“He had a good life, and will make a good end,” said Alderic, “Unlike men, horses are not allowed to live till they are senile and half mad … if they gave men such mercy as that, I should not – there would not now be a usurper king on the throne in Hali and the king would not now be wandering in his exile.”
“I do not understand,” said Romilly. Darren frowned, but Alderic said, “You are not old enough to remember when King Felix died? He was more than a hundred and fifty, an emmasca, very old and without sons; and he had long outlived sense and wit, so he sought to put the eldest son of his youngest brother on the throne, rather than his next brother’s elder son, who was rightfully Heir. And so the Lord Rakhal, who flattered and cozened an old and senile king and got the Regents all in his hand with bribes and lies, an aged lecher from whom no woman is safe, nor, ’tis said, the young son of any courtier who would like to curry favor, sits on the throne of the Hasturs at Hali. And Carolin and his sons wander across the Kadarin, at the mercy of any bandit or robber who would like the bounty set on their heads by our most gracious Lord Rakhal … for I will never give him the name of king.”
“Do you know the exiled king?”
Darren said, “The young prince was at Nevarsin among the monks for a time; but he fled when word came that Lord Rakhal sought him there.”
“And you support the young prince and the king in exile?” Romilly asked.
“Aye. That I do. And if some kindly courtier had relieved the ancient Felix of his life before ’twas a burden to him, Carolin would now rule in Hali as a just king, rather than turning the holy city of the Hasturs into a cesspool of filth and indecencies, where no man dares come for justice without a bribe in hand, and upstart lordlings and outlanders wrangle and divide our land among them!”
Romilly did not answer; she knew nothing of courts and kings, and had never been even so far as the foothill city of Neskaya, far less into the lowlands, or near to the Lake of Hali. She reached for Preciosa’s hood, and then hesitated, showing Alderic the courtesy due a guest.
“Will you fly first, sir?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I think we are all as eager as you to see how Preciosa has come through her training.”
With shaking hands, Romilly slipped the hood from Preciosa’s head, watching the hawk mantling her feathers. Now. Now was the test, not only of her mastery of the hawk, but of the hawk’s acceptance of her training, the hawk’s tie to her. She felt she could not bear to see this hawk she had loved, over whom she had spent so many anxious and painful hours, fly from her and never return. It flashed through her mind, is this how Father feels now that Ruyven has gone? Yet she must try the hawk in free flight. Otherwise, she was no more than a tame cagebird, sitting dull on a block, not a wild hawk at all. But she felt tears blurring her sight as she raised her fist and felt the hawk balance a moment, then, with a single long wing-stroke, fly free.
She rose on a long, slanting arch into the sunlight, and Romilly, her mind full of anxious thoughts – will she fly well, has this long period of inactivity dulled her flight? – watched her rise. And something in her rose with the hawk, feeling the wordless joy of the morning sun on her wings, the light dazzling her eyes as she winged upward, rose, hovered, soared, wheeled and winged strongly away.
Romilly let out a long breath. She was gone, she would not return.
“You have lost her, I fear,” said Alderic at last “I am sorry, damisela.”
Loss and pain, and a sharing of ecstasy, battled in Romilly. Free flight, something of her soaring with the hawk . . . and then fading away in the distance. She shook her head. If she had lost the hawk, then she had never really possessed her. She thought, I would rather lose her than tie her to me against her will….