The Shining Falcon

So Finist stood motionless at Alexei's side, gradually slowing his rate of breathing to match that of the young boyar, Finist's heartbeat to the boyar's heartbeat… gradually shutting out everything about him till only Alexei remained, only Alexei… till the patterns of the man's thoughts lay clear before him. Alexei's surface thoughts only, of course; not even for Maria's sake was Finist going to overcome his training in magical decency and invade another's inner self. But surface thoughts were enough. And Finist saw just what he'd expected to see: a narrow, clever mind, full of pride, envy, ambition and weakness, and never a true understanding of morality. And so, gently, Finist sent a dream to him:

Danilo stood before him, boyar Danilo, clad in spotless white. «You betrayed me!» the dream‑voice cried. «You would have had me slain!»

«Had to…» Alexei muttered in his sleep. «You stood in my way… Always in my way… Had to do something…»

«You would have had me slain!» the fierce voice repeated. ' 'You destroyed me, forced me and mine into exile, disgrace, and all for your own advancement!»

«Had to…» Alexei insisted. «Had to remove you…»

«And are you proud of what you've done? Traitor, do you think yourself safe from me? Do you think yourself safe from justice ?''

«Go away," moaned Alexei. «Go away…»

«Sleep no more, ambitious fool! Hear me: I shall haunt

you, night by night, I shall haunt you till you confess you crime. Traitor, sleep no more!»

Finist had pushed too hard. Alexei awoke with a wild cry, so suddenly he nearly caught the prince. But by the time the servant had managed to spring to his feet, Finist was gone, and all the two alarmed men saw were shadows; all they heard were the sounds of wings.

A good beginning, thought Finist, glancing back.

Of course, any boyar cold-blooded enough to let an innocent man die for his own gain wasn't going to be broken by one little foul dream. Nor had Finist expected it.

But there just might be a chance of wearing Alexei down.

There wasn't. On his second midnight visit, Finist found the boyar's room barred both by holy relics—which might have stopped some evil spirit, but not a mortal magician— and, more alarmingly, by armed guards.

Alexei, it seemed, was no fool.

And I don't have the time to wait him out. Bah, I should have known this wouldn't work. I'llhave to try a different approach.

Oh, indeed. But the only other approach was one with which he wasn't too happy; he didn't care for the fact that Svyatoslav's fear of magic had spread all over Stargorod. Still, like it or not, he was going to have to pay that suspicious prince a visit after all.

With a sigh that sounded odd, coming from a falcon, Finist took flight once more, headed towards the many‑domed royal palace, the gold paint ornamenting the roof glowing palely in the moonlight, a background against which the falcon's silvery feathers disappeared nicely.

The window of Svyatoslav's bedchamber was far too narrow for any human to enter, but a falcon could and did squirm through. Shifting silently to man, shivering in the sudden chill of being abruptly featherless, Finist glanced quickly around the dim, starkly furnished room, ready to take off again if someone spotted him. But there was no one here save Svyatoslav, not a sound save the man's soft breathing. Aside from the great, canopied bed, there was nothing in the room except the ubiquitous clothes chest, the type of thing everyone used, and a few elegant, thick-piled carpets, wonderfully warm to Finist's bare feet. No servants, of course. Anyone as suspicious as Svyatoslav was hardly about to risk having even the most loyal of servants snaring his room with him.

Naturally, there were armed guards just outside; Finist could sense their presences easily. But they were safely on the other side of that old-fashioned doorway, the sort so low they'd have to enter one at a time and bent nearly double. The prince grinned at that, and moved softly through the darkness to the head of the bed, gently pulling aside the curtain.