Barbara Hambly - Icefalcon’s Quest

The emotion, whatever it was, left him wrung out, shaken, sickened, so that as soon as the fighting was over he slid down the cotton-wood’s trunk and vomited, not even knowing what it was that he felt. He could see the faces of the dying men still. Their faces, and the faces of all those others who had died in ages past by the hands of those whose memories he touched.

One day he might have to kill somebody himself.

His face still buried in Hethya’s shoulder, he heard Bektis’ sonorous voice repeating summoning-spells, then the soft scrunch of hooves on leaves and the whuffle of horses’ breath. Looking up, he saw Akula leading two beautiful bay stallions by the bridles, so beautiful they took his breath away. The Keep boasted few horses. Four more stood, eyes rolling, among the trees. Another Akula was tethering them.

This Akula had a bleeding wound on one arm. Hethya made a little exclamation under her breath and, with a final quick hug, released Tir and stood. “Here,” she said, going to the man. “Let me get that covered.”

“My dear young lady.” Bektis strolled over to her through the trees, stroking his long white beard and considering the six horses with a self-satisfied smirk. The jeweled device still covered his right hand. He was seldom without it, even if he had no magic to work, and he seemed to enjoy just looking at it, turning it reverently to catch the sunlight, like a vain adolescent admiring a mirror.

During the fight Tir had seen how lightning and fire had flowed out of it, how strange smokes and rainbow lights seemed to leap from it around the heads of the White Raiders, making them cry out and slash at things only they could see, making their dogs attack one another or bite the legs of the Raiders’ horses. Tir had been badly scared by the Raiders’ dogs.

“It’s scarcely worth your time. The man will be dead before the wound heals.”

Hethya opened her mouth to retort, then glanced down at Tir and shut it again. The Akula looked from Bektis’ face to Hethya’s without much comprehension, a thick-muscled man with grim pale eyes. Tir wondered if Akula – any of them – knew enough regular speech to understand what had just been said.

He’d just begun to learn the ha’al language of the Empire of Alketch and could say Please and Thank you and a number of prayers, though since God presumably spoke all languages he couldn’t imagine why he had to learn, with great difficulty, what God could just as easily understand in the Wathe. But his mother, and Rudy, and Lord Ankres said that the language was a useful thing for a King to know.

“And now that we have horses in the camp,” said Bektis, drawing close around his face the fur collar of his quilted brown coat and tucking his beard behind a number of scarves, “I think it best we keep the boy tied up until his Lordship arrives. See to it.”

“Please, Lord Bektis.” Tir stepped forward, his heart pounding. “Please don’t tie me up. If something else happens, if the Raiders come again, I don’t want to be tied up.”

“So you can run away in the confusion?” Bektis had already started to turn away. There was contempt in his voice, and Tir felt his face flush.

“I know I wouldn’t get far,” he said with dignity. “Even if I stole a horse, you could just make it turn around and come back to you, couldn’t you? Or scare it, like you scared those people with stuff that wasn’t real, so they couldn’t protect themselves.”

The wizard’s dark eyes flashed with anger at this implication of cowardice and cheat. “And a fine predicament you’d be in if I hadn’t, boy. We’re not playing children’s games. Do you think the White Raiders would spare a child of your years? I’ve seen children younger than you with their guts staked over five yards of ground. Tie him up,” he added to Hethya. “And give him a lick or two, to mend his manners.”

He walked away to the edge of the grove, where he settled himself under a tree. Tir saw him take something from a velvet purse under his coat, polish it on his chamois cloth, and set it on a little collapsible silver tripod where the dim sunlight lanced through the thin leaves. Scrying, as old Ingold scried for things in his fragment of yellow crystal. As he’d seen Rudy scry, hundreds of times.

At the thought of Rudy his throat closed and his eyes grew hot, seeing him fall again through the whirl of snow and darkness. Don’t make him be dead, he prayed. Please don’t make him be dead.

Hethya’s hand dropped gently onto his shoulder. “Come on, honey,” she said. “We’d better do as he says. I’ll make it as easy on you as I can, and if we’re attacked again I’ll see to it you can get to safety.”

Tir nodded. He wondered sometimes, lying beside her in the warmth of her blankets, feeling safe while Bektis’ wolves and saber-teeth snuffled around the verges of the camp, if she had a little boy of her own.

“Who’s his Lordship who’s coming?” he asked softly, as she led him toward a thin sycamore tree where there was shade and grass. “And what’s he going to do? Why does he want me?”

“Never you mind that, honey,” said Hethya. “I’ll make sure you’re all right.”

But her eyes avoided his as she said it. She wasn’t lying, he realized. She just knew that she had no power to do that, if Bektis – and his Lordship, whoever he was, and whyever he wanted him – decided to kill him.

Shadow passed over the grass.

The Icefalcon turned, scalp prickling, then scanned the sky. There was no sign of a bird.

The chill wind of morning rippled miles of grass and brought the smoke of the camp on Bison Hill. They were waiting for someone, the Icefalcon thought. Or for some event, as Wise Ones waited for conjunctions of stars and planets that would increase and focus their power. Above the coulee, black birds now gathered in clouds, but none circled anywhere near the hill.

A smoke-colored flicker in the corner of his eye, and this time he was sure of it. Ears tilted inquiringly, Yellow-Eyed Dog raised his nose from his paws and sniffed the air. The sky was empty overhead.

“What is it?” whispered Loses His Way.

The Icefalcon drew breath and relaxed a little, as much as he ever relaxed or could relax.

“Cold Death,” he said.

It was after noon, the day following Tir’s abduction from the Keep, that a mixed company of Guards and other Keep soldiery under command of Janus of Weg finally reached the gorge where Rudy lay. Once it grew light enough to see, Gil climbed the rocks two or three times, snow still falling heavily, to lay out branches and rocks and to carve laborious notches with her footprints in the snow, showing where they were. She had just returned from gathering more wood when she heard voices on the rocks above. “Gaw, what a mess,” said the familiar backcountry drawl of the Commander – and a heavenly choir of angels playing the back half of “Layla” on electrified harps couldn’t have been sweeter to her ears – “I thought you said you could chase the snow-clouds out onto the plain, me dumpling.”

“They should have gone.” Brother Wend’s soft voice was puzzled. “It’s unheard of for weather to cling this long after the Summoner has departed. I think … I’m not sure, but I think there are spells of danger up ahead as well, avalanche and anger among the beasts of the mountains.”

Janus cursed. “Bektis was never that strong,” he said. There was a scuffle, and a couple of little snow-slips tumbled down the rock face. Then Gil saw the black shapes of the Guards, and a couple of the white-clothed warriors of Lord Ankres’ company, scrambling down the way she had marked.

Wend knelt beside Rudy and exclaimed in shock, pulling off his heavy gloves at once to weave spells of healing and stasis over the great burns and cuts on Rudy’s face and chest. Meanwhile, Janus and the others spread out along the frozen stream to cut saplings for a litter. The Icefalcon’s makeshift wall had served to keep the niche under the overhang warm through the night and into morning, but Rudy’s face wore the look of death. “Don’t die on me, man,” Gil whispered, in her disused English, as she watched the priest-wizard’s fingers trace again and again the lines of healing and strength over the still, hawk-nosed face.