Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"All right," she whispered breathlessly.

What the hell am I talking about? There's not going to be anything after this.

Alde crouched back, keeping out of his way so as not to encumber his sword arm, though her terror cried for the comfort of his touch. High up, near the top of the door, Rudy heard a soft bumping noise, like a testing finger tapping, and then a faint scratching on the heavy glass of the window. His heart slamming sickeningly against his ribs, Rudy thought, All I can do is take a swing straight down at whatever comes through that door. What's stone? What's flint? What will make a spark? I wish to Christ Ingold were here. He could make a fire just by looking at the wood.

Wonder if I could do that?

Ingold's words came back to him, spoken in the darkness of the gatehouse, the light glowing up from his empty palm. You know what it is... by its true name you call it ... Rudy looked at the tiny pile of wood, the dried leaves and tinder scattered beneath. That would catch, he knew it would. Its true name... Maybe there was some kind of a magic name for fire. But whatever you called it, fire was fire. The smell of it was the same, the brightness. He thought how it would smell as it caught off those twigs, sort of sweet and sharp. It would give off snappy, sputtery little gold sparks, little crackly sounds... He called them to mind, the shape and smell and brightness, straining eyes and mind to see the tinder in the deepening darkness. He saw only that the room was fading; even his consciousness of Alde kneeling beside him and his chilled fear of the death that waited outside the door began growing less important than the fire, the fire purely for its own sake. He could see it, hear it, smell it; he knew how it would splutter out of that tinder.

The dry leaves fluttered a little in the wind. From far off, he could see Alde press her knuckles to white lips, all the while without a sound. Detachedly, he saw the fire in his mind, in the first instant of its sparking, and knew exactly how it would be. He could see it, just couldn't touch it yet. He felt his mind and body relax, withdrawing to some great distance, his perspective on the world altering, narrowing to only the dry shapes of leaf and twig and wood that he could see, quite clearly, in the utter darkness. The wood, the dry little heap of leaves, the tiny gold sparks like stars... Without moving, he reached his mind across from where he was to where the fire was, as easily as picking a flower that grew on the other side of a fence.

There was a sudden, bright crackle of little gold sparks, and the sharp, sweet smell of dry leaves catching. Rudy bent forward, still detached from himself, calm, halfwondering if it could be a hallucination, but calmly certain that it was not, and fed one twig and then another to the fire, real fire where no fire had been before. The light spread quickly into the room, threw gleeful shadows across his face, and danced flickering, crazy jigs of triumph that reflected in tiny points of light in Alde's eyes as she brought up more and bigger sticks without a word.

And then it hit him, like a blow from a club. I did that , he thought. I did that . The warmth scorched his trembling fingers and seeped into the cold flesh of his palms and face. The wind that had rustled so evilly at the door faltered, then waned and ceased, and all outside the dugout became terribly still, except for the faint drizzling of the last of the rain.

Rudy's mind echoed like a thunderclap with the shock, and rocked wildly with surging triumph. One part of him, it seemed, was screaming , I did it! I did it! I called the fire, and the fire came , and another was saying, I shouldn't have been able to do that . But more real than either, deeper, within his true heart, there was only a calm knowledge, clear and small like a little light-the memory of that first crackle of flame in the dry leaves and the knowing that he could do this.

Then he looked up and met Alde's terrified eyes. They were wild with fear, a fear tinged with hysteria and relief and superstitious terror, fear of the Dark, of the fire, of him. He saw that newfound power reflected in her eyes, saw it as others would see it, alien and terrible and uncanny. She couldn't speak the wild question in her eyes, nor could he have answered, and for a moment they could only stare at each other in the firelight, as once before they had stared in the shocked, shared knowledge of their desire. Then, with a sob that seemed to rip her soul from her body, she threw herself into his arms, weeping wildly, holding onto him as if he were her last hope of life itself. Magic and terror and death released him, the tension breaking with an almost physical shock, and he clutched the slender girl in his arms with a grip that seemed to drive her bones into his and buried his face in her dark hair. Desperately they took one another beneath their shared cloaks on the floor, while the fire threw its shadow dance across the low rafters.

Afterward Alde slept, terror exhausted in passion, and Rudy lay awake, sword close to his hand, watching the fire and letting his thoughts of past and future have their way with him, until the rain outside stopped, and dawn came.

"You think that's fighting?" Gnift roared in a voice that cut like the steel of his grip-worn sword. "Get him! Get him!" The Icefalcon, armed with an eighteen-inch wooden stick, feinted warily at his opponent, a massive Guard wielding three feet of split bamboo that could draw blood like metal. The young captain was marked with it, face and hands; Rudy, sitting on the sidelines, shuddered. Gil, he noticed, watched beside him with an alert interest. She looked as if she'd already had her turn at this game, and gotten the worst of it.

Stubborn broad , he thought. They'll have to kill her before she'll give it up.

Gnift yelled, "Attack him, you puling coward! Don't make love to him!"

The big man swung, and the Icefalcon shifted back out of range. Exasperated, Gnift stepped forward under the arc of the wooden blade, grabbed the back of the captain's black tunic, and shoved him into the fray. The result was bloody, painful, and exhausting for both combatants.

Rudy said thoughtfully, "One of these days somebody's gonna take a poke at that little bastard."

"Gnift?" Gil raised her split eyebrow in amused surprise. "Not bloody likely." Rudy remembered seeing Gnift sparring with Tomec Tirkenson, the big landchief of Gettlesand, yesterday evening about this time, in the last of the daylight after the long march. Maybe Gil was right.

They watched for a time more, sitting side by side on the square of groundcloth just off the makeshift training floor. Around them, the camp was settling itself down for the night once again. It would soon be time to collect their meager rations and make for the watchfires. Rudy noticed that Gil looked drawn and exhausted, a thin, almost sexless shadow with a great straggling mane of black hair. He knew that in addition to marching and guard duty she was training this way nightly, on starvation rations, with the mess of her half-healed arm wound, as if deliberately driving herself to collapse.

Wind sneered down off the mountains and washed over the camp like incoming tide. The mountains loomed above them now, hugely close, blacking the western sky, a sheer wall, like the Rockies. That morning they had passed the crossroads, which were watched over by a crumbling stone cross, and set their feet on the great road that ran up to Sarda Pass. It was colder here in the shadows of the foothills and desolate of all habitation.

In the wan twilight before them, the Icefalcon was holding his own, retreating before the great swinging strokes of his opponent's sword. Sweat bathed his face, white in the frame of ivory hair, and his pale eyes were desperate with exhaustion. Cursing, reviling, Gnift circled the fighters, finally stepping lightly up behind the captain and hooking his feet out from under him with a deft sweep of one leg. The Icefalcon went down, his opponent dropping on him like grim death from above. There was a confused blur of movement. The younger man came up under the arc of the longer sword with a clean slash across the big Guard's belly and turned the end of the movement into a circle-throw that hurled his attacker over his head and flat on the Guard's back in the mud. He got both swords and scrambled to his feet, gasping. The bigger man lay on the ground, puffing and cursing. Gnift yelled, "When you get your man down, do something, don't just take his sword and stand there like a fool. If you did that... "