Fire Hawk Read Free

a myth! A legend, a story told to children—”
    “So they say.”
    “But everyone knows he’s not real, any more than the beast of the lake.”
    The storyteller shrugged again.
    “You’re saying he is real? That he lives?”
    “He exists.”
    Jenna wondered at the choice of words in the storyteller’s quiet confirmation, but the entire idea was so absurd she could only shake her head.
    “But everyone—”
    “Before I came here,” he interrupted, in such a mild tone it took her a moment to realize he might truly be imparting some hint of his hidden past, “I passed through a land where there was a legend of a distant place, a glade in a magical forest that provided safety for all the souls that resided there, where all wants were met, peace had reigned unbroken year after year, and where the leader was marked by the possession of a golden hawk. All knew it was merely legend; all laughed at the idea of ever setting out to find such a place, for it was only a myth. Everyone knew that.”
    Jenna opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her mouth quirked; she’d been through this before with this puzzling, very curious man. “Another lesson hidden in allegory, sir?”
    He smiled, that gentle, approving smile that seemed to lighten even her heavy burden. “ ’Tis often easier that way, is it not?”
    “Especially for those too stubborn to see?”
    “You are never too stubborn,” he said. “But sometimes you are too close.”
    For a long time, Jenna sat there looking at the storyteller. She wondered if she had sensed from the beginning that he would somehow hold the key to their survival, wondered if that was perhaps why she had never questioned his sudden appearance, or his right to the position of storyteller to the clan.
    He merely endured her scrutiny, as if he’d said what he had to say, and it was now up to her.
    As, she supposed, it was.
    At last, her fears still present but quieted somewhat at the prospect of doing something—anything, no matter how preposterous—she let out a long, compressed breath.
    “What must I do?” she asked simply.
    The storyteller smiled.
    THE MAN WHO was only a myth sat by the fire, staring into the darkness. It would be more natural to stare into the dancing flames, but old habits died hard, and the warrior buried deep within him could not relax enough, even after all this time, to let his night vision be destroyed by staring into the light.
    He wondered if he would ever relax that much. If, perhaps, after a decade or so of peace in these high mountains, the warrior might truly give way to the man of peace he’d fought so hard to become. A man who did not see the potential for ambush in every narrow pass, a man who did not hear the approach of an enemy in every footfall, a man who did not wake every morning and search anew for any sign of treachery in his small domain.
    He wondered if he would ever be as other men, then laughed at his own foolish fancy; Kane was Kane, and such would he always be. He had done it to himself, with his own blindness, and it was only right that he pay for it with the rest of his life.
    Almost absently his hand stole upward, to trace the scar that ran from his right temple down to his jaw. He’d heard many versions of how he’d received the mark, from a heroic battle against a dozen men to the clash with the fierce lion whose skin now warmed his shoulders against the mountain cold. Only he knew the truth behind the slash that had left him carrying the narrow, oddly straight line of whitened flesh. He didn’t dwell on it, was merely thankful it hadn’t taken his eye as well as disfigured his face.
    He pushed raven dark hair back from his forehead. The unaccustomed length of it, falling past his shoulders now, was a constant reminder of the vow he’d made never to don a battle helm again. He would never again shear it short for that purpose. He would never—
    His thoughts ended abruptly as the faintest of sounds, a mere whisper, like that