In the nights immediately following my return, however, I several times woke myself with muffled screams, starting straight up in bed, sweating and cold at once, thinking I had heard the horrid hissing of Basilisks or the sly flapping of watchful shadows.
14
The fourth or fifth night I wakened deep in the dark hours, I was reminded of myself as a child, bearing Mendost’s abuse and deciding I would rather die. Perhaps it would be better to die now than to wake in this terror at the sound of flapping. My room was high in one of the towers. Perhaps the sound had a cause; perhaps something was really there. Wrapped in a heavy robe against the cool of the night, I left the room silently and went up the cupped stones of the winding tower stairs to the roof.
As I climbed, I became convinced the sound had not been merely a dream. Dream, yes, but not merely that. Dream grafted upon reality, perhaps, as the gardeners of the House graft blooming stock upon hardy roots, the lesser reality upon the greater. This was a muddy thought, and I took time to untangle it, lost in metaphor, hardly realizing the sound I heard was a sound as real as my own heartbeat. Flap, flap, hiss. Not the hiss of Basilisks; the hiss of wind on feathers. It came from above me, and I turned face up to see giant wings fleeing across the stars.
“I am here,” I called, as I had called once before in the forest, not loudly, fearful, yet not fearful enough to be silent.
Wings lifted and folded. The flitchhawk stooped, down, down, wingtips canted to guide its flight, talons stretched before it. Just as it would have dropped upon me, the wings scooped air, and the giant came to rest before me, opening its beak to let out a rush of air scented with the breath of pines.
“What is it you eat to have a breath so sweet, flitchhawk?” I said, almost in a whisper.
“What is it you eat to have words so sweet, Star-eye?” and there came the puffed, creaking sound of hawk laughter.
“I told the Dervish about you, flitchhawk.”
“We knew you would.”
“What is it you want now?”
“You promised the forest, girl.”
“I promised to do what I could, when I knew what to do, flitchhawk. I haven’t any idea, yet. They have made me a Wize-ard, and I’m no wiser than I was.”
“Then you must do out of ignorance, girl. You must help the forest.”
“I said I would, when I knew how, but there’s been no time.”
“No time,” agreed the flitchhawk in his creaky voice. “No time, Jinian Footseer. Now. Now is the time. This moment.”
He reached for me with one talon. I stamped my foot, really angry. “I will not be dangled,” I said. “I was dangled last time. It has caused me no end of embarrassment, and I will not be dangled again.”
He stepped back. If a beak can be said to express astonishment, then the beak on that bird face did. However, the eyes were not angry. Reflective, perhaps. Amused, perhaps, but not angry. “What would you suggest?” he asked. “I cannot have you on my back, for there is no room between my wings on the upstroke.”
“Wait,” I cried, moved by sudden inspiration. “One moment:” I ran down the stairs again, peeling off the robe and gown as I went, covering half the last corridor bare as a willow twig. There were stout boots in my room and leather trousers, a heavy jacket and some tunics not woven of the thistledown we usually wore. My knife and pack were there as well. I left a message.
“Take this message to Murzemire Hornloss, house at the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. “Murzy, the flitchhawk has come for me and will not delay. I will return. Make my peace with Vorbold’s House.””
There, I thought. That ought to cause some consternation. I could imagine its being well read by Vorbold’s House before ever it was taken to Murzy. Still, she would get it in time. Someone had to explain to King Kelver and Joramal. I thought Queen Vorbold would duck that duty if she could.
Then back up the stairs, stopping at the end of the corridor for one of the great woven baskets that collected our dirty bedclothes and towels. It had long straps because the men who gathered them up carried them on their backs down Laundry Street, amid all the steams and smokes and sounds of washerwomen shouting. I thrust the thing before me onto the tower roof to find the flitchhawk stalking this way and that, peering over the edge from time to time like an owl seeking some small prey. The thought made me shiver. I was the prey in this case.
“Here,” I told him. “I can sit in this, and you can carry the straps in your claws. It will be easier for both of us.” And it would. The high sides of the basket would allow me to breathe, at least, which I could not remember having done during the trip to the tower dangled from those same claws.
“In, then, Jinian Footseer,” he creaked, and I plunged down into the basket, thankful there were already a few sheets in the bottom to soften it. The thing jerked, swayed, soared, and I was flying once again high above Xammer, above the towers, the walls, looking down on the ancient bridges, the quiet streets. I could see the corner of Goldstreet and the Hill. There were lights in the windows. So late? Were their faces at the window? How could there be?
