Shadow

regarding Shadow with some amusement, and the two young men were setting their pace to his.

    'Congratulations,' the old man said.

    With an effort Shadow managed, 'Why?'

    'Dead Man's Pass,' the old man said.

    Then a dark shape flashed above them, and Shadow jerked his head back in alarm. A brown wild eagle whirled around once more. He twisted his head to see, so the men stopped and turned him so he could watch as the wild settled down beside NailBiter, a sheep dangling from its beak.

    'What the hell?' Shadow said. At least, he tried to say that, but it didn't sound very distinct, even to him.

    'Your friend is being helped too,' the old man said.

    The wild passed the whole sheep to NailBiter, who began tearing it up and swallowing it. That was not cawking ritual--it wasn't anything. Eagles did not do things like that. Vonimor had warned him. The wild spread its wings, jumped, and went flapping away over the meadow.

    'He's a fine fellow,' the stranger said. He wore a brown smock and brown trousers and a curiously placid, friendly expression.

    'Who are you?' That came out clearly enough.

    'I am Ryl Karaman.'

    If Shadow had been standing, he would have fallen.

    'The rebel?'

    Karaman chuckled, motioned for the helpers to bring their burden, and walked alongside once more.

    'I suppose. And you are Shadow...and Master NailBiter?'

    'How do you know that?' It was very hard to talk, and the world was fading and solidifying all the time.

    He received no reply, but he was carried up steps onto a porch and laid down on a couch, boots and all. Someone gave him a mug of something wet.

    'Try not to gulp it,' Karaman said. 'Sip it. Oh, well. Sip the next one, or you'll throw up. You're dried out like a prune.'

    Shadow finished the second cupful and wanted more, but they took the mug away and firm hands were stripping his clothes off. He was suddenly racked by coughing.

    'Fingers all right. Looks like you may lose a couple of toes, though. And half an ear, possibly.' Karaman laid a blanket over him, and someone else was tucking a pillow under his head. The roof swayed pleasantly overhead.

    'The doctor will be here shortly,' the old man remarked. 'Try to stay awake until he gets here.' He settled into a rocking chair, and the others faded back, out of Shadow's field of thought.

    Shadow turned his head and forced his eyes to focus; he saw that NailBiter had finished his meal and was feaking, the equivalent of picking his teeth if he had teeth. Karaman's chair squeaked as he rocked quietly. 'How did you know my name?'

    The cheerful expression faded from Karaman's leathery old face. 'Your friend kept calling it out.'

    Now Shadow remembered why he had come. 'He's here? Alive?'

    'He made it,' Karaman said cautiously, 'but only just. He's in a very bad way.'

    'How bad?'

    'Very bad. The doctors will not say if he will live--and he will never be the man he was.'

    Another Ukarres? Shadow choked back sobs. 'WindStriker came through the pass with him?'

    'Oh, no! Not at her age. She came around the face of Eagle Dome.'

    'Then the wilds let him through?' Shadow asked. Someone gave him another earthenware mug, and he tasted hot milk and honey.

    Karaman rocked back. 'They letherthrough--she was a returning native. They thought she was carrying a corpse, and they brought her to me to get it off her thought he was a corpse, too, at first.'

    'I want to see him. Now!'

    'He isn't here. Yes, he's in Allaban, but we rushed him down to a little place cared Femie, very low. He's being well treated, but I don't think he would know you yet.'

    NailBiter spread one enormous wing and set to work preening it.

    Shadow's eyelids started to droop.

    'You're the first man ever to make it through Dead Man's Pass,' Karaman said.

    The eyes opened by themselves. 'Not what I was told!'

    Karaman shrugged. 'Eight or ten have done it from this side. None has ever succeeded coming from the left. Many have tried.'

    The words lay like a lump in Shadow's mind until meaning seeped out of them. Vonimor? No, not he. He was basically a decent man. He had known that the pass could be crossed, but not that it was a one-way proposition--he had been duped by Ukarres, and Ukarres had been trying to kill Shadow.

    'NailBiter did it, not me.'

    Karaman nodded. 'You unhooded him. That was very trusting of you.'

    Sleep was creeping up every limb, and Shadow was fighting it and losing...but now his eyes popped open again. 'How do you know that? What did you do to him? How do you make the birds safe, like this? How did he know to come to this house?'

    'That's too long a tale for now,' the gentle old voice said. 'But I did nothing to NailBiter in the pass--that was your doing. You must be a remarkable trainer. You must trust your bird greatly, and he knew that. He was greatly surprised when you unhooded him, but then he was sympathetic. He knows what you were trying to do, or thinks he does.'

    'What?' Shadow asked, getting sleepy again already. Karaman was trying to keep him awake until the doctor came. It wasn't going to work.

    Karaman smiled, and his ridiculous comb of white hair waved back and forth as he rocked. 'He had just cawked a few days before, right? A silver. Very beautiful, I am told, and very fierce. He was missing her greatly, and you were searching for your mate, too.'

    'I was doingwhat?' Shadow said, his eyes snapping open once more.

    Karaman laughed shrilly. 'People don't copulate in front of the birds--they have trouble telling the males from the females among us. You fly right behind the prince all the time, so NailBiter assumes that he is your mate. You were going looking for him--or her. He knew that WindStriker would have gone to Allaban, and you were going to Allaban. He was sorry for you, so he helped. It was nothing to do with me, and there have been very few trainers who ever won loyalty like that from their eagles.'

    'My God!' Shadow said, wondering if he was having his leg pulled. But Karaman seemed serious. In his weakness Shadow started to giggle at the absurdity--but to a bird his close attendance on the prince might seem like pair behavior. What would Vindax say to that? 'Did WindStriker find her mate, then, too?'

    'Oh, no,' Karaman said. 'He died years ago, in the fighting. She knew that, but she still had to go back to the last place she saw him. The eagles are much smarter than you think, my young friend, but that is a compulsion.'

    'Yet she knew he was dead?' The sleep was rising again, drowning him. 'Somebody told her, I suppose?'

    'There can be few more barbaric ideas ever invented by the kings of Rantorra,' Karaman said, 'than the post of Shadow. Yet you came after the prince. Why?'

    'He gave me his trust, I suppose. I had to do what...I had to.'

    'You see? We have compulsions, too.'

    'Then you know who your prisoner is?' Shadow said.

    Karaman's voice was coming from farther away. 'A guest, not a prisoner. He wears the trappings and the signet of the crown prince of Rantorra. I don't know his name; we get little news from the kingdom.'

    'Vindax.'

    'And Aurolron is still king?' Karaman asked. 'And is Alvo still duke of Foan?'

    'Yes,' Shadow said cautiously. Why should Karaman ask about him when they were talking of Vindax?