The Blue Hawk Read Online Free

That’s a common sign. It means the Gods are pleased with Diran. He sang a hymn of thanks, but I said nothing. I didn’t know what my sign meant. Here is the feather.”
    With his free hand he took it from his pouch and showed it to them on his palm. It looked drab and bedraggled compared with the pure arc of silvery white he had found on the cracked clay. The One of Gdu snorted.
    â€œAnd at breakfast, Lords, I was chosen for Goat. I have never been chosen before. When we went to the House of O and Aa I was sure that the Gods would speak to me. I’d always said to myself that when I was Goat I would turn cartwheels down between the minor Priests, but now … We sang the Great Hymn. The hawk was straight in front of me. I could see it was sick. I waited. Then I heard us singing this—
    In the least feather of the hawk the King’s soul,
    In a feather the soul of a man.
    And then Gdu spoke in my heart, saying that He had come in the night and left me the feather in a broken bowl as a sign that I should break the ritual, because it was not proper that the soul of a sick hawk should renew the King’s soul, and that I had been chosen for Goat to do this. He spoke in my heart, Lords. That is why I did … what I did.”
    He looked along the line of priests. The Keeper of the Rods seemed bored, as though he had expected a more interesting story. The One of Aa was smiling and nodding. The One of O kept all expression out of his magnificently imperious face. The Mouth of Silence, who had also thrown back his cowl, looked troubled. (He was a much older man, bald and with a close-shorn gray beard. His skin was yellow and wrinkled, his eyes dull and sunken. If he had been anyone else than Aa’s servant, one would have said that Aa must soon take him.) The One of Gdu could no longer master his anger.
    â€œThat’s nothing but a feather from one of the doves, blown in by the night breeze. A sign, uh? We cannot have the rituals turned to nonsense every time a boy wakes in the night and sees what he shouldn’t. He broke his bowl before he was Goat—he can be punished for that. It is clear that the Gods do not love him. Let Aa take him.”
    He spoke loudly and harshly enough to disturb the hawk again. It roused from its trance, turned its lean head, opened its beak and hissed soundlessly at him. Once more his expression changed as he shrank back into the cave of doubt and awe, like a snail withdrawing from menace.
    â€œLords,” said Tron, “we must speak in low voices. The servant of Gdu is fretted by sudden noise.”
    â€œIt is not often that a boy says ‘must’ to the Major Priests,” said the Keeper of the Rods.
    The One of Aa laughed soundlessly.
    â€œI do not like to see the rituals broken,” the Keeper went on. “We live by rules—not just the priests, but King and nobles and peasants too. Listen. I move my rods along the Rack of Days according to rules invented by the Wise. I move the symbols of O and Aa and the planets by other rules, also invented by the Wise. Thus I know the exact hour in any season at which a particular star will rise. I know the death days of priests and kings, and the times and heights of the floods, back through thirty generations of men. I know in which year and day Aa will fight with O in broad daylight, or a darker shadow fight with Aa by night. The Keeper before me foretold the great comet. It took me half a lifetime to learn the rules from him, and will take another half lifetime to teach them to my successor. Now, during those years I have not only learnt but thought, and I have seen that if I miss one small motion prescribed by the rules, that error will do more than repeat and repeat itself year by year. It will cause other errors, which will also repeat themselves and also cause further errors, so that in a very few years the Rack of Days would lose all meaning. We would be holding the flood feast at the