by Holly Lisle
He took a deep breath. “That’s true. I have said that.”
“So. Just tell me the name of the authority you now trust to tell us our doom is a foregone conclusion, and I’ll let you go back to sleeping yourself to death.”
He shook his head slowly, knowing what she wanted him to say, but not wanting to say it. She could see the stubbornness on his face—the way his mouth compressed, the way his brows drew down, the way his eyes tracked across the room, as if looking for his answer among the wagon’s fittings and furnishings. His arms locked across his chest, shutting away the possibility that he might have been wrong.
She waited, patient as a cat at a mouse’s hole, and finally her mouse came out.
“There is no such authority,” he admitted.
“I know.”
“But how can we hope to win against the Dragons without Solander?”
She shrugged, and her smile grew broader. “I don’t know. But finally you’re asking the right question.” She sat down in the little chair across from Dùghall’s bed. “I know this—we are only beaten for sure if we don’t fight. And if we can’t count on the Texts, we can at least count on each other.” She took a slow, shaky breath. “And the time to act is now. A thousand years ago, our ancestors destroyed all of civilization rather than allow the Dragons to carry out their plans for the world. They gave everything to make sure their children and their children’s children wouldn’t be locked into eternal slavery, that our souls would not be the fodder that fed the immortality of a few powerful wizards. They fought and died so that we would live. Now it’s our turn to fight. We’ve suffered a bad loss, but we can’t let that stop us. We can’t just hand the future to the Dragons.”
Dùghall looked at her warily. “So who else have you convinced of all of this, dear Kait?”
Her smile became lopsided. “You’re the first, Uncle Dùghall. You’re going to help me convince everyone else.”
Dùghall gave her a wary smile and said, “Did you know Vincalis the Agitator was a playwright before he became a prophet?”
“You told me something about that. That he gave up writing plays when the Dragons executed Solander, and for a thousand days cast oracles and wrote the Secret Texts.”
Dùghall nodded and said, “He created the road map by which a thousand years of Falcons have steered their lives. But some of the best things he ever said, and the truest, were not in the Texts at all—they were in his plays. The Dragons overshadowed the world he lived in for most of his life, and they were hard masters, brutal, murderous, and evil. Most men feared to fight them in any manner. Vincalis fought them with words, but carefully—he never plainly wrote about the Dragons because they would have killed him, and he taught that survival was the first duty of a warrior. He wrote about great villains, and about the small bands of heroes who dared to best them . . . and he wrote many of those plays as comedies, because he could always claim the innocuousness of comedy if questioned.” Dùghall looked down at the gnarled hands folded on his lap, then glanced sidelong at her, and the ghost of a mischievous smile played across his lips. “Those who have no sense of humor rarely realize how deadly humor can be.”
“So what did he say?”
Dùghall closed his eyes. “The putative hero of one of my favorite plays, which he titled The Tragedy and Comedy of the Swordsman of Hayeres, was the swordsman Kinkot, a mighty-thewed master of weapons and a great lord. Kinkot swore to protect his countrymen from a vile monster that ravaged the countryside . . . but the monster proved to be too much for him. For the first two acts of the play, every step he took against the beast failed, and he became a laughingstock. He lost his lands, his wealth, his title, even his sword, and by the beginning of the third act he finds himself homeless, sitting on a street corner holding a begging bowl and hoping to die.”
“Sounds like a hilarious comedy,” Kait said.
Dùghall snorted. “Watching the cocky bastard getting his ass kicked by the monster in the first two acts is hilarious. But Vincalis never just wrote to entertain, and when Kinkot has had his comeuppance and is sitting on the corner begging, a fellow even worse off than he is lifts his head out of the gutter and says, ‘When you’re beaten, when you’re crushed, when you’re broken, you remember this, boy—nothing touches everyone in the world to the same degree. It’s very large, the world, and that’s what is—and always will be—its saving grace. So look to far seas and distant hills in your time of need, and welcome unlikely heroes, for help comes from the strangest quarter.’
