Kingdom of the Grail (31 page)

CHAPTER 37

R
oland flew high and far. He little cared where he went, save that it be away from fear, away from anger: clear into the blue heaven, with all his will and spirit gathered into a single bright spark, the mind of a hawk.

As a hawk he hunted and flew. As a hawk he slept when the night came, and took wing when the sun rose again, with the memory of humanity shrinking smaller, the longer he wore those swift wings.

This was rich land, green land, teeming with prey. Other falcons flew in it, and eagles in the jagged heights, and things that his hawk-spirit did not know, winged with darkness or flame; and some wore the bodies of furred beasts but flew as the eagle did, and others were scaled like serpents, trailing a scent of fire.

The hawk flew well away from those. He was fierce and he brooked no rival, but he had a little prudence. They hunted greater prey than his, nor troubled his hunting while he forbore to trouble theirs.

Once a vast dark thing swooped over him, shutting out the sky. It passed without taking notice of him, but he was far too wary after that to linger in the air. Night was falling, true night unmarred by alien wings. He sheltered as he could in a wood of tall dark trees, deep in among the branches. Their scent was strong with resin, clear and pungent. Their needles whispered in the wind.

He had flown far and wide of men's places. Those were not so common here by the dark wood, but there were small huddles of houses scattered along the wood's edges. None dared settle within, though a few pressed up against the shadow of the trees.

Some deep spark of memory stirred at that—remembrance of a place that was not this one, but had been very like, once, long ago. Fair green country, windy moors, rings of stones heavy with old power; and in the heart of it the wood.

Wisdom would have taken him away. There were gentler lands within sight and scent of these, better hunting, sweeter quarry, but the niggle of memory kept him close to the wood and the villages. One village in particular fascinated him, though what there was about it, he could not have told. There was a warren of rabbits nearby, and a flock of doves, but any village might have offered as much. The people mattered nothing to him. They watched him—he caught the gleam of eyes in flat pale faces—but none threatened him with stone or dart.

This was a larger village than some. It stood on a road that ran along the wood's edge, then wound away into the misty green country. There was a deep clear spring on its eastern edge, and a mother tree to which the women came with gifts of wool and bread and bits of honeycomb, and which the children garlanded with flowers.

He took to roosting in the tree's branches, resting there at night and pausing between hunts in the day. From there he could see the thatched roofs of the village, and the road, and the inn that stood beside it. People came to tarry in the inn for a night or an evening, and drink strong yeasty ale and eat fresh-baked bread and chatter as human people chattered.

He had been human once. He had no particular desire to wear that shape again, awkward earthbound thing with its voice like a dog's barking. Far sweeter to be a falcon, swiftest of things that flew, with fierce talons and beak that could rend the life out of tender prey.

Dawn came one morning in a grey gust of rain, but the sun put to flight the clouds and wet. He shook the last of the damp from his wings and spread them to begin his morning hunt. But even with the sharp gnawing of hunger
in his middle, he paused. The sun was bright. The clouds were blowing away to the east. Droplets of wet sparkled on leaf and stone. There was no darkness in this world, no shadow, though the wood loomed close.

And yet within him something had been stirring since he saw the dark thing beyond the wood. In this bright morning, in the clear light of the sun, that something stirred and thrashed and woke.

Memory. Fear. Anger, and a gust of sorrow. A rabbit, young and foolish, hopped from its burrow full beneath him and began to nibble on a bit of weed by the pool. His hawk-senses leaped to the alert, but he did not stoop to the kill. On the feathers of his breast, a thing moved, familiar though long unheeded. It was warm, like a spark of the sun. It drew him inexorably to earth.

The rabbit fled in terror. He had no talons to catch and hold it. The air was cold on skin bare of feathers. Arms sprawled on leafmold, fingers scrabbling, forgetful of their purpose. No wings, no claws. No sweet taste of blood. He lay in the fallen leaves and wept, though what tears were, or what they were for, he did not clearly remember.

Marric had been watching the hawk since it took up residence in the Lady's tree. That it chose to rest there, and hunted so close to it, spoke to him of things that he had half forgotten: tales told, visions, dreams in the night. None of them came clear enough to grasp, but he was patient. The gods moved in their own time. When they were ready, they would reveal their purpose.

He had nearly forsaken patience on the day when, glancing sidewise at the bird as he passed by the tree and the spring, he had seen something odd: something hanging at the feathered breast, a gleam of metal where one hardly expected to find it. Further inspection, with care lest the hawk take flight, discovered a silver chain about the neck, and a disk of silver suspended from it. Marric could never come close enough to see what was written on the disk, if anything was; but that it was a thing of power, he could well see.

On the morning after a night of rain, in clear damp sunlight, he woke to a sharp awareness of something different. The village was quiet. No one else had paid much heed to
the hawk. That was Marric's duty, to fret over matters beyond the round of daily things. The rest of them were content to live as they had for time out of mind, tending their houses, herding their flocks, looking after the visitors who came to Gemma's inn by the Woodsedge road.

But when he passed the last of the houses and approached the Lady's tree, he saw a cluster of children standing wide-eyed and silent, staring at something under the tree. That something was larger than a hawk—much larger. It had white skin and very black hair, long and tangled, and it clutched at the tree's roots and wept.

