Courage of falcons

by Holly Lisle

  At last, Kait could see the danger for what it was. "Then it seems to me, Uncle, that I would serve better as a friend to the Falcons, without becoming a Falcon."

  "And if enough Falcons survived to do what needed to be done, and if they were here where I needed them and when I needed them, I would agree with you wholeheartedly." He braced both feet on the ground and leaned forward. "But the... the artifact you have in there... it poses a danger that grows with every day and every moment that it watches us. A slip from us a false word, a false move and it will call other keepers to it. If it does, it can destroy us. It will destroy us."

  Kait clearly remembered her own experience with the Mirror calling other keepers the bloodred beacon cleaving the night sky, the Mirror of Souls tumbling into the sea, their frantic journey through the inlets and byways of the Thousand Dancers with Ry and Ry's men and Hasmal, with Ian at the rudder urging them to row faster... and faster.... She closed her eyes tightly and drew a steadying breath. "We don't want to give it the opportunity to do that again."

  He knew the story of their narrow escape. He said, "No, we don't." He rose, and began to pace. "We need great power to destroy it and we need that power quickly, before one of us makes a mistake. You and I and Ry can control an enormous amount of magic between the three of us. Alarista, too, might join us, though I fear that, frail as she is, she would become the weak link in the chain with which we seek to rip apart the Mirror. But three should be enough, if the three of us also share the oathbond of Falconry. Then, you see, we can create a thathbund a ring of power. All surviving Falcons can offer their strength into the thathbund, and the Falcon dead whose souls still watch us can give us their strength, too. We become more than three. We become... legion."

  "And with this added strength, you think we could destroy the M the artifact."

  "Yes."

  "I wish Hasmal were here."

  "So do I. If he were, I would ask only Ry to join me. I would leave you free from Falconry."

  "Why Ry? Why not me?"

  Dùghall pursed his lips, blew out a short, sharp breath. "Reasons that you will not care to hear," he said. "But you might as well."

  Kait crossed her arms over her chest and waited.

  "He's Sabir, Kait." Dùghall met her defiant gaze with a sad smile. "Born Sabir, raised Sabir, trained Sabir. For all his love for you, for all his newfound willingness to leave behind Wolf magic and Wolf training for the magic of the Falcons, and even for all his hatred of things his Family did to your Family, at core, he is a Sabir and will always be. If the Reborn had lived, things might have been different. The Reborn's love touched him. Changed the way he saw the world. If the Reborn had lived, he would have served, and he would have stayed strong, I think. But the Reborn died, and that love died, and now Ry runs on memories that grow fainter, and on his love for you, which, in the final accounting, has little to do with how he lives his life. Pressed, cornered, I cannot help but believe that he will use every weapon at his disposal to save himself... and if that weapon is Wolf magic, you and I could well pay with our lives. Or worse."

  "He won't do anything to hurt me."

  "You believe. And I hope. And if I had a gold preid for every woman who ever said, 'He won't do anything to hurt me,' of a man who later beat the life out of her, I'd be the richest man in all the world."

  Kait felt the edges of anger twisting in her gut. "You think he'll beat me? Me?"

  "No. I don't think he'll do anything of the sort. But I know that you don't know what he will do. You cannot know. He's a man, with free will and self-determination, and as such, he's as unpredictable as any other man." Dùghall leaned back. "Taking the oath of Falconry would... limit his options somewhat. In a good way. So that's why, if we had to choose only one of you, I would choose him. Bound to our side by oath and magic, he would cease to worry me so much."

  Kait managed a small smile. "I understand. I can't say I like your thinking very much, but I do understand it." She picked at a soft spot on the rotting log beneath her. The rich wood smell filled her nostrils, comforting and familiar. "So how long will it take to prepare us to take the oath?"

  Dùghall snorted. "You could take it today. It isn't like taking the Oath of Iberism before the parnissa you don't have to memorize a catechism or a litany or learn the Obeisances or the Signs of Humankind. You swear to use only that power which is yours or freely given to you; to hold life both mortal and eternal sacred; to do no harm with your magic, either through your action or your inaction, or, if harm is inevitable, to work for the least harm and the most good; and to remain steadfast to the coming of Paranne and the return of the Reborn. Once you take the oath, it is perfectly capable of enforcing itself." He frowned thoughtfully and stared at the ground beneath his feet. "I don't know about that last clause anymore. The Reborn will not come a third time, and without him, there will be no city of Paranne, and no world of perfect love. I wonder if that ought to come out of the oath for new Falcons...."

  Kait got him back on track. "If you took our oaths today, we could destroy... it... today?"

  "Eh?" Dùghall returned his attention to her. "Oh. No, I don't think so. We have to work out a plan of attack. The artifact will certainly defend itself we need to be certain when it does that we react effectively together. I think we'll only be ready to take it on after several days of practicing together. Even so, I suspect our chances of success are about the same as our chances of failure."

