Ladyhawke

by Joan D. Vinge

  “I think I ate the moon.”

  “Fool,” Imperius muttered bitterly. He slumped down onto a terrace step, sketching arcs and circles in the dirt with a stick before he looked back at Phillipe. “I have found a way to break the curse. A time for Navarre to face the Bishop and regain what once was his.”

  “He intends to face the Bishop,” Phillipe said. “To kill him with the sword of his ancestors.” He got to his feet, remembering that magnificent sword—Navarre’s last possession in the world. He understood Navarre’s quest all too well, now. He looked out at the night, wondering if Navarre had always hated the Bishop, even when he had served as the Captain of the Guard. His family had given generations of loyal service to the Church. To find himself serving an ungodly tyrant, forced to carry out corrupt and brutal policies in the Church’s name, must have been a bitter legacy. Phillipe began to comprehend the true depths of Navarre’s hatred for the man who had betrayed his family honor and stolen his rightful heritage from him; whose evil had damned him to an eternity without peace, or hope . . . or Isabeau.

  “He can’t kill the Bishop!” Imperius said despairingly. “If he does, the curse will go on forever!”

  Phillipe opened his mouth to ask what alternative Imperius really thought there was; then jerked around as a loud banging sounded at the abbey gates.

  “Open up in there!” a voice shouted. “Open up in the name of his Grace the Bishop of Aquila!” Phillipe looked back at the monk, stricken. Imperius got to his feet, glancing toward the abbey—toward Isabeau’s room—with fear etched into the lines of his face. Then he turned and started slowly down the hill toward the gates. Phillipe followed, his heart in his throat.

  Imperius stood at his place on the parapet, looking out and down, while Phillipe crouched beside him. Jehan and two other guards waited below. The two guards carried a heavy log between them; Jehan brandished his torch.

  “Go away!” Imperius shouted belligerently, sounding for all the world like a drunken old man. “This isn’t a brothel! This is the house of God!”

  “Open up for the Bishop!” Jehan answered.

  “I’ve met the Bishop, you blaspehmous lout!” Imperius bellowed. “And you don’t look anything like him!”

  Jehan turned to his men. “Break it in,” he ordered.

  Imperius looked down at Phillipe. “Take care of Isabeau,” he whispered. “Run, you fool!” Phillipe leaped down from the wall and scurried back up the hill toward the abbey.

  The guards ran at the gate with the battering ram. The ancient beam of wood that barred it groaned and cracked.

  “By the Virgin,” Imperius shouted, “now you’ve gone too far!” He left the wall and started indignantly back up the hill.

  Ignoring him, the guards backed away and ran at the door again. This time the entire door ripped from its hinges and fell away under the battering ram’s blow. The guardsmen rushed through it and ran up the steps that led toward the abbey garden. The ancient steps crumbled beneath them as they climbed, and Imperius watched in satisfaction as they tumbled back down the hill to the gate.

  “Sorry,” Imperius called apologetically. “I’m a monk, not an engineer!” The guards scrambled up the rocks again, cursing but undeterred. He stood waiting with saintly patience.

  Inside the abbey, Phillipe burst into Imperius’s cell. Isabeau looked up at him, fear starting in her eyes. “What is it?”

  “Don’t talk,” Phillipe panted. He held out his hand. She rose from the cot, grimacing, wrapping herself in a blanket. He led her out into the hall, pulling her toward the right. “Come this way.”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He glanced back as he heard the sound of angry voices. His mouth tightened. “Because I don’t think we can go that way.”

  Outside in the garden, Imperius hurried toward the abbey as slowly as he could, urged on by the guards. “Over there, my son!” he said breathlessly, pointing ahead as they started across the drawbridge. “The door on the right! And don’t forget . . .”

  The guardsman beside him dropped suddenly from sight as the planks cracked and fell out from under him. The guard plunged into the moat with a scream.

  “. . . to walk on the left side,” Imperius finished gently.

  Jehan’s sword hilt clubbed him from behind, and that was the last he knew.

  Phillipe hurried Isabeau through the maze of hallways, trying to keep his growing fear hidden. He had roamed all through this abbey, and he knew that there was just one way out—the way the guards had come in. His only hope for saving Isabeau and himself was to find a hiding place the guards would not bother to search.

