by Holly Lisle
Book Two
“There is no day so dark that it cannot grow darker, and no man so strong that he cannot be crushed. Or are you immortal, Rogan?”
ALLIVITA, IN ACT II
OF THE LAST HERO OF MAESTWAULD
BY VINCALIS THE AGITATOR
Chapter 25
“. . and that’s how we came to be here,” Dùghall said.
Kait sipped gratefully at the mug of plantain beer and leaned against the bolster on the floor. Of all the rest of her fellow survivors, only Ry was awake. He sat to her left, devouring the meat-flavored rice dish that Dùghall had offered. The rest of them were sleeping on the floor in the back room; she could hear soft snores and the occasional rustle as someone rolled over. “But that explains nothing of how you arrived here, or why you’ve changed so much.”
Dùghall smiled. He was thinner and harder—to Kait he looked like he’d been put in an oven, where the fat had melted off his body and left him tough and brown and wiry. Gone were the round belly and full jowls that were the mark of the wealthy man in Calimekkan society.
“I’ve told you how we escaped from the Sabirs, those of us who survived. Perhaps others lived that I didn’t see, of course—the House, after all, is the friend of those who know her secrets.” He shook his head, and Kait saw pain in his eyes. “I hope more live than the few that spent the night in that room with me. After the walking dead rid the House of its invaders, I returned to my quarters. I’d thought to help the Family rebuild—regain its foothold in the city. But I sought guidance on how I could best do that; I threw the zanda, and it gave me a message I’d thought never to see in my lifetime. I was to leave the House, taking nothing with me but what I could carry on my back and telling no one of my departure, because according to the zanda, there were traitors among our survivors. I was to journey in secret. I was to go home and from there seek allies to stand with the Reborn and the Falcons against the Dragons.
“So I did exactly that. I slipped out of Galweigh House unseen and unremarked and placed myself aboard the first ship I could find that was sailing for the Imumbarras. Once there, I emptied the embassy treasury, sent out a call to my adult sons to join me for battle, hired the best soldiers I could find on the islands, claimed the Galweigh ships in harbor under martial law, and sailed ships and men through the Imumbarra Isles, the Fire Islands, and the Thousand Dancers. Along the way I hired more men, stocked my ships, trained them—”
“Then you have a navy hidden here?” Ry interrupted, his voice eager.
“No.”
“No?” Kait was puzzled. “Then what happened to the ships and men and supplies?” She kept seeing herself sailing into Calimekka with a trained, eager marine force to reclaim the Mirror of Souls.
“When we reached Falea and began to add to our supplies, the Reborn spoke to me. He told me that I was to send my great force on to Brelst under the command of my oldest son. He said I was to wait here.”
Ry said, “If you hadn’t sent your fleet off, they’d be here now to help us retrieve the Mirror of Souls. Or perhaps they could have prevented the Mirror of Souls from being stolen in the first place. We, after all, were also on our way to Brelst.”
“The ways of Vodor Imrish are . . . well, convoluted at best, and his motives are rarely clear to the mortal mind.” Dùghall managed a wry, wan smile. “I suspect I’m here to help you reclaim the Mirror of Souls. Though why this could better be done by the few we have now instead of the many we would have had a month ago, I don’t know.”
“I would have sailed with the fleet,” Ry said. “To cold hell with oracles.”
“And had I done that, I wouldn’t know my niece lived,” Dùghall said, “and I wouldn’t be able to travel back to the city to assist you in regaining the Mirror.”
“I doubt a diplomat will be of much use to us,” Ry said.
“And if I were a diplomat, I’d have to agree with you. But I’m a wizard, son—your better by far, even with all your men assisting you; better than young Hasmal in there; better than my little Kaitcha here who I can see has been doing diligent study in the science since I saw her last.”
Ry flushed. “How did you know . . . ?”
“That you were a wizard? A Wolf?” His smile was sly. “I’m a Falcon. An old Falcon. I’ve been watching your sort all my life, and not one of you has ever so much as suspected that I was anything but the diplomat I claimed to be. I can smell Wolves the way Kait . . . or you, I suspect . . . can smell the animals creeping through the underbrush outside the village walls.”
