01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

There were simply too many people. Gil and Ingold were right, whatever the Chancellor liked to say. Contrary to the assertions of most of his teachers in public school, Rudy was not stupid, merely lacking in appreciation for the public school system. He'd listened to the council last night-with as little room as there was in the hall, it would have been hard to help eavesdropping-and had seen today what was happening in Karst. He'd walked through the camps in the woods, trashy, filthy, lawless. He'd witnessed seven fights-three over allegations of food theft, two over water, and two for no discernible reason at all. He'd heard the stump preachers and soapbox orators propounding different solutions to the problem, from suicide to salvation, and had seen one ugly old man stoned by a pack of children and several of their elders because he was supposed to be in league with the Dark-as if anyone could get anywhere near the Dark Ones to be in league with them. Mostly Rudy sensed the tension that underlay the town like a drawn wire and had felt, with an uneasy shock, that closeness to that line that divided a land of law from a land without it. He'd seen the handful of Guards left in town trying to keep some kind of order among far too many people. Though it was a new sensation for him to have sympathy for the fuzz, he found he did. He wouldn't have wanted to play cop to that madhouse.

The smoke of cook fires turned the air into a stagethree smog alert, wherever he wandered in the town or in the woods. Now, as he headed back toward the square, shadows began to move up the rock walls of the little lane, and the distant clamor of voices in the square was muffled by the walls, muted to a meaningless murmur like the far-off sounding of church bells. In spite of hunger, the crowds, the threat of plague, and the fear of the Dark, Rudy found himself oddly at peace with the world and with his own soul.

Beyond the wall to his right he heard voices, a woman's and a girl's. The woman was saying, "And don't you go let him be putting things in his little mouth."

The girl's voice, gentle and demure, replied, "No, ma'am."

"And don't you be letting him wander away and hurt hisself; you keep a sharp eye on him, my girl."

Rudy recognized the emblem on the half-open grille of rusty iron at the gap in the wall, the three black stars that someone had said belonged to the House of Bes, the House ruled by Chancellor Alwir. Rudy paused in the gate. If this was Alwir's villa, then the women were probably talking about Tir.

Beyond the gap in the wall he could see the sloping garden, brown with cold and coming frost, and beyond that the rock wall of a terrace that backed the massive, gray shape of a splendid mansion. He was right; two women stood in the huge arched door of the house, spreading out, of all things, a bearskin rug in the last of the pale golden sun. The fat woman in red was doing this, with much bustle and huffing, while the slender girl in white stood, in the classic pose of women everywhere, with the baby riding her hip.

The fat woman continued to scold. "You see he doesn't get chilled."

"Yes, Medda."

"And don't you get chilled, neither!" The fat woman's voice was fierce and commanding. Then she went bustling back into the dark shadows of the door and was gone.

Rudy ducked through the gateway and made his way up silent paths fringed with sere brown hedges. Overhead, arthritic yellow leaves trembled in the watery blue of the air. Even moribund with autumn, the garden was immaculate. Rudy, pausing in its mazes to orient himself toward the haughty bulk of the villa, wondered whom they got to trim the hedges every day.

The baby sitter had settled herself down on the corner of the bearskin next to the Prince. She looked up, startled, as Rudy swung himself over the balustrade to join them. "Hello," she said, a little timidly.

Rudy gave her his most charming smile. "Hi," he said. "I'm glad to see you've got him out here-I was afraid I'd have to ask permission from every Guard in the house to see how he is."

The girl relaxed and returned his smile. "I should be taking him in before long," she apologized, "but it's probably one of the last warm days we'll have." She had a low voice and an air of shyness; Rudy put her age at somewhere between eighteen and twenty. Her crow-black hair was braided down past her hips.

"Warm?" Like most Californians, Rudy was thinblooded. "I've been freezing to death all afternoon. What do you people consider cold?"

Startled, she raised her eyes to his; hers were dark, luminous blue, like Crater Lake on a midsummer afternoon. "Oh!" She smiled. "You're the companion of Ingold, one who helped him rescue Tir."