The Blue Hawk

by Peter Dickinson

  “Mistress of dark,

  Mother of Gods,

  Aa never born,

  Ruler of birth,

  Aa never dying,

  Ruler of death,

  A man’s …”

  He choked, staggered and collapsed to the floor. Voices muttered. One of the men by the bed swung round to Tron.

  “You!” he snapped. “Explain! A servant of Aa comes, takes our master, takes himself, you are here watching. Explain!”

  Men seized Tron by the elbows and pushed him forward. He gathered his tattered wits. What would the King want? What would he need to tell them to achieve that?

  “The General of the Southern Levies has come,” he said. “He has brought an Ambassador from Falathi, carrying the Red Spear. The King suspects that the Major Priests will try to prevent the Red Spear from reaching him. He sent me by secret ways to fetch the One of Sinu. When I came I saw this priest of Aa kneeling by the bed. I ran to wake you.”

  A wavelike mutter of anger and astonishment rose and stilled. A lamp was brought. Its sickly light made masks of the priests’ faces as they gathered round the bed. Outside the circle the dead priest of Aa lay in a sprawl of black robes beneath the window as his Goddess sank out of the sky. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Suddenly Tron remembered a line of the little hymn that deals with the drugs used in surgery.

  The scent of honey, the stink of decay.

  “Revered Lords,” he said. “Perhaps the One of Sinu is not dead. I think the smell in the room is the juice of the root of leopard-flower. You drip it onto a cloth held by a man’s nose and it causes a deep sleep.”

  Somebody knelt by the bed.

  “He breathes,” he whispered. “Heavy and slow. What now, Tanta, my brother?”

  “Now,” barked the man who had first spoken, “we dress in our day-robes. We light torches. We march to these priests and demand by what right a servant of Aa is sent to drug our master? By what right is he prevented from playing his part in the rituals of the Red Spear Treaty? Where are they, boy? Where is the King?”

  “In a secret room above the Gate of Saba,” said Tron. “Revered Lord, if your master is forced to stand and walk, he will wake sooner.”

  “Good,” snapped Tanta, too angry to question how Tron should know this. “We will take him with us. And let those to whom the duty falls prepare the Horn of War.”

  XIII

  Huddled beside the Door of the Wise, Tron listened to the tramping rhythm of the Great Hymn of Sinu echoing across the starlit courtyard.

  Man-harvester,

  Sinu!

  Town-plougher,

  Sinu!

  You fill the canals

  With reeking blood

  To water fields

  From which will grow

  Fresh crops of Man

  For your blade to harvest,

  Sinu!

  An orange spark pricked the night where the first torch of the procession showed near the middle of the western halls. Governed by the staggering paces of the One of Sinu as he was dragged between two priests, it would take a long time to cross the Courtyard. Tron sucked at his lips, hesitating.

  He longed for the comfort and company of his own hawk, asleep in the King’s mews, like a priest in its cell. Always when he had carried it on his wrist it had seemed a living sign that what he did had the blessing of the Lord Gdu. But now events seemed suddenly to have rushed beyond anyone’s control, and there were no Gods here to guide them back into their proper channels. He did not feel that he could achieve anything, but was ashamed to stay there, crouching by the door, doing nothing. This shame forced him across the threshold and sent him groping up the stairs. At least he could check whether the way to the secret room was clear on this side.

  Aa had set now, and the Room of Days and Years was a cavern of dark, given shape only by the starlit rectangles of the windows. Tron felt for the rack of rods and, guided by the rail along its lower edge, stole down the room. It seemed endless, but just as he reached the last window he heard the slide and thud of a bolt being drawn. Tron crouched. The dimmest of lights showed as the door into the Keeper’s cell opened. A man strode through, as calmly as if he had been walking about in broad daylight, and crossed to the other wall of the room. Tron saw his outline against a small window that opened onto the Courtyard, and realized that he had come to see who was singing a Great Hymn in the silent hours that belong to Aa. An indecipherable voice came through the open door.

