Shadow

Chapter 12

VICE-MARSHAL Ninomar was drunk.

He felt good.

His face was streaming, possibly steaming, and probably as red as the logs in the fireplace. He sprawled on a cushion on an oak settle with his legs stretched out in front of him and an enormous tankard of hot mulled wine in his hand, and he was very, very content.

A jeweled star hung on a ribbon around his neck, and every few minutes he found himself fingering it and took his hand away quickly. Order of the Eagle, Second Class! That felt best of all.

There had been long days of waiting for orders from Ramo after the search had been called off, and he had not been relishing the prospect of returning to the capital to face a king whose son had been lost. Now the royal courier had arrived and there was a new king. The castle bell had summoned the townsfolk and the castle workers to the gate, and there the proclamation had been read:

BY THE GRACE OF GOD and the Love of the People,

JARKADON THE TENTH,

King of Rantorra and Allaban,

Sovereign of Range and Rand, Lord of Land and of Sky,

Fount of Justice and of Honor,

Giver and Upholder of the Laws,

Supporter of the Poor, etc.

Given under Our Hand this First Day of Our Reign, being the nine thousand two hundred and forty-third day of the reign of our dearly mourned and honored father, AUROLRON XX, now deceased.

GOD SAVE THE KING!

And all had responded with loyal cheers for the new monarch, led of course by the duke.

The vice-marshal was relieved. The new king could hardly look so coldly upon Ninomar, for it was partly the loss of Prince Vindax which had put him on the throne. But the great surprise had been the award, the jeweled star. The courier had produced it, and the duke had hung it around the vice-marshal's neck in the king's name, and there had been more cheers, although not so loud, naturally. It was astonishing, indeed almost embarrassing. And there was no accompanying citation to explain. Most odd. It was almost as though he were being rewarded for the accident. He took a swallow of wine and dabbed his mustache with care, wondering uneasily whether he would even dare wear the medal at court and what sort of looks he would get if he did.

In law he had been responsible for the safety of the prince--he was the officer. In practice Shadow had made all the decisions but those sorts of things could not be said. A commander must be a noble, naturally. He could not be expected to know everything, and he might well seek advice from the lowly born, but the prince had not even made the pretense of letting Ninomar do that. He had allowed the kid to give orders in public, and that had been very annoying. Still, it seemed that all was going to be well.

The duke lifted the copper jug from the hob and offered it around. Ninomar accepted a refill, Ukarres declined, and the courier was given one without asking. Sir Griorgi Rolsok was a tiny scrap of a thing, barely old enough to shave from the look of him, but he had set a new record from Ramo to Ninar Foan, even with nine stops on the way, and was obviously proud of it. He was also exhausted, and the duke was relentlessly plying him with drink beside the roaring fire. Very shortly the other three were going to get all the court gossip out of the kid. That was not difficult to figure out.

Ukarres was only pretending to drink, but the duke seemed to be doing so and holding it very well. Foan was a fine gentleman; Ninomar had come to like him very much. They were about the same age and both keen skymen, and it was a heady business to be a drinking buddy of the premier nobleman of the realm.

Before sitting down again, the duke tossed some more wood on the fire. "This is marvelous stuff, Ukarres," he said. "Where did you get it?"

"From the aerie," Ukarres said with amusement. "For years I have been scouring the Rand for firewood, and Vak has been hoarding it, apparently. When he cleaned up, he had it thrown over the side. I sent the lads out to pick up. Have you any idea what happens to a table when it drops that far? Some of it was halfway to Allaban. That junk pile had all sorts of..." He stopped and suddenly took a drink--and it looked like a real one.

Ninomar drank also. Of course the junk pile had been exonerated by the inquiry. The possibility of foul play had been ruled out completely. He had not been present in the aerie when the terrible incident occurred, so the duke had appointed him and the local bishop as commissioners; they had interviewed all the witnesses and proved beyond doubt that the affair was an accident. Their official report had already been sent off to Ramo on the last of the single birds.

"Time!" the duke said suddenly. All eyes looked to the table. There stood the great hourglass that was the master timekeeper for Ninar Foan, both castle and town, and beside it sat the three small hourglasses that every royal courier carried--and the sand was running out.

The duke reached for the big glass as it dropped its last grains and turned it over. The great bell of the castle rang: once...twice...

It was the start of third watch. "Bedtime, everyone!" the courier said with a giggle. He took another drink.

The other hourglasses emptied also, and the duke turned them. "Yes, we run a little fast," he said, frowning.

"Not enough to worry about, surely?" Ninomar asked.

"It mounts up," Ukarres observed. "When Sir Jion arrived, we were almost a whole day ahead of the court."

The duke rose and ceremoniously pulled the drapes, dimming the room. The firelight danced and flickered. It was curious to see so ancient a religious ceremony still being performed among these country folk; in Ramo people no longer bothered with such superstitions. Who knew how they originated, back in the mists of time? Whatever mists were. Whatever time was--now, there was a good subject for a drinking session. Ninomar took another swallow, and the duke lifted the big steaming copper jug from the hearth and politely topped up his tankard and Sir Griorgi's.

"How is Sir Jion?" the old man asked.

"I believe he has been sick," the courier said. "Haven't seen him around."

The duke had resumed his seat. He lifted a big roll of parchment. "You have proclaimed this all along the Rand, have you not, Sir Griorgi?" he said. "I may add it to the family archives, then? We have many similar."

"I am tired of hearing it," Griorgi said. "You can stuff it anywhere your ducal honor wishes, Your Grace."

Impudent young brat--they all laughed heartily.

The courier hiccuped, and that seemed to be a signal.

"I am a little confused," Ukarres said quietly. "When exactly did the terrible event occur?"

The courier blinked a few times and decided they were speaking to him. "Just after His Grace's first letter arrived."

"And what day was that?" Ukarres asked.

"That was the thirty-eighth, I think," Griorgi said.

The other men exchanged glances. "It took a few days to straighten things around, then?" the duke murmured. "Normally a new king is proclaimed at once, I thought."

This was what they wanted to hear, of course. "Well, it was a little confusing," the boy mumbled. He proceeded then to make it seem very confusing. "...and then the traitor striking down the king and abducting the queen...There were no precedents."

Ukarres chuckled. "It must have been absolute chaos."

"Some of the high officials were a trifle perturbed."

Ninomar started to giggle and stopped when he caught the duke's eye. Then they both laughed aloud. Tragic...terrible...but the confusion in the court...

Ukarres nodded to himself. "Getting back to the timing of the new king's proclamation," he said, "the duke's third letter reported that the search had been called off and that there was certainly no hope. But that message can hardly have arrived before you departed, so when you left there must still have been some doubt about the fate of Prince Vindax."

The boy tried to think that through.

"There is no doubt now, though?" he muttered.

"None at all. Prince Vindax is dead," the duke said.

"Ah!" Young Sir Griorgi bent over and picked up his pouch, almost falling from his settle. "I have some more documents, Your Grace."

So that was what the duke was after! The courier produced a bulky package, wrapped in black ribbon. The duke rose and almost snatched it.

"One for you, my lord," he said to the vice-marshal.

Ninomar took the document and examined the royal seal carefully, then broke it open. It was the missing citation, explaining his star. He squinted in the firelight. For diligence in searching for the body of...well, that was better. A little weak, though. He wondered uneasily if he had merely been given a bribe to make sure that he was on the right side.

But there was more. He looked up in surprise at the duke.

The duke was scowling at another parchment. "I am summoned to court, Ukarres," he said. "At my earliest convenience, to do homage to the new king."

"Your post is here!" Ukarres said sharply.

"The frontier is quiet, surely?" Ninomar muttered.

"It may not be so much longer," Ukarres replied cryptically. He and the duke were frowning about something. The courier was slumping on the settle, sliding silently into one corner, his eyes closing.

"And here," the keeper said, "a death warrant for the man hitherto known as Prince Shadow, convicted in absentia of high treason, the sentence to be carried out in accordance with the law of..." He read on for a while and then growled. "That belongs with the cooks' recipes!" He tossed the parchment onto the table with an expression of disgust.

It was very fortunate, thought Ninomar, that the man in question had taken the hint and drilled a hole in the sky. Not a bad kid, really. He had even had the tact to leave the fake orders which Ninomar had made for him--and had so quickly destroyed when he recovered them. He hoped that young Shadow would find a better life in Piatorra, if he had the sense to go that far. He should be there by now.

"And," the duke said, "a royal letter addressed to my daughter."

He stared at it thoughtfully and again exchanged glances with Ukarres.

Ninomar coughed politely. "I am instructed to escort Lady Elosa to court, Your Grace."

The duke took the orders from his hand without asking and read them through. His face grew grimmer than ever.

"Her mother is not invited also?" Ukarres asked.

"No," the duke said. "And the letter to me suggests that she is to remain and hold the castle."

Sir Griorgi was asleep, snoring. The duke leaned down, peered in the courier pouch, and took out a second package, this one wrapped with red ribbon.

Ukarres chuckled.

"These, I suppose," the duke of Foan said, "were to be delivered in the event that Vindax had been recovered and was alive?"

"A reasonable supposition," the old man said, grinning.

Both of them glanced at Ninomar, who smiled politely.

The duke laid the package on the table and opened it.

"Another for you, my lord."

The vice-marshal felt his hands shake as he opened it. He peered at the writing, finding it very hard to focus. Then it was removed from his hand.

"You had it upside down," the duke said. "Let's see...an order for you to conduct the man calling himself Prince Vindax to court at once, regardless of his physical condition. Mmm? Also to conduct myself. At once. Interesting. I think you would have earned your bauble, my lord. Yes, here is the citation for it. Postdated, this one, I see. You would have had to deliver the goods."

Ninomar took a long drink, emptying the tankard.

"And a summons for me," the duke said. "To come at once, though--no mention of convenience. No mention of Elosa. And a proclamation of bastardy against the person calling himself Prince Vindax! Well, well!" He was almost as red as the unconscious courier now, flaming with anger. "It takes two to make a bastard, I understand. I wonder how the little punk's mother feels about this, if she knows. And here? A warrant, promoting Ensign Harl to flight commander!"

Ninomar was speechless.

"I wonder what he would have said? I think that young man's price might have been higher than flight commander." The duke glanced thoughtfully at the vice-marshal's chest.

Ninomar quietly tucked the Order of the Eagle, Second Class, inside the edge of his tunic, out of sight. Dukes should be humored when in this sort of mood.

Foan read on. "Ah! There's more. Sir Hindrin Harl and his wife have been released from jail." He looked thoughtfully at Ukarres.

"Aurolron said that his background was relevant," the old man wheezed. "It would be Schagarn he was covering, I should guess. Both, maybe. The new king would prefer willing witnesses?"

The duke frowned angrily. It was all well above Ninomar's head, but he was not going to ask.

"The little creep has been busy," Ukarres remarked, probably referring to his liege lord, King Jarkadon X of Rantorra.

"Very." The duke bundled up the second group of documents and stuffed them back in the courier's pouch. "We'll let this lad worry about these, I think. They are irrelevant, as the prince is dead."

He sat down and reached for the copper jug. "Now, Ukarres, do I run to court like a whistled dog? Or do lock up my daughter and tell the king to--" He stopped. "Well?"

There was a thoughtful silence. Ninomar remembered that he had orders to escort Elosa and began to sweat even harder than before.

"Aurolron is gone," Ukarres said. "How long until they find out?"

Who?

"He will not know of that," the duke said. "Vindax did not. Do I write or dare I go in person and warn him?"

"He will not believe," Ukarres said. "It will be Schagarn all over again."

What? Where?

The door began to open even as someone knocked on it. Vak Vonimor came bursting in, panting, his straggly gray hair awry, his shirt half out of his belt. He was too out of breath to speak and just stood there, gasping, pointing behind him.

Ninomar felt suddenly less drunk.

"Well?" the duke demanded.

"Shadow..." Vonimor said.

Ninomar laid down his tankard. If Shadow had not gone to Piatorra...if Shadow had returned...

"He's back?" Foan asked, frowning.

Vonimor nodded. "Up in the aerie...wants to speak to you...and Vice-Marshal..."

"Then invite him here," the duke said, folding his arms and crossing his ankles. "I am not summoned to my own aerie."

The eagler shook his head. "I did, Your Grace. He won't come."

Foan scowled. "Bring him."

"I daren't...I can't..." A few more pants, and Vonimor said what Ninomar had been dreading. "He says he has a message from the prince."

Halfway to the aerie, Lord Ninomar concluded that he should properly have waited for the duke to move first, but it was a little late by then. Word had spread throughout the castle, and there seemed to be runners everywhere. He passed the duchess, tall and bundled in a burgundy robe with her gray hair flying loose; he was himself passed by Lady Elosa, still wearing the pink dress she had worn at dinner but with her black hair also unfastened and streaming behind her.

He went up all those hundreds of steps faster than he had run up an aerie since he was a cadet.

If the prince was alive, then there were two claimants to the throne...a proclamation of bastardy against one, which meant high treason against the queen dowager...and he had orders to find Vindax and take him to Ramo...and also orders which effectively told him to arrest the duke of Foan also and take him...He ran.

He emerged gasping and panting in the brilliant sunlight, blinked, and pushed past a line of silent men. And stopped--like them, frozen.

There, certainly, was Shadow.

He was outside the bars--in fact, he was standing on the perching wall, with no safety belt visible, in a gap between the birds, but he was at one side of the gap, right next to Lady Elosa's silver, and he was keeping his balance by leaning a hand against her wing.She was unhooded!

Ninomar felt suddenly sick.

The bird had turned her head to watch the crowd gathering within the cage and was apparently ignoring the vulnerable human being beside her. He looked tiny in comparison; she towered over him.

A line of giant eagles and one tiny man. No hood?

It was impossible--Shadow's head should be inside her crop already.

"Good sky to you, Vice-Marshal," Shadow said. "I see you have a new pretty." The star had fallen out of the tunic.

Ninomar was beyond speech. He could only pant and gape at this miracle. He heard more feet on the stairs behind him.

Shadow was on the darkward side of the aerie, so the sun was shining through on him. He had unfastened the front of his flying suit, and his bony chest was shiny with sweat, but that must be from the heat of the sun only. He was showing no other sign of fear in spite of the terrible danger of his position. He held his helmet in his free hand, and he had a bandage over one ear. There were healing scars on his face, and that face held something that had not been there before: a hardness or wariness. It was not fear. It was perhaps anger or the stain of an ordeal.

Even if the bird did not bite his head off, she could topple him backward off that wall with the slightest movement. Ninomar thought of the drop and shuddered. Ukarres had talked of a table smashed halfway to Allaban.

There was something odd about that flying suit: some object fastened to the back of it and thick straps dangling down the front. Ninomar wondered vaguely what they were for, but mostly he was waiting for that eagle to strike.

The duke had pushed in beside him, and two gasping footmen were setting down Ukarres.

"Come off there!" Ninomar said quietly, not able or daring to shout. "You're out of your mind."

"I prefer to remain, Vice-Marshal," Shadow said. "Thank you." In his brown flying suit he seemed to glow against the dark sky behind him.

"Obviously you have been to Allaban," Ukarres said calmly. Having been carried, he was the only one not out of breath.

"Obviously," Shadow said. "I understand, Keeper, that King Aurolron is dead."

The duke nodded. The stairs were quiet now, but the entire population of the castle must be crowded in behind him, every one tongue-tied.

"He was murdered by King Shadow."

"That story I deem worthy of careful review," Shadow said. "God save King Vindax!"

There was silence.

"I was told you brought a message from...Vindax," the duke said.

Shadow nodded toward one side of the group. "Tuy Rorin has it."

The groom edged sideways toward the duke, unable to take his eyes off Shadow. He held out a parchment. The duke snatched it.

"This should be discussed in private. Come down to my study. I promise you safe conduct."

The younger man shook his head angrily. "Your hospitality is flawed, Keeper. I stay here. Please read that out; it concerns the vice-marshal, also--and everybody, I suppose. I can quote it from memory, if you prefer."

The duke hesitated. "Very well." He raised his voice. "I shall read this document, but you will all understand that I am merely reading it and not making any judgment on it. Whatever it is, it may be total rubbish and a forgery. I quote:

"'Crown Prince Vindax of Rantorra to his cousin, the duke of Foan, etc., and to whomever else it may concern: Greetings. Know that I am alive and in good hands, although I have suffered serious injury from the...'" His voice trailed off.

"Read it, Keeper!" Shadow said. "Or I shall tell them what it says anyway."

The duke glared at him briefly and then continued. "'...serious injury from the attempt on my life, made by a person known to you. Please forward this letter to my royal parents at once, so that their worries may be relieved, and see to it that the would-be assassin is brought to justice. I shall remain here until I am well enough to travel, but this may be a hectoday or longer. I have been assured by the persons exercising authority here that no constraint will be put upon me. I am also assured by them that I shall not be required to recognize in any way their status, nor abrogate nor diminish in any fashion the claims of my mother or my father or ultimately of myself as their heir, in Allaban. Sealed by my hand in Allaban, this nine thousand two hundred and fifty-third day of the reign of Aurolron XX. Vindax P.'"

"God save King Vindax!" Shadow said again, quietly, and again there was silence.

"This proves nothing!" the duke snapped, crumpling the parchment.

"It is his signet," Shadow replied. "At least it proves that I found him. Or his body. Right?"

Ninomar took the crumpled ball from the duke and straightened it. "It is the correct signet," he said.

"I have permission to take a person designated by you to Allaban to meet the prince, the king now," Shadow said. "He will be returned safely within four days and will confirm that Vindax is alive, although still very ill."

"How do you propose to get by the wilds on Eagle Dome?" Ninomar demanded.

"I came that way," Shadow said. "They will be no problem. You agree, Keeper?"

Vonimor suddenly bellowed, "That Karaman! I told you in Schagarn--"

"Silence!" the duke roared.

"I know about Schagarn, Keeper," Shadow said. For the first time his cold expression softened, almost into a smile. "It is suddenly very relevant, isn't it?"

He stood there, glowing against the sky, and it seemed that the whole audience was still holding its breath. Why did the bird not attack him?

Ninomar took a step forward. "King Jarkadon has been proclaimed. He has issued a declaration--"

"Silence!" the duke roared again.

"With respect, Your Grace," Ninomar said firmly, wondering how much of this sudden courage was from the lingering effects of the wine, "these are public matters. Very well! I have orders which do not recognize the status of Vindax as crown prince--"

"Or as a prince at all, I suppose?" Shadow interrupted. A quiet sigh went around the whole group.

"I have orders to take that person to Ramo."

"Go ahead and try," Shadow said.

"I also have, downstairs, a promotion for Ensign Sald Harl to the rank of flight commander."

The lone young man's face turned furious red in the sunlight. "Take that to Ramo and stuff it in his royal ear!"

"Shadow," the duke said quietly, "there is more. King Aurolron had apparently put your parents in the cells. King Jarkadon has released them."

Shadow's eyes narrowed, and he stiffened. "That would be because of you, Keeper, I suppose?" he said.

"I don't know," the duke said.

"How do you feel about tyrants who use family members as hostages?" Shadow demanded bitterly. "If you are suggesting that I should trust Jarkadon, then I can only say that I knew him when he was a small boy. He was a little turd then, and he is a bigger turd now. You know what his father said about him."

Ninomar gulped at such treason.

"Ukarres!" the duke roared, spinning around. "Did you show him that letter?"

"Yes, he did," Shadow said. "You knew Aurolron--he always offered the small end of the egg."

There appeared to be a standoff. IceFire turned her head to look at something, and the spectators stiffened, but nothing more happened. The other birds were absolutely still, eerily so.

The duke stepped forward beside Ninomar. "Shadow," he said, "leave personalities out of this. We have matters of very grave import here. You say you know about Schagarn. I think that others do not. I also am summoned to court, and I would want to disclose those hidden things to His Majesty. Would you agree to allow me a hectoday to go to Ramo and return, without any change in the present status?"

Ninomar was getting very tired of hearing about this Schagarn and of not hearing about it.

Shadow shook his head. "l do not meddle in politics, Keeper, and I have no authority to do so. I will give you my personal opinion, though: Nothing is likely to happen within the next hectoday. But that is only my opinion, and it carries no weight."

"The king should know," the duke said.

"But who is the king?" Shadow asked. "You are the authority on the Rand. Do I return and tell King Vindax that he has your loyalty? Or do you support the usurper, Jarkadon?"

Nicely put, Ninomar thought. And he himself must make that decision also, on behalf of the few royal troopers he had with him. If his choice was not the same as the duke's, then he was going to be in the castle dungeon before three bells.

"I think I need time to consider," the duke said. "Again I offer you my hospitality, upon the honor of my house."

"And again I decline it. Decide."

The duke had gone very pale, and Ninomar suspected that he was not much better himself. Jarkadon's two sets of orders showed that news of his brother's survival would not provoke an abdication.

"You are accusing me of conniving in an attempt to murder Vindax," the keeper said at last. "Yet you want me to do homage to him? Would he accept it?"

Now it was Shadow who hesitated. "We did not know of the king's death," he admitted. He shrugged. "It makes no difference. Vindax agrees that you were not privy to the plot, so he will accept your fealty. But the assassin must be punished--he is adamant on that."

