01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

She smiled at him and shook back the dark hair from her face. "Have you seen the cart I'm going to be riding in? It's about the size of that bed. I'm not usually this unencumbered; anywhere I go I always seem to end up taking carts and carts of things, books and clothes and spare cloaks and tennis rackets and a chess game. My maid takes-" Her voice caught suddenly on the words, as if she had physically stumbled in a swift run. It was thin and shaky when she finished the sentence. "My maid used to take more than this." Then, with a forced lightness, she continued. "On longer trips I'd have furniture and bedding and dinner service and windows... "

"Windows?"

"Of course." She looked at him in genuine surprise, forgetting momentarily, as the Icefalcon forgot when speaking to Gil, that he was an outworlder and a stranger in the land. "Have you any idea how much glass costs? Even we quality folks have to bring our own windows with us when we travel. One could never afford to glaze all the windows in all of one's houses." She smiled at his expression of dawning comprehension. A little ruefully, she went on. "But I don't think we'll need the windows in the Keep of Dare."

"What's it like?" Rudy asked. "The Keep, I mean."

She shook her head. "I really don't know. I've never been there. The Kings of the Realm abandoned Renweth so long ago; there was never even a hunting lodge there. Until-Eldor-" Again there was that hesitation, almost an unwillingness to speak his name. "Until the King went there some years ago, to have it re-garrisoned, I don't think a King of Darwath had visited it in generations. But he remembered it. My grandfather remembered it, too."

"Your grandfather?"

"Oh, yes. Our House, the House of Bes, is descended from Dare of Renweth, a side descent. Now and then the memories show up in our people, sometimes hundreds of years apart. Grandfather said he remembered mostly the darkness inside the Keep and the smoke and the smell. He said he had memories of twisting passageways lit by grease lamps, and rickety old makeshift stairways going up and down into darkness. He remembered himself-or Dare, or some ancestor-walking through the corridors of the Keep and not knowing whether it was day or night, summer or winter, because it was always lamplight there. When he'd speak of it," she went on, her hands pausing, still and white against the colors of the gown she was holding, "I could almost see it, it was so close to him. I could see the stairs, going up like scaffolding, and the fitful gleam of the lamps on the stone. I could smell it, damp and murky like old blankets and dirty clothes, and could feel the darkness surrounding me. It will be hard to live always by torchlight."

"Always is a long time," Rudy said, and Minalde looked away.

They talked a while longer of the Keep, of the Palace at Gae, of the small doings that had made up the life of the Queen of the Realm of Darwath. The fire sank in the open brazier that warmed the room, the flames playing in a small, steady amber glow over writhing scarlet coals; the soft smells of camphorwood and lemon sachet drifted from the folded clothes. "A lot of this will have to be left, I'm afraid," Alde sighed. "We have only three carts, and one of those has to be for the records, the archives of the Realm." She was sitting on the floor now, turning over in her hands book after book from the small pile beside her. The firelight sparkled off their jeweled bindings and spread gold, like a warm suntan, on the soft flesh of her chin and throat. "I'd wanted to take all of these, but some of them are terribly frivolous. Books are so heavy, and the ones we take really ought to be serious, philosophy and theology. These may very well be the only books they'll have in the Keep for years."

Behind the gentle run of her voice Rudy heard the echo of another voice, Gil's voice, saying, Do you realize how many of the great works of ancient literature didn't survive? All because some Christian monk didn't think they were important enough to preserve? He'd forgotten the context and the conversation, but the words came back to him, and he ventured, "Probably a lot of people are going to hang onto the philosophy and theology." And, God knows, I wouldn't want to be shut up for years with nothing to read but the Bible.

"That's true," she mused, weighing the two books in her hands, as if measuring pleasure and emotional truths against fine-spun scholastic hairsplitting. Then she turned her head, the dark sheet of her hair brushing his knee where he sat on the edge of the bed behind her. "Medda?"