But, oh, it hurt to renounce the dream...Chapter Nineteen INTERLUDE
Dawnfire woke all at once; her heart racing with fear, but her body held in a strange kind of paralysis. She couldn't see anything. All she could feel was that she was so hungry she was almost sick, and that she was standing; her position seemed to be oddly hunched over, but-No, it wasn't hunched over, it was a perfectly normal position-for Kyrr's body. She was still in the body of her bondbird. Only-Kyrr was gone. She was alone.
She opened her beak to cry out, and couldn't-and then the paralysis lifted, and a hazy golden light came up about her, gradually, so that her eyes weren't dazzled.
She was on a perch.
As she teetered on the perch, clutching it desperately, trying to find her balance without Kyrr to help her, she saw that there were bracelets on her legs, and jesses attached to them, and that the jesses were fastened to a ring on the perch.
The light came up further; she moved her head cautiously at the sound of a deep-throated chuckle to discover that now she could see the entire room. An empty, windowless room-except for a bit of furniture, one couch, and its occupant.
She couldn't help herself; panic made her bate, and she flapped uncontrolled right off the perch. She couldn't fly even if she hadn't been jessed; she hadn't Kyrr's control-and she hung at the end of the leather straps, upside-down, swinging and twisting as she beat at the air and the perch with her wings.
I can't get back up!
That sent her into a further panic, and she flailed wildly in every direction but the right one, with no result whatsoever. She twisted and turned, tangled herself up, and banged her beak against the perch support, and never once got a claw on the perch itself.
Finally she exhausted herself; she hung in her jesses with her heart beating so hard she could scarcely breathe, listening to it thunder in her ears, growing sicker and weaker with every moment she stayed inverted.
She had gone, as any raptor would, from a state of uncontrolled panic to a state of benumbed shock.
She was hanging facing the wall, not the room beyond, and its bizarre occupant; she didn't even hear the footsteps coming toward her because of the sound of her own heart.
Suddenly there was a hand behind her back, and another under her feet. She clutched convulsively as she was lifted back up onto the perch.
She released the hand as soon as she was erect, transferring her grip to the sturdy wood, as the Changechild took his gloved hand away, and smiled enigmatically down on her.
"Having trouble, dear child?" he purred, stepping back a pace or two to observe her. The glove was the only article of clothing he was wearing, and now he pulled it off, and tossed it on a shelf next to her perch. He really didn't need much in the way of clothing-long, silky, tawny-gold hair covered him from head to toe-except for certain strategic areas.
If she could have blushed, she would have. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen nude males before, certainly there was no nudity taboo among the Tayledras, but he seemed to flaunt his sexuality like some kind of weapon. It was somehow obscene, even though he wasn't doing anything overtly to make it so. It was all in posture, unspoken body-language.
He seemed to sense her embarrassment and take amusement from it-and that made it even more obscene.
He looked like a cat-a lynx-and he moved like a cat as he padded back to his couch. That was where she had seen him when the light came up; reclining with indolent grace on a wide couch piled high with silken pillows, in black and golden tones that matched his hair. He resumed his position with studied care, and a fluidity not even a real cat could have matched, then rested his head on one hand to watch her with unwinking, slitted eyes.
Her feet twitched a little and she teetered on the perch.
That was when she realized just how helpless she truly was. He didn't need the jesses, except to keep her from falling to the floor every time she bated. Without Kyrr, she was as helpless in this body as a newborn chick. She could do simple things that were largely a matter of reflex-like perching-but anything more complicated than that was out of the question. She could no more fly now than she could in her own body.
She stared at him in despair; he smiled, and slowly, sensuously, licked his lips.
"I," he said, in a deep, echoing voice, "am Mornelithe Falconsbane.
You made the fundamental mistake of attacking me. And I am afraid that you, dear child, are my prisoner. To do with as I will." Fear chilled her, and made all her feathers slick tight to her body, as he said that. Mornelithe Falconsbane-this must be the Adept that Darkwind's Changechild had fled from; the Adept that had trapped and tormented her dyheli herd-his name did not invoke a feeling of comfort in a Tayledras.
It's a pity that you managed to have yourself trapped in that bird's body," he continued. "The ways that I may derive pleasure from it are so limited, but I'm sure you can be flexible." He mock-sighed and lowered his lids over his slitted, green-golden eyes, looking at her through thick lashes. She clutched the perch nervously, swaying back and forth, her mouth dry with fear as she waited for him to do something.
He raised a single finger. The door beside his couch opened, and a human in golden-brown leather that clung to his body as if it had been sewn around him entered the room, carrying a deep pannier. He went straight to her perch, as she flapped in alarm, and put the basket down underneath it. Then he untied her jesses from the ring, tied a leather leash to it instead, and attached the leash to her jesses.
Then he turned his back on her and left her, all without saying so much as a single word.
She looked down into the basket. Cowering in fear, and looking up at her, were three live mice.
Now her stomach growled with hunger, even while her mind rolled with nausea. She stared down at the mice, ravenous, and feeling just as trapped as they were.
She was starving-this was food. And she didn't have the slightest idea of how to kill and eat it.
Kyrr would, but Kyrr was gone.
Then it hit her. Kyrr was gone. Not waiting patiently in the back of the bird's mind, but gone completely. Dead. Part of her soul, her heart, her life-gone without a trace. She was completely alone, in a way she had not been since she was ten.
The grief that descended over her was so total that she forgot everything, including her hunger.
Oh, Kyrr-Her beak gaped, but nothing happened. Not even a single sob.
She couldn't cry, she wasn't even human anymore. How could she mourn as a hawk? She didn't know, and the inability to cry out her pain and loss redoubled it. They were both lost, she and Kyrr-and they would never come home again.
She closed her eyes and rocked from foot to foot, trapped in a sea of black grief, drowning in it.
A satisfied chuckle made her snap her head up and open her eyes wide.
Mornelithe was watching her with amusement.
Her grief turned to rage in the blink of an eye; she mantled and screamed at him, her cry piercing the silence and shattering it-though she was careful to keep a tight grip on the rough wood of her perch as she shrieked her defiance at him.