  "You're more optimistic than I am." Kait remembered only too clearly the way the Mirror of Souls shattered her shield as if it weren't there and called Crispin to it when she started to take it in a direction it didn't want to go. She feared the Mirror, and wondered how the three of them, even strengthened by Dùghall's Falconry, could hope to fend off its attack.

  "Perhaps you're less optimistic with reason," Dùghall said quietly. "You've been around the thing. I haven't. Your sense of it is certainly more clear than mine."

  They sat without speaking for a few moments, lost in their own thoughts. Finally Kait stood and brushed wood chips and wood dust off her clothes. "I suppose we should be getting back."

  "I suppose we should." Dùghall rose, too, and looked toward the House. "Talk to Ry, will you? I'll tell him about the oath if you'd like, but I think it would be best if he understood both the positive and the negative aspects of becoming a Falcon from your perspective before he talked to me. I will not... and cannot... coerce him into something he doesn't want."

  "He might refuse." Kait considered that possibility. She was tempted to refuse herself. Without the promise of communion with the Reborn and the eventual building of the city of Paranne, Falconry seemed to her to have little to offer. And while it had lost the Reborn, which would have made any sacrifice worthwhile, it had kept its drawbacks intact.

  "I realize that. If he refuses, we have little chance of success. But he must come to Falconry freely." Dùghall glanced at her. "As must you. If you do not take the oath with a willing heart, your oath won't be accepted."

  She realized she must have looked surprised by the smile on Dùghall's face.

  He chuckled. "You thought if you said the words, you would be bound to the oath whether you wished to become a Falcon or not?"

  She nodded.

  "I told you, the oath isn't just the words. If you truly have no wish to become a Falcon, nothing can make you. The words you will say must match the desire in your heart and the willingness of your soul to be bound beyond life itself to the precepts of Falconry. Nothing less will make you one of us."

  She thought about that for a moment. "I'll tell him," she said at last. "And when we've talked, we'll let you know what we decide."

  "That's all I can ask."

  Chapter 21

  Dùghall completed his session with the zanda and rose, his face troubled. He did not understand the directions he'd received; he did not like the direction in which the gods were pointing him. Always, he had used magic to bring harmony, to create peace, to guide in po
sitive directions. Now he was being directed to do something that ran counter to his every instinct and yet three times the zanda had insisted this was the direction he must take if he and the Falcons were to triumph against the last Dragon and the army he raised.

  He gathered the accoutrements of spellcasting and settled cross-legged onto the floor. He thought for a long time, composing the spell in such a way that it would do no harm, even though it would certainly seem to. Then he clipped a bit of hair from his head and scraped a bit of skin from the inside of his cheek and offered those into the blood-bowl. On a scrap of black silk that he had spread onto the stone floor, he dropped two tiny white spheres. When he dropped them, he dipped his fingertips in a little vial of clear gel and let the coating dry.

  When he finished his physical preparations, he recited:

  "Vodor Imrish, hear me now

  This path which leads through seeming night

  Must come at last to light of day

  And all my actions be revealed

  To mark me for this seeming crime.

  I give my flesh to pay my price

  And ward my deed in pure intent.

  Upon the utterings of gods

  And spirits do I cast this lot.

  Send honesty among us, place

  The fire of anger and the seed

  Of discontent on those I mark.

  Let thoughts that prudent men would keep

  In chains be spoken, and let ears

  That would incline to understanding

  Hear instead each syllable that's

  Said and take each word to heart.

  I ask for nothing save the truth,

  Knowing that truth can be unkind.

  No pain or hurt would I then cause

  Save only that which can't be spared

  To do the work that this must do."

  He held a hand over the silver-lined bowl and waited and it began to fill with white light, as Vodor Imrish took his offering, and then the light took on a cold and shimmering quality, and formed itself into the shape of a flame. Dùghall channeled that lovely flame into the two little spheres, which absorbed it as quickly as water would douse a candle.

  When the last sparkle of the godlight was gone, Dùghall pressed his left index finger to one sphere and his right to the second. They stuck, unobtrusive so long as he didn't wave his hands around.

  Then, hurrying, for he sensed that he had only a little time to do what he must do if he hoped to succeed, he went through the halls, searching.

  "Kait," he said when he passed his niece, "bring Ry to my quarters later and we'll go over the details of the Falcon ceremony." He patted her bare arm in a gesture that looked like absentminded affection and moved on, lighter by one sphere, aware that behind him, Kait stood in the hallway, watching him with suddenly uncertain eyes.

  And in an upper passageway, he met Ry. "Oh, son," he said, tapping Ry on the wrist with a single finger, and feeling the slight pop as the second sphere came free, "Kait was looking for you mere moments ago. I just saw her in the hallway by the west salon, but I believe she might have been headed elsewhere."

