Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

The vagrant glowworm of the witchlight that had been over Ingold's head wandered before them down the inky stairwell, to illuminate their feet. "No dice with Quo?" Rudy asked after a moment.

Ingold smiled at his words. "As you say, no dice."

Rudy, looking back at the sturdy, white-haired old wizard, remembered that it was this man who had worked that subtle enchantment of the languages; he saw Ingold again going against the Dark in the vaults, unarmed but for the noonday blaze of his power. "Are they all like you?" he asked suddenly. "The wizards? Other wizards?"

Ingold looked like an overage imp when he smiled like that. "No, thank God. No. Wizards are really a very individualistic crew. We are formed by what we are, like warriors or bards or farmers-but we're hardly alike."

"What's Lohiro like?" The Archmage, Master of the Council of Quo-Rudy found it difficult to picture a man whom Ingold would call master. He wondered just how this tough old maverick got along with the leader of the world's wizardry.

"Ah." Ingold smiled. "That's a good question. No two people who have known him have the same answer. They say he is like a dragon, in that he is the boldest and most guileful, the bravest and the most calculating-and that, like a dragon, he seems to those who meet him to be made of light and fire. I hope one day that you will have the opportunity to judge for yourself."

They paused in the doorway. Beyond them lay the court of the Guards, drowned under the drenching rain; to their left, the shadow of the gateway, and the broken street beyond. The gutter down its center was roaring like a millrace. The ground in the square would be nothing but sucking ooze. Rudy asked, "Do you like him?"

"I would trust him with my life " Ingold said quietly. "I love him as if he were my son." Then he turned away and vanished into the shadows of the street, a stooped, weary form in his hooded robe. Rudy watched him disappear into the sodden darkness, and it occurred to him that this was the first time Ingold had come out with a straight answer about his personal feelings. Shining wetness picked out the peak of the old man's hood as he passed under the glow of a lighted window far down the lane. The light was dim, the soft glow of a single candle or a shaded lamp. Rudy's eyes were drawn to the window, and he saw a wavering shadow pass across the mullioned panes within.

He knew that window.

After a moment he thought, What the hell? Why not?

He stepped from the shelter of the gate and hurried down the black lane in the rain.

Alde looked up, startled, as he tapped at her open chamber door. Then she recognized him, and her violet eyes darkened with pleasure. "Hello."

"Hi." He stepped hesitantly into the room, made uneasy by the dead stillness of the house below. The room itself was in wild disorder, curtained in shadow; bed, chairs, and floor were strewn with clothes, books, and miscellaneous equipment; dusky blood-rubies glittered on a pair of combs in the shadow, and white gauntlets lay nearby, like wrinkled upturned hands. Minalde herself was wearing the white gown in which he'd first met her; it was evidently a favorite, like an old pair of jeans. Her black hair, unbraided, lay in great crinkled swatches over her slim shoulders. "I came to see if you might like a hand with your packing."

"That was kind of you." She smiled. "I don't need a hand so much as an extra brain, I'm afraid. This-chaos... " She gestured eloquently at the confusion all around her.

There was a clicking tap of hard-heeled shoes in the hall behind him, and the short, stout woman Rudy remembered from the terrace-Christ, was that only yesterday evening?-came bustling in, dragging a small chest behind her and carrying a pile of empty sacks thrown over her arm. She bestowed a glance of withering contempt upon him, but didn't deign to speak. To Alde she said, "This was all I could find, your Majesty, and bless me if I don't think it's all we'll have room for in the cart. That and the great chest of my lord Alwir's."

"That's fine, Medda." Alde smiled, taking the sacks from her. "It's a miracle you could come up with this, in all this confusion. Thank you."

The older woman looked mollified. "Well, it's truth that the house is like a shambles, and I could barely find this. What you're coming to, your Majesty, I don't know-forced to ride in a cart, and hardly the clothes on your back and all. How we'll reach Renweth alive I'm sure I can't think."

"We'll make it," the girl said. "Alwir will get us there."

Without a word or a second glance for Rudy, Medda scurried to the corner of the room, where she began folding blankets and sheets, packing them firmly into one of the sacks. Alde returned to her own packing, folding the great mass of flame-cut crimson velvet that Rudy recognized as the cloak Alwir had worn that afternoon. "Most of this is Alwir's," she said to Rudy, nodding to the tumble of cloaks, tunics, and robes that half-covered the big bed. "He asked me to sort his things for him. It's hard to know what to take and what to leave behind." She packed away the cloak and picked up a quilt of star-embroidered silk, the colors of it changing and rippling as it moved. Rudy came over to give her a hand with it, being well-versed in the ways of laundromats, and she smiled her thanks.

"Well, packing was an easy one for me," he said. "All I've got is a blanket and a spoon and what I've got on. For a Queen, you're traveling awfully light."

She smiled at him and shook back the dark hair from her face. "Have you seen the cart I'm going to be riding in? It's about the size of that bed. I'm not usually this unencumbered; anywhere I go I always seem to end up taking carts and carts of things, books and clothes and spare cloaks and tennis rackets and a chess game. My maid takes-" Her voice caught suddenly on the words, as if she had physically stumbled in a swift run. It was thin and shaky when she finished the sentence. "My maid used to take more than this." Then, with a forced lightness, she continued. "On longer trips I'd have furniture and bedding and dinner service and windows... "

"Windows?"

"Of course." She looked at him in genuine surprise, forgetting momentarily, as the Icefalcon forgot when speaking to Gil, that he was an outworlder and a stranger in the land. "Have you any idea how much glass costs? Even we quality folks have to bring our own windows with us when we travel. One could never afford to glaze all the windows in all of one's houses." She smiled at his expression of dawning comprehension. A little ruefully, she went on. "But I don't think we'll need the windows in the Keep of Dare."

"What's it like?" Rudy asked. "The Keep, I mean."

She shook her head. "I really don't know. I've never been there. The Kings of the Realm abandoned Renweth so long ago; there was never even a hunting lodge there. Until-Eldor-" Again there was that hesitation, almost an unwillingness to speak his name. "Until the King went there some years ago, to have it re-garrisoned, I don't think a King of Darwath had visited it in generations. But he remembered it. My grandfather remembered it, too."

"Your grandfather?"

"Oh, yes. Our House, the House of Bes, is descended from Dare of Renweth, a side descent. Now and then the memories show up in our people, sometimes hundreds of years apart. Grandfather said he remembered mostly the darkness inside the Keep and the smoke and the smell. He said he had memories of twisting passageways lit by grease lamps, and rickety old makeshift stairways going up and down into darkness. He remembered himself-or Dare, or some ancestor-walking through the corridors of the Keep and not knowing whether it was day or night, summer or winter, because it was always lamplight there. When he'd speak of it," she went on, her hands pausing, still and white against the colors of the gown she was holding, "I could almost see it, it was so close to him. I could see the stairs, going up like scaffolding, and the fitful gleam of the lamps on the stone. I could smell it, damp and murky like old blankets and dirty clothes, and could feel the darkness surrounding me. It will be hard to live always by torchlight."