Icefalcon's Quest (Darwath) (47 page)

Among the other sleds, Loses His Way called out, with Yellow-Eyed Dog gamboling and biting at snowflakes like an idiot, and Loses His Way turned to grin at him, and waved.

He had, the Icefalcon calculated, only a few days to live. Yet he would lose one or perhaps two of them—perhaps all, if the Talking Stars People took exception to his entry into their camp—to help him, should he ask for help.

So that he could return to the people he had left, to the life of the Real World, that he himself so treasured.

To give him the gift of choice.

“Go with your kindred, o my enemy,” the Icefalcon said. “I have nothing to say to Blue Child, nor to any of the People of the Talking Stars.”

The hairless brows shot up. “You will not go?”

“The Night River Country is gone.” He hadn’t thought to say that, which was closest to his heart, especially not to this man, and, looking up, the Icefalcon saw the understanding and the shared grief in his enemy’s blue eyes. Loses His Way made as if to extend his hand to him, and, embarrassed, the Icefalcon stepped back and drew himself with dignity to his full height.

“I may be a barbarian,” he added coldly, “but I am not insane. We hunt that we may survive, and it is clear to me that survival is a thing more assured in the Keep of Dare than in the Real World now. Everything that once we knew lies under the Ice. In two years the Ice will spread farther, and stranger things than the Dark Ones and the slunch and cloned warriors will yet walk this beleaguered world. A man would be a fool to dwell in a place so deadly when he could have safety and comfort elsewhere.”

The warchief grinned a slow grin into the red-gold stubble that would never grow out into a beard. “Even so,” he said, and held out his hand. “I see that living near the Wise Ones you, too, have become wise. Then good hunting, o my friend, on your new hunt. Do not forget us who are fools.”

The Icefalcon turned around and considered Ingold, and Tir, and Hethya, looking at him also in surprise. “Come,” he said coolly. “There is a long road yet back to Sarda Pass. It is time we were gone.”

Scrunching stolidly along on his snowshoes, Tir released the hem of Ingold’s robe and dug into the hard-packed surface with his staff. The sunlight frightened him at first—the open air frightened him, filling him with panic he did not understand—but over the past two days he had begun to remember how it had been before Vair, before the Dark.

Last night Ingold had looked into his scrying crystal and spoken to Rudy, who had reported all things well at the Keep. The besiegers outside, he had said, had begun to fall
sick; Wend had reported half a dozen of them deserting over the lower pass to the River Valleys in the night. There were mass graves now in what had been the orchard before the Summerless Year. Ingold was making plans about what to do with the rest of the besiegers when he, the Icefalcon, and Hethya returned to the Vale, but Tir was wondering if there would be anyone left for them to deal with.

Except, of course, Hethya’s cousin, cooking poison mushrooms in his pots.

Ahead of him he watched the silvery braids plaited with bones, the lanky gray back bent to the harness of the sled—with his left arm only engaged, the right always free for his sword—and beside him the golden-brown, stocky form that was Hethya. Once, to his surprise, he heard the Icefalcon laugh.

“Ingold?”

“Yes, my child?”

Tir kept his voice politely down so the Icefalcon wouldn’t hear. “Is that all he really thinks about the Keep?” he asked worriedly. “Just that it’s safer than staying with the Talking Stars People? Does he really care that little about his family? And about us?”

Ingold smiled down at him. “He cares too much about them, and about us,” he said gently. “There is a saying that one can’t go home again. That isn’t entirely true, but the person who goes home is often not the person who set out on the quest and the home he returns to not the place he left. You’ll never get our Icefalcon to admit that he’s changed since he’s been among us; you’ll never get him to admit that he suspects that he might not be happy again in the Real World. I’m a little surprised, frankly, that he admits it to himself and has chosen his happiness above his pride.”

Tir was silent, thinking about that, trying to emulate the way the Icefalcon moved on his snowshoes, the way the old man moved next to him. It sounded lonely. “Why not admit it?” he asked worriedly. He would be a king, he thought. He would need to know these things.

Ingold smiled, his blue eyes bright. “Because it isn’t the way of the Talking Stars People to acknowledge that their way is less than perfect,” he said. “And because the ways and the world of our childhoods always seem more perfect than our lives as adults. But mostly …” In his eyes Tir could see the affection that he bore the strange cold warrior who had always stood aloof from them all, “because he’s the Icefalcon, and, for him, that has always been enough.”

At various times in her life, B
ARBARA
H
AMBLY
has been a high-school teacher, a model, a waitress, a technical editor, a professional graduate student, a clerk at an all-night liquor store, and a karate instructor (she holds a Black Belt and has competed in several national-level tournaments).

Born in San Diego, she grew up in Southern California, attended U. C. Riverside, specializing in medieval history and spending a year at the University of Bordeaux in the south of France; eventually, she earned a masters degree in the subject. She now lives in Los Angeles, California.

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