Darwath 1 - The Time Of The Dark (7 page)

“And very wet,” Ingold replied, and led the way back into the house.

It was Rudy who ended up doing the changing as the only one with experience in the task, while Gil made a lunch of beef stew and coffee on the kerosene stove, and Ingold investigated the light switches to see how electricity worked. Rudy noticed that, among other things, Gil had brought an extra can of kerosene; though, if he recalled, the little stove had been out of sight beneath a counter when he'd first come in, and there had been no signs that the house had been entered in years.

How had Ingold known?

Gil came over to him and set a styrofoam cup of steaming black liquid on the floor at his side. She watched Rudy playing tickle-me with Tir for some moments, smiling, then said, “You know, you're probably the first man I've ever seen who'd volunteer for diaper duty.”

“Hell,” Rudy told her, grinning. “With six younger brothers and sisters, you get used to it.”

“I suppose so.” She tested one of the wobbly chairs, then sat in it, her arm resting over the back. “I only had the one sister, and she's just two years younger than I am, so I never knew.”

Rudy glanced up at her. “Is she like you?” he asked.

Gil shook her head ruefully. “No. She's pretty. She's twenty-two and already getting her second divorce.”

“Yeah, my next-next younger sister's like that,” Rudy said thoughtfully, fishing in the pocket of his discarded jacket for his motorcycle keys, which Tir received with blissful fascination and proceeded to try to eat. “She's seventeen years old, and she's been around more than I have.” He caught Gil's raised eyebrow and askance look, and followed her eye to the decoration on the back of his jacket—skulls, roses, black flames, and all. “Aah, that,” he said, a little embarrassed at it “Picasso had a Blue Period. I had my Pachuco Period.”

“Oh,” Gil said distastefully, not believing him. “Are you in a gang?”

Rudy sat back on his heels, hearing the tone in her voice. “What the hell do you think I do, live in Fontana and go out on raids?”

Since that was exactly what she thought he did, she said, “No. I mean—” She broke off in confusion. “You mean you painted that yourself?”

“Sure,” Rudy said, reaching over to spread out the offending garment with its elaborate symbology and multiple grease stains. “I'd do it better now—I'd have different lettering, and no fire; the fire makes it look kind of trashy. That is, if I did it at all. It's kind of tacky,” he admitted. “But it's good advertising.”

“You mean you make your living at that?”

“Oh, yeah. For now, anyway. I work at Wild David Wilde's Paint and Body Shop in Berdoo, and painting's a hell of a lot easier than body work, let me tell you.”

Gil contemplated the jacket for a moment longer, her chin resting on her folded hands on the back of the chair. Though morbid, violent, and weird, the design was well executed and argued a certain ability and sensitivity of style. “Then you're not a biker yourself?”

“I ride a motorcycle,” Rudy said. “I like bikes, work on them. I'm not in a gang, though. You can run yourself into real trouble that way.” He shrugged. “Those guys are really heavy-duty. I couldn't do it.”

Ingold came back in, having traced the power cables to their sources and explored the land around the little house as if seeking something in the dusty silence of the groves. Gil dished up canned beef stew and bread. As they ate, Rudy listened to the girl and the wizard talk and wondered again how much this thin, spooky-looking woman believed the old man, and how much of her conversation was tactful humoring of an old, well-loved, and totally crazy friend.

It was impossible to tell. That she was fond of him was obvious; her guarded stiffness relaxed, and with liveliness her face was almost pretty. But it was Ingold who dominated and led, she who followed, and there were times when Rudy wondered if she was as crazy as the old man.

“I never understood that about the memories,” Gil was saying, blowing on her coffee to cool it. “You and Eldor talked about it, but I don't understand.”

“No one really understands it,” Ingold said. “It's a rare phenomenon, far rarer than wizardry. To my knowledge, in all the history of the Realm it has appeared in only three noble houses and two peasant ones. We don't know what it is or why it works, why a son will suddenly recall events that happened to his grandfather, when the grandfather never exhibited such a talent in his life, why it seems to descend only in the male line, why it skips one generation, or two, or five, why some sons will remember certain events and be ignorant of others that their brothers recall with exacting clarity.”

“I could be like a double-recessive gene,” Gil began thoughtfully.

“A what?”

