Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Mercedes Lackey

  It was the one thing she could do for all those potential victims that no one else could.

  With hands clasped before her and her jaw set stubbornly, she stared at the flame on the altar. Lay-people often made promises to God in the mistaken supposition that one could bargain with Him. She knew better; God did not make bargains. He seldom moved to act directly in the world, for He had given His creations free will, and to act directly would take those glorious or inglorious choices from them.

  But she did ask for one, small thing. Let the killing end, she begged. And if there is a cost to ending it, let me be the one to pay it. As I am the servant of the Sacrificed God, let me be permitted to offer myself as a lesser sacrifice. Let no more innocents die; let the deaths end, if need be, with mine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Perhaps others might have stayed discouraged by the failure to either stop the murder or capture the murderer's accomplice, but Visyr was now more determined than ever to help. Bad enough to have one poor creature slaughtered right under his beak, but to have two? It was not fair! Whoever was doing this was not only a murderer, but a cheat who hid himself and did his evil work only through others! Other cultures had a right to their ways, and theories of honor were different place to place, but this was patently, universally not acceptable.

  He spent a restless night, not tossing and turning as a human would, but staring into the darkness, reviewing his memories, trying to think of any other information to be gleaned from his brief encounter with the knife-thief.

  But he couldn't think of anything. Or to be more accurate, he could think of one thing, but it made him very uneasy and was discouraging, not encouraging.

  If he had gotten a good look at the dagger-thief, the man in turn also got just as good a look at him. There was only one Haspur in Kingsford, and the fellow was probably quite aware of how much Visyr could see in a limited amount of time. Or, in other words, he had to know that Visyr could identify him in a moment, now.

  He has surely discovered that our vision is hundreds of times better than a human's. And he must have deduced how accurate my memory is. After all, how else could I be making these maps for the Duke? Even if he didn't know it already, that fact is easy to find out. It was possible that Visyr was in danger himself now, and it wasn't going to be all that difficult to find him. As T'fyrr's experience showed, a Haspur made a good target, especially aloft. He would be safe enough in the Duke's palace, but nowhere else.

  This is not a good thing. Not at all a good thing. The only way to make myself less of a target—besides being totally absent—is to somehow foster the idea that my interference has only been a matter of accident, not intent. Would Ardis and Tal Rufen agree to that, I wonder?

  Well, why shouldn't they? They had nothing to lose by it. The murderer might become more cautious if he thought that Visyr was spying from above, watching for him; they needed him to become careless, not more wary than he already was. They needed him to start taking risks, not go into hiding. Perhaps I ought to even stop flying altogether for a while. If the killer assumed that Visyr was only acting as any right-minded bystander would have, he should take only minor precautions. Perhaps he would simply make certain that he was not acting in the same area where Visyr was aloft.

  Wouldn't he? Visyr wasn't entirely certain how a mad human would think, and the fellow must be mad to be doing this. Was it possible that a mad human would react to this situation by attempting to lure Visyr into an ambush so as to be rid of him?

  But if he made himself less of a target, he not only would not be doing his job for the Duke, he'd be avoiding his responsibilities to the Justiciar.

  He ground his beak; this was a most uncomfortable position to be in! Not only that, but it was one that went right against his nature. He could stick to safe and expensive areas of Kingsford and just go on with his mapping until the murderer was caught, but that wouldn't help find the killer, and although he had been reluctant at first to involve himself, now that he was in, he didn't want to give up.

  It feels too much like failure, that's what it is. It feels as if I, personally, have failed. And I hate giving up!

  Besides, I'm not sure they can continue without me. Maybe that's false pride, but the only breakthrough they've had was because I was able to see the murder in progress and act on it. I have been involved in this mystery in a key way twice now, so obviously the Destiny Winds wish to push me in this direction. Defying those Winds can kill, or worse, leave me with the knowledge of my failure. Flying with those Winds could raise me up, and save the lives of innocents. Or kill me just as surely, but at least it would be in doing something right!