“Kinkot, who has kicked this same beggar once in each of the first two acts, listens to him this time. He gives the poor sot his begging bowl and the few coins in it, and gets up to go off in search of help, for humbled as he is, he finally realizes that he can’t beat the monster alone.”
“Right. Beggars are ever full of good advice and deep wisdom. That’s why they spend their days lying in gutters.”
Dùghall shrugged. “The plays were a part of their time, and some of the storytelling is stylized, and some is a bit . . . predictable. Nonetheless, Vincalis knew his audiences. No sooner does Kinkot give the beggar the gift and follow his advice than the poor sot transforms into a beautiful young girl, and the girl, after kissing him and blessing him, transforms herself into a tiny bird. The bird rides on Kinkot’s shoulder, and the two of them, weaponless, go out to face the monster one last time. The bird plucks a flea from under its wing and flies to the monster and drops the flea on its back, at the precise spot where he can’t reach, and the monster, driven mad by futile scratching, doesn’t see Kinkot coming. Kinkot breaks its neck with his bare hands, thus winning back everything he’d lost, plus the love of the girl who helped him slay the beast.”
Kait tipped her head and eyed her long-winded uncle. “It’s a charming story,” she told him, “but I’m afraid I don’t see your point.”
“You are the point, dear girl. Consider yourself—a death-sentenced Karnee coming to the salvation of the land that sentenced you by rallying the Falcons who were supposed to save it themselves. You’re the man in the gutter who becomes the beautiful maiden who becomes the bird with the flea. You are the unlikeliest of heroes. Vincalis would have loved you.”
“I’m not a hero,” she said quietly. “I’m a coward like everyone else. I’m just a coward who would rather die fighting than die a slave.”
Dùghall grinned slowly. “You’re a coward, then, if it pleases you to say so. And I’m a coward as well. But I’m a coward who will rise and eat and dress myself, and who will be about the work of the world. Have that nattering girl bring me some food. I’ve decided I won’t die today.”
Chapter 44
The sun crept over the horizon and a single alto bell rang the station of Soma from Dogsister’s Tower near the Cloth Market. But when the bell finished ringing, a new sound rolled across the region. The air rang like a crystal bell, the sound coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Horses and cattle shied and balked and rolled their eyes back; birds launched themselves into the air in great clouds; dogs whined and cringed against the legs of their masters, then howled and ran. Perhaps most ominous of all, a river of rats poured into the streets and fled in all directions.
The ringing grew louder, and the air took on a pale green sheen. Shopkeepers slammed the shutters of their just-opened shops and followed the rats through the streets. Young women tucked their babies under their arms and raced after them. Customers stopped their bargaining in midnegotiation, stared wildly around them, and fled. No one knew what was happening, but everyone knew it was trouble.
The ringing grew even louder—painfully loud—and in the center of the Cloth Market coils of green smoke crawled up out of the shop floors and twisted toward the sky.
Only the old, the lame, and the foolhardy remained to see what happened next.
Gashes opened in the ground, and shimmering white spears grew out of the gashes like the fronds of pale ferns reaching toward the sun. These spears unfurled gracefully and f
lowed both outward and upward, spinning themselves into translucent towers and delicate arches and fairy buttresses, into shining walls and corbeled vaults, as if fashioned by the ganaan, the invisible folk of old myth. The whitewashed, sun-baked brick buildings that had occupied the ground from which they grew crumbled around them, and the new structures swallowed the debris—and all the buildings’ contents—leaving no trace. The shining white buildings absorbed the people who had not been quick enough to flee, too, enveloping them while they screamed and dissolving them with terrible slowness.
