The Blue Hawk (16 page)

But Tron, when he shuts his eyes and draws into himself, can sense, even here in the General's way-house, that he is part of some other purpose. He is being watched, but not by human eyes. It is as if he were some desert creature crossing a wide, bare tract—this journey—under the gold-eyed stare of a leopard crouched invisible on a rock that he must pass: the tip of the hunter's tail may twitch as it watches the coming prey, but its instinct tells it, “Wait. Not yet. Not yet.”

Crossing the river. The stench of mud and the sweetness of sappy new growth. The big-muscled ferrymen lean against the sweeps, singing to set the rhythm a slow and gurgling chant about a frog who had two wives on opposite banks of the river and wore himself out trying to keep them both happy. On the bank the ferry has left a green-robed priest of Tan angrily blesses the crossing. It has taken three hours of argument and a thumping bribe to the village headman to get the ferry to move at all. The priest has taken omens and declared that the Goddess was in no mood to carry chariots that day; but the headman, rheumatic and wily, has coaxed him into rereading the signs. Now the General lolls by the steersman's side, smiling to himself, and teasing the stiff curls of his beard. Tron understands quite well what has happened: the priest has seen the General come storming north, with only a few of his household and only four chariots; no village priest can question so great a noble about his comings and goings, but he can delay him for a day, send word ahead, arrange for further delays, and thus give the Major Priests time to prepare themselves for whatever this strange journey may mean. The General is smiling because he has outmaneuvered the priest. Tron smiles too, thin-lipped and sad. As if the Gods cared about any of this!

Desert soon after dawn. The jolt and bucket of the chariot, the clatter of wheels and hooves, a tiny mess of movement on the causeway corrupting that huge silence. Outwardly Tron seems to be part of the judder and noise; his body is braced against the chariot's sidebar, his feet firm in the cloglike footholds fixed to the chariot's floor; he is wearing the same gaudy livery as the General's servants. But inwardly, as he whispers the hymn of how Gdaal made the desert, he is part of the stillness.

Above the clatter rises a sudden shout of warning and a yell of surprise; a horse screams. A wheel floats into Tron's vision, spinning along the causeway so close that he could touch it if he were not trapped in the slow daze of his trance. Tron's charioteer is hauling on the reins; the next chariot is a wreck of wicker and wood, but Tron himself is hypnotized by the turning wheel as it curves with strange slowness off the paving and strikes with perfect aim into a small granite pillar, carved with the figure of Alaan and set there to mark the miles. It seems to burst quite silently and still with the same unearthly slowness, losing its shape like a storm-stripped flower. Five spokes twirl upward, dark against the dawn glare, floating as though they meant to soar off into the blue.

Then, in an instant, time asserts its grip. The spokes flop back into the sand. The wheel lies broken. Tron climbs down from the stopped chariot and goes around to hold the horses' heads while the charioteer runs back to help with the wreck behind. A man is sitting by the road with his head in his hands, but nobody else seems hurt and both horses are on their feet. An argument breaks out about whether the smash was caused by a charioteer's carelessness or by a priest at last night's way-house tampering with an axle pin. The General stamps about on the causeway, furious at the prospect of arriving at the Temple with a train of only three chariots, as if he were a common second-level lordling. But Tron stands in silence by the quivering horses, absorbed in the sign of the bursting wheel, though he cannot yet read its meaning. Several times he relives its slow instants before he shakes himself and looks around him.

At once he is aware that the desert has changed, becoming mere heaps of sand. The Gods have withdrawn. Gone too is the sense he had of being watched, as if by a leopard in ambush. So it is They who have been watching him during the journey north, and have now shown him this strange sign as They left. Though he still cannot read it, he is aware that he has come to a point where time pivots over like the heavy beam of a water-lift when it has emptied its load into an upper channel. He realizes that ever since he took the Blue Hawk from the House of O and Aa he has been somehow a focus, a central point in the Gods' attention to the world. Now, with the Temple a bare eight hours away, They have departed on Their own affairs. Whatever happens next will be achieved by men in a world of men.

