Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"Oh, yes," the girl said softly. "Well, way back in former days, of course. Every great House of the Realm kept its own troops and had law over its own people. The High Kings, the Kings at Gae, changed all that; any man can appeal from a landchief's or a lord's court to the King's now. That's for civil crimes, of course; the Church still judges its own." She hesitated at a branching of the ways. The dungeons were a black labyrinth of cramped wet passageways; Rudy wondered how she could be so confident. "Down here, I think."

They passed along the narrow way, the light of their torches touching briefly on shut doors, hewn heavy oak strapped in bronze and iron, sometimes on a level with the crude flagstones of the passage, sometimes sunk several moss-slippery steps below it. Most of the doors were bolted, a few sealed with ribbon and lead. One or two were bricked up, with a hideous finality of judgment that made Rudy's palms clammy. It was brought back to him that he was in another universe, a world totally alien to his own, with its own society, its own justice, and its own summary ways of dealing with those who tried to buck the system.

Alde stumbled, catching at his arm for support. Stopping to let her steady herself, Rudy felt the shifting, the movement of the air, the smell that breathed on his face.

He could see nothing in the corridor ahead. The close-hemmed walls narrowed to a rectangle of darkness that the torchlight seemed unable to pierce, a darkness stirred by wind and filled with a terrible waiting. Wind licked at the flames of his torch, and he became suddenly aware of the darkness filling the passage at his unprotected back. It might have been only the over-stretched tension of his nerves, the strain of keeping his senses at fever-pitch for endless nightmare hours-but he thought that he could see movement in the darkness before him.

Half- paralyzed, he was surprised he could even whisper. "We've got no business here, Alde," he murmured. "See if you can find one of those doors that isn't locked."

He never took his eyes from the shadows. By the change in the torchlight behind him, he knew she was edging backward, checking door after door. The light of his own torch seemed pitifully feeble against the pressing weight of the darkness all around him. Then he heard her whisper, "This one's bolted, not locked," and he moved back slowly to join her.

The door stood at the bottom of three worn steps, narrow and forbidding, its massive bolts imbedded in six inches of stone. Rudy handed Alde his torch and stepped down to it, his soul shrinking from the trap of that narrow niche, and used his sword to cut the ribbons that bound the great lead seals to the iron. The metal was disused and stiff, scraping in shrill, rusty protest as he worked back the bolt; the hinges of the narrow door screaked horribly as he pushed it ajar.

From what he could see in the diffuse glow from Alde's torches, the place was empty, little more than a round hole of darkness with a black, empty-eyed niche let into the far wall and a small pile of moldy straw and bare, dusty bones. The queer, sterile smell of the air repelled him, and he stepped inside cautiously, straining his eyes to pierce the intense gloom.

But even half-ready as he was, the rush of darkness struck too swiftly for him to make a sound. Between one heartbeat and the next, he was seized by the throat, and a weight like the arm of death hurled him against the wall, driving the breath from his body. His head hit the stone, his yell of warning strangling under the crushing pressure of a powerful forearm; he felt the sword wrenched from his hand and the point of it prick his jugular. From the darkness that closed him in, a voice whispered, "Don't make a sound."

He knew that voice. He managed to croak, "Ingold?"

The strangling arm lessened its force against his windpipe. He could see nothing in the darkness, but the texture of the robe that brushed his hand was familiar. He swallowed, trying to get his breath. "What are you doing here, man?"

The wizard snorted. "At the risk of belaboring the obvious, I am breaking jail, as your friends would so vulgarly put it," the rusty, incisive voice snapped. "Is Gil with you?"

"Gil?" He couldn't remember when he'd last seen Gil. "No, I-Jesus, Ingold," Rudy whispered, feeling suddenly very lost and alone.

Strengthening light shifted in the dark arch of the door, shadows fleeing crazily over the uneven stone of the walls. Minalde stepped through the door and stopped, her eyes widening with surprise at the sight of the wizard. Then she lowered her gaze, and a slow flush of shame scalded her face, turning it pink to the hairline. She wavered, as if she would flee into the corridor again, though she obviously could not. In her confusion, she looked about to drop one or both torches and plunge them all in darkness.

Rudy was still recovering from his surprise at this reaction when the old man crossed the room to her and gently took one of the flares from her hand. "My child," he said to her softly, "a gentleman never remembers anything a lady says to him in the heat of anger-or any other passion, for that matter. Consider it forgotten."

This only served to make her blush redder. She tried to turn away from him, but he caught her arm gently and brushed aside the black cloak of her hair that half-hid the silent infant slung at her breast. He touched the child's head tenderly and looked back into the girl's eyes. There was no tone of question in his voice when he said, "So they have come, after all."

She nodded, and Ingold's lips tightened under the scrubby forest of unkempt beard. As if reminded of their danger, Alde slipped from his grasp, her hand going to the door to close it.

Ingold said sharply, "Don't."

Her eyes went from him to Rudy, questioning, seeking confirmation.

Ingold went on. "If you close that door it will disappear, and we may all be locked in here forever." He gestured toward the foot of the little wall-niche, where a skull stared mournfully from the shadows. "There are spells laid on this cell that even I could not work through."

"But the Dark are out there, Ingold," Rudy whispered. "There must be hundreds of people dead in the villa upstairs-thousands in the square, in the woods. They're everywhere, like ghosts. It's hopeless, we'll never... "

"There is always hope," the wizard said quietly. "With the seals on the door of this cell, there was no way I could have left it-but I knew that someone would come whom I could overpower, if necessary. And someone did."

"Yeah, but that was just a-" Rudy hesitated over the word. "A coincidence."

Ingold's eyes glinted with an echo of their old impish light. "Don't tell me you still believe in coincidence, Rudy." He handed back the sword. "You'll find a seal of some kind hung over the bolts of the door. Remove it and place it there in the niche for the time being. I'll shut you in when I leave. Here, at least, in all the town of Karst, you will be safe until I can return for you or send someone to get you out. It's drastic," he went on, seeing Minalde's eyes widen with fear, "but at least I can be sure the Dark will not come here. Will you stay?"

Rudy glanced uneasily at Alde and at the skull in the dark niche. "You mean," he asked warily, "once that door is shut, we can't get out?"

"Precisely. The door is invisible from the inside."

Open, the door looked perfectly ordinary; it was the shadow-haunted darkness of the corridor beyond that worried Rudy. The dim yellow torchlight edged the massive iron of its bindings and revealed the roughness of the ancient smoke-stained oak slabs. Wind stirring down the corridor made the lead seal hanging from the bolts move, as if with a restless life of its own. Rudy noticed that, though Ingold stood close to the door, his torch upraised in one hand, he would not touch it.