The Time Of The Dark

It was the goddam motherless fuel pump!

Rudy Solis identified immediately the gasp and drag of the old Chevy's engine, automatically checked his rear-vision mirror, and scanned the dark, straight, two-lane highway ahead, though he knew there was nothing resembling a light in fifty miles. With all of Southern California to choose from, naturally the thing would decide to give up the ghost in the dead, endless stretch of desert and hill country that lay between Barstow and San Bernardino, miles from anywhere in the middle of Sunday night.

Rudy wondered if he could make it back to the party.

Be a lot of sorrow and tears if I can't, he thought to himself, glancing over his shoulder at the ten cases of beer stacked amid the shredded foam, old newspapers, and greasy articles of unidentifiable clothing heaped in the sagging back seat. The engine faltered, coughed apologetically, and chugged on. Rudy cursed the owner of the car, the seventh-magnitude rock-and-roll star at whose party he'd been drinking and sunburning himself into a stupor all weekend, and the buddies who'd volunteered him to make the beer run, thirty miles down the hills to Barstow; cursed them impersonally, and threw in a few curses at himself as well for being euchred into going.

Well, serves 'em right. Next time they want somebody to buy their beer for 'em, they can damn well lend me a decent car.

But the fact was that most people had arrived at Tarot's party on motorcycles, as Rudy himself had. And Tarot-who had started out life as James Carrow and was still known as Jim when not wearing his flameout stage makeup-wasn't about to lend his custom Eldorado to anybody, no matter how few cases of beer were left.

Well, what the hell. Rudy shook back the long hair from his eyes and risked another glance at the unrelieved blackness of empty desert reflected in his rear-view mirror. Everybody up at that hundred-thousand-dollar hideaway in the canyons was so drunk by this tune that it was impossible to see what difference ten more cases of beer could make. If worst came to worst-which it looked like it was going to, from the sound of that engine-he could always find someplace in the hills to hole up in until morning and try to hitch a ride to the nearest phone then. There was a service road about ten miles farther on that he knew of, which would take him to a dilapidated shack in what remained of an old orange grove. Half-plastered as he was, he didn't relish the idea of trying to do anything about the engine tonight, nor was the thought of sleeping by the road real appealing. Rudy took a drink from the half-empty bottle of wine propped on the seat beside him and drove on.

Rudy had been driving and dealing with cars and motorcycles half his life-not always with legal sanctions-but it took all his expertise to nurse the failing Chevy the mile or two from the last lighted billboard to the rutted track of the service road. The lag and jerk of the big V-8 engine as he maneuvered through potholes, gravel slides, and the ruinous washes of old stream beds made him wonder if the problem wasn't simply a blocked line. He itched to climb out, raise the hood, and check-except that he had nothing resembling a light with him, and the odds were that, once stopped, nothing short of total rebuilding would get the stupid car started again. The feeble glare of the headlights picked out landmarks he knew from his motorcycle trips back this way: an oak tree twisted into the shape of a disapproving monk, gloomily damning the couples who came out here to park; a rock like a sleeping buffalo, silhouetted against the star-luminous sky. Rudy's hobby of hunting with bow and arrow had given him a familiarity with half the wild country left in Southern California, a knowledge of these silent desert hills as casual as his knowledge of the inner workings of a V-8 engine or of the floor plan of his own sparsely furnished apartment. He was as much at home here as he was anywhere else.

Sometimes more so. Maybe the hunting was the reason, or maybe only the excuse. There were times when he simply took pleasure in being alone, a different pleasure from what was to be had from partying and raising hell, from horsing around with the guys at the body shop, from ratpack weekends in the desert. Never self-analytical, Rudy only understood that he needed the solitude, needed the touch of the empty land and the demand for slow skill and perfect accuracy. Perhaps it was this that had kept him on the edge of the biker crowd; he'd become acquainted with them at the body shop but never of them. Or perhaps it was simple cowardice.

Whatever his reasons, he was accepted for what he was; and though not part of any motorcycle gang, as an airbrush painter and pinstriper at Wild David's body shop in Fontana, he was part of that world. Hence, he understood his inclusion in Tarot's party-not that anybody in Southern California was excluded from Tarot's party. Tarot's local reputation included an apocryphal story about being a former member of the Hell's Angels. But, thinking the matter over as he guided the thrombotic car deeper and deeper into the blackness of the hills, Rudy couldn't imagine any gang admitting a member as essentially chickenhearted as Jim Carrow.

