The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,7

shame struggling in her taut face. She had been a good daughter of the Faith until the rainy night on the road from Karst when he had found his power- and they had become lovers.

Alwir grated, "That didn't prevent you from coming out to see how they had fared!"

The Bishop's dry voice was silky with menace. "It pays to count one's enemies, my lord Alwir."

There was silence on the steps, save for the rising whine of the icy wind in the trees. The Guards watched this confrontation uneasily. They had long grown used to the swift, vicious arguments between Bishop and Chancellor, but there was never any telling when one might suddenly escalate into civil war.

Then Alwir's eyebrow canted mockingly. "And do you count me so, my lady?"

"You?" The gray light slipped along the curve of her shaven skull as she looked him up and down, austere scorn in the curve of her delicate lips. "You care not whether you are numbered among the godly or the wicked, my lord, as long as you can command what you call your niceties of life. You would sup in Hell with the Devil, were the food good."

So saying, she turned in a swirl of scarlet and vanished into the darkness of the gate passage, her ringing footfalls dying away across the vast, empty spaces of the Aisle beyond toward the dark mazes where the Church kept unsleeping domain.

Aide whispered, "Rudy, I'm afraid of her."

Hidden by the folds of her heavy cloak, his hand pressed hers. Talk had surged up again around them. Two of the junior weatherwitches had been offering to send the coming snowstorm elsewhere until Saerlinn's body could be burned, and Thoth's harsh, academic voice was saying, "To do so is to presume upon the laws of the Cosmos that bid the winds blow where they will." There was some argument, but all of them, with the exception of Ingold and a withered little hermit named Kta, were terrified of the Scribe of Quo.

Under cover of the talk, Rudy said softly, "What can she do, babe? You're the Queen. Even if she knew about us- which she doesn't-we aren't doing anyone any harm."

"No," she murmured. But her fingers trembled in his.
Chapter Two
"Ingold?"

Gil paused in the narrow doorway, all but invisible in the harlequin shadows that spangled the room. One of the other mages, the wizened little guru Kta, had told her that he was here, in a tiny chamber hidden deep within the secret levels of the Keep-the subterranean levels of whose very existence nine Keep dwellers out often were ignorant. Looking into the room, Gil saw that it was a miniature version of the "observation chamber" up on the second level, in whose stone and crystal table Rudy had once seen the possessed Archmage from afar.

Ingold was sitting on the edge of the circular, black stone table, looking into the changeable brightness that flowed upward from its heart. He raised his head at the sound of her voice, his face checkered with light and shadow; then he held out his hand to her, and the white light faded.

"I was on the point of sending for you," he said quietly as she took a seat on the table's edge beside him. Then, seeing the tautness of her mouth and the way her long, hilt-blistered fingers fidgeted with the buckle of her sword belt, he asked, "What is it, my dear?"

"Is it true what Rudy said?" she demanded. "That you're going to lead the reconnaissance to Gae?"

For a moment he studied her in silence. It seemed to Gil that, as the cold brightness of the light faded, the lines of his battered face deepened momentarily. "After Saerlinn's death, I am the only one who can lead it," he replied.

She cried in despair, "You're going to be killed!"

At that the blue eyes lightened. Ingold's smile was a curious thing, for it transformed him as sunlight could transform a Highland landscape, making what was grim and angular suddenly young and wild. "You wound me, Gil," he chided. "My very own cloaking-spell..."

"This isn't a joking matter." In Gil, concern for others had always taken the form of anger. Her voice was rough and harsh as she spoke. "The Dark Ones took Lohiro, and he was the goddam Archmage."

"Lohiro went to them willingly," pointed out the man who had loved the Archmage as a son. Against the chill, shifting luminosity of the crystal's light, the scar he'd taken in killing Lohiro stood out jaggedly raw