David Gemmel - The Hawk Eternal

At the far end of the hall, where the table curved like an upturned horseshoe, sat the Queen. She was a tall woman, silver-haired and yet young, and she wore a plain dress of white wool. Caswallon had seen this woman die in the Farlain three years before. Then she had been handsome but old; now she was a beauty, proud and strong, her clear grey eyes sparkling with life and energy. The eyes turned on Caswallon and Sigarni rose from her seat, a delighted smile on her face.

She hesitated, as if not believing what she saw. Then she was running to meet Caswallon. “Redhawk!” she shouted joyously. “You’ve returned!”

Caswallon returned the Queen’s embrace, his mind racing as Sigarni gripped his shoulders.

“Let me look at you, Redhawk. By Heaven, how is it you have become young again? Have you dyed that beard? It was almost pure silver the last time we met.”

“I hear you have done well,” countered Caswallon, his mind racing.

“Well? Now, that is an understatement. The Outland King is slain, his army in ruins. The war may not be won, but we have gained valuable time. Time! Morgase is defeated-but she has vanished. Not one word of her in six months. But enough of that. Where have you been these last two years? I needed you.”

“I have been in my own land, among my own people.”

“You are ill at ease, my friend. What ails you?”

“I am merely tired, my lady.”

She smiled. “Join us at table. We’ll eat and hear a few songs,” said Sigarni, leading him forward. “Later we’ll talk.”

The feast seemed to last an eternity, and great was his relief when eventually it ended. A servant led him to an upper bedchamber. It was small, with a single window and a long pallet bed. A fire was burning in the hearth. Moving to the window, Caswallon pushed it open and gazed out over the mountains. Confused, he remembered again the Queen’s death near Attafoss, and her last words.

“Now the circle is complete,” the Queen had said. “For you told me you would be with me at my death.” And then at the last she had asked, Was I truly the Queen you desired me to be?” The cold winds of approaching winter made him shiver. Closing the window, he crossed the room to sit on the rug before the fire. He thought he had been prepared for anything, but the sight of the Queen had shaken him. She was stunningly beautiful, and despite his love for Maeg, he found in himself a yearning for Sigarni that he would not have believed possible.

For some time he sat there, then felt the draft on his back as the door opened.

Sigarni entered. She was dressed now in a simple woolen shirt of white that showed the curve of her breasts, and dark brown leggings that highlighted her long, slim legs. She sat down on the bed. No more the Queen, she looked now like a clanswoman-tall and strong, fearless and free. Her mouth was astonishingly inviting, and Caswallon found his heart beating wildly.

“What are you thinking, my wizard?” she asked, her voice more husky than he recalled from her greeting in the hall.

“You are very beautiful, lady.”

“And you are changed,” she said softly, her grey eyes holding to his gaze.

“In what way?” he countered.

Sigarni slid off the bed to sit next to him by the fire. “When I greeted you I saw the surprise in your eyes. And now I am here beside you-and yet you do not seek to hold me. What has happened to you, Redhawk? Have you forsaken me for another? I will understand if that is true. By Heaven, I have said my share of farewells to lovers. I would hope to have the strength to accept similar treatment. Is that what is happening here?”

“No,” he said, his mind reeling. Moving back from her, he stood and returned to the window. The moon was high over the mountains and he stared up at the sky, fighting to make sense of her words. They were lovers! How could this be? For Caswallon loyalty was not like a cloak, to be worn or discarded, but an iron code to live by. And yet. ..

“Talk to me, Redhawk,” said Sigarni.

He swung to face her. Once more her beauty struck him like an arrow. “Taliesen told me that you understood the Gateways. You know, therefore, that they allow us to move through time as well as to other lands?”

“Of course,” she told him. “What has that to do with you and me?”

He took a deep breath. “In all my life I have seen you only four times. Once as a babe in the forest, the second time by Ironhand’s Falls, the third”-he hesitated and looked away-“in my own realm… and the fourth tonight in the great hall. Everything you say to me-about us-is… new and strange. If we are to be lovers, it is not now but in a time-for me-that is yet to be. As I stand here I have a wife, Meg, whom I adore, and a small child, Donal.” He saw she was about to speak and raised his hand. “Please say nothing, for I know I would never betray Maeg while she lived. And I do not want to know what the future holds for her.”

Sigarni rose, her face thoughtful. “You are a good man, Redhawk, and I love you. I will say nothing of Maeg…” She smiled. “Just as you hesitated about our meeting in your own realm. I will leave you now. We will talk in the morning.”

“Wait!” he called out as she opened the door. “There is something I must ask of you.”

“The debt,” she said. Then, noting his incomprehension, she smiled softly. “You always said there would come a time when you would ask me a great favor. Whatever it is, I will grant it. Good night, Redhawk.”

“You are a rare woman, Sigarni.”

Turning back, she nodded. “You will one day say that to me with even more feeling,” she promised.

Taliesen sat alone in the semidarkness of his viewing chamber. It was cold, and idly he touched a switch to his right. Warm air flowed through hidden steel vents in the floor and he removed his cloak. Leaning back against the headrest of the padded leather chair, he stared at the paneled ceiling, his mind tired, his thoughts fragmented.

He transferred his gaze to the gleaming files. Eight hundred years of notes, discoveries, failures, and triumphs.

Useless.

All of it…

How could the Great Gates have closed?

And why were the Middle Gates shrinking year by year?

The Infinity Code had been broken a century before his birth by the scientist Astole. The first Gate-a window really-had been set up the following year. It had seemed then that the Universe itself had shrunk to the size of a small room.

By the time Taliesen was a student his people had seen every star, every minor planet. Gates had been erected on thousands of sites from Sirius to Saptatua. Linear time had snapped back into a Gordian knot of interwoven strands. It was a time of soaring arrogance and interstellar jests. Taliesen himself had walked upon many planets as a god, enjoying immensely the worship of the planet-bound humanoids. But as he grew older such cheap entertainment palled and he became fascinated by the development of Man.

Astole, his revered teacher, had fallen from grace, becoming convinced of some mystic force outside human reality. Mocked and derided, he had left the order and vanished from the outer world. Yet it was he who had first saved the baby, Sigarni. Taliesen felt a sense of relief. For years he had feared a rogue element amid the complexities of his plans. Now that fear vanished.

He understood now the riddle of the Hawk Eternal.

“You and I will teach him, Astole,” he said, “and we will save my people.” A nagging pain flared in his left arm, and rubbing his biceps, he rose from the chair. “Now I must find you, old friend,” he said. “I shall begin by revisiting the last place Caswallon saw you.” His fingers spasmed as a new pain lanced into his chest. Taliesen staggered to his chair, fear welling within him. He scrabbled for a box on the desktop, spilling its contents. Tiny capsules rolled to the floor… With trembling fingers he reached for them. There was a time when he would have needed no crudely manufactured remedies, no digitalis derived from foxglove. In the days of the Great Gates he could have traveled to places where his weakened heart would have been regenerated within an hour. Youth within a day! But not now. His vision swam. The fear became a tidal wave of panic that circled his chest with a band of fire. Oh, please, he begged. Not now!