The Time Of The Dark - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,119

that was within him as well as without, he tried to call back a little of the witchlight, but raised not even a glimmer.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, he told himself grimly. You'll get there. The wind struck him like a club; he went down and this time decided not to get up. They could make it to the Keep without him. He was going to sleep for a while.

He drifted for a time in memories, chiefly of the warm hills of California, the rippling gold of the sunbaked grass, and the way the sun had felt on his bare arms as he hauled down Highway 15 on his chopper in the late evening, the wind streaming through his hair. He wondered if he'd ever get to do that again. Probably not, he decided. But even that didn't matter much. Who'd have figured that leaving on a beer run would end up with me freezing to death in a range of mountains that never even existed?

Life is weird.

A seven- foot giant with a kick like a mule loomed suddenly in the darkness and booted him in the ribs. Cold returned, and a thin leakage of pain spread into every muscle and joint. He mumbled, "Hey," protestingly, and the giant kicked him again.

"Get up, you sniveler." Why did a seven-foot giant have Gil's voice?

Arrogant egghead bitch. "No."

Even a few weeks of swordmastery training had given her a grip like a claw. Surprising, too, that somebody wasted down to ninety-eight pounds of brittle bone could have the strength to drag him to his feet and throw him with such violence against the side of the moving wagon, so that he had to catch hold of it.

"Now keep moving," she ordered.

Stupid of her not to understand. "I can't," he explained groggily.

"The hell with you!" she yelled at him, suddenly furious. "You may be a goddam wizard, but you're a coward and a quitter, and I'll be damned if I'll have you let everybody down by up and dying on the road. You die when you get to the Keep if you want to so bad. We're only a couple miles from it."

"Hunh?" Rudy tried to keep a grip on the rope with his fingers, but they were too numb. He thrust his whole arm through the space between the rope and the flapping cover. "What did you say?"

But as if in answer to his words, he felt a sudden change in the air. The titanic winds veered, and the relentless hammering force of them slackened, making him stagger, as if for a support suddenly lost. The snow, instead of peppering his body like bullets from a Tommy gun, fell straight for a few moments, then ceased. He could hear the roaring of the wind in the pines above the road and its shrieking whine in the rocks, but the air around him, though freezing cold, was still.

The wagon team halted, one ox managing a plaintive low. Boots scrunched in the squeaking snow all about him; somewhere leather creaked. He could hear his own breath and that of the woman beside him.

"What is it?" he whispered. "Has the storm let up?"

"Not like that, it wouldn't. Besides, you can still hear it overhead."

He blinked against the darkness and raised a shaking hand to scrape ice crystals from his eyes. "Then what... " Then he realized what must have happened. Shock and fear sent a jolt of adrenalin into his veins that cleared his groggy mind. "Oh, Christ," he whispered. "Ingold."

"He stopped the storm, didn't he?" Gil said softly. "They must have been losing too many people... "

"But you know what that means?" Rudy said urgently.

"It means the Dark will be coming now." He took an experimental step away from the wagon and found he could stand after a fashion by leaning on his staff. "We gotta get moving."

The Guards were closing in around them, some thirty strong; he could pick out their voices in the darkness. God only knew where the rest of the train was. They'd gotten so badly strung out in the storm, it was every man for himself. He flexed his right hand stiffly, trying to convince himself it was still really his; he heard Gil's voice speaking softly to the Guards around them and, brief and cold, the Icefalcon's breathless laugh. Gil came back to him. "Can you call up some light?" she asked. "The land flattens out from here on; we could lose the road