Darwath 1 - The Time Of The Dark (11 page)

“And what,” Ingold asked quietly, “makes you think you're safe here from the Dark?”

Shocked, the big man started to protest, then fell silent. The Bishop slid her eyes sideways at Ingold, like a cat, and purred, “And what, my lord Ingold, know you of the Dark?”

“Only what we all know,” a new voice said. Such was the quality of it, deep and regal, like a fine-tuned woodwind played by a master, that all eyes turned toward the speaker, the man who stood like a dark king, gilded by the glare of the torches. His shadow rippled down before him like water as he descended; like a second shadow, the wings of his black velvet cloak belled behind him. His pale face was coldly handsome, the regular fleshly features marked with thought and wisdom as with a carefully wielded graving tool. The wavy raven-black hair that framed his face half-obscured the chain of gold and sapphires that glittered over his shoulders and breast like a ring of cold blue eyes. “There is a certain amount of profit and prestige attendant upon warnings of disaster, as we all have seen.”

“There is profit only for those who will heed them, my lord Alwir,” Ingold replied mildly, and his gesture took in the smoke-fouled shadows of the room behind them, the grubby mob that had for the most part gone back to chattering among themselves, chasing children, arguing over space and water. “And sometimes even that is not enough.”

“As my lord Eldor found.” The Chancellor Alwir stood for a moment, his height and elegance dominating the small, shabby form of the wizard. His face, naturally rather sensual, was controlled into a cool mask of immobility, but Gil sensed in the posture of his big, powerful body the tension and distrust between the two men that looked to be of long standing. Alwir was annoyed, Ingold wary. “Indeed,” the Chancellor went on, “his warning was the first; the stirring of the memories of the House of Dare long buried in his family. Yet that did not save him. We surmised that you had taken the Prince and fled the battle, when we did not find your sword in the rubble of the hall—though indeed there were enough of the fighters, toward the end, who snatched up the weapons of the fallen to make that not a sure clue. Was it possible, then, for you to assume the form of the Dark and so escape their notice?”

“No,” Ingold replied, without elaboration. But a murmuring went through those nearest the table—for the hall was crowded to the bursting-point, and the conference between wizard and Chancellor, though conducted in low tones, had at least two hundred onlookers besides the five who stood closest to them. Gil, standing half-forgotten with the sleeping child in her arms and her back to the monstrous newel post of the granite stair, could see the glances men gave to Ingold. Fear, awe, and distrust; he was uncanny, an alien even in the Realm. A maverick-wizard, she realized suddenly, and subject to neither king nor law. People could believe of him, and evidently did, that he could take the form of the Dark,

“And yet you contrived it somehow,” Alwir went on. “And for that we thank you. Will you be remaining in Karst?”

“Why did you leave Gae?”

Dark, graceful brows lifted, startled and amused at the question. “My dear Ingold, had you been there—”

“I was there,” Ingold said quietly. “In Gae at least there was water, food, and buildings in which to hide sufficient for all. At least there one could be reasonably safe from one's fellow man.”

“Karst is certainly smaller,” Alwir conceded, glancing deprecatingly about him at the jammed, airless cavern of the smoky hall. “But my men and the City Guards under the able leadership of Commander Janus can control the people more easily than in that crazy half-burned labyrinth that is all that remains of the most beautiful city in the West of the World. The Dark haunt the river valleys,” he went on, “like the marsh sickness of the south; but, like the marsh sickness, they shun the high ground. It may be possible to make a pact with them, such as the mountain sheep make with the lions of the plain. To avoid the lion, one stays clear of his runs.”

“To avoid the hunter,” Ingold replied in that same quiet tone, “the deer shun the towns of men, but men seek them in the forest. The Dark never stalked the high country because there was no profit in it. When their prey flee there, thither they will come, to take them in open ground, scattered broadcast halfway to Gettlesand, without wall or fire, believing themselves safe.”

The sapphires flashed in the torchlight as the Chancellor shifted his weight, and his cornflower-blue eyes were as hard as the jewels. “Two days ago there was a King at Gae,” he said. “And now there is none. This situation is temporary. Believe me, Ingold Inglorion, a city of people cannot come and go as lightly as you do yourself. We obviously could not remain in Gae… ”

“Why not?” the wizard bit at him.

