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Flights of FantasyCopyright © 1999 by Mercedes Lackey and Tekno BooksAll Rights Reserved Cover art by Robert GiustiDAW Book Collectors No. 1141 DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Putnam Inc.Introduction © 1999 by Mercedes LackeyThe Tale of Hrafn-Bui © 1999 by Diana L. PaxsonA Question of Faith © 1999 by Josepha ShermanTaking Freedom © 1999 by S.M. StirlingA Gathering of Bones © 1999 by Ron CollinsNight Flight © 1999 by Lawrence Watt EvansA Buzzard Named Rabinowitz © 1999 by Mike ResnickTweaked in the Head © 1999 by Samuel C. ConwayOne Wing Down © 1999 by Susan Shwartz Owl Light © 1999 by Nancy AsireEagle's Eye © 1999 by Jody Lynn NyeWide Wings © 1999 by Mercedes LackeyINTRODUCTIONRAPTORS. Birds of prey. Everyone gets a differ-ent mental picture when they think of birds of prey—birds who make their livings as predators, the top of the food chain. Some immedi-ately picture the American bald eagle, the symbol of the United States, without realizing that the bald eagle is more often a fisher than a hunter, which is why they are most often found near large bodies of water. Some think of babies being carried off (not in recorded history) or savage golden eagles preying on lambs (unlikely—they are more likely to be taking advantage of a lamb found already dead; birds of prey rarely attack anything too big to carry off). Some imagine noble thoughts going on behind those enormous, keen eyes; others, even in this day and age, see a "varmint," a creature that attacks a farmer's animals and competes for hunting resources, and should be shot on sight.Most are at least partly or completely wrong in what they imagine.As a licensed raptor rehabber, I know birds of prey personally; sometimes very personally, as a great horned owl puts her talon through my Kevlar-lined welding glove and into my hand. . . .There are no noble thoughts going on in those brains. Real raptors have relatively small brains, most of which is composed of visual cortex with the rest mostly hard-wired with hunting skills. That doesn't leave a lot of room for social behavior. I once read a passage in a romance novel describing a lady's falcon perched in a tree above her, watching protectively over her, and nearly became hysterical with laughter. No falcon in my acquaintance is going to perch in a tree, protectively or otherwise, if left to her own devices. Turn your back on her, and she will be out of there without a backward glance—which is why falconers in this day and age must fit their birds with jesses and bracelets (the leg-restraints) that can be removed by the bird. Nearly every falconer has sad tales of the ones that escaped, and no falconer wishes to think of his bird hanging upside down, entangled in her jesses in a tree, to die a slow and horrible death. As for being "varmints," most birds of prey neither poach on farmers' livestock nor compete with hunters. The single two most common raptors in the US—American kestrels and redtail hawks, which can literally be found anywhere— prey, for the most part, on insects, mice, and sparrows for the former, and field rats, squirrels,and rabbits for the latter. Redtails rarely bother with flying prey—they are built to hunt things that run. As such, they do farmers more service than disservice.Fascination with birds of prey seems to have been with us for as long as we've walked upright. A recent T-shirt called "Evolution of a Falconer" suggests that the hawk may have been adopted by early man almost as soon as the dog. Certainly there is some justification for saying that there have been falconers as long as there has been the written word. Falconers appear in ancient Persian and Indian miniatures, on the walls of Egyptian tombs, and in medieval manuscripts. There are falconers in every part of the world today, even in places where laws make it incredibly difficult. There are falconers in Japan, where ancient tradition favors the goshawk, and forbids commoners to touch the bird with their bare hands. There are falconers in Mongolia, who carry on their traditions of hunting wolves with golden eagles. There are falconers in Af-rica, in South America, and in virtually every European country. The tradition of falconry goes back so far in Saudi Arabia that the Saudis cannot even recall its beginnings. And needless to say, there are falconers spread all over North America.There is, in fact, a falconer joke which tran-scends all boundaries and sends falconers of every nation into snickers. "How can you tell a man who flies a falcon? By the scratches on hiswrist where the bird decided to take a walk." (Falcons are smaller, by and large, than hawks, and those who fly falcons use short gloves to protect their hands from the talons.) "How can you tell a man who flies a hawk? By the suntan that stops at his elbow." (Hawks tend to be larger, heavier, and grip far more tightly with