Hawkspar

by Holly Lisle

  Time. I knew that I could change things, if I was only willing to pay the price.

  The Hawkspar before me had told me that I could hold time, that I could, if I chose, step within the spaces between an instant.

  All rivers led to Aaran’s death, to the destruction of the Taag and everyone on it, to the annihilation of hope for not just those aboard this ship, but farther out, for the Tonk, as well.

  It was for this moment, and ones like it that would come, that I had been chosen. So that I could make the necessary sacrifices. So that I could step between the seconds.

  I had swords in both hands. I let my body flow with the movement of the ship, and made the rushing water stand still. And I held that moment. Fought for it. The pain defied belief—but in that moment, nothing around me moved, yet I moved.

  I was cold, colder than I had ever been in my life. I fought my way through air that suddenly resisted my forward progress as if it were hands grasping at me, and I pushed to the back of the steersman’s castle, over the rail to the gombaar deck, where dead men and the coracle, Aaran, and the wizard stood frozen, fighting. I fought for breath against the blinding pain, fought to breathe the thick-as-blankets air, crawled beside the wizard through a thicket of bones and rotted flesh, and pushed myself into the little boat. I fought the weight of my arms and the weight of the swords, and I swung.

  Seivein dance, two swords leaping, dance done always before with the long, wrapped reed blades. Done now blind, with the black-on-black-on-black shapes of man versus man lifted by dead men before me as weights against my skin.

  The blades danced, hard; the shock as they struck screamed through my arms and down my spine and added to the agony in my head. Screaming, howling, fire lanced through my skull. I danced in a world of absolute silence—there is no word for the stillness when time stops, unless it is death. My blades struck again. Head, neck, chest, belly, arms of the vile bastard who had come to kill Aaran, and I felt the blades hit, slice through him, but they did nothing. Nothing. He stood there, frozen as still as Aaran, and my blades passed through him, and still he stood.

  I danced seivein then against the dead men beneath my feet, slashing through arms and hands, cutting bone and tendon and such meat as remained.

  And nothing. Nothing. The dead resisted me, too, and the pain grew worse and worse in my eyes and my skull until I could not find the strength to hold time’s flow anymore. It slipped away from me as if through my fingers, and pain enveloped me, and I fell backward, out of the coracle, onto the gombaar deck, into the midst of the rotted living dead.

  Before me, things happened all at once. The wizard fell into pieces, dead, and the dead men who had lifted him fell back into the sea, still screaming, and submerged beneath the waves, silenced at last, and his boat crumbled to dust, and Aaran fell to the deck beside me, and the monsters that the wizards had forced to his will fled back into the deeps from which they had come.

  Leaving the living and the dying and the dead behind. And Aaran above me, his face turned down toward mine.

  “You have blood on your blades,” he said.

  The pain, like spikes through my skull, did not lessen when I released the time I’d held. It clung to me, a starving jackal gnawing my bones. I fought through it for words, so that I would not lie at his feet like some stupid creature.

  “Blood,” I managed. “Yes. I fought the wizard who came for us.”

  “He fell apart,” Aaran said. “How did you do that?”

  “Time,” I whispered. “I … caught the piece of time where we were and held it. Not long.”

  “Held time.” He sounded intrigued, but not afraid. I didn’t think much would frighten him. Beyond what we had just been through, of course. He was watching me, or at least, the shadow of his face turned toward me. “Are you hurt?”

  “The Eyes hurt me when I use them.” I tried to stand, to show him that I was stronger than the Eyes, but I collapsed again. The pain sucked the strength out of my arms and legs, turned my spine to water, left me too weak to do anything.

  He picked me up in his arms. Oh, his touch was all I’d yearned for, and I wanted to cling to that moment—but not at the price of trying to capture time in my hands again. He was warm, and powerfully built. My swords went clanging back to the deck because I was too weak even to hold on to them, and he stepped over them, and carried me down from the gombaar deck, down onto the main deck, down the passenger companionway into the passenger common. The little girls were hidden there, tucked behind the six doors in the long bunk rooms. I could make them out, huddled together clinging to each other and weeping.

  “Tell them the monsters have gone,” I told him. “They don’t know.”

  Aaran pounded on the doors. “You’re safe now. Safe. Your oracle is back again.”

  He took me into the passenger common, stretched a hammock in front of the friendly little fire that burned in the stove there, and carefully placed me in it. He brushed my hair back from my forehead with a gentle touch, and whispered, “Rest. I’ll have one of the cooks bring you broth. And we have a medic who can help you with the pain, perhaps. I can’t be sure—we’ve never had any experience with something like those Eyes.”

  “Well, neither have I. The Seru Moonstone are healers, and they have much experience with the pain the Eyes cause.”

  “Moonstone?”

  “The women with the white eyes, who dress in white.”

  “Oh, Ethebet. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but just looking at them makes my skin crawl. There’s something more horrible about their eyes than … the ones with the black eyes, or the red eyes … or—” He faltered.