“A genetic trait… ” She stopped. “Jeez, you people don't understand genetics, do you?”

“As in horse breeding?” Ingold asked with a smile.

She nodded. “Sort of. It's how you breed for a trait, how you get throwbacks, the more you inbreed. I'll explain it sometime.”

“You mean,” Rudy said, drawn into the conversation in spite of himself, “Pugsley here is supposed to remember stuff that happened to his dad and his grandpa and stuff like that?” He jiggled the baby sitting in his lap.

“He should,” Ingold said. “But it's a gamble, for we do not know for certain if—and what—he will remember. His father remembers—remembered—” There was a slight shift, almost a crack, in the wizard's rusty voice as he changed the tense. “—things that happened at the time of their most remote ancestor, Dare of Renweth. And, Gil, it was Dare of Renweth who was King at the time of the rising of the Dark Ones.”

“The who?” Rudy asked.

“The Dark Ones.” The touch of that heavy-lidded, blue gaze gave Rudy the uncomfortable feeling of having his mind read. “The enemy whom we flee.” His eyes shifted back to Gil, the light from the western window slanting strong and yellow on the sharp bones of her face. “Unfortunately, I fear the Dark Ones know it. They know many things—their power is different from mine, of a different nature, as if from a different source. I believe their attacks were concentrated on the Palace at Gae because they knew that Eldor and Tir were dangerous to them, that the memories the King and Prince held were the clue to their ultimate defeat. They have—eliminated—Eldor. Now only Tir is left.”

Gil cocked her head and glanced across at the pink-cheeked baby, gravely manipulating a bunch of motorcycle keys in Rudy's lap, then at the wizard, profiled against the cracked and grimy glass of the window through which the hills could be seen, desolate, isolated, dyed gold by the deep slant of the light. Her voice was quiet. “Could they have followed you here?”

Ingold looked up at her quickly, his azure-crystal eyes meeting hers, then shifting away. “Oh, I don't think so,” he said mildly. “They have no notion that the Void exists, much less how to cross it.”

“How do you know?” she insisted. “You said yourself you don't understand their powers, or their knowledge. You have no power at all in this world. If they crossed the Void, would they have power?”

He shook his head. “I doubt they could even exist in this world,” he told her. “The material laws here are very different. Which, incidentally, is what makes magic possible—a change in the ways the laws of physics operate… ”

As the conversation turned to a discussion of theoretical magic and its relation to the martial arts, Rudy listened, puzzled; if Ingold had his end of the script down pat, Gil sure as hell had hers.

After a time, Ingold took charge of Tir to feed him, and Gil made her way quietly out onto the porch, seeking the silence of the last of the westering sunlight. She sat on the edge of the high platform, her booted feet dangling in space, leaning her arms along the bottom rail of the crazy old banister and watching the hills go from tawny gold to crystal, like champagne in the changing slant of the light, the air luminous with sunlit dust one moment, then suddenly overlaid with the cool of the hills' shadow. The evening wind slurred softly through the lion-colored grass of the wastelands all around. Each rock and stunted tree was imbued by the light with a unique and private beauty. The light even lent something resembling distinction to the sunken wreck of the blue Impala and the nondescript VW, half-hidden by the screen of whispering weeds.

She heard the door open and shut behind her then and smelled the dark scent of tallow and wool permeated with smoke as Ingold settled down beside her, once more wearing his dark mantle over the pale homespun of his robe. For some minutes they didn't speak at all, only watched the sunset in warm and companionable silence, and she was content.

Finally he said, “Thank you for coming, Gil. Your help has been invaluable.”

She shook her head. “No trouble.”

“Do you mind very much taking Rudy back?” She could tell by his voice he'd sensed her dislike and was troubled by it.

“I don't mind.” She turned her head, her cheek resting on her arm on the rail. “He's okay. If I didn't know you, I probably wouldn't believe a word of it myself.” She noticed in the golden haze of the light that, though his hair was white, his eyelashes were still the same fairish gingery red that must have been his whole coloring at one time. She went on. “But I'm going to drop him off at the main highway and come back. I don't like leaving you here alone.”

“I shall be quite all right,” the wizard said gently.

“I don't care,” she replied.

He glanced sideways at her. “You couldn't possibly help, you know, if anything did happen.”

