The Last Hawk

by Catherine Asaro

  Bathed in fiery light, and dressed in robes and Talhas, Kelric stood with Ched in the sunken hollow of a circle. A rail made from gold wood encircled them.

  Cymbals chimed in soft rhythm, followed by the compelling beat of a drum and a pipe's haunting melody. Then a man's voice soared into the music. He sang in an unfamiliar language, one with an ancient sound, evoking images of Estates burnished like gold in the desert. The music swirled in the sunset, then faded into silence like a sun vanishing behind the horizon.

  A woman's dusky voice coalesced out of the air. "Ched Lasa Viasa, do you stand as Oath Brother to Sevtar?"

  "I do " Ched said.

  "What do you speak for him?"

  Ched took a breath. "Sevtar was a better friend to me than anyone else I ever knew. He stood by me no matter what. And he believed in me." He glanced at Kelric. "Knowing him made me a better person. I can't think of anyone more worthy for your Calanya."

  Kelric touched Ched's arm in thanks, and the youth's face gentled.

  A young girl spoke. "Your words are heard and recorded, Ched of Viasa."

  Ched bowed, then stepped out of the Circle and withdrew to sit with his guards.

  Cymbals chimed again. Then the woman with the dusky voice spoke. "For Haka and for Coba, do you, Sevtar, come to the Circle to give your Oath?"

  Was this the price of freedom? His betrayal of Deha? Kelric stood mute, his silence stretching out in the gilded topaz light. As murmurs came from the watchers, the curtains at the end of the hall rustled.

  Then a woman appeared.

  No. Kelric clenched the rail, trying to anchor himself in its reality. Only in a hallucination would he see, on Coba, the fertility goddess Viana from the mythology of his home world Lyshriol. She wore a long white robe that clung to her voluptuous body like fluid rippling in a stream. Graced with creamy dark skin, her face had a mesmerizing beauty. Black lashes fringed her large eyes, and a braid of glossy black hair as thick as a fist fell over her shoulder to her hip. Rubies in her necklace glittered against her skin.

  She came to stand before him. "Do you refuse ,Haka your Oath?"

  Kelric pulled down his Talha, uncovering his face. "Are you the Haka Manager?"

  "Yes. I am Rashiva Haka."

  "Dahl already has my Oath."

  "Manager Dahl has relinquished your vow."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Why would I lie?"

  Why indeed. What possessed his fevered mind to create this mocking hallucination? He liked Deha. Why imagine she rejected him? For that matter, he couldn't see why he would imagine an Estate where a man had so little choice in the matter of his Oath that its Manager didn't bother to explain the situation before the ceremony. Rashiva acted as if it had never occurred to her that he might not obey. Why would he hallucinate this? Hell, he didn't know. He was insane anyway.

  Rashiva spoke quietly. "I can offer you a better life than you will ever have in prison. But I won't force you to deny Dahl. If it is your wish to return to the compounds rather than enter my Calanya, I won't make you stay here."

  A vision of his isolation rose in his mind like a nightmare.

  "How did you force Manager Dahl to allow this?"

  "I forced no one. It was her idea."

  He refused to believe Deha had thrown him away the moment he became a liability. This was a delusion created by a man driven mad with loneliness. But a delusion of solitude would be as crushing as the reality.

  In a flat voice he said, "Then take my Oath."

  Rashiva's voice took on the quality of a ritual. "Hear my words, Sevtar. But before you give them back to me as Oath know that your life is bound by them."

  After a moment he realized she was waiting for a response."All right," he said.

  Softly she said, "You answer 'I hear and understand.' "

  "I hear and understand"

  "For Haka and for Coba, " she said, "do you enter the Circle to give your Oath?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you swear you will hold my Estate above all else, as you hold In your hands and your mind the future of Haka?"

  "Yes."

  She watched him with night-dark eyes. "Do you swear to keep forever the discipline of the Calanya? To never again read or write? To never again speak in the presence of those who are not of the Calanya?"

  "Yes." It made no sense to him, but he would have agreed to stand on his head if it kept him out of the storehouse.

