01 THE TIME OF THE DARK

She sighed and relaxed in his hold, as if something had gone out of her, a tension whose very pain had kept her strong. "No," she said softly. "No, it's all right. I loved Eldor. I loved him from the time I was a little girl. He had a magic that drew people, a vitality, a splendor. You noticed even the simplest things he did, as if they had a kind of significance that no one else could match. He became King when I was ten." She bowed her head, as if under the weight of memories impossible either to accept or to withstand. Wordlessly, Rudy took her back into the circle of his arm and drew the cloak up over her shoulders to cut out the icy air of the night. In those black cliffs above the road, the wolves were howling again, the full-throated chorus of the pack at the kill, distant and faint in the darkness.

"I remember standing on the balcony of our townhouse in Gae, the day he rode to his coronation." The murmur of her voice was hardly louder than the soughing of the pines above the road and the crackle of the fire. She was a dreamer reliving a dream. "He'd been in exile-he was always in and out of favor with his father. It was a hot day in full summer, and the cheering in the streets was so loud you could barely hear the music of the procession. He was like a god, like a shining knight out of a legend, a royal prince of flame and darkness. Later he came to our house to go hunting with Alwir or to see him on some matters of the Realm, and I was so afraid of him I could barely speak. I think I would have died for him, if he had asked."

Rudy saw her, a shy, skinny little girl, all dark-blue eyes and black pigtails, in the crimson gown of a daughter of the House of Bes, hiding behind the curtains in the hall to watch her tall, suave brother and that dark, brilliant King walk by. He was barely aware that he spoke aloud. "So you always loved him."

That same small smile of self-mockery folded into the corner of her mouth. "Oh, I was always falling in and out of love in those days. For six months I had a terrible crush on Janus of Weg. But this was-different. Yes, I always loved him. But when Alwir finally arranged the marriage, I found out that-that loving someone desperately doesn't always mean that he'll love you back."

And Rudy said again, "I'm sorry." He meant it, though he saw now that the dead King's ghost would always be his rival. She had loved so much, it was monstrous that she should be hurt by not having that love returned.

Silently the pressure of her hand in his thanked him, "He was so-distant," she said after a time, when she had regained control of her voice. "So cold. After we were married, I seldom saw him-not because he hated me, I think, but because-for weeks at a time I don't think he even remembered he was married. Looking back, I suppose I should have seen that that brilliance of his was so impersonal, but-it was too late, anyway." She shrugged, the gesture belied by the quaver in her voice, and she wiped her eyes again. "And the worst of it is that I still love him."

To that there was no possible reply. There was only physical tenderness, the closeness of another human being, and the reassurance that he was there and would not leave her. Against him, he felt her struggle to control her sobs and eventually grow still, forcing living grief back into its proper sphere of memory. He asked, "So Alwir arranged your marriage, too?"

"Oh, yes," she replied, in a small but perfectly steady voice. "Alwir knew I loved him, but I don't think that was the reason. He wanted the House of Bes allied to the Royal House; he wanted his nephew to be High King. I don't think he'd have forced me into it if there had been someone else, but since there wasn't-Alwir is like that; he's very calculating. He knew he would be made Chancellor after we were married. He's always doing things with two intentions."

You're telling me, sweetheart.

"But for all that," she went on, "he's been very, very good to me. Underneath that gleaming edifice of sartorial splendor," she declaimed, half-jestingly, "there really does lurk a great deal of love."

Oh, yeah? Love of what?

He had realized that in Alwir's case, there was no such thing as Love of whom.