Courage of falcons

by Holly Lisle

  Oracles annoyed her. She wished that they could offer advice not couched in confusion. She would have liked Dùghall to read the zanda and tell her, The gods decree you are to be a Falcon, or conversely, The gods decree that you are not. Simple, direct, clear.

  "I choose the Falcon path," she said at last. No oracle had convinced her, no god had whispered in her ear, and even her soul had failed to offer her compelling reasons for saying yea or nay in the end, she decided simply because she believed that the Falcons had much to offer the world even without the promise of Paranne, and she wished to add her strength to their numbers.

  "Open your eyes, then, and tell me again, for no path should be chosen with eyes closed."

  "I choose the Falcon path."

  "Then repeat after me," Dùghall said.

  "I offer all that is mine to give:

  ka-erea my will;

  ka-ashura my blood;

  ka-amia my flesh;

  ka-enadda my breath;

  ka-obbea my soul..."

  He paused, and Kait repeated the words after him, feeling weight building in the silence around them. As she enunciated the final ka, she felt a presence in the room with them, eyes that watched out of the edges of shadows, ears that listened from a place outside of time.

  Dùghall continued.

  "And that which is mine I will offer only,

  Now and ever.

  I will not partake of the ka of others,

  Nor benefit from ka so taken.

  I will do no harm by magic,

  Either through my action or my inaction,

  But if harm is inevitable,

  I will choose the path of least harm

  And the most good,

  Knowing that I am fallible

  And that if the path is not clear,

  I may err."

  Each time he paused and she repeated, the sense of presence grew stronger. She smelled the cold clean scent of fresh-falling snow and felt behind her eyes a vast plain unfolding. Unfamiliar terrain in her mind. Places she had never seen, never imagined, with paths well trodden leading off in all directions toward unmarked, unknowable destinations... destinations fraught with danger.

  "I will carry the weight of my errors

  On my own soul,

  And bear such punishments

  As magic and the gods mete out

  On my own flesh."

  And there the bite of the oath. That mistakes, even mistakes innocently made and with the best of intentions, would stay with her. She could not confer blame or punishment; neither could she escape them. Her mistakes would be hers alone, always. Always.

  She could accept that. She had borne the consequences of her own actions all of her life perhaps not happily, but the oath did not demand of her that she rejoice in punishment. Only that she take it on herself, not pass it off to innocent others. She breathed in and out slowly and repeated the words, feeling the metallic taste of them on her tongue. And as she finished the last word, a light sprang up between her and Dùghall, a soft, cold white flame that flickered on every metal object in the room, casting slender, dancing shadows all around.

  Dùghall's eyebrows rose, but he kept going.

  "I will not oppress by magic,

  Nor be party to such oppression,

  Nor view such oppression and fail

  To act in the benefit of the oppressed,

  Though it cost me all that I have

  And all that I am;

  For I will hold life sacred,

  Both flesh life and soul life."

  She repeated her promise, and the fire grew into a blaze, and somehow, though its color did not change and though it shed no physical heat, it seemed warmer. The scent of snow still hung in the room, and her skin still felt like ice, but somewhere in the back of her mind, a word whispered of spring, and the dancing of buds in an early morning breeze, and the fall of apple blossoms like snow across green meadows, and the rolling of the sea, and salt air sharp and biting against her face... and somewhere, somewhere, green and growing and lush and rich with decay and rebirth, her own beloved jungles, riotous with life, steadily green, fecund, powerful. Her own power, her own memories, to add to those odd and frightening memories of strangers, her own essence to add to the stream, for every bit of water that flows changes the shape of the river, and her life, her presence, would carve out a bit of bank, wear away the corner of a pebble, feed the roots of a tree, and she would pass on, changed, too.

  She felt all of that within breathe in and breathe out, and felt, too, a sense of belonging that was alien to her very soul.

  You are us, we are you.

  And Dùghall, clearing his throat, starting, stopping, starting again, pain in his face, but also wonder and certainly he felt what she felt, the touch of the river that welcomed her into its flow. Changes came already she felt them against her skin, inside her blood, in the chirring of the tiny bones within her ears.

  "And... I will hold fast

  To the vision of Solander,

  That all people are bound together by love

  Now and forever.

  I will hold Paranne

  Within my heart.

  For if it must be a dream withheld,

  Still it is a star by which

  I may steer my life."

  New words, a new promise, a new branching of the stream, and she said the words and the blaze filled the room, blotting out all vision, and the river embraced her and the water flowed in that new way, to that new place that still went to the sea. Life, the sea... and blinded by the flame that was a thousand years of lives and deaths, her mind showed her bloodshed and childbirth and parade and battleground and hearthfire; her skin felt gentle kiss and thrust of passion and stab of blade and lash of whip; her ears rang with song and whisper and lie and scream; her tongue tasted poison and feast and thin gruel; her heart knew fury and vengeance and comfort and love.

