by Sarah Ash
Rieuk took a mouthful of red wine. It was dry on his tongue, with a musky aftertaste. “I will do all I can, my lord.” He knew he would promise them anything to earn his Emissary.
Rieuk slowly followed Imri up an endlessly winding stair, taking care not to tread on Imri’s ceremonial robes. He had unfastened Imri’s hair and combed it until it hung, dully glistening, about his shoulders. He liked the silky feel of Imri’s hair beneath his fingers, and the repetitive act of passing the comb through the strands had made him forget the ordeal he was about to endure.
At the top of the tower they came out into the last blaze of the setting sun. A breeze had arisen. Rieuk had expected to see the other towers of the desolate, dry valley below and the distant gleam of snow on the peak of Mount Makhon. Instead, he heard the whisper of wind in tree branches.
“Imri, where are we? I don’t remember any trees…”
“I’ve brought you to the place where the smoke hawks gather at night. Where better to lure your Emissary to you?”
“I know nothing of hawks, or any kind of hunting birds.” Rieuk was baffled by this information. “How am I expected to lure one? Dangle a dead rabbit on a string? And then when it comes, what do I do? Grab hold? They can peck out a man’s eyes.”
Imri laughed. “I thought you had more imagination!”
Rieuk did not like to be laughed at, even by Imri. He moved away and leaned on the high parapet wall, gazing down at the wind-stirred branches of the forest below. “This is impossible. I don’t even know where to start.”
In truth, he was feeling increasingly jittery as the moment for the ceremony approached. He knew it was going to be painful and protracted. He knew that, once it started, there was no going back. Above all, he knew that there was no way he could emerge from it unchanged. Suppose he was not strong enough to bear the pain? Suppose he cried out like a scared child and begged them to stop? Or worse, suppose the pain was so great that he lost control of his bodily functions? He did not want to be humiliated in front of Imri and these austere and powerful magi.
“Remember. This is no ordinary hawk.” Imri came up behind him and wrapped his arms around him, as if understanding his unspoken fears. “This is a shadow hawk, a spirit bird that crosses the rift between worlds.”
But Rieuk was in no mood to be consoled. He pushed himself free from Imri’s embrace and backed away.
The last fiery traces of sunset were fading and darkness was covering the forest like a cloak of shadows.
“How, then, do I lure it to me?”
“With your blood. Just as Hervé de Maunoir bound the spirit to serve him, so you will draw one to you with a drop of your blood.”
“Is it so simple?”
“We are standing at a portal that opens both ways, Rieuk. That is why, if you watch the moon rising from this side of the tower, you will notice a difference…”
“Why did I never learn about the Emissaries till I met you?” Rieuk still could not rid himself of his innate skepticism. “There was not one single reference in any of the treatises in the library at Karantec.”
“The Emissaries are the most closely guarded secret of my order. Do you think I would have brought you here unless you had sworn your life to our cause? To tell anyone about this place means the most shameful of deaths: the stripping away of your Emissary.”
Stripping away. Those words provoked a shudder of disgust and fear. It would be painful enough to be bonded with a shadow hawk…but how much more painful to suffer it being plucked out of your living tissue!
“There’s no turning back now, is there?” he said. “You’re telling me that unless I go through with the ceremony, there’s no way you can let me walk away from here alive, knowing your secret.”
“Why would you want to walk away?” He never saw or heard Imri move but suddenly the magus was standing before him in the gloom. Imri’s hands touched his face, gently raising it toward his own. “Look into my eyes, Rieuk, and tell me the truth. Could you leave me now?”
A glimmer of light touched the tops of the trees. Rieuk gazed into Imri’s moonlit eyes and felt himself drowning in a confusion of love, desire, and terror. He was bound to Imri—though whether by sorcery, ambition, or sheer hunger for affection, he no longer knew.
“No,” he said helplessly.
Imri leaned forward and brushed Rieuk’s forehead with his lips.
“Look. The moon is rising,” he said softly. “When the emerald moon appears above the tower, then we know that the Rift is opening.”
