The Time Of The Dark - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,46

curved and were lost to sight in the black throat of the earth. His face was intent, as if listening for some sound which Gil could not hear. He had sheathed his sword, and his right hand hung empty at his side. As she watched, he moved with the slow hesitance of one hypnotized, down one step, and then another, like a man in a trance following enchanted music. She knew that after another step or two she would lose sight of him utterly, unless she chose to follow him down. He took the next step, the shadows closing him around.

"Ingold!" she called out in despair.

He turned and looked Inquiringly up at her. "Yes, my dear?" His voice echoed softly, ringing against the darkness of the overarching walls. He stared around him, at the stairway and the walls, and frowned, as if a little surprised to find he had come that far down. Then he turned thoughtfully to look at the deeper chasm below him again, and Gil remembered with a shiver that he had once told her that curiosity was the leading characteristic of any wizard, and that a mage would pursue a riddle to the brink of his own grave. For a moment she had the terrible impression that he was toying with the notion of descending that eldritch stairs, of walking willingly into the trap to see of what it consisted.

But he turned away and came up toward her, the darkness seeming to fall back at the advent of his light. He emerged to stand beside her on the top step and asked quite calmly, "Do you hear it?"

Gil shook her head, mute and frightened. "Hear what?"

His blue gaze rested on her face for a moment, then moved away, back toward that endless dark. There was a slight frown between his white brows, as if his mind worried at a riddle, oblivious to the danger in which they stood. She sensed that danger all around them, watching and waiting in the shadows, pressing behind them as if it would drive them into the accursed pit. But when he spoke, his rusty voice was calm. "You don't hear anything?"

"No," Gil said softly. "What do you hear?"

He hesitated, then shook his head. "Nothing," he lied. "I must be more tired than I thought. I-I thought-I didn't think I had descended the stairs quite that far. I hadn't meant to."

That, more than anything else, shocked her-the note of exhaustion in his voice, the admission of how close he had come to being trapped. He frowned again, looking down at the darkness that gaped below his feet, puzzling at some new knowledge, disconcerted, not by the darkness, but by something else.

Then he sighed and let the matter go. "You came alone?" he asked.

She nodded, a curiously forlorn figure in her grubby jeans, with her guttering torch and the borrowed sword heavy in her hand. "The others are searching, too," she explained-no explanation, really, as to why she had come alone.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and laid a hand on her shoulder. "It's extremely likely that you just saved my life. I-I feel as if I have been under a spell, as if-" He broke off, and shook his head as if to clear it. "Come," he said at last. "This way out is quicker. Keep the sword," he added as she moved to lay it down where she had found it. "You may need it. Its owner never will again."

By the time the convoy reached Karst the air was cold, and the late, weary day was drawing down to evening. They traveled slowly, for the underfed horses were deadbeat and the road steep and foully muddy. The closer they got to the town, the more often they were stopped by men and women who had been camping in the woods and who came hurrying down the steep banks to them, begging for something to eat. Only a little-it was always only a little.

Janus, riding in the lead, shook his head. "There'll be shares given out at Karst."

"Bah!" A woman in a torn purple gown spat. "Karst-if you can get into the town! And them as are there'll be sure they get first pickings!"

The Commander only looked down with stony eyes. "Move aside." He kneed his sweat-darkened horse forward, past her. The wagons had not even stopped.

"Pig!" the woman yelled at him, and bent to pick up a stone from the roadway. It struck his back hard enough to raise dust. He