Yet that would be a corruption of friendship, a breach of trust, a usurpation.
Why should he?
Whose side was he on?
Prince or commoner?
He struggled to drive a brain choked with a sludge of fatigue and shattered loyalties. He tried to see this as the birds would see it, in their strangely inhuman thinking--and suddenly he knew what they were seeing at the moment.
"Majesty!" he shouted. "Release me! The eagles--"
It was too late. To a sound like the smashing of melons, Sald's arms were wrenched almost from their sockets, pulling him back and throwing him to the ground.
Haft stunned, dazed, he lay for a moment, watching the wheeling specks in the bright sky, dimly aware of mass screaming echoing from walls as the crowds fled to the doors. Gradually the noise died away and there was peaceful silence.
He wanted to stay there forever.
Then he realized that he was lying between two twitching bodies and that his face had been spattered with something wet. He put a hand to his face; it came away red. The bodies had no heads. Shuddering and nauseated, he clambered to his feet. He was alone in the Great Courtyard. Two cast balls?
No, three. The back of the throne was dripping with blood and brains above the huddled corpse of King Vindax.
Shadow was too weary to weep.
"Good-bye, my prince," he said. "Fate dealt you a mean hand."
He paused, almost as though there should be an answer.
After a moment he added, "You must have known! You knew that there could be no kingdom without the eagles. You let me smash it so your brother could not have it. Then you wanted me to put it all back together for you!"
He choked back an angry sob, and the silence returned. He glanced around that great empty solitude and looked back at the corpse.
"You always wanted too much, Prince. You wanted to be a good king of Rantorra. That is not a possibility. It never was."
He turned and walked away, and the courtyard was empty.
Sald dragged his feet along corridors still cluttered with debris and came at last to a balcony. Blinking in the sunlight, he could see one distant gate. People were streaming through it, many carrying bundles on their heads. He raised his hands and signed to the sky.
There were two bodies still lying there, and one had a golden chain around its neck. He helped himself to it: salary arrears.
Momentarily the sun darkened as NailBiter landed on the balustrade and fixed his unchanging remorseless glare on Sald.
Had the eagles been able to look at people in any other way, he thought, then they might have been accepted as sentient right from the First Times. He could read the comb, though, and he saw the excitement.
"The High Ones speak," NailBiter said. "You have a new name. You are The-one-who-led-us-out-of-the-dark. Also you are Friend-of-eagles." That was Karaman's title, too. Yet "friend" was a poor translation--it meant much more to an eagle.
"Thank the High Ones for me," Sald signed wearily. Honors? He had had his fill of honors. The gold chain would be useful.
"Your nest and your mate and your chicks will be guarded and cherished," NailBiter said almost too fast to read. He rocked slightly.
"Have you also been given an honor?" Sald asked.
NailBiter's comb darkened. "I have a new name, too. I am Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles. But all kills are your kill."
"Tell the High Ones that the greatest kill they can give me is that there be no fighting between men and eagles. We shall have to flee the aeries of the Range as we did those of the Rand--The-one-with-broken-legs was not going to help, and the others here will not." But there could not be many birds left now to free.
The message was passed.
"And," Sald signaled, "I am proud to be a friend of Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles."
NailBiter's head cocked slightly to one side, which indicated laughter. "I am proud," he signed, "to be a friend of a friend of Friend-of-Friend-of-eagles."
With his juvenile humor he would keep the game going until it reached eight and he lost count.
Sald cut it off. "Me, also."
"We go now?" NailBiter asked.
"Yes," Sald said, his weariness settling over him like all the ice on the High Road. "Let us go to the nest of my parents. You know the way."
"I know it. You will remain there for many-many kills?"
"Yes." There was nowhere else to go. He could send out his army from there to deal with the other aeries. The eagles would protect Hiando Keep if the neighbors and the countryside sought revenge, and surely his parents and his sisters would welcome him, traitor though he was. There was no one else he could trust except the birds.He who ever trusts a bird...
But NailBiter was still chatty. "There is a good aerie at the nest of your parents."
Oh, so that was it.
"My mate is making an egg."
Sald felt his face smile, and it was an unfamiliar sensation.Big mutt!
"My parents and I shall soar very high if you and your mate make your nest there. Let us go and see about it. I may have a quiet time while we fly." He would sleep the whole way; his eyelids were drooping already.
He walked over and turned his back, and the great beak picked up the sling. He was lifted over the balustrade and then up into the sky. As they circled once over the palace, he saw that fighting had broken out already in the Great Courtyard, rival factions struggling for the throne. What good would it do them?
Higher and higher he floated in the hot thermal. Now the palace was a mere scribble on its rocky spur, its inhabitants shrunk from sight. He could imagine that it was deserted, given over to wind and sun, fallen already into ruin as it would soon be in truth: a historical curiosity, a disused relic of the fallen kingdom of Rantorra where nothing moved except the shadows of birds.
IceFire had appeared alongside, and they were floating up over the tops of sunlit hills. There, too, was change. A few hours earlier Sald had seen the peasants at their work; now they were standing in groups and talking. The word would spread.
Republic? Democracy? He did not think so, although doubtless Karaman would send his missionaries. Every peak would be a kingdom to itself, many tyrannies instead of one, wars and battles. The big men would rule now.
His eyes were blurring with fatigue, but when he raised his face to the sunlit hills, he saw that he had an escort: tens of thousands. And perhaps he did not feel so bad.
All the heavens were full of eagles, flying free.
GLOSSARY
AIR: The composition of the atmosphere is not known, but it probably contains less oxygen and more carbon dioxide than standard (terrestrial) atmosphere. This is normal for planets without oceans or with plant life restricted to small areas.
BICYCLE: One of the great inventions of the human mind. Almost no culture has ever regressed far enough to lose the bicycle.
BIRD: Usually an eagle, but also used for a whole family of flying creatures similar to terrestrial birds.
CAWKING TIME: Pairing or mating time (falconry term).
COLD WIND: The steady surface wind flowing from dark pole to hot pole. The temperature is relative: Where the flow falls off the Rand(qv), the drop causes adiabatic warming.
COVER: A flier positioned above and behind another as protection from attack by wilds.
DAY: An artificial human division of time, apparently close to a terrestrial day in length. The world is gravitationally locked on its primary, rotating once in a year. The presence of life and of crustal differentiation (seeRand)suggests that at one time the world had oceans. Possibly, therefore, it did rotate, even if very slowly, and meteor impact or, more probably, tidal drag stopped this rotation in remote times; an alternative explanation would be that the sun had a binary companion now lost or too far cooled to be effective in warming the Darkside.