Time of the Eagle (18 page)

“Were you a slave once?” I asked.

“No. But Navoran sailors and merchants told of wonderful artists and astronomers and musicians in those far countries, and when the Citadel was built, those highly skilled people were invited to the Citadel, either to learn or to teach. So we have Sheel Chandra from Shanduria, and our master astronomer, Zuleman, from Sadira. And many disciples were chosen from the brightest young men in the Empire, to come to the Citadel and study under the masters. Among them are Tulio, your artist friend from
Amaran, and, of course, my noble self, poet of highest excellence, from the fair land of Arridor.” He bowed very solemnly and moaned as he straightened up. We both laughed.

He added, his face grave again, his eyes on the map of the Navoran Empire, “You see the huge significance of the Time of the Eagle, Avala. All these nations will be affected. Countless slaves will be set free, families reunited, whole countries liberated to have their own rulers restored, living without the fear of the conqueror's ships arriving to plunder again, to steal and enslave. This entire Empire will be different, free.”

I looked at the tiny dot that was the city of Navora and at the Hena and Igaal lands stretching to the coast, only the width of two of my fingers on this map; then, overwhelmed by old doubts and fears, I looked again at the vast Empire beyond. How could so much depend on my people? How could so much depend on me? Again I felt the weight of Zalidas's prophecy heavy on my shoulders, and the fear that I would fail. And there was another thing added to the heaviness: my renewed longing to be a healer, and only a healer, and the grief that this was not to be.

I closed the atlas and hoped Delano would not see how much my hands shook. He did not. He said, brightly, “I've been writing again. A poem about my healing, how it felt when Salverion took away my pain. Would you like to hear it?”

I nodded, and we sat together by his fire. Many of our rooms had fires, with the smoke escaping up high chimneys to mountain peaks far above, to be blown away in the winter winds. I thought of the Time of the Eagle, and how the Hena people called it the All-Sweeping Wind. I tried to listen to Delano's poem but could
not. While he read he scratched his ribs a bit, where the stitched skin healed, and I thought of him on the table in the surgery, with his chest cavity opened up, and Salverion's hands moving over his exposed lungs and heart, doing their sublime healing. Then the map of the Navoran Empire rose up again before me like an omen, obscuring the vision of the work I revered and loved.

“I'm sorry,” I said, standing up suddenly. “I have to go and see Salverion.”

Delano looked surprised. “My poem is not good?” he asked.

“Yes. But it's made me think of something.”

“Well, that's what it's meant to do.” He smiled. “Off you go.”

Salverion was reading one of his scrolls, but he looked up as I entered, and put the scroll away.

“How is our patient today, Avala?” he asked, speaking of Delano.

“He is very well,” I said, sitting on a stool by a lamp. “He's writing again. A poem about your healing, and how it felt for him.”

“I look forward to reading it,” said Salverion. “But that's not what you came to tell me, is it? What disturbs you, Avala?”

I glanced at him, saw his gray eyes boring into me, reading me. It no longer unnerved me, that he knew my thoughts at times.

I said, “I've been thinking about Zalidas, and his prophecy over me. I've also been thinking of what my mother said about our destiny being always to do with what we love. I believe what they both said, but the things are opposite.”

Salverion came and sat in a chair near me. The lamplight fell on his white beard and rim of white hair and glowed about him like a holiness.

“I love healing,” I said. “Every night I go to sleep thinking of what I saw in the surgery that day you healed Delano. And then I think of my own healings, that my mother taught me. I think of the healing I did on the battle-wounded in Gunateeta's tent, of the arrow holes I packed, the sword cuts I stitched. I did it well, but I did not mend everything inside those people, not truly. I know that now. They will always be in pain, with parts of their bodies not working properly. The injured livers, they'll give trouble sooner or later. So will the damaged lungs, the crushed bones, the other parts I did not have the skill to properly mend. Maybe the people I healed will die early, or get a simple fever that will break them at last and carry them off early to the shadow lands. I eased their pain, and gave them a kind of mending, and stopped poison from spreading in their veins, but it was not enough. To heal as you healed Delano, that is what my soul hungers for. So why is it not my destiny? Why must my destiny be to bind enemies together, to lead my people into war? It's all too much, too big a thing for me to do. Even if good does come of it in the end, I'm not a warrior. I don't want to kill. Zalidas's prophecy goes against everything I want.”

