The Blue Hawk (12 page)

Lords of all time.”

As he spoke the last line the gorge altered. O in His westward journey had been slanting directly between the cliffs, but now, as if sending a sign, He moved beyond the rim, and the chill shadow of the rock swept across the platform. Tron praised Gdu again, then climbed on.

Almost at once Gdu seemed to fail him. Some two hundred steps above the platform the stair vanished at a point where it had once leaped across a thirty-foot cleft on a climbing bridge. Tron could see the jagged supports of that old arch on either side of the gap, and looking up he could also see where the same thing had happened again as the steps swung back out of the mist. There seemed to be a few holds and crannies in the rock, but not enough, and even if he were to edge across that hideous traverse and climb on into the smoke he would have the same crossing to make again a hundred feet higher.

For the moment he couldn't face it. He sighed and started despairingly down the steps in the faint hope that in his absorption with the falls he had failed to notice some other way up from the platform. When he was about halfway back he was startled by a sudden whimper in the air and a blur of slate-blue plumes hovering at his side. Habit raised his left arm chest-high and thrust slightly forward. The Blue Hawk settled, ruffled and sulky. Habit again made Tron feel in his pouch and find the thigh of the dove that had died in the King's coffin. The hawk accepted it with no grace at all, but gripped savagely at his arm while it tore at the tough sinews.

The pain pierced Tron's tiredness and numbness like a trumpeter's alarm piercing to the brains of sleeping soldiers. Gdu had sent him this signal by His servant the hawk, saying “Here! It is here!”

He looked about him. Below the falls boomed on, unpitying. But above him the cliff was split by a jagged, sloping fissure, which vanished over a jut of rock. Carefully he eased the hawk from his bleeding wrist and settled it onto one of the fallen stones that lay in places on the stairs, where it continued to rend at its meat with absorbed gusto. He reached into the crevice with a hand and a foot, found holds, and pulled himself clear of the steps.

The dances of the Temple, precise but strenuous, do not teach how to climb raw rock. But they do make the body strong and supple, give it true sense of balance, and most of all teach the limbs to move exactly to the demands of the will, so that if a movement is physically possible the body can perform it Tron didn't consider this. Wherever he rested and hung panting he praised Gdu for still continuing to lead and guard him.

Beyond the jut of rock the crevice widened and deepened, then tilted from the vertical so that for a long way he was able to crawl inside it up a very steep slope with plenty of jags and roughness to cling to. When it closed and forced him out onto the cliff face again, he found a narrow ledge running upward toward the smoke, and this in turn reached an area of broken cliff where there was a crisscross pattern of fissures to use as holds. Nothing was as difficult as the start, and even where he was clinging to a cranny above some plummeting drop, Tron wasn't afraid. He knew that Gdu was showing him the way and would give him strength to reach the top.

He climbed continually to his left, so reached the upper stair just at the edge of the cleft from which the bridges had dropped away. The remains of the man-made supports gave him the footholds he needed to wriggle up onto the first unbroken step. Here he rested, in case Gdu should be moved to send him the hawk once more; either as a sign or a companion, though he had no lure and it was useless to cry or whistle against the monotonous roar of the falls. As he waited, lonely above that deadly drop, he became more and more piercingly aware of how much of himself had gone when he had flung the hawk into freedom. But it is Gdu's servant, not mine, he thought as he turned once more to the stairs.

They seemed to climb on for ever, but ended abruptly where a fall of earth and boulders had filled a narrow ravine. Out of the earth grew tussocks and shrubs, lush with the ceaseless spray, and clinging to these he climbed on without much difficulty, coming at last to the top almost unaware. From below it had seemed to be just another grassy ridge, which he clambered onto with elbow and knee; but then he looked up and found himself staring into the setting sun across an upland of close-cropped grass, a huge, rising wold dotted with sheep. Between him and them sat the shepherd, facing away from the falls and dressed in a shapeless smock of undyed wool. He hesitated, then walked forward, raised his right hand, and began to speak the common blessing.

The shepherd looked around. It was a child, a girl about ten years old. Her brown face went pale. As she leaped to her feet her scream was a clear, harsh note, piercing the steady boom from the falls.

