The Time Of The Dark - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,22

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