The car's front wheels dropped suddenly into a twelve-inch water-cut in the road with a heart-rending scrape of oil pan against rock. Rudy tried the engine twice and got only a tired whirring in response. He opened the door and climbed cautiously out, boots slipping on the round stones of the dry stream bed. Two days of continuous partying didn't help his footing much. He ascertained at once that pushing wouldn't help matters, for the car was nose-down with its front bumper inches from the far bank of the gully. It might, he decided, kneeling in the soft sand, be possible to back out if the engine could be started, but it wasn't something he'd want to try at one-thirty in the morning.

Disgusted, he straightened up.

Starlight showed him the shape and roll of the hills, the shallow valley opening out to his right, with a dark clustering of dry, black-leaved citrus trees. The shack-a cabin,

really- would be over there in the dense shadow of the hill, a hundred yards farther on.

Made it, he thought. Thank God for small favors.

It was surprising how silent the night was. There was little silence in the world; even away from people, there was usually street noise, airplanes, air conditioning. The cooling metal of the car's engine ticked softly in the darkness; now and then, dried grass sighed at the memory of wind. Rudy's eyes, adjusting to the wan glow of the Milky Way, slowly made out the edges of the cabin's roof line, the shapes of long grass and twisted trees. His footfalls seemed very loud in that world of darkness.

Walking carefully, if not precisely staggering, he collected two six-packs of beer from the back seat and the remainder of his bottle of muscatel from the front. His head was beginning to ache. Just what I need. A busted fuel pump and a hangover to fix it with. They'll probably figure I took the beer money and headed for Mexico.

He made his way up to the shack.

It stood solitary against the dark of the hills, the long grass around its peeling walls concealing the fossilized remains of dead farm equipment and broken bottles, the shabby asphalt tile of the roof sagging under the weight of accumulated leaves. He mounted the crazy front steps and set down his burdens on the narrow front porch, the mild chill of the sweet-scented night making him shiver as he stripped off his greasy denim jacket, wrapped it around his hand, and punched out a pane of the window beside the door to let himself in.

The lights worked, surprisingly. Hookup to the power tines in the grove, he decided, taking a quick look around the dingy kitchen. So did the sink, giving cold water but not hot. Well, you can't have everything. In the cupboard under the sink he found three cans of pork and beans with prices stamped on them that were at least four years old, and a kerosene stove with half a can of kerosene.

Not bad, he reflected, if I had anything to cook. Further exploration revealed a minuscule bathroom and a cell-like bedroom at the end of a narrow hall, with a sagging cot whose threadbare mattress would have been thrown out of any jail in the state as cruel and unusual.

Nothing to write home about, he thought, returning to the kitchen and thence to the star-limned silence of the front porch. He donned his jacket, on which the faded blue denim was rather gaudily illuminated with a flaming skull with roses in its eyes, and settled back against the doorjamb to polish off the muscatel and watch the night in peace. As the dark quiet of the hills soaked into his soul, he decided that there was, after all, something to be said for the place, a perfection of solitude in many ways superior to all the beer busts thrown by all the rock stars of California.

After a long time of silence he returned inside to sleep.

He woke up wondering what he'd done to annoy the little man with the sledgehammer who lived inside his head. He rolled over, to his instant regret, and wondered if he was going to die.

The room was barely light. He lay for a time staring at the shadows of the dry, cobwebby rafters, memories of yesterday and last night leaking back to his protesting consciousness: Tarot's party; the fact that it was Monday and he was supposed to be back at work at the body shop, painting flaming sunsets on custom vans; last night's beer run to Barstow; and that pig of a Chevy. It might be just the fuel lines, he told himself, his mind backtracking creakily through the obstacle course of a splitting headache and assorted other symptoms of the immoderate consumption of muscatel. If that was the case, he could be under way in a few hours. If it was the pump, he was in for a long walk.

Rudy made his way out of the house and down the steps, blinking in the pallid light of dawn. He was soon cursing the owner of the car. There wasn't anything resembling a tool in all the bushels of trash in the trunk or on the back seat.