White roads, softly textured, forgiving to the feet that would tread upon them, oozed up from the cobblestone streets and spread into lovely thoroughfares. Those who later would dare to step onto their pristine surfaces would discover that horses’ hooves did not clatter, nor cartwheels rattle, nor falling cargo clank when striking them. The roads absorbed sound and gave back only a gentle, restful hush that echoed the whisper of leaves in a cool glade, the delicate murmur of a tiny waterfall chuckling down a stony hillside to the brook below, or the sighing of a breeze that tousled the tall grasses in a broad plain.
The magical city opened like a death rose within the heart of Calimekka. It slowly encroached on other neighborhoods and devoured them, too, filling the Valley of Sisters from the Black River to the Garaye Pass, spinning itself up the pass’s obsidian face and crawling along the top, covering Warriors’ Mount and spreading from there to the old Churimekkan Quarter and the Hammersmiths’ District.
At the end of two days the city finally seemed satisfied with itself, for it threw out no more white feelers at its edges, and no more roads shifted from cobblestone or pavingstone or brick to that white, yielding, eternal stuff.
The survivors—ten thousand left homeless, twice as many thrown out of the dissolved businesses and markets it had consumed—gradually crept onto those whispering white streets and down the broad, gleaming thoroughfares, past new fountains that tossed sparkling diamonds of water into the air, past the tall white pillars of gated walls, past mansions piled onto great houses butted up against castles beautiful beyond all imagining, looking for some surviving shred of those things and those places that had been theirs.
Everything was gone. The survivors looked at each other and whispered, “Devourer of Souls has spoken.” They wondered at the fates of those who had not fled. And they silently congratulated themselves for having been wise enough to flee, for they counted themselves lucky that they had survived at all.
What they didn’t know was what to do next. Dared they knock on the great gates of one of those castles and demand reparation for a lost home, lost belongings, a lost friend? The survivors huddled in little knots, discussing with each other the probable outcomes of such action. In an ill-omened year, with an evil carais singing like a madman from the balcony of his palace, showering down curses on the city and all who inhabited it, they thought they were likely to find nothing but pain and grief beyond those shimmering white gates. So at last, silently, in little clusters, they crept away from the newborn city, having done nothing.
From inside the gates and behind the walls, the Dragons in their new citadel watched and laughed. The Calimekkans were timid mice, terrified of the cats within their domain. And with reason. They would have taken great delight in making examples of any who dared to protest.
They touched the smooth magic-born walls they had created, and they heard the souls of the sacrificed crying within them. Again they smiled. Such walls, held together by human souls, would last as long as the earth on which they were built. The Dragons called their new city Citadel of the Gods, and looked to the nearing day when they would be gods not just in their dreams, but in fact.
The Calimekkans, who also heard the Dragons’ walls whispering, and who felt the trembling, frantic terror of those trapped within the lovely, silky whiteness of gates and pillars, arches and balustrades, were not so poetic about the white canker in the heart of Calimekka. They named the city-within-the-city New Hell.
Chapter 45
Hasmal curled next to Alarista in her narrow bed, hiding from the cold morning air. The sun was up, and light streamed through the tiny panes of the window and cast a golden glow on the lovely hand-rubbed wood surfaces . . . and outlined the curls of steam that puffed from his nose every time he breathed. Here, just south of the town of Norostis, in the Glasburg Mountains on the edge of the Veral Territories, winter was a harsh master, and he would have gladly stayed in bed all day to avoid its chilling touch.
He pulled Alarista closer and nuzzled the back of her neck. “Wake up,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be alone.”
She sighed and curled tighter against his body, but didn’t wake up. So he lay staring at the sunlight, holding her and hating his thoughts. He and Alarista would have this winter, with the innocence of their lovemaking and the time they spent in each other’s presence. They would have this bliss, this brief happiness brighter than anything he had ever known.
But the short cold days and the long sweet nights would end with spring’s thaw, and behind this season, another winter was already building—a winter of a different sort.
