Barbara Hambly - 04 Mother Of Winter

Gil had come from California -had turned down the chance to go back-to be in this world with him. She had accepted then that if he died-when he died-she would continue in this world without him. It was her world, now and forever. Her face hurt her again, and she looked down at her hand, trying to recall why it pained her so sharply and what made her remember the blood running down her palm to drip into the slunch. There were dim images of a mountain with a core of ice, of a deep lake, blue as a jewel... of things like animate gems that looked at her and knew her name. Troubled by the recollections, she took from her jacket the leather wrappings that held the Cylinder.

It weighed heavy in her hand. Without crack, without bubble, without shadow or flaw; its surface wasn't even pitted, and it had to be old, three thousand years, four thousand, maybe more. There was no way to tell. It gleamed in the smudgy lantern light as if oiled. Beyond the shadow of a doubt it was the product of magic, the product of the wizards who lived in the Times Before.

Everything she had seen of this world before the Dark's last rising had a decorated quality: the walls half timbered or ornamentally bricked, turreted and frilled with statuary and screens.

The furniture was carved with flowers and beasts, the clothing-at least that of the rich-elaborate with trapunto and knotwork and embroidery. Of the Times Before, only the Keep itself remained, slick and enigmatic and black, a featureless rectangle immensely huge; the Keep, and the crystals of light and images, likewise smooth and unblemished by eons of time. And this?

She turned it in her hand, seeking vainly for a flaw or a scratch or a clue. A communicator? A power-core? The leg of a footstool? Rudy would be able to feel magic in it, to touch it and sense something beyond its age. Ingold and Rudy both teased Gil about her complete lack of any sense of magic, her inability to feel it: odd, Ingold had once said, in someone who understood it so well. She thought about him, staring into the depths of the glass core, but saw only the distorted image of her own hand closed around it and the tiny reflection of the lantern's flame. Now, that was something they could use-a device that permitted communication of those who were not mageborn. A telephone. He had left her alone. The pain grew more intense, and she felt exhausted and nauseated, worse than ever before. Sword across her knees, she curled tighter within his robes, staring into the darkness that seemed to collect so thick in the buried chamber, above the mouth of the pit. Wherever he was, she thought, she was with him. Dead or alive, whatever the voices whispering in her brain told her.

There were other voices answering them, unanswerably... thy sweet love

remembered such joy brings

That I would scorn to change my state with kings.She felt the ice storm hit, far above her, as if all the world had been tipped over the

edge into the pit of Fimbul Winter, the dark beyond the Norse Gotterdammerung, the

cold that would see no spring, as if all the earth were sinking like a shipwreck through

blackness to cosmos' end.

"Look, guys, it's not that I don't appreciate the hospitality, but you gotta admit it's getting a little thick in here."

Rudy Solis started to rise, and George-the old dooic whom Rudy had decided bore a more than superficial resemblance to a comedian in his own world of that name-darted four-legged to the hole that led to the long and twisting passageway to the outer world, sat down in front of it, and bared his yellowing tusks. It was a ritual gesture-at this point Rudy didn't really think George was going to bite him, though the discolored fangs were darn good for a guy that age-but he understood what it meant and backed to the wall again. "Okay. I'm cool. So what the hell do you want?"

None of the dooic in the cave had laid a hand on Rudy, or come near him. There were perhaps a dozen of them, a small band as dooic went, mostly the wiry, dark-furred variety, though one or two of those with graying muzzles were large enough and scarred on the wrists and back in such a way that Rudy guessed they had been domestic slaves before the rising of the Dark.

They huddled at the far side of the low-roofed, sandy-floored chamber around a fire that George had kindled by merely looking at the wood, in the age-old manner of wizards.

Rudy was still amazed. I'll be buggered. Dooic have magic. He could not have been more surprised if he'd learned the same thing about tree frogs. He settled down to watch the movements of the band. With one worried dark eye still on Rudy, George moved away from the entrance again, to admit three or four more of the tribe, who hauled after them dead branches and chunks of half-rotted logs. These they stacked in a corner of the cave. The cave itself, though wide and deep, was only about five feet high at its tallest, tapering at the back to little more than a horizontal crack that vanished into darkness, and the whole place reeked of carrion, smoke, and dooic.

Not, Rudy thought, the place where he'd planned to spend the night, but it beat hell out of a slunch bed between the timberline and the glacier, with rubbery eyeless mushroom-critters dropping by for tiffin. For company he supposed it had a few points over Graw's great hall.

On the other hand, it was the opportunity of a lifetime to study a dooic band close up. He'd tried on other occasions, in the Vale of Renweth, but dooic were elusive as foxes in the woods-and if some of them could use magic, it was no wonder he'd never been able to sneak up on them.

Despite the fact that dooic would occasionally slaughter and devour lone travelers, he felt no threat. Unless George was a hell of a lot stronger wizard than he appeared to be, his own magic should protect him from concerted attack-and anyway, they'd shown no disposition to gang up on him.

George had lured him here with a trail of magic, of signs traced in light in the dark air, and Rudy had followed out of a combination of intense curiosity and the knowledge that Ingold would smack him with his staff if he passed up the chance. They wanted him here.

Had they asked him to dinner to thank him for saving the life of the hinny with the two babies? Did they think that action had made him responsible for her and them? Was she going to end up his wife, in the best tradition of pulp adventure tales? Er-none for me, thanks. He could see her among the others in the corner, pups in tow, eyes gleaming in the

almost impenetrable smoky darkness of the cave, but she had made no move to approach him; he'd christened her Rosie after a girl he'd gone to high school with. The other mares he labeled Mom, Margaret Dumont, Alice the Goon, Gina, Cheryl, and Linda, and two days from now I won't recognize a single one of them... George, who'd gone over to the wood-bearers-all of whom moved easily on all fours, under the low pitch of the roof-now turned, as if he'd heard a noise from the passageway. He glanced back at Rudy and grunted something, accompanied by a swift, complicated gesture with his hairy, short-fingered hands. Rudy must have looked blank, because George caught the attention of another male with a piglike squeal, made another gesture, then ran, apelike on his knuckles, to the passageway and vanished into the dark.

The other males made a flurry of gestures among themselves, incomprehensible to Rudy but speaking clearly of consternation and fear-why fear? Then four of them ran to sit in a row across the entrance, watching Rudy intently with those surprisingly human eyes.

"I get it," Rudy said. "Sit tight, right?" As he spoke he showed his hands, palms out, empty, then thought, Oh, good. They communicate by gestures, and I've just told them all their mothers wear army boots.