The Last Hawk

by Catherine Asaro

  She regarded the doctor. "Why does he have that limp?"

  "One leg healed with a slight twist," Rohka said. "His bones had so many breaks, it's a miracle they set properly at all."

  A buzz came from the desk's audiocom. Deha switched it on "Manager Dahl."

  Chankah's voice floated into the air. "Can you come up here?"

  "Is there a problem?"

  "He woke up," Chankah said.

  Deha glanced at Rohka. "I thought you gave him a sedative."

  "I did. He should have been out until tonight."

  They found Chankah outside the one-way glass in the tower. Inside the AmberRoom, Kelric was sitting up in bed rubbing his eyes.

  Deha activated the audiocom by the window. "Kelric?"

  He looked around. "Where are you?"

  "Outside. How are you feeling?"

  He scowled. "Like I've been poisoned."

  She glanced at Rohka. "Can there be something in what Dabbiv says?"

  "Dabbiv overreacts. Kelric obviously isn't being poisoned to death."

  "But?"

  Grudgingly, Rohka said, "The medicine does seem to bother him." She thought for a moment. "There is another sleep potion. It doesn't usually work as well, but I can try it."

  "All right." Thinking of how Kelric would react to yet another potion, Deha added, "But put it in his tea."

  After the doctor left, Chankah spoke to Deha. "I wish you would reconsider swearing him to the Calanya. Send him to prison."

  "For what? He hasn't done anything wrong."

  "For Coba's safety. For your safety. Winds, Deha, he could snap you in two as easily as if you were a stalk of grain."

  "He won't."

  "You don't know that. At least take precautions."

  "Such as?"

  "I'll show you."

  Chankah took her down to the Old Library As always. The room soothed with its shelves crammed full of books, old and new, gilt edged, bound in leather. A display case by the wall held a set of exquisitely tooled Calanya guards as ancient as the Estate.

  Chankah opened the case and lifted out the guards. "Give these to him."

  Deha blinked at her. "First you want me to send him to prison. Then you say I should honor him above all other Calani."

  "I don't suggest this for his honor. These are the only guards we have that are made in the old way."

  "Meaning they can be locked together?" Deha scowled. "That's barbaric."

  "We're talking about your life." Chankah clenched the guards. "What if he turns violent again?"

  For a long moment Deha considered her successor. Then she exhaled. "Let me think on it."

  The room was a smear of gold dotted by bits of emerald. Kelric tried to focus, but blurred vision apparently came as a side effect of the battle going on inside his body. One species of his nanomeds eliminated chemicals—like unwanted drugs—that his biomech web hadn't authorized. The biochemistry sounded simple: a med locked onto an invading molecule, deactivated it if possible, usually by changing its molecular structure or taking it apart, and flushed the debris out of his body.

  It rarely worked that smoothly. The meds first had to find the invaders, then get rid of them without producing hazardous byproducts. It also took energy, and fighting an invasion this severe drained him. Nor could the meds immediately capture every drug invader. According to Bolt, the sedative molecules that had so far escaped were destroying enzymes he needed to metabolize certain foods. The Coban diet made it worse; the unboiled water contained bacteria that attacked his digestive system, and some of the spices and sauces would have required intervention by his meds even if he had been in perfect condition.

  His condition was far from perfect. Bolt's memory Was corrupted, some bio-optic threads in his body were experiencing attenuated transmission, his hydraulics had sustained structural damage, and his meds were replicating too slowly. Worse, some meds were replicating improperly, forcing others to treat them like invaders.

  The sound of an opening door broke Kelric's concentration. Two blurs were approaching him. "Hacha?" he asked. "Rev?"

  "We brought you lunch," Rev said. As he came nearer, a blur in his hands resolved into a tray. He set it on the nightstand.

  Kelric regarded the food without interest. At least the Tanghi tea was made with boiled water. After the guards left, he drank the Tanghi and then lay down again, exhausted from his battle with the drugs.

  It wasn't until he opened his eyes that he realized he had fallen asleep. Morning sunshine was pouring through the window when a moment ago the shadows of late afternoon had filled the room.