A rift to where? All manner of unsettling questions crowded into Rieuk’s mind. Could he fall into this rift and find himself in another world? Or was it only possible for the eerie light of this other moon to shine through the Rift, bringing a flock of elusive shadow-winged hawks drifting on the lunar wind just long enough for him to try to summon the hawk who would be his Emissary?
Shadows soared across the pale disc of the emerald moon—winged creatures, graceful and swift as hawks. Faint, keening cries echoed high above the tower. Rieuk realized that he was seeing the light of a moon shining in from another world, as Imri had shown him in Karantec. That knowledge filled him with a sense of excitement so powerful that he felt as light-headed as if he had been drinking sparkling wine.
Imri gazed up into the sky, and his features were bathed in the eerie iridescence. “The hawks come to feed from the sap of the Haoma trees that grow beyond the Rift.”
Rieuk was so absorbed, he never saw Imri take out the knife until he caught the glint of a slender silver blade in the emerald moonlight and felt its razor-keen edge bite as Imri made a swift incision in his wrist.
Drops of warm red blood splashed onto the stones of the parapet; the sight of it made him feel faint. “What are you doing? Do you mean to let me bleed to death?”
Imri smiled at him and lifted the gash to his mouth, sealing the edges with the warmth of his lips.
Rieuk heard a skirling cry that shivered through his body with the same precision as the blade had sliced through his flesh. A shadow fell across them. Glancing up, he saw that the hawks were circling right overhead.
“They’ve come.” Imri’s hand rested on his shoulder, a firm, strong pressure, lending him a confidence he badly needed. The proud-eyed hawks came swooping down toward him out of the darkness. Rieuk clutched at the rim of the parapet to keep from falling. The wind from their wings brought a gust of air from another world; it wafted an elusive breath of alien scents and tastes into his gaping mouth.
“Stand your ground. The Emissary will seek you out. It will know you by the scent of your blood.”
Stand my ground? Easily said! Rieuk felt his hair blown hither and thither as the great hawks skimmed the top of his head, darting so close that he could hear the whispering beat of their wings.
Then he became aware that, in the swirling maelstrom of smoke-flecked feathers passing above him, one alone had fixed him with piercing topaz eyes. That topaz glare burned like a flare in the darkness. Serrated wing tips brushed his face, his eyelids. The hawk alighted on the parapet and dipped its silvered beak in his blood, all the time keeping its eyes fixed on his. Rieuk, fascinated, could not look away.
“It looks as though it has chosen you.” As Imri spoke, the hawk lifted its crimson-stained beak and let out a shivering cry. “Offer your arm, the elbow crooked, so—”
The hawk lifted into the air and, claws extended, settled on Rieuk’s forearm. He had braced himself to take the bird’s weight but to his surprise it landed gently.
This is what I was born for. Rieuk, enchanted and amazed, could still not quite believe what was happening to him. And yet it felt so right. This was the exhilaration he had been longing for all his life, a heady taste of the real magic that Gonery and Linnaius had kept from him. He looked at Imri, his eyes filling with tears of gratitude. If you had not come to find me, I would never have had the chance to experience this wonder.
The other hawks began to keen as they fluttered overhead, as th
ough aware that they were losing one of their number.
“The Rift is closing,” Imri said, gazing up at them. “Let’s go down before your Emissary changes its mind and tries to follow its kin.” As he held the door open for Rieuk, the gleam of the emerald moon began to fade and the cries of the hawks grew fainter.
As Rieuk followed Imri slowly down the narrow spiral stair, the weight of the hawk grew greater, until his arm ached with the strain.
“It’s so heavy,” he gasped, leaning against the dusty stones to support himself.
“In the Rift between worlds he weighed less than a shadow. But now in our world, he has taken on physical substance. Once he has become a part of you…” It seemed to Rieuk that Imri was going farther away from him and he was left behind in darkness, unable to see his way. He stumbled, almost losing his footing. The hawk turned its stern gaze on him and spread its dusky wings as if to fly away. Rieuk reeled backward, hitting the curved wall of the tower.
Rising out of the darkness was a smoke-winged figure, as tall as he was, gazing at him through wild eyes of topaz and jet.
