01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Ingold's words came back to him, spoken in the darkness of the gatehouse, the light glowing up from his empty palm. You know what it is... by its true name you call it ... Rudy looked at the tiny pile of wood, the dried leaves and tinder scattered beneath. That would catch, he knew it would. Its true name... Maybe there was some kind of a magic name for fire. But whatever you called it, fire was fire. The smell of it was the same, the brightness. He thought how it would smell as it caught off those twigs, sort of sweet and sharp. It would give off snappy, sputtery little gold sparks, little crackly sounds... He called them to mind, the shape and smell and brightness, straining eyes and mind to see the tinder in the deepening darkness. He saw only that the room was fading; even his consciousness of Alde kneeling beside him and his chilled fear of the death that waited outside the door began growing less important than the fire, the fire purely for its own sake. He could see it, hear it, smell it; he knew how it would splutter out of that tinder.

The dry leaves fluttered a little in the wind. From far off, he could see Alde press her knuckles to white lips, all the while without a sound. Detachedly, he saw the fire in his mind, in the first instant of its sparking, and knew exactly how it would be. He could see it, just couldn't touch it yet. He felt his mind and body relax, withdrawing to some great distance, his perspective on the world altering, narrowing to only the dry shapes of leaf and twig and wood that he could see, quite clearly, in the utter darkness. The wood, the dry little heap of leaves, the tiny gold sparks like stars... Without moving, he reached his mind across from where he was to where the fire was, as easily as picking a flower that grew on the other side of a fence.

There was a sudden, bright crackle of little gold sparks, and the sharp, sweet smell of dry leaves catching. Rudy bent forward, still detached from himself, calm, halfwondering if it could be a hallucination, but calmly certain that it was not, and fed one twig and then another to the fire, real fire where no fire had been before. The light spread quickly into the room, threw gleeful shadows across his face, and danced flickering, crazy jigs of triumph that reflected in tiny points of light in Alde's eyes as she brought up more and bigger sticks without a word.

And then it hit him, like a blow from a club. I did that , he thought. I did that . The warmth scorched his trembling fingers and seeped into the cold flesh of his palms and face. The wind that had rustled so evilly at the door faltered, then waned and ceased, and all outside the dugout became terribly still, except for the faint drizzling of the last of the rain.

Rudy's mind echoed like a thunderclap with the shock, and rocked wildly with surging triumph. One part of him, it seemed, was screaming , I did it! I did it! I called the fire, and the fire came , and another was saying, I shouldn't have been able to do that . But more real than either, deeper, within his true heart, there was only a calm knowledge, clear and small like a little light-the memory of that first crackle of flame in the dry leaves and the knowing that he could do this.

Then he looked up and met Alde's terrified eyes. They were wild with fear, a fear tinged with hysteria and relief and superstitious terror, fear of the Dark, of the fire, of him. He saw that newfound power reflected in her eyes, saw it as others would see it, alien and terrible and uncanny. She couldn't speak the wild question in her eyes, nor could he have answered, and for a moment they could only stare at each other in the firelight, as once before they had stared in the shocked, shared knowledge of their desire. Then, with a sob that seemed to rip her soul from her body, she threw herself into his arms, weeping wildly, holding onto him as if he were her last hope of life itself. Magic and terror and death released him, the tension breaking with an almost physical shock, and he clutched the slender girl in his arms with a grip that seemed to drive her bones into his and buried his face in her dark hair. Desperately they took one another beneath their shared cloaks on the floor, while the fire threw its shadow dance across the low rafters.

Afterward Alde slept, terror exhausted in passion, and Rudy lay awake, sword close to his hand, watching the fire and letting his thoughts of past and future have their way with him, until the rain outside stopped, and dawn came.