  Tron’s whole impulse now was to reach the King, and the King had said he would go to the priest’s council room. Almost without a thought Tron slipped through the door and crouched in the corner of the Keeper’s cell. The inner door was slightly ajar, and Onu Ovalaku’s voice was clear now, talking in his own purring, guttural language, some appeal, passionate and frustrated.

  “Perhaps the Lord General can interpret for us,” said the calm voice of the One of O.

  “Not in so many words,” snapped the General’s voice. “This much I know. Falathi has been attacked and almost overwhelmed by a horde of savages called Mohirrim. They ride horses, fight with war dogs, paint themselves blue and take their women everywhere they go, almost into the very battles they fight. They are like locusts, eating a country bare and then moving on. They live by war. The Princes of Falathi sent us Ambassadors to invoke the Red Spear Treaty, of whom only Onu Ovalaku came alive across the Peaks of Alaan. My Lords, I tell you this in some impatience, because it is no concern of yours. It is a matter for the King, who has an Obligation to Falathi under the Red Spear Treaty. You have kept us here since before O’s going, and …”

  “My Lord General,” said the One of O coldly now, “we are not concerned with these so-called Obligations. Our task is to see that everything is done in the Kingdom in accordance with the will of the Gods, and that can only be known through the hymns. I have never heard any hymn mentioning this Red Spear Treaty.”

  “Of course you haven’t,” snapped the General. “There’s only …”

  But at that moment the Keeper of the Rods came striding into his cell from the Room of Days and Years. He slid the bolt shut, and went on through the inner door, still leaving it slightly ajar. The argument seemed to stop at his entrance, but Tron realized from the General’s words that the King had not yet come there. There was no point in staying huddled in this trap, then. He tiptoed to the outer door, eased the bolt open, and slid out.

  The procession of the Order of Sinu was a caterpillar of men crawling with extraordinary slowness across the paving, their scarlet robes catching the torchlight and looking from a distance as though the great gawky beast were gashed with wounds. The beast’s head staggered and weaved where the One of Sinu, with his arms around the necks of two of his priests, took a half-step, fell asleep where he stood, was dragged out of the pit of dreams and took another half-step. His head lolled, a dribble of saliva glistened down his chin, and his eyelids sucked slowly open to show the sightless eyes before drifting shut once more. Tron flitted into the gap behind him where his deputy, Tanta, walked and led the baying hymn.

  Over your helmet,

  Sinu!

  Poised the scorpion’s tail,

  Sinu!

  “Ho, little God,

  I have come to suck

  The sap of the world.

  Your sword shall not stop me.

  Out of my path,

  Sinu!”

  Priests learn how to listen to a whisper while they themselves are singing at full voice. Tanta nodded when he heard what Tron had seen and done. He was a stocky, taut man to whom anger came easily. He took two more slow paces, stopped singing, and said, “Go back, boy. Keep that door open if you can. Three of us will bring my master to these priests. The rest will finish our hymn at the Gate of Saba.”

  Tron slid away. Since he knew his path now, the pools of total dark seemed easier to pass. No one challenged him in the Room of Days and Years, and the door into the Keeper’s cell was still unbarred. The clear voice of the On
e of O was speaking from the council room beyond.

  “… for those who claim without authority from any hymn to interpret the will of the Gods.”

  The General’s answer came like the snarl of a trapped animal, so weary and desperate that it is prepared to slash out at anything.

  “The Red Spear Treaty is an Obligation, I tell you! It has nothing to do with your Gods!”

  The priests allowed the silence to last for several breaths. There was a shudder of triumph in the voice of the One of O when he replied.

  “There, my brothers, we have it at last, though it is as we suspected from the first, when the Gods rejected the stranger’s offering. My lord General is claiming freedom to act without the blessing of the Gods.”

  This time the silence seemed endless. The Great Hymn of Sinu came less faintly now as the procession moved into the Inner Courtyard below the Gate of Saba. Tron crept to the stone door and peered through the slit, but all he could see by the steady, yellow-greenish glow of the oil lamp the priests had lit was the white fold of one edge of the robe of the Keeper of the Rods and a stretch of carved wall at the back of the room. He wondered what would happen now. The hymns were full of tales of men who had acted without the blessing of the Gods, and the hideous penalties they had paid.