Kait watched Ry’s eyebrows slide up his forehead, though he looked away before he could betray his surprise to Dùghall. “You’re an observant man,” he said quietly. “Observant enough that I’m surprised someone hasn’t had you killed.”
“Observant enough that I’m still alive, in spite of the fact that more than a few have tried.”
“Perhaps you’ll be an asset to our mission after all.”
Kait glanced at Ry. “When did it become our mission? I don’t recall asking you to help me retrieve the Mirror of Souls.”
He looked straight into her eyes and said, “I have my reasons for going with you.”
“I need to know what they are,” Kait said.
Dùghall nodded. “I’m afraid I have to agree. Sabir reasons and Wolf reasons are unlikely to mesh well with Galweigh reasons and Falcon reasons.”
Now Ry faltered. He looked from her to Dùghall, then back to her again. Kait saw long-buried pain in his eyes. “The truth?” he said. “Aside from being with you, that is? I need the Mirror of Souls as much as you do.” He looked away from her and his voice went both quiet and hard. “I want my brother back.”
Kait’s stomach lurched. “He’s . . . dead?”
“For a long time.”
Kait worded her question carefully. “What makes you think the Mirror of Souls could give him back to you?”
Ry managed a small smile. “He told me so himself.”
“A voice inside your head, you mean? One that claimed to be your brother? One that came to you not long ago . . . maybe after our Families fought?”
He nodded.
“That wasn’t your brother.”
“He was Cadell. He knew things only Cadell could know.”
Kait shook her head. “He read your memories. Such a spirit told me how to find the Mirror—she told me she was an ancestor of mine, martyred by your Family hundreds of years ago. She lied, because she wanted me to bring the Mirror of Souls to Calimekka. She was a Dragon.”
She thought his face went pale. “And how did you discover that?”
Kait didn’t know how he would respond to her story of seeking out the Reborn in the womb, or how reliable he would consider the information. So she said, “Hasmal performed a spell. From it we discovered her origins.”
Ry frowned and sat quietly for a moment. Kait felt a tiny tendril of magic curl out from his body; she tightened her shields until she could feel nothing. His sort of magic would pull its power from the people around him, and might rebound to him and anyone he involved; she wanted nothing to do with that.
“Cadell won’t answer me,” he said at last.
“That’s because he isn’t Cadell,” Dùghall said.
“So you have no reason to go with us when we retrieve the Mirror.”
Ry looked long and hard at her. “I still have reasons. I left my Family and crossed the ocean to be with you, Kait. I still want to be with you.” He looked away from her and said, “Maybe you think I’m a fool.” He shrugged. “Maybe I am a fool. But I’ll see you safely where you’re going. And my men will stay with me. They’re loyal and brave—they’ll be good to have along.”
Dùghall said, “Events fall into place.” His tone was enigmatic, his expression troubled. Suddenly he stiffened and turned toward the west. “Shield yourselves!” he snapped.
A wave of pure malevolent magic rolled over Kait, overwhelming the light shield she already had in place. The pain of the
magic blinded her, threw her to the floor, and drove into her belly like a knife.
Blind.
Deaf.
Mute.
Paralyzed.
Devoured by agony.
She fought for a handhold in that sudden sea of horror; a single point upon which she could concentrate, a single piece of debris in her shattered world that she could use to keep herself from drowning in madness.
Focus.
She found a place of calm energy beneath her.
Drew in protective magic.
Rebuilt her shield.
Fed it, a slow trickle at a time, then faster as the shield began to buffer her from the maelstrom around her. She expanded it, let it meld to Ry’s shield and Dùghall’s, then expanded it carefully over the men in the other room who had been caught sleeping and had been crushed by the wizardstorm.
She crouched, huddled and shivering, on the floor. Blessed stillness cradled her, and slowly, slowly, the pain subsided.
