01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

Her body moved closer to him, her breath a little white mist in the air. Due to the narrowness of the canyons through which the road now wound, the lines of watch fires lay only a dozen paces from the edges of the sleeping convoy, hemmed in by the shoulders of the mountains whose heads were hidden behind towering promontories of granite, furred over with the black of the pine forest. Now and then that day, Rudy had been able to catch glimpses of the higher peaks of the Rampart Range of the Big Snowies gouging the clouds like broken teeth. But mostly he was conscious of the forerunners of that looming range, and the way they overlooked the turnings of the road and hid what lay beyond.

Alde's voice was comforting. "If the water's a million miles deep or only six feet, all you have to do is to keep your head above it," she said. "For an outlander, you're doing well." And her arm tightened around his waist.

He grinned at her and returned the pressure gently. "For an outlander, I'm doing fantastic," he said. He shifted his arm around her shoulders to look at the tattoo on his wrist.

Alde noticed the movement and looked, too, "What's that for?" she asked.

He chuckled. "Just thinking. A girl I knew used to tease me about my tattoo. That's my name on the banner there across the torch. She used to say I got it so I could remember who I was, if I ever forgot."

"And do you need to be reminded?"

He looked out for a moment into the bitter stillness of the alien night, then up to the great, burning stars. His ears caught the distant howling of wolves. All the scents of the looming mountains came to him, shrub and pine, rock and water. The long hilt of the killing sword lying close by his right hand reflected the dim sheen of firelight, as did the braided hair of the woman curled, warm and fragile as a captive bird, in the circle of his other arm. He remembered, as if in an old legend, a sunburned California youth in a garish pachuco jacket, painting vans in a body shop. About the only thing they had in common, he reflected, was the tattoo.

"Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, sometimes I do."

"I know what you feel," she murmured. "Sometimes I think I need reminding myself."

"What was it like," he asked, "to be Queen?"

She was so long silent that he was afraid he had hurt her by asking. But looking over at her face, profiled against the dim rose-amber of the fire, he saw in her eyes instead a kind of dreamy nostalgia, of memories whose beauty overrode their pain.

"It was very beautiful," she said at last. "I remember-dancing, and the hall all lit with candles, the way the flames would all ripple in unison with the movement of the ladies' dresses. The smell of the warm nights, lemonflowers and spice perfumes, coming up-river on the royal barge and the water stairs of the Palace all lit like a jewelbox, golden in the darkness. Having my own household, my own gardens, the freedom to do what I wanted." She rested her head against his shoulder, the looped braids that bound her hair as smooth as satin under his jaw and gleaming like ebony. "Maybe it would have been the same, no matter whom I married," she went on softly. "Maybe it wasn't so much being Queen as having my own place to be." Her voice was wistful. "I'm really a very happy person, you know. All I want is to take life as it comes, to be at peace, with small things, small joys. I'm not really a stubborn, bloodthirsty hellion... "

"Oh, yes, you are," he teased her, holding her close. She raised her eyes to his reproachfully. "And I love you anyway. Maybe I love you because of it. I don't know. Sometimes I don't think there is any why in love. I just do."

Her arms tightened convulsively around his ribs, and she turned her face away, burying it in his shoulder. After a moment he realized that she was crying.

"Hey... " He turned under the weight of the cloak and stroked her shivering shoulders tenderly. "Hey, you can't cry on guard duty." The cloak slithered down as he raised his hands and caressed her bowed head with its gleaming, twisted braids. "Hey, what is it, Alde?"

"It's nothing," she whispered, and began wiping futilely at her eyes with the back of her hand. "It's just that nobody ever said that to me before. I'm sorry, I won't be stupid like this again." She fumbled at the fallen cloak, her face averted and wet with tears.

Rudy caught her firmly under the chin, forced her head up, and kissed her gently on the mouth. Her lips tasted of salt. "I can't believe that," he murmured.

She sniffled and swiped at her eyes with her arm in a child's gesture. "It's true."

Rudy's voice was soft. "What about Eldor?"

At that her eyes filled again, the tears making them seem fever-brilliant in the soft, glowing light of the watch fire. For a moment she could only gaze helplessly at him, unable to speak.

"I'm sorry," Rudy said. So much had happened, he had forgotten how short a time it had been.