Mercedes Lackey - Anthology (8 page)

 
          
"Will
you . . . please
just.
. . shut up?" Arikan
hissed breathlessly. "I'm doing ... the best . . . I ... can!"

 
          
An
arrow clicked sharply against stone, alarmingly close, and Arikan clenched his
teeth and continued his grab-blindly-at-handholds nightmare of a climb.

 
          
The cliffs not that high.
I can do this. Hah, I'd better!

 
          
But
what if this, too, was the shaman's work? What if there wasn't a top, and he
went on climbing and climbing till—

 
          
All
right, Spirits in whom I really don't believe, if you want this eagle alive
and, not incidentally,
me
as well, give me strength!

 
          
But
he—yes! He was at the top of the cliff, and pulling himself clumsily up onto
the blessedly flat surface of the mesa.

 
          
For
a time, Arikan
lay
flat on his stomach, panting, the
eagle a weight on his back. But then a knife-sharp stab at a shoulder brought
him staggering to his feet, cursing breathlessly. The eagle had managed to get
him with the tip of its beak.

 
          
At
least it was still alive, Arikan told himself, and grimly set out across the
mesa, hoping he wouldn't fall into a hole in the darkness. But was the darkness
quite as dense as it had been?

 
          
True
dawn wouldn't be here for some time, but when it came, when the sun rose, he'd
be a clear target. Arikan groaned and forced himself on, determined to put as
much terrain between himself and the Owl Spirit People as possible.

 
          
Not
too possible. He was just too worn out, mentally and physically, and the
eagle's weight wasn't helping. Couldn't be helping the eagle, either, being
wrapped up like that. No one seemed to be coming after him; presumably no one
was crazed enough to try a
midnight
climb after him.

 
          
But the shaman . . . ?

 
          
He'd
deal with that problem when it happened. The eagle had stopped struggling, and
its yeeps were getting alarmingly faint. "So be it," Arikan said. He
wormed his way out of the pack,
then
began very
carefully to untie the hide. The moment the fledgling was free, it was going to
try escaping.

 
          
Could
it fly yet? He wasn't sure, but didn't dare risk ... a foot, now . . . where .
. . ha, got it!

 
          
There
was a brief, frantic, flapping struggle.
Arikan,
buffeted by wings, bleeding from a dozen not-quite misses from beak and talons,
got a loop of the rope firmly about the fledgling's leg and anchored the other
end to ... ah, yes, a good, sturdy little tree. He scrambled back, out of the
reach of the eagle as it tried to claw him, lost his balance, and sat down,
hard.
The eagle, perched on a rock, sat, too, glaring at him
in the darkness as though blaming him for the whole situation.

 
          
"You
could show a little gratitude," Arikan told it dryly.

 
          
But
the eagle, with a dazzlingly quick pounce, landed on some small creature, a
mouse or ground squirrel startled out of hiding. The brown-and-white wings
spread
wide,
the fledgling began devouring its small
kill.

 
          
"Well,
that's something. Guess that means you aren't ready to die."

 
          
The
eagle glared at him again,
then
returned to its meal.

 
          
"That's
not going to hold you for very long," Arikan said to it. "Ah, and
what do I do with you now? How do I get you back home?"

 
          
Yes,
and what of the shaman? It seemed very strange that all he'd done so far was
create one convincing but not all that useful cliff-illusion.

 
          
Not
so strange at that. Something was all at once there,
Something
great and gray-brown-white, Something terrible, looming up over him. The eagle
screamed,
then
huddled against the ground, staring,
terrified, and furious in one.

 
          
Arikan
wanted to huddle, too, because what was forming he realized now was a great
Owl— an Owl with eyes that were only empty blackness.

 
          
"Oh,
now this is impossible," he heard himself say. "You don't
exist."

 
          
"Don't
we?"

 
          
The
voice had not come from that Owl beak, but from all around him, but Arikan
persisted, "If no vision came to me when I sought one—" "And do
we come when we are bid?" "You came at the shaman's bidding, didn't
you?"

 
          
Was
that a vast sense of ... amusement? "Brave small one!"

 
          
"Not
so brave," Arikan retorted.
"Just too stunned to be
wise!"

 
          
That
was definitely a sense of amusement radiating from all about. "Wise
enough, it seems. We heard the shaman, ah, yes, but chose to appear here and
now."

 
          
We?
"You are ... uh ... the Owl Spirit?"

 
          
"In a fashion.
Come, fight me."

