Barbara Hambly - 01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

"Do you think, then, that it can be found?" Alwir's frown was one of troubled concern, but his eyes were calculating.

"I can't know that until I seek it. But the aid of the Council of Wizards is imperative: to your invasion, to the Keep, to all of humankind. Lohiro's silence troubles me. It has been over a month, without word from him or from any member of the Council. Yet it is impossible that they cannot know what has happened."

"But you still think Lohiro isn't dead?"

Ingold shook his head decisively. "I would know it," he said. "I would feel it. Even with the spells that surround the city like a ring of fire, I would know."

Minalde spoke for the first tune, her eyes dark with concern. "What do you think has happened, then?"

Ingold shook his head and said simply, "I don't know."

She looked down at him for a moment, hearing, as no one else in the room did, the undercurrent in his voice of helplessness and fear-not fear for the world's wizardry, but for his friends in Quo, the only people in the world to whom the old man truly belonged. She had seen him before only in his strength and command, and sudden sympathy clouded her face. She said, "You would have sought them weeks ago, but for your promise. I'm sorry."

Ingold smiled at her. "The promise had nothing to do with it, my child."

She stepped quickly forward and bent to kiss the top of his rough, silvery hair. "God be with you," she whispered. She turned and fled the room, leaving lover and brother staring after her in bemused surprise.

"You seem to have made a conquest," Alwir chuckled, though, Rudy thought, he didn't sound a hundred percent pleased about it. "But she is justified. Your service to the Realm goes beyond any payment we can possibly make." He looked around him at the grimy, low-ceilinged room with its dirty walls, the smells and steam from the guardroom outside drifting in, along with Gnift's cracked, tuneless voice singing of love in cornfields. "It certainly deserves better than a back room in the barracks. The Royal Household is a regular warren-we can put you up there in the comfort that befits your state, my lord."

The wizard smiled and shook his head. "Others could use the space there better than I," he excused himself. "And in any case, I shall be departing soon. As long as there is a spare bunk in the Guards' quarters, I shall have a home."

The Chancellor studied him curiously for a long moment. "You're an odd bird," he said finally, without resentment. "But have it as you will. And if you ever get tired of your gypsy existence, the offer will always stand. The quarrel between us has wasted your talents, my lord. I can only ask your leave to make restitution."

"There is no leave," Ingold said, "nor restitution. The quarrel is forgotten."

Chancellor Alwir, Regent of the Realm and Lord of the Keep of Dare, bowed himself from the room.

A moment later the Icefalcon slipped in to give Ingold a cup of the tea he had been brewing. The steam had a curious smell, but it was supposed to prevent colds. It occurred obliquely to Rudy that, although he'd been frozen, wet, half-starved, and nearly dead of exhaustion, at no time had he felt even mildly ill. Probably there was no time for it, he decided. And what I've been through would scare any self-respecting bacteria into extinction.

"Ingold," Gil said quietly after the Guard had left. "About your going to Quo... "

"Yes," the wizard said. "Yes, we shall have to talk about that."

Rudy shifted his position at the foot of the bed. "I don't think you should go alone."

"No?"

"You say it's dangerous as hell-okay. But I think you should take me, or Gil, or one of the Guards, or somebody."

The old man folded his arms and asked detachedly, "You don't believe I can look after myself?"

"After that stunt you pulled last night?"

"Are you volunteering?"

Rudy stopped short, with a quick intake of breath. "You mean-you'd take me?" He couldn't keep the eagerness out of his voice or, to judge by Ingold's expression, off his face. The prospect of going with the old man, no matter what the dangers-of learning from him even the rudiments of wizardry-overshadowed and indeed momentarily obliterated everything he had ever heard or feared regarding White Raiders, ice storms, and the perils of the plains in whiter. "You mean I can go with you?"

"I had already considered asking you," Ingold said. "Partly because you are my student and partly due to... other considerations. Gil is a Guard-" He reached out to touch her hair in a wordless gesture of affection. "-and the Keep can ill spare any Guard in the months ahead. But you see, Rudy, at the moment you are the only other wizard whom I can trust. Only a wizard can find his way into Quo. If, for some reason, I do not make it as far as Quo, it will be up to you."

Rudy hesitated, shocked. "You mean-I may end up having to find the Archmage?"

"There is that possibility," Ingold admitted. "Especially after what I learned last night."

"But- " He stammered, suddenly awed by that responsibility. The responsibility, he realized, was part of the privilege of being a mage; but still... "Look," he said quietly. "I do want to go, Ingold, really. But Gil's right. I am a coward and I am a quitter and if I didn't screw you up or get you into trouble on the way-if I had to find the Council by myself, I might blow it."

Ingold smiled pleasantly. "Not as badly as I would already have blown it by getting myself killed. Don't worry, Rudy. We all do what we must." He took a sip of his tea. "I take it that's settled, then. We shall be leaving as soon as the weather breaks, probably within three days."

Three days, Rudy thought, caught between qualms and excitement. And then, to his horror, he realized that, faced with the chance of continuing his education as a wizard, he had forgotten almost entirely about Minalde.

I can't leave her! he thought, aghast. Not for the five or six weeks the journey will take! And yet he knew that there had never been any consciousness of a choice. To go with Ingold, to study wizardry under the old man, was what he wanted-in some ways the only thing he wanted. He had known, far down the road when he had first brought fire to his bidding, that it might lose him the woman he loved; even then he had known that there was no possibility of an alternative course. And yet-how could he explain?

Long ago and in another life, he remembered driving through the night with a scholar in a red Volkswagen, speaking of the only thing that someone wanted to have or be or do. He looked across at her now, at the thin, scarred face with pale schoolmarm eyes, the witchlike straggle of sloppily braided hair. It had been hard for her to leave something she disliked for something she loved. Harder still , he thought, was it to leave something you loved for something you loved more.

Sorely trouble in his mind, he returned his thoughts to what Gil was saying. "So you'll be bunking here until then?"

"I don't take up much room," Ingold remarked, "and I far prefer the company. Besides," he added, picking up his teacup again, "I never have found out who ordered my arrest in Karst. While I don't believe Alwir would put me out of the way as long as he had a use for me, there are cells deep in the bowels of this Keep that are woven with a magic far deeper and stronger and far, far older than my own, cells that I could never escape. The Rune of the Chain is still somewhere in this Keep-in whose possession I cannot tell. As long as I remain in the Keep of Dare, I would really prefer to sleep among my friends."

Rudy's fingers traced idly at the moldy nap of the blanket. "You think it's like that?"

"I don't know," the wizard admitted equably. "And I should hate to find out. The wise man defends himself by never being attacked."