Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"Quickly," the wizard said. "We haven't much time."

"Rudy." Alde's voice was timid, her eyes huge in the torchlight. "If I will be safe here-as safe as anywhere in

this town tonight-I would rather you went with Ingold. In case something-happened-I'd feel better if two people knew where we were, instead of only one."

Rudy shivered at the implications of that thought. "You won't be afraid here alone?"

"Not any more afraid than I've been."

"Get the seal, then," Ingold said, "and let us go."

Rudy stepped gingerly to the door, the smoldering yellow light from within the cell illuminating the narrow slot of the opening and no farther. The seal still dangled from its cut black ribbons, a round plaque of dull lead that seemed to absorb, rather than reflect, the light. It was marked on either side with a letter of the Darwath alphabet; as he reached to touch it, he found himself repelled by a loathing he could put no name to. There was something deeply frightening about the thing. "Can't we just leave it here?"

"I cannot pass it," Ingold said simply.

The horror, the irrational vileness, concentrated in that small gray bulla were such that Rudy never thought to question him. He simply lifted the thing by its black ribbons and carried it at arm's length to throw deep into the shadows of the niche. He noticed Alde had stepped back as he'd passed with it, as if the aura radiated from it was like the smell of evil.

Alde fitted the end of her torch into a crack in the stonework of the wall and turned back to him, cradling the child in both arms.

"We'll send someone back for you," Rudy promised softly. "Don't worry."

She shook her head and evaded Ingold's glance; the last Rudy saw of her was a slender white figure cloaked in her tangled hair, the child in her arms. The darkness of the doorway framed them like a gilded votive in a shrine. Then he shut the door and worked home the rusty iron of the bolts.

"What was that thing?" he whispered, finding himself unwilling even to touch the bolts where it had hung.

"It is the Rune of the Chain," Ingold said quietly, standing on the top of the worn steps to scan the corridor beyond. "The cell itself has Power worked into its walls, so that no one within may find or open the door. With the Rune of the Chain spelled against me, even if I could have found the door, I could not have gone through. Presumably I would have been left here until I could be formally banished-or, just possibly, until I starved."

"They- couldn't do that, could they?" Rudy asked queasily.

Ingold shrugged. "Who would have stopped them? Ordinarily, the wizards look out for their own, but the Archmage has vanished, and the City of Wizards lies sunk in the rings of its own enchantments. I am very much on my own." Seeing the look on Rudy's face, compounded of horror and shocked proprieties, Ingold smiled, and some of the grimness left his eyes. "But, as you see, I would have gotten out, magic or no magic. I am glad that you brought Alde and the baby with you. It was by far the best thing you could have done. Here, at least, they will be safe from the Dark."

He raised his torch, the sickly glow of it barely penetrating the obscurity of the passage. "This way," he decided, indicating the direction in which Rudy and Alde had been headed before.

"Hey," Rudy said softly as they started down that dark and wind-stirred corridor. The wizard glanced back over his shoulder. "What was that all about with her?"

Ingold shrugged. "At our last meeting the young lady threatened to kill me-the reason isn't important. She may repent the sentiments or merely the social gaffe. If one is going to... "

And then a sound rocked the vaults, a deep, hollow booming, like the blow of a monster fist, and the shock of it shivered in the very walls. Ingold paused in his stride, his eyes narrowing to a burning glitter of concentration as he listened; then he was striding down the corridor, Rudy following behind with drawn sword. As they turned the corner, Rudy saw the wizard shift the torch in his hands, and the rough wood seemed to elongate into a six-foot staff, the fire at its tip swelling and whitening to the diamond brilliance of a magnesium torch, searing like a crystal vibration into every crack of those stained and ancient walls. Holding the blazing staff half like a lamp, half like a weapon, the wizard moved ahead of him, shabby cloak billowing in his wake like wings. Rudy hurried after, the darkness falling back all around them and closing in behind.

Somewhere very close to them, a second blow resounded, shaking the stone under their feet like the smash of a piston driven by an insanely giant machine. Cold and hollow with hunger and fatigue, Rudy wondered shakily if they'd be killed, but the thought of it was strangely impersonal. Corridors converged, widening the darkness where they trod; he could now smell water and mold, and all around them the stone-acid stink of the dark. Somewhere, all that was left of the mob who had taken refuge in Alwir's villa-the handful of Guards and the scarlet Church troops, the fat man with his garden rake and the young woman with her attendant mob of children, and all the other faces that had swum in the glaring maelstrom above-stairs-were cowering in the dark, jumping shadows of the vaults, watching with horrified eyes the might of the Dark Ones hammering the barred iron doors, the only line of defense, from their massive hinges.

The might of the Dark! Rudy felt it, like a blow in the face, as the third explosion rocked the foundations of the villa; he felt the contraction of the air, and the evil intelligence watching them as they passed. The winds had begun to whip through the passageways like the rising forerunners of a gale, fluttering in Ingold's mantle and twisting at his own long hair. The light from the staff in the wizard's hand broadened to a blaze like hot noon, scorching out the secrets of the darkness, and in its blinding glare they turned a corner into a major thoroughfare and saw through the heavy shadows that blotted the air like smoke the great doors that lay at the end.

Though Rudy could see no single form, no shape in the darkness, he sensed the malevolence that beat the air with the movement of a thousand threshing wings. Their power seemed to stretch across the corridor like a wall; beyond it, barely visible in the clotted shadows, he could see the broad line of torchlight under the barred doors. There were no sounds from the people behind those doors. Those who had made it to that last covert in the vaults faced the Dark in silence.

He felt the change in the Dark, the sudden surge of that terrible alien power, and the thunder of that explosive sound roared in his ears as he saw the doors buckle and collapse, breaking inward in a flying hurricane of splintering wood. Sickly failing torchlight showed him faces beyond the broken doors and silhouetted smoky forms taking sudden shape in the darkness.

Into that darkness Ingold flung himself without so much as breaking stride, the cold light hurling around him like the explosion of a bursting star. Rudy followed, clinging to the light as to a mantle, and for one brief, terrible instant it seemed that the darkness streamed back on them, covering and smothering that brilliant burning light.

Whether it was exhaustion playing tricks on his mind or some magic of the Dark, Rudy did not know. He did not think he had shifted or closed his eyes and knew he hadn't looked away. But for one instant, there was the darkness, pouring down over the light. And the next moment, there was only light, white and chill, surrounding the strong, shabby form of the old man who stalked down that empty corridor. Streaming through the broken doors, the white light fell on waxy, pinched faces, was reflected from terrified eyes, and edged the steel in the hands of the thin line of troops stretched between the packed mob of surviving refugees and the doors. Then the light faded, shrinking naturally from the blinding glow to the yellow splotch of simple torch flame.