flat and colorless in the deep shadows thrown by the fires. He handed Ingold the parchment and drew his sword.

  Gil saw Ingold read what was written there and look up. She could feel, even at that distance, the fury and indignation that tautened every line of his body, the wrath that smoked off him. A dozen men in red emerged quietly from the shadows and surrounded him. They all carried drawn swords.

  For one instant, she thought he would fight. And she thought, Oh, my God, there'll be a riot, and a que
er, cold fury put fire-ice into her veins. Several of the red troops evidently thought so, too, for they flinched back from him. Gil remembered that, in addition to being a wizard, Ingold was supposed to be one hell of a swordsman. Then he held his hands up to show that they were empty, and the men closed him in. One of them took his staff, another his sword, and they all vanished into the shadows of the Town Hall doors.

  Stunned, Gil turned to see if Janus had witnessed this, but the Commander's back was to her, his attention held by the mob. The Guards were still working, carrying grain, sides of bacon, and sacks of potatoes and corn up the steps of the villa and through the guarded darkness of the doors. She doubted anyone besides herself had seen the arrest. They timed that, she thought suddenly. And they counted on his going quietly, rather than triggering a riot by resistance.

  Rage swept her then, leaving no room for fear. She looked back at the steps, splotched by shadow and firelight. They were empty, as if nothing had happened. The wizard might simply have disappeared.

  CHAPTER SIX

  A dying civilization. A land locked in fear. A world going down in a welter of hopeless chaos before an enemy that could not be fought. And, Rudy thought, strolling down the mossy cobbled streets of Karst through the cool sunshine of that mellow afternoon, one hell of a lot of people standing nose-deep in the sewer, with the tide coming in.

  If it weren't jammed to the ceilings with people, Karst would be a pretty town, he reflected. That is, if you had indoor plumbing and some kind of central heating and streets you weren't likely to break your ankle on. This lane was relatively uncrowded and quiet, winding away from the town square to lose itself in the woods; it was paved in lumpy, fist-size cobbles that were high and dry along the walls on both sides and heavily upholstered with bright green moss down the center, through which a thread of silver water reflected the sky. Rudy had slept-badly-in a stuffy and flea-infested closet on the third floor of the Town Hall, and had spent what was left of the morning and most of the afternoon poking around Karst, trying to scrounge food and water, scraping acquaintance with refugees and Guards and some of the Bishop's people, and checking out the town. He'd come to the conclusion that if Alwir didn't get his act together fast, they'd all be dead in short order.