Mercedes Lackey - Anthology Read online

  Flights of Fantasy

  Copyright © 1999 by Mercedes Lackey and Tekno Books All Rights Reserved Cover art by Robert Giusti DAW Book Collectors No. 1141 DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Introduction © 1999 by Mercedes Lackey

  The Tale

  INTRODUCTION

  By Mercedes Lackey

  THE TALE OF HRAFN-BUI

  by Diana L. Paxson

  A QUESTION OF FAITH

  by Josepha Sherman

  TAKING FREEDOM

  by S.M. Stirling

  A GATHERING OF BONES

  by Ron Collins

  NIGHT FLIGHT

  by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  A BUZZARD NAMED RABINOWITZ

  by Mike Resnick

  TWEAKED IN THE HEAD

  by Samuel C. Conway

  ONE WING DOWN

  by Susan Shwartz

  OWL LIGHT

  by Nancy Asire

  EAGLES EYE

  by Jody Lynn Nye

  WIDE WINGS

  by Mercedes Lackey

  INTRODUCTION

  By Mercedes Lackey

  RAPTORS. Birds of prey. Everyone gets a different mental picture when they think of birds of prey—birds who make their livings as predators, the top of the food chain. Some immediately picture the American bald eagle, the symbol of the United States, without realizing that the bald eagle is more often a fisher than a hunter, which is why they are most often found near large bodies of water. Some think of babies being carried off (not in recorded history) or savage golden eagles preying on lambs (unlikely—they are more likely to be taking advantage of a lamb found already dead; birds of prey rarely attack anything too big to carry off). Some imagine noble thoughts going on behind those enormous, keen eyes; others, even in this day and age, see a "varmint," a creature that attacks a farmer's animals and competes for hunting resources, and should be shot on sight.

  Most are at least partly or completely wrong in what they imagine.

  As a licensed raptor rehabber, I know birds of prey personally; sometimes very personally, as a great horned owl puts her talon through my Kevlar-lined welding glove and into my hand. . . .

  There are no noble thoughts going on in those brains. Real raptors have relatively small brains, most of which is composed of visual cortex with the rest mostly hard-wired with hunting skills. That doesn't leave a lot of room for social behavior. I once read a passage in a romance novel describing a lady's falcon perched in a tree above her, watching protectively over her, and nearly became hysterical with laughter. No falcon in my acquaintance is going to perch in a tree, protectively or otherwise, if left to her own devices.

  Turn your back on her, and she will be out of there without a backward glance—which is why falconers in this day and age must fit their birds with jesses and bracelets (the leg-restraints) that can be removed by the bird.

  Nearly every falconer has sad tales of the ones that escaped, and no falconer wishes to think of his bird hanging upside down, entangled in her jesses in a tree, to die a slow and horrible death. As for being "varmints," most birds of prey neither poach on farmers' livestock nor compete with hunters. The single two most common raptors in the US—American kestrels and redtail hawks, which can literally be found anywhere— prey, for the most part, on insects, mice, and sparrows for the former, and field rats, squirrels, and rabbits for the latter. Redtails rarely bother with flying prey—they are built to hunt things that run. As such, they do farmers more service than disservice.

  Fascination with birds of prey seems to have been with us for as long as we've walked upright. A recent T-shirt called "Evolution of a Falconer" suggests that the hawk may have been adopted by early man almost as soon as the dog.

  Certainly there is some justification for saying that there have been falconers as long as there has been the written word. Falconers appear in ancient Persian and Indian miniatures, on the walls of Egyptian tombs, and in medieval manuscripts. There are falconers in every part of the world today, even in places where laws make it incredibly difficult. There are falconers in Japan, where ancient tradition favors the goshawk, and forbids commoners to touch the bird with their bare hands. There are falconers in Mongolia, who carry on their traditions of hunting wolves with golden eagles. There are falconers in Africa, in South America, and in virtually every European country. The tradition of falconry goes back so far in Saudi Arabia that the Saudis cannot even recall its beginnings. And needless to say, there are falconers spread all over North America.