their feet; only a fool flies a hawk without a long glove.) "How can you tell a man who flies an eagle? By the eyepatch." (Self-explanatory.)Kings and emperors have written volumes on falconry; hawks and falcons figure prominently in myth. The Romans seem to have been of two minds about eagles; they topped the standards of their legions with them, and identified those standards with the great birds so closely that the standards themselves were referred to as "The Eagles." On the other hand, it is from the Romans that we get the myth of eagles carrying off babies. Zeus and Jupiter were both identified with the eagle. The Arab world gave us the roc, a bird of prey so large it carried off elephants.As for history, New Zealand was once home to a flightless bird of prey called the moa that stood over eight feet tall! But more impressive yet, at one point in prehistory, South America bred flighted raptors the size of small airplanes, which certainly were capable of carrying off, not just babies, but full-grown adult humans! Could these birds—or the dim memory of them—have given rise to the Native American tales of the Thunderbird? Certainly they would have beenthe only birds strong enough to dare the deadly air-currents of tornadic supercell-storms, so that their appearance in the sky would have been heralded by the flash of lightning and the roar of thunder.But—this anthology is not about real birds of prey. This is about the intersection of fantasy and reality, where raptors and other meat-eating birds are concerned. This is a wonderful collection full of surprises. For Diana Paxton, the "theme" was bent slightly, including ravens (who are, after all, carnivorous). From Mike Res-nick comes a little fable that mixes revenge with reincarnation. From Nancy Asire, a spirit bird— From a dear friend, Dr. Sam Conway, comes his first published story; I had warned him that I would be ruthless with it, and if it did not match the standards of the professionals, it wouldn't make the cut, but to the delight of both of us, it more than qualified.And my own contribution, which came out of one of those odd cases of serendipity when a character demands more attention than the author is immediately prepared to give her. When I was working on The Black Swan, my own ver-sion of the tale told in the famous ballet Swan Lake, one of Prince Siegfried's bridal candidates sudddenly took on a life and personality far be-yond that of a mere spear-carrier. The falconer-Princess Honoria and her birds absolutely de-manded to be center stage. Unfortunately, I had another story to tell than hers. Fortunately, shefit perfectly well into this venue, and I was happy to give her the spotlight on a stage of her own, and a story that proves the adage that what is hell to one may be heaven to another— or at least, an escape.We all hope you enjoy these highly unusual birds, and their flights of fantasy.THE TALE OF HRAFN-BUIby Diana L. PaxsonDiana L. Paxson's novels include her Chronicles of Westria series and her more recent Wodan's Children series. Her short fiction can be found in the anthologies Zodiac Fantastic, Grails: Quests of the Dazvn, Return to Avalon, and The Book of Kings. Her Arthurian novel, Hallowed Isle, is appearing in four volumes in the next two years, with book one, The Book of the Sword, in stores now.THERE was a man called Ketil Olvirson who look up land below Hrafnfjall in the west part of Iceland. He had two sons, Arnor and Harek. Arnor, who was the elder, liked best to go a-viking to England and Scotland and the isles, while Harek stayed home on the farm. On one of his journeys Arnor took captive a young woman called Groa. His parents were dead by that time, and though his brother said that no good would come of marriage with a woman who had been a thrall, he made her his wife.She bore him a son whom they called Bui, but they had no other child.About this time Harek also took a wife, named Hild. They all lived together in this way for some years, until Bui was fourteen years old. It happened then that an old shipmate asked Arnor to go on a trading voyage to Norway. At the end of the summer, when they looked for his return, he did not come. It was not until the next spring that they heard that the ship had gone down with all hands off the Sudhreyar Isles.When that news came, Harek sat down in his brother's high seat and Hild said that as there were no witnesses to Groa's marriage, she was now their thrall. When Bui tried to defend his mother, Harek told his men to beat the boy with staves and drive him off the farm. They dragged him to the brook that comes down from Hrafn-fjall, and there they left him.But Bui did not die."Quo-oork!"Bui opened one eye. Something black moved across his field of vision, paused, quorked again. He raised his head, and it disappeared. In the next moment pain speared through his sku... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]