Barbara Hambly - 03 The Armies of Daylight

Gil chuckled dryly. "She'll make out. It's Tomec Tirkenson I feel sorry for."

"Who? What?" He opened his eyes and blinked at her, confused by this non sequitur. "What the hell does it matter to Tomec Tirkenson?"

Her wry grin broadened without becoming any more relaxed. "Well, we reached the foot of the Pass, as I said, when the last light was going. Most of the Guards turned back; a couple of us stayed to bid the mages goodby, though none of us had any idea where they'd go. There was me, Seya, Melantrys, the Icefalcon, Gnift, and Janus. We'd smuggled them some food-they were turned out without rations, you know."

Rudy looked away. "Goddamnit," he whispered.

She shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Because about fifteen minutes later, when we were getting ready to leave, Kta pointed back down the road, and we could just see, coming through the woods, Tomec Tirkenson and his people-the whole caravan of them, all his troops, his horses, and what supplies he could browbeat out of Eldor. All of them were heading back to Tirkenson's Keeps in Gettlesand. He drew rein by us and sat looking down from the saddle for a long time at Kara, with the strangest expression on his face. Then he reached down and offered her his hand."

Something seemed to stir under the ice in Gil's eyes at that memory; the bitter, too-sensitive mouth relaxed. "He didn't look as if he thought she'd take it," she went on in a gentler tone. "But she did. Then he kissed her fingers and picked her up, to sit on his saddlebow, like that, in the curve of his arm. And he turned to one of his retainers and sort of growled, 'Get my mother-in-law a mule.' And, by God, they did, with Dame Nan gazing up at him with those wicked, sparkly eyes, as if she were looking forward to playing hell with him for the next forty years of her life.

"Then he said to the rest of them, "The Keeps in Gettlesand aren't as sure and strong as this, but for the likes of you and for a damned magelover excommunicate the likes of me, they're a damnsight safer. If you want it, you've a home there, until we're all devoured by the Dark.' And they rode off up the Pass, with Kara on Tirkenson's horse, Nan behind them on a mule, and the whole bobtail rabble of mages and Gettlesand cowboys following behind them, down into the West."

Rudy closed his eyes again, tasting the snow-winds and seeing in his mind the wintry gloom closing on the Pass, with the blown snow slowly covering the tracks as the last creak and jingle of harness faded. At least they survived , he thought. At least there was somewhere for them to go in this bitter, dying world .

"Did they ever find out what happened to Thoth?" he asked quietly.

Gil sighed. "I have a theory," she said, "about what happened to Thoth. You know Wend's gone back to the fold?"

Rudy nodded wearily. "He was at the trial in Govannin's suite."

"Don't judge him too harshly," Gil said. "She's been at him night and day since he came to the Keep-something that cost him all his peace of mind to begin with. It was only a matter of time until he broke. They had a big ceremony this afternoon-you were still sacked out like the proverbial log-sort of a formal exorcism of evil-minded people from the Keep. The Church was packed with people all up and down those little stairways and hanging chapels. And Brother Wend and Bektis formally renounced wizardry..."

"Bektis?"

"Wearing a hair shirt with ashes in his very beard," Gil mused reminiscently. "It's the first time I'd ever really seen a hair shirt. I understand now why they were considered such a penance in the Middle Ages."

"What is a hair shirt?"

"Basically, it's a tunic made of industrial-weight burlap."

Rudy writhed at the mere thought.

"Anyhow, Bektis pulled a sentence of bread and water and a hair shirt for the rest of his natural life and reassignment, in a menial capacity, to Alwir's household."

He looked up and caught the cynical glitter of her eyes. "Wonderful." He sighed. "So as soon as the stink dies down, Bektis gets his old job back."

"You got it," she agreed. "Maybe somebody's twigged to the fact that they may need a wizard around here later in the winter-if the Raiders should attack, for instance-and Govannin would rather have it be somebody like Bektis than someone as powerful as Thoth. Or maybe it's just a bribe to Alwir. I don't know. For the moment, Bektis is scrubbing floors." She shrugged disdainfully.

"And Wend?" The utter misery of the little priest's face came back to him as he had seen it above the candlelight in that dark, clamoring room.

Gil removed an invisible speck of dust from the frayed sleeve of her surcoat. "Wend was allowed to take a vow of lifelong solitary contemplation," she informed him in a colorless tone. "And was readmitted to the Church, in view of -'services rendered,' was how Govannin phrased it, I think."

Rudy was silent.

"You see, Thoth was a damn powerful mage," Gil continued in that same quiet, almost casual voice. "He was the only survivor of the Council of Wizards, and I guess he'd been one of the most powerful people on the Council. I'm told the only way to handle a wizard like that is to slip him a Mickey Finn and take care of him while he's asleep. And I don't think," she concluded, "that Thoth would have let anyone other than another mage that close to him. Wend was his student, too, in the arts of healing. He'd have had the opportunity."

For a time Rudy said nothing, and Gil folded her bony hands in silence. Faintly, the measured tread of the Alketch patrols in the halls came to him; the Alketch troops now garrisoned most of the Keep. He thought of Alwir and the hook-handed Commander Vair, but they had little meaning to him now. He felt crushingly weary, as if, like the tortured figure he had seen in his dreams, he lay beneath the rock weight of all earth and all darkness, without hope of rescue or chance of escape.

He glanced up at Gil again. Her lips were folded in a very slight, cynical smile; veiled behind fatigue-bruised lids, her gray eyes were cold and unsurprised by this sordid tale of treachery and tyranny. Rudy found himself thinking that she had become very much like Melantrys and the Icefalcon, as ruthless and impersonal as the edge of a sword.

Yet she'd put herself in danger to save the music of his harp.

He did not want to ask the next question, but knew that he could not bear not knowing. "And Aide?"

The long fingers pleated the edge of the blanket restlessly. "Eldor may not have both oars in the water," she said after a moment, "but he's smart enough to know that Alde wasn't pleading for the wizards' safety out of regard for Kara's mother's health. I knew it would backfire on her," she went on, her voice muffled as she turned her face from him, "but I literally couldn't think of any other way to stop the trial. The Church's high-handed use of power has been a sore point with Eldor all along. I was betting he'd let you go just to black Govannin's eye."

Rudy seized her hand impatiently. "What about Aide?"

The delicate nostrils flared with scorn. "What the hell did you expect?" she snapped. "He'll let her out eventually-he can't keep her a prisoner forever."

What the hell did I expect ? he wondered dully. He had known in his heart that she was Eldor's prisoner. I did this to her . And yet in the beginning it had all been so easy, had felt so right. From the first moment he had met Aide, that last golden afternoon at Karst, and had mistaken her for Tir's junior nursemaid, he had had no doubt that their love was right.

"We should never have started," he whispered softly, his bleak gaze shifting to Gil's face once more. "All I've done for her is screw up her life, and I wouldn't have hurt her for the world, Gil."

Gil shrugged and toyed with the hilt of her sword. "I don't suppose you could have hurt her," she observed, not meeting his eyes, "if she didn't love you-not that that's any excuse. But it just might be that loving you saved her life."