  He saw the wooden staircase ahead that led up into the abbey’s empty, decaying bell tower. It was a poor refuge, but it was the only possibility he could think of. He looked back at Isabeau. “Up there, my lady! Are you able?”

  Isabeau nodded wordlessly, her face set with pain. Phillipe took her hand and began to lead her up the steps. He knew the guards must have reached Imperius’s cell by now and discovered that Isabeau was gone. It was only a matter of time before they found their way this far. By then he had to have Isabeau high enough up that no one would hear their footsteps.

  The stairway spiraled up and up, past one rotting platform after another. Phillipe pulled harder on Isabeau’s hand as she slowed, gasping for breath. He glanced back at her, panic and concern warring in his eyes, as she stumbled and cried out. He moved down a step to her side, put his arm around her waist to lend her strength as they went on climbing. Above them now he could see the trapdoor that gave onto the roof. If they could just reach it without being discovered . . .

  Jehan halted at the foot of the belfry stairs as the faint echo of a woman’s cry reached him. A thin smile pulled at his mouth; he gestured silently. His guardsman started up the steps ahead of him, sword drawn.

  The guard ran up the stairway, moving softly, peering ahead. As he reached the blind corner below another platform level, the woman’s voice cried hopelessly, “Please . . . I just can’t anymore . . .” He grinned and stepped around the corner.

  Phillipe swung around as the guard turned the corner and thrust his leg between the man’s feet. The guard stumbled off balance; Phillipe shoved him hard. The guard tumbled down the stairs, falling out of sight with a cry of surprise. Phillipe turned, panting, and looked up. Farther up the stairwell, Isabeau smiled and lifted her hand in a triumphant salute.

  Flushed with pride, Phillipe started back up the steps. “Hurry! Keep moving!”

  On the landing below, Jehan leaped aside as his guardsman crashed down onto the platform and cracked his head against the wall. Jehan stepped over the guard’s motionless body with a curse and ran on up the stairs.

  Phillipe heard more footsteps below as he shoved on the narrow trapdoor that opened onto the tower roof. He scrambled through, pulling Isabeau after him, and kicked the trapdoor shut. Searching for some hiding place, they ran out across the ruined roof; but the roof was empty. In the sky to the east the stars were fading, a promise of dawn. They looked down over the parapet, past the jutting gargoyles that leered from beneath the tower eave. Far below, the dove-gray predawn light showed them the jagged rocks of the mountainside waiting like open jaws.

  Phillipe looked up at Isabeau, met his own desperation in her eyes.

  “Listen,” she began in a steady voice, “it’s me they want . . .”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” Phillipe said grimly.

  They turned together as the trapdoor suddenly banged open. Phillipe darted back across the roof as Jehan’s helmeted head rose into view. He kicked the trapdoor shut again, knocking Jehan back down into the belfry. Kneeling, he knotted the door’s weathered pull rope around a stone cleat. The wood jumped as Jehan began to pound on it with his sword hilt. Phillipe stepped onto the door, holding it down with his weight. He looked again, helplessly, at Isabeau.

  Isabeau pressed back against the parapet wall, her face ashen with despair. Suddenly the rotting wood and dec
aying mortar gave, and a part of the wall crumbled away behind her. Isabeau screamed as she lost her balance and fell backward.

  “No! No!” Phillipe cried. He leaped across the roof as he saw her fall, lunging after her over the brink. He caught her hand as it slipped from the lip of broken stone, stopping her fall with sheer willpower as her weight nearly dragged him over the edge. He jammed his legs against the wall, bracing himself, staring down into Isabeau’s pleading, terror-filled eyes. Then, straining backward with all his strength, he tried to pull her up. But he could get no leverage, frozen against the wall; and he realized, with growing despair, that his arms were not strong enough to lift her weight alone. He could barely even keep his hold on her . . . and that was not enough to save her. Silently he cursed his smallness, his weakness, and the day he was born.

