The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,81

out of the mud of Karst; and children, scorning the careful steps of their elders, sliding down the muddy snow, waving precious bits of honey candy in sticky fingers and shrieking like little birds.

On the edge of the warren of booths. Alde put a hand on Rudy's arm, halting him; the breath of the Feast, of honey and snow and pine and music, swirled over them from the meadow in a disturbing backwash of sound and smell. "Do you still believe that Dare of Renweth defeated the Dark with flame throwers?"

"Babe, I don't," Rudy said gently. "I've never really believed it, mostly because, while you recognized this, that, and the other thing around the Keep, you never recognized a flame thrower. I think the wizard-engineers were working on them as a defensive weapon when they disappeared and the labs were sealed up. But that doesn't mean that Alwir's plan won't succeed. If we can burn out the Nest- if we can cauterize the nurseries at its bottom-it will be enough for me and a damnsight more than Dare ever did."

"You're very serious about destroying the nurseries," she murmured, her eyes searching his, sober and worried.

"I was down there," Rudy said. "Yeah, I am."

The tug of the Feast overwhelmed Tir. He struggled in his mother's arms and declared insistently, "Andy! Andy!"

Aide caught the flailing little hand that grabbed her hair. "All right, you little wretch, I'll get you some candy." She looked back at Rudy, her face grave. "Why did the wizard-engineers vanish?" she asked softly. "What happened to them?"

Tir tugged impatiently at his mother's hair and cried, "Ad!" He pointed, as Tad the herdkid and a vast gaggle of the Keep orphans went skipping past. Since Tir's concealment among them, the orphans had accepted the heir of the Realm as one of themselves; even Winna, their guardian, had knitted Tir a little stocking cap, such as she had given to all the others as their gifts at the Feast. For his part, Tir was quite happy to be included in that mongrel gang, and Alde turned him over to them. A few moments later, they could be seen out on the meadow, engaged in a wild game of frisbee... It was shocking, Gil had once remarked, how much cultural pollution had been going on lately.

Hand in hand, Rudy and Alde plunged into the confusion of the Feast.

The joy of the Winter Feast was the renewal of life; even the terror of the Dark and the crumbling of civilization could not wholly eradicate the celebrations of the return of the midwinter sun. In the meadow that lay between the arms of the vast V of booths, a makeshift band was playing, surrounded by eternally shifting patterns of dancers moving ankle-deep in half-frozen slush. The air was bright with the voices of children and rank with smoke; Gil would have recognized the colorful medley as a scene straight from Breughel, but Rudy felt merely a kind of awed delight in such gay chaos. Among the booths themselves, a tangled latticework of shadows lay over the faces of those who wandered there, and a babble of voices cried whatever wares could be sold for whatever the market would bear.

Resources at the Keep were slim, but with forage parties making regular raids on all the ruined settlements of the flooded river valleys, some surprising articles had turned up. There was honey enough to make sufficient candy to sicken every child in the Keep; some dried fruits had been unearthed and small quantities of sweets. There was little wine, but Melantrys and her company of Guards had been stationed at the Keep for almost a year before the Dark had risen-enough time to make enormous amounts of Blue Ruin gin, which they were hawking in their own booth. The tangled warren of pine-bough booths boasted other entertainments as well; such as a wheel of fortune, under the auspices of Impie Stooft, the stout blond widow of the late unlamented Bendle Stooft. Blid, the Penambran Soothsayer, was telling fortunes, and Dakis the Minstrel was playing his lute.

Everyone in the Keep seemed to have turned out for the festivities- Penambrans, outlanders, and refugees from Gae and Karst. The Alketch soldiery kept to their own camp, by order of Commander Vair. Rudy had the suspicion that the disappearance of Ambassador Stiarth was more responsible for this than any consideration of peace between the allies. No sign of the missing Imperial Nephew had yet turned up, and Alwir, following