Talon of the Silver Hawk (21 page)

“Leave him alone, you useless barbarian. If we're going to get the girls to the lake tonight, we need Talon to ask Alysandra.”

Talon gave Demetrius a dubious look but said nothing. He had no problem talking to Alysandra, as some of the
other boys seemed to have, yet he had come to the conclusion that she was totally uninterested in him. Between her polite but unenthusiastic responses to him over the last few weeks whenever circumstances brought them together, and the near awe with which the boys regarded her, he had decided early on that any pursuit of her was a waste of time.

Still, if Demetrius was willing to risk the cook's wrath by pilfering some wine, and even Rondar was excited at the prospect of the gathering, Talon felt he'd best do his part.

He finished dressing and set out to find Alysandra.

The fire burned brightly as the young men and women of the island sat in pairs or threes talking quietly. Except Rondar, who sat slightly away from Demetrius and a girl whose name Talon didn't know.

Talon was surprised to see nearly fifty people around the fire. The two bottles of wine Demetrius had produced were augmented by a large cask of ale someone else had purloined from the storage shed, and a few of the boys were already showing the effects of too much drink. He helped himself to a goblet and walked a little away from the group.

Talon enjoyed wine, but ale held little interest for him. The honeyed drinks of his childhood were but a dim memory and he had been denied the fermented honey the men drank. He stood there, on his own, swishing the pungent liquid around his mouth, savoring its taste.

“Why are you alone?''

Talon looked up and found a slender dark-haired girl named Gabrielle standing next to him, a light shawl around her shoulders. She had startling blue eyes and a warm smile.

“Hardly alone,” Talon said.

She nodded. “Yet you always seem . . . apart, Talon.''

Talon glanced around and said nothing.

“Are you waiting for Alysandra?”

It was as if the girl had read his mind; and on
this
island, that was a distinct possibility! Gabrielle's smiled broadened. “No . . . yes, I suppose so. I mentioned this gathering to her before supper and”—he waved his hand at the other girls—“apparently she mentioned it to a number of the girls.''

Gabrielle studied his face, then said, “Are you yet another of those who have fallen under her spell?''

“Spell?” asked Talon. “What do you mean?''

“She's my friend. We share a room, and I love her, but she's different.” Gabrielle looked at the fire as if seeing something within the flames. “It's easy to forget that each of us is different.”

Talon didn't quite know where Gabrielle was taking the conversation, so he was content to remain silent.

After a long pause, Gabrielle said, “I have visions. Sometimes they are flashes, images that are with me for only a brief instant. At other times they are long, detailed things, as if I were in a room watching others, hearing them speak.

“I was abandoned as a child by my family. They were fearful of me because I had foretold the death of a nearby farmer, and the villagers named me a witch-child.” Her eyes grew dark. “I was four years old.''

When Talon reached out to touch her, she pulled back and turned toward him with a pained smile. “I don't like to be touched.''

“Sorry,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “I only—‘'

“I know you meant well. Despite your own pain you have a generous spirit and an open heart. That's why I see only pain for you.''

“What do you mean?''

“Alysandra.” Gabrielle rose. “I love her like a sister, but she's dangerous, Talon. She will not come tonight. But you will find her, soon. And you will fall in love with her, and she will break your heart.''

Before he could ask any more questions, she turned and walked off into the dark, leaving Talon staring after her bemusedly. He weighed her words and found himself feeling a mixture of confusion and anger. Hadn't he had enough pain already in his life? He had lost everything dear to him, nearly been killed, been taken to strange places, and asked to learn things that were still alien and disturbing to him at times.

And now he was being told that he had no choice in how his heart was to be engaged? He stood up and turned his back on the revelers and slowly started to head back toward his quarters. His mind spun this way and that, and before he knew it he was in his quarters, lying upon his bed, staring at the ceiling. It seemed to him then that two faces hovered above him, changing places: Alysandra, whose brilliant smile seemed to make a lie of Gabrielle's words—for how could someone so gentle and beautiful be dangerous? But then he'd recall the pain he saw in Gabrielle's eyes and knew that she was not giving him false counsel. She had perceived danger, and Talon knew he must heed that warning.

He was dozing when Rondar and Demetrius returned from the gathering, both of them a little drunk. They were chattering. Or rather, thought Talon, Demetrius was chattering for both of them.

“You left,” said Rondar.

“Yes,” said Talon. “As you recall, I have a long day in the kitchen tomorrow, so do us all a favor and stop talking.''

Demetrius looked at Talon, then at Rondar, and started to laugh. “That's our Rondar, talk, talk, talk.''

Rondar pulled off his boots, grunted, and fell upon the bed.

Talon turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes, but sleep was a long time in coming.