  And he moved on to his quarters, and took a seat in one of the fine brocaded chairs, and shook. He thought he might throw up, and he hung his head between his knees until the feeling finally passed.

  There. It was done. He did not know what his spell might accomplish, and he did not know why this was the path he'd been directed to take. He wished he could uncover a clear picture of the future a map that would let him see clearly the consequences of his actions and the prices that others would have to pay for the things he did.

  And at last he prayed that he had not been misguided.

  * * *

  "I don't like it," Ry said. "With the death of the Reborn, the Falcons have no reason to continue. They existed to clear a path for him... and now he's gone, and there isn't going to be a Paranne, or a world of perfect love." He turned from stalking back and forth through the ruined garden and faced her. "I would have given my life for him, Kait. For the Reborn. But not for a stuffy, secretive association of pacifist wizards. They have no head. No direction. No objectives once " He caught himself just before he mentioned the Mirror, and shuddered. So close. "Once they've accomplished this one last thing."

  Kait sat on the edge of the fountain, still as any of the statues around her. Sunlight played across her hair and the lean planes of her face, and shadowed her dark eyes and the full curve of her lower lip. She watched him, thoughtful and wary and worried. "I know. And yet, without us, they aren't going to accomplish this one last thing."

  "You can't be sure of that."

  "I can't."

  "You know we could wait to see if any of them respond to Dùghall's call."

  "I know that."

  He gave her a hard look. "Stop trying to sound so reasonable. Show a little emotion about this. A little feeling, for the gods' sakes."

  She almost smiled at that. He saw the corners of her lips twitch. Then she shook her head. "Passion can't decide this. Logic is going to have to and I'm being reasonable because if I don't, no one will."

  "So you think it's reasonable to bind yourself for life, unbreakably, to a group of people who stand for nothing, who have no fixed goal or aspiration, who have become nothing but a remnant of a lost civilization?"

  Now she did smile. "Put that way, it sounds insane."

  "It is insane."

  "It would be if you were right. But with or without the Reborn, the Falcons don't stand for nothing. They stand for the responsible use of magic for using only that power which is rightfully yours, for defending instead of attacking, for protecting the innocent from the voracious and the predatory. They stand for self-sacrifice, for the triumph of love over hatred, for leaving the world a better place than they found it." Now, now he could hear passion in her voice, and his heart sank. Her conviction flushed her cheeks a darker red and made her lift her chin and glare at him like the parata she was but rarely acted and he knew he would not like what came next. She said, "The Falcons cannot stand on the promise of Paranne any longer, but the things they've been fighting for these last thousand years are as true and as important now as they were the day Vincalis started writing the prophecies for the Secret Texts." She rose, a statue no longer, and walked over and rested a hand on his arm. "Ry, the Falcons are much of what was best about the Ancients' world. They can be much of what is best about our world."

  They stood staring into each other's eyes for a long, uncomfortable moment. "You're going to take the oath," he said at last. "You've already decided."

  She looked a little surprised. "I hadn't decided, until you tried to convince me that it was the wrong thing to do. Then suddenly I could see the truth. Yes. I'll become a Falcon." He could see, then, the pain in her eyes. "And you will not take the oath."

  He said, "I'll take it if you do."

  She shook her head. "I already told you, if you don't truly wish to become a Falcon, the words will not bind you."

  He turned away from her. "How can I wish to become a slave to someone else's philosophy?"

  "If you had stayed in Sabir House, in the fullness of time you would have become a full Wolf for the Sabir Family," Kait said quietly. "You would have embraced that philosophy."

  Her words were a little knife, digging at him, probing for weakness. He said, "Don't try to manipulate me, Kait. Perhaps I would have done what my Family required, but perhaps not. I've shown considerably more spine in standing against my Family's wishes than you have shown in standing against yours. You are the one who has put a wall between us for the sake of Family... of appearances. I received my own apartment in the House the day you found your sister not one with a door that connects to yours, either. She has that apartment. She has your time in the mornings, your first smiles of the day, the first sound of your voice each dawn. I have an apartment I don't want, and distance I don't want, and the feeling that you're ashamed of me that I'm not good enough now that your big sister is ar
ound to pass judgment."

  "I don't feel that way and you know it. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I just want to be able to share my life including you with the little that remains of my family. Alcie is slowly coming around," Kait said. "She will accept you."

  "And I think she would accept me faster if we declared ourselves incanda and took our own apartments and shared our bed."

  "That's too... abrupt. My way is taking longer, but it's better. Alcie understands that you're not truly Sabir "

  Ry's skin crawled. He spun and stared at her, and she faltered and fell silent. He said, "What did you say?" and his voice was flat and hard.