“Oh, my love,” he said, taking one of my hands, and holding it between both of his. “Do you really think you're in this on your own? You will have all the help you need, from people and places you least expect. Even your time here, don't you think this is ordained, planned for you before ever Zalidas spoke? And
who said you will kill? I heard that you made growling noises about Jaganath the other day, and that you have words to say to him. In that event, it won't be a sword in your hand that you will need, but power in your heart, power in your mind, power in your very words. The kind of power that can be taught to you by only one person in this world, and that man lives here in Ravinath. Your hour, when it comes, might be quite different from what you expect.

“As for your true destiny . . . Your destiny
is
to heal. The Time of the Eagle is not a battle. It's a way of life, a new age to come, a time of peace that will span many lifetimes and nations and centuries. I believe that what Zalidas foretold is true—you are the Daughter of the Oneness, the cord that binds. But the Oneness will happen over a short time, maybe within weeks or months, once it begins, and the cord that binds—well, you already bind two nations together, within your own body. Your healings have already bound you to the Igaal, since you have the promise of Ramakoda to fight with your people, when he is chieftain. Your friend, the pledge-son Ishtok, is a connecting cord between you and the Hena. Can you not see it, Avala? It is happening already. And this part of your life—being the Daughter of the Oneness—is only a part. I know that when you are young a year seems age-long, but when you consider the whole course of your life, even five years are not many. Even the great battle with Jaganath's army will be a brief part, very possibly only a single day. And after it, enduring peace. In that long peace time, that will last for the rest of your life, what will you do?”

“I'll heal,” I said, in tears. “But I want to heal as you do, with
your light and your power and your love. I want to heal the Navoran way.”

“And so you shall,” he said, lifting his beautiful old hand, and wiping away my tears. “So you shall.”

In your latest letter, Mother, you mentioned reading books about philosophy. You would like the Master of Philosophy, here at the Citadel. He is not one of my usual teachers, and I have had only one talk with him. We spoke, among other things, of the meanings of names, and he told me that his name means Finished Person. Isn't that a beautiful meaning? I would love to be a finished person, knowing wholly who I am, having absolute peace, being perfectly loving, totally embracing my path and my destiny.

—Excerpt from a letter from Gabriel to his mother, kept and later gifted to Avala

T
he wind was blowing strong and warm across the plain, and Ishtok and I raced our horses, laughing and yelling. The horses' hooves thundered on the earth, and I looked behind us through the bright summer haze to the Shinali land. Through the haze my people's house was barely visible, its thatched roof pale gold against the summer grass. White dots marked the grazing sheep, and darker dots the children who watched over them. I looked to the front again, over my mare's streaming mane, and saw Ishtok already in the shadow of the sacred mountain. He drew his horse to a halt and called something to me, but I could not hear it. When I reached him he was looking through a small bronze telescope back across the land, toward the farms and the Citadel.

“Salverion has come to visit us, my love,” he said, smiling, handing me the telescope. “We must go back.” As we began to gallop back a joy-wildness took hold on me, and it seemed that
I flew across the sunlit land, and a great song was in the air, and the river chuckled beside us. Then came a beating of drums, and a shout, and someone called my name.

I woke confused, dragged unwilling from the joy, and the throb of drums became the sound of someone knocking on my door.

“Avala! Wake up! There's something you need to see!”

I staggered up and pulled on a robe, and went to the door.

Taliesin stood there, fully dressed, grinning. “It's a clear night,” he said. “It's a three-quarter moon. Perfect. Zuleman is waiting by the big telescope. Are you coming? I'll wait out here while you get dressed. You'll need warm clothes.”

Instantly awake, I dressed quickly, then went out and hurried with him down the lamp-lit passages. “I was dreaming that I was looking through a telescope,” I said. “It was a little one, and I was on our Shinali land.”

“Well, we'll be looking on other lands soon,” he said. “Maybe not lands, exactly. Balls of blazing gas, perhaps. Astronomy isn't one of my strong points, and it's years since I've looked at the stars with Zuleman. He'll explain everything. You've met him, haven't you?”

“I've seen him across the hall, at mealtimes. But I've not talked to him.”

We went up several narrow flights of stairs, and came to the top of the high tower where Taliesin had shown me the wolves in the snow, through the great telescope. The room was in total darkness, but for the open window with the myriads of stars beyond, with the moon low over the mountains. Before the window were the dark shapes of the telescope and the Master of
Astronomy waiting for us. As we entered, the Master lit a candle.

Taliesin introduced me, and the Master of Astronomy came over and took my hands.

“Welcome, Avala,” he said. “I'm so pleased you could come. It's such a clear night, and Erdelan is so close, and the moon is perfect for viewing. We must make the most of these opportunities.”

