If he were twenty years younger, he might not have cared. What man who was hardly more than a youth didn't think with his prong? Now, though, Hamnet could wait. Liv would still be here after the trouble, whatever it was, went away.
Motion in the sky made both of them swing their heads the same way at the same time. Silent and pale as a ghost, an owl soared past on broad wings. Or was it only an owl? To Hamnet's senses it was, but he would never make a wizard if he lived to be a thousand. "That?" he whispered.
"That," Liv said.
"What can we—what can you—do?"
"I don't know. I don't know if I can do anything," she answered, which wasn't what he wanted to hear. But then she went on, "I'd better try, though, yes?"
"I'd say so," Hamnet Thyssen said. "If you don't, the Rulers will think we're too weak to do anything about them."
"And they may be right to think that," Liv said bleakly, which was not at all what he wanted to hear. "But I don't care to be spied on night after night, and so . . ."
She reached into her pouch and drew from it something feathered, something clawed, and something that in the moonlight might have been a dark stone. "What have you got there?" Hamnet asked.
"The dried right wing of a screech owl, and his right foot, also dried, and his heart, likewise," the Bizogot shaman said.
"You didn't kill an owl on our travels," Hamnet said, and Liv shook her head to show she hadn't. He went on, "Then you've had them with you since we set out," and she nodded. He asked, "Why, by God?"
"Because these three things, taken together, will summon birds to them, which can be useful," Liv answered. "Also, the heart and the foot together, without the wing, will compel a man to truth if set above his heart while he sleeps."
"You did not use this magic against Samoth when he first spied on us," Hamnet said.
"No—he was in man's shape then," Liv said. "He took bird shape and flew away faster than I could have shaped the spell—faster than I thought anyone could do it. If he flies away now, the spell will fail. But if he gives me time to use it... If he does, I may give him a surprise."
"May it be so," Hamnet Thyssen said. "What can I do to help?"
"For now, just stand quiet," she answered. "The time may come, though, when you will want to put out an arm. If it does, I promise you will know it." He scratched his head, wondering what she meant. Meanwhile, she held up the wing and the foot in the right hand and the screech-owl heart in her left. "This spell must have come from the south," she remarked, "for the version we learn first says that these parts are to be hung in a tree." Even under the moon, her smile was impish. "Then we have to reshape it so that it works in our country. But the original still survives."
Hamnet Thyssen wondered why. Maybe the shamans needed the link with the original to ensure that their altered version still worked. He didn't know enough of magic to be sure of anything like that. He didn't have long to wonder, either, for Liv began to chant in a soft voice. He had everything he could do to stay quiet as she'd asked. He wanted to burst out laughing, for the tune she used was the same as a Raumsdalian lullaby. Sure enough, that charm had reached the Bizogots from the south.
Instead of laughing, Count Hamnet watched the owl. At first, he thought its soaring circles were unchanged, and feared the Rulers had some counterspell to deflect or nullify the charm Liv was using. But then he saw that the circles were getting narrower, and that they were centered on Liv and himself, not on the fire as they had been.
The owl called, a strange, questioning note in its voice. Liv answered— Hamnet could find no better way to put it. She gave back fluting hoots, still to the tune of that song that made babies in the Empire close their eyes in the cradle.
Down spiraled the owl. It flew right in front of Liv's face. She never flinched. Hamnet Thyssen didn't think he could have been so calm with that hooked beak and those tearing claws bare inches from his eyes. Then he remembered what she’d said. Before he quite knew he'd done it, he held out his right arm. The owl perched on it.
It stared from him to Liv and back again. Moonlight flashed from its great golden eyes. Despite that flash, though, it seemed confused. It looked back and forth again, as if wondering how it had got there. Hamnet didn't blame it—he was wondering the same thing.
"Do you understand me?" Liv asked in the Bizogot tongue.
The owl hesitated. Then it answered, "Yes, I understand." An owl's beak and throat were not made to speak any human language. The bird managed even so. Samoth, Hamnet recalled, was fluent in the Bizogot speech.
"You are from the Rulers." Liv didn't make it a question, or need to.
"I am from the Rulers," the owl agreed, and it nodded its round head, one of the eeriest things Count Hamnet had ever seen.
"Are you Samoth? Does his spirit dwell inside you?" The Bizogot shaman was thinking along the same lines as Hamnet himself.