  He wrestled with his conscience and his concerns for half the night, or so it seemed. On the one hand, he wasn't a warrior; he never had been, and all of his reactions and attempts at combat thus far had been purely instinctual. Instinct wasn't a good quality to keep counting on in this case. On the other, how could he abandon these people?

  He finally decided that the responsibility was great enough that the risk to his hide was worth it.

  Well, it seems to me that the place for me to start is in looking for that black bird. It was at the first murder, and it was at the second. I don't know what it is, but it has to be involved somehow. The few people he'd spoken to about it, including Tal, had been mystified by his description, and absolutely adamant in their assertion that there was no such bird native to these parts. If it wasn't native, then what was it doing here? Its presence at one murder might have been coincidence, but not at two. And it had behaved in a way that made him certain that it did not want to be seen.

  He felt himself relaxing enough to sleep once he'd made that decision, satisfied that he was going to take the right course. It would be easier to track another winged creature without exposing himself; after all, it couldn't fly as well as he, and he knew from his own experience how difficult it was for something his size to hide. And in the meantime, he had the probable advantage of much superior eyesight; he could fly at a considerable height and see it, where it likely wouldn't be able to see him. Even if it could, it was difficult to judge distance in the sky; it might assume he was a smaller bird, rather than a large one farther away.

  He wondered what on earth this bird could possibly be. Maybe it was some sort of messenger to the accomplice; maybe it was the "eyes" that the mage used to view the scene. Whatever it was, it would probably lead him to the accomplice, if not to the mage himself.

  The next morning, as soon as he was "publicly" awake, a message came for him from the High Bishop. It had evidently arrived in the middle of the night; in an uncanny reflection of his own thoughts, Ardis asked most urgently if he had seen a large black bird lurking about the two murder sites. And before he could form a reply, right after the arrival of the message came the High Bishop herself.

  She didn't even return his greeting as she followed her escorting page into Visyr's rooms. "The bird—" she said, with intense urgency, looking as if she would have liked to seize his arm and hold him while she spoke to him, even though her hands stayed tensely clenched at her sides. "Tal said you saw a strange black bird at the first murder—did you see it yesterday as well? Was it big? Human sized? And incredibly ugly, with ragged feathers and a thin, slender beak?"

  His eyes widened with startlement and he stared at her with his beak gaping open. "It did! It was!" he exclaimed. "How did you know? Did you see it? Did you know I was going to look for it today? How did you know what it looks like? I haven't described it that closely to anyone!"

  "I know what it looks like because it isn't just a bird," she replied grimly. He waved her to a seat, and she took it, sitting down abruptly and gripping the arm of the chair as a substitute for whatever else it was she wanted to catch hold of. "It's a man—or it was. If the bird you saw and the one I'm thinking of are the same creature, it was a human—and a mage—and a Priest, before it ever was a bird."

  Quickly she outlined what seemed to Visyr to be a most incredible sto
ry. If it hadn't been Ardis who'd been telling it to him, he would never have believed it, not under any circumstances. Oh, he'd heard of all the things that magic was supposed to be able to do, but it all seemed rather exaggerated to him. The only "magic" he had any personal experience of was not the sort of thing that could turn a human being into a bird! The kinds of magic he was used to could influence people and events, sometimes predict the future or read the past, or create impressive illusions. He'd heard of things that the Elves could do, of course, but he'd never seen anything of the sort—perhaps he had been among the Deliambrens too long, but he had a difficult time believing in things he'd never seen for himself, or seen sufficient proof of.

  Still, it was Ardis who was telling him this, and she said that she'd been the one who'd done it, turned the man into the bird. What was more, she'd done it more than once, so it wasn't a fluke.

  His beak gaped in surprise, and he had to snap it shut before he looked like a stupid nestling.

