The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,18

"Always this concern for others' safety," he accused shrilly, "whether they wish to hold safe or not."

"You know you couldn't fight your way out of a trap," Ingold told him gently.

"Neither could you, for all your skill with that fearsome meatchopper you carry."

Ingold looked miffed, and Kta turned and hobbled ahead, toward the vast, broken doorway that opened into the darkness of the vaults. As he clambered up the weed-choked rubble of stone and shattered bronze, he half-turned and flung smugly over his shoulder, "And it is not me whom the Dark Ones pursue from one end of the world to the other."

Ingold opened his mouth to retort, but Kta was gone, hopping calmly into the terrible shadows below. Rudy and Kara fell into step beside Ingold as he hurried to catch up with Kta, where he waited in that anteroom of Hell. Rudy said softly as they passed into the clustered shadows of the vault doors, "He's got you there." It was the first time he'd ever seen Ingold lose an argument with anyone.

The wizard glanced over at him sharply. "Nonsense," he snapped. "He's too old to undertake the exploration of the Nest with us and too stubborn to admit it."

And you love him too much , Rudy thought, to want to see him killed trying . But he wisely refrained from tackling the issue of stubbornness with Ingold and walked after him in silence through the wan, dappled gray ness of the broken upper levels.

Here the ruin was greater, as if this semisubterrene antechamber to the vaults had been transformed into a kind of borderland of darkness. The vines here grew thicker, festooning the burned rafters in impenetrable curtains, insolently forcing apart the very stones of the walls. Darkness seemed to lurk in every corner; the walls and floor had a slimy glitter, and the fetid stink of netherworld vegetation clogged in the nostrils and collected like a film on the tongue. Rudy found himself prey to a growing uneasiness, a feeling of being snared; the vines and the paving-stones they had tilted seemed to snag at his feet deliberately. He wondered how quickly a man could run from this place.

"There," Ingold said quietly. Half-hidden by the mats of vegetation, another doorway gaped, black and terrible, over a bone-littered threshold. "That leads down to the lower vaults, where we will find the stairway to the Darkness itself. You all know the spell that will cloak you against the awareness of the Dark-" He vouchsafed not a glance at Kta. "-but remember also that you must use a double spell and avoid likewise the notice of their herds. Also," he went on, glancing sharply from Rudy's face to Kara's, "we must not let ourselves be seen by any human prisoners. The Dark have been taking prisoners from the beginning of their rising. It is not our business to free them, no matter how much compassion we may feel. To do so would jeopardize not only our mission but also our lives. There is just so much that a cloaking-spell will cover; if we do anything to bring ourselves to the attention of the Dark, we are lost."

Easy for you to tell us that , Rudy thought as he followed the dark, cloaked form down the red porphyry stairs that led to the vault. None of us knew Gae. You're the only one likely to see anyone you know .

Afterward, he read the wax tablets he had sketched with the maps of the Nest, registering the various tunnels and caverns he had wandered through, and what he saw surprised him, for he did not remember most of them singly. The greater part of his memories of the Nest he forced down below the levels of consciousness, only to have them surface, like bloated corpses from black waters, in his dreams. The hours he spent below the ground had a surreal quality; in that unending night, time became meaningless. Terror, shock, and disgust further clouded his sense of the passage of hours. He lost even his own sense of self, for he walked hidden in his wreaths of illusion, invisible to all around him.

After they parted in the topmost cavern with an agreement and a common spell to mark the limits of their time, he walked alone, like a ghost haunting a world as alien and incomprehensible as it was revolting and horrifying. It was a world of darkness, of slimy moisture and ever-present, hideous danger, a world whose existence he