Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (36 page)

 
          
In
Heinrich's estimation, a good falconer never left this to an underling unless
he was so pressed by his other duties for time that he could not manage to
squeeze in the few hours that it required. Much could be intuited of the health
of one's bird from the state of her stall, and the remains of past
dinners—eaten and uneaten—and the products of digestion—cast from both ends. A
truly good falconer also went into the stall several times a day during the
molt, and gathered up primaries, secondaries, and tail feathers as they were
shed. Not for frivolous use like hat trimming, but in case the bird broke one
of those all-important feathers in the course of hunting; one of the old ones
could be spliced, or "imped," to the stub of the broken one.

 
          
A
hawk's weapon is her talons, but her life is her feathers. That was what
Heinrich said, and it was true that a falcon could not hunt successfully
without her full complement of primary feathers. A hawk was a little sturdier,
however; because of the nature of the way she hunted among the trees and brush,
and those wide wings, she could tolerate loss of a primary or two with no
significant loss of hunting ability.

 
          
Perhaps
that's another reason why I enjoy hunting Freya, Honoria thought, as she
cleaned the last stall of all—the goshawk's. She isn't so fragile.

 
          
She
installed the iron bow-perch wrapped with heavy rope in the center of the
stall, replacing the old one that she had pulled up and carried out. Hawks used
bow-perches, shaped like a strung hunting bow, rather than block-perches, which
were short, round columns of wood with spikes on the bottom to push into the
ground. Bow-perches replicated the hawk's chosen tree limbs and the rope
wrapped tightly around them gave the talons purchase and grip, while the block-perches
with leather tops simulated the rock ledges and protruding boulders of a
falcon's cliff. With a sense of weary satisfaction, she pushed the spikes on
either end of the bow deeply into the gravel and down to the earth beneath it
with her foot, setting it securely so that it wouldn't wobble when Freya pushed
off or landed on it. Then she went out into the last light of sunset to bring
Freya out of the weathering yard, an area enclosed by a sturdy fence, where
hawks and falcons could be tethered by their leashes to a perch and left to
sunbathe or observe what went on, around them. They needed to spend at least
part of each day in the sun for the sake of their health, and if they didn't
get it in hunting, they had to be out in the yard.

 
          
She
took up the gos with no fear that Freya would bate; as always, the goshawk
stepped up onto the gloved hand pushed against the back of her legs with
perfect manners. Honoria pushed her free hand up under the soft breast
feathers- and scratched gently under Freya's wings; she could have sworn that
the hawk sighed with pleasure at the caress.

 
          
She
brought Freya into the mews and placed her on one of the wall-mounted perches
mounted in the corners at breast height, rather than on the more exposed
bow-perch in the middle. She knew Freya's habits after two years of working
with her, and knew that the gos preferred a higher, more enclosed perch for
sleeping.

 
          
Freya
stepped down onto the perch with the same calm demeanor that she had shown in
the yard. Honoria looked deeply into her strange, red eyes, and wondered how
they managed to appear so thoughtful, when every other gos she'd ever seen
looked angry, half-crazed, or both. The red or yellow-red color of an
accip-tor's eyes added to that impression of insanity or fury, of course; the
huge, darker eyes of a falcon looked positively innocent and endearing by
comparison. But Freya had never been the same as other goshawks, not since the
moment the net had snapped down over her.

 
          
"Oh,
Freya," Honoria sighed out loud, as the gos scratched her head with a
foot, then stretched out right leg and right wing at the same time. "How I
wish I could trade places with you. Even kept in a mews, you have more freedom
than I."

 
          
She
had never made so fervent a wish, or so sincere. But she hardly expected the
gos to reply.

 
          
"Are
you quite certain you mean that, my dear?"

 
          
The
voice startled her; she glanced all around to see who could have come into the
mews unnoticed, but there was no one there.

 
          
"Of
course there's no one there; I was the one talking to you."

 
          
The
voice was female, and entirely unfamiliar; it was with a sense of dislocation
and entire disbelief that Honoria turned back to look at her goshawk.

 
          
Freya
watched her with her head turned entirely upside-down; the position a raptor
took when she wanted to get a really good look at something (not potential
prey) that interested her.

 
          
"I
must be going mad," she said, half to herself. "They've finally
driven me mad."

 
          
"I
assure you, you are as sane as I am." The hawk righted her head and opened
her beak, like a human laughing silently. "You are certainly aware that
I'm abnormally sane for a goshawk, so that means both of us are
clear-headed."

 
          
At
Prince Siegfried's fete, Honoria had brushed up against magic at work, powerful
magic; she had seen it with her own eyes. Perhaps that made her readier to
believe that magic could be at work here, magic or a miracle or both, and less
inclined to run screaming of demons to the Royal Priest. "Why are you
talking to me?" she breathed, drawing nearer to the bird, hardly daring to
think she'd get a reply.

 
          
"You're
taking this all very well, my dear. It's making things much easier that you're
being so calm."

 
          
"Why
shouldn't I be calm?" Honoria retorted. "It isn't going to help me to
run away hysterically, not when you've just offered me a way to escape!
But why?

 
          
And why now?"

 
          
"Because you wished to trade places with me."
Freya shook her head violently to dislodge a bit of fluff. "You can, you
know. Trade places with me, that is.