  Behind him he heard sudden splintering noises. Jehan banged at the trapdoor with renewed fury as it began to weaken. Glancing back at the sound, Phillipe realized that the air around him was brightening. Sudden hope filled him as he remembered the dawn. He looked down at Isabeau, away again at the horizon, where a pearly luminescence softened the clouds. She twisted her head to look, her fingernails digging into his flesh, her wounded arm dangling uselessly. Day was coming, and with it her change.

  But the sun had not climbed above the horizon yet. How long would it take? Seconds? Minutes? If he could only hang on a little longer . . . Phillipe bit his lip against the pain. Surely it was getting brighter. He felt as if his arms were being pulled from their sockets. His aching hands were wet with sweat. Isabeau’s hand slipped downward half an inch through his grasp . . . another half an inch.

  Her eyes filled with fresh terror. “Oh, please . . .” she gasped.

  Phillipe looked away frantically at the horizon. Her hand slipped farther. “I . . . can’t . . .”

  Her hand slipped free, and she fell.

  “Oh, my God, no!” Phillipe screamed. He flung himself forward, catching empty air. He watched her body tumble down through the growing light—was suddenly struck blind by the first rays of the rising sun.

  He flung up a hand to shield his eyes, gaping in disbelief as a magical transformation began to take place in the air below him. As the sunlight struck Isabeau’s body, for an instant time seemed to stop. In that moment as long as eternity, her pale arms blurred and darkened, wideningly amorphously into wings. She seemed to float on the glittering sunlight, her short, streaming hair stiffening into a hawk’s crest . . .

  A golden bird hung midway between heaven and earth, beating its wings desperately as it fell toward the rocks below.

  At the last possible second, the hawk caught an updraft of warm air. Phillipe sobbed with relief as he watched her feeble wings spread, saw her soar upward on the current, past the bell tower and away into the hills.

  Jehan hacked a last chunk of wood from the shattered trapdoor with his broadsword. He climbed through the hole, his sword ready. His eyes swept the belfry roof.

  The roof was empty. He circled the tower incredulously, searching for a sign of Navarre or the thief or the mysterious woman who traveled with them. He found nothing and no one. There were no hiding places large enough to conceal even a wounded hawk. He circled the roof again, looking out over the parapet and up into the sky. Beginning to wonder about his own sanity, he turned back to the stairwell at last.

  The sound of a piece of masonry dropping away behind him stopped him in his tracks. He strode back to the wall and peered over the parapet again. Far below him, more bits of masonry clattered onto the rocks. He leaned farther out. Straddling the neck of a gargoyle, pressing back against the wall and doing his best to melt into the stone, was Phillipe Gaston.

  Phillipe smiled nervously as Jehan’s murderous face glared down at him. “Looks like a nice day,” he choked.

  “Where’s the woman?” Jehan snarled.

  “Woman?” Phillipe said.

  Jehan’s broadsword whistled past his ear, came down on the gargoyle’s leering face just in front of him. Chips of shattered stone stung his hands as half its gaping mouth broke away and plummeted to the rocks below. Phillipe’s stomach turned over as he watched it fall.

  “Where is she?” Jehan asked again.

  “She . . . flew away,” Phillipe whispered weakly.

  Jehan’s face filled with rage. He raised his sword over his head.

  “God’s truth, she flew away!” Phillipe shut his eyes in helpless terror. He heard a dull thunk above him, and then silence. Forcing his eyes open, he made himself look up.

  Jehan stood frozen above him, an arrow protruding from his forehead above his sightless eyes. Slowly he fell forward, toppling over the parapet’s edge. Phillipe heard him hit the rocks below a moment later, and grimaced.

  Searching the hills, Phillipe’s astonished eyes suddenly found Navarre, sitting on the black stallion on a ridge above the abbey. Navarre lowered his longbow. Phillipe sighed, going limp against the stone wall behind him. “It always pays to tell the truth,” he muttered. “Thank you, Lord, I see that now . . .” With exquisite care, he began to crawl back up onto the roof.

  C H A P T E R

  Twelve

  Navarre swung stiffly down from Goliath’s back as he saw the boy climb to safety. He had not seen everything that had led to this . . . but he had seen enough. Looking up, he searched the sky for some sign of the hawk. “Hoy!” he shouted.

