The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,57

sounds of the Corps HQ had sunk away into silence and sleep.

Otherwise, distant and muffled as the sound was, Gil would never have heard it. But it came to her, faint yet startling in its harsh violence-the sound of a man crying.

Gil sat for a moment, disquieted and almost ashamed. Like most unmarried women, she had never seen a man weep and she felt a horrible sense of eavesdropping, more shameful than if she had overheard the sounds of lovemaking. It wasn't inconceivable that someone of that enchanted rabble who occupied the surrounding cells would have the horrors and regrets of a destroyed home to mourn. And she had seen for herself the look that lurked behind the eyes of all those who had been down into the Nests.

But the despair and horror of that heartbroken sobbing drove her away, and she abandoned her research and her study to seek the silence of the common room. Such grief was none of her business. She knew that, if ever she were driven to weep as that man wept, she would sure as hell not like to think that she was being overheard.

It was almost pitch-dark in the common room. The muted flicker of writhing embers showed where the hearth lay, but it illuminated nothing. Gil stumbled against a chair, catching herself on its curved back, and spared a curse for wizards who saw so effortlessly in the dark.

The only other light in the room was the marshfire flicker of bluish light that outlined the curtain of Ingold's cubicle. As she approached it, she could hear the soft scratching of his pen.

"My dear." He held out his hands to her as she came in, the frayed brown mantle that he had draped shawlwise about his shoulders sliding down over the back of his intricately carved and much-mended chair. As always, his hands were warm; and as always, his touch seemed to transmit to her some of his buoyant strength. For a moment, he studied the marks of fatigue on her face, the bruised look to the eyelids, and the sharpness of that hard, delicate bone structure, but said nothing; he was too much a night owl himself to comment. But he cleared a place for her to sit in the confusion of the corner of his desk top and went to the narrow hearth to pour her some tea.

Gil looked down at the parchment upon which he was working. Spaghettilike in their intricacy, the tunnels and caverns of a map of the Nest writhed over the page. She looked up at the old man kneeling beside the hearth, the warm light seeming to shine through his extended hands. "You don't think Alwir's going to buy it, do you?"

Ingold glanced up. "Do you?"

Gil was shocked. "He has to," she protested. "I have proof-dammit, I have a truckload of proof! He can't just disregard it!"

The wizard got stiffly to his feet and came back to her, wraiths of steam curling around his face like mephitic smoke. "Perhaps not," he assented. "I hope not.

You see, I was not deceived by the Icefalcon's glib nonanswers. He was brought here by a band of White Raiders, and I suspect that band is still somewhere in the Vale. They'll know how many men depart for the Nest at Gae and they'll know how many return."

Gil sat looking up into his face for a moment-the flat, curiously shaped cheekbones and the determined chin outlined by the glow from the hearth. She felt, as she had often felt, that she had known that face forever.

"Ingold," she asked quietly, "why are the Dark Ones after you? I asked you that once before, when you left for Quo last autumn. I think you've found out the answer since then."

He evaded her eyes. "I don't know," he replied, his voice almost inaudible. "I used to think it was because of something that I knew. Now I fear it is because of what I am."

"And what's that?"

"The Archmage," he said in a colorless tone. "The holder of the Master-spells over the others."

Gil frowned, puzzled at the sudden wretchedness in his voice. "I don't understand."

"Good." Ingold smiled suddenly and laid a hand comfortingly over hers. "Good. And in any case, if it did come to an invasion, as a mage I would have a better chance than most to survive it. Moreover, if I did not accompany the army, my alternative would be to remain here at the Keep with the civilians, Govannin, and Inquisitor