  There is, in fact, a falconer joke which transcends all boundaries and sends falconers of every nation into snickers. "How can you tell a man who flies a falcon? By the scratches on his wrist where the bird decided to take a walk." (Falcons are smaller, by and large, than hawks, and those who fly falcons use short gloves to protect their hands from the talons.) "How can you tell a man who flies a hawk? By the suntan that stops at his elbow." (Hawks tend to be larger, heavier, and grip far more tightly with their feet; only a fool flies a hawk without a long glove.) "How can you tell a man who flies an eagle? By the eyepatch."

  (Self-explanatory.)

  Kings and emperors have written volumes on falconry; hawks and falcons figure prominently in myth. The Romans seem to have been of two minds about eagles; they topped the standards of their legions with them, and identified those standards with the great birds so closely that the standards themselves were referred to as "The Eagles." On the other hand, it is from the Romans that we get the myth of eagles carrying off babies. Zeus and Jupiter were both identified with the eagle. The Arab world gave us the roc, a bird of prey so large it carried off elephants.

  As for history, New Zealand was once home to a flightless bird of prey called the moa that stood over eight feet tall! But more impressive yet, at one point in prehistory, South America bred flighted raptors the size of small airplanes, which certainly were capable of carrying off, not just babies, but full-grown adult humans! Could these birds—or the dim memory of them—have given rise to the Native American tales of the Thunderbird? Certainly they would have been the only birds strong enough to dare the deadly air-currents of tornadic supercell-storms, so that their appearance in the sky would have been heralded by the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder.

  But—this anthology is not about real birds of prey. This is about the intersection of fantasy and reality, where raptors and other meat-eating birds are concerned. This is a wonderful collection full of surprises. For Diana Paxton, the "theme" was bent slightly, including ravens (who are, after all, carnivorous). From Mike Resnick comes a little fable that mixes revenge with reincarnation. From Nancy Asire, a spirit bird— From a dear friend, Dr. Sam Conway, comes his first published story; I had warned him that I would be ruthless with it, and if it did not match the standards of the professionals, it wouldn't make the cut, but to the delight of both of us, it more than qualified.

  And my own contribution, which came out of one of those odd cases of serendipity when a character demands more attention than the author is immediately prepared to give her. When I was working on The Black Swan, my own version of the tale told in the famous ballet Swan Lake, one of Prince Siegfried's bridal candidates suddenly took on a life and personality far be-yond that of a mere spear-carrier. The falconer-Princess Honoria and her birds absolutely demanded to be center stage. Unfortunately, I had another story to tell than hers. Fortunately, she fit perfectly well into this venue, and I was happy to give her the spotlight on a stage of her own, and a story that proves the adage that what is hell to one may be heaven to another— or at least, an escape.

  We all hope you enjoy these highly unusual birds, and their flights of fantasy.

&nbs
p; THE TALE OF HRAFN-BUI

  by Diana L. Paxson

  Diana L. Paxson's novels include her Chronicles of Westria series and her more recent Wodan's Children series. Her short fiction can be found in the anthologies Zodiac Fantastic, Grails: Quests of the Dazvn, Return to Avalon, and The Book of Kings. Her Arthurian novel, Hallowed Isle, is appearing in four volumes in the next two years, with book one, The Book of the Sword, in stores now.

  THERE was a man called Ketil Olvirson who look up land below Hrafnfjall in the west part of Iceland. He had two sons, Arnor and Harek. Arnor, who was the elder, liked best to go a-viking to England and Scotland and the isles, while Harek stayed home on the farm. On one of his journeys Arnor took captive a young woman called Groa. His parents were dead by that time, and though his brother said that no good would come of marriage with a woman who had been a thrall, he made her his wife.

  She bore him a son whom they called Bui, but they had no other child.

