Arhu controlled his desire to shudder. With their great ax-like beaks, there was no mistaking these birds for anything but what they were—meat-eaters—and there was no mistaking what they would have eaten, from time to time, in this city where there had so often been large numbers of dead ehhif. Or People, for that matter … Arhu thought.
“It’s all right,” another of the ravens said. “By the time we eat somebody, they don’t mind any more. And these days we mostly don’t, anyway. The Wingless Raven gives us chicken breast.” The raven clattered its beak with pleasure. “Very nice …”
“If you’ve been here that long,” Arhu said, “you must have seen a lot …”
“Even if we hadn’t been,” Hugin said, “we would still be seeing it now. William the Conqueror: I see him walk by a puddle, right over there, and a cart goes through it and gets his hose wet, and he swears at the man driving the cart and pulls him out of his seat … throws him down into the water, too. The Romans: I see them walking their city wall, looking at the cloud of dust as Boudicca and her chariots come riding. Over there.” She gestured with her beak at the remains of the wall, like a bumpy sidewalk, that stretched from past the Wardrobe Tower to the Lanthorn Tower, along the green that had once been the site of the Great Hall. “And poor Ann Boleyn. There she goes, over to the block. Over there.” She turned and pointed with her beak in the other direction, over toward Tower Green. “Very dignified, she was. That used to be a great concern for them. And there he goes running by, one of them who didn’t care about dignity so much.” She pointed over to the little corner building which was presently the Tower gift shop, but which once was the home of the Keeper of the Jewels. “Colonel Blood, with the Crown stomped flat and hidden under his wig, and the Rod with the Dove down one boot. He almost gets away with that, too …”
“And it was you saw that then?” Arhu said. “You must be pretty old.” He let the skepticism show in his voice a little.
“Oh, not us,” said Hardy. “Our ancestors. Though we see what they see: that’s our job. And eventually the humans noticed that we were always here, and for once they came to the right conclusion, that the place needed us. They started trying to protect us … very self-enlightened, that. Though there have been times when the population has dropped very low.” He glanced up at the sky. “During the war—the last big one here—almost all of us died except old Grip. The humans got very worried. And well they might have, with the V2s and the buzz-bombs coming down all around them. But we knew it would be all right. We saw it then, as we see it now …”
“That’s why I’ve come,” Arhu said. “It may not be all right, soon, in a very large-scale sort of way. We need help to find out how to stop what we thing is happening from happening.” He looked around him. “All this could be gone …”
“No,” said Hardy, “of course it won’t. This will still be here.” He squinted up at the pale stones of the Tower. “It will be dead, of course. No people … and eventually, even no ravens. No nothing, just the dark and the cold, and the thin black cloud high up that the Sun can’t come through. The wind crying out for loneliness … and nothing else.”
“You mean it’s going to happen,” Arhu whispered, shocked.
“I mean it already has happened,” said Hardy. “Now it’s just a matter of seeing how it happens otherwise. You know that: for you have the Eye too, don’t you?”
“Yes. I’m not very good at it yet,” Arhu said, suddenly feeling a little humble in the face of what was plainly another kind of mastery than his own.
“Oh, you will be, if you live,” said another of the ravens. “Give it time.”
“I’m not so sure I’m going to have a lot of time to give it,” Arhu said.
“Of course you will,” Hardy said. “We’re here in strength now, after all. Nothing will fall that we don’t see fall first. And the more of us there are, the more certain the vision. When there was only one to see … that was a dangerous time.”
“But there are a lot of you now.”
“Oh, after this century’s second war, all fortunes turned, if slowly,” said Hardy. “Certainties returned. Also, we felt like breeding again. It’s not like it is with your People … we don’t do it unless we feel like it. And also, some of us came from other places to live here. The humans thought they brought us, of course: but we knew where we were going. We chose to come: we chose to stay.”
Arhu wondered if this wasn’t possibly slightly self-deluding. “But your wings are clipped,” he said, rather diffidently, not knowing whether they might be insulted. “You couldn’t fly away if you wanted to.”
The ravens looked at each other in silence for a fraction of a second … then burst out in loud, cawing laughter, so that some of the tourists on the other side of the Tower grounds turned to stare. “Oh, come on now,” said Hugin, “surely you don’t believe that, do you?”
“Uh,” Arhu said. “I’m not sure I know what to believe.”
“Then you’re a wise young wizard,” said another of the ravens. “Why, youngster, we can go anywhere we please. We’re the ‘messengers of the gods’, of the Powers that Be, don’t you know that? Even the humans know it. They’re confused about which god, of course: they’re confused about most things. But they still managed to give us use-names that are the same as the ravens they think served one of their gods, and went between heaven and Earth carrying messages. Hugin—” That raven pointed at Hugin with its beak. “Actually she’s Hugin II, after another one who went before her. And there’s Munin II over there.” The raven speaking pointed at a third one.
“We go where we please,” said Hugin. “You’ve been working with the People who manage the gate under the Tower, so you must know how we do it.”
“You worldgate?” Arhu said.
“We transit. And we don’t need spells for it, if that’s what you mean,” said another of the ravens. “We don’t need to use a gate that’s been woven ahead of time and put in place, either. We see where to go … and we go. We find out what’s happened … and we bring the news back. That’s all.”
Arhu sat down and licked his nose. “A long time now we have served Them,” said Hardy. “We come and go at Their behest. That would be why you are here: for you’re Their messenger, as we are.”
“Uh,” Arhu said.
Cawing came from further up the walclass="underline" a noise of laughter. “Oh, come on, Hardy,” said another raven-voice, “less of the oracular crap. Cut him some slack.”
One more raven flapped down beside Arhu, rustled his wings back into place, and paced calmly over to Arhu, looking him up and down. “No rest for the weary,” it said. “But it’s about time you got here. I got tired of waiting.”
Arhu wasn’t sure what to make of this, or of the amused way the other ravens looked at the newcomer. “Odin,” said Hardy, “have you been in the pub again?”
Odin snapped his beak. “The Guinness over there is improving,” he said. They’ve cleaned out the pipes since last month.”
There was much muffled caw-laughter from some of the other ravens. “Odin,” said Hardy a little wearily, “is our local representative of the forces of chaos.”
“You mean the Lone Power?” Arhu said, looking at Odin rather dubiously.