Now--and much too late, he knew--Ninomar realized that they were discussing Elosa. After NailBiter launched, her bird had been next to the prince's. He and the bishop had never even considered Elosa. A child? But she could have done it, and the prince could have seen, albeit too late to stop his launch. The official inquiry had failed, then, and there was another problem.

The duke was silent, and his shaded face was visibly running sweat. If he supported Jarkadon, then the proclamation of bastardy effectively named him as a traitor for fathering Vindax and he must turn against his own son as a pretender. If he supported Vindax, then his daughter was a would-be assassin and therefore a traitor and he would also be in rebellion against the established court.

So the duke must choose between son and daughter. And if Vindax was not his son--and the duke at least could not be in doubt--then he was certainly the true king, but the duke's daughter must be sacrificed...while if Vindax was truly his son, then he was still a traitor and he and the queen dowager could suffer traitors' deaths, regardless of who was on the throne...Ninomar's head was spinning.

"Go back to your Vindax," the duke said, "and ask a pardon. Bring it here--"

"No!" Shadow said. "Kneel now, here, before me, and pledge your unconditional allegiance to King Vindax VII, or I return and tell him that you are in league with the usurper Jarkadon."

This was a commoner speaking to the premier noble?

"Then your Vindax will remain forever an exile in Allaban!"

"What was done at Schagarn is ended," Shadow replied quietly. "What if Vindax joins forces with the republic to recover his throne? You threaten war, Keeper? Kneel and swear!"

The duke moved as fast as an eagle. Two steps, and he had snatched a bow from one tub and an arrow from another and the bow was drawn and the feather at his eye before Ninomar knew what was happening.

But Shadow had moved also--he spun around and leaped out into space and was gone, as the arrow passed where he had been.

Women and men screamed in unison.

Deliberately, IceFire hunched and launched and vanished; Ninomar had not noticed that she had been unshackled. Elosa wailed loudly.

But Shadow? Ninomar thought of that terrible drop and the smashed table, and he suddenly slid to his knees and vomited up great quantities of mulled wine. When he had recovered, people were streaming down the stairs and a few others were having hysterics and yet others had hooded the birds and slipped between them to peer over the edge and look down into the darkness at the body.

"Well, that is the end of him," he said aloud. "He must have been completely crazy all along, and the prince is dead."

There was a dry wheeze behind him. "He was not crazy," Ukarres said. "He has been to Allaban. That was not the end of him."

After a moment he added, "But it may be the end of us."

Chapter 13

ON the day after he arrived at Allaban, Shadow had flown with Karaman to Femie, there to meet his prince.

He had been warned, but no warning could have fully prepared him. Karaman had not thought to mention the nauseating stench of gangrene, or the madness that days of unbearable agony put into a man's eyes, or the flatness of the bandages on a face whose nose had been killed by frostbite and so amputated. There was irony in that. Vindax would not look like the duke of Foan now, he would not look like anyone.

There was more horrible irony. His hands were bandaged stumps, and the doctors thought the rest of the fingers would have to go also, but he had lost no toes. So he had feet but no real hands; yet his arms were uninjured and his legs paralyzed. Sky sickness was caused by bubbles in the blood, Karaman said, quoting the ancient texts. At some point in her frenzy WindStriker had plunged down almost to the desert floor, to air of great pressure. Then she must have soared high again. Eagles could do that; men could not. The return to the depths at hot, suffocating Femie had not been made in time to prevent the damage.

The doctors thought that the patient might live but were still not sure.

Shadow stared in silence at the bundled horror on the bed and said a prayer that Vindax might die. Ukarres had indeed been lucky.

But honor required that he speak the prince's name, and the eyes opened in the gap left for them within the bandages. They stared for a long time blankly, as though there were no mind behind them. Then the lips twisted into a smile.

"I knew you would come," Vindax whispered. After that, Shadow was looking through tears and did not need to see the details.

Karaman cut the visit short; he made the return journey slowly, stopping frequently at isolated farmhouses to chat with old friends. He introduced "Citizen Shadow" to innumerable people, all of whom offered food and hospitality and wanted to reminisce about old times, it was not mere socializing, he assured Shadow--a gradual ascent was more wisdom from the ancient texts. Shadow was too shocked and depressed to care.

These easy-living rural folk rang no watch bells, taking their time undivided. When Karaman reached home with Shadow, they sat on the porch, Karaman in his ancient rocker, Shadow slumped on the couch. His body was telling him that it was time for bed, yet between him and the view of fields and sunlit orchards glimmered that anonymous bandaged head and its mad eyes, and he doubted that he would ever sleep again.

Karaman disappeared briefly and came back with two mugs and a few large crocks. "We make an excellent cider here," he suggested.

"I'll get drunk," Shadow growled.

Karaman chuckled. "That was what I said."

So they sat and quaffed cider and talked, and Karaman told of many things which should have been unbelievable and were somehow not when wrapped in his gentle, casual good humor. Shadow drank three mugfuls to each of Karaman's and eventually spoke of politics and attempted murder and of Vindax. The generation-long silence which had hung over Eagle Dome was breached, and slowly the nightmare vision standing guard in his mind became blurred.

"When was the prince born?" Karaman asked.

"Why?" Shadow said cautiously.

The old eyes twinkled in their wrinkles as the old man saw that Shadow was not quite drunk enough to lose all discretion. "Just nosy. He looks so like the duke."

"He did!" Shadow said. "But the duke says he never met you."

"Then call one of us a liar," Karaman replied. "Me, by choice--it would be safer. Aurolron must have noticed. I wonder why he did not disown the prince? Not in character!"

"He never met the duke," Shadow said, wondering if that was a lie also, thinking of that strange letter Ukarres had shown him.

Karaman smiled. "Once I spent several days with both of them together. Certainly call me a liar before you try it on the king."

A meeting between the king and the rebel? Fuzzily Shadow pondered that. It must have been a very well-kept secret. Yet he could believe this threadbare, patched old man more easily than Aurolron or his premier noble.

"Where? At Ninar Foan? On the Rand?"

Karaman shook his head, holding out the cider crock once more. "On the Range, at a little place called Schagarn."

"I know it," Shadow said, surprised. "One of the royal manors. He used it as a hunting lodge before he gave up flying."

"Right," Karaman said. The two men stared out over the hills for a while, waiting on each other to speak.

"Was the queen there?" Shadow asked at last. He saw the twinkle return to Karaman's eyes.

"No. We're a pair of old gossips, friend Shadow."

Shadow giggled drunkenly, then became serious. "So far as Vindax knows, it was not possible for the duke to have fathered him. He was born on 1374."

There was a long silence, then Karaman said, "I would not say this to anyone else, but you have earned his confidence and I shall give you mine. Yes, it was possible. Just. 1170 or thereabouts."

So the mystery was solved, here in far-off Allaban.

Karaman sighed. "It was my fault, I suppose, or at least I was the excuse."

"She betrayed her husband and her king at Schagarn?"

"Not there, but nearby. And I find it hard to think of it as a betrayal, Shadow. I suppose I am a romantic, or was then. They were a tragic couple. He was noble, she was royal. He was handsome, she was beautiful beyond legend. They were as much in love as two human beings can be, like eagles, yet doomed to have only a few precious hours together and then be forever parted.

"It was supposed to be a political meeting. Her father had just died, and she claimed to be queen of Allaban, so I had asked for her to be included. Aurolron had refused, saying he would speak for her as husband and as overlord. I had agreed to that. But after our business was over, after the king had left Schagarn and we were supposed to be leaving at first watch, Foan took me aside and said he had made arrangements. I said it did not matter now; he insisted, and I suppose I guessed. There were many guards, you can be sure, but they were watching the aerie and the stables. The two of us slipped away on bicycles to another house, not far off."

Shadow's knuckles were white as he gripped the cider mug, his alcoholic haze vanished like a burned leaf.

"There was no one else there except our host," Karaman said, gazing away into space and time. "No servants around. She gave me her word on the treaty without taking her eyes off Foan. The host tactfully suggested that he and I take a stroll. Soon I said I was weary and wanted to rest before our long journey began. Would he take me back to Schagarn? He did, and when we all arose at three bells, the duke was back also. So I suppose it was my fault. I suppose it happened, having seen the prince. Was I being deliberately nasty to Aurolron, I wonder?"

"Where was this exactly?" Shadow demanded.

"Oh, a lovely spot," Karaman sighed. "One of the old, old castles, fallen into humble straits as a local manor house. Set in a wooded dell with a tiny pond in front of it...ivy and gables and wild flowers...a storybook couple in a storybook setting. No, it could not have been betrayal. It was love, and surely love can justify itself."

The king's letter had said:his background is relevant.The king knew, then, and had been telling the duke that he knew.I think you owe me this.

"There is a dove cote and a rose tree in the courtyard?" Shadow asked. "The doves sit on the gables and purr?"

Karaman turned to stare at the tears on Shadow's face. "You know it?"

"Hiando Keep," Shadow said. "I also was conceived there."

And at Allaban there was Potro, who was the youngest of Karaman's many grandchildren, a collection of bones aged around three kilodays, wearing nothing but skimpy shorts and burned almost black by the sun, his hair bleached white and flying loose in a comic parody of his grandfather's. He whirled everywhere around the homestead without pause like a young eagle himself, flashing teeth and filling the air with impudence and laughter.

He was, Karaman said, as good a bird speaker as any, and the very day Shadow arrived, after he had been tended and rested and fed, Karaman led him out to sit on the grass under the trees. Then the old man seemed to snatch Potro out of the sky and sent him over to give Shadow a lesson.

"Right!" Potro said, sitting down cross-legged. "Eight points on a bird's comb, okay?" And he put his hands together and held up a row of skinny fingers, with his thumbs folded down.

"Right."

"You don't happen to play the flute do you?" Potro asked.

"Not that I recall."

"Pity. I'm teaching a flute player, and he finds it easier." The words poured out, as they spilled from the birds themselves. "So each point on the comb can be bent left or right or straight up, right? That's as good as we can do. I mean the birds can do sort of in between, but that's more shade of meaning, if you know what I mean, like being funny or so on. I can read a little of it, but even I can't do it much.

"So our fingers won't bend backward. We have to do straight for left and a little bent for straight up and bent a lot for right. Try that. Gawrn, you're stiff! So eight points for a word, a one-syllable word. This means 'egg.'" And he arranged eight fingers.

Shadow muttered under his breath and let his fingers be adjusted.

"Of course they don't hold it like that--they run it from front to back, and then the next word is starting before they've finished, the last one. Back to front for a question. And that's one-syllable words. Now, the word for 'water' has three syllables: this, this, and then this."

"You're too fast for me."

"That'sslow!" Potro said. "Way slow! I mean, they have to learn to slow down; your NailBiter is too fast for me yet, and even Gramps can hardly get what he says. He'll learn. But when you came over the pass, he'd probably been talking to the wilds before you even saw them. And in a minute or two, he'd have told them who he was and you were, and where you'd come from and where you were going and all about himself back to the egg. They can say more in a minute or two than we can talk in a day--If they want to, of course. They prefer to sing about it. Like they make up great long, long poems, and then they can take a whole day to say what a pretty hill that is, or something. Gabby, they are, but gawrn, can they go when they want to!"

He reached over to Shadow's already cramped hands.

"Take them two at a time. Two fingers straight: that'sBa.Bend the first one, that'sBe.Bend it more, that'sBo.Now first finger straight and bend the second, that'sNa.Nine of them:Ba, Be, Bo, Na, Ne, No, Sa, Se, So.So you take the eight two at a time makes four--right? and nine ways to make the two. That word for 'egg' I showed you...no, like this...that'sSaneNEso.'Egg' isSaneNEso!"

"Why? I mean, why theBostuff?"

Potro looked impatient. "Because people remember sounds, not shapes. So Gramps says and he invented this.SaneNEsois easier to remember than what you're looking at. So you learn the sounds and then make the shapes, or watch the shapes the birds make and remember the sounds and what they mean. It's easy once you get the hang of it. That water word, remember this? That'sBoboNEsa-beseSEna-sosoNAbo."

"I don't suppose you could just teach the eagles to read, could you?" Shadow asked.

The twig arms were folded over the wickerwork chest. "You want this lesson or don't you?"

"Yes, please."

"Then don't be silly. B'sides, how would they write back? Now let's hear it:Ba, Be, Bo, Na, Ne, No, Sa, Se, So."

"Ba, Be, Bo, Na, Ne, Se...Sa..." said Shadow.

"No!Ba, Be, Bo, Na, Ne, No, Sa, Se, So."

Five minutes later Potro jumped up. "That's the first lesson. I'll just confuse you if I do more. You learn the sounds and the shapes and we'll start words tomorrow. And work those fingers; they're really bad. Worst I've seen. 'Scuse me."

He glanced up and flickered his hands at the sky, then ran down to the perching wall and scrambled on top of it. A second later a huge feathered shape swooped past him and he was gone. Shadow stifled a cry and then relaxed as he saw the bird soaring away, one foot down with Potro sitting on it, holding on to the leg, his own skinny legs sticking out in front. In a few minutes bird and friend had vanished into the sky.

And at Allaban most of all there was little wizened Karaman himself. Retired farmer, he said, and even more retired priest, but he was father confessor to the whole country. Everyone came to consult him: the politicians and the priests and the neighbors and the birds. He had no title and no office, and yet nothing seemed to be decided without him. His quiet smile was everywhere and for everyone, calm and understanding. "A quiet, earthy man," Ukarres had called him, and Ukarres had known him much better than he had implied.

But let him start talking about the birds and then the zeal showed. Shadow met it first on his thirteenth day in Allaban. The two of them and a few others were sitting on Karaman's porch, drinking cider and planning Shadow's trip to Ninar Foan. A couple of Karaman's older grandsons were going to accompany him as translators, for Shadow had not yet progressed far in bird talk. Rescuing IceFire was going to be easy, they agreed. They could stay out of sight in the hills until the eagles reported that there were no men in the aerie, then just go and get her--she already knew they were coming.

Delivering Vindax's letter would be trickier. If Ukarres or Elosa--or even the duke himself--got hold of it, then it might vanish without trace. Ninomar would not suppress it, nor would the countess, but they might be gone already, and obviously accidents could happen to anyone around Ninar Foan. Shadow would have to make sure that many people knew about that letter. That meant attracting attention--and attention meant danger.

It was Karaman himself who suggested that Shadow stand on the perching wall beside IceFire. That would impress! And have NailBiter hover in the updraft below, he said. If Shadow had to leave in a hurry, NailBiter could catch his sling in midair.

Shadow gulped. Was an eagle capable of that? he asked.

He provoked an explosion. The quiet old man suddenly became the prophet, words pouring from him as he stamped up and down the porch. From the expressions on the others' faces, they had heard it all many times before, but it was new to Shadow--this was the rhetoric that had toppled the throne of Allaban.

"Capable? They are as smart as you are, if not smarter! Stop thinking of them as animals! They are people!

"It is their world, not ours! You have only to look--they were made for it and we are not. They ruled it and enjoyed it untrammeled until men came.

"How could they have understood? They saw us come and start killing their game, their food. At first there would be little of that, and perhaps at first they did not mind, for they are generous. But then men started putting up fences and sowing crops, and there was no more game there. And men started breeding livestock! How could the birds have known that those were property? They have no property except their eggs. They could not have understood that those beasts were not there for the taking like all others. They cannot hear our words; men did not see that their combs were speaking. The fault was ours, for they have no hearing, but we have sight. But neither understood, and it was war.

"Then men discovered that a hooded bird is helpless. How? Perhaps that was wisdom from the Holy Ark. Perhaps it was just a lucky chance discovery--lucky for men.

"They had soared the whole world--an eagle can stay aloft for days, did you know that? Male and female together, singing of their joy and of beauty. There are many things you cannot talk about with an eagle: unrequited love, or interior decorating, or music, or cooking, or taxes. They think our minds unbearably cluttered. But try beauty! Try philosophy! Honor...duty...joy...loyalty...logic! And they have more than a hundred different words for 'wind'--they taste the wind, play in it, dance in it, use it. They are spirits of the air itself. We chained them to the ground!

"They use time as we do not. They are at once incredibly faster than we are and incredibly slower. Your NailBiter and his mate probably chose each other within a few minutes of first sight--and they will still be bonded when your grandchildren are old. They can pass information a hundred times faster than we do, yet they can take days to discuss a single kill. They count to eight--eight points on a comb--and it is their pride to have eight great-grandchildren, neither more nor less. But they have insights into mathematics that we cannot comprehend, into space and time.

"But we hooded them, blinded them! They soared no more. A captive bird lives hooded or blinkered or chained...or doing what a rider tells it. Their captivity is more cruel than we impose on our fellows in dungeons, for they can see and talk with their free brethren and yet may never join them.

"Their cawking is sacred to them, yet we pen male and female together and so force our choice upon them. We feed them drugs to make them breed, for sex is not a drive with them as it is with us--copulation is merely a deliberate act of child making, as we might build a house. They think us insane about mating, yet it is a private thing to them also, and we give them no solitude.

"We treat them as beasts, and they are people, and we made them slaves."

The cracked old voice rose to a shout.

"And our punishment was to be made slaves ourselves!

"Few men could ride the birds. They beat back the wilds and became the protectors. They demanded a price for that protection: food and housing and service.

"Fair enough, perhaps, at first! But gradually they raised that price, and a man on foot is no match for one on a bird, so the skymen came to rule all the rest. The protectors became the leaders, and the leaders the lords. Men always seek to rule one another. Birds do not.

"We encouraged the skymen to enslave the bird, and then they used them to enslave us!

"And it served us damn well right!"

Chapter 14

JARKADON left King Shadow and the guards indoors and walked out alone across the terrace to where his mother was sitting. She seemed about half the size he remembered, a black elf under a bell tree, staring at nothing across the terraces and parks. Her hair had been cleansed of dye and was now starkly white, her small face like dried bone.

"Good sky to you, Mother," he remarked, pulling up a chair.

She turned and looked at him for a moment, glancing at the clump of papers he held in his hands. "And to you, Son."

"Still moping? You should at least keep your hands busy--sew, perhaps. Or have someone read to you. This just sitting isn't good for you."

"Perhaps I could take anatomy lessons," she said quietly, and went back to watching the horizon again.

He suppressed irritation and made himself comfortable. "I came to ask you for something."

"Why else? I am allowed no social calls."

"Mother!" he said as patiently as he could. "Pay homage to me as everyone else has and your indisposition can end at once."

She did not answer.

He sighed. "I want you to tell me about Schagarn."

That startled her, and her eyes came around quickly. "I was never at Schagarn."

"No, you were at Kollinor. Most of the time."

She frowned and then shook her head. "Your father painted the kingdom with blood to keep Schagarn secret. Ask elsewhere."

He shrugged. "I have news of Vindax."

"What! What news?"

"You will tell me about Schagarn, then?"

Her lip rose in contempt. "Very well. What I can. When did you hear?"

"Two days ago. He is alive."

She covered her face and seemed to pray.

"Apparently. I have a letter supposedly dictated by him, with his signet. So at least his body has been found, and Foan seems to think it is genuine. Here, read it."

"You read it to me," she said. He read it.

She sat for a long time and then said, "So who did that terrible thing?"

He watched her carefully. "Ninomar still thinks it was an accident; but if it was deliberate, then the duke's daughter, Elosa."

Then she wept while he waited impatiently.

She rubbed her cheeks with the back of her hand. "So now you will abdicate and become regent?"

He did not want to annoy her, but he could not help laughing. "Mother! You know me better than that. Foan is burning feathers on his way here. Worried about rebels--and Schagarn. The news of my dear half brother will not be released until the duke's face is available. Just in case of arguments."

She looked frightened. "If you bastardize your brother, then I suppose you do to me what you did to King Shadow?"

"Quite impossible," he said cheerfully. "You wouldn't last nearly long enough for all those things. He did very well, didn't he? Much tougher than he looked. I enjoyed that." He put a hand on her arm. "Mother! I know I have faults, but I'm not the first king of Rantorra to succeed through violence. Yes, some of my friends get a little out of hand sometimes when we are partying, but you are my mother. Even your naughty son has his standards. You are quite safe, I promise you."

She was not convinced. "Your father wasn't."

"He was going to disown me. We'll talk about that later. First Schagarn. What was it all about?"

She turned and spoke to the distant sky again. "Alvo rescued us from Allaban, and the rebels took over. I was called to court, ordered to marry your father--you know all that. We thought Karaman would attack Rantorra next, and your father was preparing for war. Then Karaman made an offer, a truce. Alvo said he thought that Karaman could be trusted to keep his word. He brought him leftward along the Rand under safe conduct, and your father met with him at Schagarn. They agreed that there would be a truce, to last for your father's lifetime--no penetration past Eagle Dome by either side. That was all."

He wondered if he could trust her. "There is no record of a treaty."

"Of course not. Kings do not treat with rebels."

He thought about that. "Why so much secrecy?"

"Kings do not treat with rebels," she repeated. She was hiding something more.