Rieuk drew in a gasping breath.
“Who—who are you?”
“I am your Emissary.” Although the creature had not spoken aloud, he heard the voice within his head, each word as precise and clear as a plucked string. “My name is Ormas.”
“Ormas?” repeated Rieuk dazedly.
“Your blood called to mine. Now my blood will be yours. My eyes will be your eyes.”
The smoky air swirled and once again Rieuk felt the weight of the hawk on his forearm.
“Ormas,” he said again. “My Emissary.” He lifted his hand and dared to stroke the soft, speckled feathers on the hawk’s breast.
Torchlight flared in the dark stairwell below. When Rieuk reached the foot of the tower stair, he found Imri waiting for him, his eyes shadowed, unreadable.
“I—I know its name,” Rieuk stammered. Imri nodded. There was something in his manner that was so remote, so inaccessible, that it made Rieuk ask, “What’s wrong, Imri?” And then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the torchlight, he saw the others waiting for him. Their faces masked, they moved silently, purposefully toward him.
“Imri!” cried Rieuk, instinctively taking a step back toward his master. “Has this all been a trap? Have you just been using me to get what you wanted?”
“I’m sorry, Rieuk,” said Imri, his voice expressionless.
Hands clamped on Rieuk’s shoulders, steering him away from Imri. Were they going to dispose of him? And what would they do with Ormas?
Maistre Gonery’s warnings ran through his panicking brain as they dragged him into a nearby chamber.
“They will promise you the things you most desire. And then, before you know what you have done, you will find yourself in thrall. Sealed into a contract that binds you until death—and beyond.”
A narrow table stood in the center of the chamber. Beneath it Rieuk could see that thin channels had been cut into the stone floor, leading to a drain in the far corner. It reminded him suddenly and horribly of the dissection room in the college. Those channels were to sluice away blood and other leaking fluids. Two smaller tables had been placed on either side of the bed; on each stood small bottles of dark inks. Alongside lay metal bowls and a glittering array of needles, sharp-nibbed pens, and slender scalpels. When Rieuk saw these, he began to back away but the restraining hands gripped him more tightly. There was no possibility of escape.
One of the masked men approached, and held a cup of beaten metal to Rieuk’s lips. “Drink.”
“What is it?” said Rieuk, catching a hint of bitterness beneath the strong, honeyed smell rising from the liquid. Poison.
“An opiate. To help you bear the pain. Drink.”
The pain. Where was Imri? Rieuk turned his head from side to side, seeking in vain. Imri had not once left his side since the day they met in Karantec. He felt suddenly abandoned and utterly alone.
“You must remain conscious throughout the ceremony. If you faint, it will fail. So—drink.”
Rieuk reluctantly opened his lips and the bitter liquid slid down his throat, making him cough convulsively. When the wheezing and coughing stopped, he saw that Ormas had lifted from his arm and was now perched on the table, regarding him curiously, its head to one side.
Was the opiate working so soon? Rieuk felt a strange sense of detachment as the hawk-masked magi began to strip off his clothes. Next they rubbed his body with a clear, sharp-smelling liquid that made his skin tingle. When they strapped him, face upward, to the table, he was aware of the hard grain of the wood pressing into his spine, the tight restraints of leather and metal holding his arms and legs secure. And most of all, he was aware of Ormas’s bright eye burning like an unwavering candleflame.
He was unprepared for the efficient brutality of what followed. As he lay helpless, one of the hawk-masked magi seized Ormas and, with one swift slash of a knife, cut the hawk’s throat.
“No!” Rieuk heard a scream of fury tear from his own throat. Black blood spurted out, spattering him and the officiating magi, who held bowls out to catch it. But Rieuk could only watch as Ormas’s body went limp in the bloodstained hands of the magus and the bright gaze dimmed.
Then they pried open the drooping wings, until they could pin them to a board, outspread, as if the hawk were caught soaring upward in flight. Too late, he felt tears leaking from his eyes, that his overweening ambition and desire for power had brought about the bloody destruction of such a beautiful and noble creature.
