The Eye of the Falcon (5 page)

“Be patient. It shouldn't be long.”

“When she does fly—will she come back?”

“Oh, yes. She can't hunt yet, and she thinks of this place as her eyrie. She'll fly around, learning to use her wings, but she'll keep coming back.”

Pirra shot him a glance. “Always?”

“No,” he said gently. “Once she's made her first kill, she'll be gone.”

Pirra went cold inside. “When? When will she make her first kill?”

He hesitated. “A few days. Maybe longer.”

Pirra put her hand to her mouth. Only
days
? “Well,” she faltered. “That's as it should be. I want her to be free.”

But that night, as she gazed at the falcon on the bedpost, she said, “Don't leave me, Echo. I can't be here without you.”

Echo paused in her preening and glanced at her, and in her dark eyes, Pirra glimpsed the wildness of high places where she could never go.

The next day was blustery, with snow swirling in the courtyard. Echo was restless, flapping her wings at every gust.

All at once, she bobbed her head up and down, shook out her feathers, spread her wings—and
flew
.

Pirra felt a sharp tug in her heart as Echo rose with a joyful shriek, wobbled, then glided over the sanctuary wall.

Echo flew higher—and for a moment, to Pirra's astonishment, she felt as if she was flying with Echo: rushing through the limitless Sky.

She felt as if she was free.

The falcon rode the Wind and shrieked with joy. She was a
falcon,
this was what she was
for
!

In places the Wind flowed fast and smooth, but in others it was bumpy, with sudden drops and peaks. The falcon couldn't see them but she felt them, and she had fun twisting and turning: tilting her wingtips to slide off a bumpy bit, slowing herself down by spreading her tail feathers, then stretching her wings and letting an updraft carry her higher.

The strings on her legs dragged a little, but she forgot them as she soared and the earth fell away. The girl was a speck—and yet the falcon felt her spirit flying with her.

Suddenly, the falcon's heart leaped. There, far below:
pigeons
.

Folding her wings and tucking her feet under her tail, she dived, enjoying the rush of the freezing air.

The pigeons were fast and they'd seen her. They darted confusingly, she couldn't decide which one to attack. The Wind was lumpy and tangled. She struggled to adjust her wing feathers to keep her plunge straight.

Just before she reached them, she thrust out her legs and clenched her feet to knock one out of the Sky . . .

She missed.

Pretending it hadn't happened, she flew off. She was outraged. She was
ashamed
. What had she done wrong?

Through the voices of Wind and snow and the flurry of escaping pigeons, she heard the girl calling, and flew back toward the eyrie.

The girl didn't mind that she'd missed. The falcon swooped down, skimming so low that her wing beats stirred the girl's hair, and the girl laughed, which made the falcon feel a bit better, so she swept off to the juniper tree for a rest.

Perched snugly out of the Wind in the dense branches, she did some preening, then realized she was hungry. The girl always had meat, so the falcon launched off again to get some.

Something yanked her back.

Startled, the falcon struggled to free herself. She couldn't. The strings on her legs had become tangled in the branches. The falcon tried to peck herself free, but the juniper was prickly and thick; she couldn't reach.

She shrieked and gaped in alarm. She was stuck.

“S
he'll come down when she's hungry,” said Userref. “Until then, you'd better leave her in peace.”

“Mm,” Pirra said doubtfully.

They knew Echo was in the juniper tree, but it was so dense that they couldn't see her, and when Pirra called, all she heard was a shriek, which could mean anything. Reluctantly, she followed Userref inside.

But Echo didn't come down, and Pirra couldn't sleep. She had a horrible tangled-up feeling, as if she was trapped and unable to move. Maybe Echo was trapped. Maybe she
couldn't
come down.

As night wore on, the trapped feeling grew worse, and Pirra became more and more convinced that Echo was in trouble. She had to be rescued.

The wind had dropped, and the courtyard was cold and still. In the torchlight, the bulls' horns cast spiky shadows on the snow.

To avoid getting snagged in the branches, Pirra took off her cloak, boots, and socks and left them at the foot of the wall. The pegs were icy beneath her bare feet as she climbed to the lookout post, and a freezing wind swept up from the precipice.

The sky was just beginning to turn gray, and the juniper was dark and forbidding. Pirra had never climbed a tree in her life. If she made a wrong move, it would be her last.

It occurred to her that Hylas would have sped up it like a squirrel.
Oh, shut up,
she told herself.
He isn't here.

The first branch she grabbed snapped, nearly pitching her over the edge. Breathing hard, she seized another, and clawed and scrabbled her way into the tree.

“Echo?” she panted.

No answer. But she was here, Pirra felt it.

The juniper was gritty with ash, and as she climbed higher, Pirra got liberally scratched and her feet went numb with cold. At last, through the branches, she glimpsed feathers.

Echo was perched just out of reach, her head hunched on her shoulders, fast asleep. In the gloom, Pirra saw that her traces were badly snagged. No wonder she couldn't get down.

She was about to call to her when Echo stirred in her sleep. Pirra gasped. The falcon's right eye was shut, but her left eye was open and alert. One half of her slept—while the other remained awake.

Once again, it came to Pirra that Echo wasn't just a tetchy young falcon, but a sacred creature whose spirit could never be wholly known.

