The Blue Hawk

by Peter Dickinson

  A touch woke him. He opened his eyes but did not stir. A warm breath in his ear whispered his name.

  “Majesty?” he answered.

  “I could not risk coming before.”

  “We are watched! Spyholes!”

  “That kind woman has that watcher. It is the One of Gdu. He mixed a powder for you to breathe, but I caused him to breathe it himself. Now you must hide.”

  “I planned to let the hawk loose at dawn and then throw myself from this window and go to Aa myself.”

  “I’d have grieved, Tron. Truly. Now, put your hand on my shoulder and follow me.”

  “Will you hide me in the Palace?”

  “I can’t trust my servants.”

  “They will search all the Temple.”

  “Not this one place. We have blown the death horn. They have broken down the Gate of Saba. They can’t stop the Ritual now, so they will be forced to show me to the people. By then you’ll be far away. You will travel with my father.”

  Tron’s heart leaped so that his body shook with the spasm.

  “It’s all right,” said the King. “You’ll travel alive.”

  The walls of the Great Temple had been built thicker than those of the Temple of Tan, so the tunnels in their heart were wider. Still, creeping from dark to dark with his right hand on the King’s shoulder and his left carrying the drowsy hawk, Tron sensed all around him the fearful pressure of stone. They moved with many pauses and listenings. From time to time a slot of silver would appear where a spyhole opened into moonlight. Once a trick of sound brought the muttered chant of the Priests of Aa so clearly through one of these that Tron sensed a huge, pale mouth grumbling just behind the stonework. At last the King reached back and pulled him close.

  “There’s a niche two steps to your left,” he whispered. “Wait there.”

  Tron waited in a dark as intense as that in the Cave of Aa from which O first stole the pot of clay to mold the world. He could even hear the minute movement of the breath of the hawk. After a long time a voice whispered, “Tron.” He managed to suppress the jerk of fright.

  “No watchers,” whispered the King. “Eight short paces. Turn left. One pace. Nineteen steps twisting down to the left.”

  The moon-streaked House of O and Aa semed vaster than by day. They had emerged from a hidden door to the left of the altar. The King led the way, keeping in the blackest patches, to the center of the main aisle where the coffin lay. By daylight Tron would have seen a round-topped chest, four feet high and wide and ten feet long, brilliantly painted, lying on a framework from which protruded a dozen carrying-bars. What he saw in the moon shadow was like another altar, a black slab of sacrifice.

  “The lid is bound down with linen bands,” whispered the King. “I sealed them—that’s part of the Ritual—but I did it so that I could unseal them. There’s an inner coffin at that end. This end is full of offerings to go with my Father on his journey. I saw to it that there’s plenty of bread and wine and water. At the foot of the inner coffin there’s a gold box. It’s got a couple of ebony wedges in it, and a jade slab you can use as a hammer. When you are clear of the quay you can wedge the lid up enough to cut the bands with my Father’s dagger. I’ve seen that it’s sharp. There’s a basket with two doves, alive. They’ve got their own grain and water. You can give the hawk fresh meat. You’ll come to Kalavin’s father’s house some time on the second day. I must tell you, I’ve had no answer from Kalavin, but there has not been much time, and it’s hard to find a messenger one can trust. We must pray to the Gods. Ready?”

  He worked at something in the dark near either end of the coffin, then with a faint grunt heaved upward.

  “Be quick,” he whispered. “The space is right against the end.”

  The coffin was like a mouth now, waiting to swallow Tron. He twisted himself between its jaws, feeling with his bare foot for bare wood. Something rattled as he touched it, then he found the bottom and crouched shuddering down.

  “All right,” he whispered.

  The darkness came down on him without a sound.

  VII

  The strange thing about the dark box where Tron crouched at the feet of the Dead King was that he found it comforting. The doves shuffled their plumes, destroying silence, and the air was thick with smells of life, fresh bread, spices, herbs, rich meats. Now that he was faced with the actuality of this ghostly journey Tron was no longer afraid. It was as though he had used up in the last few days all the fear that was in him. He whispered his night hymn again, settled the hawk to perch on what felt like a jeweled casket, laid his forehead on his updrawn knees, and fell asleep.