"And Father had a very selective memory for verbal agreements," he said, "so that would be part of it. But it's not enough. You are right about the blood--there are no witnesses left. And a truce could have been made by letter. Why a meeting?"

"Ask Alvo when he gets here," she said.

"No!" he shouted. She jumped. "I want to know now!" he said.

She sighed. "I suppose you should. The history books are faked, too, about Allaban. You think that the rebels were skymen? You think Karaman was a warrior? He wasn't. He was a priest, a sweet little man. There were no skymen on the other side, only farmers and priests and tradesmen. And eagles."

"You're joking!"

"No," she said. "It wasn't a rebellion; it was a religious crusade, preached by Karman." She swung around and looked at him fully for the first time. "The eagles are intelligent!"

"Well, yes..."

"Not smart! Intelligent. Like people. Karaman had learned their language. Most of the fighting was done by the birds alone, without riders."

Jarkadon started to laugh and then saw that she was serious.

"Have you ever tried flying a whole day on a blinkered bird?" she snapped. "While trying to fend off attack? That was how we escaped--our own mounts were fighting against us. Many fled the palace; very few of us made it to Ninar Foan.'"

Her women had told him that this was one of her good days. She had seemed to be recovering her wits. But this?

She guessed his thoughts and smiled. "Just a mad old woman? But that was why the blood. 'My troopers can fight birds,' your father said, 'and they can fight men, but they cannot fight ideas.' He suppressed the heresy."

"Schagarn?"

"Schagarn most of all," she agreed. "Karaman was a much better rebel than negotiator. He offered the truce as the price of a meeting. If he could convince the king, then the eagles would be freed in Rantorra. Of course he proved his point--I knew it all from Allaban, and so did Alvo. He made the birds do tricks and pass messages, anything your father could ask for. There was no doubt at all."

"But Father was not convinced?"

"So he told Karaman, and the truce had been promised. Karaman went back to Allaban, and the birds stayed in the aeries."

"I should hope so!" Jarkadon Said.

"And your father put the far Rand into quarantine, to keep the secret. That is why so few people have traveled between Ramo and Ninar Foan."

"Until Vindax." Jarkadon snickered.

"You have ended the treaty," she said, and smiled at her hands in her lap.

"Shadow ended it! We had a trial--brief, but legal. But you were not at Schagarn."

She did not look at him. "No. I went to Kollinor. I had a great-aunt whom I had never met. Your father went to Schagarn to hunt--it was a good place for a secret meeting."

"He didn't trust you near dear Alvo?"

Color showed in her face. "Perhaps not. There were certainly many troopers around Kollinor."

"So Vindax is alive," he said. He rose and moved his chair around so that he was directly in front of her. Then he leaned back and sat with folded arms until she raised her eyes nervously to meet his. It took quite a while.

"You think I should abdicate?" he asked. "Well, Mother, if you will give me your sacred oath that you never met Alvo after you left Ninar Foan, then I shall accept Vindax as my king. Go ahead."

It should not have been possible for that dry-bone face to go paler, but it did. "You dare question my honor?" she asked pathetically.

He felt an enjoyable sense of triumph. "I don't need to. I checked the aerie records--as I suppose Father did when he at last became suspicious, long, long after. Kollinor is not far from Schagarn, and between them lies Hiando Keep, and one of your ladies was graciously allowed to fly home for third watch each night, for some kissing and cuddling. I suppose the guards grew accustomed to the habit. But on the last night of your stay she flew on WindStriker."

"That proves nothing!"

"Mother, Mother!" he said patiently. "I talked this over with Father, not long before King Shadow killed him. He said I had reminded him of something. That same day he had Sir Whatever-it-is Harl thrown in the dungeons and his wife, too. I suppose he would have put them to death, except that their son was Prince Shadow and his loyalty was needed--until Vindax returned."

He had been thinking that it was all a coincidence. Now he suddenly saw that it was not--Vindax had met Shadow, the Harls' son, in the palace school. The Harl woman was the connection--no real coincidence.

"Had Vindax come back from the Rand, then there would have been a new Prince Shadow and two fewer witnesses. Of course Father had found out eventually about your little escapade, but he hadn't realized until we spoke that Harl was another Schagarn witness also. He had met Foan on the Range, perhaps even Karaman."

She bent her head. "Yes."

He laughed. "I pulled them out of the cells and explained that their son was now guilty of treason, because of Vindax. A royal pardon loosens tongues like nothing else!"

She met his eye again momentarily. "A sealed pardon?"

"Certainly," he said. Of course there were faults in the wording; the pardon could be repudiated, but that was none of her business.

"So they will be willing witnesses if you decide to put Alvo and me on trial?" she asked, gazing at her own clasped hands.

"Another interesting possibility. But if the likeness is as strong as I hear, then Foan's face at court should be enough." He giggled. "So you went to Hiando Keep and met dear Alvo. Only once...day 1165...but once is enough, and I expect you did it more than once."

Now he had roused some spark in her. "You disgust me more every time I see you," she said. "Yes, we met at Hiando Keep. Yes, we were alone there for many hours. Whatever else I say, you will believe what you will believe. Fill in the details from your own experience."

"I can't guess," he said, grinning. "I prefer my women coy and reluctant, certainly not eager." That made her redden, as he had known it would. "What happened--afterward?"

Darkside was warm compared to her stare.

"The next day he went rightward on the Rand, and I came back to Ramo. And when your father and I were alone together, I asked him what had happened at Schagarn."

"Ah! I want to hear that."

She shook her head. "No, you don't! He said it was terrifying. He said he had won peace for himself only, for his lifetime. But..." She closed her eyes. "I think I remember his exact words. He said, 'But it will bring great trouble in future; great trouble for that son you carry, my darling.'"

Jarkadon's mouth opened and then closed.

"I was pregnant!" she shouted at him. "I had told the king. I told Alvo--he would have refused me otherwise. I was carrying Vindax when I went to Kollinor. That was day 1165, if you say so. And Vindax was born on 1374!"

"It is still possible," he mumbled. "He was a very small baby. You could have been mistaken."

"Yes, I could have been mistaken. It was very early. But I never doubted."

"Wishful thinking!" Jarkadon could feel his face burning. "I'm told it is an incredible likeness. Which is more probable: that you missed a thirty, or that remote cousinship could produce that?"

She turned away from him and spoke very calmly. "Neither is likely, but one happened. You make up your own mind--it won't change your plans."

"Vindax is Foan's bastard!" Jarkadon yelled, rising. "I am the rightful heir. Why did you and Father not disown him? Perhaps you weren't sure when he was a child, but later it must have been obvious to both of you!"

She stared up at him coldly. "I never believed. Perhaps your father did--he never said. And by the time the likeness became obvious, so had something else."

He knew he shouldn't, but he asked. "What?"

"That the alternative was unthinkable. And it was too late for me to have a third son."

He turned to go, and she laughed. He stopped in surprise.

"And the trouble Aurolron saw has not come to Vindax!" she said shrilly. "It is coming to you! I know him--he will demand his birthright. Train your birds, King Jarkadon! Sharpen your arrows! Prepare to defend your throne!"

Chapter 15

PALM trees and rice paddies and sugarcane...The hot countryside unfolded gently below Shadow's bare toes. Prepared for the heat at Pharmol, he was wearing only shorts and a loose shirt, and he sat at ease in his sling and mused on what a strange way this was to fly. Now he could not command--he must humbly ask. NailBiter had considered carefully and then consented, but his comb had changed color at once at the question, because he was still a very young eagle and not yet accustomed to being free to choose. And he enjoyed carrying his friend Shadow around and feeling important.

Shadow had changed color also. He was not as dark as Potro, but thirty or forty days in Allaban had browned him, except for the frost scars on his face. He thought he might even be putting on some fat for the first time in his life. That would not worry NailBiter. As Karaman had explained, eagles were not built to be ridden; girths constricted their lungs, and the weight distribution was all wrong. By choice and by instinct the birds carried their kills in their beaks or talons, and they found a human passenger in a sling a much lighter load than a rider on a saddle.

Soon it would again be time for the ordeal of facing Vindax and telling him how much better he was looking. The prince would not be deceived.

Off to the right was IceFire, with the tiny form of Karaman sitting below her beak. It was a great honor to carry him. Potro was just ahead, sitting on his mount's foot as usual, without a sling, but he had promised not to change feet in midair on this trip.

Now the house and outbuildings of Pharmol were coming up ahead, set in a rare array of open water: paddies and canals and even a reservoir which also served as a swimming pool. One reason Vindax had been brought there was to exercise in that pool. Potro's mount was sweeping in low over it, IceFire following, NailBiter soaring in high circles, waiting until the little perching wall was clear.

There was a distant roar from Karaman--Potro had dismounted in midair, vanishing in a cloud of spray as the bird soared away. After a heart-stopping moment he reappeared, paddling to shore. The young idiot could easily have broken his back, and his grandfather would have words for him when they met, but Shadow doubted that they would make much impression on Potro.

NailBiter spread his primaries and landed gently at IceFire's side on the worn stone wall of the perching. Then he bent his head, and Shadow's feet touched down also. Shadow stepped aside, smiling at Karaman, and as fast as he could he made the carefully rehearsed gestures which meant "thank you":Sase SEso noboSObo...Nine of them: "My kill is your kill."

NailBiter's comb flickered almost too quickly to follow, but Shadow caught the meaning: "chick signals." Baby talk--the bird was poking fun at him. Shadow laughed and raised his hand. The huge fierce eye met his, then the great head was lowered and he reached up to stroke the comb. Then he saw what was coming and braced himself.

Darkness and hot, rank breath...Shadow froze as the enormous beak enclosed his face and a black, slobbery tongue ran over his hair--NailBiter was stroking his human friend's comb. The experience, though nauseating, was oddly touching, but he was glad when it stopped.

He rubbed the bird's comb then, wiped his own sticky hair with an arm, and trotted down the steps to join Karaman. He was surprised at the expression on the wrinkled old face.

"What's wrong?"

"It's dangerous," Karaman muttered. "He means well, but you don't taste right. That can trigger a nasty reflex. I've warned him before not to do that--but you can't argue with an eagle."

The sun was gentle, padded by atmosphere, but the wind in their faces was a furnace breath, lip-cracking and harsh, drying sweat before it could even appear. They walked slowly together over to the buildings of Pharmol. The farm was an untidy scattering of unroofed sheds and fenced vegetable patches, clumps of fruit trees and junk piles. Chickens paced stiff-legged, studying the ground, but there was no larger livestock in sight.

Suddenly Shadow realized that he was alone with Karaman, and that was a rarity. "May I ask you a question?"

"Always. But you won't necessarily get an answer."

"About Schagarn," Shadow said. "Why did you agree to such a truce? You had won the battle of Allaban. Why not press on to conquer all of Rantorra?"

"Ah!" Karaman said, strolling head down, studying the ground like a chicken. "Well, you are not the first to ask. Some think that Aurolron outfoxed me."

"I didn't say--"

"No, that's all right. You should know. Quite simply, my young friend, I had no choice. I had no army left."

"No army?" Shadow repeated blankly.

The silver mane nodded. "The eagles had had enough. Fighting is horrible to them--bird against bird. They are not cowards, but war is not part of their thinking--and remember, they have much longer life spans to risk than we do. They drove the monarchy out of Allaban for us, and so freed their captive cousins in the aeries, but the cost was too high for them. They don't count very well, but they could see the bodies. There were many more dead birds than dead men."

Shadow had learned as much as he could about that ancient war, but he had never thought to consider it from the eagles' viewpoint. A skyman with a bow, against birds armed only with their talons--were he a trooper in such a battle, how would he fare? How many eagles would he be able to shoot before they got him? That would depend on how badly outnumbered he was and how well he was able to control his own mount.

And when the man was eventually killed or crippled, then his mount was helpless and died also, falling blind from the sky.

"I hadn't thought of it from their side," he admitted. "How do they feel now?"

"Still the same," Karaman said. "You are a new generation, but they are the same birds. Does your Vindax dream of returning to Ramo at the head of an army of wild eagles? I should have thought you would have known better by this time."

Shadow felt himself blush; though Karaman did not appear to notice. Yes, he had been thinking along those lines, and so was Vindax.

"How about one on one?" he asked. "Man-on-bird against man-and-bird?"

Karaman glanced at him cryptically and then dropped his gaze to the path once more. "The republic has very few troopers, and it has no pigeon-hunting aristocrats any more. Work it out."

Shadow visualized. "I would have an advantage in a sling," he said, "because my bird is more maneuverable, but I couldn't direct him with my hands full, and a sling sways around, so I suppose my archery would be no better. But if he gets me, then my bird escapes."

"If you get him, then you kill his bird also."

"True," Shadow admitted. "And he can shoot my bird, which is an easier target than I am, and I may hit his by accident. It's still no better than even, is it?"

Karaman nodded once more. "And being blind in the air is deepest hell for an eagle. They can imagine no greater torture, nor any worse way to die."

"So if Aurolron had spurned your truce and moved against the republic..."

"The birds would have stayed out. It would have been the skymen against the peasants again--no contest."

It had been Aurolron who had been outfoxed at Schagarn.

With a deep thunder of wings, NailBiter and IceFire passed overhead and settled on the ridge of the house to watch the coming proceedings.

The meeting place was a semicircle of chairs set out on grass in the shade of the house. Toys were scattered about. Vindax was there already, waiting--he did not like people to see him being carried around. He was talking to two small, naked children idling on swings which hung from a frame in the center of the lawn. They jumped down and fled at the sight of the newcomers.

Shadow put on his cheerful face and made the formal nod that Shadow should give his prince. But this was not the prince he had served--and failed? The old Vindax had gone. The new one was a poor fragment of a man, shrunken and crippled, paralyzed from the waist down, a noseless horror. He had lost ail his fingers and thumbs except two stumps, on one of which blazed the gold signet of the crown prince of Rantorra. Gone were the fine clothes of royalty; he wore only the brown homespuns of the peasants who supported him on their charity, and even those looked too big for him. Always Shadow wondered what Elosa would think if she were to see her handiwork--and what thoughts of Elosa burned inside that tragic ruin.

And was Elosa perhaps already floating among the silks and glitter of the court, even now betrothed to the reigning king?

Shadow took the chair on Vindax's right, moving it back slightly as though he were taking his proper place behind, but really so that he need not look too directly into that ravaged face.

"Shadow?" Vindax sighed. "I should not be calling you that now. Sald is your name, but you are the chief and only minister in my government, so you should have a title. Pick a name and I will make you a duke." That was at least an attempt at humor, which was a small improvement.

"I am honored, King," he replied. "But a coronet would not suit me, I think, and I do not feel like Sald Harl anymore. The eagles call me 'The-one-who-came-through-the-dark'--which isn't far off being called a shadow, is it? I think I shall stay with that name until we shed some light on Rantorra."

Karaman, having finished a feeble lecture to an unrepentant Potro, sat on the other side of Vindax. The three of them were looking darkward, across a wide grassy place. The grass that grew in the fixed shade of the house was not the same as the sunlit grass next to it. Beyond the little meadow was the pool, and trees and then fields.

And hills--hills stretching up endlessly, ridge after crumpled ridge, growing bluer and dimmer with distance, as far as the human eye could see into the sky. Beyond that stood the cobalt canopy of space, crenellated along its lower edge by faint icy peaks.

"Those are volcanoes, you know," Karaman remarked, making safely neutral conversation. "It is geothermal heat in this area which melts the ice of the High Rand, feeding springs and making Allaban so fertile." He was knowledgeable on almost any subject after a lifetime of studying the ancient lore. The conversation continued on impersonal topics.

The wind was a gentle torment, hot from its long fall off the High Rand, growing ever hotter as it sped past toward the deserts far below, but soon Shadow could see tiny specks drifting down that unlimited hillside--others coming to the meeting.

It took an hour or more for them all to assemble--farmers and merchants mostly, both women and men. Some of the men were enormous compared to Shadow and Karaman and Vindax, but the eagles could manage them in slings. There were introductions to "Citizen Vindax" and "Citizen Shadow," awkward attempts to shake hands with Vindax's stump, and courteous chat. Then they all settled into the chairs of the arc and waited.

NailBiter and IceFire were preening themselves on the roof; the birds had infinite patience. A few of the arrivals' mounts joined them, while the others returned to the sky. Shadow did not know whether that was a personal choice or whether juniors were not allowed to join in the meeting--the other half of the meeting, high in the air.

Finally the group was assembled.

An eagle swooped in across the reservoir, braked, then landed awkwardly on the fiat grass. It stalked forward a few paces and stopped, its great bulk seeming to complete the arc and turn it into a circle.

A full-face view of an eagle was still unnerving to Shadow, a sight he had rarely seen before he came to Allaban. This was an elderly female, brown with a few silver primaries, and on flat ground she stood twice as high as he would have done, glaring slowly around the circle. Her gaze finally settled on Karaman.

High above, not much more than spots in the sky, hung two or three dozen others. Far away beyond human sight there would be others watching, and others beyond them. The talk would be reported all across Allaban.

"Er...who speaks to the High Ones?" the president asked.

"Me!" Potro said eagerly, jumping forward into a circle of disapproving glances.

"All right," Karaman said, indulging him. "Sit here." The skinny form dropped cross-legged to the grass and faced toward the bird.

The president stood up. He was a lanky, bony, middle-aged spice merchant, shabby in his work clothes and smelling strongly of coffee and cinnamon.

"You want to do the talking, Ryl?" he asked hopefully.

Karaman shook his head. He had half twisted in his chair, as though not too much concerned in the affair at all, but he had stayed next to Vindax, which was a hopeful sign, worth many votes if there were to be voting. "You do fine, Jos," he said.

The president shuffled a toe at the ground, finally leaning back against the frame of the children's swing set and sticking his hands in his pockets. "Citizen Vindax," he mumbled. "When you arrived, we said that you were welcome to stay until you got better and then we'd send you back. With no conditions."

Porto's fingers were racing and the eagle's fierce glance was following them, her comb moving as she passed the speech up to the watchers in the sky. Karaman was unobtrusively watching the translation but seemed to be satisfied with it.

"Well, we meant that," the president said. "And that's still fine by us. But the death of...of your father...has made a bit of a difference. See, we got a letter from Ramo. Seems they still had a bird they took from Allaban, and they've sent this note to us and we've talked it over and it makes things a bit tricky, like."

He explained at length, but Shadow had been told earlier by Karaman. Jarkadon wanted "the pretender Vindax" turned over to him. In return, he would renew the truce his father had made, to last for the duration of his own reign.

"Well, we don't want a war," the president said apologetically.

That was obvious--it would be a rout, although perhaps Jarkadon did not know that. "But we don't fancy turning you over--under the circumstances."

He dried up for a while, looking around hopefully for volunteers and not finding any. "We thought if you wanted to stay, then maybe the king would settle for a letter from you," he said at last, uncomfortably. "Waiving any claims on his throne."

"And Allaban," someone muttered.

Vindax nodded and waited. Shadow wondered who would support him and feed him. The republic was not very good at raising taxes, even when the government voted them. Who would provide charity for a helpless cripple with no family?

But certainly these politicians would have thought about finance, and eventually the president glanced toward Shadow. "We think we could find a house and a bit of land for you and your friend," he said. "If that's what you want to do."

So Shadow would be peasant for two, would he? And also nurse. The damage to Vindax had been drastic, and nothing worked below his waist; he was not a pleasant patient to tend. Was this divine punishment for a failed bodyguard? A lifetime of exile and horrible drudgery?

"Well!" the president said. "That's what we wanted to suggest. Who speaks for the church?" Again he looked hopefully at Karaman, but again the old man shook his head, and it was a plump, matronly lady who rose. The president sat down quickly. Even this apparent formality of having the speaker stand was observed only so that the eagles could tell which one was talking.

Perhaps Potro was regretting his eagerness; he rubbed his fingers to ease them.

"The church would be much against turning over a refugee!" the woman said fiercely. "We would rather hope to have Citizen Vindax's help in overthrowing this Jarkadon and freeing all the birds in Rantorra, as we should have done eight kilodays ago! Would you agree to that, Citizen? If we can put you back on your throne, would you free the eagles?"

"Not the throne of Allaban!" two or three said together. Potro glanced around angrily.

She started a lecture about moral obligations, and eventually the president suggested that perhaps they should hear from Citizen Vindax.

Vindax raised one of his hand stumps, and the eagle's eyes flashed toward him.

"Explain that I cannot stand, please," he said. His voice had changed tone but not timbre. It was still deep and commanding, but the arrogance had gone.

"I did," Potro said. "I said your legs are broken."

"Then I ask the representative of the church:Canyou put me on my throne? Is your army capable of it?"

The woman rose again, looking pink. "We can probably persuade a lot of men to help. We would need the government to help us with money and weapons. But you would give up any claim on Allaban, wouldn't you? For yourself and your...successors?" She turned much pinker and sat down quickly; she had almost said "heirs."

"Good archers?" Vindax asked.

"They'd need practice," she admitted weakly.

"And the mounts?"

The president jumped up. "Let's hear from the eagles."