  "Do you swear—on. penalty of your life—that your loyalty is to Haka, only to Haka, and completely to Haka?"

  "If you want," he said.

  " 'I swear,' " she murmured. " 'With my life.' "

  She waited, watching him with her unsettling gaze. So he said, "I swear. With my life."

  Rashiva raised her hand and the sound of a gong vibrated in the air. The colors in the hall were deepening into crimson shadows. "In return for your Oath," she said, "I vow that for the rest of your life you will be provided for as befits a Calani."

  What did that mean? Deha had told him the same thing.

  Rashiva reached into the folds of her robe and withdrew four armbands. She first slid on his Dahl bands white gold engraved with the suntree symbol and other hieroglyphics including just about the only written Teotecan he understood, his Coban name, Sevtar Dahl, the first word depicted by the glyph of a man striding across the sky, the second by the suntree glyph. The next pair of armbands she slid on him were a darker gold. He saw his Dahl name followed by a third symbol, the Haka rising sun. Sevtar Dahl Haka.

  One other symbol on the Haka bands was familiar, a man with a mane of shoulder—length curls, his head turned to the right and his arm raised, bent at the elbow, with the palm at shoulder height and turned to face the ceiling. Kelric knew its meaning. The turned head symbolized fertility, the long hair denoted desirability, the raised palm acceptance. Husband. These were Akasi bands.

  His anger stirred. For a year he had lived in a hell of solitude. Now this siren appeared out of nowhere and lured him with an alien vow of love.

  Triumph flickered in her eyes. "Sevtar Dahl Haka, you are now a Second Level Calani of Haka."

  16

  Hawk's Fire

  The audiocom refused to stop its insistent buzz. Chankah Dahl, the Dahl Successor, rolled over in bed and fumbled for the switch. "Who is this?" she grumbled.

  Senior Physician Rohka's voice snapped out of the com. "You have to come to Deha's suite. Hurry. She's had another heart attack."

  Chankah ran barefoot through the halls, her robe flying out behind her. Inside Deha's suite, she found the doctor Dabbiv pacing in the living room. Grief etched lines in his face.

  "Why is she so rock-headed?" he demanded. "Why does she insist on working all night? We warned her, Chankah. Over and over. We warned her."

  Chankah stared at him. Before she could respond, Deha's son appeared in an inner archway and beckoned to her.

  She found the Manager lying in bed, her face pale. Chankah leaned over her. "Deha?"

  The answering voice was faint. "I can't see you."

  Chankah turned up the lamp on the nightstand. "Is that better?"

  "A little." Deha watched her with faded eyes. "Remember all I have taught you You carry much responsibility now. You are a power among the Estates second only to Karn."

  Chankah swallowed. "Don't talk that way. You'll be up sooner than you can whistle."

  "Not this time. Ah—Chani."

  "I'm here. Right here."

  "You must take care of him."

  "Him?"

  "Kelric. Get him a pardon. Promise."

  Chankah would have sworn to deliver the wind if it eased her mentor's dying. "I promise. I swear it."

  Deha's voice faded. "Don't mourn . . . My life has been rich . . . Good-bye. . ."

  "No, Come back!" Chankah clenched the bedpost "Deha? Deha."

  No life showed In the eyes of Dahl's queen.

  Rashiva stood at the end of the Topazwalk. watching an octet come down the tunnel of
light. The elderly Calani they escorted was distinguished, with silver hair and gray eyes. His escort towered around him like refugees from a world less serene than the one he inhabited. Saje Viasa Varz Haka was the elite of an elite a Third Level Calani, one of the few among the Twelve Estates.

  When Saje reached her Rashiva smiled. "You look well today."

  He nodded his greeting.

  She turned to the escort. "You may wait Outside the Hyella Chamber."

  After the guards withdrew, Rashiva moved aside to let Saje enter the tinted sphere of glass that ended the Topazwalk. Named for the translucent orbs that floated on the tips of hyella reeds, the chamber sat poised at the top of a tower, overlooking the desert. A glass bench ran around its interior wall and a glass Quis table stood in its center.

