the Dark Ones really know it's Tir, or are they just going after any kid in a gilded cradle? If Alde went on foot with the kid in her arms, like every other woman in this train, wouldn't she be safer than being stuck in the wagon?"
Bektis looked down his long nose at this grimy upstart outlander who, he had been informed, had presumed to show signs of being mageborn. "Perhaps," he said loftily, "were we presently in any danger from the Dark. Yet it has been noted that no alarm of their presence has occurred since we reached the high ground... "
"Oh, come on! You saw how well that high ground stuff worked at Karst!"
"... and," the sorcerer grated, with an edge to his high, rather light voice, "I have seen in an enchanted crystal the only Nest of the Dark known in these mountains, and I assure you that it is blocked, as it has been blocked for centuries. Naturally my lady may do as she pleases, but for reasons of her own comfort and health, and on account of her state and prestige, I doubt that my lord Alwir will permit my lady to walk in the back of the train like a common peasant woman." Turning on his heel, the old man stalked back toward his wagon, his fur cape swirling behind him like a thundercloud.
Minalde sat in unhappy silence for a time, rocking her child against her breast as if to protect him from unseen peril. Distantly, the sounds of the camp's breaking came to them, the braying of mules and the creak of harnesses, the splash and hiss of doused fires. Somewhere quite close, voices raised in anger, Alwir's controlled and cutting as a lash, and after, the dry, vituperative hiss of Bishop Govannin's.
Alde sighed. "They're at it again." She kissed Tir's round little forehead, following up the mark of affection with a businesslike check of the state of his diaper, and proceeded to tuck him up in his multiple blankets again; the morning seemed to be growing colder instead of warmer. "They say we should reach the Keep tonight," she went on in a low voice, excluding from hearing any but the man who stood beside her in the shadows of the wagon. "Sometimes it has seemed that we'd travel forever and never reach the place. So Bektis is probably right."
Rudy leaned his elbow on the wagon-tail. "You think so?"
She didn't reply. Beyond, there was the clatter of trace-chains and the sound of troopers talking casually among themselves as they harnessed the oxen. "Will we reach the Keep in daylight, or will we have to push on after sundown?"
Her hands paused in their restless readying of the wagon for travel. In a low voice she said, "After sundown, I think."
Ingold slumped back exhaustedly against a boulder and rested his elbows on his drawn-up knees. "I am very much afraid, my dear," he said tiredly, "that we are not going to make it."
Gil, who for the last several hours had been aware of very little beyond the form of the wizard, who had always seemed to be walking farther and farther ahead of her, could only nod. The little bay among the rocks above the road where they had taken shelter offered no protection from the increasing cold, but at least they were out of the wind. They had fought the wind all day, and, like a wolf, it had torn at their cloaks and mauled their exposed faces with savage violence. Gil could sense on it now the smell of the storm moving down from the glaciers on the high peaks. Even in this comparative shelter, hard bits of mealy snow had begun to fly. It was now late afternoon; there was no chance, she knew, of reaching the Arrow Gorge before the convoy did. Whatever the Dark Ones had done to the bridge there, it was beyond her power or Ingold's to warn the people of it.
After a little time she recovered enough to disengage the flask she wore at her belt, draw the stopper, and take a tentative sip-the stuff made white lightning taste like lemonade. "The captain at the Keep gave me this," she explained, passing it over.
He took a drink without turning a hair. "I knew there was an ultimate reason in the cosmic scheme of things for you to accompany me," he said, and smiled through the ice in his beard. "Now that makes twice you've saved my