Barbara Hambly - 03 The Armies of Daylight

Rudy slung the covers back where they had been. Outside the closed door, the Icefalcon's cool voice could be heard, turning away servants, clerks, and Guards who had been drawn by the commotion. Rudy tried to think, his mind clouded by the long exhaustion of that horrible night. "I think you'd better stay with Eldor, Gil," he said at last. "I'll see what kind of purgatives I can find in the commons and stop by the barracks on my way back here." He shivered, realizing for the first time how damp his own clothes were. He couldn't look much better than Gil did.

From the darkness of the hall came the sudden, muffled tread of many feet and the Icefalcon's light, warning voice. "It's Govannin!" he called, and Rudy groaned.

"Christ, that's all we need," he said. A hoarse, dry voice rapped out an order, and he heard the rattling of scabbards and mail. A moment later the door opened, and the Bishop of Gae stepped into the room.

Bitter, dark eyes under those graceful, curving brows studied him, like a gardener contemplating a snail. "So you returned, mage."

He stood up, conscious of the smarting of his bruises, the ache in his shoulders, and the sting of the life returning to his frostbitten fingers. The weariness of the eternal night seemed to be grained into the flesh of his body, but anger stirred in him, like a swig of fiery brandy. In a shaking voice he said, "I was told there was a man sick here, my lady."

She gave a single dry sniff of contemptuous laughter. "I should think he is the last man you would aid."

"Yeah, you would think so," Rudy said tiredly. "And considering he's tried to break your power over the people of the Keep, he might be the last man you would aid. But whatever else I am, I'm a wizard; and though we don't make any vows and we don't preach about what people ought to do, there's an understanding among wizards that we hold our power as a trust and we help whoever needs it, whether that person has just got done cursing us, or whether it would be more convenient for our love lives if he died, or whatever. Now, if you're not going to help me, lady, you get the hell out of my way."

Govannin glanced over her shoulder at the Red Monks who filled the doorway at her back. "Arrest him."

There was a thin metallic whine as Gil pulled her blade free of its scabbard, and the light of the glowstones sang along its edge. The Red Monks hesitated visibly.

Govannin's vulture eyes never shifted. "Arrest them both. Eldor's illness is a judgment upon a man who would choose to deal with magic and the work of wizards."

Rudy shouted, "For a lady who'd use the Rune of the Chain, you talk mighty big about magic!"

The monks, startled, looked curiously at their Bishop, and her flat black eyes narrowed dangerously. "Silence me this liar."

"Is he a liar?" a soft voice inquired from the corridor. The warm white light of the room reflected off a shaved skull in the darkness, and Govannin swung around, her lips growing tight with anger.

"What affair of yours is this, you peasant upstart?"

"Peasant or not," that gentle voice replied, "I am duly ordained and chosen Bishop of Penambra, and if you, my lady, have indeed tampered with a thing as God-cursed as the Rune of the Chain, it is fully within my powers, both sacerdotal and actual, to place you under arrest for heresy."

Maia of Penambra, followed by half a dozen of his ragged warriors, limped into the brightness of the room. In his shadow walked two others who were not warriors: a slender, dark-haired woman, the black smudges of exhaustion like bruises beneath her eyes; and a stocky young man, barefoot and shivering in a dust-streaked hair shirt, carrying a little bundle of medicines under his arm.

Even a few days ago, Rudy knew he would probably have thrown his arms around Alde and kissed her-not only for locating Brother Wend but for having learned enough of Gil's political savvy to get a military backup first. But now their eyes only met, and she turned hers away. Though he was bruised and aching in spirit as well as in body, Rudy understood. She had made up her mind, and there was far too much at stake now to confuse the issue. They each had a clear duty, though it would destroy forever whatever chance they might have had to rejoin their love.

Govannin's eyes flickered from one to the other in baffled hate, then to Brother Wend, who bent over Eldor's bed. "Heresy!" she jeered. "You talk of heresy to me, you ignorant butcher! What shall we say of a prelate who deals with mages? Or of a monk who has sworn himself to lifelong solitude, but who cannot wait three days before violating his vows?"

Brother Wend flinched at that, as if at the flick of a whip, but he did not look up from the sick man.

Maia turned back from helping Alde to a chair in the shadows of the hearth and replied calmly. "We shall say, my lady, that neither the prelate nor the monk can be proven to have tampered with black magic-as the Rune of the Chain, according to the unanimous ruling of the Bishops at the Council of Gae, undoubtedly is."

"All magic is the same!" she snarled at him furiously. "It is all the dealings of the Devil!"

"Not," the Bishop of Penambra said, "according to the Ecumenical Councils."

"Solipsistic hairsplitting!" she cried. Looking at her eyes, Rudy was reminded of a rattlesnake about to strike.

Brother Wend glanced up, his sick, dark eyes filled with misery. "It was not she who drew the Rune on the door," he said wretchedly. "It was I. She isn't mageborn; she could not have drawn and spelled the Rune of the Chain..."

Govannin whirled on him. "Be silent, you filthy heretic!"

"What door?" Gil asked suddenly. "The Rune of the Chain was on a seal. It was hundreds of years old, by the look of it."

"Be silent, on penalty of eternal hellfire!"

Gil gripped the young monk's sleeve, and there was desperate urgency in her voice. "What door did you draw the Rune on?"

But Wend was looking up at Govannin, confused. "Seal? What seal?"

Rudy supplied the answer. "Govannin had the Rune drawn on a seal-and it wasn't the first time she'd used it, either. Alde can testify to that. Your Bishop gave it to Alwir at the place of execution tonight."

Wend's eyes grew huge, staring up at his terrible preceptress, the sick man on the bed before him momentarily forgotten. "You used it yourself, then," he whispered. "The door that Bektis and I sealed- It wasn't the first time that you tampered in black magic."

"What door was this?" Gil demanded. "Where?"

"If you speak," Govannin whispered, and her eyes held Wend's like a snake's, "I swear to you, by my power as Bishop of Gae..."

"Get her out of here," Maia said. There was not a Red Monk who moved in protest as the Penambran soldiers surrounded the enraged Govannin. "Where is this door, Wend? What cell did you seal? It could be Eldor's life or death."

Wend shook his head helplessly. "I don't know. It was on the first level, in the Church territory. We were blindfolded and taken there. The cell had been spelled before. It was a small one, but no magic could be used therein. Bektis and I only renewed things that were already there."

Maia glanced over at Gil. "Gil-Shalos? You know the back corners of the Keep. Will you take my men and search?"

Gil nodded briefly and stood up. Though it was hot in the royal bedroom, with its fur rugs and braziers of coals that burned redly in the shadows about the bed, the door let in a draft of icy air from the hall. Rudy stripped off the shabby black surcoat Gil had lent him and threw it to her. She pulled it on loosely over the slashed and blood-smutched shirt and headed for the door.

"Gil- Shalos?" Maia stayed her and turned her face gently to the light with one crippled hand. "Are you all right?"

"I'll be fine," she said. Most of the wounds Alwir had dealt her had stopped bleeding, probably including the biggest one, which was in her right side and which Rudy had patched crudely before starting to examine Eldor. It had surprised him a little that Gil literally could not remember receiving most of the wounds-only the first one, which was on her cheek. By the look of it, Rudy could tell already that she'd be scarred for life.