  And acceptance. She was not alone. Never again alone. She was part of life, and had always been, but now she was the river and not the riverbank. Now she was shaper and not shaped. Now she was found, who had never known before how deeply lost she had been in the corridors of her own mind.

  You are us, we are you.

  Fire was her blood, her breath was richest purple and truest green, her heart beat roses, and every faintest whisper in the world humped and skittered and slithered and strolled before her in shape and color and scent and taste reborn a living thing.

  And in that pageant, that maelstrom, that wonder, a solitary cry of pain.

  No! Don't leave me.

  Over that, louder as the crashing of the sea is louder than the falling of a single drop of water onto a leaf in a rain-soaked forest the great susurration of the body that enfolded her. You are us, we are you. Wordless, soundless, and nonetheless immense, bone-melting, skin-searing, sense-drowning... and wonderful. So wonderful.

  You are us.

  We are you.

  And the desire, the hunger, the blind, seeking, nuzzling, pleading, raw-edged want to be part of that, part of that, part of that, when that was the thing she had never had, never been, knew she could never be. Part of a group, part of a herd, part of the masses. One of many, not one alone. Never one alone again. To heal the hurt of her losses her family, her greater Family, her childhood, her pain at being Scarred, and finally her abandonment by Ry.

  And that single drop of water fell on that single wet leaf in that distant stand of trees that whispered again, and again she felt its movement, heard its soft plink, saw it shimmering in her mind: You were not alone with me.

  She rose from the depths, slowly, as if from a deep and bewitching dream. She rose, shaking layers of warmth from her skin and her soul. She rose, leaving behind the alien vistas of a thousand years, the sweet touches of welcoming brothers and sisters, the gentle lulling rocking embrace of that timeless, waterless sea. She rose because that single tiny voice called her against time, against the tides of eternity, against even her own desires and let
her see herself as she was. She could hear the calling of that voice, and that set her apart, made her unlike others, gave her both individual identity and distance.

  She was Karnee, born strong, raised to be alone, destined to be a hunter. A protector... or a predator.

  But never, never, never part of the herd.

  The soft and muffling comfort of Falcon souls fell away completely; she was above them then, as if she stood on the churning surface of the water. She could still dip into that storm of memories and thoughts and hopes and fears, but she would not be a part of it again. She was no longer the riverbank, but neither was she the river; she had become the sailor on the water, but never truly part of it.

  Her vision cleared, and she was once again in the close, dark room with her uncle, kneeling on the hard tile floor, her knees sore and her back aching. The instep of her right foot burned, and she had to fight the urge to change position, to twist around to see what had caused that pain.

  Dùghall shook his head and smiled at her. "I should have realized," he said.

  She waited for clarification, but none came.

  Annoyance pricked her, and she gave vent to it. "What should you have realized?"

  "That the Falcons would never swallow you. You could no more lose yourself in the comfort of others than I could fly."

  "Ry called to me when I was in there," she said.

  Dùghall shook his head. "He couldn't have. Nothing can break through the sound of those voices when they have hold of you...." He looked at his hands. "But you aren't me. They don't compel you as they do me."

  Kait said, "That was the place you came back from, wasn't it? When the Reborn died and you sank into trance, that was the place where you were hiding."

  "Yes... but it was not the warm and comforting place you felt. It was full of despair then. It was..." He shook his head, lost for words. "It was a sea trying to swallow itself. It was hell, and I was lost in it."

  She considered that for a moment, and said, "You were strong to come back from there."

  "I was. The only thing more seductive than your own self-pity is self-pity you share with your entire group. You did well to get my attention."

  She thought a moment longer. "So... am I a Falcon, then, or am I not?"

  He said, "You are. You've been marked." He pointed to the silver needles that had lain beside the zanda when the two of them began. They were twisted into knots and lumps, unrecognizable. "The Falcons marked your skin with silver somewhere. The place will be unique to you, but the mark will be the same."

  And she thought of the pain in her right foot, and said, "Dare I move?"

  "Now you can."

  Gratefully she shifted position and, cross-legged, studied her right instep. The mark on the skin was blue, deep, but clear. A circle no bigger than the pad of her thumb, with a stylized falcon within it. The falcon plummeted from the sky, beak open, wings cupping the air to slow his descent, talons spread to catch his prey.

  She angled her foot and showed him her mark, and he stared at it for a moment, and swore softly, and then he began to laugh. He peeled his shirt off, and twisted his left arm around until she could see the pale skin of his underarm. The small blue circle marked him, too but the falcon silhouetted in his circle sat in profile, talons clutching a branch.

  "This is the mark of every Falcon I have ever seen. Yours is different; they acknowledge that you're different. A new kind of Falcon."

  "And what sort of Falcon am I?"

  "That I don't know."