His hands were cold, but his voice, with its strange accent, was warm and deep. He was elderly, elegant, and tall, with a hooked nose and high cheekbones. His skin was brown, and I remembered that he was from Sadira, on the far side of the Empire. His dark eyes shone with wonder and excitement.

“You're about to see the most amazing things in the known universe,” he said, blowing out the candle. “I'll just make sure I've still got the moon. It moves out of view amazingly fast.”

He checked, his eye to the small eyepiece of the huge telescope, and I glanced at the earth below. Dark patches of tussock poked through the moonlit snow where I had seen the wolves play four months ago, and silver streams tumbled down the black rocks, from the snow melting in the heights. It was spring now, and the mountains and valleys about Ravinath were waking up from their white winter sleep.

“Now,” said Zuleman, stepping back. “If you look through this bit here, you'll see the shadowed edge of the moon.” He stood back and waited, as thrilled and breathless as a child waiting for someone to open a gift he was offering.

And what a gift, indeed! I caught my breath, totally unprepared for the splendor I saw. The inner curve of the moon was very bright, its shadow dark as the surrounding sky; but on that
bright edge, clear and sharp and solid as if carved of shining stone, were the rims of great holes, vast flat plains, shadowed valleys, and the sculptured shapes of jagged ridges and pointed mountains. And farther out in the deep shadow, invisible but for their sunlit peaks, were the blazing summits of far mountains, bright as stars and sharp as broken glass. It was majestic, alien, glorious beyond anything I had ever imagined.

I tore my gaze away and looked back at Taliesin. I was still half blinded by the blaze of the moon. “There
are
mountains there!” I said, and he laughed softly.

While Taliesin looked through the telescope, Zuleman said to me, “You see that model of the planets above your head, Avala?”

I nodded, looking up. The little orbs glowed softly in the moonlight. “Taliesin showed them to me one day,” I said. “He said our world is like that little blue ball.”

“That is true. With our telescope we can see some of the other balls, the planets. To the naked eye they look just like stars. But when you see them through the telescope, you'll see that they are indeed globes. As is our world.”

Taliesin finished admiring the moon and stepped back.

Zuleman stooped over the telescope and looked for another wonder to show me. He said, “Have a look at these stars, Avala. Stars are suns, most of them many times brighter than our sun, but they look small because they are so incredibly far away. Our sun is a star, our day-star, and it lights our whole sky only because we are so close to it. What you see now are suns, untold millions of miles away.”

The telescope was pointed to what I thought was a fairly bare patch of sky, but when I looked I saw stars beyond number, some
very large and bright, some tiny, some gathered so close together that they looked like glittering mist. The more I looked the more I saw, stars that went on and on forever into the dark.

“Where's the end of it?” I asked, lost in awe. “Where do the stars end?”

“They never end,” the Master said. “That's the glory of them. And the mystery.”

He moved the telescope again and peered through it. While he searched the stars he said, “I knew your grandfather, Avala. Gabriel's father. I gave him copies of my star charts, which he used for navigation. He was a sailor, a famous merchant, and went on long voyages to seek out fine silks, artworks, and riches from the far reaches of our Empire, which he brought back to Navora. Some of the greatest foreign treasures in our city came from his ships. Ah—there it is! The four moons showing tonight, lined up nicely across. Take a look. This is not a star, but a planet. Another world, round like ours, though unlike ours in other ways.”

I looked and cried out in astonishment. I saw a gray ball with four smaller balls—the moons—in a straight line across it. I could see the land, strangely marked in wide lines, and the shadows of the moons as they passed across.

“That planet is many times larger than our earth,” explained Zuleman. “It has those four moons, and many others besides that we cannot see. The bands you see are clouds, and the swirling reddish patch is a huge storm that rages everlastingly. We call that world Erdelan.”

“Erdelan,” I repeated. “A beautiful name for a beautiful world.”

Then I asked to see the moon again, and looked at it for a
long time, not noticing that my hands were shaking with the cold, and my feet felt like ice. I was wishing, with all of my being, that Ishtok were here to see this. How he, too, would love it!

While I looked and marveled, Zuleman told me wonders about our galaxy, of how the planets and their moons and our Earth all swing about the sun in a huge cosmic dance, perfect and elaborate and everlasting. Beliefs I had held since childhood, about a flat Earth and the moon sailing like a ship in river winds in the sky, were blown away, leaving me breathless, awed, and with a blazing desire to know more.

At last Taliesin said, covering a yawn, “Enough for one night, Avala! The stars and Erdelan will be there for the rest of your life. We can come again.”