The slipping temper showed in the steel that suddenly edged his voice. “It was chaos there. We… ”

“That will be as nothing,” Ingold said slowly, “to the chaos you will find when the Dark Ones come here.”

In the silence that followed, Gil was conscious of the rustling presence of the onlookers and eavesdroppers, chance-camped around the parchment-littered table that was all the headquarters the Realm of Gae now had—men and women, with their children or bereft of them, sitting or curled uncomfortably on their blankets, drawn against their will into the vortex around the tall, elegant Chancellor and this shabby pilgrim whose only possession seemed to be the killing sword at his hip. Though all around them in the obscure, pillared fastnesses of the hot, murky hall there was subdued talk and movement, here there was none. The duel was fought perforce in the presence of witnesses.

Alwir seemed to remember them, for the tension in him eased perceptibly, and his voice was lighter, with just a trace of amusement, as he said, “You run ahead of yourself, my lord wizard. The Dark have not come to Karst—of all the cities in this part of the Realm, it is without trace of their Nests. As I have said, this state of affairs is temporary; it takes time to relocate and reorganize. Those who have refugeed here have nothing to fear. We shall make of Karst the new heart of the Realm, away from the danger of the Dark; it is here that we shall assemble an army of the allies of mankind. We have sent already to Quo, to the Archmage Lohiro, for his advice and aid, and south for help, to the Empire of Alketch.”

“You've what?” It was Ingold's turn to be shocked and as angry as Gil had ever seen him.

“My dear Ingold,” Alwir said patronizingly, “surely you don't expect us to sit on our hands. With the aid of the armies of the Empire of Alketch, we can carry the fight into the Nests of the Dark. With such aid and that of the Council of Wizards, we can attack the Dark in their own territory, burn them out, and rid the earth once and for all of that foul pestilence.”

“That's nonsense!”

Alwir hooked his thumbs in his jeweled belt, clearly satisfied that he had taken the wizard off his usual balance. “And what would you propose, my lord wizard?” he asked silkily. “Returning to Gae, to be devoured by the Dark?”

Ingold recovered himself, but Gil could see, from her post by the stairs, how shaken he had been by the Chancellor's suggestion. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet. “I propose that we go to ground,” he said, “at Renweth.”

“Renweth?” Alwir threw back his head, as if uncertain whether to explode into rage or laughter. “Renweth? That frozen hellhole? It's ten days' journey from the end of the world, the jumping-off place of Hell. We might as well dig our graves and bury ourselves in them. Renweth! You aren't serious!”

The Bishop shifted her black, lizard's gaze to Ingold curiously and spoke for the first time. “The monastery there closed twenty years ago, during the Bad Winter. I doubt there's even a village there anymore.” Her voice was a dry, thin whisper, like the wind whistling through bleached bones in the desert. “Surely it is too isolated from the heart of the Realm to establish as its capital?”

“Isolated!” Alwir barked. “That's like saying Hell has an unseasonable climate. A backwater pit in the heart of the mountains!”

“I am not concerned with the Realm,” Ingold said, his scratchy voice uninflected now, but his eyes glittering in the murky torchlight. “There is no Realm anymore, only people in danger. You deceive yourself to think political power will hold together when every man's thoughts are on refuge alone.” The Chancellor made no reply to this, but along his cheekbones Gil saw the flush of anger redden the white skin. Ingold went on. “Renweth Vale is the site of the old Keep of Dare. From the Keep, whatever else you choose to do, you can hold off the Dark.”

“Oh, I suppose we could, if the Keep's still standing,” the Chancellor admitted brusquely. “We could also hold them off if we lived in the wilds like the dooic, hiding in caves and living on bugs and snails, if you wanted to go that far. But you're not going to fit the entire population of the Realm into the Keep of Dare, for all your vaunted magic.”