  “Or my Eyes. I know.” I could feel his horror. I knew it well enough from life with the Ossalenes before the Eyes came to me. They are unnatural things, terrible things.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a braying, thick-headed jackass. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t. I didn’t want the Eyes. Not ever. I took them because there’s something I have to do with them. Something the previous Hawkspar saw through them, that concerns the survival of all the Tonk.”

  His hand held mine. “Relax. It isn’t important now. Take deep breaths, and I’ll go get one of your Moonstone seru. Everything will be all right.”

  And he let go of my hand and left.

  I was left feeling foolish. In pain, and foolish. He had seen me collapse; he thought me weak.

  I rested in the hammock, in front of the little stove. Warm, at ease. The hammock swung back and forth, and the ship creaked gently, and I heard voices coming and going, and feet thudding on the decks above and below. The sounds were comforting. Gentle, distant, muffled by the wood. I was not alone, but I was not crowded either.

  The Moonstones would not be able to hurry to my side; I already knew this. They would be dealing with worse hurts than mine, working side-by-side with Aaran’s healer. The dead they could do nothing for, but the dying—well, the Moonstone Eyes gave them a great deal of power where the dying were concerned.

  And I was not dying. I was merely in pain, and the pain would probably pass on its own. If it felt like the whole of the universe had shoved its way inside my head to explode, I could still give myself some comfort by knowing that I was exaggerating.

  I wondered if I could distance myself from the Eyes. If I could turn them off for a while, and not have them affect me.

  If I could do that, I would be completely blind, of course. But the rivers of time flowed through my skull unchecked, and bits and pieces of events and scraps of people flashed on the blank wall that was my personal vision.

  A man stood within my mind, deep in the water. I could not see any detail of him. I could not get a feel for him, except that he was strong. Old. He lay in my past.

  I turned, and found another like him. Dark, strong, old. In my future.

  And a third, like the first two, lay in my present—but he was dead. Destroyed. I could make him out when I looked closely. He was the wizard I
had killed. He was not gone. Dead, but not gone. His spirit lingered, bound by something he could not escape. He had become one of his own dead men, a spirit that could not rest.

  The one that lay in my past was bound to me, and was with me. He had come into my mind through the gate I had opened when I held time at bay.

  She had warned me, Hawkspar had. She had told me there would be a price for using the full power of the Eyes.

  I had known. Though I could not get close to the shadow within me, I knew he had come. And I could sense that he would not leave. I’d opened the door behind which he had waited, and I had let him in.

  I knew him. He was the wizard of the Eyes. He had, in a sense, made me.

  The shadow in my future was bound to someone else … someone I did not know. But I would have to stand against him.

  He was a wizard, too. He did not know I watched him. But the first did. The second did.

  The third would come to feel my presence soon enough.

  I shuddered, wishing the room could be warmer, or my pain less. Wishing that I could be someone else, perhaps—the girl I had been before the Eyes came to me.

  “Oracle?”

  I could not place the voice. One of the little girls, but I did not know which one. And I was trying not to look with the Eyes, because looking hurt so much. “Yes.”

  “Are you going to die, Oracle?”

  I sighed. “No. Why would you ask such a thing?”

  “The sounds you were making were so … frightening.”

  Sounds. I was lying there making sounds, and did not even hear myself, at least not until I thought about it. Once I listened to myself, I heard the whimpering, and the moaning. How lovely. I was scaring the children and I, with not a cut on me, sounded no less in agony than the dying.

  Feet thundered down the companionway, and then Aaran’s voice touched me again. “My healer is working, as are yours. Many of the injuries were terrible; they’ll be longer before they can attend to you, and yours made it clear to me that nothing I might do would help you. Still, I thought perhaps I would bring you something that I’ve used to ease pain—maybe it will help somewhat while you wait.” I caught his movement next to me, and the shape and weight of his hand pouring something from a bottle into a mug.

  For an instant, a rancid smell curled around me, but then it vanished, replaced by sharpness and the biting aroma of the infirmary, and the stinging astringency of the solutions used to clean wounds.

  “Have a sip,” he told me, and put the mug to my lips.

  “That’s something that should treat wounds on the outside,” I said, “not pain on the inside.”

  He laughed. “It’s my favorite gyriik—caribou milk fermented with herbs, strained and bottled and aged for twelve years. There’s none finer.”

  “You drink it?”

  “When I have the privilege. It’s hard to come by.”

  “And you’re not dead yet.” I sighed. “Yes, let me have a taste.”

  “Sip it,” he said. “It burns.”

  It did. It burned all the way from my mouth down my throat and into my gut. I choked, and sputtered.

  “It’s strong,” he said. “But once it gets in the blood, it can ease a world of hurt.”

  I could think he was right. It flowed through me, spreading warmth. The taste had been terrible, but the sensation that came after the taste was remarkable.

  “Another sip?” I asked.

  The shadows of two dead men watched me, receding as the warmth filled me.

  He put the cup to my lips. I would like to say that the second sip wasn’t as bad, but that would be lying. If I crawled on the ground and licked the dirt, I would find no worse tastes.

