05 Icefalcons Quest d-5

by Barbara Hambly

  For a long time he simply looked down at his hands and the dagger he held in them. At the dim starshadow on the snow. But he saw Eldor Endorion, and Loses His Way, and even Zay of the Keep of the Shadow at the End of Time, who took on the burden that his shoulders were not strong enough to bear. At length he said, "She could have told me that."

  "Would you have listened?"

  Dove in the Sun laughing as she rode out with his hunting party. Blue Child's face, ugly and craggy, across the longhouse fire, calculation in those wolfish ice-blue eyes.

  Noon weeping as he stepped from the darkness into the red light of the fire and held out to the Icefalcon the white shell.

  Stays Up All Night, and Fifty Lovers, and Red Fox, all ready to fight Blue Child's friends for him. Ready to divide the tribe, or to split off from it, at a time when the harshness of the winters and the thinning away of the herds as they migrated farther and farther to the south were threat enough.

  And for what? he thought. For what?

  He walked by himself. He had always walked by himself. He knew this of himself; Cold Death was the same way. He had dealt well with his kin and his friends, but in a way he had always felt separated from them. Unlike Zay in the dark beneath the Keep, this isolation was a thing that he knew and loved.

  But it was hard to think that he would not walk by himself in the Night River Country again.

  Cold Death was gone in the morning. The day was clear; only the thinnest mist of steam rose from the center of the lake, and already the ice was blue and hard on its verges. Even with the clearing of the steam he could see no sign of the camp of the Talking Stars People, but he knew he had but to circle the lake and they would find him.

  The Empty Lakes People were breaking their camp to go. Unsurprisingly, none of them mentioned Cold Death's absence. Such were her spells that the Icefalcon doubted they'd even been aware of her presence.

  It mattered little since he knew he'd see her again.

  "I think she departed so that she would not see the fight between Blue Child and myself," he said to Hethya, binding up their provisions of frozen caribou meat. "She considers Blue Child a better leader for the Talking Stars People than I."

  "Well, that's damn cold, I must say!" Hethya bridled. Even under a coat of grease, thin with fatigue and crisscrossed with bruises and demon-bites, her face had a flirtatious prettiness. She would do well, the Icefalcon thought, at the Keep. "There's a sister for you!"

  "I have learned," said the Icefalcon gravely, "never to gainsay my sister."

  The others, he had noticed, steered clear of the subject of Blue Child. Ingold had not said one word that indicated that he expected the Icefalcon either to go or stay-Ingold was good at that-but had merely gone about selecting such provisions as the Empty Lakes People could spare and seeing them packed.

  Now the old man came over to him, leaning on his staff, Tir walking in his shadow. The boy had had very little to say at first and showed a disinclination, even during the daylight hours, to leave the snow-house.

  Hethya, and Loses His Way, and Beautiful Girl had spent a good deal of time there with him, and he looked a little better now, as if he were eating again, though the Icefalcon suspected he still had nightmares and would for many years to come.

  At least he remembered, thought the Icefalcon, what it was to have friends and to value them above the solitude of complete safety in a fortress, and that was something.

  In the cool gray sunlight the half-healed gash on his face was a great jagged red double line, scabbing and horrible to look at. The children back at the Keep would love it.

  With them walked Loses His Way, and it was he who spoke. "My friend," he said, "shall we cross over to the camp? Your kindred should be astir by now." It was an hour or so after dawn-a sly dig, since the people of the Real World would take shame to themselves to be still sleeping after the first whisper of light.

  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 hi
s 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."

  About The Author

  At various times in her life, Barbara Hambly has been a high school teacher, a model, a waitress, a technical editor, a professional graduate student, an all-night clerk at a liquor store, and a karate instructor. Born in San Diego, she grew up in Southern California, with the exception of one high school semester spent in New South Wales, Australia. Her interest in fantasy began with reading The Wizard of Oz at an early age and has continued ever since.

  She attended the University of California, Riverside, specializing in medieval history. In connection with this, she spent a year at the University of Bordeaux in the south of France and worked as a teaching and research assistant at UC Riverside, eventually earning a Master's degree in the subject. At the university, she also became involved in karate, making Black Belt in 1978 and competing in several national-level tournaments. She now lives in Los Angeles.

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