Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"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.

"Get out of here!" he ordered them furiously.

"The hell I will," Gil said.

"You can't possibly be of any help to me... "

"I'm not going to leave you alone."

Rudy looked from the one to the other: the girl in her faded jeans and denim jacket, with those pale, wild eyes; the old man in his dark, billowing mantle, the sword gripped, poised, in one scarred hand. Loonies, he thought. What the hell have I walked into? He headed down the hall.

Tir lay wrapped in his dark velvet blankets on the bed, blue eyes wide with fear. The only other thing in the bare room was a pile of kindling in one corner, looking as if every piece of wooden furniture in the little cabin had been broken up; next to it stood the can of kerosene. Steps sounded behind him in the hall, and Ingold's voice, taut as wire, said, "Don't you understand?"

"I understand," Gil said quietly. "That's why I came back."

"Rudy," Ingold said, and the tone in his voice was one of a man utterly used to command. "I want you to take Gil, get her in the car, and get her out of here. Now. Instantly."

Rudy swung around. "Oh, I'm gonna get out of here all right," he said grimly. "But I'm taking the kid with me. I don't know what you guys think you're doing, but I'm not leaving a six-month-old kid to be mixed up in it"

"Don't be a fool," Ingold snapped.

"Look who's talking!"

Then, as Rudy bent to pick up the child from the bed, the lights went out.

In one swift movement, Ingold turned and kicked the door shut, the sword gleaming like foxfire in his hand.

The little starlight leaking through the room's single window showed his face beaded with sweat.

Rudy set the whimpering baby down again, muttering, "Goddam fuses." He started for the door.

Gil gasped. "Rudy, no!"

Ingold caught her arm as she moved to stop him. There was deceptive mildness in his voice as it came from the darkness. "You think it's the fuse?"

"Either that or a short someplace in the box," Rudy said. He glanced over his shoulder at them as he opened the hall door, seeing their indistinct outlines in the near-total blackness; the faint touch of filtered starlight haloed Ingold's white hair and picked out random corners of Gil's angular frame. The edge of Ingold's drawn sword glimmered, as if with a pallid light of its own.

The hall was black, pitch, utterly black, and Rudy groped his way blindly along it, telling himself that his nervousness came from being trapped in a house in the middle of nowhere with a deluded scholar and a charming and totally insane old geezer armed with a razor-sharp sword, a book of matches, and a can and a half of kerosene. After that stygian gloom, the dark kitchen seemed almost bright; he could make out the indistinct forms of the table, the counter; the thread-silver gleam on the hooked neck of the faucet; the pale, distinct glow of the windows by the door; the single one in the left with the broken pane.

Then he saw what was coming in through the broken pane.

He never knew how he got back to the bedroom, though later he found bruises on his body where he'd blundered against the walls in his flight. It seemed that one instant he was standing in the darkness of the tiny kitchen, seeing that hideous shape crawling through the window, and that next he was falling against the bedroom door to slam it shut, sobbing. "It's out there! It's out there!"

Ingold, standing over him in the gloom, scarred face outlined in the misty gleam of his sword blade, said softly, "What did you expect, Rudy? Humans?"

Firelight flared. Gil had made a kind of campfire out of splintered kindling in the middle of the cement floor and was coughing in the rank smoke. Lying on the sagging mattress, Tir was staring at the darkness with eyes huge with terror, whimpering like a beaten puppy afraid to bark. Another child would have been screaming; but, whatever atavistic memories crowded his infant brain, they warned him that to cry aloud was death.

Rudy got slowly to his feet, shaking in every limb with shock. "What are we gonna do?" he whispered. "We could get out the back, make it down to the car... "

"You think the car would start?" In the smoldery orange glare, the old man's eyes never left the door. Even as he was speaking, Rudy could see that both his hands were on the long hilt of the sword, poised to strike. "I doubt we would make it to the car in any case. And-the house limits its size."

Rudy gulped, cold with shock, seeing that thing again, small and hideous and yet rife with unspeakable terror. "You mean-it can change its size?"

"Oh, yes." Sword in hand, Ingold moved cat-footedly to the door. "The Dark are not material, as we understand material. They are only incompletely visible, and not always of the same-composition. I have seen them go from the size of your two hands to larger than this house in a matter of seconds."

Rudy wiped sweating palms on his jeans, sickened with horror and totally disoriented. "But if-if they're not material," he stammered, "what can we do? How can we fight?"

"There are ways." Firelight played redly over Ingold's patched mantle as he stood, one hand resting on the doorknob, the other holding ready the gleaming witchfire of the blade, his head bowed, listening for some sound. After a moment he spoke again, his voice barely a whisper. "Gil," he said, "I want you to take Tir and get between the bed and the wall. Rudy, how much of a fire do we have left?"

"Not much. That wood was dry as grass. It's going quick."

Ingold stepped back from the door, though he never took his attention from it. The little room was filled with smoke, the flaring fire already sinking, feebly holding at bay the encroaching ring of shadows. Without looking back, he held out his hand. "Give me the kerosene, Rudy."

Wordlessly, Rudy obeyed.

Moving swiftly now, Ingold sheathed his sword in a single fluid gesture, took the can, and set to work, unscrewing the filler-cap and throwing a great swatch of the clear liquid over the dry wood of the door. It glittered in the yellow firelight, its throat-catching smell mixing with the gritty foulness of the smoke, nearly choking Gil, who stood with her back pressed to the icy concrete of the wall, the muffled baby motionless in her arms. The fire's light had gone from yellow to murky orange, the brown shadows of the wizard's quick, sure movements wavering, vast and distorted, over the imprisoning walls. Ingold came hack toward her and saturated the mattress with the last of the kerosene, its stink nearly suffocating her at close range. Then he set the empty can down softly, turned and drew his sword again, all in one smooth move; all told, he had had his sword sheathed for less than forty seconds.