  "How do you feel?" Deha asked.

  Disoriented, he rolled over and saw her standing by the bed. As he sat up, his wrist caught on a blanket. When he pushed away the cloth, his hand slid over metal. Puzzled, he looked down at his wrists.

  Guards. Calanya guards. The gold was welded together so cleanly around each of his wrists that its joining blended into the engraved designs on the metal. Yanking away the covers, he saw his ankles similarly guarded by gold. He swore, swung around to Deha—and hands shoved him down on his back. He looked up into the bores of Rev and Llaach's guns.

  "Try anything," Llaach said. "and we'll put you out like an avalanche on an airbug."

  "Let him go," Deha said.

  Rev released him, but Llaach looked as if she wanted to dump him out the window. When she finally let go Kelric sat up and regarded them implacably, then gave Deha the same look.

  The Manager sat on the bed. "I know you don't want to be a Calani, Kelric. But winds, it's better than the alternatives. Most of my advisers think you should be sent to prison. Jahlt Karn almost ordered your execution."

  He stared at her. "The Minister wants me killed?"

  "Yes."

  "For what?" He felt as if a cage were closing around him "Don't you realize what will happen if the Imperial Assembly learns what you people are doing?"

  "That," Llaach said, "is why the Minister wants you dead." She touched her gun to his temple. "Dead like that Calani whose neck you threatened to break."

  Deha glanced at her. "Perhaps you and Rev should wait Outside." When they-started to protest, Deha shook her head. With obvious reluctance, the guards withdrew. Llaach paused at the door, looking back at Deha, but when the Manager frowned, Llaach went out and closed the door.

  Deha turned back to him. "I'm sorry. They don't trust you."

  "And you do?" he asked.

  "It would do you no good to take me hostage My guards have orders to stop any escape you attempt even if they have to shoot me."

  "This is crazy. You can't lock me up."

  "Your Oath ceremony is tonight."

  "I'm not taking any damn oath."

  "Another man will speak for you." Deha paused. "In the Old Age the Oath was always given through a surrogate, supposedly because Calani were too exalted to speak in public." Dryly she added, "I suspect the real reason was to avoid questions about whether or not the Calani was there of his own free will."

  He snorted. "That figures."

  "Kelric, I truly am sorry." She stood up. "I wish it was your choice to stay."

  He couldn't give the answer she wanted, so he said nothing.

  After she left, Kelric lay back, trying to subdue his vertigo. He wished they would stop with their potions. His head felt strange, like an earthquake fault under pressure. He needed to think but he was too tired to sit up and every time he lay down he drifted into fitful sleep.

  That evening, while he lay in a drugged daze, the door opened. Rev and Balv came in, followed by a boy carrying a pile of Clothes. The boy approached shyly and showed him the garments "For the ceremony, sir."

  Rubbing his eyes, Kelric made himself sit up. Both Rev and Balv had their guns out, but they needn't have bothered. His battle with the drugs left him too drained to fight anyone.

  With the boy helping like a valet, he dressed. The shirt was made from burgundy velvet. Its sleeves fit tight around his Calanya guards, t
hen widened out from wrist to shoulder. The collar opened halfway down his chest, but crisscrossing laces held it closed. Almost closed. A gray suede vest went over the shirt, its snug fit accenting his physique. The trousers, made from a rich gray suede, were odd. The outer seam of each leg was unsewn but kept closed by small flaps that buttoned across it. Suede knee boots finished off the picture. Kelric was no expert on the messages given by clothes, but even he recognized the ones in these: sexually provocative, in a subtle manner designed to suggest high social class.

  He almost refused to wear them. But he already had a pounding headache, and he didn't want to make it worse by getting into a contest of wills.

  When Kelric finished dressing, Balv ushered the valet out of the room. But Rev remained.

  "I wanted to tell you," the guard said.

  "Yes?" Kelric asked.

  "About tonight," Rev said. "For a normal ceremony you would have Chosen an Oath Brother."

  "Oath Brother?"

  "Your closest friend." Rev hesitated. "I know you have no reason to call me a friend. But you shouldn't have to stand alone."

