The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,35

a Keepful of women and kids-an old Keep, which was half-torn-down way back in the old days and rebuilt as best we could. It's damn stout, but there's no magic in its walls, bar the spells old Ingold put on it five years back and what Kara and her mother could do before they got the summons to come here. If I'd left the place unmanned, I'd have come back to find it gutted, sure as the ice in the north."

"So you made the decision not to fulfill your vows to the High King..." Alwir began with a sneer.

"Dammit, I brought all I could!"

"And he has done more than any other landchief in the Realm," Ingold added quietly. "And more than any of the others will."

The Chancellor swung around, an unpleasant curl to his full lips. "And are you party to the counsels of such traitors, my lord wizard?"

"No, my lord." Ingold stepped aside, to give room to a couple of snow-covered brigands who were lugging a groundsheet piled high with sacks of provisions and fodder.

"But I and the other mages have scried in our crystals, north, south, and east. And neither from the Keeps of Harl Kinghead in the North, from the lands of the petty princes of the Eastern Woods, nor from the country of the landchief Degedna Marina have we seen any sign that any other landchief in the Realm is sending you the aid you requested."

"So." Alwir drew himself up, haughty and bitter, his sapphire-dark eyes flashing at this new evidence of the fractioning of the Realm. "All the more reason for my lord Tirkenson not to have stinted the duty that he owes to the Realm."

"An excommunicate such as the Lord of Gettlesand..." Govannin began in her thin, vicious voice.

"The Lord of Gettlesand is welcome, with all those whom he could bring." Minalde stepped forward quickly, holding out her hand, heedless of the dust that daubed the hems of her faded peasant skirt and liberally smutched the baby Prince in her arms. "In our time of need we could scarcely ask for a more loyal vassal."

Alwir looked down his nose at her dishevelment, but Tirkenson grinned, the frost glittering on his mustache and unshaven cheeks. The explosion that would have erupted in another instant between Chancellor, Bishop, and landchief faded like a rumble of thunder into the distance and dissipated under Aide's warm smile.

"It is hardly the time or place, my sister, to extend formal welcome to the leader of this-vast legion," Alwir said primly. "If it is true that he is the only landchief to answer our summons, then we shall meet in Council at sunset to determine the time and distribution of the upcoming reconquest of Gae. I trust," he added, his lips pinched, "that you will trouble to comb your hair for the occasion."

Turning on his heel, he strode off through the mob of ragged, gesticulating Gettlesand rangers that filled the Aisle and quickly blotted him from view.

Aide's face was crimson with anger and shame at his last remark. Tirkenson laid a gloved, comforting paw on her shoulder.

"He's put out that we're so few," he rumbled. "Don't trouble yourself over it, my lady. We're few enough and, unless they have found the means old Dare used to drive back the Dark, we're going to be hard put to it." He glanced down at her, his yellow-brown eyes sharp. "They haven't, have they?"

In a hushed voice. Alde said, "I don't know."

"My lord Chancellor's precious mages have devoted enough time to it," Govannin remarked spitefully, her coldly beautiful face disdainful in the restless, jerking shadows that surrounded them. "Yet they themselves seem to have doubts about their solutions." She rested her hands on the jeweled buckle of her sword belt in a gesture Rudy found reminiscent of Gil's; like a baleful eye, the amethyst of her episcopal ring flashed in the dimness.

"That reminds me," Tomec Tirkenson said suddenly. "I brought you another mage, Ingold." He raised his head, scanning the bustling confusion whose noise seemed to echo and re-echo from the black, featureless walls around them. Then he caught sight of someone- God knows how , Rudy thought, in that steamy chaos of snow-covered bodies -and yelled in his foghorn voice, "Wend! Wend ! Get over here, you little warlock!"

A young man emerged from the crowd and elbowed his way with surprising diffidence to the big landchief's side. Looking at the newcomer, Rudy realized with a start that it was, in fact, the same