The Blue Hawk (23 page)

In a silence broken only by the click of Odah's crutches the four of them crept out of the valley.

XVI

In the morning brightness they hurried down the mountain road as fast as the litter-bearers could travel. Now they were afraid with ordinary human fears, of being trapped in that hopeless place by the murderous blue horsemen, coming from either behind or in front. Tron was dizzy and aching, but the priest of Aa who had spoken to them in the valley took his turn at the litter poles. The One of Sinu looked as he had when Tron had first met him, blue-lipped and feverish, though his followers had taken turns to rub his icy limbs all night. Odah had a different sickness; his Welcome to O had come with a leaden, apathetic note, and now his eyes were dull and his face for once showed the pain he had long lived with. He did not speak until after their noon rest, when the priest of Aa was walking beside his litter.

“Tell me your story, my brother. What have you seen, if it can be told?”

The priest of Aa walked with a young man's stride, and his voice had warmth and life in it.

“It began with the King's Going to War,” he said. “After that there was said to be a quarrel among the Major Priests, and suddenly Aa, blessed be Her name, took the Mouth of Silence, and a new Mouth was chosen. That was four days after the Going to War. Immediately after the ritual of his choosing he summoned the whole order and told us that with him and the One of Aa twelve twelves of us must travel to the Peaks of Alaan to renew an ancient ritual. So we came, bringing no slaves, carrying our own bread and water. A Son of the Wise guided us across the desert by night, and after three nights we reached a place where the sand ended and a great road began. There he left us. We were seven nights on the journey, marching with great haste. Two of my brothers died, but we made only the short ritual for them.”

Tron heard a gasp and mutter among the litter-bearers. The short ritual was performed for peasants whose families could afford to pay for nothing better.

“At last we came to that place. I knew it to be a stronghold of Aa, heavy with Her presence. I was afraid, although I am Her servant. We arrived a little before dawn, but because O does not shine into the valley for a long time after His rising we were able to rehearse the ritual that the One of Aa had chosen. It was a ritual of power and fear, especially in that place. At the heart of the ritual he was to chant a hymn, aloud, with his own voice, not using the Mouth of Silence.”

He paused for another murmur among his bearers.

“I have confessed that I was afraid. The Mouth of Silence told us that men might come to try to stop or interrupt the ritual, and that therefore one of us must stand sentry. I have keen sight, so I gladly offered myself, and was chosen. When O rose above the peaks my brothers went to rest under their canopies and I took up a post outside the valley where the shadow of a leaning rock shielded me from His rays. It was half a mile from the saddle of the pass, but from it I could see great stretches of the road where it climbed the mountains.

“I lay there through the noon of O. I was teased with strange notions, that I should be up there alone, seeing what no priest of Aa had ever seen, all the vastness and richness of the Kingdom under the rays of O. The mountains are very silent. In the middle of the afternoon I heard a cry, which I thought must be that of a mountain bird. Then I heard more cries and knew them for human. And then, far off, I heard a chant begin. It was not the ritual we had practiced, and it began raggedly, and still the cries continued. I ran toward the valley, but before I reached the top of the road I was afraid again and I left the road and climbed the flank of the mountain until I could see into the valley. Before I finished climbing I recognized the chant. My brothers, it was the Great Curse of Aa, which we learn in a whisper, leaving out certain names, knowing that we shall never need to chant it aloud. Now I heard it.

“I reached a place where I could see down into the valley. At first I did not understand what I saw. I thought my brothers were standing by the canopies where they had rested, chanting as if in the House of O and Aa, while a horde of blue demons on horses rode screaming round them, with strange gestures. Then I saw one of my brothers fall, and another, and I saw the demons were shooting at them with arrows, and huge dogs pranced beside the horses baying. So my brothers fell, one by one. I knew … I knew it was my work to stand and join in the chant. They had only reached the Third Naming, and already half my brothers had fallen to the ground. If I had taken up the chant I might have continued it to the Fifth Naming before the demons could reach me, and then perhaps Aa Herself … She was there, filling the valley.… She did nothing … and I was afraid. It was not my fear of the Goddess, but it was the ordinary fear of hurt and death, such as a peasant might feel. I lay down among the rocks and watched. The demons killed and killed, with terrible cries. I heard the chant dwindle, but I did not see any of my brothers move from his place or stop chanting until he died. The demons did not shoot the One of Aa, who stood in front of the front rank of my brothers, but when all the rest were killed one of them rode forward. There was a silence, in which I heard the voice of the One of Aa, still chanting. The demon took a sword and with careful aim hacked off his head.