There was a shed half-buried in the weeds farther back in the groves behind the cottage, and he spent ten grimy minutes picking through spider-infested debris there in search of tools. The result was hardly satisfactory: a rusted Phillips screwdriver with a dog-chewed handle; a couple of blades with the business ends twisted; and an adjustable end wrench so corroded that he doubted it could be used.

The sun was just clearing the hills as he stepped out again, wiping his hands on his jeans; all around him the clear magic colors of day were emerging from the dawn's grayed pastels. The house, formerly a nameless bulk of shadow, ripened into warm russets and weathered sepias, its windows blazing with the sun's reflected glory like the dazzle of molten electrum. As Rudy stood there in the shadow of the shed, he thought for a moment that it was this burning glare that was playing tricks on his eyes.

Then he saw that this was not so, but for a moment he didn't know what it was. He shaded his eyes against the blinding silvery shimmer that hung in the air like a twisting slit of fire, blinking in the almost painful brilliance that stabbed forth as the slit, or line of brightness, widened scarcely a dozen yards in front of him. He had the momentary impression that space and reality were splitting apart, that the three dimensions of this world were merely painted on a curtain, and that air and ground and cabin and hills were being folded aside, to reveal a more piercing light, blinding darkness, and swirling nameless colors beyond. Then, through that gap, a dark form stumbled, robed and hooded in brown, a drawn sword gleaming in one hand and a trailing bundle of black velvet gripped tightly in the crook of the other arm. The sword blade was bright, as if it reflected searing light, and it smoked.

Blinded by the intensity of the light, Rudy turned his face away, confused, disoriented, and shocked. When he turned back, the blazing vision was gone. There remained only an old man in a brown robe, an old man who held a sword in one hand and a wailing baby in the other arm.

Rudy blinked. "What in hell was I drinking last night?" he asked aloud. "And who the hell are you?"

The old man sheathed the sword in one smooth, competent gesture, and Rudy found himself thinking that whoever this was, he must be very quick on the draw with that thing. It looked real, too, balanced and razor-sharp. The old man replied, in a scratchy baritone, "I am called Ingold Inglorion. This is Prince Altir Endorion, last Prince of the House of Dare."

"Hunh?"

The old man drew back the hood from his face, revealing a countenance wholly nondescript except for the remarkable blueness of the heavy-lidded eyes and for its expression of awesome serenity. Rudy had never seen a face like that, gentle, charming, and supremely in command. It was the face of a saint, a wizard, or a nut.

Rudy rubbed his aching eyes. "How'd you get here?"

"I came through the Void that separates your universe from mine," Ingold explained reasonably. "You could hardly have missed it."

He's a nut.

Curious, Rudy walked slowly around him, keeping his distance. The guy was armed, after all, and something in the way he'd handled the sword made Rudy sure he knew how to use it. He looked like a harmless old buffer, except for the Francis of Assisi get-up, but years of association with the brotherhood of the road had given Rudy an instinctive caution of anybody who was armed, no matter how harmless he looked. Besides, anybody running around dressed like that was obviously certifiable.

The old man watched him in return, looking rather amused, one thick-muscled hand absently caressing the child he held into muffled whimpers, then silence. Rudy noticed that the old man's dark robes and the child's blankets were rank with smoke. He supposed they could have come out of the shadows around the corner of the house in the moment the reflected sunlight had blinded him, giving the impression they'd stepped out of a kind of flaming aura, but that explanation still didn't tell him where they'd come from, or how the old man had happened to acquire the kid.

After a long moment's silence Rudy asked, "Are you for real?"

The old man smiled, a leaping webwork of lines springing into being among the tangle of white beard. "Are you?"

"I mean, are you supposed to be some kind of wizard or something?"

"Not in this universe." Ingold surveyed the young man before him for a moment, then smiled again. "It's a long story," he explained, turned, and strolled back toward the house as if he owned the place, with Rudy tagging along in his wake. "Would it be possible for me to remain here until my contact in this world can reach me? It shouldn't be long."

