collect taxes? How will the nobles receive their rents?'
'Well, Prince?' the king asked.
Everyone was waiting.
Then Shadow realized that they were waiting for him.
'Horses,' he said.
Over the rising tumult from the audience the duke shouted, 'Nothing tastier than a young foal to an eagle! No more horses...How will you cross from one peak to another? On bicycles?'
It was true. Many of the gaps were impassable to men on foot. The First Ones had not settled all of the Range. Shadow had not thought of that--but certainly Karaman had. He had not said so. Would that have held Shadow back from his purpose?
Vindax raised a stump, and the noise died away.
'Well, Prince Shadow?' he said again.
Shadow stepped forward. 'You agreed to free the eagles, Your Majesty!'
Vindax hesitated. 'We need them! Before we issue that proclamation, we must make a contract with them, Shadow. They need not be slaves, but we must have mounts.'
Betrayal! Shadow was too shocked to speak, too exhausted to think.
The company murmured.
'You can't make a deal with the eagles!' Foan shouted. 'You have nothing they want!'
Shadow raised his hands.
Two burly guards appeared instantly at Shadow's side, gripping his arms so tightly that his feet almost left the ground, keeping him from putting his hands together to signal. They must have been forewarned. He squirmed helplessly.
The courtiers fell totally silent. Now they knew the stakes.
'Shadow, my friend,' Vindax said sadly. 'Prince Shadow? I owe you everything, but without the birds I have nothing. You must make me a treaty with the eagles.'
Could he? True, he had nothing to offer that they would want, but they were loyal. As utterly loyal to their friends as they were to their mates, Karaman said. He, Shadow, was a hero to them now. He could impose on that friendship perhaps. For his sake they might agree to supply transportation.
Yet that would be a corruption of friendship, a breach of trust, a usurpation.
Why should he?
Whose side was he on?
Prince or commoner?
He struggled to drive a brain choked with a sludge of fatigue and shattered loyalties. He tried to see this as the birds would see it, in their strangely inhuman thinking--and suddenly he knew what they were seeing at the moment.
'Majesty!' he shouted. 'Release me! The eagles--'
It was too late. To a sound like the smashing of melons, Sald's arms were wrenched almost from their sockets, pulling him back and throwing him to the ground.
Haft stunned, dazed, he lay for a moment, watching the wheeling specks in the bright sky, dimly aware of mass screaming echoing from walls as the crowds fled to the doors. Gradually the noise died away and there was peaceful silence.
He wanted to stay there forever.
Then he realized that he was lying between two twitching bodies and that his face had been spattered with something wet. He put a hand to his face; it came away red. The bodies had no heads. Shuddering and nauseated, he clambered to his feet. He was alone in the Great Courtyard. Two cast balls?
No, three. The back of the throne was dripping with blood and brains above the huddled corpse of King Vindax.
Shadow was too weary to weep.
'Good-bye, my prince,' he said. 'Fate dealt you a mean hand.'
He paused, almost as though there should be an answer.
After a moment he added, 'You must have known! You knew that there could be no kingdom without the eagles. You let me smash it so your brother could not have it. Then you wanted me to put it all back together for you!'
He choked back an angry sob, and the silence returned. He glanced around that great empty solitude and looked back at the corpse.
'You always wanted too much, Prince. You wanted to be a good king of Rantorra. That is not a possibility. It never was.'
He turned and walked away, and the courtyard was empty.
Sald dragged his feet along corridors still cluttered with debris and came at last to a balcony. Blinking in the sunlight, he could see one distant gate. People were streaming through it, many carrying bundles on their heads. He raised his hands and signed to the sky.
There were two bodies still lying there, and one had a golden chain around its neck. He helped himself to it: salary arrears.
Momentarily the sun darkened as NailBiter landed on the balustrade and fixed his unchanging remorseless glare on Sald.
Had the eagles been able to look at people in any other way, he thought, then they might have been accepted as sentient right from the First Times. He could read the comb, though, and he saw the excitement.
'The High Ones speak,' NailBiter said. 'You have a new name. You are The-one-who-led-us-out-of-the- dark. Also you are Friend-of-eagles.' That was Karaman's title, too. Yet 'friend' was a poor translation--it meant much more to an eagle.
'Thank the High Ones for me,' Sald signed wearily. Honors? He had had his fill of honors. The gold chain would be useful.
'Your nest and your mate and your chicks will be guarded and cherished,' NailBiter said almost too fast to read. He rocked slightly.
'Have you also been given an honor?' Sald asked.
NailBiter's comb darkened. 'I have a new name, too. I am Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles. But all kills are your kill.'
'Tell the High Ones that the greatest kill they can give me is that there be no fighting between men and eagles. We shall have to flee the aeries of the Range as we did those of the Rand--The-one-with-broken-legs was not going to help, and the others here will not.' But there could not be many birds left now to free.
The message was passed.
'And,' Sald signaled, 'I am proud to be a friend of Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles.'
NailBiter's head cocked slightly to one side, which indicated laughter. 'I am proud,' he signed, 'to be a friend of a friend of Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles.'
With his juvenile humor he would keep the game going until it reached eight and he lost count.
Sald cut it off. 'Me, also.'
'We go now?' NailBiter asked.
'Yes,' Sald said, his weariness settling over him like all the ice on the High Road. 'Let us go to the nest of my parents. You know the way.'
'I know it. You will remain there for many-many kills?'
'Yes.' There was nowhere else to go. He could send out his army from there to deal with the other aeries. The eagles would protect Hiando Keep if the neighbors and the countryside sought revenge, and surely his parents and his sisters would welcome him, traitor though he was. There was no one else he could trust except the birds.
But NailBiter was still chatty. 'There is a good aerie at the nest of your parents.'
Oh, so that was it.
'My mate is making an egg.'
Sald felt his face smile, and it was an unfamiliar sensation.