Potro's fingers flickered and went still. He translated. "She says that the eagles should be free. It would be an updraft...a good thing to free all the eagles. The birds of Allaban mourn their friends who are slaves." He signaled, probably telling her to go more slowly. "But she says that you would kill them, not free them. The men would ride out on them to fight, and they would all die. Many eagles of Allaban would die also in the fighting. That would be a big downdraft."

"Does she understand about law?" the prince asked. "How a royal command works?"

"Gramps?" Porto said urgently.

Karaman chuckled. "Tell her this. The-one-with-broken-legs is the highest man in Rantorra. If he goes back, then all other men will be lower than he and must do what he signals. He could tell them to free their eagles."

"She wants to know why he doesn't," Potro muttered for the benefit of the rest of the company.

"Tell her..." Then Karaman decided to tell her himself, and flickered his fingers for a few minutes. "I explained about the brother. It's a hard idea for them."

The eagle was scanning the sky, studying the discussion going on up there. Then she put her menu-inspecting glare back on Potro.

"She says would it be like the last time? Would many-many-many eagles die?"

"Yes," Karaman said.

"The High Ones say that that is a big downdraft to kill many-many-many eagles to free not-so-many eagles," Potro announced.

Vindax seemed to shrink inside his homespuns.

The president stood up. "We talked about this in the government. We can't fight, because we have no mounts. I think we need your decision, Citizen: go or abdicate as we suggested. The eagles won't help."

"Shadow?" Vindax muttered. The gaunt and ruined face swung around to him. The heavy brows were still there, and the dark eyes had sunk back into the skull, pits of agony and despair. "What can I do? Advise me."

"Jarkadon will kill you," Shadow said. Here was the loyalty test, then--he must make the sacrifice and the offer. "Accept the land and stay in exile."And I must tend that disgusting lump of flesh until eventually its life of pain comes to an end."Perhaps one day the kingdom will tire of his excesses and send for you."

Vindax reached out a flipper hand to touch his arm; if there was expression on that mask of scar tissue, then it was compassion. "I will not impose on you, my friend. If I go to Ninar Foan? The duke would not hand me over, I think."

That was a possibility; there would be many servants to care for the cripple, and surely the duke's conscience would be stricken by the sight of this horror his daughter had created. But it meant a once-proud prince throwing himself on the mercy of his disowned father. Where was the arrogance now?

"We do not know that the duke is there," Shadow said. "He may be in Ramo; so may Elosa. And if Jarkadon has her as hostage, then the duke is a dry pond."

Vindax nodded miserably and looked away. "I was just hoping," he mumbled, "that you might work one of those miracles of yours, think of something that no one else had. Some other way."

Shadow shook his head. It was easy enough to display fake brilliance when surrounded by marble-minded aristocrats like Lord Ninomar, but these Allaban farmers were deeply practical souls themselves. Unless the equation would work in reverse...

He was a skyman, a trooper, a soldier. Was there something that he should be seeing that they might have missed? He pondered and then realized that everyone was waiting for him, watching him. Yes, perhaps there was something.

"I cannot restore your health," he said. "Within the limits of the practical, though, what do youwant?"

The deep-buried eyes flamed with a fury as fierce as that of the eagles. "Justice!" said Vindax.

"That's all?" Shadow asked.

The eyes searched his. "What else could there be?"

Karaman was peering curiously at Shadow. So were the others. Shadow stood up, thinking of Potro's arrival at Pharmol.

"Can the birds understand experiment?" he said. "I would have to try something, and I'm not sure it would work."

"No, they can't!" the old man snapped, as though he felt responsible for this failing in his beloved eagles. "They're nothandylike us, and their world is unchanging." He signaled. "I've told her you think there may be an updraft but you won't know until you go to look."

Shadow knew that NailBiter's beak could reach almost any part of him except his head, but there was one movement he could not recall seeing in all his years of skyman training. "Ask her if she can put her head back like this," he said, looking straight up at the sky. Then he looked back at the eagle and recognized the flicker. "No, not chick signals. I'm serious."

"Hey, good!" the busy-fingered Potro muttered, approving of his pupil.

The eagle bent its head back briefly in imitation and then glared down at Shadow again.

"Now--could she fly like that for a while? Could she land, maybe even just on the flat--but could she?"

The humans seemed just as irritated and puzzled as the bird. Potro scowled and started to signal.

"She says it could be done. Sometimes it would cause an accident, but it could be done usually. And why are you asking?"

"They're inquisitive devils, Shadow," Karaman whispered. "You've got them all twiddling up there."

"I have another question," Shadow said, mentally crossing his fingers. "Sometimes eagles will carry their kill in their talons. So they could carry rocks--if they dropped them, could they make the rocks land where they wanted them to?"

"Holy Ark!" Karaman was staring at Shadow in stupefaction. "Sure they could! They don't think geometry, they live it. Why did I never see that?"

Because he was not a fighter.

"She says, 'cast,'" Potro announced in a puzzled voice. "What's cast got to do with it, Gramps?"

Karaman chuckled, and he signaled to the eagle. "I've asked her to show us on that," he said, pointing to the children's swing set in the center of the circle.

"That could be dangerous!" Shadow said uneasily, glancing around the group.

"What the hell is 'cast'?" the spice merchant demanded.

For a few moments no one spoke. Then Potro explained in a patient, superior tone, "Cast is what they throw up, the bits they can't digest in their crops. It's hard bails of nails and teeth and pebbles and stuff."

NailBiter had stopped his preening. He and the six or so other eagles on the roof ridge were watching the sky, and so was Shadow, waiting for one of those tiny specks to start a dive, but nothing was happening. Perhaps the birds were having one of the songfests he had heard about and would make their choice in a kiloday or two.

Then a clap of thunder showered the spectators with splinters and hoof fragments and a few sheep teeth--one of the swings had gone, leaving two wildly dancing ropes, each attached to half a plank. There were loud screams and belated raisings of hands in front of faces. Potro's shrill soprano shouted, "Gawrn!"

"Holy Ark!" Karaman muttered.

"Holy Ark yourself!" Shadow yelled. "From that height?"

"I told you--they are spirits of the air!" Karaman insisted. "They know the air as we know the land."

"She asks if that would kill a man," Potro said.

"Yes!" Shadow said. "If he was sitting up, they could smash his head in with that. Even lying down, it would break his back. In fact, it would hurt the bird--it was harder than we would need."

Karaman caught the next message. "She wants to know what the other chick talk was. They understand now that they don't need to carry archers."

Shadow suppressed uneasiness--he had given the eagles a new weapon, something they had never had in their ancient war against mankind. They had never seen that they could use missiles as men did, any more than it would occur to men to kick at the birds. Whose side was he on? Fortunately his other idea needed human hands, so men could still retain some control...

"I'm not sure," he confessed cautiously. "But I think it would work."

"Hooks?" a voice said. The speaker was a small, dark, crinkled man who looked like a farmer.

"Yes!" Shadow said. "We kill the rider and the reins go slack, blinkering the bird. If one of us flies in close with a long hook, then we could catch the reins and drop the hook, see? The bird holds its head back, like we saw, and the weight of the hook will hold the reins back--"

"It doesn't work," the farmer snapped. "We tried something like that. You forgotten, Ryl?"

"Why not?" Shadow demanded, suddenly deflated.

The older man counted on his fingers. "First, there are a dozen other troopers shooting at you, lad. Second, it's almost impossible to get two birds that close in the air because they get in each other's wind. Third, there isn't time. A blind bird without human guidance panics and just drops," he finished triumphantly.

"He's right, Shadow." Karaman sighed. "We did try something like that. It worked in rehearsal a couple of times, but not in practice. You use your ears to balance, did you know that? The birds have none. They need their eyes. Sorry, sonny. Nice try."

Shadow sank back into his seat angrily.

There had to be a way!

"I do not wish to impose on your charity," Vindax said to the president. "I believe that I could write to...to the duke of Foan and he would send money. Then I could buy a suitable place and hire servants."

Shadow stopped listening. He was a skyman--was he anything else? Was there any other way of looking at the problem which the farmers and merchants could not see, which Karaman had not seen when he led the rebellion? Karaman was a priest, a student of the ancient ways--wise but not trained to think of new things. He was emphatically not a fighter. He was a bird fanatic, of course, and had taught Shadow something of how the birds thought, although their way of looking at the world was so different from men's that it was almost incomprehensible.

Up on the roof, NailBiter had inspected and approved every feather and was now standing on one leg, licking the talons of the other with that same tongue he had used to wash Shadow's hair. NailBiter thought that Shadow was his friend--the man who had unhooded him in the hellish dark of Dead Man's Pass and so freed him. So he thought. But it had been Karaman who had freed NailBiter. Shadow would not have known. He would have acquired another hood at the first chance he got and gone back to business as usual with a captive mount, a beast of burden.

Not a friend. How could a man be friends with an eagle? The affair in the pass had been an accident, caused by exhaustion, by carelessness, and by the wind.

"You can't trust Jarkadon," Vindax was insisting.

The president wanted that letter of abdication, and the sword was sliding slowly from the scabbard.

The wind?

"Wait!" Shadow shouted, leaping to his feet in excitement. "Maybe there is a way!"

"Now what?" a man growled, standing between Shadow and the president.

"Wecanfree the eagles!" Shadow tried to pass, but the man stared down at him without moving away.

"Playtime is over, sonny," the president said quietly. "This is grown-ups business."

Shadow felt blood rush to his throat, and his fists clenched. A tradesman speaking to the son of a baronet? An elected king speaking to a homeless exile?

"Go ahead, lad," the spice merchant said, eyes glinting. He spoke not as a king or a tradesman, but as a big man speaking to a smaller one.

Shadow spun on his heel and stalked out of the circle, face and soul burning. In Rantorra he was a commoner among nobles, and in Allaban he was a runt. There never was justice, he thought bitterly. He was nothing. All he had was his skymanship, and he should have gone Piatorra while he had the chance. Free the eagles? He was the last one who should want that.

In his blind anger he almost tripped over a heap of old fence posts, broken farm tools, and rusted bicycles. Flailing arms to regain balance, he put up a flock of chickens, which rushed flapping and squawking in all directions. The flapping became a continuous roll of thunder and was joined by screams and huge shadows leaping over the grass as an eagle came slithering down the roof to sprawl onto the grass, wings wide, narrowly missing Vindax. Then two more filled the air, wings beating madly and loudly. The human screams were redoubled, and the meeting exploded into flight. Eagle Speaker reared tall and spread her wings, a living curtain shutting off the lagoon, her comb blurring in a silent shout. Feathers and dust filled the air. More giant birds went lurching noisily away, fighting for height...chickens shrilled madly among legs...

What the hell?

Up on the roof NailBiter had squared off with a young brown wild, both rearing as high as they could, wings thrashing, combs inflamed, beaks locked and breast straining against breast in a battle quite silent except for the drumming of wings and talons scraping on wood. Other birds were dropping from the sky, coming to restore order. Then IceFire dislodged the last of the other wilds, turned toward the duel, and took the brown from behind, leaping bodily on his back, and all three overbalanced and started to slide. The fight was forgotten in more thunder and clouds of dust...

It was a subdued but angry meeting which eventually reassembled. NailBiter and IceFire had the roof to themselves and were unrepentantly preening each other. The wild eagle, Shadow now learned, had remarked that The-one-who-came-through-the-dark had obviously been eating batmeat. NailBiter had taken action which might seem reasonable to a man but was not correct eagle behavior. Karaman looked more shaken than anyone.

"I must have taught him bad habits," Shadow said, regarding NailBiter affectionately. He found the episode amusing.Big mutt!

Karaman shook his head. "Or driven him crazy. First he spared you in Dead Man's Pass, now he's going around picking fights like a human being. It isn't allowed, Shadow!"

"What do you mean, 'isn't allowed'?"

"The High Ones have banished them," Karaman said. "NailBiter and IceFire. As soon as they've taken us home, they have to leave Allaban." He nodded at Shadow's astonishment. "Yes, they even had a trial already, after their fashion."

The president called the meeting to order. Shadow strutted over to him, turned his back, and addressed Vindax.

"King," he said loudly, "I can give you your justice--I can put you on your throne. But I would need the help of the republic, so you must waive claim to Allaban. I would need the help of the eagles, so you must swear to free all the birds in Rantorra. Are you willing to pay the price?"

The mask regarded him steadily, unreadably.

"Yes," Vindax said. "I agree to those terms."

Shadow swung around and looked up at the president. "I shall need an army. It won't matter if they're not very good--there won't be much fighting, but I must have men to seize the palace. Will you permit King Vindax to raise a force? With the help of the church, of course. He will need money, but you will gain security. You will never need to fear attack from Rantorra, ever."

The spice merchant folded his arms. "How are you planning to work this miracle?" he asked, but his manner was cautious; money had been mentioned, and he was wary now of this puny youth whose displeasure had so aroused the eagles.

Shadow grinned. He turned to Karaman, who had been translating for Eagle Speaker. "The birds can't keep a secret, can they? Anything we tell them here will be all over Allaban and then the Rand?"

The circle of eyes was skeptical and impatient, but Karaman was giving Shadow a stare of shrewd appraisal. "They can't keep a secret," he said. "And I wouldn't keep that one. Think before you speak."

"Come with me!" Shadow snapped. He almost dragged Karaman from his chair and led him off to the side, out of the shade and into the sunshine beside the pile of grindstones and cartwheels and old bicycles.

And then he explained the obvious: The eagles could free themselves.

"God the Pilot!" the old man exclaimed. "You sure? It doesn't make sense!"

Shadow was aware that he was grinning like a monkey, and he couldn't help it. "What's the last time you ate with your feet?" he asked.

Yes, he was sure this would work--and how simple it was! It wasn't a case of thinking from a different viewpoint. It was a case of putting it all together--what Karaman had taught him of the birds and what he knew as a skyman and what had happened in Dead Man's Pass. And NailBiter cleaning his talons.

Karaman shook his head in wonderment. "You certain?"

"Yes! How many skymen did you have on your side in the war?"

The old man sniffed. "About two, more or less. I just can't believe it could be so easy!"

"That's the problem," Shadow said. "If the word gets out, then Jarkadon could block it just as easily. We'll have to go like a stooping eagle, hit them so fast that they don't know and have no time to take countermeasures."

Karaman was still skeptical. "Why has it never been done?"

"Who cares? It'll work," Shadow said, "won't it?"

"Yes, I think so," the old man said, and took hold of his arm. "But do you know what you're letting loose, lad?"

Shadow hesitated. "Yes."

A pair of sad old eyes regarded him from a face as brown and wrinkled as the Rand. "Do you? Life is not the same after, you know. And why? Why are you doing this?"

Why? "To free the eagles? Is that not what you have always wanted?" Shadow asked.

The silver mane waved in a nod. "Me, yes. But you? And I wanted to make a republic, as the First Ones had. You are putting another king on the throne."

"Vindax will be a good king!" Shadow protested. "I always thought so, and now he has seen poverty as no king of Rantorra ever has."

Karaman turned and stared at the group of watchers, at the back of Vindax's head. He sighed. "You can't turn a straight furrow with a bent plow, lad."

"Perhaps not!" Shadow snapped. "But good things can grow in crooked furrows!"

The old man studied him in silence and then sighed. "Only if the soil is fertile. All right, if you're sure. Come along." He led the way back into the circle.

"Yes, it will work," he announced. Astonishment swept the ring of faces. He started to sign to Eagle Speaker, translating as he went. "The-one-who-came-through-the-dark has shown me an updraft, and I follow him. He can free the eagles, if the eagles will do as he says. Not-many eagles will die and many-many-many eagles will be freed. But he cannot signal the way now--if he hatches the egg too soon, then the dark ones may kill the chick."

Flicker. Pause. Flicker.

Karaman nodded. "She says they will follow you if I vouch for you. As long as you do not start killing many-many eagles."

"We want peace, though," Shadow said. "Will the eagles be merciful? We do not want many-many-many men killed, either. When a slave bird is freed, will it turn on its rider?"

Fingers flickered; comb replied.

"She says 'what would you do?'" Karaman asked grimly.

Revenge?

"The High Ones will ask the slaves to be merciful?" Shadow asked. "The birds of Allaban and the men live together without war. That's what we need in Rantorra, too."

There was more flickering, then a pause for discussion in the sky. It was a long pause by bird standards. Was a big argument going on? Finally the birds replied.

"She says they will try," Karaman said. "They can't sign contracts, Shadow--that's they best they can do."

"Right!" Shadow said. He turned and grinned at Vindax. "What size crown do you take, King?"

Teeth were bared in the inhuman face. "You will give me my revenge?" Vindax said.

Not justice?

"Yes!" Shadow said as confidently as he could.

NailBiter was rocking with excitement. Shadow would have to negotiate that sentence of banishment.

"What do we do about this letter from Ramo?" the president demanded.

"Stuff it!" Shadow snapped. "They can't be sure you've even received it. I know Jarkadon! He's probably far more scared of you than you are of him."

The spice merchant looked doubtful.

"We're going to depose him anyway," Shadow said. "And I also know the Royal Guard. They're scattered all over the Range. They're great at evicting old ladies who can't pay taxes, but they can't put more than three hundred decent fighters in the air."

Vindax raised his eyebrows but did not speak.

Chapter 16

THE Range was everything Elosa had expected and a thousand times more. Its fertility amazed her after the barren lands of the Rand: vineyards and orchards and brilliant greenery. The slopes were crowded with hamlets and little towns; there were roads with traffic on them, and the distant birds in the sky were mounts being ridden, not dangerous wilds to avoid.

But then, Ramo was a thousand times more again--she could hardly believe the size of the city floating endlessly below her, and when the palace itself came into view, she wondered if it was real. Surely it would have stretched from Ninar Foan to Vinok. She saw marble porticoes set amid flowers, palm trees and fountains, roofs of every hue, courtyards and lawns, cupolas and balconies and ornamental lakes...the place was huge! And it was beautiful beyond imagining--paradise.

The palace aerie alone was larger than her father's castle, with ten layers of roosting.Ten!And her guides took her to none of those but to yet another perch close to the ground, reserved for the arrival of honored guests. She was hardly out of the saddle before a groom had flown her mount away to be cared for.

Her father was waiting, greatly handsome but hardly recognizable in splendid court dress. She rushed into his arms, and they hugged. "Father!"

"Fledgling!"

Yes, she had had a wonderful flight and it was all marvelous and the fairy-tale palace was amazing and she was ecstatically happy to be here.

His hug was warm, but his face was strained. She looked again and saw that he had aged. There were worry lines there that she did not remember and gray on the temples, and he had certainly lost a lot of weight. She inquired anxiously how he was, and he said he was fine and now she must meet her welcoming party.

They were a dozen or more--a couple of men but mostly ladies, some young, some old--and her head started to spin madly with the effort of trying to remember so many names. Yet the first face of all was familiar--the very beautiful woman she had been told was called Feysa, the spurious lady's maid who had been Shadow's mistress on the journey. Her name was not really Feysa, and she was a marchioness, no less.

The whirling dream sensation grew stronger and stronger. She was swept out to a landau with two white horses and driven off before she had remembered that she ought to thank those who had brought her so far. Feysa was beside her and her father behind, so she could not speak to him, but in any case she was too entranced by all the sights of the palace as the carriage jingled along to have said much to anyone. The extent of it overwhelmed her--the beauty, the crowds of gorgeously dressed people, the innumerable servants who seemed to spring out of nowhere as soon as anything was needed, the stupendous staircase of onyx and marble, the tapestries and the ankle-deep rugs, the enormous silk-draped bedroom that she was told was to be hers, with its adjoining bathroom. There were gold taps on a tub large enough to drown an eagle.

Her father had disappeared, and obviously Feysa--Marchioness who?--had taken her in charge. Women who were to be her maids, all dressed in finer clothes than she had ever owned, were curtsying to her. They bathed her, and she was too dream-struck to be embarrassed at all. They dried her in towels of lamb's wool and massaged her and rubbed her with scented oils. They dressed her in silk underclothes. They measured her for dresses, and they coiffed her hair and varnished her nails and painted her face...

And suddenly she was standing before a mirror, admiring a lady who had a vague facial resemblance to herself but whose gown and jewels and elegant coiffure were totally strange. The gown! Ocher silk, it was open down the front almost to her navel, yet tight enough to show off her admirably fashionable flat chest. The maids had politely raved about her figure and her complexion. From her hips the gown sprang out in a great wide crinoline of foamy lace. She sparkled with jewels.

"There," Feysa said. "I think that will do to begin with. How do you feel?"

"Stunned," Elosa said.

The marchioness was very beautiful and very gracious, and obviously in charge. She smiled. "Wait till tomorrow--you have twenty-two gowns to try on after breakfast."

Elosa gasped. Feysa laughed and brought in the duke to inspect. He was very complimentary, although she noticed again the deep lines of anxiety.

"Perhaps I may have a word with my most beautiful daughter?" he said with a warm smile at Feysa.

He was asking permission? No, that was ridiculous.

The Feysa lady hesitated. "Make it quick," she replied in a whisper. She made a fast nod toward the balcony and turned to shout at all the maids to get the place in order.

The duke led Elosa out to the balcony.