“There are other Keeps,” the Bishop put in suddenly, and Alwir shot her a look black with anger. She ignored it, refolding her long, bony fingers, her parchment-dry whisper of a voice thoughtful. “There is a Keep in Gettlesand that they still use as a fortress against the incursions of the White Raiders; there are others in the north… ”

“That they've been using to cure hides in for the last three thousand years,” Alwir snapped, really angry now. “The Church might not suffer much, my lady Bishop, in the breakup of human civilization; your, organization was made to hold sway in scattered places. And you, my lord wizard, think your own kind wouldn't be hurt—wanderers and brothers to the birds. But it's a long trek to Renweth.” He jerked his head at all those watching eyes, that blur of faces in the blue fog of smoke-the girl with the cat, the old man with his crates of chickens, the fat woman in her nest of sleeping children. “How many of these would survive a half-month of nights in the open, journeying through the river valleys where the road runs down to Renweth Vale? We are safe here, I tell you—safer than we'd be on the way.”

There was a murmuring among them, a shoal-whisper of agreement and fear. They had fled once from comfortable homes and pleasant lives in a city now deteriorating into lawlessness by day and nightmare terror by dark—a weary climb up muddy roads, burdened by all they could carry away with them. Frightened and confused, they had no desire to flee farther, and there was not one of them who, by hope of Heaven or fear of Hell, could have been induced to spend the night in the open.

Alwir went on, his voice dropping to exclude all but those closest in the smoky glare that surrounded the foot of the stairs. “My lord Ingold,” he said quietly, “you held a great deal of power under King Eldor, power based on the trust he had in you from the time he was a child under your tutelage. How you used that power was your own affair and his; for you had your secrets that even those of Eldor's family were not privy to. But Eldor is dead; his Queen lies raving. Someone must command, else the Realm will destroy itself, like a horse running mad over a cliff. Your magic cannot touch the Dark—your power in the Realm is over.”

Their gazes met and locked, like sword blades held immobile by the matched strength of their wielders. The tension between them concentrated to a core of silence unbroken save by the sound of their breathing; blue eyes looking into blue, framed in darkness and the smoldery glare of jumping torchlight.

Without taking his eyes from Alwir's, Ingold said, “King Eldor is dead. But I swore to see his son to a place of safety, and that place is not Karst.”

Alwir smiled, a thin change of his lips that neither touched nor shifted his eyes. “It will have to be, won't it, my lord wizard? For I am his Regent now. He is under my care, not yours.” Only then did his eyes move, the entire stance of his body changing, and his voice lightened, like that of an actor stepping out of a role—or into one. His smile was genuine then, and deprecating. “Come, my lord,” he said pleasantly. “You must understand that there are conditions under which life is definitely not worth preserving, and I'm afraid you've named one of them. Now—” He held up his hand against the wizard's next words. “I'm sure we will get off with less drastic consequences than the complete dismantling of civilization. I admit we are hard-pressed for certain things here, and I do not doubt that there are more refugees from Gae and the surrounding countryside coming up the mountain tomorrow. We're sending a convoy of the Guards down to the storehouses under the Prefecture
Building at the Palace of Gae as soon as it grows light. As for getting in touch with the Archmage Lohiro, I'm afraid your colleagues seem to be in hiding, and it is beyond even Bektis' powers to get through to them.”

“There is a glamour thrown over the City of Quo,” Bektis said stiffly, looking down his high, hooked nose at Ingold. “With all my spells and the magic of fire and jewel, I have been unable to pierce it.”

“I'm not surprised,” Ingold said mildly.

The Bishop's flat black gaze rested briefly upon them both. “The Devil guards his own.”

Ingold inclined his head toward her politely. “As does the Straight God, my lady. But we wizards are of neither world and so must protect ourselves as best we can. As the stronghold of the teachings of wizardry, Quo has always been guarded against invasion and destruction. I doubt that any wizard, however skilled, could pierce the town's defenses now.”

“But that is what you propose to do?” Alwir asked, a note of genuine curiosity stealing into his trained melodious voice. He had won his battle—or at least this particular gambit. He could afford now to drop pose and ploy that Gil sensed were habitual with him.

“It is what I propose to try. As soon, as I said, as I have seen the Prince to a place of safety. But first, my lord Alwir, I need rest, for myself and my two young friends. They have journeyed far from their homes, and will set out on their return before today's sun sets. And, by your leave, I would like to see the Queen.”

There was a stirring in the hall beyond; someone opened the postern door, and the sudden, sharp draft of fresh, biting air threw smoke over them, making the Bishop cough, a dry, rasping sound. Beyond the door, the darkness was stained with paler gray.