  Emptiness and silence answered him. The wind whistled along the barren ridgeline. “Hoy!” he shouted again, desperation rising in his voice. The echoes of his call rolled across the land and faded. There was no sign of the hawk. Navarre looked down, sick at heart, turning back to the horse.

  A harsh shriek filled the air above him. His head snapped up; he saw the hawk come spiraling down, beating her wings erratically. She landed heavily on his gauntlet, making him wince, and ruffled her wings in recognition.

  Navarre stroked her fierce head tenderly, his worried eyes searching out her wound as he murmured, “Shh . . . be still now . . . be still.” He held her close to his heart.

  The hawk turned her head and nipped him sharply for his overfamiliarity. He jerked his hand away; his mouth twitched with a rueful smile. “So that’s the way you greet your master, is it?”

  He climbed slowly into the saddle again. His healing wounds still caused him considerable pain; but he had known that they were not fatal ones. It was a pain he could endure. And now that the hawk was back in her rightful place on his arm, the truly unbearable pain he had suffered these last days was gone as if it had never existed.

  He started Goliath down off the ridge, riding toward the ruined abbey, and Imperius. He had stayed away until now not simply out of physical weakness, but because he had not trusted himself to face his betrayer, knowing that he needed him . . . that Isabeau needed him. But he had kept watch from the ridge, taking cold comfort in Phillipe’s shouted reports at dawn, and he knew that this time Imperius had not failed them.

  He had had time by now to realize what Phillipe must have been doing at the ambush—that the boy had probably betrayed him, as well. But Phillipe had more than repaid any betrayal, by saving the hawk . . . by saving Isabeau.

  Navarre rode in through the ruined gate and up the hill. He stopped before the abbey entrance. Imperius came across the drawbridge without hesitation and hurried toward him.

  Navarre felt his face freeze as he met the eyes of the man whose weakness had caused so much suffering, to himself and the woman he loved. His fist clenched over the reins. Imperius stopped, seeing his expression. The two men studied each other for a long moment, face to face for the first time in two years.

  At last Navarre said, “I thought you might be dead, old man. There were times when I wanted to kill you myself.” He took a deep breath, and found the strength to say, “I’m grateful for what you’ve done here.”

  Imperius nodded, and looked down. “Vengeance—like forgiveness—is the privilege of God,” he said. “And He has forgiven me.” He s
ounded as though he actually believed it.

  “I am not God,” Navarre answered bitterly. “I have not forgiven you. And I cannot forget.” He dismounted. From the corner of his eye he saw Phillipe appear at the entrance; the boy stood watching them silently.

  “What will you do, then?” Imperius asked querulously. “Kill me? His Grace?” He glanced at the hawk. “Kill her, perhaps?”

  Navarre stared at him. “Perhaps.”

  Imperius shook his disheveled head. “That is not how your story ends! Only I know how it ends! God has told me how the curse may be broken!”

  Navarre stiffened. His hand shot out, grasping the monk by the front of his ragged robes, pulling him close. “Betray me again, old man?” he whispered, his voice like acid. “Torture me with false hopes?”

  With quiet certainty, Imperius said, “Three days hence, in the Cathedral of Aquila, the Bishop hears the confession of the clergy. You have only to confront him—both of you, as man and woman, in the flesh, and the curse will be confounded. Broken. The Evil One will seize his prize, and you are free.”

  Navarre stared at Imperius, searching his eyes for a sign of betrayal or doubt, finding none. It was said that a curse was always imperfect, by its very nature. There was always a flaw, a way it could be broken . . . if the flaw could only be found. “It’s not possible. As man and woman. Together in the flesh. Impossible.” And yet he had believed it was impossible to escape from the dungeons of Aquila . . . He glanced at Phillipe, standing mesmerized in the entrance.

  “As long as there is night and there is day.” Imperius nodded. “But three days hence you’ll have your chance. In three days, at Aquila, there will be a day without night, and a night without day.”

  Navarre stared at the old man a moment longer, turning the words over and over in his mind . . . feeling the sudden blossom of hope wither and die inside him. His gaze turned as cold as a killing frost. “Go back inside, old man,” he said in disgust. “Back to your wine. God has not forgiven you. He has simply made you mad.”