The Blue Hawk (19 page)

They all waited until he was standing face to face with the blind priest.

“Sinu,” he said gently. “The Red Spear Treaty. Let them send from the south.”

The old man's filmed eyes blinked slowly, and his mouth stopped its yawning for a moment and shut tight.

“My brother of Sinu knows of no such hymn,” said the One of O. “Therefore this Red Spear Treaty is nothing more than a stratagem to allow the King to raise his levies against the will of the Gods. It is as we thought from the first, my brothers.”

Tron stared at the old man, hopeless and despairing. Only the Lord Gdu could break the chain of the drug and free the imprisoned will, and He was far away. Shadowy in his mind Tron formed a picture of the Blue Hawk, his contact with the God, as he had first seen it, drowsy like the One of Sinu, sick and bedraggled. The picture became firmer, became like a living bird in the dark room.

“Let them send from the south, Sinu,” said the King. “Let them send from the south.”

The One of Sinu swayed and tried to draw his arms free from his supporters. His head jerked erect, lolled, and straightened again. The spittle down his chin became a steady stream. His lips began to move. The words were slurred into a dull mumble, only just interpretable.

“Let them send from the south,

From beyond the peaks,

A rider with a spear

Strung like a bow—

One string for each people

Bound at the tip

With flamingo feathers,

Tan's holy bird.

Then, then must the Horn

Of War be sounded.

The breath of Sinu

Must fill the Kingdom

That the King may call

His levies to muster

And ride to war

Through the Pass of Gebindrath.”

As he ended, one bony old hand rose and feebly tried to wipe the saliva from his chin.

“How deep the hymns root,” said the Mouth of Silence in an awed matter.

“So, Revered Lords!” cried the King. “There is no Red Spear Treaty? There is no hymn? And you have taken it on yourselves to reject and burn the symbol of friendship between two nations!”

The One of O said nothing, but glanced at the Keeper of the Rods, who nodded calmly, just as though he had been giving the signal for the start of a new phase of a ritual in the House of O and Aa.

“Let us all sit down,” he said. “The lesser priests of Sinu may wait in my room beyond. The boy too.”

His glance at Tron caught, held, and became a thoughtful gaze. Then he nodded again. His face showed no sign of surprise, only a look of satisfaction, as though a rod lost from his rack had been found and settled into place again.

“No,” he said. “The boy must return to the Halls of Gdu. By O and Aa I hereby vow that he will not be harmed.”

“The boy you are talking about went on a journey to that kind woman,” said the King. “How can this be the same boy? He stays with me.”

“Perhaps he is still on his journey,” said the Mouth of Silence in a trancelike voice. Tron shivered. He knew by now how often the Gods put truth into the mouths of the priests, even when they themselves might think they were lying. Instinctively he moved to behind the King's shoulder, as if into the sphere of his protection, but standing a little sideways so that he could watch the door through which the King had entered. What mustering of silent priests, each gripping a leaf-shaped sacrificial knife, was waiting in that dark cranny, ready to burst into the lamplit room? Tron wasn't afraid of them now, only wary. As far as the human actors went he was beginning to feel a sort of exhilaration in the King's success, a sense of being part of a controlled onrush. A sudden thud in the room made him start, but it was only the One of Sinu collapsing forward across the table. The old man sprawled now with his yellow skull stark on the black wood, mouth half open, lids closed over the sightless eyes. Tron stared at him without pity or horror, but with a sort of awe at the way the Gods contrived to squeeze Their purposes through such a narrow and fragile channel.

This room was full of purposes, layers under layers—the General's to fulfill his Obligation to the Falathi; Onu Ovalaku's to bring help to his country; the King's to provide that help and thus to reassert his own power, and in the end to break the power of the priests; the priests' to retain that power; and so on. But under all these lay the invisible purposes of the Gods, Who had willed this meeting, Who had used the One of Sinu and now were letting him sleep, Who had used Tron and now …

Tron shivered again. This was what he was afraid of. Glad and happy though he'd been to serve the Lord Gdu always in dance and prayer, he did not feel that he could endure again adventures such as those that had taken him to Kalakal, to serve Their purposes. And yet the Mouth of Silence had said that he was still on that journey.