Weeks passed, and the events of the night in which Gabrielle shared her vision with him faded. Talon found much of the work that was given to him routine and predictable, but there were always enough new lessons to maintain his interest. As Magnus had predicted, Rondar turned Talon into a fine horseman, and over the next few months the Orosini emerged as the most able swordsman on the island. It felt, however, something of a hollow honor, as most of the students on Sorcerer's Isle spent little or no time studying weapons and their uses.

The magic classes were strange. He barely understood half the things under discussion, and seemed to have no natural aptitude for the subject at all. Once or twice he would get an odd feeling just before a spell was executed, and when he told Magnus and Nakor about this, they spent over an hour asking him to describe that feeling in great detail.

The most amusing situation to arise during those weeks was Rondar's infatuation with a newly arrived girl named Selena, a hot-tempered, slender Keshian girl who despised Ashunta horsemen on general principle, for she had seen them on the edge of her town many times as a child. Her outrage at their treatment of women seemed focused upon Rondar as if he were the sole architect of his culture's values and beliefs. At first, Rondar had been silent in the face of her anger, ignoring the barbs and insults. Then he had returned the anger, speaking in rare, complete sentences, much to Talon's and Demetrius's
amusement. Then against any reasonable expectation, he became enamored of her.

His determination to win her over resulted in Talon sitting quietly, biting his tongue to keep from laughing, as Demetrius tutored Rondar in how properly to pay court. Talon knew himself to be no expert in such things, and judged that the girl had a great deal more to say in these matters than the boy, but his experience with Lela and Meggie at least had made him a little more comfortable around girls than Rondar and Demetrius. Around all girls, that is, except Alysandra.

His initial attraction to her had been supplemented by his reaction to Gabrielle's warning. He now found her both appealing and daunting in the extreme. There was a sense of danger about her, and he wondered if it was of his own imagining, or if there was something truly risky in having any contact with her.

He decided that the best answer was avoidance, and when a situation arose which threw them together he was polite but distant. He also found as many excuses as possible to keep away from her until he puzzled out how he felt about all this.

Nakor and Magnus provided new things for him to do all the time, and one afternoon he found himself undertaking the strangest task so far. Nakor had taken him to the top of a hillock, upon which sat a stunted birch tree, nearly dead from some pest, with gnarled branches and few leaves. Nakor had handed Talon a large piece of parchment stretched over a wooden frame, then a fire-hardened stick with a charcoal point. “Draw that tree,” he said, walking away without waiting to hear Talon's questions or remarks.

Talon looked at the tree for a long time. Then he walked around it twice and stared for nearly half an hour at the blank parchment.

Then he noticed a curve below one branch, where a shadow formed a shape like a fish. He tried to draw that.

Three hours later he looked at his drawing, then up at the tree. Frustration rose up in him and he threw the parchment down. He lay back and looked up at the clouds racing overhead, letting his mind wander. Large white clouds formed shapes and in those shapes he saw faces, animals, a castle wall.

His mind drifted away, and before long he realized he had dozed off. He was not sure how long he had slept for—only a few minutes, he judged—but suddenly he understood something. He sat up and looked at his parchment; then the tree, and frantically began another drawing, to the left of the original sketch. This time he stopped looking for details and just tried to capture the sense of the tree, the lines and shadows his hunter's eye had revealed. The details weren't important, he realized: rather, it was the overall sense of the object that mattered.

Just as he was completing the drawing, Nakor returned and peered over his shoulder. “Have you finished?”

“Yes,” said Talon.

Nakor looked at the two trees. “You did this one first?” He pointed to the one on the right.

“Yes.”

“This one is better,” he said, indicating the drawing on the left.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. I just stopped trying to do everything.”

“That's not bad,” said Nakor, handing back the drawing. “You have a good eye. Now you must learn how to record what is important and not what is unnecessary. Tomorrow you will start to learn to paint.''

“Paint?”

“Yes,” said Nakor. Turning back toward the estate, he said, “Come along.''

Talon fell in alongside his instructor and wondered what Nakor meant by “learn to paint.''

Maceus scowled as he watched Talon. The man had appeared as if by magic outside Nakor's quarters the day after Talon had sketched the tree. He was a Quegan, with an upturned nose, a fussy little mustache, and a penchant for clucking his tongue while he reviewed Talon's work. He had been teaching the young man about painting for a month now, working from dawn to dusk.

Talon was a quick study. Maceus proclaimed him without gifts and lacking grace, but grudgingly admitted he had some basic skill and a good eye.

Nakor would come in and observe from time to time as Talon struggled to master the concepts of light, shape, texture, and color. Talon also learned to mix his colors and oils to create what he needed and to prepare wooden boards or stretched canvas to take the paint.