Barbara Hambly - 05 Icefalcons Quest

Then he realized what it was that had tugged at his mind about Linok, what it was about him that he had recognized, or thought he recognized.

It was too dark to see tracks in the meadow now, and in any case there might be very little time. Turning, he made his way toward the Keep at a run.

The Icefalcon was one of the tallest men in the Keep, long-boned and rangy, and he ran fast. He was still a mile from its walls when he saw blue witchlight dance in the meadow by the stream, and voices carried to him, too far to make out words, but recognizable in their timbre and pitch. He turned aside, his heart cold in him with dread. There was only one reason people would be outside the Keep after nightfall.

Though the Dark Ones had been gone for seven years, the trauma of their coming ran deep. Almost no one who had passed through that horror would willingly remain outside of shelter once twilight gathered.

Moreover, with the Sunless Year had come changes in the world.

Huge patches of slunch emitted a sicklied radiance all along the valley's floor, and the mutant creatures that grew from it were not all harmless. Even without such beings, there were always the perils of the mountains themselves: dire wolves, saber-teeth, the bears that were coming out of hibernation, now thin and hungry and angry.

Fog lay in the low ground of the meadows, dense and white. The moon would not rise for some hours.

The voices came clearer, and the magefire showed him the faces of the man and woman scanning the damp earth for tracks.

"Sometimes he goes exploring where the old road used to run along the west foothills," said the voice he recognized as Rudy Solis'.

They're talking about Tir.

"He says sometimes he remembers things there."

Gil-Shalos. In seven years they had almost completely dropped the tongue of their own world, even when speaking to one another, save for words that had no translation in the Wathe, like tee-vee and car and Academy Awards "You think he might have gone out with Hethya? I saw her talking to him."

"He might have, if she described something he thought he recognized."

"Yeah, but why wouldn't I have..."

Even as Rudy was speaking the words, the Icefalcon was thinking, Why would Rudy need to search?

He's a Wise One. He has his scrying stone. He should be able to call Tir's image...

Unless Tir is with another Wise One.

He'd guessed before, but the confirmation was like taking an arrow in the chest.

"It's Bektis." He stepped out of the trees. Gil-Shalos was already turning. No fool, she.

"Bektis?" She looked nonplussed as she spoke the name of the Court Mage who had years ago sold his services to the power-mad Archbishop Govannin, had followed her to the Alketch and, so rumor said, had assisted her when she carved an unshakable sphere of influence in those war-torn lands.

"What does Bektis have to do with Tir being gone?"

The Icefalcon hadn't even broken stride, forcing Rudy and Gil to fall into step with him as he led the way fast through the knee-deep ground fog and on toward rising ground, the shouldering bones of the hills that guarded Sarda Pass and the road down into the West.

"We have been had for dupes." The Icefalcon's voice was bitter, anger at himself tempered by fear.

"Made fools of by a shaman's illusion. The old man Linok was Bektis the Sorcerer. I thought I recognized his voice and the way he stroked his beard. Were we to waste time going back across the meadows we would find his tracks-long and thin, not the tracks of the little short-legged man we saw.

The whole thing was a fakement, a lure, a tale, so that he could get into the Keep."

Gil swore. Rudy, who was a little slower on the uptake, said, "Well, I'll be buggered. But he isn't in the Keep. He and that broad Hethya disappeared about two hours ago..."

Gil concluded for him, guessing, but at the same time sure. "And they took Tir with them."

"I was a fool," said the Icefalcon.

It didn't take them long to cut Bektis' tracks. Snow still lay thin where the shadows of the Hammerking mountain fell on the trail, and the prints of the old man's boots were there, long and narrow, with the heel and nail-work characteristic of Alketch bootmaking.

Prints that had to be Hethya's mingled with the wizard's, along with the marks of a second donkey, and the three identical bandits with hide wrapped around their feet.

"Where's Tir?" Rudy held his staff close to the sparkling ground. The magelight playing around the pronged metal crescent at its tip glittered on the crisp edges of the new prints.

"On a donkey." Gil forestalled the Icefalcon's reply. Night wind coming down cold off the glacier tore long wisps of her smoke-black hair where it escaped from the leather cap she wore.

"We're lucky the herdkids were just bringing in the horses from pasture when Bektis was getting ready to get out of there, or we'd have lost a couple for sure." She bore a lantern and a firepouch like the Icefalcon's, though the lantern was dark; like the Icefalcon, Gil believed in never making assumptions about who she'd be walking with or what she might need.

Some way farther, they saw Tir's tracks where he'd gotten off the donkey to relieve himself behind a boulder.

"Are they keeping a guard on him?" The Icefalcon scanned the ground by the witchlight's glow, seeking other tracks near the small boot prints, the little puddle of frozen urine.

"My guess is Bektis has an illusion on him." In the bluish witchlight Gil's thin face, scarred across cheek and jaw, was impassive, her gray eyes steely-cold. "He probably thinks Rudy's with him and that everything's okay."

Rudy cursed. He'd been silent most of the way up the glacis, but the Icefalcon knew that the Prince was like a son to the young wizard and that Alde would be frantic with anxiety for her child.

Winds blew down the peaks, pregnant with the scent of coming snow. Not unusual for this time of year, reflected the Icefalcon bitterly, but too useful to a Wise One fleeing over the pass to be accidental.

"I should have known him," he said grimly, "long before they reached the Keep."

Gil regarded him in surprise. "How could you?" she asked. "Wend and Ilae-even Rudy-didn't see through the illusion. I didn't, and I saw him just two years ago in Khirsrit."

"Neither Wend nor Ilae ever saw him before the Wizards Corps was organized for the war against the Dark." He moved off again, leaning a little against the iron hammer of the wind, a bleached, silent moving animal in the wild dark.

"Nor did you, or Rudy, know him much longer. Not to know his voice, or his manner of movement. Not to recognize the way in which he speaks. As court mage to Lady Alde's brother he was about the palace from the time of my coming there. I knew him well. And in any case," he added dryly, realizing too late yet another truth, "why would they have camped for the night within five miles of the Keep they claimed to be seeking? I should have recognized a fakement when I saw one."

"Bektis is a wizard," retorted Gil. "It's his job to deceive. Don't be so hard on yourself."

She tucked her hands under her armpits, cold despite the gloves she wore. She was a thin woman, all bone and leather; cold until you saw her smile. Many of the Guards had affairs with the women of the Keep, the weavers and brewers and leather workers and those who tended the hydroponics gardens.

The Icefalcon's affairs, when he had them, tended to be with women in the Guards or in the military companies of the other Keep Lords. At one time he had considered Gil, though it had been obvious to him from the first that her heart was given elsewhere. His only serious love, many years ago, had been so also, and this time he had not deceived himself.