by Holly Lisle
She nodded again.
He smiled. “We’re ready, then. Friend. I’ll take Kargan form before we reach the village. Keep the red cloak on when you ride in, but after I change to human shape in front of them, throw it to the ground at my feet so that I can dismount on it. Their prophecy of their savior’s arrival states that he ‘walks on red.’ The cloak should meet the requirement well enough. And as long as we ride the lorrags and I’m Kargan in form some of the time, they’ll be ready enough to accept that their prophecy has come true.”
Danya nodded. “You said you wanted me to say something.”
He said, “Raise your right hand so that they get a good look at those two claws of yours. Say, ‘You welcomed me and made me one of you. You accepted me in forms both strange and stranger, fed me from your tables, gifted me with home and hearth and friendship. Now, my good and faithful children, I reveal myself to you as Ki Ika, and I give you my son Iksahsha as I promised long ago.’”
“Ki Ika and Iksahsha—the Summer Goddess and her son Bountiful Fishing. You truly believe they’ll look at us and see their heroes? I’m not even Kargan.”
“Their legends speak of the day when they were human—they fully believe that they’ll be human again someday. If Ki Ika reveals herself to them in human form, what of it? You’re what they hope to be. Besides, we’re riding lorrags, I can become Kargan at will, and we control magic. We’re as close to their gods as they’ll ever see walking.”
“If you say so. Then what?”
“Then I’ll tell them that the days of the prophecy have come, when the Scarred shall be returned to their rightful places in the lands and the homes of Man, and shall once again, if they so desire, take back their forms as Men.” He shrugged. “I’ll tell them to follow us—that we’ll lead them to the Rich Lands, them and all the rest of the Scarred.”
“And we use them to raise our army and attack Ibera.”
“Yes. Why do you sound so doubtful now?”
“Because now I’m sitting on the back of the lorrag and not merely imagining it. And I’m looking at you on the back of your beast, and you look neither immortal nor particularly impressive. We have no cloth-of-gold robes, no jewels, no servants. I was raised in a House, gods know. I’ve seen what power is supposed to look like. We’re not it.”
“Dear foolish child, I was the leader of the most powerful guild of wizards in the known world a thousand years ago, when aircars flew through the skies powered by wizard thoughts and gardens grew in the air and people wandered through them walking on clouds. I have seen power in forms so beautiful and wondrous you would fall to your knees, believing yourself in the presence of your own puny gods if you had ever seen them. I tell you they’ll believe—what is power to you would be an alien thing to the Kargans. What they will see when they see us will be power in a form they can understand. We’ll be what they have prayed for and dreamed about for generations uncounted.”
Chapter 6
Dùghall saw Crispin Sabir’s viewing glass go dark. He waited, holding his breath, looking for a sign from Hasmal. He didn’t know what his young colleague might do, but he hoped Hasmal might find a way to control Crispin’s body. That he might even discover a way to oust Crispin’s soul and claim the body for himself.
Then the darkness in the glass changed to radiant light, and Hasmal’s voice filled the tent.
“We have to hurry,” Hasmal said. “I have so much to tell you, and so little time. Crispin will wake soon, and before he does, much of what we need to accomplish must be completed.”
Dùghall suppressed his desire to ask questions about where Hasmal was and what was happening to him, or to offer him comfort or encouragement. He said, “Tell me.”
Hasmal’s voice spoke from the light. “Take me into your body and your mind, that you can know what I know.”
Dùghall hesitated only for an instant. Then he picked up the viewing glass and stared into its depths. Immediately Hasmal made the connection with him. Dùghall felt reassuring warmth and Hasmal’s familiar personality flow into him—and half a heartbeat later, he felt the sharp memories of Hasmal’s torture and death, his grief over his loss of Alarista, and his discoveries of Crispin’s daughter and the operation of the Mirror of Souls. While he was learning what Hasmal knew, Hasmal was discovering that Kait and Ry had already escaped, that Ian had not betrayed them, and that the Mirror of Souls was already back in the hands of the Falcons.
He felt Hasmal’s imprint on his soul—and Crispin Sabir’s, and the Dragon Dafril’s, too. And he felt Hasmal discovering the price that Alarista had paid to send rescue, and Hasmal’s anguish at the discovery.
She loves you still, Dùghall told him.
I know. As I love her. Right now, it only makes what has happened hurt worse. Please just tell me you can use what I’ve found, Hasmal said. That this has not been for nothing.