  As they sat at the table, Safe studied her face. "The man from the prison troubles you."

  "I played Quis with him this morning," Rashiva said.

  "And?"

  "Deha Dahl was wrong. Sevtar isn't talented."

  Regret showed in Saje's eyes. "You are certain?"

  She took a breath. "Talent comes nowhere near to describing his gift with the dice. It's like defining the desert as a grain of sand. Sevtar isn't a grain. He's an ocean."

  "Such a gift should please you."

  "Every pattern he makes is sorrow, Saje. He weeps with his dice."

  The Third Level sighed. "Well, Manager Dahl is dead."

  "He doesn't know. I don't know how to tell him." She paused. "He is her Akasi after all."

  "Was. He is yours now."

  In name only, Rashiva thought Sevtar was a stranger she saw only during their Quis sessions. "I'm concerned about how he will react. Warden Haka thinks he is dangerous. Her doctors say he is insane."

  "What do you think?"

  "I don't know. He's like the blank face of a cliff. I need your advice."

  "To give you counsel," Saje said. "I must know him. To know him, I must sit at Quis with him."

  Rashiva stiffened. "No."

  Saje waited.

  "It isn't safe," she said.

  He continued to wait.

  "I can't risk your life," she said.

  "If you believed him to be that dangerous," Saje said, "he wouldn't be here on the Estate."

  Rashiva looked out at the desert where sand swirled in patterns impossible to fathom. Like Sevtar. Saje was right. It was time Sevtar sat at Quis with a true Calani.

  When Captain Khaaj and the escort came for him, Kelric balked. He had been alone in his suite for the past ten days, since his Oath ceremony. The only person he had seen besides his guards was Rashiva, three times, when she came to play Quis. They never spoke during the games. Apparently she hadn't found whatever she sought in his dice and now had sent his guards to take him back to prison and isolation.

  He refused to leave the suite. No one forced him; the octet simply waited.

  After an hour, Kelric began to wonder if he were wrong. He walked over to the octet Khaaj bowed, then lifted her hand offering to escort him out of the suite. He considered her. Then he finally went with them.

  They followed graceful halls, climbed the spiral stairs of a tower, and came out in a corridor of glass. The walkway ended at a spherical chamber where an elderly man sat playing Quis solitaire He wore three bands on each arm, over his sleeves rather than under them, as Kelric wore his. Kelric's guards took up positions with the Calanya escort already waiting outside the chamber, standing beyond the range of conversation but close enough to reach it in seconds. Kelric suspected their concern was for the elderly gentleman rather than him.

  As Kelric entered, the man looked up. "Ah. Sevtar. My greetings." He indicated a chair across the table. "Please. Be comfortable."

  Kelric sat down, watching him.

  "I am Saje." He set a velvet pouch on the table. "Manager Haka wishes to give you this."

  Kelric made no move to take the pouch. "I have Quis dice."

  Saje slid the pouch over to him. "These are Calanya dice."

  Kelric turned the bag over several times. Then he nudged out the dice. Not only did the pouch contain a full dice set, it also included unusual shapes, such as stars, eggs, and boxes with hinged lids. And they were real. The gold ball was just that—solid gold. White pieces were diamond, blue sapphire, red ruby. Some of the gems, like the opals, gave mixtures of colors that sparked ideas in his mind for manipulating color rank within dice structures.

  Saje rolled out his own dice gems. "Shall we begin?"

  "I can't." These new dice were strangers.

  Saje didn't look surprised. "Use your other set today. In time you will feel comfortable with the new one."

  Kelric refilled the new pouch. He tied it onto his belt, then took off his ragged bag and rolled out his dice.

  "Stop hovering over me, Rashiva." Saje eased down among the cushions on the lush carpet in the sitting room behind Rashiva's office. "I'm not a blown- -glass Quis die."

  She sat next to him, as tense as a mountain climber's rope. "How did your session go?"

  "Your Sevtar is a remarkable young man." Saje paused. "But strange. He has no sense of his own genius. He never analyzes. He does it by instinct. We give him dice so he plays Quis."

