"It would be sort of pointless to get yourself killed on a routine mission," Rudy admitted.

Ingold smiled. "Precisely," he agreed. "I'm sending Thoth to head the reconnaissance of Penambra-he knows that city from his early days as a healer there. And I'm having the Raider shaman. Shadow of the Moon, take a couple of scouts to the Nest in the Vale of the Dark, some twenty miles north of here. She knows woodcraft-among other things."

In the black wall of woods to their right, branches stirred suddenly, rustling in dark, aimless winds. Clouds were moving down from the glacier-locked mountains that loomed above them to the west, swallowing the few remaining stars. Cold cut through Rudy's coat like a skinning knife.

"Kara of Ippit will go with you and Saerlinn to Gae," Ingold went on. "She's had the most formal training as a mage. Unless one counts the Chancellor Alwir's Court Mage Bektis, of course."

Rudy sniffed. He did not like Bektis. "If he's out here tonight, I'll eat my boots without even scraping the mud off 'em."

"If that's the case, I regret to inform you that you're going to miss a meal." Ingold sighed. "Bektis knows Gae, too. But I'm sure that his ever-pressing duties will not permit..."

He looked up suddenly, the words dying on his lips. A scream split the mountain stillness, a hopeless, echoing shriek that scaled up to a frenzied pitch of horror, then jarred and broke. Rudy sprang to his feet, the hair prickling on his neck, and was instantly arrested by the iron grip on his arm.

"Be still, you fool."

A figure broke from the edge of the woods on the far side of the valley, black and tiny against the hoarfrost landscape. A man , Rudy thought, watching the way he ran, young and slender, stumbling over his own cloak in his terrified haste.