Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"Where is he?" Rudy asked.

"With the Guards." Gil adjusted her sword belt without meeting his eyes. He could see that she had been crying.

Rudy rolled over and found he had to use the wall to climb painfully to his feet. His body ached, and little electric flashes of pain were stabbing every muscle and joint as he tried to move. Lassitude gripped not only his bones but his spirit as well, so that nothing-not last night's flight, nor the news Gil had wakened him with this afternoon-brought him either sorrow or joy. He recognized this as a symptom of extreme fatigue.

When I get back to California, he vowed tiredly, I am never, ever going to gripe about anything again. I will always know for a sure fact that things could be loads worse.

If I get back to California, he amended, and followed Gil out of the cell.

The cell was one of a warren of partitioned-off cubicles that stretched haphazardly beyond a door to the right of the gate. To get out, he had to pick his way through ill-lit huddles of those who still slept, lying where they'd fallen in blind exhaustion, and step over and around the pitiful little bundles of pots and blankets heaped in the corners of the tiny rooms. Next to a small hearth, a porcelain-headed doll slumped like a dead child against a pair of broken boots. The place stank of unwashed clothes and a child's neglected diaper. Blinking in the dim light, Rudy stepped out into the central hall of the Keep.

Looking around him at the dark fastnesses of that fortress, he could only wonder at the human powers of recuperation and the human tendency to make oneself at home. Here, in this awesome fortress of stone and steel, after they'd fought their way through peril and death and darkness, people were settling themselves in cozily for the winter. Children-Minalde was right, children were tough little survivors-ran madly up and down that great, echoing hall, their shrill, piercing yells ringing off the unseen vaults. He heard women's voices, sweet and high, and a man's genuine laugh of pleasure. Down at one end of that monstrous space, a rectangle of blinding light marked the doors-daylight, filtered with clouds and snow. At the other end of the hall, a couple of monks in patched red robes were putting up a bronze crucifix over a cell doorway otherwise indistinguishable from a hundred small black doorways exactly like it to establish the domain of the Church-Renweth Cathedral and the administrative offices of Bishop Govannin. She was evidently wasting no time. On the narrow catwalk above, he saw Alwir, like Lucifer in his velvet cloak, quietly surveying his dominion.

The Guards had a complex of cells to the immediate right of the great Keep doors. Gil led Rudy through a narrow entrance. By the smoldering light of grease lamps, he saw Janus arguing with a couple of indignant-looking burghers who had the air of having been men of property before the Dark had made hash of wealth and land and prestige.

Janus was saying patiently, "Cell assignments aren't the province of the Guards, they're the responsibility of the Lord of the Keep, so I suggest... " But neither of the men looked as if he were listening.

The room was heaped with provisions and mail, weaponry and kindling. Guards were sleeping in the chaos, with their slack, pinched faces showing the last stages of weariness. In the room beyond, the confusion was worse, for most of the Guards there were sitting around, eating a scratch dinner of bread and cheese, sharpening their swords, and mending their uniforms. The Icefalcon, his white hair unbraided and hanging in a sheet of liquid platinum past his waist, was keeping a pot of water from boiling by watching it impatiently. People looked up and called greetings, cheerful and noisy, which Rudy returned with what bloodless enthusiasm he could conjure. The place stank of filth and grease and smoke. What the hell was it going to be like in a year? Or two years? Or twenty? The thought was nauseating.

A grubby curtain partitioned off a sort of closet, where the Guards had stored their spare provisions in wildest disorder. Stepping through the grimy divider, Rudy blinked at the dimness, for barely any of the greasy yellow illumination managed to leak through from the room beyond; he had the impression of heaped sacks, scarred firkins, a floor mucky with mud and old hay, and an overwhelming smell of dusty cheese and onions. Across the back of that narrow cell somebody had excavated a makeshift bed on the fodder-sacks. On the bed, looking like a dead hobo, lay Ingold.

"You're crazy, do you know that?" Rudy said.

The blue eyes opened, drugged and dreamy with fatigue. Then the familiar smile lightened the whole face, stripping the age from it and turning it impish and curiously young.

"You could have got killed."

"You have an overwhelming capacity for the obvious," Ingold said slowly, but his voice was teasing, and he was obviously pleased to see Gil and Rudy alive and well. The wizard's hands were bandaged in rags and his face welted and snow-burned, but on the whole, Rudy thought, he looked as if he'd live. He went on. "Thank you for your concern, though the danger was less than it appeared. I was fairly certain I could keep the Dark Ones at bay until I released the spells over the storm. I knew I could escape them under cover of the storm, you see."

"Yeah?" Rudy asked, sitting down at the foot of the bed. "And just how the hell did you plan to escape the storm?"

"A mere technicality." Ingold dismissed the subject. "Is it still snowing?"

"It's coming down pretty heavy," Gil said, drawing her knees up like a skinny grasshopper and settling herself beside the head of the bed. "But the wind's stopped. Tomec Tirkenson says this is the coldest it's been in forty years. The Icefalcon said he's never seen the snow pile up in the canyons like this so early in winter. You're gonna have one chilly trek over the Pass." Barely visible in the smoky darkness, her face looked thin and haggard, but at peace.

"I'll wait until it actually stops snowing," Ingold said comfortably, and folded his bandaged bands before him on the moth-eaten wool of the coverlet. Half-hidden in the gloom, he looked white and ill. Rudy didn't like the dreamy weakness of his voice, nor the way he lay without moving, propped on the sacks of grain. Whatever he said, the old boy had had one hell of a close call. "I can't delay much longer than that," the wizard continued. "Things have happened about which it has become imperative that I consult Lohiro, quite apart from the fact that, so far as I know, Alwir still proposes to assemble his Army here, for the invasion of the Nests of the Dark."

"Look," Rudy began. "About your going to Quo... "

But before he could finish, the muted voices outside rose to a quick babble, followed by the hasty scuffle of too many people all trying at once to get respectfully to their feet in too small a space. The ragged curtain was thrust aside, and a towering shadow blotted the infalling light. Alwir, Lord of the Keep of Dare, stepped through. At his side, dark and slender as a young apple tree newly come to blossom, was the Lady Minalde.

The Chancellor stood silent for a moment, gravely regarding the old man lying on his bed of sacks. When he spoke, his melodious voice was quiet. "They told me that you were dead."

"Not much of an exaggeration," Ingold said pleasantly, "but not strictly accurate, as you see."

"You could have been," the Chancellor said. "Without you, we might all have been, back by the river. I have come-" The words seemed to stick in his throat like dry bread. "I have come to say that I have wronged you, and to offer you my hand in friendship again." He held out his hand, the jewels of his many rings flaming in the shadows.

Ingold stretched out a grubby, bandaged hand to accept, a king's gesture to an equal. "I only did as I promised Eldor I would," he said. "I have taken his son and seen him to safety. My promise is fulfilled. As soon as the weather permits, I shall be leaving to seek the Hidden City of Quo."