Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"Why not?" the wizard bit at him.

The slipping temper showed in the steel that suddenly edged his voice. "It was chaos there. We... "

"That will be as nothing," Ingold said slowly, "to the chaos you will find when the Dark Ones come here."

In the silence that followed, Gil was conscious of the rustling presence of the onlookers and eavesdroppers, chance-camped around the parchment-littered table that was all the headquarters the Realm of Gae now had-men and women, with their children or bereft of them, sitting or curled uncomfortably on their blankets, drawn against their will into the vortex around the tall, elegant Chancellor and this shabby pilgrim whose only possession seemed to be the killing sword at his hip. Though all around them in the obscure, pillared fastnesses of the hot, murky hall there was subdued talk and movement, here there was none. The duel was fought perforce in the presence of witnesses.

Alwir seemed to remember them, for the tension in him eased perceptibly, and his voice was lighter, with just a trace of amusement, as he said, "You run ahead of yourself, my lord wizard. The Dark have not come to Karst-of all the cities in this part of the Realm, it is without trace of their Nests. As I have said, this state of affairs is temporary; it takes time to relocate and reorganize. Those who have refugeed here have nothing to fear. We shall make of Karst the new heart of the Realm, away from the danger of the Dark; it is here that we shall assemble an army of the allies of mankind. We have sent already to Quo, to the Archmage Lohiro, for his advice and aid, and south for help, to the Empire of Alketch."

"You've what?" It was Ingold's turn to be shocked and as angry as Gil had ever seen him.

"My dear Ingold," Alwir said patronizingly, "surely you don't expect us to sit on our hands. With the aid of the armies of the Empire of Alketch, we can carry the fight into the Nests of the Dark. With such aid and that of the Council of Wizards, we can attack the Dark in their own territory, burn them out, and rid the earth once and for all of that foul pestilence."

"That's nonsense!"

Alwir hooked his thumbs in his jeweled belt, clearly satisfied that he had taken the wizard off his usual balance. "And what would you propose, my lord wizard?" he asked silkily. "Returning to Gae, to be devoured by the Dark?"

Ingold recovered himself, but Gil could see, from her post by the stairs, how shaken he had been by the Chancellor's suggestion. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet. "I propose that we go to ground," he said, "at Renweth."

"Renweth?" Alwir threw back his head, as if uncertain whether to explode into rage or laughter. "Renweth? That frozen hellhole? It's ten days' journey from the end of the world, the jumping-off place of Hell. We might as well dig our graves and bury ourselves in them. Renweth! You aren't serious!"

The Bishop shifted her black, lizard's gaze to Ingold curiously and spoke for the first time. "The monastery there closed twenty years ago, during the Bad Winter. I doubt there's even a village there anymore." Her voice was a dry, thin whisper, like the wind whistling through bleached bones in the desert. "Surely it is too isolated from the heart of the Realm to establish as its capital?"

"Isolated!" Alwir barked. "That's like saying Hell has an unseasonable climate. A backwater pit in the heart of the mountains!"

"I am not concerned with the Realm," Ingold said, his scratchy voice uninflected now, but his eyes glittering in the murky torchlight. "There is no Realm anymore, only people in danger. You deceive yourself to think political power will hold together when every man's thoughts are on refuge alone." The Chancellor made no reply to this, but along his cheekbones Gil saw the flush of anger redden the white skin. Ingold went on. "Renweth Vale is the site of the old Keep of Dare. From the Keep, whatever else you choose to do, you can hold off the Dark."

"Oh, I suppose we could, if the Keep's still standing," the Chancellor admitted brusquely. "We could also hold them off if we lived in the wilds like the dooic, hiding in caves and living on bugs and snails, if you wanted to go that far. But you're not going to fit the entire population of the Realm into the Keep of Dare, for all your vaunted magic."

"There are other Keeps," the Bishop put in suddenly, and Alwir shot her a look black with anger. She ignored it, refolding her long, bony fingers, her parchment-dry whisper of a voice thoughtful. "There is a Keep in Gettlesand that they still use as a fortress against the incursions of the White Raiders; there are others in the north... "

"That they've been using to cure hides in for the last three thousand years," Alwir snapped, really angry now. "The Church might not suffer much, my lady Bishop, in the breakup of human civilization; your, organization was made to hold sway in scattered places. And you, my lord wizard, think your own kind wouldn't be hurt-wanderers and brothers to the birds. But it's a long trek to Renweth." He jerked his head at all those watching eyes, that blur of faces in the blue fog of smoke-the girl with the cat, the old man with his crates of chickens, the fat woman in her nest of sleeping children. "How many of these would survive a half-month of nights in the open, journeying through the river valleys where the road runs down to Renweth Vale? We are safe here, I tell you-safer than we'd be on the way."

There was a murmuring among them, a shoal-whisper of agreement and fear. They had fled once from comfortable homes and pleasant lives in a city now deteriorating into lawlessness by day and nightmare terror by dark-a weary climb up muddy roads, burdened by all they could carry away with them. Frightened and confused, they had no desire to flee farther, and there was not one of them who, by hope of Heaven or fear of Hell, could have been induced to spend the night in the open.

Alwir went on, his voice dropping to exclude all but those closest in the smoky glare that surrounded the foot of the stairs. "My lord Ingold," he said quietly, "you held a great deal of power under King Eldor, power based on the trust he had in you from the time he was a child under your tutelage. How you used that power was your own affair and his; for you had your secrets that even those of Eldor's family were not privy to. But Eldor is dead; his Queen lies raving. Someone must command, else the Realm will destroy itself, like a horse running mad over a cliff. Your magic cannot touch the Dark-your power in the Realm is over."

Their gazes met and locked, like sword blades held immobile by the matched strength of their wielders. The tension between them concentrated to a core of silence unbroken save by the sound of their breathing; blue eyes looking into blue, framed in darkness and the smoldery glare of jumping torchlight.

Without taking his eyes from Alwir's, Ingold said, "King Eldor is dead. But I swore to see his son to a place of safety, and that place is not Karst."

Alwir smiled, a thin change of his lips that neither touched nor shifted his eyes. "It will have to be, won't it, my lord wizard? For I am his Regent now. He is under my care, not yours." Only then did his eyes move, the entire stance of his body changing, and his voice lightened, like that of an actor stepping out of a role-or into one. His smile was genuine then, and deprecating. "Come, my lord," he said pleasantly. "You must understand that there are conditions under which life is definitely not worth preserving, and I'm afraid you've named one of them. Now-" He held up his hand against the wizard's next words. "I'm sure we will get off with less drastic consequences than the complete dismantling of civilization. I admit we are hard-pressed for certain things here, and I do not doubt that there are more refugees from Gae and the surrounding countryside coming up the mountain tomorrow. We're sending a convoy of the Guards down to the storehouses under the Prefecture Building at the Palace of Gae as soon as it grows light. As for getting in touch with the Archmage Lohiro, I'm afraid your colleagues seem to be in hiding, and it is beyond even Bektis' powers to get through to them."