I turned to Zuleman and took his hands. “I've seen the most wondrous things this night,” I said. “I feel a high lot honored. I wish all my people could see what I have seen. Thank you. Thank you, with
sharleema
.”

“It was my great pleasure,” he replied. “When we are free, back in the Citadel, this telescope will be for all who wish to use it. You can line up your whole tribe outside my door, and they can see this. I will be happy to teach them all I know. And I hope they will tell me what their priests and astronomers know, and the Shinali names for the stars. We have much to share.”

“Thank you,” I said. “And thank you for telling me about my Navoran grandfather. It's good for my heart, to find out about my Navoran family. Did you know my grandmother, too?”

“Only a little. Her name is Lena. We'll talk another time, Avala. Our friend Taliesin is almost asleep on his feet. And you have work with Salverion in the morning. Though poking about
in pots of herbs and pickled livers can't be anywhere near as marvelous as gazing at the stars.”

I thought about that for a moment or two. Then I said, “Heart's truth, your other worlds are wonderful, Master, but not as wonderful as the healing of Delano.”

He looked taken aback for a moment, then he smiled, and his eyes shimmered a little in the starlight. “Maybe you're right, Avala,” he said. “My other worlds are beautiful, but they are only gas and dust, ice and fire. Nothing, compared with the miracle of human life.” He embraced me and kissed the top of my head, as Salverion often did, and Taliesin and I left.

My heart sang as we went down the long stairs toward our rooms. “Your Empire is so wonderful, Taliesin!” I said. “It has discovered so many amazing things. The things I am learning here, the things I'm seeing . . . It's as if I've lived in a tiny tent all my life, and someone has suddenly blown the tent away, and I find myself in another world altogether. Many other worlds.”

“You're seeing the best the Empire has to offer,” he said. “Until now you've seen only the worst. Now you see that there is much that is good, much worth saving. Besides, it's not my Empire, but yours as well. It's not another world you're discovering, Avala; it's your own.”

“So it is,” I said, stopping on a stair, astonished at the thought. “It's half my own life I'm discovering, half my heritage. Half my own self.”

He shivered and said, “Please don't stand philosophizing for too long. I'm frozen.”

“Let's go to the kitchen for a hot drink,” I said, suddenly realizing how cold I was, too, after the hours by the open window.
“I'm too excited to go back to sleep.”

Taliesin groaned and muttered something about being too old for midnight feasts, but he came with me to the kitchen. As we sat in the warmth by the massive ovens and sipped our drinks, he asked, “How is your work going with Salverion? All winter you've been working with him. You must know how to numb a bit of pain by now.”

“I'm learning slowly,” I said.

“Very well. I'll test you.” He put down his drink and stood with his back to me and his head bent. “Numb my right foot,” he said. “Imagine I've got gangrene from the cold, after staring at the stars all night, and you have to amputate. I want it properly numb, and only from the ankle down. I don't want to be totally comatosed.”

He grinned and held aside his dark hair, so I could touch his neck.

“It might be a good idea to comatose you,” I said, “since then you wouldn't be able to complain.”

His grin widened, then he straightened his back, and I moved my fingers down his vertebrae.

“I didn't think you knew the meaning of the word
comatose
,” he said. “I'd better be careful what I say from now on. I suspect you understand everything.”

“More than you think,” I said, removing my hand from his neck, and picking up my drink again.

“What—done already?” he said. “I don't think it worked. I didn't feel a thing.” He tried to walk to his chair and almost fell over. I watched him hop to his seat, and tried not to laugh.

“I'm impressed,” Taliesin said. “It is indeed only my foot.
Salverion must be pleased with you. He'll be sending you up to Sheel Chandra soon.”

“After the next full moon,” I said. “I'll have the summer learning from Sheel Chandra, and in the autumn I'll go back to the Igaal. Salverion said you'd go with me, as far as their camp.”

“I'll enjoy the journey. Much as I love Ravinath, a trek to the Igaal territories sounds like a pleasant change.”

I asked, “Where did you live before you came to Ravinath? Before you went to the Citadel? Are you from Navora?”

“Yes, I'm Navoran,” he said. The laughter faded from his face, and he sighed deeply and looked down at the cup in his hands. “I have a wife in Navora, and two twin daughters. The children were eight months old when I was chosen to go to the Citadel. Then my training was to last seven years. After that, I was to be free to go and continue healing wherever I wished, living again with my wife and children. But the Lord Jaganath changed all plans. And, when the changes came, I could not give up the work I believed I had been born for. So I came here to Ravinath, though I knew that we might be here for many years.”