Barbara Hambly - 03 The Armies of Daylight

Rudy felt blackness closing over him again and groped for the solidness of the floor to lean on. Instead, someone took his arm and helped him to his feet, and he briefly felt hard, bony hands gripping his elbow like claws. Blinking through a thickening haze, he recognized Gil-that cold, impersonal, frightening Gil, her black hair braided back from a face as thin as bone and as closed and forbidding as a sealed door. He tried to get his feet under him and couldn't feel the floor; his head throbbed with every jolt of his body as she half-dragged, half-carried him toward the dark arch of the door. As they passed over the threshold, he stumbled, as he had done when the Alketch troops had shoved him in. This time he could look down and see what had tripped him.

It was a pile of bricks. There were enough there, stacked to one side of the doorway, to fill it in three or four layers thick. Beside them, mortar glittered fresh and wet in the white light of the glowstones carried by the Guards.

The dream returned to Rudy, as it had haunted him time and again. But his fever gave it the clarity of hallucination, and he could not, as he had so often done, waken himself by screaming. His cries stifled as stillborn moans in his throat.

His dream was of darkness, thick as smoke, hot, damp, and clinging. He knew he dreamed of the Nest, for he could smell the wet, black moss and taste the powdery choke that came from the disintegrating patches of brown that spotted the leprous walls. He was deep, deeper than he had ever gone in waking exploration, and the black weight of the earth crushed down on his consciousness like a burden of hopeless grief with the knowledge that there was no escape.

No herds came here. Only the Dark covered the walls, ceiling, and floor in a squirming swarm of blackness. The cluttering scratch of their claws was like the faint, steady gnawing of rats at his nerves. He could see them, though there was no light to throw even the smallest gleam from those pulsing backs. And he could see what it was, stretched upon the rocks, that they swarmed over. Horribly, he could not see the man's face. But he recognized the hand, thick, and strong, and blunt-fingered, nicked with the old scars of swordsmanship, and he saw it grip the rocks as if in sudden agony.

He woke sobbing, drenched with terror-sweat. The room around him was pitch-black, but the darkness was familiar; the weight above him was only the weight of the Keep. His wizard's sight showed him his own cell in the Corps complex. He had a vague sense that he should not be there, but could not, for the moment, recall why. He could only lie there, crushed by the memory of an unspeakable horror, telling himself over and over again, Ingold is dead. He's dead. He's got to be dead .

And, like an answer, he heard the echo of that calm, scratchy voice, above the memory of the grasslands wind. I would know it if Lohiro were dead .

Rudy rolled his head back and forth on the pillow, trying to clear it of the sticky cobwebs of the dream. Ingold is dead , he told himself again, sweating, frightened, and desperately fighting a growing conviction that this was not entirely true.

Vaguely, he knew he had slept for a long time-days, by the weak hunger he felt and the scratchy growth of his beard. Cloudy images of voices and of people sitting near him swam like specters to his mind, then swirled away again like mist. He wondered if Eldor had changed his mind and if, when he got to his feet and tried to open the door, he would find nothing but a brick wall.

But that's stupid , he told himself tiredly. The walls of this cell are so thin I could damn near kick my way out .

He wondered what Eldor had said to Alde when she'd told him that the Inquisition was trying the wizards for heresy.

A dim, white gleam appeared under the door, and he recognized Gil's light, cautious tread. The gleam shifted; he heard the quick spatter of spilled water and realized that he was parched with thirst. He managed to sit up when she came in and took the cup she gave him. His head still ached, but the sickening dizziness had passed. The water tasted very cold to his dry mouth.

Gil regarded him with pale, disinterested eyes. "Think you'll live?"

"Are they placing bets in the barracks?"

"Five to seven against."

He fished clumsily in the pocket of his painted vest and found a few coppers. "Put these against." He sank back onto the rumpled pillow. "Where are the others?"

She seated herself casually at the foot of the bed. "About fifteen miles the far side of the Pass."

He sat up with a jerk, so quickly that the motion almost made him sick. "What?"

Cold as ice, her bony hand pressed him back. "You had a long nap, punk. Kara sat up with you most of yesterday, but she had to hit the road with the rest of them at sunset last night. You were in no shape to go anywhere. Neither Elder nor Alwir nor Govannin bothered to see the mages off, and if they were one short, Janus wasn't going to say anything about it."

Her bony fingers traced the fold of the blanket under which he lay-a gesture, Rudy thought, that she had picked up from Ingold. "Officially, Janus knows nothing about your being here," she went on, "but he did mention to me that he hoped any wizards who might have lingered would remember that if Eldor sees one, that order of banishment could just as easily get switched back to death."

Rudy nodded, the slight movement bringing on a pang of nausea. "Nobody will see me," he said faintly. "A cloaking-spell isn't invisibility; but, as long as I move quietly and don't call attention to myself, it should amount to the same thing. People might have the impression there's somebody else in the room, but they'll also have the impression it's somebody they know and that everything's okay. It should take care of me long enough for me to collect supplies and get out of here. The only person who could see me when I'm being quiet and moving slowly is another wizard, and that," he added bitterly, "doesn't seem to be much of a problem around here anymore."

The shadowy gleam of the glowstone Gil had set beside the door made her eyes look frost-colored as she turned them toward him. Her voice was neutral and uninflected. "Not anymore," she agreed.

He was silent for a moment. Then he whispered, "He did let them all go, then?"

"Oh, yes," she replied calmly. "Govannin wasn't happy about it, but Janus kept an eye on them, as much to make sure they left safely as for anything else. I was with the Guards who escorted them to the Pass. We left about two hours before sunset, actually; it's a long way to the top of the Pass. On the hill of execution across the road, Kta met us- the Inquisition's soldiers never caught him at all. It was a bitter climb," she said, still in that cool voice, "freezing cold, with the wind keening down off the rocks like the screaming of the damned."

Rudy remembered that road-it was the way he has taken with Ingold, the first steps of the road that led to Quo. But Quo no longer existed; the ashes of its Archmage were long ago scattered by the wet winds of the sea. Only that black-walled Pass remained with the rocky, snow-covered road running through it, leading nowhere.

He closed his eyes, as if he could blot out the vast sensation of wretched exile that swamped him-first exile from his own world, and now from this one as well, as soon as he was strong enough to be on his feet and away.

The soft, colorless voice went on. "We stopped to rest- Kara's mother was about done in. The Red Monks roughed her up pretty badly. It didn't shut her up much. The things she said about Govannin would have made a construction worker squirm."

He clenched his teeth, remembering the struggle and Kara's voice begging mercy for her mother when she herself could have been beaten to death without a sound. "Damn them for turning her out," he whispered tiredly. "Even if she is a vicious old biddy. Besides," he added, "I kind of like her."