01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

This, then, was the Palace of Gae, she thought, viewing it dispassionately, sane and awake and by daylight, from the back of a fat, jittery carthorse, with her hands blistered from the reins and her eyes aching from lack of sleep. This was what she had come to see, the place where Eldor had died, the place she had known in dreams. This was where humankind had fought-and lost-its last organized battle against the Dark.

By the look of those blackened ruins, it was very clear that the place had been looted before the ashes were cold.

More voices, angry this time, rang against the stone walls of the square in faint derisive echoes. Turning from her silent contemplation, Gil saw that a little group of carters and Guards had formed before the wide, shallow steps that led down to the broken doors of the Prefecture, centering on Commander Janus and a big, brawny man in homespun whom Gil remembered vaguely as having driven the lead cart. The man was saying, "Well, this driver's not going down to fetch no grain. If the top level of the vaults has been cleared out like you say, that means going down the subcellar, and that's death, sure as the ice in the north."

Someone else chimed in over the general din of agreement. "The vaults is haunted, haunted by the Dark. I said I'd drive a cart, but going against the Dark ain't in it."

A Guard shouted back, "Well, who in hell did you think was going down for the stuff?"

Janus, red-faced with anger, spoke quietly, his brown eyes cold. "Every man knows the value of his own courage. Those drivers brave enough to do so can help us fetch the food out. I have no use for cowards. Icefalcon, I'm leaving you in charge on top. Pick twelve Guards and shoot anyone or anything that comes near the food once we get it up here. Get it loaded and be ready to move out."

From the back of the cart he had been driving, Ingold handed down a bundle of cold pitch torches, then stepped down himself, bringing with him a six-foot walking staff on which he leaned tiredly.

The Commander disengaged a torch from the bundle and went on. "Gae isn't empty, by any means. It's dead, but every corpse has its maggots. There's danger above the ground as well as below." He turned and walked, torch in hand, toward the steps. Without a glance at him, Ingold made a slight gesture with his fingers; the cold torch in the Commander's hand burst into flame with a loud whoof! The other Guards, and over half the drivers, clustered around to get their own torches and light them from his.

As Gil was picking up a torch from the bundle on the ground, Ingold stepped over to her and laid a hand on her shoulder. "That didn't apply to you, Gil. This is none of your affair."

She looked up at him, then straightened to bring her eyes level with his. "You don't have to look after me specially," she said. "I'll stay with the Guards."

He glanced back over his shoulder at the small group already descending to the vaults, then at the long train of empty carts that would have to be filled by afternoon. "I brought you here against your will," he said quietly. "You are in my charge. I won't demand that you put yourself in danger of death in another universe, when you're going back to your own tonight. This is no dream, Gil. To die here is to die."

The ice- winds from the north pierced her thin jacket like a knife, and the heatless sun glared in her eyes without power to warm her. From the steps a woman's voice-Seya's, she thought-called out. "Gilshalos! You staying or coming?"

She yelled back, "Coming!" Ingold caught her arm as she started to move off. To him she said, "I won't get in your hair, I promise."

He smiled, the weary lines of his face lightening with a brief illusion of youth. "Like a bat, eh? As you will. But as you love your life, stay close to the others." And he walked with her to join the Guards.

They worked swiftly in the darkness of the vaults, soundlessly, with drawn swords, their efficiency impaired by the need to keep together. Following the bobbing chain of weak yellow lights, Gil found herself almost afraid to breathe, straining every nerve for the glimpse of some anomalous motion in the blackness, the breath of alien wind. In the deeper vaults where the food was stored, the endless darkness was all a whisper of tiny pattering feet and a sea of glaring little red eyes, gray bodies swarming soundlessly away from the light of the torches; but beside the fear of the Dark, that was of no more moment than a cockroach on the wall might have been. They carried burden after burden back toward the light, sacks of grain, cured meats, great waxed wheels of cheese, treading the swiftest path they could under their loads, with Ingold flitting beside them like a will-o'-the-wisp, sword in one hand, the tip of his upraised staff throwing clear white light that dispelled the crowding shadows.