"A little fast advice, fledgling," he said. "No, face the rail while we talk. Don't trust anyone..."

Really! She felt her face start to burn under the paint.

"Father, I may be inexperienced, but I am not a child!" No silky-tongued courtier was going to take advantage ofher.Kings must marry virgins--and she already suspected that she might be the only virgin in the whole court. She was going to stay that way, certainly.

Now her father went red. He placed a hand over hers where it rested on the balustrade. "I did not mean that, fledgling. I am sure you will be sensible. But this is a court--everyone is conspiring against everyone else, all the time. Try to keep out of it. Be polite and gracious and noncommittal. The marchioness will be giving you guidance, but don't trust her, either. We are invited to dine with the king in just a few minutes."

The king! Her legs started to shake.

Her father nodded unhappily. "I did try to explain that you had come a long way and needed a day or so to adjust to palace life, but the king wants to meet you." His voice became quieter yet and more urgent. "Remember, he is God here. His smallest wish is absolute law. His slightest whim! You understand?"

She nodded, frightened. "Father, is something wrong?"

"Of course not."

His eyes said that there was.

"We should be moving, Your Grace," Feysa's voice said. It was so close to her back that Elosa jumped.

Dining with the king, not--Feysa explained as they strolled in ladylike procession through the palace, did not involve eating. The king ate, and the others watched. There would be nobles serving him, of course, lords with the hereditary right to pour the royal wine, for example. The king would invite only two, or at the most three, persons to sit and actually eat with him--that was a tremendous honor--but the several dozen other guests would stand. Later the king would withdraw and they could have a hurried meal before joining him in whatever entertainment was planned for afterward. Today there was to be a masque.

Elosa did not think she was very hungry, anyway.

"One word of advice," the marchioness muttered between vivacious greetings to passing friends. "Don't make jokes. Not yet. When you know your way around, maybe. He likes humor...to a point."

"I don't feel very humorous," Elosa said.

She got a frown. "Be cheerful, though! Smile all the time. Enjoy yourself." Feysa dropped her voice to a whisper and covered her mouth with her fan. "One young man two nights ago topped one of the king's jests. The king had him taken out and flogged like a serf--Good sky to you, my lord!--and he is a viscount."

Elosa did not feel humorous at all.

The reception court was magnificent in its golds and colors and gleaming furniture. The courtiers waiting around were veritable peacocks. She was presented to this one and that one by Feysa or by her father, and they circulated and scintillated, and the dream sensation came pouring back like the hot wind. Either the rugs were even softer and thicker than they looked or her elegant shoes were not touching them at all.

All her life she had waited for this--her arrival at court. It was vastly more magnificent than she had ever imagined.

Then the great doors opened. The king entered with a small entourage of three older men, two of his own age, and four girls, all of them looking younger than Elosa and even more splendidly bejeweled and bedecked. The king began to circulate, greeting his guests.

Dazzling in mauve and gold, he was about the height she had expected but broader and more muscular, with very fair hair hanging loose to his shoulders. His fingers glittered with treasure. Much handsomer than--she tried to remember Vindax and saw the face of Tuy Rorin.

Jarkadon had bright blue eyes, she saw as she was presented and curtsied. Very bright and very blue.

"It has been too long!" the king said. "We have been eager to meet you--and had we known what beauty we were missing, we should have been much, much more impatient."

He was charming.

In a moment or two, Elosa began to realize that she was being greatly honored. The royal procession around the room had stopped at her. He was ignoring the rest of the company. Charming--that was the only possible word. His blue eyes and his attentive smile charmed her as he gave forth a stream of compliments about herself and her long journey and her faithful father and loyal family and on and on...

Then she was sitting at his side and dinner was being served. The king and she were the only ones eating. Her father was there in the circle of onlookers around the table, and he smiled when she caught his eye and the conversation flickered to and fro. She thought she was managing to make sense. She made no jokes. She smiled.

The marchioness had not mentioned the possibility of only one companion. Two or three, she had said. So this was very special, and she was getting some dark looks from the younger women.

The king sent back the wine and demanded a better. The talk turned to wine. The king remarked on the excellent vintage produced by someone's estate, and the owner hastily offered to have several hogsheads sent at once and to fly a few bottles in daily until the carts could arrive.

"I must say, Majesty," the duke remarked, "that almost any wine on the Range is better than the thin swill we produce at Ninar Foan."Warning: The wine is strong.

Elosa agreed that she had never tasted...

Her head was starting to ache.

They were on the eighth or ninth course, and the food kept coming.

Jarkadon was nibbling at some strange-looking meat. "You know what this is?" he inquired.

No, she could not guess.

"By law and ancient tradition," he said proudly, "it is a dish reserved for the king alone. Our father never cared for it, but we had the tradition revived. Taste some."

He offered her a mouthful from his fork. It was highly spiced and rather tough. No, she still could not guess.

"Eagle comb!" he smiled. "Here, we shall share it with you." He dumped all of it on her plate.

"Doesn't it hurt the eagle?" she asked, feeling sick.

"Oh, they're useless for anything afterward," the king said. "Usually go mad. That's why it is so rare."

She set to work on the horrible stuff.

"Talking of eagles," the king said, "our cousin of Foan, you breed silvers, we understand."

Her father said modestly that he had some silvers.

"Our father was a great fancier," Jarkadon said, leaning back. Having given most of his dish to Elosa, he had plenty of time to speak, and she had to gobble so as not to keep him waiting. "We could never see the point in breeding birds--I mean, the damned birds get all the fun, don't they?"

With much laughter the company agreed.

"The royal breeding aeries," the king said. "You know them?"

The duke said that he had not had the pleasure of visiting those.

"They are not far off. Our father never flew in his later years, so they are an easy horse ride; a few minutes by bird. Vast! Huge! They are bleeding the exchequer dry! There must be some economies we could make there, mmm?"

The subject was tossed around, and everyone agreed that economies could be found.

"Foan!" Obviously the king had had a Good Idea. "You look into it for us. Go over there and poke around. See what can be cut. I mean improved. Give us your comments and suggestions. You're a knowledgeable bird breeder."

Her father's face was quite expressionless. "I shall be honored to do so for Your Majesty."

"Good," the king said with a smile. "Now?"

The duke bowed to the king and to Elosa, then turned and walked away.

"Eat up, my darling," Jarkadon said. "It's time for dessert."

My darling?Elosa started gulping even faster.

She was being tested! The unfair rush from eagle to royal table, the crude heaping of her plate, the dismissal of her father--they were tests of her nerve. To be queen she must have poise and grace, so Jarkadon was testing to see if she could be rattled. Obviously she had impressed him physically--the gleam in his eyes said that. Now she must impress him with her personality. When she was queen, she would sit by him at table every day.

She decided to risk a joke and show him. Her father was just going out the door.

"I thought I was the only one who could order him around like that, sire," she said.

The sapphire eyes lit up with amusement. "It is nice to be king," he said.

And nice to be queen, too?

"I am sure Your Majesty does it very well."

He switched his gaze to the onlookers. "Idodo it well!" he said. "I'm irresistible!"

The company laughed loudly once more. She wasn't sure she understood that one, but she laughed too.

"How old are you?" he asked.

She gagged, then swallowed. "I am exactly two hundred days younger than Your Majesty."

"Terrible!" the king cried. "Old age is upon you!"

There was more laughter.

"But then, you have a birthday coming in a few days?" he said. "Your seventh, too! We must find a suitable gift for the occasion."

Elosa mumbled with her mouth full.

"Meanwhile," Jarkadon said, leaning toward her, "here is a small advance on your birthday gift." He held up a brooch for her to see--two eagles, rubies set in gold. It was large and beautiful and obviously worth a fortune.

She choked down the last horrible lump of comb and made appropriate thanking sounds. She knew that the rings he wore were there to be used as gratuities, but the brooch was worth many rings and was a woman's ornament. He must carry pockets full of things like that around also.

"Allow me," he said. "A little premature, perhaps, but we can correct that...Oh! I am sorry, did I prick you? That was careless. Here, let me try again." This time he slipped fingers inside the front of her dress to make sure that the pin did not prick her, touching her nipple as he did so.

She thanked him again. He seemed amused. She sensed something odd, looked across at the guests, and saw glances being exchanged. There was something more to that little episode than the brooch itself. Another honor?

The meal ended, and the king withdrew. Elosa found herself in yet another luxurious courtyard with him and three men of about his age and half a dozen girls, all of them younger than she. Some looked hardly older than four kilos, yet all were dressed like grand ladies. She noticed that they all wore two-eagle brooches identical to the one she had been given. So those were obviously a sign of royal friendship and probably a great honor, especially when he had just met her. She must ask Feysa as soon as possible. Feysa did not have one.

There was King Shadow, too, of course, in matching gold and mauve and a black baldric. He was a surly-looking young man with an irritating habit of sniffing.

The king's attention was still for her alone. "Now, what trifle can we find to amuse you, my dear Elosa," he said, "while we wait for the rabble to eat? Cockfighting? Do you have cockfighting at Ninar Foan?"

They didn't, and the king conceded that it was technically illegal--but what was the use of being king if you had to obey all the silly rules like everyone else? So they spent an hour watching the bloody business of cockfighting. A couple of the girls seemed to be nauseated by it, but Elosa joined in the cheering and was adamantly not rattled at all. The king was an avid spectator.

Then they rejoined the rest of the party to view the masque. Elosa knew that she should be exhausted, but she was soaring, buoyed up by the excitement as though she were riding an invisible eagle. She was making a good impression--that was certain. He could not keep his eyes off her.

The masque enthralled her. She had never seen professional acting and singing; she gloried in the music and the costumes and the acting. The king sat her beside him in the front row, with the rest of the dinner guests around and behind, and the artists were right at her toes--a very intimate command performance. The king's hand settled on her arm, and she thrilled at his touch.

He began to stroke her skin with his fingertips.

A boy soprano was singing a glorious aria, high as the Rose Mountains.

"You don't get much of this stuff at Ninar Foan, I suppose?" the king asked loudly.

The boy's voice cracked on a note, and the musicians missed a beat.

He was trying to rattle her again. To whisper back would be a criticism.

"No, nothing more exciting there than bird breeding, Majesty," she replied in the same tone, and he bellowed with laughter.

He was stroking her arm with his nails now, very gently, but the constant scrape was beginning to hurt.

"We usually get much better talent," he said, still loudly.

She said that she was no judge but was enjoying it.

The other guests remained silent while the performers struggled along, now obviously terrified. The king kept up his conversation and his insidious gentle scraping. She responded as naturally as she could, deliberately not moving her arm or even looking at it, although the pain was intense now and was making her eyes prickle.

The players were dancing a gavotte. The king had stopped scraping and put his arm around her. Her heart started beating faster than the gavotte.

The gavotte ended; jugglers and comedians sprang into action.

Jarkadon's hand slipped lower, and his fingers reached around to fondle the silk over her breast. She moved away, dislodging them.

The king yawned and stood up. Instantly the performance stopped, and everyone else rose also.

"We are a trifle fatigued," he said. He pulled off a ring and presented it to the leading lady. "Please continue for our guests. A charming performance! No, the rest of you, do stay. Lady Elosa, we welcome you to our court and we hope to seemuchmore of you in the near future." He kissed her hand as she curtsied.

The king walked out with Shadow behind him. The door closed. Everyone sat down--except that Feysa had appeared from nowhere and had hold of Elosa's elbow. "Come!" she said.

"But...I was enjoying..."

Elosa was led firmly from the hall.

Chapter 17

THE eagles came to Ninar Foan.

How many? Shadow had no idea. He was the leader of an army whose size he could not guess. There were three hundred men in it, young farmhands mostly, eager and excited at the novelty. Many could shoot a fair arrow, but few could handle a sword as well as they could a sickle, and the rest would be almost as dangerous to their companions as they would ever be to an enemy. A surprising number, though, knew bird speech and an ever more surprising number of birds seemed to have learned the halting, tortoise-slow gestures required to speak to mankind.

He had organized the men into six companies and put the best commanders he could find in charge. It was all very hasty and makeshift--and it was a bluff. The birds were the army, and the only real weapon he had was the idea which had come to him when he saw NailBiter cleaning his toes. Now he must test it, and if it did not work, the great war would be over without a bow being bent.

Here on the Rand he would have died in the flimsy clothes of Pharmol. Soaring high over the bright, bare mountains, he shivered even inside the fleece-lined flying suit which Ukarres had given him. Close at NailBiter's side floated IceFire, and the three of them seemed to have the whole vault of the sky to themselves. The naked sun glared angrily through the thin air over the distant plain.

Yet if he peered hard in any direction, he could see eagles, some from Allaban and also local wilds gathering to watch the outcome. He had not understood in his days as a skyman that the eagles were never alone, that the constant and seemingly meaningless rippling of their combs was conversation. He had the world to himself, yet he had a vast and uncountable audience also.

IceFire signaled: "There are one-comb-and-four eagles in the aerie. One has left and is coming." Shadow acknowledged.

As he had expected, a messenger had been dispatched from Ninar Foan as soon as Shadow's army appeared in the sky. That was why he had bypassed the castle and positioned himself along the path to Vinok, and soon he would see this solitary courier racing to warn the men of Rantorra that the invasion had started.

One-comb-and-four? A human mind had counted and sent the word--there were only twelve eagles left. Then it was certain that the duke and his household were gone, and a fair guess that they were in Ramo. That should make the coming battle easier.

"It is my father that comes," IceFire signed.

IceStriker, he remembered--a huge silver, as big as NailBiter. The cautious duke would have left his best silvers at home in case Jarkadon took a fancy to them.

Shadow was unarmed, but around his neck hung a priceless farewell gift from Karaman, a pair of binoculars from the Holy Ark. With those he could see far better than with his own eyes, although still poorly compared to the birds. Hopefully he raised them and peered toward Ninar Foan. He saw nothing but wildly swaying rock and scrubby hills, and put the glasses down again before he became nauseated. This sling riding was much less stable than straddling a bird; good archery would be impossible. It was also chilly work, for he could not stretch out along his mount's back to seek shelter from the wind.

Then he saw the lone flier, floating down in a long glide toward an obvious thermal, and he signaled IceFire to intercept. She passed the word to NailBiter, and the two veered in unison.

"Speak to your father. Tell him that we come to free him and he must not resist his rider. He is to do what the man wants until you tell him."

IceFire's comb flickered the message. Shadow just caught the start of it--"This one flies behind Friend-of-eagles..."--but the rest was much too fast for him.

About ten minutes later they drew close, as the lone rider circled for height and Shadow came gliding in at about the same elevation. He tried the binoculars again.

He almost dropped them in surprise, seeing Vindax, the hooked nose below goggles. Impossible! It had to be the duke himself--but surely he would never flee his own castle. No, it was the young groom, Tuy Rorin, the duke's other bastard. Rorin was a good skyman, too; he was handling his bird beautifully. He had seen Shadow and was waiting with bow in hand. Shadow held out his arms to show that he bore no weapon, then signaled IceFire--and so NailBiter--to approach as close as possible but to look out for the bow.

"Rorin!"

Back came a faint reply. "Shadow?"

The air grew warmer as he entered the thermal. Then the birds were level, facing one another across the invisible column of wind and apparently almost motionless, rising and falling slightly with respect to one another, although all were steadily gaining height.

"Turn back!" Shadow called.

The reply was an obscene gesture.

"You will die!" Shadow yelled. "I can free your bird. Turn back, lad, and live!"

This time the obscenity was verbal, and Shadow was not surprised. Why should Rorin believe him? He hardly believed himself. Rorin was studying the terrain, planning the next hop of his journey.

"Your last chance! Turn back or die!"

Shadow was ignored, so he started the war.

He signaled to IceFire. "Tell your father that it is a downdraft to hurt the man. I ask him to spare the man."

IceFire's reply was too fast for him, which perhaps was deliberate. Perhaps her father was using bird obscenities.

"Tell your father to do three things. First he must raise one talon and scrape along under his beak. He will break the strap which holds the front of the helmet. Then he must dive, and the wind will blow it away from his eyes. Lastly, he must keep on diving until he lands."

"That is forbidden!" IceFire replied.

Forbidden? Shadow was nonplussed. Forbidden by whom? In all his plans he had not expected argument from the eagles. Forbidden?NosoNEne...he needed young Potro!NosoNEne...forbidden...off limits...inadvisable!

"Forbidden by whom?" he asked.

"When I was a chick, my father himself told me."

Rorin banked IceStriker and dived away steeply.

Please. Shadow begged. "Tell him to try!"

IceFire's comb reddened angrily, but she sent the message, then passed the reply. "He says it is forbidden. He cannot land on one foot."

The straps were thin leather. The stitching holding the buckles was only thread. Shadow thought of those mighty talons and beaks carrying goats--carrying him. There was far more muscle there than was needed...

You can't argue with an eagle.

IceStriker and his rider were dwindling in the distance. Shadow felt panic. "Tell him Friend-of-eagles says it will work. Tell him...if I lead badly, then NailBiter will drop me...Tell him!"

He caught IceFire's ferocious glare and thought that perhaps, just this once, that expression represented her true feelings. She passed the message.

His suicidal offer was accepted, as he had known it would be. The eagles were literal. The eagles were also fast. The signal, IceStriker's reaction, and NailBiter's surge of excitement seemed to be simultaneous. Rorin hardly had time to scream as his mount bucked and dived. The reins went slack, and the helmet flipped inside out and flapped back toward him, useless. The great raptor beak flashed around momentarily, for just long enough to bite off his head.

Then the whole world whirled and swayed, and Shadow yelled in terror and grabbed his harness straps as NailBiter did a dance of joy. For a moment he thought the bird would drop the sling in his excitement and the victorious general would fall to his death, following IceStriker as he plunged earthward, still trailing a long plume of blood. IceFire was tumbling around like a new-flown chick. Far beyond human sight in all directions the watchers would have seen, and perhaps they also pranced and gamboled in the sky. The secret was out: The eagles could free themselves.

When NailBiter calmed down and Shadow's stomach returned, he signaled again. "Tell your father that we shall send a man to take the body off his back, but the man is a friend and must not be harmed."

IceStriker was already lost to Shadow's sight against the bright hills below, but the reply came at once. "My father will not hurt the man you send. His kill is your kill, One-who-came-through-the-dark."

"Return to the castle," Shadow ordered. He asked for the rescuer to be sent but was told that he was already on his way--his eagle would know where to go.

Then IceFire relayed another message. "My father has landed safely. He has bitten through the saddle straps but cannot reach the one around his neck. Send an eagle to do that. He does not need a man."

Shadow acknowledged sadly. He had seen that possibility and had been waiting to discover if the birds were smart enough to work it out. Obviously they were. He had hoped to keep some part for men to play in this, but they were not needed. Yet the birds in the aeries were still hostage, and it would not be difficult for Jarkadon to have all the bird helmets fitted with chains instead of straps.

"Speak to the High Ones. I have hatched the egg as I promised. They must send word to all slaves that the army is coming. The slaves must wait. Any slave who does this thing before we arrive will warn the men, and the men will kill the chick. The slaves must wait."

Who were the High Ones? He did not know. Perhaps two or three, perhaps hundreds, but they spoke always with one voice, through whichever bird was nearest, who in this case was IceFire.

"You have hatched a fine chick, One-who-came-through-the-dark. The eagles will follow."

The point was critical. The birds could not keep a secret--certainly not news like this. It would flash from comb to comb along the Rand with the speed of sight, from wild to aerie and wild to wild. The courier bringing news of Jarkadon's accession had taken thirteen days to reach Ninar Foan, and that had been good time. An unladen bird could do it in two. How long would it be until this message reached the birds in the capital? Probably only hours. The race was on.

Shadow was surprised by the swarm of birds over Ninar Foan--there were at least two unladen for each one carrying a man. So he must have a thousand eagles at his command. He was going to seize a whole country with three hundred men and a thousand birds? He was crazy.

The castle was battened down for siege. Eleven birds sat on the sunward side of the aerie, all hooded and still. Whoever was in charge had not ventured a sortie against the impossible odds. Shadow had made his orders plain: The army was to wait for him to return. Had his strategy not worked, then the battle would not have needed to be fought, for it would have been useless.

NailBiter landed on the pyramid roof of the aerie itself, and Shadow slid carefully down the old weathered timbers toward the dark side. As he had expected, the wood was dried and ancient, exactly like that of the Vinok aerie, where the troopers had ripped out a few boards to cook a meal.

He made himself comfortable on the awkward slope, just back from the edge. Below him was the terrace and the deserted perching wall, flanked by a thin litter of mute pellets. He had jumped from that wall once...He shivered again at the memory. He was well above the roof of the castle, safely out of bowshot, but NailBiter was exposed and a tempting target if anyone thought of it, so Shadow had to hurry.

His arrival would have been heard by those below him.

"Who's in charge down there?" he shouted.

"God save King Jarkadon!" The voice belonged to Vak Vonimor.

"It's Shadow."

"I saw you. Come and get us, bird lover."

"Vak, I owe you a debt," Shadow said without hope. "I don't want more bloodshed. Rorin is dead--there will be no message passed and no help coming. Give up the castle. Proclaim the true king and we'll go away and leave you alone."