IX

Exhausted though he was, Tron smiled at the strangeness of it. The first woman he had heard had been a coffin-robber in the dark. The first he spoke to screamed at the sight of him.

“O watches us. Aa sleeps. What do you fear?” he said, automatically falling into the half-singing speech which he had been taught to use to peasants, but pitching it loud enough to be heard through the drumbeat of falling waters.

“I … I thought you were a ghost … Revered Lord. I thought you'd crept out from the Jaws of Alaan. It's full of ghosts down there.”

She had a sharp, perky little face, on which curiosity sat more naturally than fear.

“The Jaws of Alaan!” he exclaimed, awe and astonishment piercing the priest-trained calm.

“Down there. Didn't the Revered Lord know? That's His voice, roaring. That's His breath you can see.”

The Jaws of Alaan! How many of the hymns spoke of that chasm of mystery and fear, that home of ghosts, not to be visited by living men!
But I have set foot there. I have seen Gdaal's bow curving across the rim of the falls, where He was forced to leave it when He rescued Tan from the lightless kingdom. I have walked among spirits, under the wing of Gdu.

“I was on the river in a boat,” he said. “Tan swept us between cliffs. Then a mist came down and I slept. And in my dream my Lord Gdu carried me to the clifftop, and there I woke.”

“What it is to be a priest!” she answered. If Tron had ever lived among villagers he would have recognized this as an everyday remark picked up from the child's elders, half sneer and half acceptance of a fact of existence. He turned his back on her, raised his arms and praised Gdu, Alaan, and Tan. His knowledge of where he had been filled him with deep awe and made his voice as solemn as a Major Priest's. When he had finished he saw that the child was watching him with almost absurd respect.

“May I milk an ewe for the Revered Lord to drink?” she said.

“I drink water,” he answered. “Have you any bread?”

“A … a little, Revered Lord. And there is a stream of good water over the rise there, by the cave.”

A cave, a stream. Bread. Gdu guided him still.

“Child,” he said solemnly. “I do not know why my Lord Gdu brought me to this place, but I do know that it is dangerous even for priests to interfere with the plans of the Gods. So until my Lord Gdu has spoken to me and shown me His will you must tell nobody that you have seen me, not even your own priest.”

“Oh, we hardly ever see our priest in Upper Kalakal,” she said. “He lives in Lower Kalakal, and he's a cripple, so when we want him to bless a hut or something he has to be carried up. Curil—that's our headman, brews his own beer, but of course he doesn't tell anyone. Oh!”

“And I will not tell anyone,” said Tron, “just as you will not tell anyone about me. I will take the bread from you as a sign.”

She opened a sheepskin satchel and took out a strange, flat loaf, very dark. Tron broke it in two and gave half of it back to her, at which she seemed surprised. As she was replacing her half in the satchel, he saw a roll of stout cord there.

“I will take that cord also for a day and a night,” he said. “Will you need it?”

“Oh no, that's only for training lambs that won't follow my clatterer. The Revered Lord can … that's meat! Priests don't eat meat!”

“It is for my companion,” said Tron, hacking away a corner of tough mutton. When he rose he saw that she had gone pale again, and was glancing round her with her eyes while trying not to move her head.

“He will do you no harm,” said Tron. “He is quite small.”

“I must go, Revered Lord.”

“There is nothing to fear.”

“No. Look. It is time.”

She pointed back over his shoulder and he turned. O's beams now lay flat across the grassland. Tron's shadow reached almost to the cliff edge. To the right, where the last of the falling spray drifted across the hill, a gold arch began to rise, made out of nothing. It was vast, though there was no more of it than the start of a curving column, which now gathered colors to it and stood there glowing.

“Lord Gdu!” said Tron. “What is it?”

“Don't you … doesn't the Revered Lord know? That's O's answer.”

“I know the hymn,” said Tron stiffly. “I had not seen the thing.”

“It means I must take my flock home before Her time.”

“Go then,” said Tron. “This cave and stream are easy to find?”

