The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,118

fringing of diamonds, and how clear was each single star above the ice-edged glimmer of the black mountains. Chill sweat was already freezing on her face, but the blood still warmed her hands; in them, the weight of her sword seemed suddenly immense. It was a quick-burning ecstasy that left her detached, relaxed, and filled with an indescribable sense of peace.

Rudy's voice broke that magical stillness. "Hell," he said rather shakily. "I wanted to do that."

Gil drew a deep breath, as if she were waking up, then expelled it in a tremulous laugh. She bent and cleaned her hands in the snow, wiping her blade on the corner of her dead foe's cloak. By the time she reached Rudy, she was trembling uncontrollably.

"Can you walk?" she asked him.

"Christ, lady, I should be asking you that!"

She pulled him to his feet, staggering a little at his weight against her. He drew the cloak around both their shoulders; under the sweat-drenched, blood-daubed shirt, he felt her flesh like ice. A moment ago she had been almost terrifying to him, a coldhearted, deliberate killer; but now he felt protective of her as she nestled gawkily against his side beneath the warmth of the cloak.

"How long has it been since I was put out here?" he asked.

Gil frowned, her concentration bent on negotiating the slippery snow of the hill. "Three hours or so."

"Then I might still be able to save Eldor, if I can get hold of some medicines."

She looked up at him, startled. "But the gates won't be opened until dawn."

"You think so?"

Color rushed into her bone-white cheeks. Keep Law was knitted into her nerve endings. It had never occurred to her that Alwir would have violated it. But she didn't even need to follow Rudy's gaze to the darker slit among the shadows of the Keep's western face to know the truth. "That-" she began, and continued at length. Rudy noted that swordsmanship wasn't all Gil had learned in her training with the Guards. Looking back toward the prostrate body, she delivered the final, crushing judgment. "It figures. Let's go, punk. We've been lucky so far. If..."

Her words stuck in her throat. At the same instant Rudy turned, knowledge and awareness like a chill smoke twining around his heart. Around them, the moonlight failed.

Gil's arm tightened around his body, not in fear, but in a businesslike effort to drag him toward the Keep before they were overtaken. Rising wind whirled at their hair, and it seemed that all the trees in the Vale began to toss and whisper. As they stumbled across the road, the sense of the awful numbers of the Dark Ones rose like the rising tide. Over his shoulder Rudy could see the river of illusion and death pouring down from the somber trees that hid Sarda Pass; unguessable numbers of the Dark Ones swirled the snow in glittering eddies, killing the light.

His feet caught on the edge of the lowest step and he fell, bringing Gil down with him. His every muscle cried out at the jarring blow. After that fight, she wouldn't be in much better shape than he was, he thought as they both struggled to rise. The winds stung his face, the smell of them harsh, acid, metallic...

... and looking up, he saw the Dark Ones turn aside.

Within a dozen yards of the half-open gates of the Keep they flowed, filling the earth, covering the sky like a cloud. But they paused for nothing, howling past the silent fortress and away like an elemental storm.

"What's happening?" Gil whispered, kneeling on the snow-covered steps above him, her fingers nerveless on the hilt of her sheathed sword. "I didn't know there were that many Dark Ones in the Nests of Gettlesand. You don't think the-the wizards-had anything to do..."

"No," Rudy said softly. "No wizard in that group, or all of them together, could touch the Dark."

"Then what is it?" she murmured as the directionless winds tore at the cloak they shared and stung their faces with blown snow. "Where are they going?"

With a wizard's understanding, Rudy knew the answer, though he shuddered to think of the reasons for what he knew. He glanced sideways at Gil and replied unwillingly.

"They're going to Gae."

"Christ, I wish I knew more about healing." Rudy stood against the light of the banked glowstones, looking down at the fevered body that writhed on the narrow bed. Without the mask, Eldor's face was hideous, not only from the sunken masses of shiny, twisted scars