Part 16 (2/2)

”I always have.”

”How many sticks have been taken from you, Cort?” Which was tantamount to asking: How many boys have entered the square yard beyond the Great Hall and returned as gunslinger apprentices?

”No stick will be taken from me today,” Cort said slowly. ”I regret it. There is only the once, boy. The penalty for overeagerness is the same as the penalty for unworthiness. Can you not wait?”

The boy recalled Marten standing over him. The smile. And the sound of the blow from behind the closed door. ”No.”

”Very well. What weapon do you choose?”

The boy said nothing.

Cort's smile showed a jagged ring of teeth. ”Wise enough to begin. In an hour. You realize you will in all probability never see your father, your mother, or your ka-babbies again?”

”I know what exile means,” Roland said softly.

”Go now, and meditate on your father's face. Much good will it do ya.”

The boy went, without looking back.

VI.

The cellar of the barn was spuriously cool, dank, smelling of cobwebs and earthwater. The sun lit it in dusty rays from narrow windows, but here was none of the day's heat. The boy kept the hawk here and the bird seemed comfortable enough.

David no longer hunted the sky. His feathers had lost the radiant animal brightness of three years ago, but the eyes were still as piercing and motionless as ever. You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are half a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them. The hawk pays no coinage to love or morals.

David was an old hawk now. The boy hoped that he himself was a young one.

”Hai,” he said softly and extended his arm to the tethered perch.

The hawk stepped onto the boy's arm and stood motionless, unhooded. With his other hand the boy reached into his pocket and fished out a bit of dried jerky. The hawk snapped it deftly from between his fingers and made it disappear.

The boy began to stroke David very carefully. Cort most probably would not have believed it if he had seen it, but Cort did not believe the boy's time had come, either.

”I think you die today,” he said, continuing to stroke. ”I think you will be made a sacrifice, like all those little birds we trained you on. Do you remember? No? It doesn't matter. After today I am the hawk and each year on this day I'll shoot the sky in your memory.”

David stood on his arm, silent and unblinking, indifferent to his life or death.

”You are old,” the boy said reflectively. ”And perhaps not my friend. Even a year ago you would have had my eyes instead of that little string of meat, isn't it so? Cort would laugh. But if we get close enough... close enough to that chary man... if he don't suspect... which will it be, David? Age or friends.h.i.+p?”

David did not say.

The boy hooded him and found the jesses, which were looped at the end of David's perch. They left the barn.

VII.

The yard behind the Great Hall was not really a yard at all, but only a green corridor whose walls were formed by tangled, thick-grown hedges. It had been used for the rite of coming of age since time out of mind, long before Cort and his predecessor, Mark, who had died of a stab-wound from an overzealous hand in this place. Many boys had left the corridor from the east end, where the teacher always entered, as men. The east end faced the Great Hall and all the civilization and intrigue of the lighted world. Many more had slunk away, beaten and b.l.o.o.d.y, from the west end, where the boys always entered, as boys forever. The west end faced the farms and the hut-dwellers beyond the farms; beyond that, the tangled barbarian forests; beyond that, Garlan; and beyond Garlan, the Mohaine Desert. The boy who became a man progressed from darkness and unlearning to light and responsibility. The boy who was beaten could only retreat, forever and forever. The hallway was as smooth and green as a gaming field. It was exactly fifty yards long. In the middle was a swatch of shaven earth. This was the line.

Each end was usually clogged with tense spectators and relatives, for the ritual was usually forecast with great accuracy-eighteen was the most common age (those who had not made their test by the age of twenty-five usually slipped into obscurity as freeholders, unable to face the brutal all-or-nothing fact of the field and the test). But on this day there were none but Jamie DeCurry, Cuthbert Allgood, Alain Johns, and Thomas Whitman. They cl.u.s.tered at the boy's end, gape-mouthed and frankly terrified.

”Your weapon, stupid!” Cuthbert hissed, in agony. ”You forgot your weapon!”

”I have it,” the boy said. Dimly he wondered if the news of this lunacy had reached yet to the central buildings, to his mother-and to Marten. His father was on a hunt, not due back for days. In this he felt a sense of shame, for he felt that in his father he would have found understanding, if not approval. ”Has Cort come?”

”Cort is here.” The voice came from the far end of the corridor, and Cort stepped into view, dressed in a short singlet. A heavy leather band encircled his forehead to keep sweat from his eyes. He wore a dirty girdle to hold his back straight. He held an ironwood stick in one hand, sharp on one end, heavily blunted and spatulate on the other. He began the litany which all of them, chosen by the blind blood of their fathers all the way back to the Eld, had known since early childhood, learned against the day when they would, perchance, become men.

”Have you come here for a serious purpose, boy?”

”I have come for a serious purpose.”

”Have you come as an outcast from your father's house?”

”I have so come.” And would remain outcast until he had bested Cort. If Cort bested him, he would remain outcast forever.

”Have you come with your chosen weapon?”

”I have.”

”What is your weapon?” This was the teacher's advantage, his chance to adjust his plan of battle to the sling or spear or bah or bow.

”My weapon is David.”

Cort halted only briefly. He was surprised, and very likely confused. That was good.

Might be good. be good.

”So then have you at me, boy?”

”I do.”

”In whose name?”

”In the name of my father.”

”Say his name.”

”Steven Deschain, of the line of Eld.”

”Be swift, then.”

And Cort advanced into the corridor, switching his stick from one hand to the other. The boys sighed flutteringly, like birds, as their dan-dinh stepped to meet him.

My weapon is David, teacher.

Did Cort understand? And if so, did he understand fully? If he did, very likely all was lost. It turned on surprise-and on whatever stuff the hawk had left in him. Would he only sit, disinterested and stupid, on the boy's arm, while Cort struck him brainless with the ironwood? Or seek escape in the high, hot sky?

As they drew close together, each for the nonce still on his side of the line, the boy loosened the hawk's hood with nerveless fingers. It dropped to the green gra.s.s, and Cort halted in his tracks. He saw the old warrior's eyes drop to the bird and widen with surprise and slow-dawning comprehension. Now Now he understood. he understood.

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