XII

It was strange to stand at the Great Gate of the Temple and watch the little procession move through it to the steady throb of a gong and the clear note of a priest of O singing the Hymn of Welcome to Strangers. One priest of O and one of Aa led the procession; then came Onu Ovalaku in his outlandish ambassadorial robes, holding the Red Spear high before him; then the General, frowning and stiff; and then two Temple guards, snapped out of their lounging arrogance by the presence of these great people.

Tron watched them go and turned away to walk behind the chariots. He found himself swallowing with nerves, though there seemed little to be afraid of; his part of the adventure seemed over, he was under the protection of a great noble and the King himself, and there wasn't even much danger of his being recognized, in livery, with his hair a two-month mat and his already dark skin almost black from living all day under the glare of O. But he was still afraid. The Lord Gdu had left him, and he felt naked and companionless.

The path round to the palace passed beneath the enormous statues of the Gods, lining the Temple wall, patched with sharp angular shadows by the slant rays of O. At the foot of each was a priest of that God, standing by a stone bowl. Tron saw the charioteers ahead pause at the feet of lion-headed Sinu, throw a small coin into the bowl, and receive a blessing from the red-robed priest. But Tron as part of his disguise carried on his wrist the General's pretty little crested sparrowhawk—his own Blue Hawk was hidden in one of the chariots, in a basket which it hated and feared—so it was natural for him to make his small sacrifice to Gdu. The bowl held a mound of mixed coins, and as Tron's tinkled among them a blue-robed priest paced forward out of the shadow of the taloned feet to chant

“For this service,

O Lord Gdu,

Take the pain

And clear the eye.

For this service

Smooth the skin,

Heal the sickness,

O Lord Gdu.”

For a moment Tron stared at the priest, who stared back until he suddenly realized that he had made a mistake. All day he'd been trotting out the same blessing to visitors who had journeyed across the desert to consult the God about some illness, and now he'd automatically chanted it once more, when he should have blessed this boy's lord's hawking. He grunted and turned away, obviously not prepared to produce two blessings for one small coin.

A month before, Tron would have been appalled, but now he began to smile to himself as he walked on. The statue was empty, the God was not there, to heal or bless. But Tron found, whispering the words to himself, that he began to feel a little less afraid. Fear, after all, is a kind of sickness of the soul.

It seemed a long way round the huge-slabbed, windowless walls to the Palace Gate. When he had lived in the Temple it had seemed to Tron to be a whole world; during his travels it had shrunk in his mind to something no more than a big group of buildings, a place where a lot of priests happen to live; now once more he discovered how vast it was, and how the huge mass of its stones seemed to weigh the desert down, in much the same manner that the centuries of priest rule seemed to weigh down the Kingdom. O's light lay level across the dunes as he followed the chariots into the Palace Courtyard.

This was built as a mirror image of the Great Courtyard in the Temple, but was a whole world different in feel. At its center, round a stone-rimmed pool, rose a small grove of date palms, and in their shade a group of young nobles, fresh from some war game, were laughing and drinking; elsewhere men and women lounged or bustled, all at their own pace, doing what had to be done or what pleased them. A group of young men were singing at the foot of a wall; above their heads was a screen of fretted stone through which small hands emerged, opened, and showered petals down on the singers. The arrival of three chariots and a dozen servants were hardly noticed in this bustle, but suddenly one of the singers broke out of the group and came striding across.

“Atholin!” he called. “What in Sinu's name are you doing here?”

“The General has come north, My Lord,” said the head charioteer. “He brought a stranger with him. This boy knows more than I do.”

The young man swung round, frowning and pulling at his broken nose. Tron knew him for the King's friend, Lord Kalavin, the General's son, but he stared at Tron in humorous bewilderment.

“You're not one of our people,” he said. “Why are you wearing our livery?”

“My Lord the General gave me that honor,” said Tron carefully.

“Well, what's all this about?”

Tron felt a need to be cautious. The General had not talked in front of any of his own servants about the reasons for his sudden dash north.

“My Lord,” he said. “Do you remember a day, hawking above the Temple of Tan, when kingfowl were caught by a stranger?”

Kalavin's mouth fell open. He cut short a snort of surprise, stared again, nodded and turned to the charioteer.

