Free Darwath 3 - The Armies Of Daylight by Barbara Hambly

burn medicine and it's good for you. Fortunately, there was a fairly straightforward tunnel that detoured around the cavern, and I did make it out— though I had to leave the rope at the stairs.”
    “How come?”
    “Because I was carrying you.” He sat back, wiping his hands on the corner of Rudy's blanket. His rough brown mantle reeked of smoke and of all the foulness of the Nest. In the shadows of his cowl, his eyes were amused and kind. “I trust your experiment with the flame thrower proved satisfactory?”
    Rudy laughed shakily, and Ingold joined in—the first time, now that Rudy thought of it, that he had heard the wizard laugh in quite some time. The driven tension had faded from his eyes, leaving only an elusive, slightly haunted expression, like an echo of what he had seen in the Nest of the Dark. Rudy was later to know that look in the eyes of those who had been a part of the reconnaissance.
    The memory of that putrid darkness returned to him, and he sobered. Quietly, he said, “It's going to be rough.”
    Ingold flashed him a quick, sideways glance. “You believe it can be done at all?”
    Rudy frowned. “Of course. We'll need a heavy covering force to get the flame thrower squad to the bottom of the Nest, but once we're there, we can burn our way backward. If we can knock out the nurseries and damage as little as fifty percent of the Nest, we can make Gae safe for human habitation again.”
    “And you believe that a human force can damage as much as half the Nest?”
    “That moss burns like paper, man.” Rudy moved a little and winced. His muscles were already stiffening. “You don't think so?”
    The old man was silent a moment, staring down at his own cut, blistered hands. Then he glanced toward the doorway. “Kara? Are you taking the first watch?”
    “If it's all right,” she said in her queer, deep voice.
    Rudy struggled to a sitting position, surprised at how sore he was. His hands and face smarted under the sticky paste of Ingold's medicines. “I'll arm-wrestle you for it.” he offered. “Or let's have the three of us draw straws. Short straw has to go to sleep. God knows how Kta manages it,” he added feelingly.
    “Kta's a hundred years old,” Ingold reasoned mildly. “If there is anything he hasn't seen, I don't know what it could be.”
    Kara's smile was brief and hesitant, an expression that flickered out of existence almost before Rudy realized she'd been amused; it was as if at some time in her childhood she had been punished for laughing. She sat forward from the wall and put away the tablets she'd been working on, wrapping them in her old satchel. Like Gil, Rudy saw, she took her note on the wax with a sharpened hairpin, which she now carefully stuck through the lapel of her cloak, its tiny lily of diamonds twinkling like a star against the coarse gray fabric. Even the most precious jewels and trinkets were common coin among those who had survived the massacres of Gae and Karst. “Why couldn't we just pack up and leave the city now?” she asked quietly. “I don't think any of us is in any shape to sleep.”
    Ingold lay down in the shadows next to Kta and pulled his blanket over his mantle. “No,” he decided softly. “We shouldn't be moving about Gae at night. There are other things besides the Dark abroad. And we are all exhausted. It would be fatally easy to make mistakes. It isn't many hours until dawn.” He turned his face to the shadows of the wall, but Rudy wasn't going to take any bets on whether he would sleep or not.
    Rudy got stiffly to his feet and drank what was left of the water in the leaky pot. It was cold and tasted of stone and of Ingold's herbs, but he felt parched with thirst. Then he limped to the door and settled himself opposite Kara in the broken doorframe. The thought of the dreams that sleep would bring made him wonder if he were in for a lifetime of insomnia. “Scoot over,” he said. “You and me can tell each other ghost stories all night