  “I didn’t mean …” the General suddenly blurted, then fell silent. It was too late. Whatever he had meant, it was clear what he had said.

  Suddenly Onu Ovalaku’s voice burst out into the one sentence he was sure of.

  “By ancient treaty and by der Red Spear I call der King to aid us.”

  Tron heard a click and a stir of movement as the Keeper took a pace forward and out of Tron’s sight-line. A carved slab of the rear wall vanished, becoming a slot of dark, out of which stepped the King, with the Eye of Gdu gleaming on his forehead. The General gave a yap of surprise, but the priests seemed not even to murmur.

  “By ancient treaty and by the Red Spear I will come to your aid,” said the King slowly. He added a stumbling sentence in the language of Falathi, to which Onu Ovalaku replied, then he too moved out of Tron’s sight-line. From the darkness of the Room of Days and Years Tron heard a faint shuffling sound.

  “Where is the Red Spear, my lord General?” said the King’s voice.

  “Majesty, they burned it,” the General burst out.

  “The Gods rejected the stranger’s sacrifice,” said the One of O. “He is accursed, and accursed too are all who have helped him. The General has just said with his own lips …”

  “I heard what he said,” snapped the King. “He said that the Red Spear Treaty had nothing to do with your Gods. And he was right. It is a treaty under the shield of the Lord Sinu. It is a matter for the One of Sinu. Why is he not here? Where is he?”

  In the silence Tron heard again the noise of the blind old man being dragged forward through the Room of Days and Years. Now he could see an orange crack down the outer door of the cell, where torchlight struck. He felt the urgency of keeping up the momentum of the King’s attack, of not giving the priests time to consult or to argue. Quickly he crossed the cell, opened the outer door, recrossed the room, and threw his weight against the slab of stone. It gave more easily than he was prepared for, so that he almost fell sprawling as he stumbled through. For an instant the whole room stared at him, and then their eyes switched away beyond.

  They looked from light through darkness and into light where, under one flaring torch, four red-robed men came slowly down the Room of Days and Years. The priests supporting the One of Sinu tried to hurry his pace, so that his bald yellow head flopped heavily from side to side as he came. His mouth opened and shut ceaselessly like the beak of a sick hawk. His eyes blinked stickily, and when the weary lids were raised the film of gray across the eyeballs reflected lamplight and torchlight, so that they gleamed like a jackal’s in the dark. The lion-headed staff of his office had been lashed to his left hand and its end scraped uselessly along the floor. While the others in the room stared, Tron slipped unnoticed to the King’s side.

  “He’s been drugged,” he whispered. “Leopard-flower. They sent a priest of Aa, but we caught him. He hadn’t finished. He killed himself. I don’t know how long the drug will last.”

  The King nodded, frowning. The priests’ faces showed no sign of surprise or doubt. There were only four of them in the room—the Ones of O and Aa, the Mouth of Silence, and the Keeper of the Rods. They waited in calm patience until the shuffling procession reached the lamplight, and then the One of O stepped blandly forward.

  “Welcome, my brother,” he said to the blind, stupefied old man. “The Gods have brought you in a good hour, as we have need of your knowledge. Send your helpers away. This room is for the Major Priests alone.”

  The blue lips of the One of Sinu continued their meaningless gaping. Tanta stepped forward.

  “My lords,” he said harshly. “The Order of Sinu comes to demand by what right …”

  “We do not hear you,” said the One of O coldly. “Only Major Priests have a voice in this room.”

  “… by what right,” shouted Tanta, heedless, “you had my master drugged so that the King should not hear the hymn of the Red Spear Treaty?”

  “Now it’s out!” said the King eagerly. “How does the hymn go, Revered Lord?”

  “Let them send from the south

  From beyond …”

  Tanta stopped short, staring at the One of Aa, who with three dancelike strides had moved to face him. As the swirl of black robes settled, the pearl-pale hands floated upward.

  “Shall my master curse you with his lips, then?” whispered the Mouth of Silence.

