The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,131

and reach out to her and Gil crumple forward into the wizard's arms.

With an inarticulate cry he sprang forward, the pronged gold of his staff flashing in the wan sunlight as he drove its points toward Ingold's unprotected back. Gil cried out a warning, and the old man twisted away from the blow, thrusting her out of danger as he staggered to his feet and raised his arm to shield his eyes from the unaccustomed glare of the light. Gritting his teeth, his own eyes half-blind with tears, Rudy drove the razor edge of the crescent on the end of his staff toward Ingold's throat.

Rudy had not reckoned on Gil. A pair of bony knees scissored his legs viciously from under him and he fell, the staff clattering on the stone floor. He groped for it, and Gil kicked it out of his hands. He looked up in time to see her scramble to her feet, snatch up her drawn sword from the floor, and fling it, glittering, into Ingold's waiting hands.

Sobbing, Rudy grabbed for the staff again, and this time Gil stepped back, tears pouring uncontrollably down her face. With a cry of frustrated fury, he took a step toward her, his own mind unclear as to what he intended.

Ingold rasped, "Touch her, and I swear you will never leave this city alive."

Rudy stopped, blinking, wondering for a dizzied second whether Ingold had placed some kind of spell of gnodyrr upon Gil with those few words he had murmured to her when he lay with her dagger at his throat. The old man's ragged breath was the only sound to pierce the uncanny stillness of the cellar. His blue eyes, pale and bright within the rings of cut and blackened flesh, went warily from one to the other.

Then in a strained voice, Ingold said, "Neither of you should be in this city. Get out of here. Get as far away as you can."

"I won't leave you," Gil said quietly.

He rounded on her, his eyes widening with sudden and blazing fear. "You'll do as I say! Get out! Get out now!"

"The hell we will!" Rudy yelled, and Ingold swung back toward him, his borrowed sword flashing in the pale light. "You've been a prisoner of the Dark..."

The wizard moved back a step into the bar of sunlight, his long, matted hair glistening like seaweed. The light around him dimmed. Looking up, Rudy could see, through the crazy tangle of broken timbers and charred stone, the soft coils of white fog beginning to blur the day.

"And what?" Ingold asked softly.

Rudy cried out, "Why did they want you?"

"You'll learn that in time." The wizard retreated another step, the blade poised before him, orienting himself, his red-rimmed eyes growing used to daylight again. Rudy took a hopeless step toward him, and Ingold shifted a little, readying himself for an attack, his body moving with the old, deadly lightness.

Then Gil cried, " Rudy !" Her voice was sharp with terror. He whipped around and saw her blink in surprise, like someone just waked from a trance...

... and turning back, he saw that Ingold was gone.

Cursing, he plunged up the red stone steps toward the waning daylight. Gil hurried at his heels, stammering, "I'm-I'm sorry. I don't know why I yelled..."

"You yelled because he wanted you to!" Rudy stormed at her, his voice rough with anger that was three parts fear. He stopped and caught her arms, facing her in the mottled shadows of a broken doorway among leaf drifts and rotted bones. "Christ, Gil, why did you stop me?" he whispered. "I understand how you couldn't do it, but-"

"No," she interrupted quietly. Her eyes were swollen but perfectly calm. "If he had been possessed by the mind of the Dark, I would have cut his throat. But he wasn't."

"Fantastic!" Rudy sighed in disgust. "That's all I need to-"

"I don't know what's going on," she continued, unruffled, "but his mind is his own. I know it."

"How the hell would you know it?" Rudy yelled passionately. "He's had you wrapped around his finger from day bloody one! The Dark have had him. He's been their prisoner. There's no way they would have let him go-not after they hunted him from one end of the continent to the other!"

"I know it because I know him!" she lashed back at Rudy, jerking her arms free of his grip and striding on ahead of him up the stairs. Above their heads, the broken vaults of the Palace showed the