  "Why a mark?" she asked him. "It seems to me only a good way to be found out and executed, especially since you can feel each other's presence within that..." She couldn't find a word to describe the sea of souls that had flowed over her.

  "Falcons call it sha-obbea."

  Our soul. "Yes, then... why the mark, since you can touch each other within sha-obbea?"

  "Several reasons. First, because most Falcons cannot sort out an individual soul within the mass of sha-obbea. Second, because almost always, even for those Falcons who can, we have been forced by danger to stay shielded. Even when we met sometimes especially when we met we dared not enjoin sha-obbea because of the danger of sudden magical attacks if we lowered our shields. The marks well, you feel a burning in your foot."

  "Yes."

  "That burning tells you another Falcon is nearby. The mark isn't terribly sensitive the burning doesn't get stronger as you near a Falcon, or weaker as you move away. It is either there or it isn't, and the range has always seemed excessive to me. There have been times in my life when I've occupied a city for months, and have felt the presence of another Falcon, and have sought him or her without success. We might have been on the same street, or only in the same district, with our paths never crossing."

  "You have no safe way of reaching each other?"

  "We have ways. They are awkward, but in times of extreme danger, when no shield can be lowered, they work well enough. A bit of graffiti scrawled on the corner of a public building, a crier hired to call for a lost lover, with the code phrase 'I burn for you' inserted in his message. In any case, when we meet, mostly we exchange the Falcon words of greeting. That is usually enough. If we doubt, we show our marks."

  "It's a simple enough design," Kait said. "I should think it would be easy to forge."

  "Hold your foot close to my arm."

  "What?"

  "Hold your foot close to my arm."

  Kait raised her foot, moving the instep toward Dùghall's mark. Suddenly, when the two marks were less than a hand span apart, a brilliant blast of light erupted between them. She yelped and pulled her foot back, and Dùghall laughed.

  "Not so simple to forge after all, eh?"

  "Well, that must be awkward on the streets."

  "Never happen. Clothes, shoes... they block the spark." He began gathering up his supplies and storing them. She noticed that he cleaned the coins before he put them in the bag, that all of them had been horribly tarnished, though they had gleamed before her trance. And that he didn't just drop them in when he'd finished, but placed them carefully. He glanced up at her, noticed her watching, and smiled. "Good tools are precious things." He scooped up the ruins of the silver needles and handed them to her. "You'll make your own. These will become the silver coins for your zanda. You'll have to create that, too. I'll give you such guidance as I can, but no two are alike. That way, no one else can ever use what they've learned from another Falcon to tamper with your tools, or twist what the zanda tells you. But that is for later. For now Alarista awaits us."

  Kait realized then what he had not told her before. The three of them were going after the Mirror of Souls immediately.

  Chapter 29

  I don't like the look of this place," Yanth said.

  Jaim rested a hand on the pommel of his sword and glowered, which would have made him look more imposing had he not then sneezed. "Hellish pighole."

  They'd put ashore in the New Territories, in Heymar, a rough coastal trading city run by the Heymar Galweighs, who from all accounts were little better than pirates and thugs. Riches came through Heymar, but it didn't look to Ry like they stopped there. The houses were almost all built of poorly made mud brick with roofs thatched instead of shingled; the streets ran to mud and deeper mud, with a few planks strewn over the worst bogs to keep unsuspecting strollers from falling in at night and drowning; the air redolent of night soil told of a place where the locals' preferred treatment of raw sewage was to throw it out into the street on unwary passersby. The women ran from merely bedraggled to downright ugly, and the men started at ugly and got progressively worse from there. Everyone wore a sword, or a sword and daggers, and Ry thought that if the weapons looked to be of poor quality, they would probably still kill a man well enough. And there were Scarred in the streets, too, with misshapen bodies and unreadable faces and eyes that watched everything.

  "I think we ought to find a place to stay for the night," Ry said, "and by tomorrow morning be sure we are on our
way away from here." He'd wrapped the pommel of his sword so the Sabir crest wouldn't show he thought it alone would be enough to give mortal affront in such a rough place as Heymar. He wore commoners' clothing coarse homespun breeches and a thick wool shirt that itched abominably. He could walk with a slouch to hide his fighter's body and his fighter's gait. He'd darkened his hair to a muddy brown with dye. But nothing would hide his pale eyes or the angle of his jaw or the shape of his face. He looked Sabir still, and he knew it.

  Yanth smiled coldly, the scars on his cheeks blanching white when he did. "We could find some sport here, I think, without looking too hard for it. My blade hasn't fed on any blood but mine in far too long."

  Ry glanced over at him and said mildly, "And if you think they'd fight you for sport here, you're madder than poor Valard."

  The mention of their absent friend who, possessed by some demonic spirit, had fallen into the employ of Ry's mother and betrayed him to her, erased the smile from Yanth's face. "I've not gone that mad," he said after a moment. "I simply tire of all this running and hiding and hiding and running. I want an enemy I can fight."