This far from the Vale wolves lived, too, and saber-teeth. The Icefalcon listened for their voices above the sea-howl of the trees. "There they are," said Gil.

Light flickered and whipped against the rocks ahead and made buzzing diamonds of the snow. As the Icefalcon had suspected, the donkey had slowed them, as had the presence of the Alketch warriors, unhandy in cold weather. Of a certainty none of them knew the pass.

"How many are there?" asked Gil.

"Warriors? Three." The Icefalcon glanced around him, calling to memory what the terrain ahead would be like. The deepening gorge, the cliff, the stream; the waterfall that would probably be frozen still and the shouldering outcrop of rocks beyond it, narrowing the pass to a gate thirty feet wide.

Remembering the wisdom of Gil's alien upbringing, he added, "They were alike, in stride and weight, even to the way they walked. More alike than any brothers I have ever encountered."

"Clones?" Gil spoke an outlander word and looked to Rudy for confirmation. His eyes were half shut, as the eyes of Wise Ones were who concentrated on the casting of a spell.

"Come on." He seemed to wake from reverie and pressed on again, striding ahead of the Icefalcon now, pushing against the pounding winds. "I put a Word on the donkeys, but I'm not sure how long it'll last.

Bektis can use a counterspell..."

"If Bektis figures out why the donkey's stopped." She was running beside him, a lean dark gazelle leaping up the sheltered goat trail. "He'd have trouble figuring out a Chinese finger puzzle," a judgment that meant nothing to the Icefalcon but that made Rudy laugh.

"Are we anywhere near that big spur?" he asked in the next breath. The light from his staff dimmed to nothing, but sparks of blue lightning crept along the ground at their feet, barely illuminating the way. "If I can get a rockslide going ahead of them, we can hold them..."