  "I transformed another couple of excommunicates into donkeys," she continued. "Ones who were indirectly responsible for the Great Fire and were directly responsible for keeping those of us who could have quelled it from doing so. As such, as my fellow Justiciars and I saw it, they were accessories to hundreds of murders. It seemed to us that turning them into beasts of burden was actually a very light punishment—and it gave them the opportunity for repentance."

  Visyr shook his head, unable to understand why she should have been concerned that these people repent. Like most Haspurs, he was somewhat incredulous at the concept of omniscience and deities at all, but allowed as how they might be possible, and it was certainly impolite to say nay around anyone who believed in them. Believing that human criminals turned into donkeys would want to repent to an omniscient deity went far past the high clouds of logic, to him, and into very thin air. Well, that doesn't matter, he thought. She's a human; who can understand a human completely? Not even other humans can, and Ardis is a Church power atop that. "But you can't turn them back into humans?" he asked.

  "With time—I might be able to," she said, cautiously. "It would be a bit more difficult than the first transformation, because it would be layering one spell on top of another, but I think I could. The spell as I learned it was never intended to be reversed, even by the death of the mage who cast it, but I think I could work a reversal out. But Revaner—no. No, I couldn't. The circumstances that created him were so complicated and so unpredictable that I doubt I could reverse them. It wasn't just our magic that was involved, it was the snapping of the spell that he had cast, and the involvement of Bardic magic from two Bards who were acting on sheer instinct, and Gypsy magic from Revaner's victim. The chances of deducing just what happened are fairly low."

  "And you still aren't certain that the bird I've seen and this Revaner fellow are the same." He ground his beak a little. "Still—whatever this creature is, I can't see how it could fail to have something to do with the killings. You don't suppose that someone else entirely found out how to change himself into a bird, do you?"

  Ardis looked as if she would have ground her beak, if she'd had one. "I can't give you any reason why it shouldn't be the case," she admitted. "My main reason for thinking that it's Revaner is that the pattern of the murder-victims matches the kind of women that Revaner would be most likely to want to kill. On the other hand—"

  "On the other hand, when you changed him into a bird, he wasn't a murderer." Visyr couldn't help pointing that out.

  "No, he wasn't. He was unscrupulous, immoral, utterly self-centered, egotistical, a liar, a thief, and ruthless, but he wasn't a murderer." She wrinkled her brow as if her head pained her. "On the other hand, there is one way to overcome just about any magic, and that is to overpower it. And one sure way to obtain a great deal of power is to kill someone. Now, when you combine that fact with the motive of revenge—" She tilted her head in his direction, and he nodded.

  "I can see that. Well, I was already going to make a point of looking for that bird, and now you have given me more reasons to do so," he told her. "And you have also given me plenty of reasons to make certain that it doesn't see me!"

  Now Ardis rose, full of dignity. "I will not ask you to place yourself in further jeopardy, Visyr," she said solemnly. "If this is Revaner, he is very dangerous. If it is not—well, he may be even more dangerous. Please be careful."

  In answer, Visyr flexed his talons, a little surprised at how angry and aggressive he felt. "I am more than a little dangerous myself," he said to her. "And I am also forewarned."

  She looked him directly in the eyes for a long moment, then nodded. "Good," was all she said, but it made him feel better than he had since he lost the dagger-thief.

  She left him then, and he took his mapping implements and went out to resume his dual duties.

  Only to discover that now he couldn't find the damned bird!

  He spent several days criss-crossing the city on every possible excuse. He thought perhaps that the Black Bird might have decided to lurk in places he had already mapped in order to avoid him—then he thought it might be in places he hadn't mapped yet. But no matter where he looked for it, there was not so much as an oversized black feather. It was as if the creature knew he was trying to find it and had gone into hiding. On the other hand, if all of their suppositions were true, and it was in league with the knife-thief, perhaps it had the suspicion that he was hunting it. At the very least, it now knew that there was danger in being spotted from above, and might be taking steps to avoid that eventuality.

