The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,41

the Keep's mighty walls. She spoke of battles fought by the mages against the Dark, who would come sweeping down from the Nest in the Vale to the north, of freezing nights torn by the fire and lightning of these combats, of hopelessness and terror, and of cold.

"The Keep had to be built," she said quietly, staring into the darkness of that shadowy room hidden at the heart of the ancient fortress. "Everything was sacrificed to it-fuel, power, energy, magic. It was a cold and bitter winter. The Dark attacked us, night after night, killing or carrying off prisoners alive." She paused, her lips pressed tight to keep them from trembling and her eyes wide with remembered horrors.

"And then?" Ingold's voice was little more than a breath in that still, dark room. The cold light fragmented his lined face into chips of brightness and darkness. As he leaned forward, his moving shadow woke a single blink of brightness from the gray crystal set in the heart of the stone table. "Tell me, Minalde. What means, what weapon, did Dare of Renweth use to combat the Dark? How did he go against them?"

She sat still for a moment, staring into the darkness. Then her eyes widened, until it seemed that only the black pupils showed, dilated within a thin ring of indigo. She shut her eyes and began to weep, deep, heaving sobs that racked her body like the pains of childbirth.

Rudy sprang to his feet with a startled cry. Ingold waved him back and gathered the weeping girl into his arms, stroking the dark, braided head that he held pressed to his shoulder and murmuring words of comfort. Her sobbing quieted but did not stop. The wizard continued to murmur to her, rocking her like a child, and Rudy sensed the slow withdrawal of the spells that had filled the room. The air seemed to change. The scent, the feel, of power dissipated and the dark aura slipped away until Ingold was nothing but a ragged old vagabond, comforting a frightened girl.

Finally Alde sat up a little, her face blotched and swollen. From somewhere about his person, Ingold produced a clean handkerchief to give her.

"Are you all right?" he asked her kindly.

She nodded, her hands still shaking from the violence of her tears, and blew her nose comprehensively. "Why was I crying?" she whispered.

He brushed the wet tendrils of hair back from her face, a father's gesture. "You don't remember?"

She shook her head. Rudy put a gentle hand on her shoulder; her fingers slid around his, and she looked up at him with a wan smile. "Did you-did you learn what you were looking for?"

"We have learned some things of value," the wizard replied after a moment. "Something of the founding of the Keep." He frowned and got to his feet, helping Alde up with a strong, gentle hand. The soft glimmer of the witchlight in the room coalesced into a floating shred of ball lightning, which drifted out the door before them, showing their dusty route through the whispering darkness of the dry gardens.

"But nothing of how humankind defeated the Dark?"

In the bobbing blue light, Ingold's face seemed suddenly harsh. He said quietly, "Perhaps more than we know."

Minalde's experience with forbidden magic yielded other fruits than that ambiguous dread. In her trance she had spoken of caves, where the refugees from the realms in the valleys had lived through that first brutal winter, during the construction of the Keep itself. "And whereas we cannot, of course, tell Alwir how we came to learn of their existence," Ingold said as they returned to the Corps common room, "considering the border war that has been carried on for generations between Gettlesand and Alketch, were Rudy and I to 'discover' these caves, I think things could be much more peaceable in the Keep when the Army of the South arrives."

"The caves would have to be fortified, wouldn't they?" Gil mused, stirring the fire to life and prowling into the dark kitchen in quest of bread and cheese.

"They must have been, if the refugees survived in them until spring." Ingold held out his hands to the warmth of the blaze, the saffron light winking off the brass of his belt buckle and the hilts of sword and dagger. "They would provide a protected camp for our allies-protected not only from the Dark Ones but, I think, from the White Raiders as well."

Rudy shivered. The idle threnody that he had begun to pluck from