The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,121

let in a draft of icy air from the hall. Rudy stripped off the shabby black surcoat Gil had lent him and threw it to her. She pulled it on loosely over the slashed and blood-smutched shirt and headed for the door.

"Gil- Shalos?" Maia stayed her and turned her face gently to the light with one crippled hand. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine," she said. Most of the wounds Alwir had dealt her had stopped bleeding, probably including the biggest one, which was in her right side and which Rudy had patched crudely before starting to examine Eldor. It had surprised him a little that Gil literally could not remember receiving most of the wounds-only the first one, which was on her cheek. By the look of it, Rudy could tell already that she'd be scarred for life.

The few Penambrans who had remained after Govannin's removal followed Gil silently into the dark hall, accompanied by the Bishop's confused and whispering monks. Brother Wend looked up from his patient, his hollow eyes tortured by doubt.

"Who is it?" he whispered. "Whom do you seek?"

"Yeah," Rudy said, confused. "Who do they have sealed up?"

The Bishop of Penambra raised an eyebrow, and wrinkles laddered all the way up his high, narrow forehead. "You have not guessed?"

The sensitive hands resting on Elder's wrist trembled. In a shaken voice, Wend murmured, "She told me that he was dead. I killed him. I..." He bowed his head, unable to go on.

"I sincerely doubt," Maia said, bending down to touch the priest's shoulder in a faint rustling of patched brocade, "that with your small skill you would be capable of concocting a poison strong enough to kill Thoth the Scribe. Nor do I believe that my lady Govannin would permit any wizard simply to die painlessly - It was painless, wasn't it?"

Wend nodded wretchedly.

"To die painlessly or quickly, if it were in her power to make it otherwise. So take courage, Brother-her spite may well have been her undoing in this." He straightened up and moved back toward the door as Wend returned shakily to his task. Only to Rudy did Maia turn a worried face, in the shadows that shrouded the doorway. "By the look of my lord Eldor," he said in a low voice, "it will take all Thoth's great skill to save him. I pray that he can be found."

But the night hours wore into morning, and Gil and her squad did not reappear. Rudy and Brother Wend did what they could, using Wend's stock of herbs and Ingold's medicines and working with their combined magic to hold soul and body together, but Rudy could feel Eldor's life slipping away.

His own mind and body were numb, and his hands fumbled at their tasks. He was barely cognizant of the passage of time or of his surroundings, scarcely aware of hunger or thirst. All he knew was the task before him and a weariness that became a dull torture. The golden flicker of the fire on the embroidered hangings around the bed began to swim before his tired eyes, and his occasional speech with Wend grew less and less connected. He wondered that it had been only yesterday morning that the messenger had ridden to the steps of the Keep- a little over twenty-four hours since the Army of Alketch had departed.

Alwir must have begun to plan it then , Rudy thought, and he had been mere bait, the ostensible trigger for the larger trap. With what feeling remained to him, he felt a dull anger at Alwir, lying stiff with cold and rigor mortis in puddles of frozen blood on the hill. He would have stamped me out like a cockroach, disgraced - maybe killed - his own sister, and slain Gil more or less in passing - all as a cover-up for the real thing .

And yet, beside the silent passing of the Dark Ones toward Gae, Alwir, Eldor, and even he had already begun to seem very small and insignificant. His suspicion had strengthened to virtual certainty; he knew in his heart what was awaiting the Dark there. And he knew what would have to be done.

He sank, exhausted, down on a bench and leaned his head against the mingled colors of the tapestry behind him. The bullion stitching of it scratched his cheek; distantly, dark against the shaded glow of the banked white lamps, he saw Brother Wend wiping his hands, his dark eyes weary and defeated. Eldor had ceased to