Marric stepped through the ring of children and touched the trembling shoulder. The stranger whipped about, nearly sweeping Marric from his feet. But Marric was rooted in earth, and even in utter startlement he was not to be overset. He stared into a face that had nothing human in it at all, though the shape of it was more human than not. The eyes that blazed on him were as yellow as a hawk's, and wild, and quite empty of reason. On the creature's breast swung the silver talisman. It caught the sun and flamed, all but blinding him.

“Well,” said Marric, without fear though not without surprise. “Well and well. So She called you here. She has an odd humor, does our Lady.”

The man who had been a hawk did not answer. But he did not strike, either, and Marric took that as an omen. “Off with you, children,” he said to the audience, who had drawn back in respect for a manifest madman, but in no more fear than Marric had. “Fetch Gemma and her boys. Tell them the Lady's brought us a gift and a charge, and we'll need the fowling net, and maybe the roc's cage, too.”

“Oh, no,” said the smallest of the children, who had the largest eyes and the clearest sight of them all. “Not the roc's cage. But the net, you'll need.”

“Just the net, then,” said Marric. The children ran to do his bidding—far more obedient than they were usually inclined to be, but then this was the most remarkable thing they had seen in most of their short lives. They would reckon that the sooner they had run their errand, the sooner they could be back again, staring at the stranger with the hawk's mad eyes.

He crouched against the tree's bole, sitting oddly, as if he
had forgotten how a man's limbs bent and flexed. His toes curled as if to clutch a branch; his shoulders hunched, arms drawn in like a hawk's wings. Tears were drying on his cheeks, glistening in a sparse growth of beard.

Marric settled in to wait while the children fetched Gemma and her pack of burly sons. And, he reminded himself, the net. He was not at all certain that it had been wise to omit the cage, but small Brigid had a clear sight for such things. If she did not reckon it wise to cage this wanderer, then no doubt the net would suffice.

In the event, it did—barely. The stranger was awkward in this shape, but strong, and grimly determined not to be confined. But Gemma's sons overcame him, rolled him in the net and carried him, by then stiffly quiescent, down to the inn. Marric had had in mind to take the stranger to his own house, but he was overruled.

“We have a room with a lock on the door,” Gemma said, “and no windows to let a winged thing out. And you laid the guard-spells yourself. He'll be safer here.”

Marric was not exactly sure of that, but he shrugged and let the innkeeper take command. Time enough later to win that battle. For the moment he saw one advantage in surrender: the innkeeper could see to taming the stranger enough to wash the sharp animal reek from him, though she was no such fool as to approach him with razor or cutting blade.

He seemed to have exhausted his struggles once the net fell on him. Biding his time, Marric thought. He suffered through a bath and a lengthy combing, much more lengthy than it need have been—for all the emptiness of his face and the madness in his eyes, he was a handsome thing, and very well made. He only struggled once after he was netted: when Gemma tried to touch the amulet about his neck. She escaped with a bruise and a scratch or two, and a greater respect for his strength and quickness.

Gemma took rather too much pleasure in making him as presentable as she could, plaiting his hair and, with visible regret, covering that fine white body in a tunic that fit him passably well: some lord's left-behind, all fine linen and silken borders.

“And right noble you look in it, too,” she said to him, stroking his hair that she had labored so long to clean and
comb smooth. He endured the touch as he had the rest, without acknowledging her at all.

“Poor thing,” she said. “No wits in you, and such a face to go with it.” And not only the face, Marric could see her thinking.

While she fussed over him and plied him with dainties which he ignored, Marric sat in the corner and watched, pondering a number of things. Not least was the amulet, and the protection that it granted. Whatever manner of man this was, if indeed he was a man, he was or had been in the favor of great powers. Had he run from them, from some task that they had imposed? Or had they reft his wits from him in punishment for a great sin?

When the Lady was ready, no doubt she would reveal the truth. For the moment, Marric sensed no evil in this man. Danger—yes, he could be thrumming with it. But of darkness Marric could find nothing.

Word of the stranger had spread. The inn was remarkably full for so early in the day. When Marric lengthened an ear to listen, he discovered that they had invented a history for the stranger, as solid as if it had been true. He had come out of the wood, they said. He was cursed—or blessed—by the Lady, and he was mute as well as mad. They had also decided that he was either a beggar or a prince, and that a maiden's kiss would cure him. One or two maidens, and several who Marric knew had not been maidens in some time, hung about the entrance to Gemma's wine-cellar, where the stranger was confined.

None of them had magic enough to pass the wards on the door, and Marric was on the other side of it, making sure that the wardings held. When Gemma came and went, which she did often, attempts to slip past her failed. Still one of them was determined enough to set off the wards; her screech pierced Marric's heightened senses, and brought the stranger flailing to his feet.

He fell at once in a tangle of limbs, thrashing until Marric feared he would harm himself. Marric caught the thin wrists, hissing at the strength in them, and spoke a Word. The stranger stiffened, staring, yellow eyes fixed on Marric's face. Did he see? Could he understand? Marric found no answer there, only walls and shuttered windows.

The woman had made herself scarce. The stranger eased
slowly. His eyes had not left Marric's face. Marric suppressed a shiver. “There,” he said for lack of anything more sensible. “There.”

The sound of Marric's voice seemed to calm the stranger. His wild eyes closed. He turned his face away. After some little while Marric let him go. He stayed where Marric left him, as if there were no will in him, no wits and no memory.