The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,68
All I want is to love her and to be happy. Why is it that all I've managed to do is comprehensively screw up her life and bring her nothing but pain and disgrace, excommunication and exile, and loss? Was Ingold right? Are mages born damned ?
"Aide, I'm sorry," Rudy said wretchedly. "I never meant for it to turn out this way."
She looked up at him, tears shining in eyes that looked almost black in the shadows. "It had nothing to do with you, Rudy," she murmured. "Really," she added, seeing the weary denial on his face. "Don't you see? It would have come to fighting between Alwir and myself whether I-I loved you or not. It's just that -I thought for so long that he cared for me." She shifted her position, the white brocade of her skirts polished by the firelight as they rippled down over the hearth bricks. She was fighting to keep her mouth steady. "He could be so kind to me in the old days, but maybe that was because he Knew I-I respond easily to kindness. I suppose he'd say Ingold knows that, too. I always thought he was a very contradictory person, but he's not. I-I'm only sorry you had to be caught in it, that it had to spoil something that was-that you-"
Rudy cried miserably, "Aide, nothing could hurt my love for you! Not time or distance or politics or the Void... Nothing."
For an instant neither of them moved, but only looked at each other, separated by the glow of the hearthlight, as one day the brighter light of the Void must stand between them. Then, with swift impatience, Rudy swung to his feet, crossed the light with his great shadow sprawling across the walls behind him, and dragged her to her feet and roughly into his embrace. She clung to him, her face buried in the rough fleece of his gaudily painted vest, her hands locked behind his back. He whispered desperately, "Aide, if I had a choice, I'd never leave you. I'd always be here."
She whispered back, "It doesn't matter. I'll love you no matter where you are or what becomes of you."
They clung to each other in the dim glory of the topaz light, as if they felt already the currents of their separate universes turning to drag them apart.
Then a deep, rusty voice intruded upon Rudy's consciousness. "My children?"
"You're all right!"
Ingold caught Alde by the shoulders, halting her impulsive rush to embrace him, and smiled into her flushed, anxious face. "Did you conceive that your brother would stab me the moment we were alone?"
"The way he looked, yes!" Rudy put in. "What-" His voice failed him, and he stood uncertainly, looking into his master's face. He swallowed, but still could not speak.
The wizard reached out gently and laid his hand upon Rudy's shoulder, warm and very strong. His eyes went from Rudy's face to Minalde's, a kind of wry sorrow in their deceptively bright blue depths. "Do you love each other so much, my children?"
Neither spoke, but Rudy's hand sought Aide's, the twined shadows of their fingers a closing knot in the firelight.
Hesitantly, Alde said, "If it were lawful..."
"If I- if I could stay..." Rudy stammered.
Ingold sighed. "Indeed." In the fitful lambence of the fire, his lined features looked sad and a little resigned. "I fear I had the temerity to point out to your brother, Minalde, that there are worse things than your permanent alliance to one who is forbidden by Church law and the code of the Council of Wizards to rule those who are not mageborn. And I reminded him that you are strong-willed and stubborn, and that you have, in fact, a power base among the outland chiefs. For a woman such as yourself, it is not inconceivable that at some future time, if driven to desperation, you might ally yourself to some landchief whose realms come only nominally under the sway of the Lord of the Keep of Dare. Your brother was neither pleased nor gracious-but he agreed with me."
"What?" Rudy whispered, after a long, uncomprehending silence. Then understanding penetrated to his brain, and a feeling like an electrical shock to all the cells in his body.
"My children," Ingold continued, "walk very carefully. You still flirt with scandal -perhaps you will do so all your lives. But, by the laws of the Realm, there is nothing illegal in your union, no matter that Alwir may have said..."