The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,32

Gil pushed aside the glue pot and four of the odd, crystal-gray polyhedrons that they had found in such numbers in the deserted lab levels and perched herself on the edge of the workbench, her feet in their scarred old boots dangling above the floor. She picked up one of the polyhedrons and angled its frostlike facets to the ball of witchlight that floated over Rudy's head. "You ever find out what these were good for?"

"Sure," Rudy said cheerfully. He daubed some glue on one of the hand-whittled gunstocks, fitted a glass bubble- one of the firing chambers they had found in a deserted storeroom-to the top, and used three of the crystal polyhedrons to prop the whole thing delicately together while the glue dried.

"But what is this-hypnosis?" Alde looked up from her corner of the lab, nearest the brazier that warmed the room. She looked very domestic, with gold embroidery scissors glinting in her hands and rags piled in her lap, which she had been snipping into long strips, to be later painted with glue to make sticky tape. Prince Altir Endorion, last scion of the House of Dare, was solemnly mummifying himself at her feet.

"It's kind of like being put to sleep," Gil began, and Rudy shook his head.

"No," he contradicted quietly. "A girl I knew did age-regression therapy-she said you aren't asleep. It's like- like all your concentration is on the hypnotist's voice. You relax to a point where your mind is open to suggestion. Anything sounds reasonable." He glanced from the wizard to Aide. "And it can be used to uncover things that have been forgotten."

"It sounds like gnodyrr ," Ingold mused, setting down the slightly egg-shaped firing chamber he had been examining and regarding the three young people with thoughtful, half-shut eyes. " Gnodyrr is a type of spell that relaxes and opens the subject's mind-and it is done primarily with the voice."

"Have you done it?" Gil asked.

"Of course."

"Would there be someone else here who could work such a spell on you? Because that's the way we could find out what it is that you have forgotten-the key to the defeat of the Dark. Would Thoth be able to do it?"

The wizard's smile widened. "Oh, I don't think so," he said, his eyes beginning to twinkle impishly. "Thoth would never speak to me again if I so much as suggested that he knew such things. Gnodyrr is categorized as black magic- forbidden magic. The teaching of it is punishable by death."

Aghast, Rudy gulped. "Why?"

There was a momentary silence, broken only by the faint throbbing of the pumps, hidden deep in the rock of the walls. Then Gil said, "Think about it."

"Yeah, but you can't get someone to do something he knows is wrong under hypnosis," Rudy argued. "That's been proven."

"But we're not talking about hypnosis," she pointed out quietly. "We're talking about magic- gnodyrr ."

Rudy was silent. He knew the power of Ingold's flawed velvet voice, the voice that could make all things seem possible, logical-even necessary. In the dusky laboratory, the witchlight that wavered over Ingold's head seemed to halo them both in disturbing brightness-this thin, dark-haired girl in her patched black uniform, sitting on the workbench among the confusion of crystal and steel, and the old man who stood beside her, the sleeves of his pale robe rolled up over his scarred forearms. Now that Rudy thought of it, he wouldn't have been entirely willing to bet that Ingold couldn't get her to do murder, cold sober and in the rational light of day.

"And in any case," the old man went on, "I would hesitate to surrender the control of my mind to anyone, even to someone whom I trusted implicitly-Gil or Kta. I have far too much power to take a risk of that kind, even for the best of causes. If for no other reason, mine are the spells that bind the gates of the Keep against the Dark. And as holder of Master-spells..."

"Master- spells?" Rudy frowned, reaching out with one foot to prevent Tir, who had grown bored with his cocoon, from seeking his fortune among the piled junk under the workbench.

"Certainly."

For an instant Rudy was conscious of what he had seen, one night in the depths of the desert-his own isolated soul, viewed through the bright sea-blue eyes that suddenly held his. Like an image made of crystal, there was nothing in his mind or spirit that the old man could not probe out, if he wanted. Ingold's thoughts,