The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,17

with ice and already infected by the long, searching runners of the vines. Ingold shifted the weight of the coiled rope he carried over his shoulder and whispered, "We'll cross one at a time. Kara, keep an eye on Kta." He gripped the staff in his hand and stepped into the open ground of the court.

A movement caught Rudy's attention, along the wall to his left. He whirled, his hand going to his flame thrower, but all he saw was a huge rat, sliding insolently among the matted compost of dirt and vines and bones. When he looked back to the court, Ingold was gone.

There was no sign of him in all that bleached expanse. Not even a footprint marked the frost-fuzzed moss of the broken pavement.

Then he saw the wizard in the dense shade of the arch at the far side of the courtyard, barely visible in the dappling shadows of filigreed marble and dead vines. Ingold moved a hand, signaling Rudy to follow.

He obeyed, with a hopeless sense of nakedness in the open ground. But though he half-expected Ingold to greet him with a mild query about whether he intended to send out a crier to announce his presence as well, the wizard said nothing. It was borne upon Rudy that the time for his education in wizardry was past. He was what he was, and it was up to him to keep himself out of trouble.

Kara followed. Rudy had a quick impression of the gray ripple of a homespun cloak and the touch of a skirt hem on frozen vines. Once, where the tessellated pavements were cracked, he saw the brief shadow of a tall woman and the glint of wan daylight on the blade of a halberd. Then Kara was beside him, her face pale under her hood.

Ingold had moved off, scouting the porch. The mists held thicker here, stirring faintly about his feet like pallid ground fog; sometimes it was only that vague shifting movement that allowed him to be seen at all. His brown cloak seemed to blend with the gloom, melting indistinguishably into the thicker shadows of the broken archways. Rudy glanced back across the moss-splotched court, seeing its smeared and dirty pavements with their brave colors all but hidden beneath the soupy scum of mud and ash and leaves.

"Where did Kta go?"

Kara, who was likewise looking out across the court, shook her head. "He was going to follow me," she whispered.

Rudy cursed his own stupidity. "One of us should have gone after him," he whispered back. "He may be tough as an old sagebrush root, but I don't think he was mageborn. If he was, I've certainly never seen him work anything resembling a spell." Which was true; as far as anyone could tell, the withered little mummy was totally illiterate and untaught, though he took a childlike joy in the spells of the younger mages. Most of the other wizards in the Corps tended to regard him as a curiosity, rather than an asset to the Corps. But Rudy had tried to keep up with the little fossil's untiring footsteps for seven days' hard slogging through the foul, flooded river valleys that lay between Gae and Renweth, and had come to the conclusion that not only did Kta neither eat nor sleep, but that he only sat down to rest at night out of consideration for the frailty of his companions.

Kara murmured, "Should one of us go back for him? Ingold would never forgive us if we lost..."

Her voice trailed off. Ingold and Kta materialized from the shadows behind them, Ingold whispering in an exasperated voice, "... and since you insisted upon including yourself in this expedition to begin with, the least you can do is accept my judgment as its leader."

"Ah?" the little hermit said, not at all concerned. He was hopping along at

Ingold's side with a birdlike gait, tiny and incredibly fragile-looking, like some worn macram6 made of rags.

"You have to admit you're too old for active fieldwork. I've permitted you to come this far, but you will not go down with us into the Nest."

The older man straightened his back as much as was possible and peered up at Ingold with bright little black eyes. "I will be unseen," he replied in his piping voice.

"I'm only concerned for your safety, Kta," Ingold insisted. "You know-"

The tiny creature rounded upon him, almost tripping him with the quickness of his movement, and jabbed a skinny pink forefinger up at him.