The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,24

sequitur.

"Then don't ask me about what I saw in the nurseries."

He waited for a moment while she thought that one through. She made a dreadful, stifled noise in her throat and relapsed into sickened silence.
Chapter Four
"It scarcely matters when they return, my lord Chancellor," Bishop Govannin said quietly, looking across the laced fingers of her white, bony hands. "In some ways it might be better if they never did."

Chancellor Alwir did not turn his head; but, from where she sat on the corner of the barracks hearth, Gil could see the white gleam of the glowstones dart across his brocaded shoulders as his muscles stiffened. On the other side of the hearth, the captain of the new-formed firesquad, Melantrys, stopped in the midst of her exposition of flame throwers to a group of her fellow Guards. At the room's long, central table, Minalde, who had been talking with the Keep's other Bishop, the lanky, ragged leader of the Penambran refugees, turned her head sharply. Conversation in the main room of the Guards' barracks was suddenly stilled.

Govannin continued with silky malice. "You cannot pretend that the powers that rule the Empire of Alketch will agree to lend their might to an endeavor led and counseled by wizards."

Slowly and deliberately, Alwir regarded the prelate where she sat in the room's single, carved armchair, with her white hands linked before her and the hearth fires dancing in the purple depths of her episcopal ring. "Ingold Inglorion, my lady," he declared quietly, "neither leads nor counsels in this fortress. I have appointed him chief of the Wizards' Corps, since that is where his talents lie. And I might point out to you that the Church has yet to produce either reconnaissance, protection, or weapons to aid us against the Dark."

Govannin's chin went up. "And of what merit is any wizard's work against the salvation of souls?"

"You know more about the salvation of our souls than I, my lady," Melantrys said in her low, sweet voice. "But these devices are going to be the salvation of our hides, and no mistake." Her small, dainty hand caressed the looping rigs of wire and tubing that festooned the flame thrower's glass bubbles. She shook back her barley-gold hair. Under soot-black, impossibly long lashes, her eyes were as pitiless as a hawk's. Rudy had left two rifle-sized flame throwers with Melantrys, with instructions to organize the firesquad among those born with the lesser magical powers capable of wielding the weapons. The lovely captain had taken him at his word. "The troops of Alketch won't quibble with magic on those terms," she added.

"The ignorant won't," the Bishop replied softly. "The godless won't. But ignorant and godless warriors march in all armies. Sometimes they even command them."

Alwir swung around, bristling, and met only that close-lipped, reptilian smile. With determined cheerfulness, he said, "Surely it would be flying in the face of providence to reject weapons that have come down to us, miraculously preserved, from the Times Before. Exactly how Dare of Renweth's forces defeated the Dark Ones and drove them back underground is a secret regrettably lost to us, for the last scion of his House is an infant, and Tir's father perished in the ruins of Gae. But I am convinced that Dare used weaponry of this kind-and as such, he must have had a trained corps of firebringers to wield them. Their success may be gauged by the centuries of respite humankind had from the Dark."

The Bishop's ivory fingers flicked. "Wizards' work," she snorted disdainfully. "Work that fouls the hands of any who touch it, your precious Dare of Renweth along with the rest." She cast a scornful glance across at Bektis, who sat with the amber colors of the hearth fire gleaming in the white silk of his beard, gravely examining a second flame thrower at the other end of the table. In the middle of the table, the Guards' Commander Janus and the handful of poker players around him were keeping a wary eye on which way the muzzle was pointing.

Alwir's smile remained resolutely pinned to his mouth. "I think we have heard enough of wizards for one evening, my lady Bishop."

"You will hear enough and more than enough when the representatives of the Lord of Alketch arrive." Her bitter eyes were like starlight on oily black water. "The Emperor of Alketch is a man of true faith."

"He's a priest-ridden bigot who had his own first wife burned for a witch," the Penambran Bishop snapped, looking