 
          
The
suddenness of it almost overcame Arikan. As the Owl lunged for him, Arikan
desperately threw himself sideways, rolling, hearing a huge talon scrape the
ground where he'd just been, coming back to his feet—aie, here came the Owl
again, diving at the eaglel

 
          
"For there is a gap between 'clever' and 'wise.'"

 
          
Why
should he be thinking that now? There wasn't any time for adages—

 
          
Wait!
Yes!

 
          
"Owls
don't stoop at eagles!" Airkan cried. "Nor could a mortal man ever
fight a—
This
is a trick!"

 
          
"A
test, rather," the Owl replied, swooping up again.

 
          
But
one long talon neatly sliced the rope holding the eagle. And the fledgling
proved that it could, indeed, fly, taking to wing before the horrified Arikan
could move.

 
          
"No,"
he murmured as the young eagle disappeared into the graying sky, "ah, no

 
          
.
. ."

 
          
It
was all for nothing, then. The last of his people's eagles was gone.

 
          
"Why
did you—"

 
          
The
Owl was gone, too, dissipated by the first rays of the sun.

 
          
If,
Arikan, thought, it had even been there. But when he bent to study the rope, it
had not frayed loose; it had been severed as cleanly as though by a knife.

 
          
Wearily,
heartsick, Arikan started for home.

 
          
The
people came running to greet him, with cries of "Hero!" and
"Rescuer!"

 
          
Arikan
stopped. "I didn't . . ."

 
          
But
they were pointing up, to the cliff where the eagle nest—

 
          
Was occupied by a bird with the mottled white of a not-quite-grown
fledgling.

 
          
He
. . . couldn't have found his way back here on his own. Could he?

 
          
"How
went your vision quest?" a voice murmured.

 
          
Arikan
turned to see Wenketh smiling slyly at him. "You knew."

 
          
"Did
I?"

 
          
"What
was that, Wenketh? Did I really see and speak with a ..."

 
          
"With a god?
With an aspect of the
Great Divine?
What do you think?"

 
          
"I
... don't know. I don't know how the eagle got back either. I only know, well,
that I don't know!"

 
          
The
old shaman chuckled and turned away. "There," he said, his voice
trailing back to Arikan, "is at last the beginning of wisdom. Welcome
home, Arikan."

 
          
Stephen
Michael Stirling has been writing science fiction and fantasy for the past
decade, collaborating with such authors as Jerry Pournelle, Judith Tarr, David
Drake, and Harry Turtledove, as well as producing excellent novels by himself,
such as Marching
Through
Georgia, Snozvbrother, and,
most recently, Against the Tide of Years. Born in
Metz
,
Alsace
,
France
, and educated at the
Carleton
University
in
Canada
, he currently lives in
Santa Fe
,
New Mexico
, with his wife Janet.

 
          
ADELIA
the sorceress was an uncommonly proud woman. This was obvious from her fine
dress, a king's ransom of green satin, tucked and ruched, bright with ribbons
and glittering with gold lace. Her thick brown hair, beautifully coiffed, was
held in place by a gold net glittering with jewels, and in one richly gloved
hand she bore a delicate little peacock feather fan.

 
          
She
was certainly pretty enough to carry off these fripperies without looking
ridiculous, which couldn't be said of every finely dressed lady at the fair.

 
          
But
it wasn't merely her appearance that made Adelia vain. The lady was a sorceress
of note; an accomplishment which made her a person greatly to be feared as well
as admired.

 
          
Adelia
wore the signal of her achievement upon her smooth white brow, an illusion
which the uninitiated saw only as a spot of flame. But the adept could read her
capabilities there and know that she was both capable and very powerful indeed.

 
          
The
sorceress moved through the fair with her glossy head held high, ignoring the
wary, often unfriendly stares of the folk around her.
Ignoring
as well the embarrassing meeping and cringing of her servant Wren, whose
shyness had the wretched girl well on the way to panic.
Wren had dropped
the parcels she carried into the dust and the mud twice after a meaningless
sight or sound had startled her; once, a cat sleeping on a window sill, then a
dog barking in the street.

 
          
Listening
to the sniveling and the whimpering behind her, Adelia rolled her eyes. I
should never have made her from such a pathetic creature in the first place!
What was I thinking? A wren is the very essence of shyness. If I'd made her
from a nightingale, she'd still be shy, but at least she could sing.

 
          
Suddenly
she turned on her servant, glaring at the small, brown-haired girl in her plain
dress. Wren froze, her mouth agape, panting in unabashed terror.