  "You would stand as my brother?"

  "Yes."

  The offer caught Kelric by surprise. It was true he felt a kinship with Rev; not only were they alike physically, they also shared a similar awkwardness with words. But he had thought his escape attempt blotted out any friendships he had with his guards He felt it most with Llaach, whose hostility was so intense he could almost touch it.

  He spoke quietly. "I would be honored to have you stand as my brother."

  Rev bowed to him. "The honor is mine."

  After Rev left, Kelric fell into a half sleep. At Night's Midhour the escort and four more guards came for him. Not only did they carry stunners now, they also wore ceremonial curved swords with glistening nacre inlaid in the hilts.

  No one spoke as he stood up. Captain Hacha stepped behind him, drawing his arms behind his back. Metal pins clinked and his wrist guards locked together, binding his arms behind him.

  "What the—?" He tried to pull apart his wrists. "What are you doing?"

  No one answered. Instead they escorted him from the room They descended the stairs that spiraled around the tower a guard on each side keeping a steadying hand on his arm. At the bottom they walked through halls lit only by torches that sent shadows flickering on the walls. When they reached a recessed archway, Rev pulled back the bolt in an ancient door there and leaned his weight into the heavy portal until it creaked open.

  A great hall stretched out before them, lit by no more than the starlight pouring through its crystal walls. Radiance shimmered in the air, reflected off the marble floor glimmered in the shadows of a ceiling so high above their heads Kelric could barely make out its vaulted spaces.

  A retinue of robed figures drifted toward them from the far end of the hall. Deha walked at its front with a younger woman at her side.

  "Chankah," Rev said, following Kelric's gaze to the unfamiliar woman. "The Dahl Successor."

  The shimmering air, the starlight, and the shadowy retinue all combined with his drugged haze to make him feel as if he were floating in a surreal netherworld. When Balv prodded him with his gun, Kelric walked forward. The retinue parted so he was passing down an aisle of people.

  Deha led them back the way they had come, to a large dais at the far end of the hall. Made from black marble and veined with crystal, the disk scintillated in the starlight. The rows of finely carved chairs that circled it held an aura of age, as if they had- guarded the dais for centuries.

  The retinue withdrew to the chairs, and Deha climbed the dais with Chankah. When Balv prodded him up the steps, Kelric stumbled and with his wrists bound behind his back he couldn't catch his balance. As he fell to one knee, his guards drew their swords. He froze, acutely aware of the honed steel only fingerspans away from his body.

  Deha spoke. "Help him up."

  Hacha slid her hand under his arm, supporting him as he rose to his feet. With their swords still drawn, the guards escorted him up the stairs. They followed Deha and Chankah to a depression in the center of the dais, a circular area about a meter in diameter and a handspan deep. A rail at waist height circled it, with an opening just wide enough to let a person step through. In the shadows on the far edge of the dais, the vague outline of a table curved in a semicircle. Glitters came from the blades of the guards' drawn swords.

  Deha spoke to the retinue. "Ekaf Dahl, approach the Circle."

  A man came forward and climbed the dais. When he reached Deha, she indicated a place to the right of the circle. "You will Speak from here." Then she and Chankah walked toward the table, becoming blurs as they receded into the dark.

  A moment later, her voice floated through the air. "Sevtar Dahl, you may enter the Circle."

  As far as Kelric knew, no one named Sevtar stood on the dais. But Rev nudged him forward. With the guard at his side, and the drawn swords all around him, Kelric stepped through the gap in the rail, down into the sunken area.

  A pipe began playing, caressing the night with notes as delicate as a lover's touch. Its melody flowed through the hall sweet and haunting Then it receded growing fainter until it vanished.

  Deha spoke out of the shadows. "Does one here stand as Oath Brother to Sevtar?"

  "I stand for him," Rev said.

  "What are your words?"

  Kelric realized then just how much Rev's offer meant. The taciturn giant made no secret of his discomfort with public speaking.

  Rev's voice rumbled. "I speak thus: Sevtar may differ from us, but the quality of his character transcends differences. His inner strength is as great as his outer. He will honor your Calanya."

