Darwath 3 - The Armies Of Daylight (21 page)

Vair sprang to his feet like a tiger. From among the Gettlesand rangers, Rudy could see him overtake the lithe Ambassador in the doorway, catching the petaled edge of Stiarth's sleeve with his hooks. “Are you mad?” he demanded. “The Emperor said—”

“My Imperial Uncle entrusted this matter and all others to my judgment,” Stiarth replied softly. With two fingers, he disengaged his fragile ruffles. “And believe me, Commander, I would far rather deal with the brother than have the sister and the wizard come to power in the confusion that would follow schism. I trust you concur?” Then he was gone in a rustling of perfumed silk, the click of his high heels audible for some moments as he retreated down the long hall.

It was Alwir's voice that broke the silence. “My lord wizard,” he said quietly, “I would have a word with you— alone.”

“I should never have let him go.” Alde spoke without raising her head, her chin resting on her crossed wrists upon her drawn-up knees. On the other side of the common room hearth, Rudy put aside his long-silent harp.

“It had to happen,” he said softly. “Oh, Christ, Aide, what are we going to do?”

She shook her head despairingly. “I don't know.”

It was midmorning and the common room was empty. Voices murmured among the complex of cells—Dame Nan's yapping curses, Tomec Tirkenson's rumble of protest, and Kara's patient “Mother!” The only light was the honey-gold glow of the hearth. The room smelled of rising bread and of the braided strings of herbs and onions that hung from nails on the walls. Tad the herdkid had brought word that Tir was still safe in concealment among the Keep orphans. If Alwir was looking for him, it had not occurred to the Chancellor that he would be hidden there.

How do I manage to do stuff like this
? Rudy wondered miserably, looking across the hearth to the girl who sat folded so compactly in the inglenook, staring unseeingly into the fire. All I want is to love her and to be happy. Why is it that all I've managed to do is comprehensively screw up her life and bring her nothing but pain and disgrace, excommunication and exile, and loss? Was Ingold right? Are mages born damned?

“Aide, I'm sorry,” Rudy said wretchedly. “I never meant for it to turn out this way.”

She looked up at him, tears shining in eyes that looked almost black in the shadows. “It had nothing to do with you, Rudy,” she murmured. “Really,” she added, seeing the weary denial on his face. “Don't you see? It would have come to fighting between Alwir and myself whether I—I loved you or not. It's just that—I thought for so long that he cared for me.” She shifted her position, the white brocade of her skirts polished by the firelight as they rippled down over the hearth bricks. She was fighting to keep her mouth steady. “He could be so kind to me in the old days, but maybe that was because he Knew I—I respond easily to kindness. I suppose he'd say Ingold knows that, too. I always thought he was a very contradictory person, but he's not. I—I'm only sorry you had to be caught in it, that it had to spoil something that was—that you—”

Rudy cried miserably, “Aide, nothing could hurt my love for you! Not time or distance or politics or the Void… Nothing.”

For an instant neither of them moved, but only looked at each other, separated by the glow of the hearthlight, as one day the brighter light of the Void must stand between them. Then, with swift impatience, Rudy swung to his feet, crossed the light with his great shadow sprawling across the walls behind him, and dragged her to her feet and roughly into his embrace. She clung to him, her face buried in the rough fleece of his gaudily painted vest, her hands locked behind his back. He whispered desperately, “Aide, if I had a choice, I'd never leave you. I'd always be here.”

She whispered back, “It doesn't matter. I'll love you no matter where you are or what becomes of you.”

They clung to each other in the dim glory of the topaz light, as if they felt already the currents of their separate universes turning to drag them apart.

Then a deep, rusty voice intruded upon Rudy's consciousness. “My children?”

“You're all right!”

Ingold caught Alde by the shoulders, halting her impulsive rush to embrace him, and smiled into her flushed, anxious face. “Did you conceive that your brother would stab me the moment we were alone?”

“The way he looked, yes!” Rudy put in. “What—” His voice failed him, and he stood uncertainly, looking into his master's face. He swallowed, but still could not speak.

The wizard reached out gently and laid his hand upon Rudy's shoulder, warm and very strong. His eyes went from Rudy's face to Minalde's, a kind of wry sorrow in their deceptively bright blue depths. “Do you love each other so much, my children?”

