The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,28

hair. Sour, weary anger filled him as he realized that the blow had been deliberate, to punish him for speaking against the Chancellor's plans.

In a toneless voice, he said, "No, it doesn't." Turning on his heel, he strode away into darkness.

"Rudy!" The desperation in Aide's voice stopped him as he crossed the common room. Looking back, he saw that she had run after him, down shortcuts that only she and Gil could have found. Tears gleamed on her face, and the sight of them broke and drained the anger in him, leaving only grief and pity for her sake. He held out his arms to her without a word.

For a moment they could only hold each other in silence, her face buried in the damp, rough wool of his coatcollar. her scented hair tickling against his lips. Then they kissed, feverishly, as if trying to deny what they both knew to be true. The hot saltiness of her tears burned where they touched his chin.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "Aide, I'm sorry."

He felt her arms lock tighter about his body, felt through his grip the shuddering draw of her breath. He had not known her long, but already it seemed strange to him that he had ever known the feel of any other woman's body in his arms.

She shook her head. "No," she murmured. "Don't be sorry, Rudy-not for this." Her words were muffled against his chest.

In the hearth a log broke, and the sudden spurt of gold threw their shadows leaping on the opposite wall.

"It was always going to be temporary, wasn't it? And then it seemed as if we both forgot it. But I wanted to forget. It seemed that you'd been here forever- and would be-" She stopped, and against his chest he felt the determined tightening of her jaw and the stifled trembling of her ribs. Then she shook her head again, the red flickering of the ember light tipping her hair with carnelian. She swallowed hard. "This world was never your own. You have no choice, have you?"

"No," Rudy whispered bitterly. "No, I have no choice."

She let out her breath in a long, thick sigh and rested her forehead against his shoulder. "Then there's not much we can say, is there?" she murmured. "Sometimes. I think we never have the choice. That no one has the choice. How long do we have?"

His voice was almost inaudible against the fragrance of her hair. "Until the Winter Feast. After the Feast, the army will leave for Gae. And after..."

She shook her head, the soft skin of her temple gritting on his unshaven jaw. "There won't be any after," she said. "It was all fate, wasn't it? Fate that you came here, so you could discover how to make the flame throwers to use against the Dark. And after fate is done with you, you must return to your own world. Isn't that how the universe works?"

His arms tightened around her body, feeling the smallness of her bones through gauze and velvet and soft flesh. "Ingold's always saying there's no such thing as chance. But for Chrissake, why did fate decide it had to work out this way?"

She looked up at him, shaking back her hair; the front part was braided, the back fell in a loose cascade over his hands where they rested upon her waist. "It worked out this way because I would have begged it to," she whispered. "Rudy- better this little than nothing at all. I've been happier with you than I have ever been in my life. Do you know, you have spent more time with me between your journeyings with Ingold than Eldor ever did in the thirty months we were husband and wife? And I have never feared you, never felt helpless or stupid or like some gauche, stammering child in your presence. You've never expected me to be other than what I am..."

"What did Eldor expect you to be?"

"I don't know!" she cried. The words broke from her like long-pent floodwaters. "But it was in his eyes when he'd look at me and then look away. I gave him all that I was, but since it wasn't what he wanted, it was as if he didn't know, or didn't care, that it was everything. I was sixteen. I loved him. I worshipped him. If I had known you then..." She stumbled to a halt, her lashes beaded with tears like diamonds in the firelight.

Rudy bent his lips, kissing the glittering droplets.