“All right, Atholin,” he said. “Put the horses away. Our quarters are going to be pretty cramped if my father's here. Make the best arrangements you can. Come with me, boy.”

Tron needed almost to run to keep up with Kalavin's eager stride. He'd expected simply to be taken aside to explain the General's arrival in privacy, but Kalavin was evidently going somewhere, and talked excitedly as he walked.

“Sinu, but I'm glad to see you! The king … he wouldn't understand how I failed to get you out of that barge.”

“You couldn't have done anything, My Lord. I saw that.”

“Exactly! Well, I hope you'll tell him! I've tried to explain but he won't listen. It's as though I'd broken an Obligation to him—I suppose in a way I did, but it wasn't like that. And he's been behaving since then—not just to me, either—oh, I don't know—as though he'd never be lucky again. This way.”

Corridors, courtyards, arcades. Walls that in the Temple would have been bare were hung with deep-colored carpets; strange, heavy scents seemed to float out of certain doors they passed. At some entrances elegant young men, courtier-sentries, stopped them, more to break the boredom of their guard duty by chatting with Kalavin than to question his right to pass; but behind the chat Tron sensed a tension and wariness, a sour echo to Kalavin's eager optimism. At last they reached a round-arched passage where five men sat on stools, whispering over a game of dice. One of them, a black-bearded official wearing a long blue-and-gold robe, looked up at Kalavin's step, frowned and shook his head.

“Wait here, boy,” said Kalavin.

The official rose as he strode forward. A discussion began, but in whispers so low that Tron could hear a woman's voice singing somewhere beyond the group. Kalavin became stiff and angry, gesturing once or twice toward Tron. The dice-players rose and joined in the argument. Tron could see Kalavin's problem—if he was out of favor with the King, these courtiers would be reluctant to let him through, and there was no question of explaining who Tron really was, or how he had traveled in the Dead King's coffin. At length the blue-robed official beckoned. As Tron walked forward he heard this man saying, “… on your head be it, Kalavin.”

“On my head be it, My Lord. And let everyone witness that if the King rebukes My Lord, I will forfeit to him the stewardship of Bastaan Canals. You'd better go alone, boy. I'll take that hawk.”

Tron had almost forgotten the crested sparrowhawk he was carrying. Nervous and bewildered, he passed it to Kalavin, then walked through the arch at the end of the passage into a small arcaded courtyard. A slow fountain trickled at its center; gummy-scented flowers dangled from baskets hung between the pillars, and under the arcade itself dusk was already halfway to dark. He walked toward the sound of the singing, which seemed to float in among the fret-carved stone and then drift away upward to the darkening sky. More nervous than ever, he stole along the marble tiles and round the corner of the arcade.

The King was lolling on a mound of cushions in the next corner, his left hand idly stroking the black hair of the singer who sat cross-legged at his side and with pale fingers caressed a small harp, making a sound so soft that only the two of them could have discerned the faint, rainy notes behind her voice. But there was something about his pose at odds with the mood of idleness and luxury, and the moment Tron's movement caught his eye he jerked himself up, his face harsh with fury and amazement, but also a sort of eagerness, as though he welcomed the chance to pour out his frustration on this intruder. Then the fury died, leaving only the amazement, and he came striding forward with outstretched arms, his whole being seeming to pulse with pleasure in the living instant.

“I was afraid you would not know me, Majesty,” said Tron in a low voice.

“I would know you in the cave of that kind woman,” said the King, speaking even lower. “Come and sit with me. Don't say anything for the moment. No spyholes cover this corner, but voices carry among stonework. Namuthaa will make us a screen of sound.”

He turned and called to the singer “Ah, my love, any more music like that will melt me into a pool of honey. Sing something a bit more bracing—it's a long time since I heard
Dana and Tribathu.”

He settled back onto the cushions; Tron knelt beside him; the woman, pouting slightly, slipped onto her right hand a silk glove with fingernails of bone and began to pluck at the wires, drawing out a wild and clashingly metallic cataract of music. The King smiled at her. She threw back her head and began on a long and wailing note.