The Armies of Daylight - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,99

than that-and to one in particular, a recurring horror that he had begun already to pray was only a dream.

In all that wretchedness and despair, the one thing that he clung to was the music of the harp Tiannin. He had salvaged the instrument from the ruins of Quo, the city that he had felt instinctively should have been his home; Dakis the Minstrel and Minalde had both taught him the rudiments of Tiannin's art.

Now, through the dark winter days, it was his only company, the magic of its music the only outlet for his longing and grief. For hours on end he played, sometimes straight through the long nights, his hands clumsily shaping the songs he had learned, or following their own inclinations into long, melancholy improvisations. He sensed, as he had always sensed, the presence of a crystalline beauty within the harp that lay far beyond his striving. The notes seemed to rise toward it, as flocks of marsh birds rose toward the sun at dawn. But because Ingold had once teased him about how badly he played, he was not aware of how close to that beauty he came. The other mages, some of the Guards, and those in the Keep who had their own losses to mourn in that bleak dead of winter often came to sit in some room of that thin-walled, half-deserted complex to hear those clean and shining strains.

It was thus that Gil found him, the night that the Church finally struck.

So engrossed was he in the shimmering sounds that he did not hear her swift feet in the hall. The first he knew of her presence was when the door was flung open, and she strode with light and terrible urgency into the room.

She paused, blinking in the darkness, but she was moving toward the bed where he sat by the time he had called a feather of light to the air above his head.

"What the-" he began.

She removed the harp from his startled hands. In the pale glow of the witchlight, her brows were two black slashes above eyes that were coolly impersonal. "I just got word," she informed him briefly. "All the Alketch troops up on the second level are being sent down here. Their orders are to put all the wizards under arrest."

Rudy gasped. " What ?" And then, rather incoherently, he protested, "It's the middle of the goddam night!"

She paused on her way back out the door, the harp tucked under her arm, its strings glimmering like quicksilver against the darkness of her voluminous surcoat. With cool scorn, she asked, "You think they'd pull a bust like this if there were likely to be witnesses?"

"But..."

She was gone, her black clothes mingling with the shadows. Rudy was still standing in the doorway of the cell when torchlight flooded the corridors, followed by voices, curses, and the clatter of boots. A squad of Alketch troopers turned the corner and barged toward the cell door-flat-faced, mahogany-dark men in scaled armor that glittered like an oiled rainbow in the light.

Confusion had slowed Rudy's reflexes. He slammed the door instants before they reached it and made a dash across the room for the flame thrower that was holstered beside the bed. The door was kicked open and men poured in, surrounding him before he reached his weapon; it occurred to him, as heavy hands slammed him against the wall, that he could have used a cloaking-spell instead.

His arms were twisted behind him, and he was searched, not gently; it came to him for the first time how civil and pleasant the San Bernardino cops had been.

"Listen..." he gasped-and collected a slap from a mailed hand that took his breath away.

He was jerked away from the wall, stifling a cry as his arms were all but wrenched from their sockets. Something sharp pricked his ribs, and someone said, "You make a noise, mage, and it will be the last one you ever make." A hot thread of blood trickled down his side.

They dragged him into the corridor, past the door of the commons. Dark figures passed back and forth across the flaring light of the hearth, their shadows huge on the walls. Firelight glittered on armor; the soldiers were smashing glowstones and record crystals, ripping to pieces Thoth's mathematical notes, and dumping books and phials of medicinal powders into the fire. He heard a groaning crash as one of them stamped his boot through Dakis the Minstrel's lute and realized belatedly why Gil had