  But I lay there and felt Aaran’s vile-tasting gyriik start blanketing the worst daggers of my pain. Dulling the points, putting softness between me and them. The river of time receded, as if I were stepping back from its banks. The voices and the images, the ghosts and all the many horrors of what might happen and what might have happened slipped back, and hushed a bit.

  “Oh,” I murmured. “That’s better. More, perhaps?”

  “Finish what I’ve poured,” he said. “And then tell me about your Eyes, and how you and these other women came to have them. Where they came from, what they do.”

  “You have nothing else more important to do?”

  “The healers are working, the ship is—for now, anyway—not moving, and anyone who needs me knows where to find me. And I’m curious.”

  I took two more sips that burned their way through me. I thought if the tiny mug he’d held up for me had helped so much, surely more gyriik would be even better. But I didn’t want to appear greedy. I’d tell him as much of the story as I knew, and perhaps partway through ask for more.

  He refilled the mug and sipped from it himself.

  “The story isn’t all that long. The Citadel of the Ossalenes was once the estate of one of the island kings. A son of that king, whose name was Ossal, converted to Marositism, and then joined the Cistavrian Order, which against the teachings of the rest of the Marosites, practices magic. By the Ossalene accounts, Ossal became powerful in the creation of magical weapons and magical tools. He also fancied young women, and kept a large harem of them for his amusement.”

  “Harems,” Aaran said. “Right. I think it’s understood that most men would love to have a harem of young women. Just the way we’re made.”

  “Would you?” I asked him.

  “I find parts of the picture appealing,” he said. “Then I consider my vast talent at annoying women, and consider the consequences of having a whole herd of angry, if lovely, creatures coming after me with murder in mind—and I decide that I would be best off enjoying the company of the world’s beauties one at a time.” He sighed. “Maybe two at a time on a really good day.”

  Two. “Oh.” A woman wants to hear a man say, All I’ve ever wanted in the world was one woman—the right woman. Not, Everything with legs and breasts, just not all at once.

  He started laughing. “You asked me what I would want. I was honest with you. And now you look horrified. I’m trying to find my sister, and until I find her, I don’t have the opportunity to stay in one place and be with one woman. Maybe someday I’ll be able to do that—and maybe someday I’ll want to.”

  His sister. Yes. If she was not among us, then he would return to devoting his life to the search for her.

  I sat up in the hammock and discovered that the pain in my head had become a little thing. Replacing it, however, was a spinning sensation that made me feel as if the ship were rocking forward and backward and side-to-side and upside-down all at the same time. I lay back down.

  I said, “You quickly grasped the problem with harems. Ossal, who had used his magic to destroy his father and all his father’s offspring so that none could challenge his right to the throne, was not so quick in realizing the danger, however. He created the Eyes that we now wear—the story is that at one time there were more than two thousand pairs, and that many of those pairs were designed to make the girls biddable.”

  “Ah,” Aaran said. “Not enough that he should be a king. He wanted to be a god as well.”

  He seemed to have a clear picture of the man who had created the Eyes. Clearer, perhaps, than I had.

  “He had women to care for his every need, for his health and his protection and amusement, the growing of his food, the tending of his flocks, the maintaining of his surroundings. And then he decided that these slaves, bound to him by the magic of their eyes, unable to be unfaithful to him or to escape him or to argue with his slightest whim, were not enough. He wanted to know the past and the future. He wanted to see all of what was, all of what is, and all of what might be and to find ways to control the whole of time. He dreamed of being king not just of his islands, but of the whole of the world. So he made the Eyes of the Oracles.”

  “And got some very special slaves.”

  “More special than he wanted. The oracles could see not on
ly what he was, but what he had been, and what he could become.” I laughed a little. “Worse than that, they could see clearly how the future might be changed to crush him. They led him, with advice carefully given, into a trap in which he was slaughtered, and all his soldiers with him. At his death, the bond that bound his slaves to him cracked, but did not break. The oracles and the seru, though they did not yet think of themselves in that way, closed up the Citadel. They locked themselves away from the world for a time. Tried to find out who they were, and what they might do. And how they might be fully freed of the spirit of dead Ossal.”

  “It seems that the king should have been able to figure out that women who could see into the future might be interested in finding a way of shortening his.” Aaran sipped slowly at his drink.

  “We seem, rather, to have stretched it for him. It is a weak bond between those with lesser Eyes. All of the slave Eyes, that served no purpose but to turn women into sex toys, were destroyed as the women who wore them died. The seru Eyes connect to him, but from all the Hawkspar before me had time to tell me, the connection is not strong. With the Oracle Eyes … well. If we allow ourselves to delve into the full power the Eyes offer, we strengthen the connection between us and him.” I let my body bask in the warmth inside me and outside me, and smiled. All of that was so very far away. “Power has its price,” I told him—but at the moment that saying seemed to have little to do with me.

  “When you started calling for help … ?”

  I lay in the hammock, gently rocked by the sea, warmed by the fire, surrounded by people who were not trying to kill me, and by those whose lives I had saved. As much as anyone could be safe floating on a speck of wood in the middle of a vast unknown world, I was safe. “I was powerless. Just a little girl with a knack for Tonk magic.”