Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Rudy, who'd been tremendously impressed with this last maneuver, whispered, "Do all warriors have to do that? I mean, Alwir's Guards and the Church troops?"

"The method is much the same," Ingold's mild voice remarked behind them. "Gnift is stricter than most, and the Guards have the reputation of having the best instruction in the West of the World. Methods differ in different modes of combat, of course. In Alketch, for instance, they train their famous cavalry by chaining a slave by one wrist to an iron post in the middle of the exercise hall, putting a sword in his free hand, and having the cavalry trainees practice their saber-charges on horseback against him."

"What's their budget for replacements?" Rudy wanted to know. "Somebody remind me never to visit Alketch."

Gil glanced sideways, from the old shackle gall on the wizard's wrist to his serene face, and said, "Somebody told me once that you used to be a slave in Alketch."

"Did they?" Ingold's eyes twinkled. "Well, I have been and done many things in the course of my misspent life. Rudy, if you could spare me a moment, I would like to talk with you in private." He rose and led the way through the orange-lit confusion of the settling camp with Rudy tagging at his heels. At a distance they passed Alwir's wagons, and Rudy recognized the sable standards of the House of Dare and knew that Minalde was there with her son.

He had hardly spoken to Alde during the day. She had turned away from him, silent and more shy than before, as if withdrawing herself after the shattering intimacy of last night. Rudy was puzzled but not surprised; they had taken each other in the passion that followed tension and terror; such things could change drastically come morning. It could be grief at Medda's death, though she must have known, after the Guards led the poor, stumbling zombie who had been her oldest companion out of the camp, that there was no way to bring her along with the train. It could be shame, either at the act of sex itself or at its implicit betrayal of her dead King. Rudy wondered about that. Alde seldom spoke of Eldor and shied almost visibly at the mention of his name. It might be shame that she'd lain with a commoner-though from remarks about history that Gil had dropped in passing, that wasn't something that seemed to bother female royalty much-or, more likely, fear and a kind of revulsion that she'd lain with a wizard. Alde was a good daughter of the Church. Rudy remembered the look in her eyes, awe and a wild kind of horror, staring into his across the new brightness of the flames.

But whatever her reasons, he sensed in her no anger toward him, only a terrible emotional confusion. And he knew, looking back at the square gray silhouette of the wagon top against the fading salmon of the sky, that he must bide his time. Rudy had been around enough to know that sleeping with someone once could happen to and with literally anybody. It was the second time, and those after, that had meaning. Impatient as he was to be with her again, he was aware that to rush her would be fatal. He knew Alde and knew that behind her deceptive gentleness lay a core of steel. For all her quiet diffidence, she was not a woman who could be bullied into bed.

And that would be fine, he thought, as his breathing suddenly constricted, if she were the only one involved.

He forced himself to turn his eyes away.

"Now." Ingold halted on the grassy open ground that lay between the edge of the camp proper and the guard line where the watch fires were being kindled. Here they were alone, camp and lines both fading into the featureless gray of the evening. The wind blew the cold rain-smell down around them, surging through the grass and over the bare patches of stony ground beneath their feet. "You told me this morning how you called fire at need last night. Show me what you did."

Rudy gathered a few sticks together that had been dropped from the making of the watch fires and found a patch of dry ground. With his thumbnail he peeled enough dry bark to make a little tinder and sat cross-legged beside that small pinch of wood, his cloak wrapped about him. He relaxed his body and mind, shutting out the smells of the camp, the smoke and scent of wet grass, and the lowing of the cattle. He saw only the twigs and the bark, and how the stuff would catch. Smokier than last night's leaves, he thought. A little spot, like one made with a magnifying glass in the sun... a different smell from the leaves...

The fire came much more quickly than it had come before.

There was a hint of triumph mixed with anxiety in the glance Rudy gave Ingold. The older wizard watched the new flames impassively for a moment, then without moving put them out. He produced the stump of a candle from somewhere about his person and held it a few feet from Rudy's eyes.

"Light the candle," he instructed.

Rudy did.

Ingold blew it out thoughtfully and regarded him for a moment in silence through the whitish drift of the smoke. Then he set it aside. From a pouch in his belt he fished a piece of string with a dangling bit of lead on it like a fishing-sinker. He held the string before him and steadied the suspended weight to stillness with his free hand.

"Make it move."

It was like starting the fire, only different.

"Hmm." Ingold gathered the plumb weight into his hand again and put it away without speaking.

A little ripple of evening wind stirred the grasses beside them. Rudy fidgeted, his mind shying from the implications of what he had done. "What is it?" he asked nervously. "I mean-how can I do this?"

The wizard straightened his sleeves. "You know that," he said. "Better than I do." Their eyes met and held. Between them passed the understanding of something known only to those who had felt what it was. There were not even words for it among those who did not know already. "The question is the answer, Rudy. The question is always the answer. But as to your Power, I'd say you were born with it, as we all are."

We, Rudy thought. We. He stammered, knowing Ingold must be right, his mind fighting the nets of the impossible. "But-I mean-I never could do this before."

"In your own world you couldn't," Ingold said. "Or possibly you could-did you ever try?"

Rudy shook his head mutely, helpless. It had never occurred to him past his childhood. But unbidden images invaded his mind, images of dreams he had had as a very small child, before he started school. Things he was not sure whether he had done or only dreamed of doing. The memory of the need in him struck like an arrow, a need deeper than his love for Alde, a wordless yearning so deeply buried he had never sensed its loss in all his aimless life. The need for something they had taken away from him when he was far too young to fight back. And, like the child he had been, he felt the tears choke him.

"Never?" Ingold whispered, and his eye was like a dragon's that holds and reflects, a mirror that swallows the soul. In it Rudy saw his own memory of the spark leaping from the dried leaves, the dark, terrified gaze of deep blue eyes into his. He saw the scattered pictures from childhood dreams, and felt the utter grief he had felt when he had first learned that they were impossible. Ingold's voice held him like a velvet chain. "You have talent, Power. But even your little power is dangerous. Do you understand that?"

Rudy nodded, hardly able to breathe. "Will I-can I-" Was there some kind of etiquette about it, some way of asking? "Will the Power grow, if I learn how to use it right?"

The old man made a slight movement of assent, sky-blue eyes remote and cool as water.

"Will you teach me?"

The voice was now very soft. "Why do you want to learn, Rudy?"

He felt then for the first time the terrifying extent of the old man's power. The blue gaze pinned his brain like a spear, so that he could neither answer nor deny. He saw his own thoughts, stripped before that watching power, a mushy jumble of half-formed longings and a selfish, disproportionate indulgence of his own passing emotions, pettiness, indolence, sensuality, a thousand sloppy, stupid errors past and present, murky shadows he had turned his back on, probed by glass-edged light. "I don't know," he whispered.