What the hell? "Yeah, sure, go ahead." Rudy sighed. "I'm only here myself because my car died on me-I mean, it's not really my car-and I have to check out the pump and see if I can get it running again." Seeing Ingold's puzzled frown, he remembered the guy was supposed to be from another universe where, since they used swords-

and he'd still like to know where the old man had picked that one up-the internal combustion engine hadn't been invented. "You do know what a car is?"

"I'm familiar with the concept. We don't have them in my world, of course."

"Of course."

Ingold led the way calmly up the steps and into the house. He proceeded straight on down the hall to the bedroom, where he placed the child on the stained, lumpy mattress of the cot. The baby immediately began working himself free of his blankets, with the apparently fixed intention of rolling off and braining himself on the cement floor.

"But who are you?" Rudy persisted, leaning in the doorway.

"I told you, my name is Ingold. Here, enough of that... " He reached down and stopped Prince Tir from worming himself over the edge. Then he glanced back over his shoulder. "You haven't told me your name," he added.

"Uh- Rudy Solis. Where'd you get the kid?"

"I'm rescuing him from enemies," Ingold stated matter-of-factly.

Wonderful, Rudy thought. First the fuel pump and now this.

Untangled, the kid was revealed to be a crawler of six months or so, with a pink rosebud of a face, fuzzy black hair, and eyes that were the deep unearthly blue of the heart of a morning glory. Ingold set the kid back in the middle of the bed, where he promptly started for the edge again. The old man removed his dark, smoke-smelling mantle and spread it out like a groundcloth on the floor. Under it he wore a white wool robe, much patched and stained, a worn leather belt, and a low-slung sword belt that supported the sword and a short dagger in beat-up scabbards. The whole setup looked authentic as hell.

Ingold picked up the child again and put him down on the mantle on the floor. "There," he said. "Now will you stay where you are put and fall asleep like a sensible person?"

Prince Altir Endorion made a definite but unintelligible reply.

"Good," Ingold said, and turned toward the door.

"Whose kid is he?" Rudy asked, folding his arms and watching the old man and the child.

For the first time that look of self-command broke, and grief, or the concealment of grief, tightened into the muscles of the old man's face. His voice remained perfectly steady. "He is the child of a friend of mine," he replied quietly, "who is now dead." There was a moment's silence, the old man concentrating on turning back the cuffs of his faded robe, revealing a road map of old scars striping the hard, heavy muscle of his forearms. When he looked up again, that expression of gentle amusement was back in his eyes. "Not that you believe me, of course."

"Well, now that you mention it, I don't."

"Good." Ingold smiled, stepping past Rudy into the narrow hall. "It's better that you shouldn't. Close the door behind you, would you, please?"

"Because, for one thing," Rudy said, following him down the hall to the kitchen, "if you're from a whole other universe, like you say, how come you are speaking English?"

"Oh, I'm not." Ingold located one of the six-packs of beer on the kitchen counter and extricated a can for himself and one for Rudy. "Speaking English, that is. You only hear it as English in your mind. If you were to come to my world, I could arrange the same spell to cover you."

Oh, yeah? Rudy thought cynically. And I suppose you figured out how to operate push-tab beer cans the same way?

"Unfortunately, there's no way I can prove this to you," Ingold went on placidly, seating himself on the corner of the grimy formica table top, the butter-colored morning sunlight gilding the worn hilt of his sword with an edge like fire. "Different universes obey different physical laws, and yours, despite its present close conjunction with my own, is very far from the heart and source of Power. The laws of physics here are very heavy, very certain and irreversible, and unaffected by... certain other considerations." He glanced out the window to his right, scanning the fall of the land beyond, judging the angle of the sun, the time of day. The expression of calculation in his eyes, adding up pieces of information that had nothing to do with Rudy or with maintaining a role, troubled Rudy with a disquieting sense that the old man was too calm about it, too matter-of-fact. He'd met masqueraders before; living in Southern California, you could hardly help it. And, young or old, all those would-be Brothers of Atlantis had the same air of being in costume, no matter how cool they were about it. They all knew you were noticing them.

This old croaker didn't seem to be thinking about Rudy at all, except as a man to be dealt with in the course of something else.

Rudy found himself thinking, He's either what he says he is, or so far out in left field he's never coming back.