Neither spoke, but Rudy's hand sought Aide's, the twined shadows of their fingers a closing knot in the firelight.

Hesitantly, Alde said, “If it were lawful…”

“If I—if I could stay…” Rudy stammered.

Ingold sighed. “Indeed.” In the fitful lambence of the fire, his lined features looked sad and a little resigned. “I fear I had the temerity to point out to your brother, Minalde, that there are worse things than your permanent alliance to one who is forbidden by Church law and the code of the Council of Wizards to rule those who are not mageborn. And I reminded him that you are strong-willed and stubborn, and that you have, in fact, a power base among the outland chiefs. For a woman such as yourself, it is not inconceivable that at some future time, if driven to desperation, you might ally yourself to some landchief whose realms come only nominally under the sway of the Lord of the Keep of Dare. Your brother was neither pleased nor gracious—but he agreed with me.”

“What?” Rudy whispered, after a long, uncomprehending silence. Then understanding penetrated to his brain, and a feeling like an electrical shock to all the cells in his body.

“My children,” Ingold continued, “walk very carefully. You still flirt with scandal—perhaps you will do so all your lives. But, by the laws of the Realm, there is nothing illegal in your union, no matter that Alwir may have said…”

His words purled over Rudy's consciousness like the unintelligible voice of a river, barely audible through what felt like a fountain of blazing joy welling up from the depths of his being. He wanted to whoop, to dance, to sing songs and embrace everybody in sight; but as it was, his hand only tightened on Aide's. Looking across at her, he saw answering oceans of happiness in her quiet face.

Ingold's voice went on about Church law, the position of the individual Bishops, the need for utterly circumspect behavior, and the mutability of all human conditions, but to them it was like the voice of a lawyer reading the fine print on a contract already signed in blood and galactic dust. Through the whirling vortex of his thoughts, Rudy was conscious only that he had never been so absolutely happy since he was a very small child; he was wishing illogically that he were Fred Astaire, so that he could swing this woman who held his hand so tightly through all sorts of crazy, improbable dance steps up and down the walls and over the furniture of the dark, shabby common room.

The old man seemed to realize how little he was being attended, for he smiled and withdrew, leaving them to their unspeakable joy.

Ten minutes later Gil emerged from the corridor that led to her own tiny cubicle, carrying a couple of wax note tablets and wearing an abstracted expression that turned to sudden and appalled guilt at the sight of the lovers embracing before the hearth.

“Oh, hell, Rudy, I'm sorry,” she said, to the back of his head and to Aide's white hands that grasped his shoulders so fervidly. “I got tied up in my research. Was your flame thrower demonstration to be this afternoon, or was it yesterday and I missed it?”

She could not understand why, at her words, the two lovers broke apart and collapsed into whooping paroxysms of laughter.

“The old King is dead And he's lying on his bed, And the snow is a-falling all around…”

The voices of the Keep children drifted through the corridors, blithe as the sound of sleigh bells. From her seat by the hearth of the common room fire, Gil heard them, and in spite of her exhaustion-grated nerves and her oft-declared detestation of the young of the species, she smiled. Every child in the place had been pelting around in a state of self-induced frenzy for the last two days.

Tomorrow was the Winter Feast.

The gay carol faded into the winding distance of the maze. Gil's hand strayed to the parchment roll of notes that lay on the bricks at her side. Then she leaned her head against the stone of the chimney and closed her eyes. This time tomorrow, she told herself tiredly, I will be back at the simulated-ivory towers of UCLA, explaining—or trying to explain— how come I left without notice in the second week of Fall Quarter and where I've been since.

Tomorrow.

Other voices echoed in the hall outside. Vair na Chandros, his tone harsh and acid, demanded, “What do you mean, missing?”

The light, fluent voice of Bektis replied, “He set out from the caves before I did, my lord. Surely he would not have strayed from the road. If the Dark Ones have taken to moving about in the dusk, before full darkness falls…”

“That's ridiculous,” the Alketch Commander rasped. “For one thing, my lord Stiarth had a talisman that protected him, in some measure, from the notice of the Dark. He boasted of it to me.”

