01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Ingold's eyes glinted with an echo of their old impish light. "Don't tell me you still believe in coincidence, Rudy." He handed back the sword. "You'll find a seal of some kind hung over the bolts of the door. Remove it and place it there in the niche for the time being. I'll shut you in when I leave. Here, at least, in all the town of Karst, you will be safe until I can return for you or send someone to get you out. It's drastic," he went on, seeing Minalde's eyes widen with fear, "but at least I can be sure the Dark will not come here. Will you stay?"

Rudy glanced uneasily at Alde and at the skull in the dark niche. "You mean," he asked warily, "once that door is shut, we can't get out?"

"Precisely. The door is invisible from the inside."

Open, the door looked perfectly ordinary; it was the shadow-haunted darkness of the corridor beyond that worried Rudy. The dim yellow torchlight edged the massive iron of its bindings and revealed the roughness of the ancient smoke-stained oak slabs. Wind stirring down the corridor made the lead seal hanging from the bolts move, as if with a restless life of its own. Rudy noticed that, though Ingold stood close to the door, his torch upraised in one hand, he would not touch it.

"Quickly," the wizard said. "We haven't much time."

"Rudy." Alde's voice was timid, her eyes huge in the torchlight. "If I will be safe here-as safe as anywhere in

this town tonight-I would rather you went with Ingold. In case something-happened-I'd feel better if two people knew where we were, instead of only one."

Rudy shivered at the implications of that thought. "You won't be afraid here alone?"

"Not any more afraid than I've been."

"Get the seal, then," Ingold said, "and let us go."

Rudy stepped gingerly to the door, the smoldering yellow light from within the cell illuminating the narrow slot of the opening and no farther. The seal still dangled from its cut black ribbons, a round plaque of dull lead that seemed to absorb, rather than reflect, the light. It was marked on either side with a letter of the Darwath alphabet; as he reached to touch it, he found himself repelled by a loathing he could put no name to. There was something deeply frightening about the thing. "Can't we just leave it here?"

"I cannot pass it," Ingold said simply.

The horror, the irrational vileness, concentrated in that small gray bulla were such that Rudy never thought to question him. He simply lifted the thing by its black ribbons and carried it at arm's length to throw deep into the shadows of the niche. He noticed Alde had stepped back as he'd passed with it, as if the aura radiated from it was like the smell of evil.

Alde fitted the end of her torch into a crack in the stonework of the wall and turned back to him, cradling the child in both arms.

"We'll send someone back for you," Rudy promised softly. "Don't worry."

She shook her head and evaded Ingold's glance; the last Rudy saw of her was a slender white figure cloaked in her tangled hair, the child in her arms. The darkness of the doorway framed them like a gilded votive in a shrine. Then he shut the door and worked home the rusty iron of the bolts.

"What was that thing?" he whispered, finding himself unwilling even to touch the bolts where it had hung.

"It is the Rune of the Chain," Ingold said quietly, standing on the top of the worn steps to scan the corridor beyond. "The cell itself has Power worked into its walls, so that no one within may find or open the door. With the Rune of the Chain spelled against me, even if I could have found the door, I could not have gone through. Presumably I would have been left here until I could be formally banished-or, just possibly, until I starved."

"They- couldn't do that, could they?" Rudy asked queasily.

Ingold shrugged. "Who would have stopped them? Ordinarily, the wizards look out for their own, but the Archmage has vanished, and the City of Wizards lies sunk in the rings of its own enchantments. I am very much on my own." Seeing the look on Rudy's face, compounded of horror and shocked proprieties, Ingold smiled, and some of the grimness left his eyes. "But, as you see, I would have gotten out, magic or no magic. I am glad that you brought Alde and the baby with you. It was by far the best thing you could have done. Here, at least, they will be safe from the Dark."

He raised his torch, the sickly glow of it barely penetrating the obscurity of the passage. "This way," he decided, indicating the direction in which Rudy and Alde had been headed before.

"Hey," Rudy said softly as they started down that dark and wind-stirred corridor. The wizard glanced back over his shoulder. "What was that all about with her?"

Ingold shrugged. "At our last meeting the young lady threatened to kill me-the reason isn't important. She may repent the sentiments or merely the social gaffe. If one is going to... "