  Chankah spoke softly. "Your words are heard and recorded, Rev of Dahl."

  The guard bowed. Then he stepped out of the Circle and vanished into the darkness.

  A bell chimed, two notes, high and clear, vibrating in the silvery air. Chankah began speaking, what sounded like a,chant in a language other than Teotecan, verses with an ancient sound, a hypnotic rhythm. When she finished, the bell chimed again, a musical echo of the radiance filling the hall.

  Deha spoke "Hear my words, Sevtar, but before you give them back to me as Oath know that your life is bound by them."

  Even if Kelric had intended to answer, he was too dazed to think of a response. It didn't matter. Ekaf spoke. "I hear and understand."

  A glow appeared on the table, a flame in a bowl of oil. Ruddy light flickered across Deha's face. "For Dahl and for Coba, do you, Sevtar, enter the Circle to give your Oath?"

  "I do," Ekaf said.

  "Do you swear that you will hold my Estate above all else, as you hold the future of Dahl in your hands and your mind?"

  "I swear."

  "Do you swear to keep forever the discipline of the Calanya? To never read or write? To never speak in the presence of those who are not of the Calanya?"

  Saints almighty, Kelric thought. What is this?

  "I swear," Ekaf said.

  "Do you swear, on penalty of your life, that your loyalty is to Dahl, only to Dahl, and completely to Dahl?"

  "I swear," Ekaf said. "With my life."

  A chime rippled like a waterfall. Deha passed her hand over the oil, and the flame flickered and vanished.

  Kelric felt as if he were floating in the shimmering air. Deha and her successor seemed to materialize out of nowhere, walking toward the Circle. Chankah carried a box of carved wood. When they reached the rail, she opened it to reveal two armbands lying on velvet. They looked like solid gold.

  Deha regarded him. "In return for your Oath, I vow that for the rest of your life you will be provided for as befits a Calani." Then she nodded to Hacha. When the captain moved behind him and lifted his manacled wrists, Kelric stiffened. But all she did was release him. Bringing his arms in front of his body, he rubbed his sore muscles.

  "Kelric." Deha spoke softly. "You need to put your hands on the rail."

  He set his palms on the wood
. It felt cool and smooth under his palms.

  "The bands I give you are those of an Akasi Calani." Her face gentled. "May you someday wear them of your own free will." She took an armband from the box. Picking up his hand, she slid on the band and pushed it up his arm until it stopped on his biceps. She slid the second band onto his other arm.

  "Sevtar Dahl," Deha said. "You are now a First Level Calani of Dahl."

  6

  Night's Move

  The escort returned Kelric to the AmberRoom the same way they had taken him from it; in complete silence, his wrists locked behind his back, without Deha or her retinue. The journey up the tower seemed endless. He couldn't even use his hands to lean on the rail as he climbed.

  Inside the AmberRoom, Hacha freed his wrists. Brusquely she said, "Don't try to leave. An armed octet will be posted Outside at all times." She turned and walked toward the door, motioning for the others to follow.

  Rev spoke. "I'll stay a while."

  Hacha glanced back and shrugged. "Suit yourself." Then she left with the others, closing the door behind her.

  Kelric sat on the edge of the bed. "Is she always that abrupt? Or is it just me?"

  Rev said nothing.

  "Ekaf took the vow of silence," Kelric said. "Not me."

  "I have no right to speak with you."

  "Hacha just did."

  "Only because she is now captain of your Calanya escort and Deha has allowed it. But she can't talk with you. Only to you."

  Kelric exhaled.."l don't understand any of this."

  "You can speak with other Dahl Calani," Rev said. "And with Deha. But not to anyone Outside."

  "You do it too." .

  "It?"

  "Say Outside as if it were a title."

  "It is," Rev said "Those within the Calanya are Inside. The rest of the universe is Outside."

  Dryly, Kelric said,"That leaves a lot of people Outside."

  "Yes. You are one of a very few."

  "Great," Kelric muttered.

  Rev sat in a chair. "Kelric, it is considered a great honor among our people." He stopped. "I should call you Sevtar now."