The Court Mage's tones were apologetic. “True, the Rune of the Veil is a general protective device, but hardly guarantees…”

“Gil?” There was a rustle of robes in the shadows beside her and the smell of herbs and woodsmoke. “Not sad?”

She shook her head without looking at him. After a moment's silence, Ingold's light, strong hands touched her shoulders and drew her back into the comforting circle of his arm.

“It will all be a tremendous mess when you get back, won't it?” he asked quietly. “Another black mark to me. Will they believe you if you tell them that you were spirited away by gypsies?”

In spite of herself, Gil laughed. “I'll tell them I was doing research at the bottom of the Hollow Hills,” she murmured. She leaned her head back against the strength of his shoulder. “That's even the truth. I said once I was going to do my Ph.D. thesis on the coming of the Dark. And there it is.” She moved her fingers toward the rolled parchment with its long columns of dates and years. “It was a scholar's answer, wasn't it?”

“Indeed,” Ingold whispered, and his arm tightened around her shoulders. “Gil…”

She opened her eyes and looked up to see the struggle in that lined, nondescript face and the naked unhappiness of his eyes. Then he sighed, as if he were putting away some impossible dream, and said, “Be happy.”

“Will you?”

“I shall be happy,” Ingold said quietly, “knowing that you are safe.”

Light began to stir in the room as the other mages came in, a clear, sourceless brightness that sparkled like unfamiliar dawn over the familiar furnishings. The members of the Wizards' Corps began to take their places around the long central table. Dakis the Minstrel flirted outrageously with the weatherwitches Grey and Nila; the haughty Shadow of the Moon was discussing astronomy with the diffident Ungolard. The gaggle of the younger mages down at the far end of the table—not all of whom were young in years by any means—kept a wary eye out for Thoth, who had taken it upon himself to act as their tutor. Brother Wend came in, worn and hagridden, like a man being eaten from within by slow cancer. As Ingold handed her to her feet, Gil saw that Kta had been in the commons all the time, dozing in his nook by the fire.

Rudy and Alde appeared, handfast like children, as if they still could not believe their good fortune. They almost sparkled with happiness, and Gil had to smile.

Here are two, at least, who have gotten what they wanted, even if they are stuck in a world without hope.

Then Bektis entered, still stroking his milk-white beard, nattering on about the mislayment of the Imperial Nephew; and behind him came Alwir, kingly in his dark velvet, telling Bektis in a rich, melodious voice to shut his blithering mouth. The Chancellor stopped before Ingold, and there was a bleak and ugly hatred in his handsome, sensual face.

“I hope, my lord wizard, that this is not another piece of your—renegotiation—of the terms of the alliance. The armies are, after all, departing the day after tomorrow—if it pleases you,” he added sarcastically.

“I am afraid,” Ingold said, “that that is what we must discuss.” He led Gil to one end of the long table and seated her to the right of his own place at its head. She put down her things—the roll of parchment, two or three wax note tablets, and a small wash-leather bag—and turned back, to see the Chancellor's face darken with anger.

“Really… !”

“Perhaps, my lord,” Ingold continued in his mildest tones, “you had best sit down.”

Two of the junior wizards brought up the carved chair that was usually reserved for Thoth and put it at the far end of the table. Alwir seated himself in it stiffly, the folds of his black velvet cloak spreading about him like a royal robe, suspicion as visible as a back brace in every line of his big, powerful body.

Do him justice, Gil thought. It was only yesterday that Ingold kicked the props out from under his plans to settle down into a nice, cozy Regency here, with Alketch troops at his back and the Inquisition to keep people like Rudy in line. And after he drove out the Dark Ones from Gae—after he'd given people even the illusion that things were on their way to returning to what they used to be—he'd hardly have needed to dispose of Tir. His own prestige would have made him King by acclamation. It's no surprise that he views Ingold as a malicious meddler in affairs that hardly concern him.

But the stubborn set of Alwir's mouth and the sullenness smoldering in his eyes made her stomach sink with dread.

Ingold took his seat at the head of the table; with a glance he commanded silence in the room around them. It always surprised Gil how the wizard, usually the most unobtrusive of men, could dominate any gathering he entered, merely by walking into the room and choosing to do so.

Alwir's voice was rough, “There's a rumor going about that you've found the key to the defeat of the Dark. If this is true, why wasn't I told? And why do you say—”