"On a donkey." Gil forestalled the Icefalcon's reply. Night wind coming down cold off the glacier tore long wisps of her smoke-black hair where it escaped from the leather cap she wore.

"We're lucky the herdkids were just bringing in the horses from pasture when Bektis was getting ready to get out of there, or we'd have lost a couple for sure." She bore a lantern and a firepouch like the Icefalcon's, though the lantern was dark; like the Icefalcon, Gil believed in never making assumptions about who she'd be walking with or what she might need.

Some way farther, they saw Tir's tracks where he'd gotten off the donkey to relieve himself behind a boulder.

"Are they keeping a guard on him?" The Icefalcon scanned the ground by the witchlight's glow, seeking other tracks near the small boot prints, the little puddle of frozen urine.

"My guess is Bektis has an illusion on him." In the bluish witchlight Gil's thin face, scarred across cheek and jaw, was impassive, her gray eyes steely-cold. "He probably thinks Rudy's with him and that everything's okay."

Rudy cursed. He'd been silent most of the way up the glacis, but the Icefalcon knew that the Prince was like a son to the young wizard and that Alde would be frantic with anxiety for her child.

Winds blew down the peaks, pregnant with the scent of coming snow. Not unusual for this time of year, reflected the Icefalcon bitterly, but too useful to a Wise One fleeing over the pass to be accidental.

"I should have known him," he said grimly, "long before they reached the Keep."

Gil regarded him in surprise. "How could you?" she asked. "Wend and Ilae-even Rudy-didn't see through the illusion. I didn't, and I saw him just two years ago in Khirsrit."

"Neither Wend nor Ilae ever saw him before the Wizards Corps was organized for the war against the Dark." He moved off again, leaning a little against the iron hammer of the wind, a bleached, silent moving animal in the wild dark.