Her hands trembled, and cold sweat beaded on her forehead and dripped down her nose and off her upper lip. But she had herself under control, and the evil could no longer touch her. Her vision began to clear, and she saw Dùghall and Ry curled on the floor beside her, both pale and sweating and shivering. She rose, shocked at how weak her legs were and how wobbly her gait, and tottered outside. She looked west, toward the birthplace of the evil she felt.
The cloud-smeared sky glowed impossibly blue, the blue of sapphires illuminated from inside, their light sent streaking across the horizon in tight arcs. Lovely. But the poison that poured from the beautiful light pounded at her, even as she tightened her shield. She knew the evil—knew its shape and its appearance, knew its name, and how it had come to be summoned forth.
She leaned against the cool, whitewashed wall and closed her eyes. That light came from the Mirror of Souls. They’d used it. She could feel the artifact’s imprint in the magic; she could recognize its signature. After months of living on the ship with the damned thing, feeling its energy permeating the cabin, hearing the almost-imperceptible hum of its light core, she felt she knew it better than she knew her shipmates. And it was awake, and alive, and exultant.
Evil. The artifact was inherently evil; she did not think there would be any way to use it for good. She hadn’t been able to sense that before, but now, with it fully awake, she couldn’t mistake the Mirror’s essential nature. It had been created to cause pain, to maim and destroy in some manner that she could not, from her great distance, fathom. It had waited more than a thousand years to carry out its evil. It was . . . happy.
I brought it here. If I hadn’t gone after it . . . if I hadn’t listened to the voice that told me the only way I could hope to see my Family alive again was to retrieve it . . .
But no. Down that path lay madness. She had acted in good faith, using the best of her knowledge at the time. She had done the only thing she believed she could do. And if she had not been willing to undertake the arduous voyage, the same voice who lured her across the ocean would have found another person with equally compelling desires.
Others had crawled out into the daylight to stare at the distant light show. Kait heard Hasmal nearby, and Ry, and Dùghall. Dùghall stood staring at the sky, and frightened villagers hurried to surround him, babbling questions in panicked voices. He shook his head and pointed his finger at those glowing blue arcs and answered them in their own language. She heard his attempt to be comforting and, underneath that, his fear.
She walked to his side. “We’re too late. They’ve used it.”
Dùghall looked from her to the sky, where the lights had finally begun to flicker out. Back to her, to the sky, to her. Finally he said, “We’ve known for a thousand years and better that the Dragons would return, Kait. We’ve been waiting for them. We knew they would find the Mirror, though we didn’t know how. Vincalis predicted all of these things in his Secret Texts, and warned us to watch—that these evil things were the signs that foretold a good outcome. The Dragons are back, their magic has returned, and the Mirror of Souls is in their hands. But prophecy said all these things would come to pass before Solander returned to us. He’s ready to be rebirthed—and when he returns, he’ll lead all of us against the Dragons, and we will wipe them utterly from the face of the earth and raise the city of Paranne for everyone.”
“Danya carries the Reborn in her belly,” Kait said. “But she has closed herself off from him, and won’t answer me when I try to reach her, either.”
Dùghall’s eyebrows slid up his forehead, and she knew she’d stunned him.
“Danya?” he whispered. “Danya! Is alive? She escaped from the Sabirs? How?”
Kait cut him off. “I don’t know how she’s doing, and I don’t know how she got away from her kidnappers. All I know is she’s pregnant with the Reborn. I can feel her anger and her hurt, but I can’t reach her. Either I don’t have enough control of magic to get through to her, or else she isn’t listening.”
Dùghall looked worried for a moment. “I’d feel better if I knew where she was. How she’d come to be there. How she was doing.” He sighed, and stared toward Calimekka, where the last of the lights had vanished, and the overwhelming feeling of evil had dissipated. “Whatever they did there, it’s finished now. But we have Vincalis’s assurance that the Reborn will set things right. We’ll follow his guidance; with his help we’ll destroy the Dragons. And when it’s done, the Reborn will build an eternal empire of love better than any empire the world has known before.”
