Hawkspar by Holly Lisle

She has no name that she remembers, and she is a Penitent of the Ossalene Order, a minor priestess. But even though she started there as a slave, she still yearns to escape. With every shower she takes, she makes magic and allows her plea to be released to the sea. "Help me. Find me. I need to escape." Her only friend is Redbird, a similar Penitent in the Ossalene Order, also a former slave and one of the women who look to her as a leader to escape this life they do not want.

But when she is called before Hawkspar, owner of the Hawkspar Eyes of War and Time, and Oracle, this young woman fears that she is fated to die for her plans of escape, for her making of magic. But Hawkspar surprises her by telling her that the older woman, considered a Goddess, and the most powerful of the Ossalene Order, supports her and wishes to help her. The woman reveals that they are both of the Tonk people, stolen away from their people as slaves and brought to the Order. But Hawkspar is old and dying, and she needs someone to succeed her and to save the entirety of the Tonk people, who will die without the young Pentitent's help. She intends to declare the young woman her heir and ensure that the other seru (Holy Wearers of the Sacred Eyes of Ossal) support her in this: Windcrystal, Onyx, Sunspar, Tigereye, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Amethyst and Raxinan. But Windcrystal and Sunspar do not support her, and Ruby and Emerald back them up, requesting that she be subjected to a test to see if the Goddess Vran Vrota supports her, the Test of the Rats, where live, starved rats are put into a cage with her. If they eat her, or hurt her, she is disqualified as a suitable choice.

The Penitant, called Mouse by her friend Redbird, is subjected to the test, and passes, whereupon Hawkspar puts the four seru who did not agree with her to test as well, and all the seru but Windcrystal are devoured. So Mouse is confirmed as Hawkspar, and goes under her council to be taught as well as she can how to use the Eyes, and when the old Hawkspar passes on, she is given a drink that makes her pass out, her eyes are cut out, and the Hawkspar eyes, magical creations, are put in place.

The next days are full of pain and complete blindness, but slowly her body links to the eyes, and though all she sees is blackness, it is a weighted blackness that does allow her to see, in a strange way. Her first act as Oracle is to humiliate a prince who thinks to bribe the Ossalene order for a seeing into the future about the outcome of a war he wishes to wage. She advises him, after a long period of imprisonment, that he will lose the war and to go home.

Instead, he attacks the other nation and does, indeed, lose. But he and some of his men escape and come after the Ossalene Order. Hawkspar carefully makes plans to gather away the other Tonk girls into hiding in a series of underground tunnels. Not just to hide, but to escape, for after all these years, someone has finally heard her and is coming to rescue her and her companions. But has it come too late? For she is now the Oracle Hawkspar, and her friend Redbird has become one of the Obsidian eyes who keep discipline in the Order and act as spies for the Seru, keeping watch on the slaves and lesser priestesses.

Aaran is a Tonk Tracker working on a ship, trying to find kidnapped Tonk youths. Long ago, when he was young, Aaran's sister was taken and the woman he loved killed in a slaver raid. Since then, he has worked aboard ships, searching out any news of her and trying to find out if she still lives. Now, he hears the pleas of Mouse and knows he must go to rescue her and the other Tonk women who are with her. But in addition to his Tonk Magic, he is also one who knows of the Haegedwar magics of the Feegash, who attempted to conquer Hyle and the Tonks and reduce their people to slavery. Thankfully, a woman named Talyn and an Eastil man threw back their conquerors and now, although the Feegash seem defeated, other nations seem to be nibbling at their borders.

But when Aaran tells his captain he wishes to rescue these Tonk women, the Captain, Haakvar, declares it madness and refuses to use his ship to rescue these women. Aaran feels he has no choice but to leave and buy a ship of his own, and sail off in search of Hawkspar and her fellow former slaves. Haakvar does everything he can to make Aaran give up the mission, and when Aaran persists, tells the other Tonks that Aaran is a madman and not to sail with him. In reply, Aaran decides to take any crew at all who will ship with him, not just Tonks, and buys a formerly sunken and restored ship to sail with. In return for the ship and the maps and journals of a journey the shipbuilder made to the same area many years ago, he will seek a wife for the man to replace his wife who has died.

But the journey is long, and the islands are filled with many perils, including cannibals, storms and dangerous wildlife. Even if he can arrive in time before the Ossalene compound can be attacked by the men of the former Prince, they will have to sail home, and defeat a conspiracy against the Tonk people. Not only must they defeat it forever, but remove the threat to their people and their way of life, or their culture will die out in a mere hundred years.

As they sail together, Aaran finds himself falling for Hawkspar, but afraid of her strange eyes. And she is falling for him, even as she fights the spirit of Ossa, the mage and ruler who crafted the eyes so very long ago, whose spirit is bound to all the eyes of the Seru, and to those of Hawkspar most of all. If she uses the eyes too much, or too often, his spirit could free the bounds of its cage and take over her body forever. And just using the eyes also carries risk. Just being able to see the flow in the river of time means she can be obsessed with simply watching it... and forget to eat or drink, and so die that way.

But with the help of Aaran and his sailors, the women she helped escape the Ossalene Temple, and their fellow Tonk, Hawkspar will have to fight the many prongs of an enemy who wants nothing less than the complete obliteration of the entire Tonk people... and who has the allies and troops to make it happen. But how can one young woman, Goddess or not, unweave the web the Feegash have cast around not only Hyle, but all the nations of the world? And then, how can they make all the other nations believe that they are in the right, and not simply madmen and barbarians.

This novel is a sequel to the book Talyn, which I read a few months back, and takes place approximately 50 years in the future. Talyn, though, is still alive, and she makes an appearance at the end of the book, and is mentioned a few times as the savior of the Tonk people. Though the Tonks are now free, they are having other problems with other nations, problems that they don't realize are connected until they encounter Hawkspar and believe the results of her visions and sight into the stream of time.

Though at times the story is hard to read because of the pain and torment experienced by the main character, Hawkspar, it is also easy to read style and prose-wise. Hawkspar is a young woman thrust into a position of power and although she is prepared as well as she can be for her role, she still has a lot to learn and must learn it quickly and incredibly painfully. The story will not only keep you entertained, but drag you along as it ruthlessly powers its way through the lives of the characters and the incredible plot that is massed against the Tonk people by their enemies, the Feegash. In addition, we finally learn *why* the Feegash wish to exterminate the Tonk people and witness the treachery against the majority of the Tonk by some of their own, who collude with the enemy for reasons of money and power.

The two main characters are interesting and each in their own way bold. But while Aaran quickly falls in love with Hawkspar, he also comes to fear the power of her eyes. But his love is stronger than his fear, and while they spend much of the time apart even when they are physically close because of Hawkspar's belief that she must die to free the Tonk, in the end they decide that even if she must die, it is better to be close as much as possible so that they will have sweet memories of each other.

I really enjoyed this book, and think it is definitely a worthy successor to Talyn, as it not only expands the characters and the conspiracy against the Tonks, it also expands the world that they live in and shows us how large that world truly is for the first time. It will be interesting to see if Holly Lisle writes any other stories set in this world, or shows us the lives of peoples other than the Tonks. Certainly, there are hints of a story for a third book, as Hawkspar's tribe is one of the "Drifted" tribes of Tonks whose whereabouts are lost to the rest of their people. Seeking out these tribes could easily make enough of a story for a third book set in this world, and I would definitely read it.