Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Still more refugees joined them on the plain by the walls of Gae. The Karst-Gae road crossed the Great South Road a few miles from the multiple turrets of the city gates, in a great trampled circle amid the withered grass. Just north of the crossroads loomed Trad's Hill, named for some hero of ancient wars, the only prominence on that flat plate of land, and from that hill a lichenous cross of carved stone bestowed its arcane sanction on the joining of the ways. There they were met by a motley horde of fugitives from Gae itself, braver, or more foolish, or more conservative souls who had hung on in the looted ruin of the capital, hoping that the danger would somehow miraculously pass. They were far better provisioned and more heavily burdened than those who had fled to Karst earlier in the week; better clothed, leading carts and mules and horses, driving milk cows and pigs and chickens, carrying great satchels of books, money, spare bedding, and the family silver.

"Where'd they get the cows?" Rudy demanded of Gil, who happened to be walking close by him at the time. "They didn't keep all them animals in the city, for God's sake,"

Gil said, "People in New York, Boston, and Chicago kept cows and pigs clear up to the 1890s. How do you think you got milk if you lived in town?"

As the two parties converged, he heard the buzz of talk pass down the length of the swelling caravan. "Is that really her Majesty? Is her Majesty really well and safe? And his Little Majesty?" People crossed themselves thankfully and craned their necks to see. As an American, and not a particularly well-informed one at that, Rudy had expected the subjects of a monarchy to fear and resent those who had such absolute power over them, and it surprised him to see the reverence in which they held Alde and Tir. He remembered what she had said last night, about love and honor-that people needed a ruler they could love, as well as a law they could follow. Offhand, he couldn't think of any member of his own government he even respected, let alone one for whose survival he'd offer up prayers of joy. It caused him to look with new eyes at the tall, hide-topped cart with its drooping standards of black and red and to think about the dark-haired girl inside.

The day wore on, and they followed the Great South Road through the drenched green farmlands along the river. In contrast to the muddy track down the mountain, the road was wide and well-drained, with deep, weed-grown ditches on both sides and a pavement of worn, close-fitted hexagonal blocks of some kind of pale gray stone. As the centers of the blocks were more worn than the edges, they caught the rain in each separate hollow and turned the road into a shining scarf of fish-scale silver, stretching away into misty distance. The caravan left the wide sweep of the plain of Gae behind them and crossed a bridge beneath frowning, empty towers, to enter into the fertile bottom lands where the road sought its lazy way between meadow and farm and woods.

No countryman, Rudy was nevertheless impressed by the solid appearance of prosperity that lay over the land. The farmhouses were well-built, most of them boasting more than one room, with separate quarters for the animals-not always the rule in nonindustrial societies, Gil remarked cynically. But the emptiness of the land was chilling. They saw very few people-only the eyeless stare of vacant houses, the abandoned cattle, and mile after mile of half-harvested corn, rotting in the rain. Those people they did meet were the farm families, or the remnants of them, who came out to the road with all their worldly goods-plow, seed, and poultry-and the youngest baby of the household piled haphazardly into ox carts, to swell the ranks of the moving army of refugees, with children and servants and herd dogs driving little bunches of sheep and cows in their wake. As they passed through those desolate farmlands, the Guards, or the Red Monks, or men and women acting on their own left the train to forage in the ruined fields and the oddly crushed, deserted barns for what they could find, though Rudy noticed they seldom went into the houses that they passed. Sometimes they came back with wagonloads of seed and grain, or livestock, pigs, and bleating sheep, or the small cobby farm horses-beasts whose masters would take no further interest in husbandry.

And still it rained. The convoy had grown to an army, plodding along the silver road in the downpour. Rudy thought of the sheer number of miles involved-Hell, that's like walking from Los Angeles to Bakersfield-and wondered what the hell he was doing there. Above the dull overcast and slanting rain, the gray day was sickening toward twilight.

He shaded his eyes and squinted out across the wet landscape; he saw, as he had seen several times that day, a person-man or woman, he couldn't always tell-wandering aimlessly in the distance, driven by the cutting wind. He wondered about those people, for none of them had made any sign that they saw the passing convoy, and none of the company on the road spoke or waved to them. Sometimes alone, sometimes two or three together, they moved like zombies, stood staring listlessly at nothing, or lay on the ground in the fields, looking blankly into the hollow sky.

He grew more and more curious about these outcasts. Toward evening, when he saw a man and two young women standing at the bottom of the drainage ditch on the side of the road, gazing vacantly into space, he left the pavement and went scrambling down the side of the culvert, slithering through weeds and mud, and waded over to where they stood.

The man wore a loose white cotton shift, plastered to his soft, paunchy flesh by the rain. His hands and mouth were nearly blue with cold, but he seemed to take no notice of the ankle-deep ice water in which he stood. The girls wore dripping silk rags, wilted flowers and colored ribbons braided into their wet, snarled hair. Their lobotomized eyes followed his motions, but none of the three made a sound.

Rudy passed his hand cautiously across the man's line of vision. The eyes tracked, but registered no understanding of what they saw. The girls were the same-beautiful girls, dainty and sweet as lilies of the valley. Rudy would cheerfully have taken either or both of them to bed with him, except for the creeping horror of that empty stare.

"This," Ingold's voice said behind him, "is the other thing that the Dark Ones do."

Rudy swung around, startled; he hadn't heard the wizard approach, even through four inches of water. The old man's face looked taut and sick, barely visible in the shadows of his drawn-up hood. "We didn't see much of it at Karst; probably because the victims were trampled by those seeking safety, or lost in the woods around the town. But I know this from Gae. I daresay most people know it."

"What's wrong with them?" Rudy looked from the wizard to the three shivering, empty-eyed automatons and felt a creeping of his flesh that, for once, had little to do with the cold.

"I think I spoke of it earlier," Ingold said quietly. "The Dark Ones devour the mind as well as the flesh-which is why, I suspect, they prey upon human beings and not upon beasts. As well as human flesh and human blood, the Dark Ones devour the psychic energy, the intelligence-the mind, if you will. Perhaps to them that is the most important of the three."

Reaching out, Ingold shut the eyes of the man with his thumb and forefinger and, closing his own eyes, meditated for a moment in silence. The man's knees buckled abruptly, and Ingold stepped lightly back from him as he splashed noisily into the rain-thrashed water and lay face down. Rudy was still staring, aghast, at the corpse when Ingold touched each of the girls in turn. They fell and lay with their flowered hair floating around them in the dirty water of the ditch. The wizard turned away and, leaning on his staff, clambered up the bank again. Rudy followed him, water dripping soggily from the hem of his mantle, cold and shivering and shocked at what he was pretty sure Ingold had done.