  Chill seemed to seep out of the stonework, up from the earth, down from the dark of Aa, filling the lamplit room. Tanta hesitated, licked his lips, and took a pace backward. Slowly, with the wavering movement of dead things sinking through water, the hands of the One of Aa sank back to his sides.

  “Now,” said the One of O, “you will settle your master in that chair and leave.”

  “One moment,” said the King, moving forward. “Or will you curse a King rather than let him speak to a Major Priest? I fear that kind woman, but I am not afraid of you, Revered Lords.”

  They all waited until he was standing face to face with the blind priest.

  “Sinu,” he said gently. “The Red Spear Treaty. Let them send from the south.”

  The old man’s filmed eyes blinked slowly, and his mouth stopped its yawning for a moment and shut tight.

  “My brother of Sinu knows of no such hymn,” said the One of O. “Therefore this Red Spear Treaty is nothing more than a stratagem to allow the King to raise his levies against the will of the Gods. It is as we thought from the first, my brothers.”

  Tron stared at the old man, hopeless and despairing. Only the Lord Gdu could break the chain of the drug and free the imprisoned will, and He was far away. Shadowy in his mind Tron formed a picture of the Blue Hawk, his contact with the God, as he had first seen it, drowsy like the One of Sinu, sick and bedraggled. The picture became firmer, became like a living bird in the dark room.

  “Let them send from the south, Sinu,” said the King. “Let them send from the south.”

  The One of Sinu swayed and tried to draw his arms free from his supporters. His head jerked erect, lolled, and straightened again. The spittle down his chin became a steady stream. His lips began to move. The words were slurred into a dull mumble, only just interpretable.

  “Let them send from the south,

  From beyond the peaks,

  A rider with a spear

  Strung like a bow—

  One string for each people

  Bound at the tip

  With flamingo feathers,

  Tan’s holy bird.

  Then, then must the Horn

  Of War be sounded.

  The breath of Sinu

  Must fill the Kingdom

  That the King may call

  His levies to muster

  And ride to
war

  Through the Pass of Gebindrath.”

  As he ended, one bony old hand rose and feebly tried to wipe the saliva from his chin.

  “How deep the hymns root,” said the Mouth of Silence in an awed matter.

  “So, Revered Lords!” cried the King. “There is no Red Spear Treaty? There is no hymn? And you have taken it on yourselves to reject and burn the symbol of friendship between two nations!”

  The One of O said nothing, but glanced at the Keeper of the Rods, who nodded calmly, just as though he had been giving the signal for the start of a new phase of a ritual in the House of O and Aa.

  “Let us all sit down,” he said. “The lesser priests of Sinu may wait in my room beyond. The boy too.”

  His glance at Tron caught, held, and became a thoughtful gaze. Then he nodded again. His face showed no sign of surprise, only a look of satisfaction, as though a rod lost from his rack had been found and settled into place again.

  “No,” he said. “The boy must return to the Halls of Gdu. By O and Aa I hereby vow that he will not be harmed.”

  “The boy you are talking about went on a journey to that kind woman,” said the King. “How can this be the same boy? He stays with me.”

  “Perhaps he is still on his journey,” said the Mouth of Silence in a trancelike voice. Tron shivered. He knew by now how often the Gods put truth into the mouths of the priests, even when they themselves might think they were lying. Instinctively he moved to behind the King’s shoulder, as if into the sphere of his protection, but standing a little sideways so that he could watch the door through which the King had entered. What mustering of silent priests, each gripping a leaf-shaped sacrificial knife, was waiting in that dark cranny, ready to burst into the lamplit room? Tron wasn’t afraid of them now, only wary. As far as the human actors went he was beginning to feel a sort of exhilaration in the King’s success, a sense of being part of a controlled onrush. A sudden thud in the room made him start, but it was only the One of Sinu collapsing forward across the table. The old man sprawled now with his yellow skull stark on the black wood, mouth half open, lids closed over the sightless eyes. Tron stared at him without pity or horror, but with a sort of awe at the way the Gods contrived to squeeze Their purposes through such a narrow and fragile channel.