The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,48

the walls of that narrow room.

This isn't how it's supposed to be , she told herself numbly. We were supposed to find the ancient records of the Times

Before, and there it would be in black and white or in this case in living color - the Answer. How to Demolish Dark Ones. (See: Secret Weapons, Specs. Appendix A.)

But of course that's stupid. When the Dark Ones hit, civilization probably lost all capability of making record crystals. There won't be any of these made after the coming of the Dark.

She pressed her hands to her head, her fingers tangling in her coarse, unruly hair, her palms cold against her scalp. Why do I care ? she wondered, rather rhetorically, for she knew perfectly well why she cared. I'm going to be leaving this bloody universe to its own devices in a little under ten days, and the whole thing should be nothing to me .

But the thought of leaving, rather than bringing her joy as it once had done, stabbed her with nostalgia and a kind of hurtful, ambiguous grief. She fought a weak longing to bury her face in her arms and weep. Instead, she picked up a stick of charcoal, marked the number 14 on the bottom of the latest crystal, and etched on her tablet, "14-relig. crmny- Gae?"

Hard work is the novocaine of the soul.

"Spook?"

She looked up to see Rudy silhouetted against the darkness of the doorway. He hesitated in the narrow aperture, his Aztec cheekbones and broken nose thrown into curious, craggy shadows by the pallid light of the glowstone, his coarse, homespun shirt sleeves pale against his sheepskin vest. In a fit of annoyance against the multiple layerings of shin, tunic, breeches, surcoat, doublet, and cloak, Rudy had recently reconstructed a sort of ski vest for himself that would keep him warm but leave his arms free for work in the labs. In a reminiscence of his old Pachuco days, he'd painted on its back his private omen, a child's hand clutching a flowering branch, barbaric yet strangely beautiful, in a circle of stars.

"Did you- did you find anything?" he asked hesitantly.

For an answer, Gil flung her stylus against the opposite wall. "Nothing," she whispered. "Bloody nothing. There wasn't one of these things made after the coming of the Dark."

Rudy was silent, He, too, had expected to find the answer cross-indexed under World. Saving of .

"Christ, Rudy, what are we going to do?"

"Do?" His voice was suddenly bitter and grating. "We're going to get the hell out of here before the ax falls. We meant to do that once, remember?"

"And never know?" she asked.

He closed his eyes, fighting pain with cynicism, the only weapon he had ever had. "And never know," he affirmed quietly.
Chapter Seven
The booming of kettledrums echoed like thunder against the ice-pure silence of the Vale of Renweth. Above it, like the thin cry of wind, Gil could distinguish the high, mellow sweetness of horns.

It seemed to her that every man, woman, and child in the Keep was gathered before those black walls, carpeting the hill of execution with its sinister, chain-hung pillars and blackening the snow of the lower meadow. A shifting lake of humanity spread out beyond the lines of the Guards, the ranked masses of the scarlet troops of Alwir's private corps, the Church regiments, and the long, disorderly row of the Gettlesand rangers. Now and then gusts of talk would swell over that close-packed, uneasy body and spread like wind ripples to its edges-rumor, speculation, and fears. Only at the end of the Guards' rank, where Gil stood on the lowest step of the Keep, was there silence, centered upon the Guards' burly Commander Janus and the old man who sat on the ground at his feet.

At length Ingold stood up and put away the yellowish crystal into whose depths he had been peering. "I make their numbers some three thousand," he said, brushing the snow from his robe.

Janus did some rapid calculation in his head. "We've over half that strength here of fighting men, not counting volunteers. Even with the flame throwers, it will be a near thing."

To that Ingold did not reply.

The drums boomed louder, an insistent, throbbing rhythm that seemed to engulf flesh and bone, and someone in the lower meadows cried out as the first glittering ranks of the Army of Alketch broke through the trees.

Except for the small corps of halberdiers, the Army of the South was composed solely of men; an Imperial Army, gleaned