And his indignant outrage at being beguiled into admitting two possibilities at all was almost immediately superimposed on the uneasy memory of that gap of light and the colors he'd thought he'd seen beyond.

Watch it, kiddo, he told himself. The old guy's not hitting on all his cylinders. If you're not careful, he'll have you doing it next. So he asked, "But you are a wizard in your own world?" Because the outfit couldn't be for anything else.

Ingold hesitated, his attention returning to Rudy; then he nodded. "Yes," he said slowly.

Rudy leaned back against the counter and took a pull at his beer. "You pretty good?"

Ingold shrugged and seemed to relax, as if reassured by the disbelief in Rudy's tone. "I'm said to be."

"But you can't do any magic here." A foregone conclusion-the ersatz Merlins of the world did not often operate outside a friendly environment.

But the ersatz Merlins of the world didn't usually smile, then hide the smile, at the suggestion of fraud. "No. That isn't possible."

Rudy simply couldn't figure the guy. But something in that serene self-assurance prompted him to ask, "Yeah, but how can you be a wizard without magic?" He finished his beer, crumpled the aluminum with one hand, and tossed it into the corner of the bare room.

"Oh, wizardry has really very little to do with magic."

Taken off-balance, Rudy paused, the old man's voice and words touching some feeling in his soul that echoed, like the distant note of a long-forgotten guitar. "Yeah, but-" he began, and stopped again. "What is wizardry?" he asked quietly. "What is magic?"

"What isn't?"

There was silence for the space of about two long-drawn breaths, Rudy fighting the sudden, illogical, and overwhelming notion that that was the reply of a man who understood magic. Then he shook his head, as if to clear it of the webs of the old man's crazy fantasies. "I don't understand you."

Ingold's voice was soft. "I think you do."

He really did step out of that light.

In another minute you'll be as crazy as he is.

Confusion made Rudy's voice rough. "All I understand is that you're crazier than a loon... "

"Am I really?" The white eyebrows lifted in mock offense. "And just how do you define crazy?"

"Crazy is somebody who doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's just in his imagination."

"Ah," Ingold said, all things made clear. "You mean if I disbelieved something that I saw with my own eyes, just because I imagined it to be impossible, I would be crazy?"

"I did not either see it!" Rudy yelled.

"You know you did," the wizard said reasonably. "Come now, Rudy, you believe in thousands of things you've never seen with your own eyes."

"I do not!"

"You believe in the ruler of your country."

"Well, I've seen him! I've seen him on television."

"And have you not also seen people materializing out of showers of silver light on this television?" Ingold asked.

"Dammit, don't argue that way! You know as well as I do... "

"But I don't, Rudy. If you choose deliberately to disregard the evidence of your own senses, it's your problem, not mine. I am what I am... "

"You are not!"

Slowly, in an absent-minded imitation of Rudy's can-squashing ritual, Ingold crushed his empty beer can into a wad slightly smaller than his own fist. "Really, you're one of the most prejudiced young men I've ever met," he declared. "For an artist you have singularly little scope."

Rudy drew in his breath to reply to that one, then let it out again. "How did you know I'm an artist?"

Amused blue eyes challenged him. "A wild guess." In his heart Rudy knew it had been nothing of the kind. "You are, aren't you?"

"Uh- wen, I paint airbrush pictures on the sides of custom vans, and pinstripe motorcycle fuel tanks, that kind of stuff." Seeing Ingold's puzzled frown, he conceded, "Yeah, I guess you could call it art."

There was another silence, the old man looking down at his scarred hands in the sunlight on the table top, the isolated cabin utterly silent but for the fault creaking insect noises in the long grasses outside. Then he looked up and smiled. "And is it beneath your dignity to have friends with, I think you call it, nonstandard reality?"

Rudy thought about some of the people who hung around Wild David's bike shop. Nonstandard was one way of putting it. He laughed. "Hell, if I felt that way I'd have maybe about two friends. Okay, you win."

The old man looked startled and just a little worried, "You mean you believe me?"

"No- but it doesn't bother me if it doesn't bother you."