  About this time Harek also took a wife, named Hild. They all lived together in this way for some years, until Bui was fourteen years old. It happened then that an old shipmate asked Arnor to go on a trading voyage to Norway. At the end of the summer, when they looked for his return, he did not come. It was not until the next spring that they heard that the ship had gone down with all hands off the Sudhreyar Isles.

  When that news came, Harek sat down in his brother's high seat and Hild said that as there were no witnesses to Groa's marriage, she was now their thrall.

  When Bui tried to defend his mother, Harek told his men to beat the boy with staves and drive him off the farm. They dragged him to the brook that comes down from Hrafn-fjall, and there they left him.

  But Bui did not die.

  "Quo-oork!"

  Bui opened one eye. Something black moved across his field of vision, paused, quorked again. He raised his head, and it disappeared. In the next moment pain speared through his skull, and he lost consciousness once more.

  When he woke again, the light had dimmed. This time the pain was instantly present, a dull, pounding ache localized above his left eye. That eye was swollen shut, but the other was focus-ing now and he could hear the trickle of water from somewhere nearby. Grass waved gently in the forefront of his vision. Beyond it, he saw the sleek shape of a raven. For a moment its glittering black gaze met his own.

  "Kru-uk? Ru-uk-uk?"

  The inquiry was answered from above. With a groan, Bui rolled over, and the first raven flapped upward to join its mate in the stunted birch tree. For a moment of distorted vision he saw them as valkyries, waiting to choose the doom-fated men they would carry to Odin's hall.

  "I'm not dead, curse you!" he whispered. "You'll have to wait for your meal!"

  He closed his eye again in a vain attempt to shut out the images flickering in memory— Harek and Hild in his father's high seat—the malice in the face of the thralls as they closed in. Did the nithings believe they had left him for dead, or did they account a beardless boy of so little worth they did not care?

  The movement had awakened the rest of Bui's body to a host of new agonies. He had the woozy, sick feeling that comes from blood loss, but no wet warmth to warn of reopening wounds. He had been hurt badly, but he had spoken truth to the ravens; he was not going to die for a while yet. For a moment, he found himself as disappointed as they.

  Beyond the birch tree the fells rose stark against the dimming sky. He set his teeth against the pain and set about the business of learning to live again.

  Before Bui lost consciousness he had managed to stagger a fair way up the brook toward the fell. The upper part of the vale was a good refuge, far enough from the farm to keep him from a chance discovery, but sheltered from the winds. For some days he had just enough strength to crawl from the bank to the waterside where the vivid purple fireweed grew. There he quenched his thirst and bathed his wounds.

  It was high summer, and the weather held mild, with only a few showers of rain. Once Bui began to move about, the ravens lost interest in him, though he often saw them cruising over-head in search of food. They were clearly a mated pair; he took to calling them Harek and Hild, and threw stones to drive them away.

  Three days of nothing but water and the tender inner bark of the birch left him as hungry as the birds. Weak as he was, Bui managed to trap a fish in a circle of stones, which he then filled with more rocks until the water ran out and the fish flopped helplessly. As he tore at the sweet flesh, he could feel strength pouring back into his body.

  That night, as he lay curled in a nest of soft grass beneath the trees, he dreamed.

  An old man came walking over the fells, wrapped in a dark cloak with a broad hat drawn down over his eyes. As he trudged forward, leaning on his staff, a wind came up, bending the grass and lifting the edges of his mantle so that it billowed like dark wings. And then suddenly it was wings, as the cloak separated into a host of ravens that swirled across the sky.

  The old man turned, and his figure grew until he towered into the heavens. But now he wore mail and a helmet, and he had only one eye. His staff had become a spear, pointing back toward the farm.

  "Look to the ravens. They will be your guides. . . ."