“Well, Revered Lord?” said the King as the lesser priests of Sinu withdrew. His voice sounded light and careless, but his right hand was taut around the hilt of his dagger, below the table, out of sight of all but Tron.

“Majesty,” said the Keeper in a flat and passionless voice, “ask yourself why we were so certain that this treaty was a lie. The answer is that we already knew that the Gods had rejected the Red Spear which this stranger brought, and thus shown him to be accursed. And we knew why. You have now shown that the treaty is true, but it would have been better to have left it as a lie. Because, treaty or no treaty, you can never lead your army through the Pass of Gebindrath. The Great Curse of Aa is on that place.”

He turned to the Mouth of Silence, whose dry, painful voice took up the story.

“That curse is the greatest of our Great Rituals,” he said. “It is performed by twelve twelves of priests, led by the One of Aa, chanting with his own lips. It has been heard only twice in three hundred floods. Each new generation of priests learns it in a whisper. Majesty, do you think your levies will follow you through a place where such a curse is laid?”

“And there is no other road through the Peaks of Alaan,” said the Keeper. “The stranger must have come that way. That is why the Red Spear was rejected by the Gods. That is why he is accursed.”

“Majesty …” began the General, but the King held up a hand.

“Keeper,” he said. “You count the days and years. Can you tell me why the Pass of Gebindrath was closed with a curse? And why the paths through the northern marshes which used to be known are now lost? And why the desert wells which were built by the Wise are now poisoned, so that no merchants can cross the sands? Why?”

“It was the will of the Gods,” said the Keeper. “There are no hymns about the closing of the Kingdom. The Gods said, ‘Let it be done,' and it was done.”

“That is all?” said the King in a slightly mocking voice, and then with sudden urgency added, “Mouth of Silence, is that all?”

Tron saw how well he had chosen his man and his moment. The One of O might have ducked the question, and the Keeper would have blandly lied. But the Mouth of Silence served the Gods in a simpler manner.

“The passes and the marsh roads and the desert are all closed,” he said, “for one great purpose. We must keep the Kingdom holy, serving the Gods. There was a certain King, Dathardan the Ninth, who fought a war against a people on the far side of the desert and returned with many captives, one of them a woman for whom he became mad with love. And because of this love he built her a Temple for the God she worshipped, a snake god, false and abominable. And Dathardan made for the woman a jeweled image of the snake god, and for her sake on a certain day he fell at its feet and worshipped it. That night, as he and the woman slept, Aa took them. And next day Sinu raised up a holy madness in the people, priests, nobles, and peasants, so that they hunted down and killed all the strangers. Then Dathardan the Tenth reigned, and he was a child, so there was a Council of Regency, and the Gods made known their will to the Council, that the Kingdom must be closed thenceforth and for ever.…”

The tired voice droned on, hypnotic. This was not a hymn, true, but Tron could tell from the stiff turns of phrase that it was something learned and passed down through generations of priests, a secret knowledge that threaded through all the unchanging rituals of the Kingdom just as the secret ways threaded in darkness through the Temple. In a half-trance he saw the green-robed priests of Tan supervising the demolition of the canals that drained the barrier of marshes to the north; he saw the small party of priests of Gdu making every ten years the appalling journey to add more poison to the desert wells; he saw an army of laborers breaking down the wonderful road cut by Gebindrath, and leaving sheer cliff; he saw the slow dunes beginning to creep across that other road, built by the Wise, that led to it. He felt, across the stretching years, the power of the Gods drawing the Kingdom close around Them, just as a hunter draws his cloak around him against the chill of the desert night.

“… and finally,” said the Mouth of Silence, “the One of Aa with twelve twelves of his priests journeyed to the pass and made the Great Ritual, calling down the power of Aa upon that place, to hold it closed against man and beast until the Gods unmake what They made.”

“So the pass is sealed and the road is broken,” said the Keeper of the Rods. “And with good reason. Majesty, you cannot and you must not cross the peaks.”

“What men have broken men can mend,” said the King. “What priests have done priests can undo. I have an Obligation to Falathi.”

