Barbara Hambly - 03 The Armies of Daylight

"Be silent!"

"And you know yourself that it's no more against civil law to be a wizard than it is to be an actor..."

He barely saw the finger that Govannin lifted. But he heard the heavy stride of the Red Monk behind him and whirled to take the stunning blow from a leaded spear butt across the side of his jaw and neck instead of on the back of his skull.

He was only vaguely aware of falling through oceans of roaring blackness to the floor.

For a long moment, the uproar in the room seemed to come to his ears from some vast distance, blurred by the buzzing murk that appeared to surround him. Distantly, he saw Brother Wend's face behind Govannin's shoulder, rigid and white, as if he were going to be sick. Dame Nan's screeching voice rose, screaming accusations of perversions that he had never imagined possible. Then he heard the sound of booted feet scuffling, and blows, and Kara's voice crying, " Don't ! Please, she's only an old woman!" Bektis' whining and other sounds faded unidentifiably back along an endless corridor of muzzy pain.

Sometime later he heard Govannin's voice, spitefully triumphant, reading the formal sentence into a silence broken by Kara's muffled sobs. He felt the stickiness of blood all along the side of his face and tasted dust on his lips. As the Bishop droned on, he wondered why she bothered, unless it was to get back at someone who wasn't even there-someone who was perhaps long dead. Through the ache in his head and the growing nausea, he thought he heard the words "sentence of death" pronounced, but could not be sure. His consciousness was beginning to fade again.

Other footsteps approached from outside the door. Rudy heard the soft, measured tread of scores of feet and the muted clink of chain mail. The heightened senses of a wizard that operated to a degree even in the null spaces of that terrible room told him that there roust have been over twenty of them, and he wondered with a weary disinterest why they thought they would need so many. Then the door was thrown open, and the torchlight from outside was mingled with the white brightness of the glows tones carried by the Guards of

Gae.

Eldor Andarion, High King of Darwath and Lord of the Keep of Dare, stood silhouetted in the doorway.

A sudden, hideous silence fell upon the room. Though the movement brought the sour taste of sickness to his mouth, Rudy crawled to a sitting position, and his heart quickened with fear at the sight of the King.

"My lady." The King's voice was shrill, edged by the cracked suggestion of suppressed screams.

The white light pouring into the shadows of the Bishop's cowl outlined high, hard cheekbones and threw into prominence the sudden blackness of the grooves that bracketed the full, ungiving lips. "My lord King," she greeted him stiffly.

Eldor turned his head, scanning the room, taking in every detail of that chill, hushed tribunal. The light of the glow-stones caught the sheen of the black leather mask, puckered grotesquely with the draw of his breath. Behind the eye slits lay only a horrible, enigmatic darkness.

"My lady Queen tells me that you hold court."

Rudy bowed his head, weak with sudden relief. Trust Gil , he thought, to know to whom to go and what to say .

The rasping voice went on. "It seems that the invitation that you must surely have sent to do capital justice in my own Realm has miscarried, for I received none."

Govannin raised her head, her words bitter and harsh. "Since the days of your grandfather Dorilagos, it has been given to the Church to do its own justice."

Eldor linked his hands behind his back, the scarred mess of the left winding like some red, knobby growth around the strong, slender whiteness of the right. The mask rippled as his head turned, pulsing slightly as he spoke again. "Are these, then, the Church's own?"

"They are heretics," Pinard's deep voice replied, "as you know, my lord. They are seducers of innocence. To have truck with them is to share their crime."

Rudy guessed dizzily that the words probably referred to Ingold's metaphysical seduction of Brother Wend, but he could see the King's broad, flat shoulders stiffen and he felt the mad gaze brush him like the tip of a soldering iron.

Govannin went on slowly. "This is a new age, my lord King. The hope of salvation through wizardry has perished, and with it many good warriors of this Keep. The might of the Church shall work for the salvation of those who are left, whether they will it or no. We will not be stopped from this."

The shrill edge of Eldor's voice cut the air like a flint knife. "Nor will I have the Church passing sentence of death or of anything else without my knowledge, my lady Bishop. However many warriors you may have been lent by the Emperor of Alketch, however much he would like to establish his rule and his pet Inquisition in the North, I am still the Lord of the Keep of Dare, and justice and the power of life and death are mine and mine only. Whoso does not recognize that power in me is a traitor to me, to the Keep, and to humankind. Do you understand?"

Within her cowl, the Bishop's face was white and rigid with fury. She spat the words at him. "Do you, then, ally yourself with these-traitors? Traitors to God and to humankind, whose defenses they have murdered-and to you?"

"My lady," Eldor said softly, "to whom I ally myself and why I choose to do the justice that I do are none of your concern."

"They are my concern where they touch the Church!" she shrieked.

"But as these are all excommunicates, they are outside the realm of the Church entirely, are they not?"

He might be mad , Rudy thought, but you get him into the kind of Church-State hassle that Gil seems to understand so well, and he can handle himself better than a sane Alwir ever did .

"Don't chop logic with me, my lord!" She strode forward, and for all her small size, against the gold haze of the torches, she seemed suddenly taller, a dark, thin spider in an aura of flame, holding the center of a steel web of Faith that stretched throughout the Keep. "You are master of their bodies and their lives, but I am the master of their souls. I have said that these here are damned and have passed sentence of death upon them. Will you go against that and let them free to do what evil they will? It is because of their doing, my lord, that you wear a mask today."

The silence that followed these words was so long, so intense, that Rudy could have sworn that everyone in the room could hear the hammering of his heart. He sensed Eldor's gaze upon him again and his soul twisted, like a beetle trapped under the concentrated glare of a burning glass. He felt that his guilt stood out all over him, like the sweat that trickled down his face. The other mages watched them from the shadows as if frozen, knowing that whatever happened, their fate would be tangled with his.

The shifting of Eldor's eyes was like the removal of a heated needle from a nerve point.

"You have passed sentence upon them, my lady," the King said, and the jewels on his sword hilt and the gold embroidery on his breast glittered like fire in his sudden movement. "But because of their healing, which has enabled me to be upon my feet today, I commute that sentence to banishment. Let the Guards take them to the head of the Pass at sunset tomorrow; and after that, let them go where they will, as long as none return ever to the Keep of Dare, under penalty of death. I have spoken."

He turned to go.

Govannin's voice jeered at him. "You mean because your lady wife pleaded for the lives of-wizards?"

The faceless head swung back. The hard, white gleam of a glowstone caught an answering glint from within the eyeholes. "Even so." He strode from the room.