“Master. I am still here.” Rieuk heard Ormas’s voice and thought he glimpsed the hawk’s shadow hovering high above him. Before his drugged brain had time to acknowledge Ormas’s presence, the magi were bending over him. He caught the glint of steel—and then the torment began.
At first the opiate dulled the sensation as the tattooing needles pierced his skin and the magi set about their intricate work. But then as his own blood slowly trickled out, he began to feel each sharp cut as the blade went in, followed by the aching sting of Ormas’s black blood as it seeped into his flesh. Each needle-prick burned like fire. He gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out, knowing it was more than he could do to bite back his agony. If they had wanted to extract the most intimate secrets about Kaspar Linnaius and the college, now would have been the ideal time.
How long is this going to last? How long will it take to imprint each one of Ormas’s mottled feathers into my body? How much longer can I endure it?
As each feather was painstakingly copied, the distinctive markings faded on Ormas’s limp body until nothing was left but a pale shadow. Ormas’s physical body was slowly fading, and as Ormas faded, so Rieuk felt himself slowly sliding down into a dark place of slow-searing agony. Memories that were not his own etched themselves into his mind as the magi imprinted the hawk into his lacerated flesh. He felt as if he were lifting out of himself to stare down at a young man’s bleeding body, twisting and arching as if desperate to burst the bonds that bound him. And then he crashed back down again into the reality of that tortured body. Whose eyes had he been looking through?
He felt the sudden, feverish beat of shadowy wings and saw many Emissaries hovering above him, their wild eyes burning like golden stars…
Rieuk felt gentle hands lifting his head. Someone held a glass to his lips.
“Drink,” said a voice. Cool water flowed into his mouth and he swallowed obediently. There seemed to be a medicinal tang to the liquid, for it left a faintly astringent aftertaste at the back of his throat. Someone gently wiped his face with a warm, damp cloth.
“The opiate is wearing off. How do you feel?”
“Imri?” Rieuk slowly forced his heavy lids open and saw Imri gazing down at him. He tried to sit up but felt Imri’s restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t try to move. Not yet.”
Rieuk gazed down at his body and saw that his chest and neck were swathed in bandages, concealing the marks where the
y had scored the Emissary into his flesh. “D—did it work?”
“Is your Emissary awake?”
Rieuk’s hand moved automatically to rest on the place above his heart where the hawk had been engraved. “Ormas?” he said tentatively.
“What is your will, master?” He recognized the shadow hawk’s keen voice as it vibrated through his mind.
“Imri, he’s there! I can hear him speaking to me!” In his excitement, Rieuk forgot Imri’s warning and tried to shift his position. The slight movement set off a jarring throb of pain.
“Yes, it will hurt like hell at first,” Imri said, smiling. “But the pain will pass. And then you’ll be ready to start training for your first mission.”
“My first mission? Already?” When even the slightest movement caused him pain, it seemed far too soon to be talking of training.
“You made a vow, remember? In exchange for Ormas, you promised to serve the order. We’ve received a summons to attend on our most illustrious patron. He’s most interested in meeting you.”
The vast pillared hall of the Arkhan’s palace was filled with tiered lamps burning sweet-scented oils whose cloudy vapors swirled, trailing a faint haze of bronze smoke in the warm evening air. The scents they gave off were subtle, tinged with hints of damask rose and cinnamon.
Rieuk rubbed his eyes. Was this some drug-induced dream? As he followed Imri across the marble floor of the great hall, their footfall echoing into the distant recesses, he noticed white-robed guards standing between the pillars, each one holding an unsheathed scimitar across his breast, each one watching them as they passed.
At the end of the hall were two massive doors inlaid with beaten metals that gleamed dully in the lamplight. Guards barred their way, crossing spears across the doors. Imri spoke quietly with them in a tongue Rieuk had never heard before. They nodded and, lowering their spears, opened one of the heavy doors so that the two magi could enter.
The room beyond was smaller, more intimate in scale; Rieuk noticed a desk covered in stellar charts. Candleflames bloomed in exquisitely carved lotus flowers of crystal on the desk and in alcoves in the wall.