The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,91

chiaroscuro and glittered on the weapons of the firesquad. Far below him, Rudy could see that Ingold's drawn sword had begun to burn with a chill, white light of its own.

Though there was no sign of the Dark, he could feel the pressure of their minds, their power, and the haunting evil of their presence. He scanned the gnawed rock of the walls, smooth as glass below eye level, where millions of jostling bodies had polished it over uncounted years, rough and sparkling with stray glints of quartz above. It was unbroken by crack or fissure. They would not be attacked from above.

Would the Dark lie in wait for them, he wondered, in the huge cavern below the drop-off of the stair? Or would the Dark give way before them, luring them on, to circle around behind them in the uncharted mazes of the passages?

The grip of his flame thrower felt clammy in his hand, and he found himself wishing he'd spent the backbreaking hours that Gil had spent in learning to use a sword. Unless he planned to cut off the army's retreat by prematurely starting tires in the moss, he couldn't even use the damn thing until they were deep in the Nest. He cursed his stupidity. And still they descended.

Wind licked his cheek, startling him almost to death. A murmur went through the crowding ranks that hemmed him in. Sweat ran from the faces that looked suddenly gray in the hard, pitiless glare, and he heard the faint whispering rattle of weapons gripped in tightening hands. But of the Dark themselves there was no sign.

The tunnel walls widened before them. The stair abruptly ended. From the cavern below, a faint breeze soughed, thick with the harsh stink of the Nest. As the white light streamed forth, revealing the world that had been hidden since the founding of the Nests, Rudy heard the whisper of awe that wound back and back through the ranks on the stair behind. Pillars and chasms and hanging teeth of stone glistened wetly with acid and nacre; dark pools in the carpets of brown, rolling moss caught the light in hard onyx surfaces. The putrid air seemed to press into Rudy's skull, weighted with the malice of unseen watchers. But in all that shadowy vastness, nothing moved.

The sappers flung down their ladders, and the hollow booming rang like a cannon shot, the echoes dying slowly amid the mazes of stone. The vanguard hesitated, looking about into that horrible, alien realm. On the brink of the ladder, Ingold paused, the vagrant winds stirring at the heavy folds of his mantle, his sword glinting like lightning in his hand. Then Eldor strode forward, and his footfalls sounded, each as distinct as the tap of an iron bell, upon the separate rungs. The cynical amusement in his eyes as he gazed about him filled Rudy with chill terror.

Yet Rudy followed, as they all followed, stumbling in the crumbly mosses of the cavern floor. Against the darkness that seemed to crowd so thickly around them, Ingold's sword gleamed as he pointed the way toward the tunnels he and Rudy had taken in their earlier exploration of the Nest. The smell there was intolerable, fetid and sweet. Powder from the decaying mosses clogged Rudy's nostrils. In the open cavern, the magelight did not penetrate the darkness of the ceiling, but it threw horrible leaping shadows of the warriors among the knobbled pillars and across the inky pits of the floor.

In the descending tunnel, Rudy felt the awareness of the Dark, stronger and stronger, like a thin sound sawing its way through his skull. In the cavern beyond, it was worse. Blind, squeaking things fled before the light, their chittering echoing down the tunnels. In spite of the coolness of the air, Rudy's face was wet with sweat; he could see more sweat gleaming on the faces of the Guards packed so closely around him. As he stumbled over the soft wetness of the floor, he could feel and taste the malice of the Dark, pressing on him like the millions of tons of earth and rock above his head.

Ingold stopped in the black mouth of the next tunnel, swinging around as if startled by some noise or movement. At first Rudy thought that the old man's foxfire sword had begun to burn brighter. Then he realized that the soft, white magelight around them was dimming.

Alwir looked up into the shadows of the cavern ceiling. "Can we use the