Icefalcons Quest by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-04-23T20:39:13+00:00

Chapter 12

With dawn they brought the Dark Lightning up to the ice face and began to carve.

"Behold their road." The Icefalcon wrapped his arms around himself, shivering. He had already seen how clouds hung over the ice cap, columns of gray and black and dazzling white where the sun struck them. Up on the ice it would be world-winter indeed.

"It is bad hunting." Loses His Way passed him one of the doublesewn coats of bison-hide and a short-handled war ax. "Never have I seen so bad a hunt. See how the lady holds close to the boy? She fears for him." From a distance he'd become very taken with Hethya.

"She fears for herself. He is in her charge."

Loses His Way shook his head, and for a time they watched Hethya and Bektis, together at the controls of the Dark Lightning. The unholy colorless glim in the air wickered forth, played across the pearl face of the Ice. The notch at its edge deepened, steam gushing to join the cloud cover, and milky water flowed in a sputtering, steaming stream.

"She is wise," he said approvingly, watching her issue instructions to Bektis, who turned the Dark Lightning in its geared cradle, the apparatus moving like a hunting cat seeking prey. They had been busy in the night, for, around them, many new clones affixed leather boots to the feet of the mules and dragged the sledges up the rocks.

Vair in his quilted garments of white fur and silk spoke to Hethya, and she returned some haughty reply. "She knows not to show her fear. Does your man in the ice pool know aught of this Dark Lightning, little shaman?"

A few minutes previously Cold Death had blown on and rubbed one of the hard-frozen puddles near their camp, scratching the surface with a pebble and speaking Ingold's name. The Icefalcon had been aware of the sweet high bird chitter of her voice all during the bringing up of the Dark Lightning, as she narrated what she saw to the Archmage of the Wizards of the West.

He saw the old man in his mind, shaggy and scrubby and filthy as Ingold generally was after his journeyings, tucked like an apologetic old dog into some cranny of the rocks close enough to the besiegers to go and help himself to supper at their campfires. If he knew Ingold, the old man was doing it, too, on a nightly basis. The thought brought a pang of envy. The Icefalcon was heartily weary of pemmican.

"Ingold says he has never heard of such a matter." She came to the two men to watch, gloved hands shoved in her pockets like an impish girl. "But he did not seem surprised that the magic of the Ancestors of wizards could be turned to such a use."

"Did he say what he thought," inquired the Icefalcon, "of this woman who claims to be possessed by the Ancestors of wizards? Whether what she says is possible?"

"All things are possible," replied Cold Death cheerfully. "From the remaking of the world to the rescue of this child.

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