“But the Gods have already rejected your Obligation,” said the One of O impatiently. “They made that clear when they rejected the stranger's offering, brought here by him through the Curse of Aa.”

“But he didn't come that way!” burst in the General.

Every head turned toward him.

“There is no other way,” said the Keeper. “The hymns of Alaan are clear.”

“He climbed,” said the General. “He has drawn pictures to show me. At one point he fell three hundred feet down an ice-scree. Both his guides died. And six other Ambassadors set out, of whom only he has come through. But still he didn't use the Pass of Gebindrath, so the curse is not on him. That's clear.”

“It's also clear I cannot take an army the way he came,” said the King. “Revered Lords, the curse must be lifted from the pass.”

They looked at him in silence, their faces unreadable. Tron realized that the muffled, repetitive chant from the courtyard had ceased and was being replaced by a new sound, or rather a shuddering of air, a note so deep that it seemed to quiver along the bones rather than be heard through the ears. It lasted through twenty heartbeats, and as it faded the voices of the priests of Sinu came in with a harsh, unmusical yell.

“Sinu! War! Sinu! War!”

The shudder of air began once more.

“What is that?” asked the One of O, sounding mere mortal and nervous.

“That is the breath of Sinu. That is the Horn of War,” said the King. “You heard the One of Sinu give the order to sound it. Now it is done, and all according to ritual. Now, until the peace offerings are laid on His table, Sinu is supreme in the Kingdom. At dawn tomorrow my messengers must ride to my Generals of Levies, carrying the war tokens so that the army can begin to gather. You cannot stop me now.”

“We cannot stop you,” said the One of O heavily. “The Gods can. You will never lead your army through the Pass of Gebindrath. It takes priests of three orders to lift such a curse as lies on that place. It takes a ritual known only to the servants of Aa. No servant of Aa will tell you the ritual. No priest of any other order than Sinu's will help you. Do you think one man of all your soldiers will follow you through the pass, with the curse unlifted? King, you are doomed.”

“Doomed,” said the Keeper.

The One of Aa's pale hands swept through a slow arc.

“Doomed,” croaked the Mouth of Silence.

In the courtyard below, the long note of the Horn of War began again, making it seem as though the whole world shuddered.

XIV

Even that end had been only another beginning. Twelve days later Tron stood with his hawk in the shade of a creeper-tangled cliff and remembered his last conversation with the King. It had taken place two days after the confrontation in the room above the Gate of Saba.

“Yes,” Tron had said doubtfully, “if a lost ritual has to be found again, then I think Odah, servant of O, might do it.”

“And perform the ritual too?” the King had asked.

“Yes, I think so. But he's very crippled. He'll have to be carried to the pass.”

“So will the One of Sinu. If you take him to Kalakal, Tron, you can talk to this Odah, can't you? You can persuade him?”

Tron shrugged. He felt sick and uneasy. The King turned on the balcony, where they'd been watching the parade of one of the first levies to arrive at the Temple.

“We must be quick, you see, Tron,” he had said. “In about fifteen days I'll be able to get the first war party up to the pass, to hold it and start to repair the road. The longer I leave that, the more chance there is of these Mohirrim reaching the pass first. And the longer I sit idle here the more time it gives the priests to start working against me. There's nothing like an army for rumors. They're saying that this very dawn a priest of O, singing the Welcome on the tower, saw the face of the God as He rose, all streaked with blood. They say the vision was so powerful that two other priests were needed to stop him throwing himself off the tower.”

“It may be true,” Tron had said.

“Perhaps. It's a sign you could read several ways. But Tron, have you asked yourself why the God guided you to Kalakal? Why, if not so that you should find not just the Ambassador but also this priest, Odah? Listen.…”

But at that point a horn had sounded in the courtyard and the King had been forced to turn and salute the parade of gaudy banners passing below. While the fretted colonnades had echoed to the rhythmic clash of sword blades on shields, while cascades of petals had streamed down from the screened balconies of the women's rooms, Tron had seen and heard nothing.
He will ask me to travel with Odah and the One of Sinu to the pass. The One of O said it takes priests of three orders to lift the Great Curse of Aa
.…
Lord Gdu, is this what you ask?