If he's schizo, Rudy found himself thinking later in the morning, he's got it all down. Wizardry, the mythical Realm of Darwath, the Hidden City of Quo on the Western Ocean where the garnered learning of a hundred generations of mages was stored in the dark labyrinths of Forn's Tower-Ingold had it all, seemed to know it as intimately as Rudy knew his own world of bars and bikes and body shops, of smog and steel. Through the long, warm morning, Rudy messed with the Chevy's engine, Ingold lending a hand occasionally when one was needed and staying out of the way when it wasn't, and their talk drifted over magic, the Void, engines, and painting. Ingold never slipped up.

Not only was he totally familiar with his own fantasy world, but Rudy noticed he had the lapses of knowledge that a man imperfectly acquainted with this world would have. He seemed totally fascinated with Rudy's world, with the wonders of radio and television, the complexities of the welfare system, and the mysteries of the internal combustion engine. He had the insatiable curiosity that, he had said, was the hallmark of wizards: the lust for knowledge, almost any kind of knowledge, that superseded even the most elementary considerations of physical comfort or safety.

If it wasn't for the kid, Rudy thought, glancing from the tangled shadows of the car toward the wizard, who was seated in the long grass, thoughtfully dissecting and examining a seed pod, I wouldn't care. Hell, the guy could claim to be Napoleon and it'd be no business of mine. But he's got no business with a kid that young, wandering around a million miles from noplace.

And his hangover hallucination of their stepping out of the burning air returned to him, the absolute reality of the vision, far clearer than anything muscatel or anything else had ever done for him. Something about it troubled him, something he could not yet define.

Then the rusted nut he was working on gave way, and other matters claimed his attention. Ten minutes later he crawled out from under the car, grease-smudged, hot, and disgusted. Ingold set aside the seed pod and raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

Rudy flung the wrench he was holding violently into the dirt. "Goddam fuel pump," he sighed, and dropped crosslegged to the ground at the wizard's side.

"It is the pump, then, and not the line?" Rudy had briefed him on the problem.

"Yeah." He cursed, and elaborated on the car, its owner, and things in general. He finished with, "So I guess the only thing to do is walk to the highway and hitch."

"Well," Ingold said comfortably, "my contact in this world should be here very shortly. You could always get a ride back to civilization with her."

Rudy paused in wiping his oily hands on a rag he'd fished out of the back seat. "Your what?"

"My contact in this world." Seeing Rudy's surprise, Ingold explained. "I shall be stranded the night in your world and, though on occasion I've starved, I see no reason to do it if it can be avoided."

"So you're just passing through, is that it?" Rudy wondered if there was, in fact, such a contact, or if this was yet one more strange figment of the old man's peculiar imagination.

"In a manner of speaking," Ingold said slowly.

"But if you're a wizard in your own world, how come you'd starve?" Rudy asked, more out of lazy curiosity than anything else. "How come you can't just make food appear if you're hungry?"

"Because it doesn't work that way," Ingold said simply. "Creating the illusion of food is relatively simple. To make a piece of grass like this one convincingly resemble bread requires only that in taste, texture, and appearance, I convince you that you are eating bread. But if you ate it, it would provide you no more nourishment than the grass, and on a steady diet of such things you would quickly starve. But literally to transform the inner nature of the grass would be to alter reality itself, to tamper with the fabric of the entire universe."

"Lot of trouble to go through for a crummy piece of bread."

"Well, more than that, it's potentially dangerous. Any tampering, no matter how small, with the fabric of the universe is perilous. That is why shape-changing is seldom done. Most high-ranking wizards understand the principle behind turning oneself into a beast-with the mind and heart of a beast-but very, very few would dare to put it into practice. An archmage might do it, in peril of his life. But... " He raised his head suddenly, and Rudy caught the far-off chugging of an engine in the still, pale air of afternoon.

"My friend," Ingold explained. He got up, brushing dry grass and twigs off his robe. Rudy scrambled likewise to his feet as a dusty red Volkswagen beetle crept into view around the shoulder of the hill.

"This I gotta see."

The bug's tires surrounded it in a light cloud of dust as it made its slow approach, bumping cautiously over every rut and pothole of the treacherous road. It came to a stop a few yards away, the door opened, and a girl got out.