"Go lay an egg!" the voice below him shouted. "You're bluffing. Come and get us."

No doubt the man assumed he was in a strong position. He would have archers, standing on a solid floor. The attackers had to come in against the light, in unstable slings which would seem ludicrous to an old skyman like Vonimor. Even if Shadow's men were to land on the roof and chop holes in it, they would still black out the light when they tried to shoot through those holes. If he set fire to the roof, he would kill the birds, which were on the downwind side. So Vonimor would be as confident as Rorin had been.

"All right!" Shadow yelled. "When you're ready to give up, release the eagles."

He clambered back up the slope to NailBiter, who was shivering with excitement. As they dived away from the aerie, a couple of arrows flew unpleasantly close.

The army melted away to clear the air. Shadow signaled for a comb of rocks, then soared on a thermal in the distance and waited, watching.

The first two went through the planks, making small holes but undoubtedly scaring the hell out of the defenders below as they shattered against the floor. The third rock struck a corner beam, and the whole roof shuddered.

Then the final five struck simultaneously, and the ancient timbers on the darkward side collapsed, crumpling and folding and taking much of the barred wall with them.

The hoods started coming off--and the battle of Ninar Foan was over.

Shadow did not cheer. Never had there been a peace treaty in the Old Times struggle between man and bird--it had merely decayed into guerrilla warfare as the eagles abandoned the middle slopes and retreated to places where men could not follow. The killing had become random terror, when a wild saw a chance to take an unarmed man or the skymen a wild. There had never been a peace, and now the full fury of war was about to erupt again.

Never before had the eagles captured an aerie. But this time they had a skyman on their side.

A traitor.

Bong!

More like a prisoner than a victorious general, Shadow marched along a corridor with three swordsmen in front of him and another three behind. Each one of them was a head taller than he was, and most were twice as wide; he did not trust the hospitality of Ninar Foan.

Bong!

Instinctively he was keeping time. Every third step of his left foot coincided with a stroke from the great bell as it echoed mournfully through the stones and the passages, drifting out over castle and town, wafted away in the wind toward the Great Salt Plain.

Bong!

"This one, I think," he said. The door was opened, the room inspected before he could enter.

It was well furnished yet cluttered with a lifetime of personal effects: paintings, shelves covered with souvenirs, inlaid wooden chests, a dozen trophy heads decorating the walls. The drapes were partly drawn. The air was stuffy and stank of death.

Bong!

Leaving his guard by the door, he advanced to the big bed and wondered if he was too late. The tiny mummy face was yellow, and the good eye closed; the dead eye was half-open and blank as usual.

Bong!

Then the eye opened slightly. "Why don't you turn that damned thing off and let a man die in peace?" the old voice wheezed.

Shadow reached down and took one of the limp hands. It was cold as the High Rand. "I am sorry you are unwell, Sir Ukarres."

There was a pause while the eye studied him. "I am sorry you are well."

Bong!

"I have a score to settle," Shadow said. "You tried to kill me. You sent me to Dead Man's Pass, but you did not tell me that it had never been done from this side."

The old man stared at him contemptuously. "There had to be a first. But go ahead--settle."

Shadow shrugged.

"Pah!" Ukarres sneered. "You wouldn't settle anyway."

"Probably not," Shadow agreed, and smiled. "Now the king will be proclaimed, and then we shall leave and not disturb you further."

Ukarres licked his lips and gestured toward a table. Shadow reached for the beaker of water and held him up while he took a sip. In contrast to his hands, his body burned, but the water seemed to revive him a little. The funereal tolling had ended.

Ukarres coughed feebly and sank back. "So you have liberated twelve eagles? How many left to go?"

Shadow sat on the edge of the bed. "No idea. The king alone has thousands."

"Vonimor is a fool," Ukarres wheezed. "You would not have had it so easy had I been there. Yes, the aerie, maybe; but not the castle itself."

"It was only the birds we wanted," Shadow said. "We could have just bypassed the castle and gone on."

Ukarres frowned. "And when Jarkadon comes, he will burn and pillage because we surrendered to Vindax. Such is war. Well, I shall not be here."

"Jarkadon will not come," Shadow said. "The duke will not be returning either. You may never hear from the capital again, Ukarres."

"Bah!" the old man said mildly. "Karaman may win battles, but he will lose in the end. How is my old friend?"

That was better. "He is well, purring over a new great-grandson. He stayed in Allaban. But his health seems excellent."

"I am glad," Ukarres said with surprising grace. "And your prince--or king?"

"He was less lucky than you," Shadow said grimly. "He will not be visiting this place." Vindax had gone on ahead days before, strapped in a litter and well guarded by men and eagles. He would stop only at isolated farms, but would needs make slow time because of his weakness. He could traverse the sparsely populated Rand without other men knowing. Birds, yes; men, no.

Ukarres did not speak, so Shadow said, "And Elosa? She has gone to court, I hear."

"The duke forbade her to go with him, and we kept her shackled, almost. But the king's orders became more demanding." The eye glinted. "The last one was specific: Alvo would hang by his thumbs if the child did not go. Elosa was ecstatic, of course. She will be there by now."

"Why?" Shadow mused. "What does Jarkadon want with her? To thank her, do you suppose?"

Ukarres flicked his faint eyebrows in a sort of shrug. "A hostage for the duke's good behavior if he sends him back, perhaps."

That made sense. The gaunt duchess had refused to discuss her husband or daughter. She would be down at the gate now, attending the proclamation of Vindax VII.

Ukarres closed his eye as though the conversation were ended. Shadow waited. After a minute the old skyman's curiosity got the better of him, and the eye opened again.

"You have taught the birds to throw rocks--that is a dangerous innovation, lad. What if the wilds copy them?"

"They are wilds! Karaman was right, and you have known it for years. You were keeping slaves, not beasts of burden."

"So?"

"No repentance?" Shadow asked sadly.

Anger brought back some life to the shriveled corpse. "None! It is the eagles that make it possible. Do you think I would rather be a sheepherder in a hovel, or a skyman living in a castle with servants and comfort? How is it in Allaban? Did Ryl make his paradise?"

"They have a republic. All men are equal."

Ukarres snorted. "If you believe that, then I have some young lunks here to wager against you, pipsqueak. Arm wrestling? Boxing? All men equal? Feathers!"

"They have no masters--put it that way." In truth, Shadow had found Allaban very strange.

Ukarres was about to make some angry retort but was seized by a fit of coughing and then needed more water. He sank back weakly. "They eat lettuce, I suppose. Did you have much steak when you were there?"

"I stayed with Karaman," Shadow confessed. "The eagles are constantly offering him kills. But you are right, I admit--most men in Allaban see little meat."

"I knew that would be the way of it," Ukarres said with some satisfaction. "Who would tend livestock if he were not allowed to defend it against the birds? And what of us? There is not much grows up here except sheep and goats. The children are going to starve in Ninar Foan, boy, while your precious birds eat the meat."

Shadow squirmed uneasily. The Range was fertile and could support its human population easily on its crops. The Rand, admittedly, was not. "There will be few birds around here for a while. You had better make your plans quickly."

"I have only one plan now," Ukarres said. "And that is to die as soon as I can. But with luck the fighting will kill off most of the birds. We got plenty of them in Allaban."

"I must go," Shadow said. "The proclamations will have been read--Vindax as king and no fighting against eagles, no more slave birds, elect a local mayor. I must be on my way."

"Why the hurry?" Ukarres demanded, his warrior's curiosity aroused in spite of himself. "Tell me what you think you can do."

Shadow hid a smile. "We are going leftward along the Rand as fast as we can, and that will be very fast. Every aerie will be emptied as this one was. I have shown the way; a few men left at each castle or town can handle it and then hurry on to catch up. Ramo will not know what is happening before we are upon them.

"I stopped the messenger Vak sent," he added sadly. "It was young Rorin. He was the only casualty, apart from Vonimor's broken ribs."

"No warnings?" Ukarres mused. "What of the singles? Jarkadon has good advisers--probably the duke, of course. He has scattered singles all along the Rand. Communications have never been better in my lifetime. You can't stop the Ramo singles going back."

"That's good!" Shadow said. "As long as they carry no messages. Jarkadon will be able to map our progress. There are two things he can do--and I want him to do the wrong one."

"So they will be waiting for you," Ukarres said. He closed his eye as though imagining the battle. "And you offer terms: Put Vindax on the throne and you won't release the rest of the birds. The Rand will be lost, of course, but the Range safe. I don't think you'll get very far with that ploy." He looked up with a satisfied smile.

"You're wrong," Shadow said, content to discover that Ukarres had worked it out as he had expected him to. "What they must not know, and what you don't know, ishowwe are doing it."

He stayed quiet until Ukarres demanded, "Well? Howareyou doing it?"

Shadow told him, and his shock was obvious.

"It isn't possible!" he whispered.

"It is! Karaman went back to the old books. He discovered that the First Ones blunted the birds' talons. They used metal helmets--the birds could not remove those. When the war was won, men started using the birds for hunting and left their talons alone. He isn't sure. But over the ages the equipment has been perfected and made lighter, and the eagles never thought to try again. They were too smart! They thought they knew better." Eagles did not experiment--their thinking was even more rigid than Ninomar's.

The old cynical smile briefly flickered on the pillow. "And over the ages we bred larger birds and smaller men! Do I detect an irony there?"

"Possibly." Shadow smiled also. "It was just something very obvious that no one had seen. The birds never preen their own heads--they do each other's. But I knew that NailBiter could reach his beak with a talon, and I knew that the helmet had only the two straps and certainly the neck strap alone could not hold it firm in a strong wind."

A helmet had to be a flimsy, pliable thing, for it had to slide up under the hood and fit around the comb and beak. So a helmet was only two pads of leather, joined by two straps at the top and fastened by two buckles below.

Ukarres was staring in horror. "You cannot stop this thing, then? It is already too late?"

"Yes," Shadow said. "The days of the skymen are over. The eagles will be freed, and they will take good care that no one ever enslaves another, by any means."

Ukarres gave him a skeptical glare, then his gaze wandered away to the far distance. It was a while before he spoke.

"The keeper of the Rand is the last of the skymen," he said quietly. "Did you get that lecture from Karaman?"

"No. I thought I was a skyman."

"No." Ukarres sighed. "You were a trooper, and the troopers are tax collectors. The real skymen were rulers. Once all the local lords ruled their own fiefs and defended the men against the eagles. But they were always quarreling and having little wars. The kings gradually pulled them all into Ramo and made courtiers out of them. Taught them revelry instead of rebellion, finery instead of fighting, madrigals instead of mayhem."

"They are parasites!" Shadow said.

"Yes, they are now," Ukarres agreed. "Only the keeper of the Rand remained. He is the last of the skymen. And the kings did all the ruling and became tyrants. That's what Karaman says."

"I think I agree with that," Shadow said. "Perhaps you do?"

"Perhaps a little. Why did you come to see me?"

"I...to say good-bye."

The creaky voice rose in fury. "Wanted to talk to a skyman, didn't you? Not many in Allaban! Tired of farmers and priests?"

That might well be true; Shadow had not thought of it.

"And you wanted my approval!" Ukarres said angrily. "You wanted to confess to me what you've done and see if I approve. Well, I don't. You've swallowed Ryl's rubbish about being nice to those killer flying monsters, and you've betrayed your own kind. You've freed the birds and taught them to throw rocks, and now they're going to rule us, instead of the other way around."

"Most of the folk in Allaban seem to be friendly with the birds," Shadow protested. "They have a feathered friend or two who drops in and gives them a leg of mutton once in a while."

"For what? Just for chat? You're saying that the birds are amused by the humans?"

"Well..."

"That's it, isn't it? Entertainment! Curiosities? In Allaban the humans are pets now?"

Shadow rose. "I would rather be a pet for a bird than a slave to Jarkadon. Karaman is right: We were wrong to enslave the birds, and we paid for it. I hope you recover, Sir Ukarres."

"Shut the door and let me die in peace," the old man said, and closed his single eye.

Chapter 18

BETWEEN the Rand and the Range lay a gap which the skymen called the "Big Jump." It was not especially deep--a drover road crossed it, snaking over the great monoliths, the cinder cones, and the jagged fault blocks like a snail track through a garbage tip, spanning chasms on ramshackle bridges and seeking always the highest ground. The herds and the ox carts crawled painfully along there, the men gasping in the heat and thick air, and they had another name for it.

To the skymen, though, it was the Big Jump, and its width was always a challenge. The sunward crossing--from Rand to Range--was the easier, aided by the cold wind. For both mounts and wilds the technique was the same: Climb in the strong thermal which poured upward from a great sun-blasted cliff below Krant, and then glide. Ridden birds had a steeper angle of glide than wilds or spares, but in most cases they could all arrive safely at the little mountain called Rakarr, which marked the start of the Range.

Against the darkward face of Rakarr, of course, the cold wind rose in an updraft, and skill was needed there: The rider had to gain altitude to be able to circle the peak and reach the thermal above the sunward face. After that his road to the Range was open, an easy line of thermals to Ramo and beyond, all the way to the end. But with too little altitude he would not reach the thermal, while too much would sweep him up into the turbulence of rain and storm that lay on the darkward side of every mountain in the Range. It was those clouds which kept the Range fertile, their precious rainfall seeping through the volcanic rock to emerge as springs on the sunward side, but they could be death for a bird and its rider.

The darkward crossing from Range to Rand was harder, at least for the skymen. The wilds merely rode a convenient thermal up into the hot wind and let it carry them, and they were not even restricted to using the Big Jump--they could cross at wider places. But the men could not go that high, so they had to fight the cold wind all the way, and many a rider ran out of air before he reached the thermal at Krant. Then he would be swept back and down and suffocated in the desert, unless he was lucky enough to achieve a landing near the drover road and could hitch an ignominious ride for himself and his mount on an ox cart.

So the Big Jump was the main obstacle between the Rand and Ramo, and it was there, obviously, that the battle must be fought. When Lord Ninomar had been put in charge of the Guard, he had seen that point at once.

He had his promotion: full Marshal Lord Ninomar now. Of his two superiors, one was senile--well over thirty--and the other had rashly complained about the king's treatment of his granddaughter and had not yet recovered his health.

"We don't think much of you," the king had told Ninomar, blue-blue eyes glittering in a way very reminiscent of his father's, "but we think even less of the next three in line. So you will be in command--and your adjutant will be Colonel Rolsok."

That had been a hard dose to swallow, but when the king said swallow, one gulped. Rolsok was a baby-faced stripling, a close friend of the king's and rumored to be one of his orgy partners, although it was difficult to believe from the look of him that he was old enough to know what it was all about. Before Jarkadon's accession he had been a mere ensign, but he came from a fine family, with good skyman connections; his brother was the courier who had brought the news of the king's accession to Ninar Foan.

So it was Shadow all over again, with Ninomar approving what his nominal subordinate said. Like Shadow, Rolsok knew what he was doing, but he was a gentleman and much more tactful. He couched his suggestions in phrases such as "Have you considered, my lord..." or "His lordship has decided..." and things were magically done.

Edicts went out and every man who could fly and bend a bow was conscripted: retired troopers, country gentlemen, junior aristocrats...everyone. They drained into the palace from the whole length of the Range. Their mounts filled the aerie and the breeding aeries and then started lining the balcony rafts. Logistics became a nightmare: food and shackles and equipment and weapons...

The rebels were moving with astonishing speed. Fortunately they had overlooked the singles' compulsion to return to their mates. Day by day the solitary birds returned and another mark was made on the map.

There were no messages either with the singles or by courier. That strange silence bothered Ninomar more than anything. The rebels' archers must be superb.

And their speed was unbelievable.

"Sastinon!" the king snarled at one of the daily conferences. "The bird from Sastinon returned only eight days after the two from Ninar Foan? Could you move an army from Ninar to Sastinon in eight days, Marshal?"

That was faster than a royal courier traveled. Ninomar was about to say that of course he couldn't, when young Colonel Rolsok coughed.

"His lordship was just pointing out to me, Your Majesty, that it takes a single two or three days from Ninar Foan to Ramo, but about one day from Sastinon. So the rebels must have takenninedays, not eight."

"Oh?" the king said. "Astute of you, Lord Ninomar; we had missed that." He smiled at Colonel Rolsok.

"Perhaps Your Majesty would like to hear his lordship's plans for Podrilt?" the adjutant suggested, returning the smile.

"We should be delighted," the king said.

Ninomar had no plans for Podrilt, so he told Rolsok to go ahead.

"Just a suggestion of his lordship's, sire," the youngster said, "subject to your approval, of course. If you will look at the map..." He counted off the distances--a force sent now from Ramo should reach Podrilt just before the rebels did. "He thought about two hundred men, Majesty--and all riding singles. A reconnaissance in force? Perhaps delay them a little?"

Ninomar did not think much of the idea. There was a serious danger that such a force would destroy the rebellion all by itself, leaving no glory for anyone else. It meant dividing forces, and the manual warned against doing that; while if the rebels were much stronger than expected, it meant a loss of two hundred good men.

"And another point," Rolsok said smoothly. "The rebels must be stopped at the Big Jump, as his lordship has repeatedly pointed out. But it will take us at least eight hours to reach there from here. You will note from the map that the rebels will need about half a day to travel from Podrilt to Krant, on the far side. So word of an encounter at Podrilt would be our signal to launch."

Smart young fellow, Rolsok.

The departure of two hundred was hardly noticeable; still the skymen kept coming and the problems grew worse. They were being billeted on earls now, with dukes' houses next on the list. Human food was becoming short and bird fodder so scarce that even horses were sacrificed. Ninomar began to worry that the rebels would halt their progress at Krant and let the royal army starve itself to death. There were over twelve thousand men on the rolls already, and that seemed absurd--Allaban could never have raised more than a thousand.

Exactly ten days after the singles from Ninar Foan had sounded the alarm in Ramo, he was roughly shaken awake in the middle of third watch by Rolsok, who was looking very shaken himself.

"Singles from Podrilt!" Rolsok snapped, his voice perceptibly higher than usual.

"How many?" Ninomar demanded, sitting up.

The boyish face was pale and beaded with sweat. "Thirty-three when I was told," he said, "and still coming."

"How do they do that?" the king demanded for the third or fourth time. He had called the council into session; he had summoned all the senior officers of the Guard. They were still stumbling into the cabinet, hair awry, rumpled and bleary-eyed--the chancellor and the chamberlain, the earl marshal, and even some unusual choices like the royal breeder.

For the third or fourth time, the king received no answer. Well over half the singles were back now, with more coming all the time. Most of them bore dried blood on their tars or wings. None was injured in any way.

Many of them had borne a message tied to a leg--and no sane eagle allowed anything as flimsy as paper to remain tied to its leg very long. The messages were all identical: "When you are ready to surrender, release the birds in the aerie and wait in the Great Courtyard for orders. Vindax R." One such note might have been suppressed, but there were too many of them--everyone had seen one, or heard the words.

Jarkadon stopped his pacing, went back to his desk, then sat and glared around. Most of the men standing before him were elderly, but all had flown at some time. If any group in Rantorra knew eagles, it should be this.

"Well?" the king demanded. "I ask again: How do you kill a rider without killing his mount? Was every man crazy enough to go into battle with his reins tied? How do they do it? Foan told me about the battles he had in Allaban, and the rebels couldn't do it then. How are they doing it now?" There was silence.

Ninomar did not know, and such problems were not for him. If Jarkadon or Rolsok could not solve them, then he never would. But the mention of Foan was interesting--Foan ought to be here. In truth, he ought to be in charge, but he was known to be still under house arrest at the breeding aeries, and if the rumors about his daughter were true, then he was not going to be returning to court very soon. Jarkadon was creating his own problems--but that was a treasonable thought.

A courier marched in unannounced and bowed to the king. "One hundred and eighty, sire," he said. He turned and left without waiting for a reply.

"Twenty to come," Jarkadon said sourly. "Anyone want to bet against that?"

"Majesty," Rolsok said quietly. "We should launch the army."

He received a glare from his royal friend which obviously startled him.

"Not until we know what they are going to be fighting," the king said, almost snarling the words.

Rolsok looked appealingly at Ninomar, who stayed silent. No one had ever called him a coward, but one hundred and eighty out of two hundred? He could not doubt that those men were all dead.

"Majesty?" creaked the elderly voice of Chief Air Marshal Quortior, nominal head of the Guard. "I think I agree with the colonel. Once the rebels cross the Big Jump, they will be very hard to track down."

"They could pillage and loot and hide among the hills," the earl marshal suggested.

"If they ever take possession of the thermals around the palace, they would have us under siege," the chamberlain muttered.

"Then our numbers would be useless," the chancellor added.

It was amateur soldier time, obviously. The noncombatants wanted the rebels kept well away from Ramo.

"If they do to the army what they did at Podrilt, then we shall have no one left to guard the palace," the king snapped. "And no eagles. In the aeries they at least are safe."

"They will starve within five days," Rolsok said. "And so will we."

Jarkadon drummed his fingers on the desk and chewed his lower lip. The decision must be his. He had not had much experience at the harder side of kingship. If he made the wrong choice, Ninomar realized, then he might not get much more.