"I am Samoth. It is not a matter of the spirit. I am Samoth," the owl said. To hear its words hoot and hiss their way forth made the hair at the back of Hamnet s neck want to stand up of its own accord, as if he were a frightened animal puffing up in the face of danger. By God, what else am I? he thought.
"And you flew here to spy on us?" Liv asked.
"To spy on you, yes, and to spy out the way south," said the bird that was also a wizard or a shaman or whatever the right word among the Rulers was.
"Hear me, Samoth." Liv's voice changed from questioning to commanding. If anything, the hair on Hamnet's nape stood higher and straighten "Hear me," Liv repeated. "When you flew forth, you found no Bizogot or Raumsdalian travelers."
"When I flew forth, I found no Bizogot or Raumsdalian travelers," agreed the owl that was Samoth.
"You did not pass through the Gap at all—the snowstorm to the north was too strong."
"I didn't pass through the Gap at all—the snowstorm to the north was too strong," the owl echoed. Were its eyes duller than they had been when it landed on Count Hamnet's wrist? He thought so, but he couldn't be sure. He steadied his right arm with his left hand to make sure no quiver upset the owl or disrupted Liv's magic.
Her eyes, by contrast, shone as she thanked him with them. "You turned back and flew off to your camp because you could fly no farther," she said to Samoth.
"I turned back and flew off to my camp because I could fly no farther," the ensorceled owl agreed.
"And of course you remember nothing of this talk, for it never happened," Liv said. When the owl echoed her once more, she nodded to Ham-net Thyssen. He thrust his arm up and forward, as if launching a falcon against a quail. Like a hawk trained to the fist, the owl flew away. It arrowed off toward the north.
"That was—bravely done," Hamnet whispered, not wanting to disturb its flight in anyway. "Bravely done!"
"My thanks," Liv whispered back. She let out a long, weary, fog-filled breath. "He is very strong. He almost slipped free of my magic four or five times, even as an owl. As a man ... I don't know if I could stand against him as a man. This should have been easy, and it was anything but."
"You did it. What else matters?" Hamnet Thyssen was determined to look on the bright side. That felt strange for him, but it was true.
"Nothing else matters—now," Liv answered. "But if we see the Rulers again . . . When we see the Rulers again . . . How strong they are matters a lot."
He couldn't tell her she was wrong, for she plainly wasn't. "The way you sent Samoth off makes it less likely we'll see them anytime soon," he said. "It may mean we won't see them at all."
"I doubt that," the Bizogot shaman said. "What I wonder is whether he'll stay fooled, whether he'll believe the weather was bad or hell realize he had a spell put on him. If he does realize I used magic against him, will he know how close his owl-self came to breaking free?" She sighed again, even more deeply than before. "Nothing is ever simple, however much we wish it would be."
Count Hamnet nodded; he couldn't argue there, either. But he said, "You did everything you could. It all worked, every bit of it. Be proud of that." He put his arm around her.
She leaned against him for a little while, drawing strength or at least consolation from his touch. Then she straightened and took her weight on her own feet again. "I am," she said. "But it should have worked better. It should have worked easier."
Hamnet Thyssen almost did argue with her then. At the very end, he held his tongue. He recognized that drive to have everything come out perfect, and the gnawing sense of dissatisfaction when any tiny little detail didn't. He had it himself. If anyone had told him not to worry so much, what would he have done? Ignored the advice and probably lost his temper. Why wouldn't Liv do the same? No reason at all, not that he could see. And so he kept quiet.
When the travelers rode south the next morning, Audun Gilli had the oddest expression on his face. He rode up alongside of Count Hamnet and asked, "Did anything strange happen in the nighttime?"
"Strange? What do you mean?" Hamnet couldn't have sounded more innocent if he'd worked at it for a year.
"I had the oddest dream," Audun said. "I was flying. I was a bird of some kind, not a flying man, the way you can be in dreams. I know I was a bird, because I looked down and saw myself. I don't know how I could, though, because it was night in the dream. But I did. And then—then I didn't. Then everything was all confused, as if I couldn't see at all. And I was flying away as fast as I could. But do you know what the oddest thing was?"
"No," Hamnet Thyssen said gravely. "You're about to tell me, though, aren't you?"
"The oddest thing was"—Audun Gilli ignored, or more likely didn't notice, his irony—"that in the middle of all this, your Grace, I somehow shook hands with you. Isn't that peculiar?"