Yet still his hand remained on hers, and the claw-held sword was steady to light that joining.
What did Rane raise in Nirel? Tirtha could not guess. Nor could she reach out, she discovered, to aid the other in his fight. Would the fact of sword-oath, as great a bond as that was among his kind, be any armor against such an assault as this?
“Fool, die then!”
Rane’s palms turned down. He no longer waited for a gift. His fingers crooked. Through her ran pain—red pain—a fire eating away her body inch by inch. She struggled to keep back her screams, wondering how long she could. Let Nirel release this common hold, and that other—the victory would be his!
The fragment of skin with its scrawl of pictured symbols, which had been fluttering in the air above the box, though it could not be wind-borne, suddenly began to twist upon itself. Even through the haze of her pain, Tirtha saw it change. The twisting substance took on a bird shape—not that of the gray bird which was Ninutra’s messenger. This one was darker, black of feather as the clouds about them.
It… it lacked a foot, its head drooped, its wings beat with such a manifest effort that it could barely keep aloft. But it flew straight toward Rane. Then, with a last desperate burst of speed, it sped into his face as if determined to pluck out an eye, as Tirtha had heard the war falcons had once been battle-trained to do.
The Dark Great One threw up an arm to beat the flyer away. As he did, that claw, so close to her own body, moved also. The sword of power that had been found in a place of death hurtled through the air, crossing over the casket from which, in its passing, it appeared to draw more light—went on—aimed at the dark-skinned breast of him who threatened.
There came a blast of red, of black, if both could be the color of flames. Tirtha was blinded by that vast surge of energy, that upward flare. She felt the pressure laid on a hand coming to life—alive to agony. Nirel’s flesh against hers, so tormented and torn, was forcing down the lid of the casket, to seal it again. She twisted under a final upsurge of agony, and at last she screamed in a way that tore at the very lining of her throat.
Dreamy content, a feeling of lightness in the world—what world? Where? She was dead. Could one dead feel the beating of a heart, draw deep breaths of scented wind? There was no pain, there was only…
Slowly Tirtha opened her eyes. Sunlight beamed over her head—the sun of early summer. She was stronger, more alive than she had ever felt before in her whole pinched, grim existence, as if she had been truly dead before and only now awakened into life. Her body was whole. Instinctively she used a healer’s sense without thinking to assure herself of that. In fact, it was as if she somehow stood above and beyond that body and could see into it. There were no broken bones, no harm. She was healed!
She lay in a strange place—a round hollow filled with red mud that gave off an odor akin to certain herbs she knew. There came a tapping. She looked down. Mud had been mounded over her body, had hardened into a crust that covered her. A bird now perched upon the smaller hump above her upturned feet, and with its bill, it was chipping away at the covering which fell in flakes. A bird? No, a falcon, black and strong and standing on two feet!
There was a stir by her side. Quickly she turned her head. Nirel knelt there, even as he had done when they had united to open the casket. There was no encrusted blood matting his dark hair, no sign of any wound. His fine-drawn body was bare, unscarred. He, too, was picking at that which covered her, picking with two hands. The cruel claw was gone, he had ten fingers busy at his task.
She gasped and he smiled—such a smile as she thought could never have touched the somber face she had learned to know so well. Then he raised his restored hand, spread, retracted, spread again, those fingers.
“It…” The wonder of that or of her own healing encompassed her, and her voice was lost in it.
“It is witchery,” he said with such a light gaiety that she wondered if this could be someone else wearing Nirel’s body. Then she looked into his falcon eyes and knew that could not be so. “The witchery of Escore. We have been here long, my lady, but it has served us well.”
She remembered. “The casket!”
“There is no more geas for the Hawk,” he told her, as he pulled away with his new-found fingers a long strip of dried clay. “That witchery has been reclaimed by the one who set it, having once sent forth the casket into safety with those of your clan who swore to guard it when the Shadow fell here in the long ago. It was returned that it might serve now as a weapon in the right hands.”
“Ninutra?”
He nodded as he pulled off more of the clay, then clasped her hand, drawing her up toward him. She looked from those entwined hands to him.
“I am still a woman.” She forgot Great Ones and their dealings.
“As I am a man.”
“And a Falconer?” She could not yet accept this change in him. Dim in her mind was that dream vision, Lord and Lady under the Hawk, closed in a bond she had never known or thought to know, but which might possibly exist again.
He turned his head and chirped. The bird arose from the crumbled clay, gave a cry, alighted on his shoulder.
“In so much as this”—he lifted his free hand and caressed the feathered head which bent to his touch—do I hold with the old. But now I am a Hawk—did not you yourself name me so, my lady?”
Was there a shade of anxiety in that? Could it be that he looked to her for reassurance?
“A Hawk,” she returned firmly, and allowed him to steady her on her feet. More than their bodies had been cleansed and healed here. There might lie before them much that was of the Dark—more pain, more needed strength, but neither of them would walk alone again.
“Alon?” For the first time she remembered the third one of their comradeship.
“He too seeks a destiny—that which is truly his.”
Tirtha nodded. Yes, that would also follow. Alon in his own way was now free.
“A Hawk,” she repeated softly. “And let them ’ware all hawks henceforth, my lord, Nirel.”
His arm was about her shoulders where the weight felt right, a part of a life to be. The falcon took wing and spiraled heavenward as together they walked away from what was past and could be forgotten at will.