  He slept through the dawn hymn on the Tower, and woke with a jerk when the doors of the House of O and Aa crashed open and the horns marched groaning in. The sound of them came gradually nearer. He could envisage the slow procession led by the King’s trumpeters with their high-curling instruments passing within arm’s reach on either side of him. At last the groaning ended, but there was no pause before the voices of the priests of Aa swelled out of the echoes.

  Mistress of dark,

  Mother of Gods,

  Aa never born,

  Ruler of birth,

  Aa never dying,

  Ruler of death,

  A man’s life, yes, a King’s life,

  It is birth, it is dying,

  Coming from Aa,

  Going to Aa,

  Between them is nothing,

  Beyond them is nothing,

  And over that nothing

  Aa rules also.

  Between each of the many verses the horns sounded a long note that began strongly and ended in a barely audible stirring of air. Tron could picture the priests of the other Gods still filing in, and the benches of the nobles filling, and the Inner Courtyard thronged with lesser nobles and the headmen of a thousand villages, all summoned to see the Dead King go and the Live King ruling. Then the pulse of the hymn changed and it began as most Great Hymns did, to tell a story. The coffin stirred, but so slightly that it took Tron time to realize that twelve nobles had gripped the carrying-bars and lifted it. The rhythm of the hymn set their pace as they carried it slowly down the aisle. Sudden as a knife-thrust a bright gold thread shot down the blackness above him and he knew that they had come out into the Courtyard and O was blazing down onto an unsealed crack between two boards of the coffin lid. The light was welcome, but Tron found it odd and shocking that the coffin should have been so carelessly made, as if for a one-day show, rather than a noble vessel to carry the Dead King safely on his long journey to the land of the Gods.

  Saba, said the woman

  Speaking from darkness,

  How shall I judge you?

  I had in my cave

  From one moon to the next

  A ghost who howled

  Like a jackal for vengeance

  On his son who killed him.

  “My sword is bloodless.”

  He drew the blade slowly.

  See the bright bronze.

  See the blood on the bronze

  Glistening like the streams

  From the throat of a victim

  On Aa’s dark altar.

  See, see, as dew fades

  At O’s first coming,

  The blood dwindles, vanishes,

  And the bronze is bright.

  The coffin-bearers marched at a pace so slow that Tron could not sense the movement across the Inner Courtyard. The gold thread vanished and returned as they passed under the connecting arch, and again under the main gateway. Meanwhile in the hymn Saba threaded his perilous way through the tests set by the Goddess, ate the dark bread and not the white, sat on the ebony stool and not the ivory throne, chose for his journey the black goat and not the white pony.

  A faint jar marked the moment when the coffin settled on the sledge that waited on the Great Causeway. Whips cracked. The headmen of a hundred villages, lined along the paving, strained against the thongs and lugged the greased runners of the sledge into
motion. Every unevenness of the paving jarred through the coffin with unpredictable thuds and scrapings, so that Tron seemed to be crouching inside a drum beaten by a crazed giant. Each new blow boomed in his ears and sent a shock wave along his bones. The hawk flung itself about in flapping panic, which, but for the noise of the runners, must have given them away to the priests pacing beside the sledge. Desperately Tron felt about, found a wing, gripped it and with his other hand grabbed the scaly legs. Rough though his touch was, it seemed to quieten the bird, and in a few minutes he was able to still it completely. Then for mile after mile he knelt in hot, stale, strange-scented air gentling the bird’s feathers, cushioning it from the impacts of the paving, and whispering comfort. Three times the sledge halted, and while the teams on the thongs were changed, the hymn, which had been an endless background to the jar and grate of the runners, rose clear. Then the whips cracked and the torture began again.