  Frustrated, he spent all of one evening trying to reason the way he thought a crazed human in bird form might.

  It made him a little less queasy to think of it as a hunter as he tried to ignore the type of quarry it was taking; he came from a race of hunters himself, and it wasn't all that difficult to put himself in that mindset.

  When one hunts a prey that is clever, particularly if one is hunting a specific individual, one studies that individual, of course. He'd done that himself, actually; the trophy-ringhorn that he'd wanted to take to Syri as a courting-gift had been a very canny creature, wily and practiced in avoiding Haspur hunters. It knew all of the usual tricks of an airborne hunter, and it would race into cover at the hint of a shadow on the ground. He'd had to spend time each day for months tracking it down, in learning all of its usual haunts and patterns, and in finding the times and places where it was most vulnerable.

  Now, the Black Bird was probably not that clever a hunter itself. This creature was hunting prey that was not aware it was being hunted, nor were humans as versed as that ringhorn in avoiding a hunter, but the Black Bird still needed to find the moment that its prey was most vulnerable. It couldn't hunt inside buildings, and if it was going to hunt again but didn't want to be seen, it had to come out on the rooftops eventually. There was no other possible hunting ground for it.

  That was how a Haspur would hunt in the same situation. But unlike a Haspur, the Black Bird might well have decided that there was another hunter that might be stalking it. So it was torn between two courses of action: don't hunt at all, or find another way to hunt.

  It still has to find prey. It still has to find the prey's most vulnerable moments. But somehow it is managing to do so when I won't see it.

  That would be very difficult to do, unless—

  Unless it is hunting at night.

  It was black, and perfectly well camouflaged by darkness. And if the records were to be trusted, there had been plenty of killings at night, including at least one possible killing here in Kingsford, between the first one he'd witnessed and the second. That meant it had hunted by night before, which meant it could probably see just fine at night.

  Which, unfortunately, I cannot. But I am not limited to my own unaided eyes, which is something that I doubt it has thought of.

  He could fly at night, he just didn't like doing so, because unlike T'fyrr, his own night-vision was rather inferior by Haspur standards. Once night fell, all o
f his advantage of superior vision vanished; he couldn't even see as well as some humans he knew. That was why he always got back to the palace before dusk, and never went out at night if he could help it. It was a weakness he had never liked about himself, so when the opportunity had arisen for him to compensate for it, he had. He had something in his possession that he hadn't had occasion to use yet, something that would render the best of camouflage irrelevant at night.

  He chuckled to himself as he thought of it. There hadn't been any need to use it in Duke Arden's service, because it wasn't at all suited for his mapping duties. No one here knew he had it. And he rather doubted that anyone in all of this Kingdom had ever even seen this particular device.

  He reached immediately for a bell-pull and summoned one of his little attendant pages. Talons were not particularly well suited to unpacking, but clever little human hands were.

  At his direction, the boy who answered his summons dug into the stack of packing-boxes put away in a storage closet attached to his suite. The boxes were neither large nor heavy; the few that were beyond the boy's strength, Visyr was able to help with. In less than an hour, the page emerged from the back of the closet with an oddly-shaped, hard, shiny black carrying-case.

  The page looked at it quizzically as he turned it in his hands. "What is this?" he asked, looking up into Visyr's face. "What is it made of? It's not leather, it's not pottery, it's not stone or fabric—what is it?"

  Visyr didn't blame the boy for being puzzled; the material of the case resembled nothing so much as the shiny carapace of a beetle, and the case itself was not shaped like anything the boy would ever have seen in his life. "I'll show you what it is," he said to the youngster, taking the case from him and inserting a talon-tip into the lock-release. "Or rather, I'll show you what's inside it. The outside is a Deliambren carry-case for delicate equipment; what I wanted is inside. But you have to promise that you won't laugh at me when I put it on. It looks very silly."