“She is a daughter of
Heru
the All-Seeing,” Userref had told her. “
Heru
the Great Falcon, Lord of the Horizons. The speckled feathers of His breast are the stars, and His wings are the sky: With every downbeat He creates the winds.
Heru
never sleeps, for His left eye is the Moon, and his right eye is the Sun, which gives life to all . . .”

Somewhere far beyond the Great Cloud, the Sun woke—and so did Echo. She sneezed, tried to scratch her ear with one foot, realized she was stuck, and struggled to flap her wings.

“Keep still, you'll hurt yourself!” said Pirra. “I'll cut you free.”

Echo swiveled her head and glared at her. Her beak was agape, sending out smoky puffs of breath, but she was listening.

Still talking, Pirra stretched as far as she could, and offered Echo a scrap of frozen squirrel. Echo relaxed enough to take it, and while she was ripping it to shreds, Pirra drew her knife and cut the traces.

To her surprise, instead of taking off, Echo gulped the rest of the squirrel, then sidled along the branch and stepped onto her wrist. For a moment, Pirra put her forehead against the falcon's cool soft breast, and felt Echo's beak touch her hair. “Thank you, Echo,” she whispered.

Then the falcon was gone, swooping down to the courtyard, where she perched on the woodpile and called impatiently to Pirra.
Eck-eck-eck! Hurry up and come down!

Stiff with cold, Pirra scrambled out of the tree and down to the courtyard. She'd pulled on her clothes and was dusting herself off when Userref and Silea emerged from the sanctuary.

The Egyptian saw Echo and smiled. “I told you she'd come down when she was ready.”

Pirra didn't reply.

Silea was eyeing her suspiciously. “Mistress, you have juniper prickles in your hair.”

“So I have,” Pirra said coolly.

A few days later, Echo flew off and didn't come back.

Since being rescued from the tree, her flying had improved incredibly fast, with agile swerves and heart-stopping drops. Pirra had worried that she'd crash, until Userref had pointed out the extra feathers on the elbows of her wings: “They'll slow her down till she can handle an adult's speed.”

But suddenly Echo wasn't there anymore. Pirra stood in the courtyard, unable to take it in. She had a sense of a high, cold, limitless sky, and knew that Echo was far away. “I didn't think she'd go so soon,” she whispered.

“She may still return,” said Userref.

“But it's been a whole day, and she hasn't learned to hunt!”

“The Wild is her home, Pirra. She'll learn. And who knows, maybe she'll bring back the Sun.”

Pirra didn't care about the Sun; she wanted Echo.

When Userref had gone inside, she climbed to the lookout post. Clouds seeped over the crags, and the pines stood silent on the slopes. Behind the waterfall's muted roar, she sensed the vast brooding presence of the mountain. She was alone again. Trapped in this endless gray twilight.

Without Echo, her chamber was deathly quiet. The remains of a pigeon wing dangled from the bedpost, and on the floor stood a small earthenware dish of water. Echo had ignored it—Userref said falcons rarely drank—but Pirra had found this so hard to believe that she'd put it there anyway.

Beside it lay one of Echo's pellets, delicately woven of mouse fur and bones. Pirra stooped to put it in her amulet pouch—and suddenly the floor tilted, a wave of weakness washed over her, and her knees buckled and she went down.

The next thing she knew, she was lying in bed. Userref was tucking sheepskins around her, and Silea was warming a bowl over the brazier.

The glow of the embers hurt Pirra's eyes. “Wha' happened?” she mumbled.

“It's nothing,” Userref said in a low voice. “You caught a fever, being out in the cold.”

It didn't feel like nothing. Her head was cracking open and she was freezing and burning up at the same time.

When she woke again, she ached all over, her teeth were chattering, and needles of fire were piercing her skull.

Userref sat cross-legged on the ground, rocking and muttering a charm in Egyptian. He'd reverted to his old linen kilt, and on his bare chest she saw his
wedjat
amulet: the sacred eye of his falcon-headed god. Over the winter, he'd taught Pirra a little of his speech, and she understood snatches of the charm.
“My fledgling is hot in the nest . . . the black seeds of sickness fly towards her . . . All-seeing One, let them not touch her . . .”

Pirra shut her eyes, but that made her dizzier. She spiraled down into the whirling dark . . .

Now Hylas was bending over her, scowling through his shaggy fair hair. “What have you done with Havoc?” he demanded. “You were supposed to look after her!”

“I lost her,” she mumbled.

“This always happens,” he complained. “I make friends, then I lose them. But this time, it's your fault!”

What about me? she wanted to say. You didn't
lose
me, you sent me away.

But she was so weak her lips wouldn't move, and the pain in her head was agonizing. She tried to tell him that she was sorry about Havoc, but as she squinted up at him, he turned into Silea. The slave girl was clutching a steaming basin and shaking with terror. “I c-can't touch her,” she stammered. “I'll catch it too!”

“Give that to me,” snapped Userref. Snatching the basin, he dipped in the cloth and gently wiped Pirra's face. She moaned, and he put down the basin and began passing his cool fingers lightly over her throat, then under her chin, as if he was searching for something.

With a jolt of terror, Pirra realized what he was feeling for: the telltale boils of Plague.