Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) by Barbara Hambly Read Free Book Online

know what he
does
remember! Bektis should know that.”
    The Icefalcon led them into the lee of a small cliff under the Hammerking’s flank, where the wind was less and the snow thinner underfoot, allowing them better speed. Unseen above them the glaciers that armored the Hammerking’s shoulders sent down their slow, glass river of cold.
    “More important,” said Gil,
“Govannin
should know that. Unless she figures to have Bektis put a spell of
gnodyrr
on Tir, to dig into what he doesn’t remember consciously. That’s the worst kind of black magic, and God knows what it’d do to a kid that young, but that’s never stopped her before.”
    Rudy cursed, viciously and with every step as they scrambled up the protected trail.
    By the ground’s shape underfoot and the way the wind roared and shifted, the Icefalcon recognized where they were and steered the others hard to the right. To the left streams had cut gorges in the floor of the narrow, U-shaped canyon. The forty or fifty feet that separated this gash from the mountain’s hip were safe enough to navigate in fine weather but perilous when visibility was poor.
    This far from the Vale wolves lived, too, and saber-teeth. The Icefalcon listened for their voices above the sea-howl of the trees.
    “There they are,” said Gil.
    Light flickered and whipped against the rocks ahead and made buzzing diamonds of the snow. As the Icefalcon had suspected, the donkey had slowed them, as had the presence of the Alketch warriors, unhandy in cold weather. Of a certainty none of them knew the pass.
    “How many are there?” asked Gil.
    “Warriors? Three.” The Icefalcon glanced around him,calling to memory what the terrain ahead would be like. The deepening gorge, the cliff, the stream; the waterfall that would probably be frozen still and the shouldering outcrop of rocks beyond it, narrowing the pass to a gate thirty feet wide. Remembering the wisdom of Gil’s alien upbringing, he added, “They were alike, in stride and weight, even to the way they walked. More alike than any brothers I have ever encountered.”
    “Clones?” Gil spoke an outlander word and looked to Rudy for confirmation. His eyes were half shut, as the eyes of Wise Ones were who concentrated on the casting of a spell.
    “Come on.” He seemed to wake from reverie and pressed on again, striding ahead of the Icefalcon now, pushing against the pounding winds. “I put a Word on the donkeys, but I’m not sure how long it’ll last. Bektis can use a counterspell …”
    “If
Bektis figures out why the donkeys stopped.” She was running beside him, a lean dark gazelle leaping up the sheltered goat trail. “He’d have trouble figuring out a Chinese finger puzzle,” a judgment that meant nothing to the Icefalcon but that made Rudy laugh.
    “Are we anywhere near that big spur?” he asked in the next breath. The light from his staff dimmed to nothing, but sparks of blue lightning crept along the ground at their feet, barely illuminating the way. “If I can get a rockslide going ahead of them, we can hold them …”
    Thunder cracked as blinding light split the darkness. The Icefalcon grabbed Gil by one arm and Rudy by the back of his bearskin mantle, thrust them forward as the snow-roar in the swirling obscurity above told him that Rudy wasn’t the only one who knew how to start avalanches. Rudy yelled “Damn it!” and cried out other words, magical words, answered from far off above the storm.
    “Rudy!” It was a child’s voice, piercing and terrified.
    The winds checked, failed. Rudy made a pass with his hands, and cold blue light showed the crowding enscarpmentsof the Mammoth and the Hammerking bizarre in the harsh shadows, the glistening headwalls of the glaciers above. Dune and drift snow clogged the way, and against the thrashing trees, the scoured shelter of the rock-spur and frozen falls, their quarry could be seen.
    The donkey was rearing and fighting in terror, the second animal dragging