"I want to know what they did to those men!" the king growled.

"They were killed by eagles," Rolsok said. "There is too much blood for arrows."

Jarkadon nodded. "So?"

"So--an eagle must attack from above. The rebels must lose altitude crossing the Big Jump. That is the only place where we can be certain of taking their air."

The king snarled again. Then he seemed to reach a decision. He turned to Ninomar.

"You're commanding officer! What do you want to do?"

That was more like it! It was time for the experts to step in--and the astonishment on Rolsok's face was most gratifying. Ninomar considered the problem with professional care. He had almost fourteen thousand men ready to go, incredibly, but that was a grave responsibility--it was not fair to lead them into a battle against an unknown enemy.

"I should like to take counsel with the keeper of the Rand, sire, as he--"

"No!" Jarkadon snapped.

No help there! Suppose he took the army to Rakarr and the rebels did not come? How long could he keep his men in the air? Where would they perch, and what would men and birds eat?

Ninomar straightened his shoulders. "I am of the same opinion as Your Majesty. Keep the birds in the aeries."

"Then I was obviously wrong," the king said. "Launch the army."

Rakarr was a very small mountain, small enough that men on the top of it could breathe. Leaning into the wind, Ninomar stood there and surveyed his forces, and in spite of his tension and deathly weariness, he felt pride. No general had ever commanded so large an army: 14,248 men was the official count. A few of the militia might have found urgent business elsewhere, of course, but the absence of cowards need not be regretted.

Say fourteen thousand. To hold such a force in military formation was impossible. The air to sunward was full of wheeling birds and cursing riders, a great column of specks curving high into the sky with its base close above the fields and terraces on the sunward side of Rakarr. Those in the best part of the thermal could hold altitude, but the crowding was continually forcing men to the edges, where they had to sink and try to fight their way back in again. Near the base the turbulence of the cold air coming around from darkward was stirring the nearer specks in and out and up and down in a pattern that was visually pleasing but was certainly hell for the riders. At the top of the thermal, where it curved out far above the next peak, the birds were barely visible at all. The men there would be going through another sort of hell just trying to breathe, and once in a while he would see one plunge suddenly, heading down to safety--or to death if the rider did not recover consciousness in time.

It was a damned nuisance that thermals curved, for Ninomar's proper post as commander was at the top of his army. Indeed, he had never doubted that that was where he would wait for the attack--until Rolsok had tactfully pointed out that from there he would be unable to see the enemy, unable to know when to signal, and probably unable to signal in any case.

Rolsok was a smart young fellow; Ninomar would have to see that he got a medal for something, afterward.

Cleverly, though, Ninomar had found a way around the problem. He had set up his headquarters on Rakarr itself, on one of the many jagged pinnacles that topped it. Here he stood with Rolsok and a small group of aides and, of course, their hooded and tethered mounts. He had ordered tents, too, but time, transportation, and wind had frustrated that idea. Sunward his army waited. The tiny rocky space was flanked on either side by rushing streams of mist pouring through narrow gaps in the fanged ridge to vanish when they saw the sun. Above him stood empty sky, and darkward he could look down on the surging clouds that blanketed the windward side of the peak. Beyond that he had a clear view of the Big Jump and across it to the Rand and Krant and the enemy.

They were coming--or so some of the sharper-eyed youngsters insisted. Ninomar could see nothing himself. Rolsok was certain that there were birds in the thermal over Krant. Half an hour should do it.

Ninomar sent a messenger to the palace.

He stamped his feet, slapped his arms to keep warm, and wished his eyes were not watering so much. He thought he ought to be making light conversation with his companions, acting the confident leader, but he couldn't think of anything to say.

"See any more, Adjutant?" he demanded.

"Not yet, my lord." Rolsok rubbed his eyes. "I suppose it could just be smoke from a brushfire? Or else there must be a hell of a lot of them." He sounded very uneasy.

Ninomar thought of a cheerful subject at last. "Don't look for riders," he said. "The men of Allaban sit sling like bundles of laundry and let the birds carry them."

There were expressions of polite incredulity all round.

"Oh, it's true! The duke of Foan fought them years ago, and he tells me they were doing it then. I've seen one of their suits with a sling attachment." It was comforting to be able to sound so experienced. "Of course it calls for very good bird training--we must grant them that. But I shouldn't like it. What if the damned fowl sneezed, ha?"

There was appreciative laughter.

"It must make for difficult archery, too, my lord."

"Very," Ninomar agreed. "Never fear--we're going to fill the Big Jump with dead rebels today. The cowboys will be able to walk their herds across on the bodies."

When did he order the attack? The rebels had no options: They would lose altitude in the glide, so they had to enter the updraft below the cloud. Ninomar had no options, either, in truth. His force had to dive out of the sunward thermal and pass directly over his head and down into the Big Jump. It was a problem in calculating speeds. He must not let the rebels into the updraft, so the battle would be fought over the nearer end of the gap itself. There were going to be many men forced to ditch their birds then, and he should have thought to organize recovery teams. But it was too late for that.

His force would be traveling much faster, so the right moment would be about when he could see the rebel birds as clearly as his own. It was simple.

Then Rolsok spoke in a whisper that was somehow worse than a shout. "Ark of God!"

There they were.

At first Ninomar thought there was something wrong with his eyes. Or some sort of freak dust storm?

He turned and looked at his own army. Then he looked back into the Big Jump.

If he had fourteen thousand, then there must be thirty or forty thousand on the other side. He started to shake. It was cold up on this damned peak.

Small wonder that the two hundred had not returned from Podrilt.

They were still coming? The dust cloud was growing thicker. He had not known that there were that many birds in the world.

He could not guess how many there were. Sixty thousand? Eighty? Many, many times more than he had.

"It's a bluff!" he snapped. "There can't be that many men--just a few thousand. The rest are all wilds."

But wilds would attack a man on birdback, and they were a lot more agile and hard to hit. "The wilds will attack the rebels, too!" he shouted.

"Then why don't they?" Rolsok whispered.

The wilds were escorting the men in slings. Was that why the rebels used slings--because they did not annoy the wilds? How did the rebels get the wilds to follow them, anyway?

Now his eyes could resolve the great cloud of birds into dots, and he could see how those bearing slings had sunk to the lower edge, but they were still higher than he would have expected. And there were yet more dust specks behind. In the name of God, where had they all come from?

He straightened. It was time--if it was not too late.

"Attack!"

Every man jumped from his paralysis. Mirrors were ripped from bindings and turned sunward; to the waiting army, the top of Rakarr must have flickered suddenly in dancing pinpoints of light. And the birds of the Royal Guard began their glide.

Those in the lower part of the column had still to gain altitude, so they continued to circle. To Ninomar, the rest seemed to dwindle in size as they turned head-on.

The higher birds had farther to come, but their dive was steeper, so they would be coming faster. He had not thought of that: Two-thirds of his force was going to pass directly over his head at very much the same moment, and there would be impossible crowding in that tiny patch of sky. Damn, but there had been no time to plan all this properly!

He looked back into the Big Jump. The first ranks were close enough to be obviously eagles, but the dust cloud behind was still growing thicker--they were still coming, a bee swarm of eagles. Two hundred thousand? Four? He could not even guess--the odds were hopeless. Where had they all come from?

The others around him were thinking the same. "If every man gets a bird with every arrow..." a voice said.

There were still not enough arrows in the army.

"Stop that!" Ninomar shouted.

If those unridden birds were going to fight and were not merely camouflage, then Marshal Lord Ninomar was going to lose this battle.

It would be no battle--it would be a massacre.

The sun was darkened. He looked up, and the royal army was there, birds filling the sky, a forest of birds, thousands, some so low that he wanted to duck, packed in the air, hurtling darkward--men yelling and cursing as their neighbors crowded in on them. Here and there he saw some very near misses.

His heart swelled with pride at the sight of his gallant host, this royal army, his army: the skymen, the lords of the air!

Brave lads! Many of you will die today, he thought, and I am sending you into a very unfair fight. But you will do your duty, and I have done my best for you. Now you must do yours for His Majesty.

A solid cloud of eagles poured overhead, all diving at great speed into the wind.

Then something very odd happened.

Every bird raised its feet and ducked its head in a move he had never seenbefore--everybird.

Simultaneously.

Fourteen thousand men screamed in unison.

And the sky was full of blood.

Chapter 19

IF the palace at Ramo was the most luxurious dwelling place for men in the world, then the royal breeding aeries nearby were the eagles' equivalent. Aurolron had spared no expense or trouble to build and equip and staff them. In spite of his cynicism and his lack of interest, the duke of Foan had been impressed. Even had he truly been expected to inspect, comment, and improve, he could have added nothing to what had already been done and was being done. His banishment had been for other reasons entirely, and he knew that he could do nothing but submit. Rage would be useless.

So the duke threw the breeder out of his luxurious quarters and moved in. He ordered a large supply of good wine, hired three or four limber girls, and proceeded to spend most of his time in bed, drunk or wenching or brooding.

On the first day he received a brief note from the marchioness: The king was very pleased with Elosa, but she was fatigued after her long journey and the doctors had suggested a few days' bed rest. The duke burned the note and called for the next girl.

Days dragged. He had no friends at court, had not shared in the gossip, had been a pariah, his very face evidence of treason. Only loneliness had been his companion since he had left Ninar Foan, and only his surroundings had changed now. Were it not for his rank he would be in the dungeons, and at least his present quarters were better than that.

He endured. Mostly he mulled over his own mistakes, and there seemed to have been many.

Firstly, of course, he should have married Mayala--a passion like that comes but once in a life, and never in most. But dukes and princesses required royal permission to marry. Aurolron had refused it and summoned her. Foan could have resisted, but that would have placed him between rebels on one side and an outraged liege on the other--it would have been rebellion itself, with the state already threatened. So he had submitted. Had that been loyalty or cowardice?

He had made possible the truce between the king and Karaman. He had always believed that truce to have been a triumph. Now he suspected that it had been a second error.

He should never have married Fannimola. She was a link which had brought him lands, but little lust and less love. At that point in his dirge he usually called for a girl.

Elosa? In his darker spells, he counted four when he got to Elosa. A diamond shines most brightly on black velvet; even a hard man needs a soft place, a gentleness, somewhere in his life. He had lost it in Mayala. He had not found it in Fannimola or on the bleak and rocky uplands of his fief. He had made Elosa the tenderness at the core of his being, pandered to every whim--and somehow he had taken all the softness away from her, removing the black velvet and leaving only another diamond, hard and sharp and cold. Elosa, my fledgling!

Another bottle.

And Hiando Keep? More than an error--a madness. But she had sworn that she was pregnant, and the child had been born at the right time. When the proclamation of the heir had reached Ninar Foan, he had done his calculations and then worried no more, remembering only those few hours they had spent together as being the zenith of his mortal passage. Oh, Mayala!

But then Fannimola had gone visiting at court. She had always been a grim-faced bitch, but that was nothing compared to what she was like when she had returned. Put the heir apparent next to the scullery brat Rorin, she had said, and only the age difference would let you tell them apart. Explain that to the king and to the people, Your Grace.

Traffic between Ninar Foan and Ramo had become very rare thereafter.

How many errors was that? Five? Usually he was too drunk or drained to count by then.

Vindax's visit? That had been a disastrous error, but not his.

He had withheld the king's letter from Vindax before the hunt and the accident. In hindsight that had been an error but also an honest attempt to do a kindness. It probably would not have made any difference. He could ignore that one.

Five, then, until the sixth. A man should learn and grow and do better, but his mistakes seemed to have become progressively worse.

His sixth error had been his decision in the aerie, when the upstart serf Shadow had called on him to choose between Vindax and Jarkadon. He had been defending Elosa, true. He had ignored Aurolron's verdict, true. But what man of honor could move to place his own by-blow on another man's throne? That had been his reason, had it not? Honor?

Another bottle or another girl, whichever was closer to hand and mouth.

That sixth error had been the worst--ten minutes with Jarkadon had shown him that. As premier noble, having the senior prince alive again, Foan could have turned the wind and put Vindax on the throne. Instead he had abandoned the kingdom to a sadistic despot, an obviously unstable juvenile who dispensed floggings at random and cavorted with underage girls.

Jarkadon probably thought he could seduce Elosa, but her father was certain she would refuse him. The king would be disappointed there.

After ten days or so of frustration and debauchery, the duke sobered and checked the date. He humbled himself to pen a groveling letter to the king, begging that he might visit the palace for his daughter's coming of age. The reply came again from the marchioness: The king was planning a surprise party for Elosa's birthday; it would be an intimate little affair, reserved for a few friends of about her own age. He was not invited.

He was pleased to hear that she was making friends. He sent her his best wishes by letter but received no reply.

The next day he discovered two things. First, that there were guards at the doors, refusing him both passage and explanation; second, that the aeries were rapidly filling with new birds. His apartment had a good view, and he watched them streaming in at all hours.

It was not hard to guess what was happening, although there had not been a general muster of the skymen in many reigns. He waited hopefully for a summons to help--anything would be better than inaction--but it did not come, and he went back to the girls and the bottles in despair.

He awakened in the middle of the third watch when something passed between his window and the sun. He looked out and saw the eagles rising like smoke--the smoke of a funeral pyre?

The rebels were coming then, certainly. Vindax maybe. Unsure which side he wanted to cheer for, the duke went back to bed with two bottles and no girl.

When he awoke, there was a strange silence. He could see only a handful of birds in the aeries, and the roads were empty. The guards had gone from his door. He shaved and washed and dressed and found some food for himself--there were no servants, even.

Then he walked to the nearest of the aeries. He had a choice of birds--ancient or gravid types, not fit for battle--but finding a saddle and helmet took much longer than did his ensuing flight to the palace.

He was challenged, of course, but when he showed that he was unarmed, he was waved through. He could see only five guards over the whole palace, so evidently Jarkadon believed in betting everything on one roll.

The duke flew in to perch on the lowest level of the great aerie.

He made it with two minutes to spare.

There were no grooms in sight. While he was hooding his bird to undress it, he saw the great transformation take place. He saw the guards' eagles snap their bindings and dive. He saw the guards die. He saw the birds land on the grass below and bite off the harnesses.

He had known the truth about the eagles long before Schagarn, ever since Ukarres had escaped over Dead Man's Pass with news of the rebellion and the plight of the nobles trapped in the palace in Allaban. He knew that the birds' communication was almost instantaneous, and he guessed the truth at once.

What he had just seen happen to five guards had certainly just happened also to the royal army. The rebels had won without losing a man or a bird--Karaman's rapport with the eagles would have been enough, with that trick.

But it would have taken a skyman to think of that one, an unusually alert skyman.

When he had fired that arrow at Shadow, he had missed. That had been the seventh error, and the worst of all.

He went in search of Elosa and could not find her. The palace was rapidly degenerating into madness. There might have been a dozen eagles around when he left the aerie; very soon after, there were a hundred. In another hour, the sky was black with them.

The whole maze of balconies, terraces, gardens, and courtyards was open to the air and now open to the birds. The siege was solid; no man could reach a gate alive. The few covered passages and hallways could hardly contain the frenzied crowds milling through them. The troopers had all gone to battle. The duke knew that none would return.

So there were no guards, no fighters. Many of the enclosed rooms and halls had huge, high windows leading from the courts outside; a few ravening monsters came straight through glass and woodwork, snapping gigantic beaks like scissors. Those died on swords eventually, and the other uncounted thousands outside seemed content to wait before trying such suicidal attacks. Men and women fled to cellars and cupboards and servants' quarters, while the vengeance of the ages descended on the palace of Ramo.

Rocks fell.

The roofs had been built to withstand nothing heavier than sunlight. Some shots went through floors as well, to the levels below. The cannonade echoed continuously, rattling the whole palace complex. More death. More terror.

And the projectiles were not merely rocks. Anything an eagle could find and could lift was used: benches and wheelbarrows and grindstones, small statues from the gardens, chimney pots and butter churns, all falling from an incredible height; even a few headless bodies, which were the worst of all, exploding on impact, but those soon stopped coming, as though an order had been given.

He had to fight his way through service passages and cellars, but eventually he found the government: an ice-white boy cowering at a desk in a big egg-shaped room, surrounded by a dozen or so old men, all shaking and most looking ready to die of fear. From the smell of them, several had lost control of their bodily functions. The lord chancellor, the archbishop, the lord chamberlain, supreme air marshal, ministers of this and that...

Foan pushed through them and walked around to stand beside Jarkadon. He folded his arms and waited, and no one spoke.

So he said, "God save King Vindax."

They mumbled it back at him.

He took hold of Jarkadon's hair and twisted his head around. "How were you told to surrender?"

The mad-wide blue eyes stared up at him, and Jarkadon started to scream obscenities. The duke silenced him with a slap.

"I am quite prepared to torture it out of you myself," he said. "What is the signal?"

"We all saw the letters," King Shadow said, and told him.

The duke of Foan found his way through cellars and shattered hallways to the aerie. He climbed up three levels before he found any birds. There were six--and six men of Allaban also, with drawn bows aimed at him as he reached the top of the stairs.

"Want something?" their leader asked. He sounded young, he sounded like a peasant, and his tone was contemptuous. Both he and his men were indistinct against the light shining through the bars behind them, but they were slouching, and their arms trembled as they held the bowstrings. They must be exhausted if they had come from Ninar Foan in eleven days or so.

"I came to release the eagles, as King Vindax commanded."

"You're too late." The man spat at the floor.

It had come to this? "I wish to surrender the palace."

"Who are you?" the man asked, but then he did order his men to lower their weapons.

Foan told him who he was.

"Right!" the peasant said. He raised his hands and signaled to the birds watching on their perch. A few moments passed, then the noise of destruction died away. The rocks had stopped.

"The boss'll be here shortly," the peasant said to the duke. "Go and wait in the courtyard. Move!"

The single throne on a dais at one end of the Great Courtyard faced a vast emptiness; the walls were encrusted with balconies where in happier times the lesser folk would have gathered to watch the important ceremonies below. Here there had been no bombardment or invasion, and that was an awesome tribute to the control that someone held over this horde of wildlife.

The duke walked out and stood in front of the throne and waited, feeling very conscious of the crowded sky above him and his own vulnerability. He had to wait a long time, but then a single bronze circled down and settled on the lip of a balcony at the far end. It lifted one foot and turned to face him. One of his own silvers swooped over and perched on the top of the wall nearby, higher up.

He knew the bronze, and he knew the small male figure sitting in the sling it carried. He thought he would give up everything he had ever owned to have his bow in hand--but he would not have dared to use it.

He started to walk forward.

Shadow stayed in his sling, feet dangling over a long drop.

As soon as Foan was within earshot, Shadow called, "Not you."

The duke shrugged and turned to go, then stopped. In spite of the war and the siege and the death, his own mind was full of thoughts of Elosa--and the kid up there was human, too.

"Shadow? Jarkadon did release your parents. I checked when I arrived."

Shadow looked down at him for a while without expression. He was very pale, as though exhausted or in shock. "I had thought my father would have been in the army."

"I don't know what may have happened recently," Foan said, "because I've been kept away, but when I checked, they were at home under house arrest. So perhaps not."

Shadow nodded. "I flew by Hiando Keep, and their eagles told me they were there. It's too late to make friends, Keeper."

The duke spun on his heel and walked away. He eventually found the lord chamberlain. He dragged him back to the court and then along it until they stood together at the end, staring up at the kid high above them. Shadow had moved from the sling to a bench on the balcony and gone to sleep--they had to shout to waken him.

"I have a proclamation here, from the king," Shadow called down to them. "You can fill in whatever name you want; it grants power of regency until the king arrives. Probably tomorrow."

He tossed down a roll. The duke picked it up and held it while the lord chamberlain and he read it together.

Proclaim Vindax VII as King of Rantorra.

Proclaimtemporary regent.

No one to leave the palace.

The following to be held in chains, awaiting the

king's pleasure:

the usurper Jarkadon,

the duke of Foan,

Elosa, his daughter.

Shadow climbed over the wall as the bronze took hold of his sling once more. "Got any questions?" he called down.

"No," the lord chamberlain said.

"I have!" the duke of Foan shouted. "How do you feel?"

The big bird launched, flapped wildly to gain altitude as it flew the length of the courtyard, and narrowly cleared the far wall beside the high mirror. Then it was gone. IceFire followed.

But the question remained behind, unanswered.

Chapter 20

So it would end where it had begun. Shadow stood at the side of the throne and stared out at the assembled courtiers of Rantorra. One by one the senior nobles were coming forward to kneel and do homage to Vindax.

They had managed very well, those courtiers. The palace was a devastation, its interiors littered with fallen beams and smashed artwork, with plaster, with fragments of plows and cartwheels and chunks of rock. Throughout the grounds bodies still lay in heaps, especially near the gates. Yet somehow the nobility had rounded up its servants and its finery and dressed itself again in grandeur. The coiffures glittered with jewels, and the brocades and silks and laces shone in a thousand hues from doublets and plumes and sashes. They had painted the face of a corpse.