“Then the other demons got down from their horses and moved among my brothers, cutting off all their heads. And women and children of the demons—they were not blue but orange—picked up the heads and piled them into a cairn, laughing while they did so.…”

He stopped. His black-gloved hand rose toward his face, hesitated and withdrew. He walked on in silence.

“And then what?” said Odah in a tired voice.

“That is all,” he whispered.

“No. You stayed in the valley two nights and two days after this slaughter?”

“Yes.… I was ashamed of my cowardice, my brothers. I knew that Aa was still in that place. I thought perhaps I had not been killed in order that I, alone, might perform the ritual we had rehearsed, so I decided to wait in that place until the night of Aa's Most Brightness. She did not tell me to do this, but I thought it best. When the demons had finished their work they gathered themselves together and rode out of the valley and down the great road. I waited. When Aa was bright I went into the valley and said the full ritual for my brothers. After that I slept and watched and said the hymns and did the dances as if I had been back in the Temple. On the third day I prepared myself for the Great Ritual. I fasted. Indeed, the demons had taken almost all our bread, so I was forced to fast. Toward evening I was saying the hymns of purification for myself—who else was there to say them?—when I saw you three priests come into the pass. I hid. You did not see me. The One of Sinu I knew by sight, and the boy with the hawk I remembered from the Renewal, but my brother of O was a stranger. My ritual was prepared to begin at the noon of Aa. But as I listened to your ritual I began to perceive that I should never perform it. And when you finished I knew that the Goddess was gone.”

Tron walked on in a daze, remembering the lively look of the One of Aa as he chomped his bread in the secret room, or sulked over his colleagues' refusal to let him sacrifice a convenient boy. Below them the coloring of the plateau changed as the shadows shortened. The heat of O became a blessing, and later a burden.

They camped in the ravine they had found on their way to the mountain, and there, quietly, the One of Sinu died. Tron knew from the little hymns of Gdu that the night chill in the pass had got into the old man's lungs; but he also knew there was an illness mentioned in no hymns, an exhaustion of the soul after that ritual. He could feel it in himself. He could see it in the dullness of Odah's eye. Since the night of Aa's Most Brightness they had all three been, so to speak, half-loosed from their moorings in the living earth, ready at the snap of one more strand to drift down the river to Her kingdom. They said the full ritual for the harsh old hero and buried him among the rocks.

Now at least Tron was able to ride in the second litter—with the mountain fever in him he could never have managed the trek across the blistering desert to the ravine from which they had first climbed. He lay all day under the canopy, dry-mouthed. If he opened his eyes the glare of O seemed to pierce to his brain like heated needles. If he closed them he found himself roaming dizzily through the darkness inside himself, searching for a way … a way into what deeper dark? He was not aware of the. moment, toward evening, when the litters were at last lowered into the ravine.

Next day he was better in his body but worse in his mind. He rode in the litter again. The priests of Sinu were anxious to return to the King with the news that the task was performed and the One of Sinu dead, and were impatient at having to carry the litters across the difficult paths in the beds of the ravines. The black-lizard clan had moved camp and so, to their guides' surprise, had the rock-owl clan. The ravines seemed empty. The hunters became almost distraught with worry.

Next morning as they ate their priest-bread Odah said, “My brothers, we have done what we came to do. Tron and I are ill, and this hurrying does us no good. If two of the hunters will stay with us to look after us until we are well, the other can guide you back to your war.”

Tron was too dismal in his soul to notice how faint were the murmurs of dissent, but despite his illness Odah enforced his will. Hymns of farewell were said, and so they parted.