Kait nodded, hoping the future’s outcome was as certain as her uncle believed. “What about Danya?”
“The Reborn will protect her.”
Chapter 26
The horrible darkness and the bitter cold of winter had given way to a short, startling spring, and then to a summer where the sun never set. The bleak tundra bloomed, suddenly and shockingly fertile, covered with berries of a dozen varieties, short-lived flowers in colors Danya had never even imagined before, sturdy greenery that grew so fast she kept thinking if she sat down and watched just a little longer, she could see the plants move.
Birds flocked to the just-melted waterways and filled the skies with their chatter and themselves with the larvae of mosquitoes and burstbugs. Blackflies and coppergnats filled the air in clouds, and spawning salmon and firth and grayling raced into the pure, cold, shallow streams to mate. Wolves and bears trailed their young, foxes trotted ahead of round-faced kits, caribou and wixen swung across the spongy ground in huge herds with their calves at their sides.
Danya swelled, too, as fertile as the rolling tundra. The baby was huge inside of her, all angles and lumps and kicking, squirming protrusions. She waddled when she walked, fought for balance, slept sitting up because she could no longer breathe when she lay down. A small part of her embraced the changes, because they made her feel necessary and vital and somehow more alive than she’d ever felt. That small part of her was the Danya she had been before the Sabir Wolves kidnapped her, tortured her, raped her, and used her as the buffer for the spell they launched against her Family. That small part of her had always wanted a baby, and found the life of the one inside her enthralling.
But she was no longer human, and she felt sure that the magic that had twisted her into a monster had done the same thing to the unborn infant. And she could not forget the rape that had forced the child on her, and the three detestable Sabirs, one of whom had fathered it. Luercas said that the father was Karnee—that meant that he was either Crispin or Andrew, both of whom had changed into beast form at one time or another while torturing her. So the infant would have their beast-nature, too.
Had she still been human, she might have been able to forgive the unborn creature for his existence; after all, he had done nothing to her. But she looked at the monster she’d become, and her ugly, ravaged body twisted the joy she found in the wonder of pregnancy and poisoned it. When the magic made her into a monster, the people who cast it took away everything she’d ever wa
nted in her life: home, friends, Family, position, wealth, and future.
She shifted her weight to her other hip when the baby kicked, trying to find a position that didn’t hamper her breathing or hurt her back and at the same time trying to find a comfortable position for her thick tail. She sat among the hummocks on the edge of a high bluff, watching the light glint off the water below her, though her body was no longer designed for sitting.
No. The Sabirs hadn’t taken away everything. She was still a Wolf. She still had her magic. And Luercas promised her that with her magic and his help, she would have her revenge. She would bring about the deaths of the Sabirs—she would feel her hands wrapped around their cold, silenced hearts, and their blood would congeal on her fingers. She would see her own Family humiliated, subservient before her, made to suffer for their callousness, for their unwillingness to pay the necessary price to rescue her.
The baby stilled in her belly, and she felt it reach out to her. Mind-touch to mind, soul-touch to soul. It felt like sunlight—hope and warmth and still, soft brightness that radiated outward from her center, blurring the edges of her pain and promising her peace. Hope. Love.
I am your reward for surviving all that pain, it whispered. I will make you whole again.
As she did every time, she blocked its delicate touch and tentative contact. She pulled her magic around her like a wall, holding herself separate from the intruder in her body. She would not love the thing. She would not. If she allowed herself to love it, she would lose the keen, fine edge of her hatred . . . and she would not lose that. Without hatred, she could not keep herself keyed for revenge. And she had sworn on her immortal soul that the Sabirs would pay for what they did to her, and that the Galweighs would pay for what they failed to do.
She rose awkwardly and stretched. Below her lay the river Sokema, and her little boat waited on the sandbar. Across the river, the Kargans worked in their fish camp, gutting the fish they drew from the river, spreading it flat, drying it on lines the way women back in Calimekka had dried their clothes, or smoking it over green willow fires in smokehouses to make the tough fish jerky that sustained them through the winter.