  All the while O beat down on the coffin and the air inside became more stifling. Tron took water from the jug and sprinkled the bird with it, then splashed his own head and neck and found a few minutes’ relief. But soon after the third change at the thongs the jug was empty and he knew that unless they soon reached shade hawk and boy would travel dead with the Dead King, to Alaan. Despite the risk of its betraying him by some wild movement he slid the hood off the hawk’s head and held it close to the crack in the hope that it might find better air. By that faint light he saw that it was in a miserable state, almost in coma and gaping continuously. Even if he were somehow to lever up the lid and set it free, it would not fly now. There was nothing to do but endure and pray with swollen lips to Gdu.

  They halted again. New voices joined the hymn, the priests of Tan welcoming the coffin to the care of their Goddess. The coffin grated slightly as it was lifted from the sledge, and then there was the rustle and creak of slings being slid around it and tightened. It swayed, but in silence, as it was hoisted through the air. The gold slit in the lid vanished. Men gave brief, whispered commands, close by. Water sucked and gurgled. Another rustle as the slings were drawn free. Then

  Son of Saba

  Servant of the Gods

  Go now to Aa

  In whose palace

  The just are happy.

  Tan shall take you

  Gdu shall guard you

  O watch over you

  Alaan guide you

  Aa receive you.

  Go.

  At the last enormous note wood scraped on wood, the voices of rivermen rose in a work-chant, feet moved on stone, the coffin lurched with the heavy movement of the barge below it, and the light slap of waves grew louder and firmer. Six thousand throats shouted all together, horns growled, gongs boomed, cymbals crashed. For a mile up and down the river birds rose shrieking and squawking.

  As the uproar of farewell faded in Tron’s ears he felt at the foot of the inner coffin and found a box whose lid rasped with jewels. Setting the hawk down, he opened it and took out the tools the King had prepared for him. The ebony wedges were so close-grained that they felt like metal, and the heavy jade brick fitted his grasp as if it had been made to hammer with. At first the wedge tried to bounce out of the crack between the lid and the coffin, but he managed to tap it firm and then hammer with greater force. All at once a streak of light showed, which each blow widened until it was as broad as his little finger; there the wedge stuck, having driven the linen band taut. He put his mouth to the crack and gulped river air, as cool in that heat as a draft of midnight, then lifted the hawk to do the same. While he held it there he peered through the crack.

  He saw a tumbled mess of brown water, frothy and thick with the silt of unknown mountains. Beyond this a riverbank swung suddenly into view as the barge twirled on the torrent like a leaf on a stream. The reedbeds raced past, and then he was looking back up the river to where, already half a mile distant, lay the thronged quay from which the barge had been launched into the floodstream. Sunlight twinkled off armor and instruments, and the gaudy parasols of the nobles looked like tiny flowers, but the people—priests of O and Aa, Gdu and Tan, the nobles, the headmen, the guards—were all merged by distance into common humanity.

  The hawk seemed refreshed, so Tron let it perch on the end of the inner coffin while he wedged the other end of the lid open. By the light from the slit he had made he could now see that the jade slab he was using as a hammer was the clearest pale green, unflawed, carved with pictures of warriors on horseback, each no bigger than a pea. It must have been worth the harvest of a hundred villages. Wriggling back, he discovered another water jug, from which he drank. One of the doves was dead with heat and the other very feeble, but it revived with startling speed when he held it up to breathe the fresh air. Having failed to persuade the hawk to drink (hawks seldom do so), he settled into his space among the spice caskets and nibbled a little bread.

  Some time later, a new noise began to rise above the ripple and cluck of the river, a steady hoot mingled with a patterned thud and clatter. He rose and peered nervously through the slit, wondering if he ought to knock the wedges out. The river seemed very wide here, and the barge, though twisting more rapidly, appeared to be traveling less fast. It was difficult to estimate. The reeds and mud walls of the far bank slid out of sight and he was looking back up the churning waters, all mottled with yellowish froth. Then he gasped as the other bank hove in sight, a mud wall pocked with the tunnels of river creatures, not twenty yards away. No wonder the river had seemed wide. He was almost aground.

