"But something might happen to you, Father." Tir spoke in the cracking voice of adolescence, and indeed as he spoke he wore the form of that other boy, in his black kilt all stamped with stylized eagles of gold.
"Isn't that why you brought me? So I'd know, in case the Dark...?"
"It is the Dark we fear here, son. The Dark, and what they might conceivably learn." The father stepped away from his friend to put a hand on the son's shoulder. "After I've spoken with the other mages at Raendwedth, we'll see."
But the Icefalcon felt Tir's memory-the memory of stories he'd heard about his own father, his real father, Eldor Andarion, seized and borne away by the Dark Ones to their hellish nests-and after the two men vanished through the right-hand archway, the boy crept stealthily in their wake.
The northern end of the Keep beyond the Aisle was the headquarters of the Keep's ruling landchief, containing the chambers where his warriors slept and the rooms where his weavers, potters, smiths, and bakers dwelled with their families and plied their trades.
Here-as in Renweth-there were audience chambers great and small, conference halls, even chambers spelled with Runes of Silence against the working of wizardry, which could hold the mageborn prisoners within their walls. There had always, the Icefalcon deduced, been renegade shamans.
But unlike Renweth, this Keep was new. In Renweth over the countless years, families and clans had broken walls, enlarged cells, put in new stairways to suit their convenience-diverted the water pipes and run conduits off public fountains and latrines, installed false ceilings to create storage lofts, knocked out new doors or blocked old ones up: in general behaved like people making themselves thoroughly at home.
In the Keep of Dreams, corridors still ran straight and wide. Doorways were uniform and uniformly equipped with wooden louvers-(I'll have to tell Gil-Shalos all this)-and no pipes ran along the high black ceilings or the walls along the floor.
No bindweed tangle of ramose chaos; no torches.
Only glowstones in mesh baskets casting pale clear shadows as mage and warrior entered a cell (fourth on the right after the pillared audience chamber), mounted the spiral stair there, and, in the small conference chamber above, worked a catch behind a sconce on the wall to open a hidden panel.
They ascended a farther stair, and the boy who was also Tir watched them from below. He was tall enough-barely-to reach and work the lever behind the sconce. The stair was narrow, concealed within a wall, the Icefalcon guessed. He wondered if there were a corresponding route in Renweth and what its goal might be.
Here the goal was disappointing: a round vestibule entered, and exited again, by two doors that were only the width of a man's shoulders and barely six feet tall. What seemed to be a long conference hall lay beyond, though there was no table there, no chairs. Its eastern wall contained an archway flanked with frost-white pilasters in whose core seemed to be a half-seen spiral of broken fragments of iron and rock.
The archway led through a smaller chamber, likewise bare and likewise giving by a similarly pilastered arch into a third still smaller, and so into a fourth. Fearful of being seen, the boy remained hidden in the gloom of the vestibule, watching his father and the wizard Zay slowly pace the length of the first hall, then pass between the pillars to the second. Their voices were too low to be heard, but he saw Zay gesture, desperate, demanding, his shadow swooping huge over the wall, though what he demanded the boy did not know.
Around them the Keep slept, secure against the Dark Ones that haunted the lands outside. Tir turned away, afraid to follow further, and descended the secret stair.
The Icefalcon waited for him at the bottom.
"Icefalcon!" The boy flung himself at him, sobbing with relief, grabbed him hard around the waist, and pressed his wounded face to his belt knot, clinging as if he'd never let go. "Icefalcon, get me out of here!
Get me out of here! They killed Rudy, and Mama's dead, and they're going to break into the Keep and kill everyone because Vair thinks there's more weapons in the Keep, and he needs a place to raise an army that has food and can't be broken into like Prandhays..."
"Easy." The Icefalcon awkwardly stroked at the boy's dark hair. "Easy." He had always abhorred weeping children and was uneasily aware that such overwhelming emotion could decant the boy into wakefulness again. It might be hours then before he slept, and the Icefalcon had information to impart, and the cold pain, the ache of concentration, was beginning to saw at his consciousness.
"Your mother's not dead. Nor is Rudy, though he was badly hurt."
Tir lifted a face wild with hunger and the fear of belief. The Icefalcon felt a cold lance of fury at the man who would put that look into a child's eyes. "Lord Vair said..."
"Lord Vair's a liar."
Tir pressed his face to the Icefalcon's side and again burst into tears.
"Tir, listen. Listen." We don't have time for this. The Icefalcon patted the brittle little shoulder blades and wished Hethya were there.
And why didn't she wake Tir if he was sobbing in his sleep? Stupid wench, probably deep in some dream of tupping Ruvis or Mal or Dub or Dare of Renweth or Sergeant Red Boots or the Alketch Cavalry Corps...
"Tir, listen to me." The storm seemed to be subsiding. "I'm here to get you out, but you must help me.
Can you do that?"
Tir looked up at him again, wiped his eyes, and nodded.
"Good boy. I'm separated from my body now-my people call it shadow-walking-but I think I can get you out of this cell. I'm going to leave you now and scout a place outside the Keep where you can hide, a place for me to meet you and a route to get there. Then I'll return, tell you where to go, and get the guard to let you out."
"No," whispered Tir. "No, Icefalcon, please. Vair..." He stammered a little, as if his throat closed in protest against even forming the name.
He swallowed, mopped his cheeks, and made himself go on. "Vair will make me tell. About the stairway.
About the rooms. That's what he's here for. That's what he wants."
"What lies there?" The Icefalcon's pale brows knit. He thought he'd had a clear view to the back of the succession of chambers and had seen nothing.
Tir shook his head violently. "He'll make me tell," he whispered. "Bektis will make me tell. There's a spell they can do... Icefalcon, please."
The boy began to tremble and hiccup, and the Icefalcon patted his shoulders again. "Sh-sh. Very well."
He was thinking fast-and in truth, until he knew what Vair intended he did not know how much time he'd have. "How well do you know this Keep? Is there a place on the first level where you can hide? Close enough to the doors that you can get there quickly?"
Tir nodded. "There's places Bektis can't find me. Places magic doesn't work. Up there"-he pointed up the concealed stairway-"is one of them, but it's all grown up with plants in real life."
"Can you find another such? Good. When I leave you, you must wake and slip away as soon as the guard opens the door. Go quietly, so not to rouse Hethya."
"Can Hethya come with me? Icefalcon, please!" he added, feeling the warrior stiffen, and grabbed a handful of wolfskin vest as if he feared the Icefalcon would thrust him away.
"She's sorry, and she hates Vair as much as I do, and she only helped him because she was afraid not to. He'll hurt her real bad if I run away and she doesn't. Please."
"And if she decides it's in her best interests that neither of you flee?" He still remembered her in the high Vale, soaked with the clone's blood and clutching her hair in false terror. Remembered her gazing down at the Keep and declaiming in the voice of Oale Niu.
"She won't. Please." His eyes filled, and he blinked hard to keep them from running over: not a child's bid for pity, but fear for the sake of one who had been his only comfort. "She helped me, Icefalcon. I can't leave her."