Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"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.