  From that time, Bui recovered rapidly, being young and hardened by work on the farm. He followed the vale upstream to the edge of the earth had formed a small cave which could be unproved with stones and turves until it kept out the rain. He twisted twigs of dwarf willow into a weir to trap fish, and fashioned a sling with which he could bring down birds that came to the lake on the fell. With a fire drill and a great deal of patience he was able to make a fee which he kept smoldering in the cave.

  For the moment, Bui was surviving. The reasonable thing would be to make his way to some other farm and take service there before winter came. But he dreamed sometimes that he heard his mother weeping, and could not bring himself to leave Hrafnfjall.

  When he had been on the fell for a moon, he had the fortune to find a strayed ewe caught among the stones. Swiftly he slit its throat with his belt knife and began to butcher it, saving every part of the animal he might be able to use. It was a messy job, and as he finished, it occurred to him that anyone who came searching for the animal would find the remains and him, as well.

  A familiar "whoosh" of wings overhead brought his head up. Swearing, he looked for a stone, then paused, frowning, for this raven was a stranger, smaller and scruffier than the territorial pair, with a distinctive white spot upon its tail. It hopped forward and then back again, avid and wary at the same time.

  Ravens, thought Bui, could pick the sheep's carcass so clean no one would be able to tell how it had died. He sawed off a hunk of fat and tossed it toward the bird.

  The raven exploded into the air in a flurry of black wings, circled once, then flew away westward over the fell, emitting a peculiar cry rather like a yell.

  Bui watched it go in disappointment, then finished bundling the meat into the sheepskin, shouldered it, and made his way back to the cave. He fashioned a rack in the back of the cavern to smoke the meat, and that night-he ate cooked mutton for the first time in over a moon.

  The next day Bui went back to the carcass, dropping to hands and knees as he approached and taking care to remain unseen. It had occurred to him that the raven he had seen might be a young one, without the insolent confidence of the territorial pair, and he did not want to frighten it away.

  He need not have bothered. There were no birds to be seen. Then he looked again and grinned. Raven tracks showed everywhere, and the carcass had been picked clean. On the ground before him lay a black feather. Bui picked it up and stood for a long time, stroking the smooth vane.

  Bui realized that he had decided to stay on the fell the day he found the body of the man. It had been there a long time, and there was little to be scavenged from the clothes. The shaft of the spear had rotted away, but the point, though rusted, was still whole, as was the head of the ax that had been thrust through the man's belt. A disintegrating leat
her sheath had pro-ted the sword. The metal framework for a leather-covered helmet still shielded the skull. Bui might tell himself that the spear was for the seals that winter would bring to the shore, but the only use for the sword and helm was when went to kill men.

  The Althing had not judged him outlaw, but Bui had heard stories enough to know how to live like one. He turned from the fell, with the pale menace of the glacier on its horizon, to the long dun slopes that stretched toward the sea. The air was so clear he could glimpse the green of the vale. Inner vision supplied the long, turf-roofed shape of the farm, his farm, where his mother labored, a thrall once more.

  "Odin, hear me! Show me how to take back my land!" He raised the sword to the sky.

  As if the action had invoked them, black specks appeared in the sky. One, two, three— Heart pounding, Bui counted as nine ravens plummeted earthward, rolling in the air and pulling up in a long swoop, only to spiral downward, wings half folded once more. Breathless, he watched the aerial display until on some silent signal they all circled above him, and then flapped away across the fell.

  "Hrafna-guth, Raven-god," Bui whispered, remembering his dream, "Let your birds show me the way, and they shall never lack for an offering."

  As the nights grew longer, the air became clamorous with the cries of migrating waterfowl. Bui spent most of the daylight hours beside the lake, using nets and his sling to bring down ducks of all kinds and geese as well: He built a second structure of turf to smoke the meat, and cured the skins of the eider-duck with the feathers on to serve as bedding.

  His activities very quickly attracted the ravens, and he and they began to learn each other's ways. Now, when he set out for a day's hunting a black speck would soon appear, checking at regular intervals until he made a kill. Usually it was one of the pair that "owned" Hrafnfjall that came first.