Four and Twenty Blackbirds

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 story. 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'dheard 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, itwas Ardis who was telling him this, and she said thatshe'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.