She took one look at Rudy and stopped, her eyes filled with suspicion and distrust. Then Ingold stepped down the bank toward her, both hands held out in welcome. "Gil," he said. "This is Rudy Solis. He thinks I'm crazy. Rudy-Gil Patterson. My contact in this world."

They regarded each other in silent animosity.

Gil would almost have preferred the Highway Patrol. This character had "biker" written on him in letters a foot tall: greasy jeans, grubby white T-shirt, scarred boots. Dark hair faintly tinged with red fell loosely on either side of a long widow's peak almost to his shoulders; cocky darkblue eyes under sharply backslanted black brows gave her an arrogant once-over and dismissed her. She noted the bump of an old break on his nose. RUDY was tattooed on a banner across a flaming torch on his left wrist. A real prize.


Kind of tall and scrawny, but not bad-looking, Rudy decided, checking her out. Bitchy, though, I bet. A real spook. Beyond that he noted the worn jeans, blue checkered shirt, lack of make-up, unworked hands and bitten nails, and cool, pale, forbidding eyes. Where'd Ingold dig her up?

Ingold went on, "Rudy's been stranded here with car trouble. Could you take him back with you as far as he needs to go when you leave, Gil, as a favor to me?"

Her eyes went warily from Ingold to Rudy, then back to the wizard's face. Ingold rested a hand briefly on her shoulder and said quietly, "It's all right. He doesn't have to believe me, Gil."

She sighed and forced herself to relax. "All right," she agreed.

Rudy had watched all this with curiosity bordering on annoyance. "Well, don't do me any favors."

Those pale gray eyes grew colder. But Ingold's hand tightened almost imperceptibly on Gil's bony shoulder, and she said, in a more natural voice, "No, it's all right."

Rudy, in turn, relaxed and meant it when he said, "Thank you. Uh-can I give you a hand with that?" for Gil had turned back to the car and was fetching out assorted provisions, including canned beef stew and diapers, from the back seat. He dropped back a pace to walk beside her as they followed Ingold up to the cabin, however, and as soon as the old man was out of earshot Rudy asked softly, "Who is he?"

She regarded him with those pale schoolmarm eyes-old-maid eyes in the face of a girl his own age. "What did he tell you?"

"That he was some kind of a wizard from another universe."

When Gil was embarrassed, she became brusque. "That's his story."

Rudy refused to be put off. "Where'd you meet him?"

Gil sighed. "It's a long story," she said, falling back on Ingold's usual explanation. "And it doesn't matter, not really."

"It matters to me," Rudy said, and glanced up ahead of them to where Ingold was just vanishing into the shadows of the little house. "You see, I like the old guy, I really do, even if he isn't playing with a full deck. I'm just worried some land of harm will come to the kid."

They stopped at the foot of the rickety steps, and Gil looked carefully for the first time at the young man's face. It was sun-bronzed and sensual, but not a crass face, nor a stupid one. "Do you think he'd let any harm come to Tir?"

Rudy remembered the old man and the child together, Ingold's gentle competence and the protectiveness in his voice when he spoke to the baby. "No," he said slowly. "No-but what are they doing out here? And what's gonna happen when he goes wandering back to civilization like that?"

There was genuine concern in his voice, which Gil found rather touching. Besides, she thought, if I hadn't had the dreams, I'd probably think the same,

She shifted her burden from one hand to the other. "It will be okay," she assured him quietly.

"You know what's going on?"

She nodded.

Rudy looked down at her doubtfully, not quite satisfied and sensing something amiss. Still, in one real sense this girl was Ingold's contact with reality, which in spite of his obvious shrewdness and charm the old man sorely needed. And yet-and yet-Troubled visions of the old man stumbling out of a blazing aura of silver light returned to him as he started up the steps, Gil climbing at his heels. He swung around on her abruptly, to ask, "Do you believe him?"

But before Gil could answer, the cabin door opened again, and Ingold re-emerged onto the narrow porch, a flushed, sleepy infant in his arms. "This is Prince Altir Endorion," he introduced.

Gil and Rudy came up the last few steps to join him, the question left unanswered. On the whole, Gil disliked children, but, like most hard-hearted women, she had a soft spot for the very young and helpless. She touched the round pink cheek with gingerly reverence, as if afraid the child would shatter on contact. "He's very beautiful," she whispered.

"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."