The first thing the two hunters did was to find hiding places for the four of them, and to make sure that Tron and Odah understood the signal to hide—a series of clicks at the back of the tongue which sounded like a few pebbles falling, accompanied by a sharp outward movement of the arm, palm down. Then they dismantled the litters and carried the poles and the betraying red canopies and cushions half a mile back up the ravine, where they piled scrub and boulders over them. All this was mere habit—from birth the hunters had been trained to see to it that a stranger coming to any ravine should find it apparently empty—but as the day wore on Tron realized that his two guardians were extra nervous.

He himself sat with his back against a rock, heavy-eyed, dull-minded, and drowsy with the scent from the white-flowered creeper that foamed down the cliff behind him. The strip of shade at the foot of the cliff narrowed as O rose. Soon he would have to stand up and cross the scorching boulders to shelter beneath the other cliff. It seemed a long journey. The two hunters were out on the tableland, looking for nuts and roots, termites, lizards, fat thorn beetles, and anything else they or the priests could eat.

“How are you?” said Odah suddenly. “How is your soul, Tron?”

“Empty,” said Tron. “Everything seems to have gone.”

“The Gods have left the world, I think,” said Odah. “I have had strange … I do not know what to call them … not thoughts, not dreams, not visions … it is as if everything that has happened was an answer to a
need
of the Gods. We believed that we performed the ritual because the King needed the Pass of Gebindrath to be opened, but the King's need was only part of a long plan, and so was everything else. The closing of the Kingdom, the struggle between priests and Kings, my going to Kalakal, your taking of the Blue Hawk, the coming of the Mohirrim to Falathi—all these things happened in order that such-and-such a ritual should be performed on such-and-such a night, because the Gods required it for quite other purposes.”

“What?”

“I do not know. I do not know that what I have just said is true. But the Gods have gone, and I think They have taken something out of us, because They needed that also. Sinu is dead. You say your soul is empty. So is mine.”

“Have they gone forever?”

Before Odah could answer there was a sudden urgent rustling above their heads. The creepers swayed wildly and the two hunters came almost falling down into the floor of the ravine. One made the clicking noise and the gesture, then they both bent and lifted Odah and carried him bodily to his hiding place. By the time Tron had crawled behind the scented vines and found a nook for his hawk the hunters were scuttling like disturbed spiders among the boulders, picking up nut kernels and other traces of their presence, and scattering handfuls of gravel over footprints. Then they too darted into hiding.

Out of the noon silence Tron heard a noise begin to swell, at first no louder than the movement of his own blood, then seeming to drum through the rock against which he huddled. When at last he heard the sound waves directly though the air he recognized them for hoofbeats.

Close beside him the creepers rustled and he started, but it was only Talatatalatatehalatena joining him in the green and tangled shadows. They waited in silence. Tron could see the sharp rim of the opposite cliff through two or three places between the vine leaves, but he was not in fact watching when he sensed the hunter beside him stiffen into extra stillness. He looked up. There, appeared from nowhere, silhouetted against the glaring sky, was a blue horseman, motionless, with his rangy great dog beside him. The man peered down into the ravine, turned back and gestured. Then he jumped from his horse, lowered himself over the edge of the cliff and began to climb down. He was nothing like as skillful as the hunters, but soon he was out of Tron's sight.

Several more of the Mohirrim came into view with the same startling suddenness, but simply sat there waiting. Through another gap in the leaves Tron saw the climber halfway down the cliff. All the time the hoof-beats came nearer, and above them Tron could hear cries, and very far off what seemed to be a trumpet. A few minutes later the creepers to his right shook and swayed as the man began to climb up. Soon Tron was covered in an itchy layer of falling debris. When the leaves were still again, he found that his viewpoints had changed and he could look at a place a little farther along the cliff where an archer was posed, all alone, aiming across the ravine. The bow snapped out of its arc and a fine cord floated across the gulf behind the arrow. Tron heard a cry above his head, and at once a heavier cord began to jerk its way over, in its turn pulling a good-sized rope, which was barely taut before two men came swarming across it with more cords trailing from their belts.