Nevertheless, he obeyed the summons, launching himself out onto a damp, chill wind into an ugly gray morning. This was not a day he would have chosen to fly in; the air was heavy, and the dampness clung to his feathers.
I'm going to be late,he realized, as he thought about how long it would have taken the messenger to come from the Abbey, then for one of the pages to bring the message to him.It would be just my luck to get there after they've all finished and gone away.
He pumped his wings a little harder, wishing that the cloud-cover wasn't so low. He wouldn't be able to get any altitude to speak of in this muck.
As he neared the area Ardis had directed him to, he started to scan the rooftops for possible landing-spots. The address the messenger had specified was in an alley, not in the street; he couldn't hover there indefinitely. Sooner or later he would have to land and rest.
It was then, with a startled jolt, that he finally spotted the Black Bird he'd been looking for all this time.
It was dancing around on a rooftop overlooking the alley; it probably thought it was hidden from view by an elaborate arrangement of cornices, chimney-pots, and other architectural outcroppings, but it wasn't, not from directly above. And there was something about the way it was moving that was the very opposite of comical. In fact, the moment he saw it, he had the same feeling that vipers, adders, spiders and poisonous insects gave him—a sick, shivery feeling in the pit of his stomach and the instinctive urge to smash the cause flat.
Without a moment of hesitation, he plunged down after it. As he neared the halfway point of his dive, it saw him. Letting out a harsh, startled, and unmusical set of squawks, it fled, half flying, half scrambling along the roofs, like no bird he had ever seen before.
The very sound of its voice made him feel sick; he pumped his wings hard and pursued it with all of his strength. Whatever it was, whatever it had been doing—well, it waswrong, evil. There was nothing Visyr wanted at that moment more than to feel his talons sinking into its skull.
Suddenly, Tal froze in place, as a strange series of squawking noises came from up above. Something flashed by overhead, and a moment later, Tal felt the strangling hold on his throat and tongue ease—not much, but enough for him to speak? At least he wasn't chasing Ardis anymore!
"Ardis!" he croaked. "Ardis, something's turned me loose! For a moment!"
She stopped what she was doing and held perfectly still.
"I'm in the spell, the magic—" Each word came out as a harsh whisper, but at least they were coming out now! "It's like a shell around me, forcing me to do whatever it wants. I think it's using the pen—not the knife, but my pen—I think that's how it got hold of me!"
She nodded—then moved, but not to run. She closed the few steps between them faster than he had ever thought she could move and began taking things away from him, virtually stripping him of anything that might be considered a weapon, starting with his belt-knife and the pen. As her fingers touched the pen, he felt something like a shock; as she pulled it away, he felt for a moment as if he'd been dropped into boiling lead. He screamed, the focus of the worst pain he had ever experienced in his life.
Visyr was a hunter; more than that, he was an angry, focused hunter, one who had pursued difficult game through the twisting caverns of the Serstyll Range. And he was not going to let this particular piece of game get away from him again.
He narrowed the gap between them, until he was close enough to snatch a feather from the tail of the Black Bird. It wasn't squawking now, as it tried desperately to shake him off its track. It was saving its breath to fly.
But Visyr the hunter was used to watching ahead of his prey as well as watching the prey itself, and he saw what it did not yet notice.
It was about to run out of places to hide.
A moment later, it burst out of a maze of gables into the open air above the river.
It realized its mistake too late. Before it could turn and duck back into cover, Visyr was on it.
Two hard wing-pumps, so hard he felt his muscles cry out, and he had his hand-talons buried in its rump. He executed a calculated tumble, which swung it under, then over him, and brought its head within reach of his foot-talons. One seized its skull; the other seized its chest.
He squeezed.
And a moment later, he landed safely on the docks amid a crowd of shouting, excited humans, with his prey safely dead, twitching, beneath his talons!
Of all of Orm's calculations, these events had not entered into them.
He had been watching from the safety of the recessed doorway of his own rented warehouse, figuring that Orm the spice-merchant had a perfect right to be in his own property, and a perfect right to investigate anyone rattling about in the alley. From here he could not see the pile of bodies, so he wouldn't "know" there was anything wrong. This was a good place to watch for the moment when Rand took over the Church constable; when Rand was completely occupied, Orm would have a chance to flee.
But then everything went wrong.
The constable got taken over, all right—but before he could do anything but chase the High Bishop around a bit, there was a flash of black overhead, followed closely by a flash of red, blue, black, and gray. Orm had seenthat particular combination before.
It was the bird-man, and it was after Rand. Rand, who couldnot duck down alleys too narrow to fly in, Rand who was subject to exactly the same limitations as the creature who was chasing him, and who did not have that creature's sets of finger-long talons to defend himself with. Oh, he had that long, spearlike beak, but the bird-man had a better reach, and besides, Rand wasn't used to defending himself physically. The only things he'd ever used that beak on were helpless human women, not six-foot-tall predators.
The two Church officials were out of sight in the cul-de-sac, but Orm knew what was happening: Tal Rufen was no longer being controlled by Rand. The High Bishop would free him in a moment—and she would have the pen in her possession in another. Nothing he could do or say would take away the fact thathe still had Rufen's pen in his room, and traces ofhis essence would be on the pen in Rufen's hand. Ardis was famed for being able to dig the true facts of a matter out of people who might not remember them. None of Orm's alibis would hold up against her investigation. Once she began unraveling his web of deceptions, it would fall completely to pieces. Rand might die by the talons of the bird-man, but Orm would be taken by the Church constables, and—
And he'd heard rumors about what they did to prisoners. Look what they'd done to Rand!
Nothing he had planned had included the High Bishop surviving Rand's attack.
His luck had run completely out. He could not run far or fast enough to escape the Church's justice with Ardis in charge.
But for a little while longer, at least, Rufen would not be able to move. Until Rand was actuallydead, Rufen would be frozen in place. There was only one hope for Orm, only one way he could buy himself enough time to flee.