  The strange noise rose louder. A human voice boomed through it. A hut came into sight, then another, then … just as he thought he was about to gaze all down the curve of the near bank he saw a barricade across the river, a series of spindly stilts, carrying a platform with men waiting, some of them holding long forked poles. On the bank was the village orchestra of drums and flutes, and the Headman’s son standing to one side and swinging round his head, like a hawk-lure, a cord that ended in a block of hollowed wood through which the air thrummed and hooted. The platform was clearly makeshift. The brown flood-waters frothed angrily round the swaying stilts, and as soon as they rose another few feet would whisk it away. The barrier didn’t run clear across the river. At its outer end stood a green-robed priest of Tan, arms raised in welcome, singing with all the strength of his old lungs. Tron dared not knock the wedges away now. He was too close. He crouched, trembling, and waited to be discovered.

  Sluggishly the barge settled against the jetty, but with the betraying slit below the lid facing upriver. The river-men’s poles rattled on the thwarts. The racket from the orchestra rose to a crazy, shapeless mess of sound. The villagers yelled at the top of their lungs, calling on the Dead King to ask the Gods, when he reached Their land, for blessings on crops and cattle. The barge lurched and began to trundle faster and faster, cutting sideways through the streaming waves. The platform creaked and crackled. The priest boomed his farewell.

  Now the barge twirled in the opposite direction, so Tron was forty yards clear before he saw the platform again. A few twists later he saw the river foaming and eddying over a mudbank on which he would certainly have been stranded but for the villagers’ help. He wondered how many generations of Kings had swept this way before, and been thus passed on. No doubt that priest knew a local little hymn which told exactly how and where the platform should be built.

  Next time, warned by the distant din, Tron knocked his wedges out in time, and waited in darkness while the barge was coaxed past ancient obstacles. So he did not see the men of three villages roped together in gangs and working up to their knees in tearing water to pass him out along a great sickle-shaped sandspit. Nor, near O’s going, did he see the faces of another village change as the barge swept past ten yards beyond the end of their jetty, not needing their help. There, behind the back of the impassively chanting priest, each man glanced at his neighbor, wondering what offering the Gods would demand to avert the effects of this bad sign. Which cattle? Whose child?


  Despite the slit, the coffin was dark enough for the hawk to sleep unhooded all afternoon. It was heat-bedraggled still and would be unfit to hunt for a week, but Tron was no longer afraid for it. He sat among the treasures quietly chanting as many of the common hymns to Tan as he could remember.

  He had never thought much about Tan. Unlike the other male Gods, Gdu had taken no lovers, either among the Gods or the Daughters of the Wise. He was like a priest among the Gods, whereas the love story of Gdaal and Tan and the jealousy of Sinu ran through a hundred hymns. But now Tan carried Tron in Her care and seemed to be protecting him from discovery, so it was proper to be grateful. As he sang the soft words he wondered a little about his own brothers and sisters and his own mother, and what it might be like to live in a village, to love and be loved—never, in fact, to have been chosen. He found it impossible to imagine, and Tan sent him no vision.

  Through the slit he watched O’s going redden the brassy sky until the God seemed to stand on the dusky level strip of the western bank. The barge was now right in the middle of the river, so he cut the linen bands and raised the heavy lid inch by inch, propping it open with the jeweled offerings to the Dead King until it was wide enough for Tron to wriggle through. He fetched the food, the hawk, and the dove out but was able to lower the lid only by leaving outside the last two treasure boxes he had used to prop it open. With the King’s dagger he poked the cut ends of linen into the slit below the lid so that they looked complete.

  The prow of the barge curved up into a slender arc, like the antenna of a grasshopper; behind this on a gilded perch rode a jeweled and enameled image of the Blue Hawk; the perch stood on a small deck from which an embroidered curtain hung to the main deck planks, screening off a little triangular cave, which, Tron found, held nothing but a coil of mooring rope. There was just room for him to curl up on the rope, with the birds, caskets, and food tucked into the corners.