Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (37 page)

 
          
"What?"
Honoria shook her head, thinking she hadn't heard correctly.

 
          
"Child,
the silly boy is head-over-heels in love with you. He'd do and accept anything
you asked him to! Well, almost anything; you'd still have to be a wife to
him."

 
          
"Yes,
and just how free would I be producing babe after babe like a milch cow?"
Honoria snapped. "I don't care if he's in love with me, I certainly don't
love him, and that would be the only thing that would reconcile me to wedding anyoneV
She
shuddered, thinking of all the women she'd seen,
suffering through childbirth and dying of it. The only difference between a
lady and a peasant was that the lady wouldn't be worn out with work and bearing
babies year after year—a lady could hand the babies over to nursemaids once
they were born. But there were at least six months of every year when she ould
be forbidden to ride, hunt, walk for miles—all things Honoria loved.

 
          
The
hawk sighed. "You see what I mean? Wedding a handsome fellow like Gunther
is perfectly acceptable to me, but not to you. That's why I chose you and let
you catch me. I failed twice before; the girls gave in and married the lad
their parents chose. They never said I'd give anything to trade places with
you. You, on the other hand . . . well, you've got more spirit and more
determination than they did. And I am very fond of Gunther. He's been making
calfs-eyes at you ever since he arrived. I think he's been in love with you for
the last year, though he's far too aware of his lowly status to ever betray
himself to you." Amusement tinged the hawk's thoughts. "You aren't
the only one to come to the mews and pour out sorrows to a bird; I've heard as
many sad tales from him as I have from you. The fact that I'm your bird made it
all the more romantic in his eyes, I suppose."

 
          
"You've
tried this twice before?" To her mind, that was far more important than
Gunther's misplaced affections. Evidently, although this gift had literally
dropped into her lap from Honoria's point of view, from Freya's, it had not
come easily. Somehow that made it easier to believe in.

 
          
"Twice
before, yes, but don't think you're my only chance." The hawk snapped her
beak. "If you don't free me, I can free myself, and will, and I still have
eleven months of my last year to find someone else."

 
          
But
Honoria's mind was already leaping ahead. "It's three days until the first
night of the full moon—how do we do this thing?"

 
          
"It's
absurdly simple; we go where the moonlight falls on both of us, and truly desire
with all our hearts to exchange places. That's all." The hawk ducked her
head. "Well, not quite all. You'll have to get used to the hawk's body,
and that won't be easy, but I can help you there. I won't set you free until
you think you're ready."

 
          
Honoria
snorted in a way that would have made her mother blanch. "I'm ready
now," she said. "Just wait and see."

 
          
After
all, I've flown hawks and falcons most of my life, she thought. I know
everything there is to know about them. How hard can it be to become one?

 
          
Three
days later, just after sunset, Honoria slipped out of the palace and into the
mews, still wearing the gown she'd worn to dinner, but with a gauntlet
protecting her hand. She didn't risk taking a lantern, but went straight to
Freya's stall, making plenty of noise in walking so that the bird would hear
her coming.

 
          
"Here
I am," she whispered, letting
herself
into the
stall, and peering through the gloom for the bird.

 
          
"And
I'm on the bow-perch," came the reply. "Are you still quite sure you
want to do this?"

 
          
"Never
more certain than now," Honoria replied firmly, stooping down to put her
gauntlet under the bird, and feeling her step up onto it. She automatically
took up the jesses as well,
then
started to release
them.

 
          
'No,
hold onto
the jesses
; the exchange is going to be a
bit of a shock.

 
          
You're
better off to hold tightly, as if you expected me to bate, so that when you
become me, you'll be the one held securely." That only comforted her more;
it didn't seem that Freya intended to deceive her in any way.

 
          
"The
moon will rise soon after sunset," Honoria told her, as she used her free
hand to feel along the wall to keep from walking into it in the dark. "I
think it should be safe enough to just go out into the stable yard."

 
          
"Good."
The hawk's talons relaxed a little as Honoria reached the door of the mews and
stepped outside. The stable yard was deserted, with everyone inside the palace,
at duties, or eating. As they waited for the moon to show itself above the outer
walls, Honoria wondered what it was going to be like to see the world with a
hawk's eyes.

 
          
The
barest sliver of silver slid into view, and Honoria, remembering what Freya had
told her, began to wish with all her heart and mind that she could be the hawk
she held, that she could be the one to soar on wide wings, and look down on the
poor, land-bound humans below, that—

 
          
A
fist of darkness closed around her and squeezed all the breath out of her,
squeezed hard enough to shatter every bone in her body. She tried to scream,
and couldn't. Then she could, and her voice echoed maddeningly in the dark void
all around her.

 
          
I
can't see! I can't see! Desperately, she flailed around to try and touch the
mews wall, and instead, found herself falling,
then
something grabbed at both her ankles and jerked at her—

 
          
Blind,
terrified, and swinging upside-down from her ankles, Honoria flailed her arms
wildly and gasped for breath.