“You have no magic here,” she said softly, “and your back's to the wall. I'm not going to leave you.”

Ingold folded his arms along the rail, his chin on his crossed wrists, seeming for a tune only to contemplate the rippling tracks of the wind in the long grass below the porch, the rime of sun-fire like a halo on the distant hills. “I appreciate your loyalty,” he said at last, “misguided though it is. But the situation will not arise. You see, I have decided to risk going back tonight, before it grows fully dark.”

Gil was startled, both relieved and uneasy. “Will Tir be okay?”

“I can put a spell of protection over us both that should shield him from the worst of the shock.” The sun had touched the edges of the hills already; the evening breeze wore the thin chill of coming night. “There should be a good two hours of daylight left in my own world when Tir and I return—there seems to be a disjunction of time involved in the Void, your world and mine not quite in synch. We should be able to come to cover before dark.”

“Won't that be an awful risk?”

“Maybe.” He turned his head a little to meet her eyes, and in the dimming evening light she thought he looked tired, the shadows of the porch railings barring his face but unable to hide the deepened lines around his mouth and eyes. His fingers idled with the splinters of the wood, casually, as if he were not speaking of danger into which he would walk. “But I would rather take that risk than imperil your world, your civilization, should the Dark prove able to follow me through the Void.”

Then he sighed and stood up, as if dismissing the whole subject from his mind. He helped her to her feet, his hand rough and warm and powerful, but as light and deft as a jeweler's. The last glow of the day surrounded them, silhouetted against the burning windows. “I am entitled to risk my own life, Gil,” he said. “But whenever I can, I draw the line at risking the lives of others, especially those who are loyal to me, as you are. So don't be concerned. We shall be quite safe.”

“Where you headed?” Gil carefully guided the VW in a small circle, bumping slowly over stones and uneven ground, and eased it back onto the road again. The road, the hills, the dark trees of the grove had turned gray-blue and colorless in the twilight. In her rear-view mirror, Gil saw Ingold's sword blade held high in salute. She could see him on the cabin porch, straight and sturdy in his billowing dark mantle, and her heart ached with fear at the sight. Rudy, chewing on a grass blade, one sunburned arm hanging out of the open window, was about as comforting as reruns of The Crawling Eye on a dark and stormy night.

“San Bernardino,” Rudy said, glancing back also at the dark form of the wizard in the shadows of the house.

“I can take you there,” Gil said, negotiating a gravel slide and the deep-cut spoor of last winter's rains. “I'm heading on into Los Angeles so it's not out of my way.”

“Thank you” Rudy said. “It's harder than hell to get rides at night.”

Gil grinned in spite of herself. “In that jacket it would be.”

Rudy laughed. “You from L.A.?”

“Not originally. I go to UCLA; I'm in the Ph.D. program in medieval history there.” Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed his start of surprise, a typical reaction in men, she had found. “Originally I'm from San Marino.”

“Ah,” Rudy said wisely, recognizing the name of that wealthy suburb. “Rich kid.”

“Not really.” Gil objected more to the label than to the facts. “Well—I guess you could say that. My father's a doctor.”

“Specialist?” Rudy inquired, half-teasing.

“Child psychiatrist,” Gil said, with a faint grin at how well the label fitted her.

“Yow.”

“They've disowned me,” she added with a shrug. “So it doesn't matter.” Her voice was offhand, almost apologetic. She turned on the headlights, and dust plumed whitely in their feeble glare. By their reflection Rudy could see that her face wore the shut, wary look again, a fortress defended against all comers.

“Why the hell would they disown you?” He was indignant in spite of himself for her sake. “Christ, my mother would forgive any one of my sisters for murder if she'd just finish high school.”

Gil chuckled bitterly. “It's the Ph.D. mine objects to,” she told him. “What up-and-coming young doctor or dentist is going to marry a research scholar in medieval history? She doesn't say that, but that's what she means.” And Gil drove on for a time in silence.

The dark shapes of the hills loomed closer around the little car, the stars emerging in the luminous blue of the evening sky, small and bright with distance. Staring out into the milky darkness, Rudy identified the landmarks of his trip into the hills, rock and tree and the round, smooth shapes of the land. The green eyes of some tiny animal flashed briefly in the gloom, then vanished as a furry shape whipped across the dark surface of the road.