The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,80

spite of all this-in spite of the fact that you know that the Dark are seeking you-will you still march north with the army?"

"Of course..." he began, and then looked more sharply up at her, catching some inflection in her voice. "... not," he finished. "Of course not."

Thoth's honey-colored glance flicked sideways, startled, but Ingold cut off his words. "No, I shall remain here at the Keep. Alwir has my permission to perish in his own chosen fashion, but after tonight, I see no reason to oblige the Dark by letting them strip my bones. Don't worry about me, my child. I shall be quite safe."

Gil nodded. "I'm glad to hear it," she said. "Even though it will make things rougher for the rest of us when we march on the Nest."

"There's no need for you to endanger your life!" he retorted sharply.

"Oh, come on, Ingold, you can't expect me to leave on the eve of an invasion without knowing how it will turn out."

"I certainly can, particularly when you know better than anyone else that it is most likely to turn out, as you say, with you dead. You know how little chance there is..."

"I know how little chance there is," she told him maliciously, "if you're staying at the Keep. The Guards will need every sword."

She intercepted a startled look from Rudy, to whom this plan was news. It was, in fact, news to her.

A dangerous glitter of annoyance shone in Ingold's eyes, which Gil met with an air of mild defiance, daring him to contradict his own lie.

More quietly, she went on. "It was you who taught me not to forsake those I love, even though their cause might be lost."

He regarded her for a long moment, at a loss for once in his life for a retort. His hands, still closed around hers, tightened slightly; had it not been both their lives at stake in this joust of wills, she could almost have laughed at the emotions warring in his face.

Then he said, "Has anyone ever told you how unbecoming it is for the young to outwit their elders?"

Gil shook her head, her eyes wide, as innocent of guile as a schoolgirl's. "No, sir."

He snorted. "Consider yourself told."

"Yes, sir."

"Now go to bed. And, Gil..."

She paused in the doorway, turning to see him half-risen from his chair, edged in the reflected amber of the hearthlight as if with a lingering of his earlier searing power. Behind him, all was darkness, but for the oily sparkle of Rudy's flame thrower on the table and the shimmering twinkle of the harp strings in the corner of the hearth.

"You never needed me to teach you that kind of loyalty, Gil."

"I needed you in order to understand it."

She turned and strode quickly into the darkness, feeling exhausted, lightheaded, and yet curiously at peace.

"Did Gil really mean it?" Alde hugged her black fur cloak more tightly about her; though the sun shone, pale and distant, for the first time in many weeks, the air was icy cold. She and Rudy came out of the gate passage into the open and moved down the steps, jostled by the crowds around them. From the jumbled warren of booths made of pine boughs and ragged, colored awnings that stretched along two sides of the meadow, a skiff of freezing wind carried voices and music.

"Of course she meant it." Rudy looked over at Alde in surprise.

"But she might be killed."

The path leading down to the meadow was slushy, trampled already by the crowds that had been taking that way since dawn. Rudy put a steadying arm around Aide's shoulders. Tir, wrapped up like a little black and white cabbage and tucked within her cloak, blinked about him with wide, jewel-blue eyes and gurgled happily at the noise and confusion below.

"I didn't understand all of what she said last night," Rudy went on, "but she's right about one thing. She couldn't leave without knowing if her friends were going to live or die."

"No," Alde agreed quietly. "But she's the one who wrote that report. She knows better than anyone that humankind never defeated the Dark. She knows how hopeless it is."

"That's a helluva thing to say to the man who invented our side's secret weapon," Rudy declared in mock indignation.

The path was narrow; they brushed elbows with others descending around them: Guards in threadbare black uniforms and Tirkenson's rangers in sheepskin boots; women in rainbow skirts like those of peasants, their hair twined with jewels they'd picked