 
          
But
you'd better be certain that it's what you really want, because you'll be a
goshawk for a very long time."

 
          
"How long?"
Honoria didn't question the truth of
the promise; if she was dreaming all this, she'd awaken soon enough, and if there
was any chance at all this was real, she was not going to chance losing this
unlooked-for gift of Heaven! If Honoria had been granted a true miracle, surely
this was the one she could have chosen!

 
          
"Thirty
years. That's the duration of the spell. Then you either find someone who
wishes she could trade places with you, and says so aloud, or you die a
goshawk, and the spell dies with you." Freya cocked her head to one side.

 
          
"Actually,
any time during the thirty years, you can try to find someone to trade, but the
spell will only work on Walpurgis Night—May Eve. In the thirtieth year, it will
work for the three days of every full moon."

 
          
This
was awfully detailed information for a hawk to be carrying around! "How do
you know that?"

 
          
"Would
you go light a lantern?" Freya said instead. "It's getting too dark
in here to stay
awake
property."

 
          
Hawks
tended to fall asleep as soon as darkness fell, and Honoria did not wish the
possible bearer of salvation to doze off. As Honoria hurried out to the equipment
room to fetch a lantern and light it at the one always kept burning there, she
realized that she wasn't actually hearing a voice when Freya spoke.

 
          
She
returned with more questions—which Freya answered before she even entered the
stall.

 
          
"I'm
hearing your thoughts, of course, silly goose." The hawk was clearly
amused. "It comes as part of the spell. Very convenient, knowing what's
happening even ivhen
you're
hooded."

 
          
Honoria
brought the lantern into the stall and set it carefully on the gravel; Freya,
however, was not going to wait for spoken questions. Now that she'd started
talking, it seemed that she very much enjoyed having someone to listen!

 
          
"Let
me tell you what you want to know, as quickly as I can, before your parents
send a page to drag you in to dinner. I don't know who first set this spell,
but I know why—it was a girl voho loved freedom and falconry and hated the kind
of life she led as a human female. Like you, I suspect she must have faced a
coming situation that for her was unbearable. I think she might have found a
powerful sorcerer to change her shape for her, but she wanted a chance to be a
human again if she changed her mind. So that was the 'escape' set into the
spell—on any Walpurgis Night, or on the night of every full moon in the
thirtieth year, if she wanted to resume the life of a human woman, she needed
to find a human who wanted the same kind of freedom a hawk has." Freya
gazed up at her with unblinking eyes; shadows moved as the candle in the
lantern flickers. "Remember, before you say anything, what that also
means. Freedom to starve or freeze to death in the winter, to be shot by a
hunter or killed by an owl or an eagle, freedom to be crippled in an accident
and die slowly and in great pain. There is an everyday price as well; you will
have to hunt for your food unless you allow yourself to be taken by a falconer,
and not all mews are as well-run as Hein-rich's. You will have to protect
yourself from other predators, and endure the long cold and scant food every winter.
Unless you find it, you will have no shelter for the worst weather, and no
escape from the heat of high summer. For everything there is a cost— that's the
cost of this trade. And the final cost, if you change your mind and can't find
someone to trade with, you die at the end of thirty years, as a hawk, unshriven
and unmourned."

 
          
"I
could die in two years in childbed," Hon-oria replied impatiently. "I
could die tomorrow from a fall from my horse. What odds is it? Thirty years is
as much as most humans get. If you can read my thoughts, you know the ultimatum
my parents have presented me with."

 
          
"That
was why I spoke." Again, the beak opened in a silent laugh. "But I
had already guessed you would be likely to make that wish the moment I decided
to let you trap me. At least four girls before me have thought the bargain
worth the risk; my predecessor told me everything I just told you. Thirty years
ago, I was just like you, but with less choice of spouse. My parents chose a
man for me—a feeble, sickly old man, quite old enough to be my grandfather, and
entirely insistent that once I was his wife, I give up all my frivolous
pursuits to make his life comfortable. I was intended, not to be the bearer of
his children, but to be his nursemaid, constant companion, and silent helper,
destined to see no more of the out-of-doors than I could through a window until
he finally died.
Which promised to take years, for he had
already worn out two such wives with his care.
"

 
          
Honoria
could imagine it all too easily, and shuddered. "I'd have thrown myself
off the tower, first."

 
          
"Believe
me, I considered it. It wasn't an in-termewed gos that spoke to
me,
it was a free bird circling the tower, who came to land
beside me to make her offer." Freya looked away for a moment. "That
might have been why I was so willing to accept it—having a goshawk land on the
parapet next to you and begin a conversation in the moment of your greatest
despair is magical enough to make one believe in anything."

 
          
Honoria
almost laughed. "I can see that. But what had she been flying from?"

 
          
"A
family in disgrace; her choice had been to take vows, which her predecessor
found perfectly acceptable, as she found caring for an old man an acceptable
alternative to living out her last year of life as a gos. She, with twenty-nine
years of freedom behind her, was willing to gamble on outliving him. I
wasn't." If there was ever a shrug in someone's voice, there was one in
Freya's. "What one of us finds intolerable, another finds acceptable, you
see, especially after having had a full measure of freedom already. But before
you agree—you must carefully consider the bargain. You could have a perfectly
reasonable life as someone's spouse, the lady to a young man who worships you
at this very moment. I'm speaking specifically of Sir Gunther."