 
          
"Gently,
child, gently—you've just bated off the fist, I've got you by
the jesses
!" The voice was strange, full of harmonics
and resonances Honoria had never heard in a human voice before, but there was
no doubt of the amusement in it. "You're a hawk now, dear—you can't see,
because hawks don't see well at night."

 
          
With
a supreme effort of will, Honoria stopped thrashing; a giant hand supported her
beneath her breastbone and placed her upright. Reflexively, her feet clenched
the surface below her with desperate strength. She turned her head wildly
around, and made out nothing more than a huge shadow beside her, vaguely
human-shaped, an enormous space that could have been the stable yard, and black
walls with a dim sphere rising above them. For her, there was no more light
than on a night with a bare quarter-moon.

 
          
"Dear,
please relax your grip—you can crush a rabbit's skull with those talons, and
you're not far from piercing my hand!"

 
          
Sorry.
With another effort of will, Honoria omehow told her feet to let go a little,
and the oice sighed. "I have a great deal of advantage ver you, I'm
afraid. I still remember what it as like to be a human, but you have never been
hawk before. I did warn you it was going to be a shock."

 
          
Honoria
bobbed her head, and the voice chuckled. "Let me get you back into the
mews and on your perch—oh, and get you some light. We need to make some plans.

 
          
Plans?
What for? She felt her bearer start to move, and her
body made clumsy little adjustments to the movement. When the woman finally
brought her into some light, the lantern in the mews workroom, it was with
great relief that Honoria saw that the exchange had, indeed, taken place. The
person beside her was—herself; odd from this perspective, and strangely
colored. Can a hawk see colors that a human can't? She certainly didn't recall
her face being so bluish. Nor so—gentle.

 
          
The
woman lit a lantern and brought it with her; for her part, Honoria now
experienced something else to unsettle her. From her point of view, she was
balanced on a very small "platform," the platform was moving, and it
was an awfully long way to the ground!

 
          
"Relax.
Don't think about it. Your feet know what to do," the woman assured her.
"If you relax, your feet will actually lock in place. That's why it's so
hard to pry a hawk's talons off of something."

 
          
By
this time, they had reached Freya's stall; the woman stooped down to the
bow-perch near the floor. Instead of putting the perch behind her legs, she
showed it to Honoria, who gingerly loosed one foot, transferred her grip from
the glove to the perch, then did the same with the other foot. It was very good
to feel the rough rope under her feet, and the firm iron beneath it.

 
          
The
woman sat down on the gravel facing Honoria, with no more care for the gown
than Honoria would have shown. "By now you've surely realized that you
don't know how to do anything as a hawk. You can't even walk yet, much less fly
or hunt. We have to have an excuse for why you're in this state, or Heinrich is
going to think something very peculiar is going on. We don't want that; we
particularly don't want him thinking that you have to be destroyed."

 
          
Immediately,
Honoria realized that she was right, and felt incredibly stupid that she hadn't
figured that out for herself.

 
          
"Don't
feel stupid, you've never done this before," the woman said with a laugh.
"I have; it's part of the bargain for the last one transformed to help the
next one. I think what we should do is this—when I come into the mews tomorrow,
you drop off the perch onto the ground, just as if you'd been struck
down."

 
          
I
can certainly do that, anyway, Honoria thought ruefully.

 
          
"I'll
act as if you've had a fit, and call Heinrich. Goshhawks do have fits,
sometimes; you lop around and shiver, to make it look realistic. I'll insist on
nursing you myself, and take you up to the bedchamber. And by the way, thank
you for taking me all over the palace yesterday, otherwise I'd have to find
someone to show me the way tonight without arousing more suspicion!" The
woman who had been Freya was enjoying herself immensely, from the sound of her
voice. And now that she was getting used to things, Honoria was beginning to
enjoy herself, too.

 
          
"At
any rate, I'll keep you up there in a basket by the fire for a couple of days,
then bring you back down to the mews—recovered from the fit, but not what it
did to you, do you see? We'll have the reason why you have to learn how to fly
and hunt all over again." Now, instead of amusement, Honoria heard
sympathy, and saw it in the woman's eyes as well. "I promised you that I
would see you through all of this, and it won't be as hard as you think."
She reached her hand forward, and scratched under Honoria's wings—Honoria was
astonished at how good it felt. "I'd better get back before I'm missed.

 
          
Remember
what to do in the morning."

 
          
She
left and took the light with her, but as she had promised, the more Honoria
relaxed, the steadier she felt on her perch. In a far shorter time than she
would have thought, she was asleep.

 
          
It
was in sleep that she learned the last of the spell-gifts; all of the memories
of flight and hunt as experienced by all the women to wear this body.

 
          
These
were purely hawk dreams, no thoughts from the women intruded. Flying dreams
kept her enraptured all night long, as she read the wind, the updrafts and
crosswinds, and angled her wings to take proper advantage of them. She felt the
adjustments of each feather as she guided her path; reached with feet instead
of hands when she meant to grasp, adjusted her body moment by moment as a
branch or glove moved under her. She understood what it meant to pursue quarry,
and to wrench
herself
around in mid-stoop to adjust
for the evasive gyrations of her prey. And when dawn arrived, and with it
wakefulness, for a moment she despaired of actually mastering all of it.