“Just beyond that ridge, Revered Lord,” she said. She picked up from beside her satchel two slabs of shaped wood and clacked them together, making a rapid rhythmic rattle, which pierced the boom of the falls. At once all the sheep raised their heads and started to drift toward her.

“They won't come if the Revered Lord stands too close,” she said.

“I will go,” said Tron. “Will you bring me more bread tomorrow, and a little raw meat?”

Her eyes widened, but she seemed relieved and pleased when he gave her the common blessing. He walked wearily away, but looked back from the ridge of the hill to see her moving slowly across the slope, followed by an obedient line of brown backs. He blessed her again in his mind.

The stream was formed in a cup of land that gathered the spray from the falls but sloped away from the gorge. The cave was a dark little hollow where a wall of stones and turfs had been piled beside a big sloping boulder to provide shelter from the endlessly falling droplets.

Tron was very stiff as he did his dances, and for the first time for many years his tongue muddled the hymns. He found it difficult to eat more than a little of the tough, salty bread, and difficult too to stop drinking from the stream. He slept uneasily, drifting in and out of muttering dreams, and woke feeling sore in all his joints, thirsty, and dizzy.

When he had drunk from the stream he chose from its bed a suitable stone, then walked through the drenched grass back to the gorge. At the rim he paused. O had barely risen, and all the depths below him were dusky with the trapped remains of night. The roaring gulf made him dizzier still, seeming to call to him, to suck at his will, as if there was a voice below the roaring which said, “Down. Down. Drown. Drown.” If he hadn't been carried on by the impetus of the plan he'd made last night he would simply have stood on the brink shivering with fever and irresolution.

But he backed away, knelt, and carefully cut the torn hem free from his tunic. With his hawking knife he pricked his forearm in the place that the hymns prescribe, and as he squeezed out the first drops of sacrifice he sang.

“Brother of Gods,

Son of Great Aa,

I give you my blood,

Answer my asking.”

His voice, shivering off the note, was drowned by the boom of waters from below.

He squeezed more blood from his arm and mopped it with the length of hem, then bound stone and cloth and meat together with the end of the cord. Standing up, he swung the whole contraption round his head, letting the cord run out through his fingers until the cloth-wrapped stone was flying round him, fluttering, blue and scarlet, a wounded bird. He began the shrill, quavering whistle of the austringer, but found it difficult to maintain as his lips were strangely numb and puffy. The hurling lure made him dizzier still. He staggered about, whistling and calling, and conscious in his darkening mind that he too was being called. Down. Down. Drown. Drown. Twice he almost fell over the edge, the second time coming so near that the gulp of panic cleared his mind and let him move back and sit on the soft turf with the lure loose beside him.

As he rested there trying to swallow away the rasping soreness in his throat he heard a hiss and a thud, and there, flung down out of nowhere, was the Blue Hawk binding to the lure.

By an effort of will he forced the fever out of his brain long enough to coax the bird onto his gauntlet and retie the thongs to its legs while it pulled disgustedly at the cooked meat. As his gloved fingers closed at last round the other end of the thongs his stupidity and feebleness came surging back. He rose and began to stagger back toward his cave. Suddenly, without warning, the hawk flung itself into a frenzy. He whispered to it, but it would not be still. A voice seemed to be calling to him again, but pitched above the water-thunder.

“Revered Lord!”

The shepherd girl was floating toward him, only a few feet away now. He turned his back on her and tried to hood the terrified hawk. There seemed to be two hoods, two curved beaks, two seats of shaking fingers. He shut his eyes, and with the Lord Gdu guiding his hand he did the job by feel. Then he opened his eyes to the swaying landscape and turned to face the girl.

“O's blessings,” she called cheerfully. “What's that? It's a blue hawk! Oh! I've never seen one so close. Didn't you … didn't the Revered Lord know they can't be tamed? May I touch him?”

“Gently,” muttered Tron. “Not used to … to … I'm sick. Fever. The cold and the wet. The cold and the wet. The cold …”

He stood there mumbling the words over and over.

“It's funny Lord Gdu should carry you out of the Jaws of Alaan and then give you a fever,” she said.