Free The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson

refused to allow it to be corrected by their rack.”
    â€œBut why …”
    â€œPriests! They were jealous. Or perhaps this Temple supported the King … in fact, it would be much easier to be King in a country where there are two factions of priests to set against each other, and that would be reason enough for the priests at the Great Temple to try to close this Temple down. They could say that the disorder of the rack was proof of the Gods’ displeasure. When I’m truly King I’ll bring the priests back here, and set this rack in order again. It’s madness to rely on one rack only. Do you think that’s why the Gods caused us to meet, Tron—why They have sent you such signs?”
    Tron turned again to stare out of the window, but no vision came, no word whispered out the distances. Even so he shook his head.
    â€œNo,” he said. “I think this room is a sort of sign, like your salt valley, Majesty. They let us find it, but when I felt I couldn’t help you if it was all to end like this, They sent me a vision of the land dying. I don’t know what it means.”
    â€œGood,” grunted the King. “No doubt it’s a great thing to restore a Temple to the service of the Gods, but I feel … have you ever seen the river at the very start of the flood, Tron? It takes a fisherman’s eye to notice that there’s anything different at all; the ripples hump against the reeds, there are smooth patches like stretched silk between the wavelets, then the lungfish begin to croak … everything that’s happened so far to us, even my father’s murder, feels like that—little signs that tell of a huge change coming. The Gods don’t send me visions, but I’ll tell you how I read this room. It’s a sign like the salt in the fields. It says that a country cannot be ruled without system and order, just as the Gods cannot be worshipped without rituals. But if the order and rituals are so stiff and unchanging that they cannot alter, ever, then when a time of change comes they become like this. They die.”
    Tron shook his head again, knowing that even if change was what the Gods desired, he was afraid of it. Not for him the King’s excitement at the prospect of riding the flood wave. He understood very well how strong was the priests’ desire to hold the Kingdom to its ancient, rigid ways. But for the Goat-Stone and the Blue Hawk, he could well have grown to be a priest of that very kind. He sighed once more.
    â€œWho are you to be afraid of change, Tron?” said the King mockingly. “You began it all. In fact it’s like what you told me about these rods—each change causes further changes. Because of what you did at the Renewal the priests themselves are planning to change the ritual of my Showing to the People, by letting you fly your hawk then. And because of that … you know, you’re like a child who takes one pebble out of a great cairn of stones and brings the whole pile rumbling down.”
    Tron didn’t answer, and was glad to leave the ruined room and to close at last the door into the secret ways. Though he said nothing more about it, the King seemed aware of his need for assurance. They shared a meal of priest-bread by the river and spent the heat of the afternoon lazily trying to snare the young bream that loitered beneath the undercut mud banks. Tron fell in, and the King jumped after him to help, though he was in no danger. After that they lay on a bank of almost burning gravel to dry their clothes in O’s rays.
    In the heavy, steamy silence, where no life seemed to stir, something gave a sharp and rasping bark. Another bark echoed it before the silence closed in again.
    â€œWhat was that?” said Tron.
    â€œLungfish waking,” said the King somberly. “I told you it was a sign. The flood is coming sooner than I thought. The priests will send for you in a very few days,