01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

At the realization of it, a weariness came over him, as if all strength had been suddenly drained from his body. He stumbled and caught the wall for support. Ingold moved on to the broken threshold, where three figures had detached themselves from the line of Guards and stood framed in the ruin of wood and iron. Under the filth and slime of battle, Rudy recognized Alwir, Janus, and Bishop Govannin.

Without a word, the Commander of the Guards of Gae stepped forward, dropped to one knee before the wizard, and kissed his scarred hand. At this gesture of fealty the Chancellor and the Bishop exchanged a glance of enigmatic distrust and disapproval over the Guard's bowed back. The echoes of the empty corridor murmured back the Commander's words: "We thought you'd gone."

Ingold touched the man's bent red head, then raised him, his eyes on Alwir's. "I swore I would see Tir to a place of safety," he replied calmly, "and so I will. No, I had not gone. I was merely-imprisoned."

"Imprisoned?" Janus' thick brows met over russet, animal eyes. "On whose orders?"

"The detention order was unsigned," the wizard said in his mildest voice. "Merely sealed with the King's mark. Anyone who had access to it could have done so." The light of the guttered torch in his hand flared in the hollows of exhaustion-shadowed eyes. "The cell was sealed with the Rune of the Chain."

"The use of such things is illegal," Govannin commented, folding thin arms like a skeleton's, her black, lizard eyes expressionless. "And it would have been a fool's act to order such a thing at such a time."

Alwir shook his head. "I certainly sealed no such order," he said in a puzzled voice. "As for the Rune-There was said to be one somewhere in the treasuries of the Palace at Gae, but I always thought it merely a legend. I am only thankful that you seem to have effected your escape in time to come to our aid. Your arrest was obviously a mistake on someone's part."

The wizard's gaze went from the Chancellor's face to the Bishop's, but all he said was, "Obviously."

Much later in the morning, Rudy backtracked their steps to the doorless cell, empty now and standing open, with the intention of taking that dark seal and dropping it quietly down a well. But, though he found the place all right, and searched through the dusty bones of the niche, someone else had clearly been there before him, for he could find no trace of it anywhere.

CHAPTER EIGHT

"Will she be all right?"

"If the arm doesn't fester."

The voices came distinctly to Gil, like something heard in a dream; as in a dream, she could identify them without being clearly able to say why. As if she lay at the bottom of a well, she could look up and see, a long way away, the tall shape of Alwir, blotting the sun like a cloud; beside him was the Icefalcon, light and cool as wind. But the water of the well she lay in was pain; crystal-clear, shimmering, acid pain.

Alwir's melodious voice went on. "If it festers she'll lose it."

And the Icefalcon asked, "Where's Ingold?"

"Who knows? His talent is for timely disappearances."

Curse him, Gil thought blindly. Curse him, curse him, curse him... Alwir moved away, and a bar of sunlight fell on her eyes, like the stab of a knife. She twisted her head convulsively aside, and the movement wrenched at the sodden mass of pain wrapped around the bones of her left arm. She wept in agony and despair.

In her delirium she dreamed, and in her dream she saw him. From the dark place where she stood, she could look into her lighted kitchen, back in the apartment on Clarke Street; a stale litter of old coffee cups and papers was on the table, and the half-finished research was strewn about the room like blown leaves in autumn. It seemed as if she had only to step down to reach it, as if a few strides would take her from this place to home, to the university, to the quiet life of scholarship and the friends and security of her own time and place. Dimly she heard the phone ringing there and knew it was one of her women friends calling, as they had been calling for two days now. They would be worried-soon they would begin to search. The thought of their pain and fear for her hurt Gil almost as much as her injured arm, and she tried to go into the kitchen to answer the phone, but she found that Ingold stood in her way. Hooded, his sword gleaming like foxfire, he rose before her, a dark shape blown and wavering on the wind. No matter how she turned and shifted, he was always in her way, always turning her back. She began to cry, "Let me go! Let me go!" in helpless fury. Then wind caught at him, swirling his brown mantle into a black cloud of shadow, and in his place a Dark One rode the twisting air. She tried to run, and it was upon her; she tried to fight with the sword she suddenly found in her hands, but as she cut at it, its huge, slobbering mouth snatched at her, leaving a trail of acid down her arm that seared into the flesh until she cried out in pain.