The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,140

green weeds of the coming spring.

Deep and scratchy, Ingold's voice came to her ears. "You are free now to return to your homes," he was saying, "wherever those homes may be."

The hush that filled the morning world was so profound that Gil could hear the far-off whistle of a chickadee in the willows that fringed the river. She became conscious that she was hungry and cold, as she had always been since coming to this world.

Rudy was the first to speak. "I thought you didn't believe in the chances of fortune, Ingold," he said quietly. "You know I could never go back. It almost seems I always knew that, even on the first day we were in Karst, before I'd met Aide, or understood about magic, or-or anything."

Ingold smiled. "And that is why I do not believe in the chances of fortune. My dear..."

Gil looked up, to see grief and gentle regret in the old man's eyes.

"I know there were times that you hated me for robbing you of what you had and what you sought in your own world. There is little scope here for your scholarship. In the years to come, humankind will be reduced to fighting for its bare survival. And due to my carelessness, you have been kept here against your will, and in your absence that other life that is waiting for you has become badly disrupted. Forgive me, Gil. I think you shall find, when you return, that nothing is irreparable."

"I'm not so sure about that," Gil said shakily. "I don't think I'll ever patch up the break in the wall that I'd built around myself there. And maybe other things besides."

The glacier wind from the mountains burned her scarred cheek. Through her mind floated a host of trivialities- movies, the stereo, coffee, hot showers, her parents, and the peace of a soft bed. She realized how badly she ached with lack of sleep and how icy were her hands in that light, sword-scarred grip.

She raised her head again and held his gaze with hers. She asked, "Do you want me to stay?"

She saw his eyes widen, all the serenity in them put to flight by sudden, springing hope that was resolutely crushed before they turned away from hers altogether. His low, grainy voice was carefully neutral, but she could feel his fingers tighten over hers.

"Gil," Ingold said quietly, "I told you once that I am a dangerous person to love. I have tried very hard not to love you-without success, I might add-and if you stayed, I would not want to be parted from you. And that, my dear, would bring you nothing but disaster."

"You don't think that, after all that's passed, I can't cope with disaster?"

He looked back at her, taut misery on his face. "You don't understand," he said. "From the time I was your age, my power, my damned curiosity, and my infernal meddling have brought danger and horrible deaths to those I have loved and to those who have loved me. I have never loved a woman as I love you-God only knows why, for I've never met such a stubborn and hardhearted woman as yourself. I have never before loved a woman so much that I would rather lose her than see her come to harm."

"If it comes to that," Gil replied mildly, "I've never met any man-any person- whom I'd risk my neck to stay with-until you."

"I cannot allow it...".

"That wasn't my question."

Something very close to anger darkened his face. "I can't let you do this to yourself," he told her roughly. "Aside from being pointed at as an old man's folly -"

"Old?" Her brows shot up. " You ?"

Under the scrubby beard and long, unkempt mane of hair, his scarred cheeks colored. "Gil, you have no idea what you are asking," he pleaded.

She put her hands on his shoulders, and the coarse folds of his mantle were damp and cold under her fingers. "I know what I'm asking," she said in a low voice. "Now forget your responsibility to everyone else for once in your life and give me a straight answer. Do you want me to stay?"

She saw the struggle on his face, his love and protectiveness toward her fighting against a wholly selfish desire to keep her at his side as his woman and his friend. She thought that he would lie, as he had often lied, to keep her from harm, retreat behind a smoke screen of words, send her away from him, and meet his own doom in his own way.

But after a moment he reached up and took her wrists, a half-amused, half-regretful wryness in his eyes.

"I want you," he said softly. "You know perfectly well that I have always wanted you, my love."

Rudy looked consideringly at the two cloaked forms, locked in a sudden and crushing embrace in the pale, heat-less sunlight. He shook his head. "And I thought I was involved in a relationship I didn't understand," he remarked.

"The only thing in that relationship I never understood," Gil commented judiciously, when she and Ingold broke apart at last and she pushed the tangled hair back from her face, "is Aide's taste in men."

"You're coming real close to spending the rest of your life as a frog, spook," Rudy warned her.

"A rash threat," Ingold said, "considering that her true love is on the spot and yours is a week's journey away at the Keep of Dare."

Rudy sighed, realizing that he was outnumbered. But then, he thought, eyeing that curious couple, Gil and Ingold together were capable of outnumbering almost anything.

"Why do I put up with this?" he demanded rhetorically.

"It's very simple," Ingold replied, draping one arm around the frayed shoulders of the awesome and intellectual warrior at his side. "Since nothing is fortuitous, you yourself chose this world over the one that you were born in. Perhaps, since we do not know the reasons for all things happening as they do, you chose it long before you ever came here. Even a cursory comparison of the two worlds proves that you are out of your senses."

"Thanks." Rudy sighed. "I wondered about that."

"It explains why you're always surrounded by lunatics," Gil offered hopefully.

"No," Rudy objected. "Even a plea of insanity wouldn't explain that."

Ingold laughed. "Come," he said. "Your lady at the Keep will be growing anxious. It is time we were bound for home."

Pale sunlight glimmered on the ice in the flooded valleys before them, turning the trampled mud of the plain into a flashing carpet of diamonds. Though cold winds blew the scent of barren rock and glacier ice down upon them from the mountains to the north, it could already be seen that the pools were edged with the vivid green rushes of a late and chilly spring. The shadows of the wanderers rippled hard and blue about their feet as the three moved off down the hill to take the southward road.