The balconies were deserted. High in the vault of the sky floated the eagle army, faint as gnats, waiting with endless patience. A single bird sat on the far wall, behind the courtiers: IceFire. She was chatting with the watchers overhead and once in a while would pass a message to Shadow.

Sweat trickled down his ribs and face. His legs trembled with the effort of standing, and he wanted to crawl off to bed for a hectoday. Even NailBiter had been exhausted by that journey, that great sweep along the Rand, flying three watches out of three, with Shadow sleeping in the air, grabbing food when he got the chance as towns and castles fell and the eagles flocked to his banner. His plan had worked, worked too well: Jarkadon had fallen into the trap and emptied his aeries.

The inside of Shadow's head was ringing like a tolling bell in an empty church, echoing back and forth, and the peals were the words of Karaman:Do you know what you're letting loose, lad?

No, he had not known.

Where it had begun...yet it was not the same. Two hectodays ago that nervous Sald Harl had worried about his coat of arms, how he looked, how to behave. Now Shadow still wore his battered flying suit with its cumbersome sling--his getaway suit, he called it to himself, grimly aware that he might need a fast getaway very soon. In the vertical blaze of sunlight around the throne he sweltered, and certainly he stank. He had not been out of that garment since he had left Allaban, and he had unfastened the front of it as far as he decently could. He did not care. Nor, seemingly, did the courtiers. No eye met his. They were not admitting his existence--long might that last.

There was a new archbishop, holding out the sacred text as each noble repeated the words of the oath.

The portly duke of Aginna, Sald's old neighbor from the robing room, came stumping forward to do homage. Like all those who had preceded him, he looked at Shadow not at all, and very little at the human wreckage now occupying the proud throne of Rantorra.

Vindax had survived his journey well. He seemed to burn with some fierce internal forge. How long could such a cripple live? How long would he be allowed to live?

"Explain," IceFire signaled, "why thisBobaSAsa-neneNOna?"

If only he were not so weary...How to translateBobaSAsa-neneNOna?A dance? Three-dimensional ballet? A romp?

"They are showing," he signed back, "that The-one-with-broken-legs is higher than they are."

No wonder the eagles thought that the human race was mad.

The courtiers had changed. Women outnumbered men by three to two. There were almost no young men. This was a joyous occasion, the throning of a new king. Mourning was not allowed, else that swarm of fireflies would be an army of ants. Husbands, sons, brothers, friends--fourteen thousand had died in the bloodstorm over Rakarr, and unknown hundreds in the bombardment of the palace.

The homage ended, and the last man retired, bowing. Vindax sat for a moment and gazed with satisfaction over the Great Courtyard. He wore royal blue, taken from his brother's wardrobes, and a gold circle shone on his dark hair, but he had made no effort to disguise his injuries. His fingerless hands rested in full view on the arms of the throne, and every senior peer had been required to kiss one of those stumps. The noseless face...he was an ape playing king.

The bell in Shadow's echoing head was knelling the words of Eagle Speaker: "She says what would you do?" It had been a reflex. He had been warned. Again and again he had pleaded with the High Ones, but they had been powerless. They could stop the slaughter afterward--once the birds had been released, there had been no more killing, but whenever one had been freed in flight, it had turned on its rider. Perhaps even Karaman had not realized how hotly burned the resentment of a ridden eagle, the gnawing of lifelong ignominy.

"And now," Vindax said, "we must distribute reward. And punishment."

The court took a deep breath.

There had been no way to turn back. Had Shadow faltered, then the eagles would have done it by themselves. He had believed that he could do it better and faster and therefore, he had hoped, with less bloodshed in the end. And so his juggernaut had thundered along the Rand, gathering freed slaves and wilds by the thousands as it came.

"Sald Harl, known as Shadow!"

Shadow yanked his mind back to the present. He stepped to the front of the throne and knelt. Vindax studied him for a moment.

"Know, my people," the king proclaimed, "that in Rantorra, only one man remained true." Unfair! What chance had the others had of demonstrating loyalty? "Only Shadow was loyal. He made this justice possible; single-handedly he overthrew the usurper." Better that fact not be made public. "We shall reward him as greatly as lies within our Power, and he shall have our favor forever."

There was a silence. Then Vindax growled, and Shadow looked up in surprise. "We forgot to think up a suitable title, my friend! I am not used to this king stuff. Duke? No, perhaps we can make you a prince. King of Arms?"

The old man whom Shadow remembered from the dressing room of so long ago came limping forward; he bowed and waited.

Duke of Hiando? Prince Sald? Shadow's skin crawled. It was all a sham now. There were no slaves and no skymen, either. No one could hold a dukedom--today a man's land ran the length of his bowshot. The court itself was about to fade like a puff of dust. To become a noble would be a mockery.

"We can appoint a prince, can we not, King of Arms?" the king asked.

If the old man was disgusted at the thought, it did not show on his craggy features. "Your Majesty is the fount of honor; you may confer any title. Not, I fancy, a royal prince, although you could certainly decree an equivalent precedence."

"Pick a name, Sald," Vindax said.

"Sire..." Shadow said, then hesitated. He wanted two things only from Vindax, and a title was not one of them.

The heavy brows scowled. "Well?"

"Shadow," said Shadow.

Surprise showed on the king's face, then a frown, then a royal smile. "Why not? So be it! We name you Prince Shadow and grant you precedence after ourself and our royal mother. We deed you the royal estates of Kragsnar and Schagarn as your fief, to you and your heirs forever. Record it, King of Arms. Arise, Prince Shadow!"

Courtly honors were already history, so it didn't matter. Shadow muttered thanks and stayed where he was.

"I crave a boon, Majesty."

He wanted two things only: a proclamation to flee the eagles--and release. The thought of escape to Hiando Keep was a great ache, a haunting, an irresistible yearning.

Vindax scowled. "Later! First the punishment."

Reluctantly and uneasily, Shadow rose and stepped back to the side of the throne.

Now the courtiers saw him; he was the object of dozens of furious glares. They were angry not about the title or the land, probably, but the precedence. Fools!

Vindax leaned back and rubbed his palms. "We shall proceed to justice! Earl Marshal? Bring in the prisoner, Foan."

Shadow cringed and wished he could think of any excuse in the world to leave. He had promised Vindax his revenge, and now it must be delivered. Had he killed so many just for that?

On a chair of state at the side of the dais sat the dowager queen, Mayala: a wraith, a legend. She alone had dressed in black, a plain robe which covered her totally except for hands and head. She wore no jewels or ornaments. Her hair was tied starkly back, partly hidden by a black mantilla, and her face was the same shade of white. She had been the first to pay homage; since then she had sat like a figure of ice, seeming not even to blink, staring over the heads of the crowd. Strangely, a trace of her former beauty showed again. No, it was not quite beauty, but the fading of fear had returned her grace and dignity. Now she slowly turned her face to study the horror on the throne.

The first man in the procession was the executioner, brawny, raven-hooded, bare-chested, carrying a knife and a rapidly cooling branding iron as symbols of his art. Guards followed, and within them the duke of Foan. He had been decked in sackcloth, his hair filled with mud, and he could barely walk under the weight of chains. Thus by law one accused of high treason was required to come to judgment. When he had shuffled to the front of the throne, he was forced down on his knees.

Vindax smiled.

There was no more expression on the duke's face than there was on the queen's, but Shadow was shocked at the sight of him. Yesterday in this same courtyard he had been nobility in defeat; now there was only defeat. How had they stamped on him so quickly?

The queen was studying him, but he had not looked at her.

"Executioner," Vindax said. "Review for us the punishment prescribed for traitors."

Shadow closed his mind to the litany of horrors. The courtiers rippled silently. Rank had its privileges, and freedom from that sort of systematic public demolition was supposedly one of them. And Foan was the premier noble.

The executioner fell silent.

"Barbaric!" Vindax said. "But if that is the law...We shall see about changing it--someday." The courtiers squirmed in unison. Foan's expression did not change.

High on the wall an eagle spread its wings and then folded them again--IceFire was trying to attract Shadow's attention.

"One-who-came-through-the-dark, there are many-many-many people going through the gates, all bearing kills."

This whole monstrous performance was a charade. The troopers who enforced the law were all dead; when the food ran out, the palace would starve. The servants knew, obviously, and as soon as the king had lifted his blockade, they had loaded up and started to move. While the court hierarchy was standing here watching the king gloat, the understructure of the government, the cooks and the cleaners and the gardeners and the footmen, were heading for safety as fast as their feet would go with whatever their hands could carry. Shadow could think of no reason to stop them. As soon as these bemused aristocrats discovered the truth, they were going to become a mob of ordinary people. Possibly a maddened, out-for-blood mob. He still had his flying army at his beck, so the sooner they made the change, the better. He moved fingers unobtrusively at his waist to acknowledge.

Had Vindax realized that his power rested entirely on Shadow?

Now the executioner had finished; the king licked his lips and addressed the prisoner.

"You are charged with high treason in that, knowing me to be alive, you continued to support the usurper. How do you plead?"

"Guilty," Foan said, and was cuffed by a guard for failing to add the proper form of address.

Vindax looked disappointed. "Do you wish to beg for mercy?" he asked hopefully.

Foan merely shook his head and was struck by the guard on the other side.

This, Shadow reminded himself, was the king's father. But how could a man not beg for mercy when faced with such torments?

"Well, it wouldn't do any good, anyway," Vindax said. "We find you guilty. We sentence you to loss of all titles, ranks, honors, and lands, and then to death as ordained by law. We shall start the first session shortly, I think, as the court is already assembled. Move him over there..."

He waved a flipper, and the guards dragged the prisoner off to one side. He fell when they released him, and was unable to rise because of his chains.

The bell in Shadow's empty head tolled again:You can't turn a straight furrow with a bent plow, lad.Karaman had seen in Vindax what Shadow had not. Shadow had not dared to dream of a republic, only a better kingdom, and again Karaman had been wiser.If the soil is fertile.

"Bring in the prisoner, Elosa Foan," the king said.

The earl marshal dropped to his knees.

"She is dead, sire."

"No!" Vindax roared. "Who killed her? I'll have him flayed. When? How?"

The earl marshal had turned gray with terror. "She took her own life, Your Majesty, some eight days ago."

Obviously the duke had not known that the previous day.

Vindax pounded both arms of the throne without producing any sound. "I wanted her to see what she had done! Why?" He turned his head to look at the prostrate form of the former duke. "Bring him back here!"

The duke was dragged over and lifted to his knees before the throne once more.

"Tell me what happened!" the king ordered.

"Take off these damn chains first!" the duke shouted, and was instantly prostrate again.

There was silence. One of the guards drew back a foot to kick, and Vindax yelled at him to stop. He had already sentenced the man to the worst death he could find; he had no threats left.

"Remove his chains," he growled.

With much clattering, Foan was released. He climbed stiffly to his feet beside the heap of shackles and rubbed his wrists. The last of the skymen, Ukarres had called him. He should be a tragic figure, Shadow thought. Nobility in defeat again, the young hero of Allaban grown gracefully to elder statesman--but the duke of Foan was a flawed hero. Always he had found solutions which served his own purpose or that of his daughter. His motives had never flown quite true. If this was the last of the skymen, then it was time to close the book on them.

"Now talk, traitor!" the king said.

From somewhere that filthy, half-naked figure drew a pathetic dignity. "I know only what I learned in your jail, boy."

Boy?Son? If Foan confessed to adultery with the queen...but he would not do that.

Again the guard raised a fist, and again the king stopped him.

"Which is?"

"That your brother did it. He invited her as guest..." The duke's voice began to rise. "...and pretended to welcome her. Then he beat her into submission, savagely, brutally. He raped her!"

"Good!" Vindax said, mollified. "What else?"

Foan spoke with contempt. "When she had recovered from the beating, he held a party for her birthday. She did not know what his parties involved. Afterward she was carried back to her quarters. Before the medics arrived, she somehow managed to drag herself over to the window--" His voice cracked, and he fell silent.

"Pity!" Vindax said. "I did not approve of the Lions when they abused innocent victims, but in her case I only regret that they did not leave her for my professionals. Still, they were very inventive amateurs."

Now the duke's face was incandescent with fury; hatred hung in the air like a stink. Yet who should presume to judge Vindax? He would never more know life without pain. He had owned the world: youth, power, health--who could lose all that and not desire revenge?

The courtiers were as silent as a field of rocks.

Vindax had dealt with his father and sister. "Bring in the prisoner Jarkadon!" the king snapped.

The earl marshal prostrated himself.

Foan laughed.

Vindax flushed around the scars on his face.

"You thought that mongrel could survive in a jail in this place?" the duke asked. "I had the cell directly across the passage. Noisy prisons you keep, King Vindax!"

"Who?" the king hissed.

"All sorts of people, Brothers and fathers, I suppose." Contemptuously the duke added, "You'll be pleased to hear that he took a whole watch to die. But indulge yourself: Send for the remains and pass them around."

Vindax almost overbalanced as he turned his head. "Shadow! You promised me my revenge! They have cheated me!"

Now the courtiers were beginning to rustle and stir. Shadow could feel danger rising like vomit, and he was shaking with fatigue and revulsion.

"Cut off that one's head and be done with it, sire," he said. If he did not get Vindax safely out of this place, and quickly, there was going to be more bloodshed.

"No!" the king snarled. He glared at his prisoner. "He will have to suffer enough for three."

Shadow thought: I am not Shadow, Vindax is. Ever since his conception he has been a shadow on the throne of Rantorra, growing and spreading...but that was only fatigue scrambling his mind.

"There is another traitor!"said a new voice. The queen had risen, and now her tiny form walked slowly across the front of the throne and stood beside the duke. "I plead guilty to high treason also."

The whole court seemed to recoil one step, and Vindax grabbed vainly at the arms of his throne to hold himself steady.

"Silence!" he said.

"I will not be silent!" she shouted, and for so flail a figure she was astonishingly loud. "It was not King Shadow who killed your father, it was Jarkadon. I had to watch that poor man die--I perjured myself at his trail, and that itself is treason!"

Vindax's sigh of relief was quite audible.

"Jarkadon is beyond our reach," he said. "And I don't give a damn about King Shadow. Go and sit down, Mother!"

She put her arm around Foan, who seemed to recoil slightly from her touch.

Once Karaman had seen these two as the ideal romantic couple. Now they were a haggard old pair, and yet Shadow could find little pity for them. He could see nothing noble in their tragedy. They had caused all this trouble by not being honest with themselves and with their children.

"I plead guilty to high treason!" the queen repeated stubbornly. "I shall suffer under the same law as this man does."

Threat? Blackmail?

"By God, if you defy me, then you shall!" the king roared.

Father, sister, brother--now mother?

The queen spoke again, but clearly she was intent on saving Foan, and to speak of Hiando Keep would drag him down with her.

"Then there is another traitor!" she shouted, and raised an arm to point at Shadow. "He is a traitor to his own race! He has freed the eagles!"

There was a pause.

"Some of the eagles," Vindax said.

"Sire!" Shadow protested.

"The queen is right!" the duke shouted. "Without eagles, how can you rule? How will you keep order or 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.

"Seize him!"the king commanded.

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.He who ever trusts a bird...

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.Big mutt!

"My parents and I shall soar very high if you and your mate make your nest there. Let us go and see about it. I may have a quiet time while we fly." He would sleep the whole way; his eyelids were drooping already.

He walked over and turned his back, and the great beak picked up the sling. He was lifted over the balustrade and then up into the sky. As they circled once over the palace, he saw that fighting had broken out already in the Great Courtyard, rival factions struggling for the throne. What good would it do them?

Higher and higher he floated in the hot thermal. Now the palace was a mere scribble on its rocky spur, its inhabitants shrunk from sight. He could imagine that it was deserted, given over to wind and sun, fallen already into ruin as it would soon be in truth: a historical curiosity, a disused relic of the fallen kingdom of Rantorra where nothing moved except the shadows of birds.

IceFire had appeared alongside, and they were floating up over the tops of sunlit hills. There, too, was change. A few hours earlier Sald had seen the peasants at their work; now they were standing in groups and talking. The word would spread.

Republic? Democracy? He did not think so, although doubtless Karaman would send his missionaries. Every peak would be a kingdom to itself, many tyrannies instead of one, wars and battles. The big men would rule now.

His eyes were blurring with fatigue, but when he raised his face to the sunlit hills, he saw that he had an escort: tens of thousands. And perhaps he did not feel so bad.

All the heavens were full of eagles, flying free.

GLOSSARY

AIR: The composition of the atmosphere is not known, but it probably contains less oxygen and more carbon dioxide than standard (terrestrial) atmosphere. This is normal for planets without oceans or with plant life restricted to small areas.

BICYCLE: One of the great inventions of the human mind. Almost no culture has ever regressed far enough to lose the bicycle.

BIRD: Usually an eagle, but also used for a whole family of flying creatures similar to terrestrial birds.

CAWKING TIME: Pairing or mating time (falconry term).

COLD WIND: The steady surface wind flowing from dark pole to hot pole. The temperature is relative: Where the flow falls off the Rand(qv), the drop causes adiabatic warming.

COVER: A flier positioned above and behind another as protection from attack by wilds.

DAY: An artificial human division of time, apparently close to a terrestrial day in length. The world is gravitationally locked on its primary, rotating once in a year. The presence of life and of crustal differentiation (seeRand)suggests that at one time the world had oceans. Possibly, therefore, it did rotate, even if very slowly, and meteor impact or, more probably, tidal drag stopped this rotation in remote times; an alternative explanation would be that the sun had a binary companion now lost or too far cooled to be effective in warming the Darkside.

EAGLE: The dominant life form of the world, resembling a terrestrial eagle, but of greater size and intelligence and having an eight-pointed comb.

FEAK: To clean a beak by rubbing it on the perch (falconry term).

GOAT: A rock-dwelling mammal. Like many other species of plant and animal named in the text, the goat may be either a terrestrial import or a local form of similar appearance. Human settlers anywhere tend to use familiar names whenever possible: for example, the North American "buffalo."

HIGH RAND: Probably mountains standing high on the continental crust, and very high above the oceanic crust of the plains. (SeeRand.)

HOT WIND: The high-altitude return of air from hot pole to dark pole. Note that the descent of this air over the dark pole warms it: The coldest part of the world is just darkward from the terminator, where water is precipitated. (SeeIce.)

ICE: Almost all the free water of the world is locked up in vast ice sheets on the dark hemisphere. Geothermal heat keeps the base of the ice plastic; slow flowage and local continental drift move enough of this ice to the terminator to provide a very minor circulation of water in local areas of the world, as in Rantorra, and thus permit life to continue.

MUTES: Bird droppings (falconry term).

PLAINS: Flat, low-lying area of oceanic crust, equivalent to the abyssal plains of Earth. Atmospheric pressure is too great for humans. (SeeAir.)On the dark hemisphere, of course, the plains are buried in ice.

RAND: In terrestrial terms, the continental slope. On Earth the slopes are smoothed by a cover of sediment; on this world they retain their block-faulted ruggedness. Vertical relief is obviously extreme, perhaps even greater than on Earth, where it can reach several miles: for example, between the Andes mountains and the floor of the Pacific. The continental surfaces lie above breathable atmosphere for mankind, partly because air has replaced water within the ocean basins, but perhaps also because of a less favorable atmospheric composition than the terrestrial standard. (SeeAir.)

RANGE: In terrestrial terms, a volcanic island arc marking the edge of a crustal plate, such as the Aleutians or Antilles. In the absence of oceans, the whole ridge is exposed.

RED AIR: Skyman term for conditions of very high pressure at low elevations. Carbon dioxide or nitrogen poisoning is indicated. (SeeAir.)

SHEAR ZONE: The interface between the cold wind flowing sunward and the overlying hot wind returning; a zone of great turbulence and electrical activity.

SINGLE: A paired bird separated from its mate, to which it will attempt to return.

SPARE: A paired bird accompanying its mate without a rider and hence able to carry small loads.

STOOP: To dive in attack (falconry term).

TAKING (HIS) AIR: To be above (him) (falconry term).

TERMINATOR: The boundary between light and dark hemispheres. Life is impossible elsewhere on the planet, and human life also requires favorable elevations.

THERMAL: A plume of relatively warm air ascending from a sun-warmed surface. The prevailing (cold) wind bends the column sunward.

THIRD WATCH: The final watch of the day, reserved for sleeping.

TWO BELLS: Start of the third watch.

UPDRAFT: A skyman term for wind moving upward over a surface elevation, but at times also including thermals(qv).

WATCH: One-third of a day, or eight hours, signaled in major population areas by a bell.

WILD: An undomesticated eagle.

WORLD: The world of the story is never named in the text and has not been identified with any known inhabited planet, although much effort has been spent in searching for it. It was apparently settled in the First Diaspora. The tale of Shadow has been found in many forms in early literature throughout the Galaxy and must therefore date from early in the Second Diaspora, when settled planets were first reestablishing interstellar communication. Its wide distribution suggests that it enjoyed much popularity at that time, perhaps due to a morbid fascination with the problem of cultural regression, which was a very real risk for settlers of inhospitable worlds. The earliest known version is found in the Sirian Sector in a very primitive inflected language descended from one of the many Indo-European tongues of Earth.