He and Alarista had thrown the zanda and cast bones and summoned Speakers, had sought the trances of Gyru drums and Falcon caberra incense, looking for some sign that they could hope to live out their years in peace together. But every oracle and every attempt had said the same thing. The Dragons held Calimekka, and would soon reach out for the rest of the world, and no one would escape slavery. Dragon power grew, and with it Dragon greed. They snuffed out not just lives but souls to build their new city, as unheeding of the price they exacted from others as cattle were of the clover they ate. They created beauty with a heart of ugliness; they spread; they conquered; and soon they would complete the spell that would pin all the world beneath their feet forever. Soon they would finish the complex machinery that would power the spell that would make them immortal.
Then slavery’s cold winter would come to Matrin forever.
Alarista stirred, and Hasmal held her tighter. “I love you,” he said, pushing eternal winter from his mind as best he could.
She rolled over to face him, and kissed his forehead and his nose and his eyelids, and said, “I love you, too.”
He stroked her hip and said, “Let’s leave today. We can get the wagon down into Norostis, and as soon as the roads clear we can travel to Brelst. I’ll work for our passage on the first ship sailing to Galweigia or New Kaspera or any of the Territories,” he said. “There’s land in Galweigia going begging—they’re desperate for settlers. We can be together, a long way from Calimekka and the Dragons. Perhaps we can have a whole life together before they reach that far—”
Alarista pressed a finger to his lips, smiled sadly, and shook her head. “Before they reach far enough to destroy us. Or our children. After they’ve already destroyed everyone we ever knew or loved that we were callous enough to leave behind.” She kissed his lips lightly and snuggled closer to him. Her skin was softer than silk beneath his fingers.
He closed his eyes to shut out the sun, the proof that time passed and the end of the world drew nearer, and he wished for the sea, for distance, for a safe place to hide her from the hell that came.
“We can’t run,” she said. “We’re Falcons. Even if we can’t win, even if we can’t fight, we have to stand.” She kissed him again and said, “You know this is true.”
“I only know that I waited my entire life to find you, and I haven’t had you long enough. I want peace for us, Ris. I want us to live out our lives in a world without fear. I want more time.”
Her soft laugh startled him. “How much time would be enough, Chobe? A year? Ten years? Fifty? A hundred? A thousand? When could you say, ‘We’ve had long enough. We’ve had our share,’ and let me die? Or when could I willingly let you go?”
Hasmal rolled the future forward in his mind and could not find that moment in all of eternity. “Never,” he said at last. “Unless I’m with you forever
, I won’t have had enough time.”
She nodded. “Me either. So if the world ends now or in a hundred years, you and I will suffer the same from our parting.”
“Yes.”
“Then how do we justify turning our backs on the others that we love? We can’t run away while they stay behind, because if we lived knowing that all of them were gone—dead or tortured by the Dragons—and that we had abandoned them to suffer their fates alone, we would poison our love for each other. We would lose the one thing we cherish most.”
“I can’t lose you,” Hasmal told her.
“Yet you will. Remember Vincalis: ‘Nothing bites more bitterly than knowledge of mortality.’ No matter what we do, we’ll eventually die, love, and either you will die first, or I will . . . or perhaps . . . if we’re lucky . . . we’ll die together. But someday this will end.”
Hasmal closed his eyes. “I don’t want it to end. I want forever.”
“We’ll find each other again. Beyond the Veil, or in new bodies, in new times. . . .”
“I want you and me. Us. I want what we have now. These bodies, this time, this world, forever.”
“I know. But nobody gets that. We have this moment. That has to be enough.”
He pulled her hard against his chest, kissing her, touching her, driven by the terror of future loss. She responded vehemently. They wrapped themselves around each other and clung together, seeking within the pressures of flesh and the warmth of passion a place beyond the pain, seeking within their lovemaking and their love the promise of eternity.
For just an instant, they found it.
Chapter 46
They weren’t impressed; Kait could see it in their eyes.
“So the few of us here will march back to Calimekka—”
“—or sail—”
“—or sail, right . . . and attack the Dragons on their home ground, now that they’ve had all this time to dig in—”