  Rashiva nodded. "Yes, I thought so too. And his dice have almost no patterns of the prison. Just loneliness and solitude. If I hadn't known he's been down in the compounds, I would never have guessed it from his Quis. He plays as if he taught himself with no input from anyone else."

  Saje nodded "I detected a faint reference to the prison. But it was very old." He spread his hands. "Perhaps it is the conditions under which he has played dice. He needs to sit at Quis with other Calani. He should live in the Calanya."

  "It's too dangerous. Warden Haka thinks he's mentally ill."

  Saje spoke quietly. "His only illness is loneliness. He needs company."

  Rashiva had no answer for that. How could she risk her Calanya with him when she wouldn't risk herself?

  The days blended together, each a repetition of the last. Kelric played Quis with gems now instead of rocks, and his guards brought his meals on silver trays instead of shoving them through the door, but the rhythm of his life was otherwise unchanged from his time in solitude. He lived in a trance.

  One break existed in the pattern; each day either Rashiva or Saje sat at dice with him, in sessions so intense that conversation was an intrusion. As he learned Saje's Quis he came to know the man, his wisdom and gentle humor, better than had they exchanged words instead of dice. His sessions with the Third Level were an oasis in his loneliness.

  Rashiva remained an enigma, craved but denied. He watched her from the fortress of his mind, hungering to touch her, hating her for tormenting him.

  His dreams jumbled in confused images. Sometimes he was a Jagernaut, fighting endless battles with no reprieve. Other times he saw Deha lying in death, her heart stopped. He relived Llaach's death again and again. In some nightmares he forced Rashiva to give him what he craved, with a brutality that left him stunned when he awoke. Or else ghosts entered his dreams, soldiers he had killed in battle. Each time: he bolted awake, his mouth working to release a scream that never came. Gradually an obsession took hold, a desire to go out into the desert, as if its endless space could release him from this agony of solitude, parch him dry until he no longer hurt. A thought worried at his mind like a dog with a bone: he would shatter a window and jump out. He tried with his fists, pounding the glass, but he nearly fractured his hand and still the thick glass remained solid. Another night he used a chair. It broke into pieces long before the window weakened, and the noise brought his guards running into the room.

  After that, Saje no longer came to visit.

  He changed his approach, using his Quis to deceive Rashiva. Like everyone else he had met on Coba, Including Saje and Deha, she had no idea how to play dice. He hadn't realized it at Dahl. They were all children with Quis, blind to its intricacies. Rashiva never knew how his dice lied. He wan
ted her to suffer for what she let Haka do to him; his Quis told her that he was content, adjusting well to his new life.

  On a night when clouds massed around the cliffs and lightning clawed the desert, an unfamiliar octet came for him. They took him through corridors emptied by the late hour, their boots echoing on the floors. With a numbness born from too long dreading this journey, he waited for the halls to become tunnels that ended at a barren gray cell.

  They stopped in an alcove lit only by a torch in a claw on the wall. An ancient door faced them. The captain pushed it open, revealing a tower with spiral stairs. They climbed up and around, up and around, up and around . . .

  A door at the top opened into a suite that made his own quarters look meager. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, sparkling with colored crystals. Then he realized the "crystals" were gems: diamonds, rubies, topazes. The furniture was made from a lustrous black wood with red overtones, and upholstered in dark brocades. Urns as tall as his shoulder stood in corners, glazed with intricate Quis designs, and tapestries on the walls showed desert scenes. No windows softened the suite, only heavy drapes and walls paneled in rosewood.

  After the escort left, shoving bolts into place and locking the door, Kelric wandered through the rooms. In one he found a bed covered in gold brocade, with darkwood posters at its corners and a canopy of red velvet. He took a blown—glass vase off the nightstand and turned it over in his hand. Why this new prison, this cage within a cage? At least his old suite had windows that let him see the world. Had they moved him here so he couldn't try breaking the glass? The walls pressed in, confining, suffocating—

  The vase snapped in his clenched hand. Its body fell to the floor and shattered on the darkwood parquetry, leaving him holding a shard of glass. He stared at it. Then, slowly, he pressed its jagged edge against his wrist.