01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

And suddenly, unexpectedly, Gil began to laugh. Not hysterically, or nervously, but with a soft, wholehearted chuckle of genuine amusement. Rudy could not remember ever seeing her laugh. It darkened her frost-gray eyes to blue and softened the bony hardness of her white face.

"And my advisor will love it." She grinned up at him. "What a Ph.D. thesis! 'Effects of Subterranean Incursions on Preindustrial Culture.' "

"I'm not kidding," Rudy protested, still astonished at how changed she was, how beautiful, scars and swords and all.

"Neither am I." And she laughed again.

Rudy shook his head, amazed at the difference in her. "So tell me truthfully," he said. "Would you go back from this? If it was a choice between the other world and what you have and where you are now, and if this had all never been-would you go back?"

Gil looked at him consideringly for a moment. Then she turned her eyes back to the hearth, to Ingold, his warm, rasping voice holding his listeners enspelled, to the firelight on the faces of the Guards and the blackness of the shadows beyond, and, past that, to the dark weight of the Keep, the night it held within its walls, and the shifting, wind-stirred night that waited outside. "No," she said finally. "I think I must be crazy to say so, but no, I wouldn't."

"Lady." Rudy grinned, touching the emblem of the Guards she bore on her shoulder. "If you weren't crazy, you wouldn't be wearing that."

Gil looked him speculatively up and down. "You know, for a punk you have a lot of class."

"For a spook," Rudy said gravely, "it's real perceptive of you to notice."

The two of them went to join Ingold by the fire.

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