01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

The lines of Eldor's face creased briefly deeper with his tired smile. He was evidently long familiar with the wizard's stubbornness. "In the end," he said, "there is always a last. I know," he went on, "that your power cannot touch the Dark Ones. But it can elude them. I've seen you do it. When the night comes that they rise again, your power will allow you to escape, when the rest of us must die fighting. No-" He raised his hand to forestall the wizard's next words. "I know what you're going to say. But I want you to leave. If it comes to that, as your King, I order you to. When they come-and they will-I want you to take my son Altir. Take him and flee."

The wizard sat silent, but his beard bristled with the set of his jaw. At last he said, "For one thing, you are not my King."

"Then as your friend, I ask it," the King said, and his voice was very low. "You couldn't save us. Not all of us. You're a great swordsman, Ingold, perhaps the greatest alive, but the touch of the Dark is death, to a wizard as well as to any other. Our doom is surely upon us here, for they will come again, as sure as the ice in the north, and there can be no escape. But you can save Tir. He's the last of my line, the last of Dare of Renweth's line-the last of the lineage of the Kings of Darwath. He's the only one in the Realm now who will remember the Time of the Dark. History itself has all but forgotten; no record at all exists of that time, bar a mention in the oldest of chronicles. My father remembered nothing of it-my own memories are sketchy. But the need is greater now. Maybe that has something to do with it-I don't know.

"But I know, and you know, that three thousand years ago the Dark Ones came and virtually wiped humankind from the face of the earth. And they departed away again. Why, Ingold, did they depart?"

The wizard shook his head.

"He knows," Eldor said softly. "He knows. My memories are incomplete. You know that; I've told you a dozen times. He's a promise, Ingold. I'm only a failed hope, a guttered candle. Somewhere in his memory, the heritage of the line of Dare, is the clue that all the rest of us have forgotten, that will lead to the undoing of the Dark. If I ever had it, it's buried too deeply; and he's the only other one. Him you must save."

The wizard said nothing. The quiet flame of the lamp, pure and small as a gold coin, reflected in his thinking eyes. In the stillness of the room, that tiny gleam was unmoving, the pool of waxy gold that lay around the lamp on the polished surface of the table as steady and sharply defined as a spotlight. At length he said, "And what about you?"

"A King has the right," Eldor replied, "to die with his kingdom. I will not leave the final battle. Indeed, I do not see how I could. But for all the love you have ever borne me, do this thing for me now. Take him, and see him to a place of safety. I charge you with it-it is in your hands."

Ingold sighed and bent his head, as if to receive a yoke, the gold of the lamplight limning his silver hair. "I will save him," he said. "That I promise you. But I will not desert you until the cause is hopeless."

"Do not trouble yourself," the King said harshly. "The cause is hopeless already."

Deep below the dark foundations of the Palace a hollow booming resounded, like the stroke of a gigantic drum, and Gil felt the sound vibrate through the marble of the floor. Eldor's head jerked up and around, his long mouth hardening in the smooth gold and shadows, his hand flinching automatically to the hilt of his jeweled sword, but Ingold only sat, a statue of stone and darkness. A second booming shivered the weight of the Palace on its deep-found piers, as if struck by a great fist. Breathless in the closeness of that peaceful room, three people waited for the third stroke. But no third stroke fell; only a cold, creeping horror that prickled Gil's hair seemed to seep into the silence from below, the wordless threat of unknown peril.

Finally Ingold said, "They will not come tonight." Through his weariness, his tone was certain. "Go to the Queen and comfort her."