We can use it. We’ll get the girl before Crispin can wake and find her. We’ll activate the Mirror and call back the rest of the Dragon souls, then send them through the Veil. And when they’re gone, we’ll destroy the Mirror. You’ve saved us, Hasmal. You’ve given us the chance to win everything. You will be written into the Falcon annals, your name remembered until the end of time.
And I would trade all the Falcons’ memory and honor for a single day with Alarista. . . . Touch her for me, please. Let me be with her this one last time.
Dùghall moved to Alarista’s side and rested a hand on her forehead. Light poured down his arm, and only in that instant did he realize that while Hasmal had been inside of him, he had glowed like a small sun. As Hasmal left him, he once again felt the cold of the tent. The light poured into Alarista’s frail body and illuminated her, erasing her anguished expression and replacing it with a beatific smile.
Dùghall looked for just a moment. Then, feeling that he intruded on something private, he turned away.
“Get me Kait’s and Ry’s viewing glasses,” he said to Yanth. He spoke around the lump in his throat, and his voice sounded rough in his own ears. He blinked back the blurring in his eyes and growled at Jaim, “Don’t stare at them. For decency’s sake, man, turn away. Better yet, bring me pen and paper and ink. I’ve spells to cast that have never been set before, and I’ll only have one chance to set them properly. I’ll do it the child’s way, with the words before me.”
• • •
When the tasks he had to accomplish were clear in his mind and on paper, Dùghall knelt again in the center of the tent. “Ry first,” he said.
They had reached their inn. Ry and Kait were eating, Ian was pacing the room, stopping from time to time to stare out the window.
Dùghall felt the familiar darkness take him as he connected with Ry’s viewing glass, and an instant later he looked out of eyes not his own.
Ry, it’s Dùghall, he said.
Ry grew still. I know your touch.
We’ve almost won. Hasmal found out that Crispin has a daughter. Her name is Ulwe. He’s hidden her in an apartment on Silk Street, in the outlanders’ ghetto of the Merchants’ Quarter, just beyond the Black Well and above the dyeing shop of Nathis Farhills.
Dùghall could feel Ry absorbing the information. The revelation of his cousin’s daughter stunned him, but he moved quickly beyond that.
How will I get her? Why would she come with me?
She has not yet met her father. When Crispin wakes, he will no doubt go to her first—Hasmal’s thoughts will be in his mind as clearly as his were in Hasmal’s. He now knows everything Hasmal knew, and that’s a deadly danger for us. But if you hurry, you can reach her before he does and take his place. With Crispin’s daughter in our care—
You don’t need to tell me. I’ll hurry. What am I to say to her?
Tell her, “A daughter is her father’s greatest blessing, his greatest weakness, and his greatest fear.” She’s young, Ry, and has been raised entirely out of her father’s influence. She’s an innocent.
I won’t hurt her.
Protect her.
I’m on my way.
Dùghall broke off the connection with Ry. He waited a moment—Ry would tell Kait and Ian something, surely, before he raced out the door, and Dùghall wanted to make sure Ry was well on his way before he contacted Kait. What would happen next would be dangerous—perhaps deadly—and he didn’t want Ry to hesitate when he discovered that Kait would be facing danger he would no doubt prefer to take on himself.
Either Kait or Ry could have activated the Mirror and done what needed to be done with it—but the girl, Ulwe, was expecting a man to come after her, and if she had ever seen an image of him, she would be more likely taken in by Ry’s appearance than by Ian’s.
Finally enough time had passed that he felt sure Kait and Ian would be alone. He grasped Kait’s viewing glass and reached out for her.
Chapter 7
Kait leaned against the slatted shutters, staring through one gap at the place where Ry had been only an instant before. He had run out the door after only the thinnest of explanations, leaving her and Ian dumbfounded.
Behind her, Ian paced and fretted. “Where are we going to hide a little girl? We won’t be able to use her papers—her father will have the city in an uproar finding her. And the first checkpoint we pass, she’ll scream for help, and the weight of the city will descend on our heads.”
“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” Kait sighed and watched the unending stream of strangers that hurried along the harbor boardwalk. She wished one of those strangers would suddenly become Ry—that she could know he would return safely to her. “We’ll figure it all out when the child gets here.”
“Maybe I should buy a sleeping draught from an apothecary,” Ian said. “If we fed her a healthy dose of nightbell or Phadin’s elixir, we could get her to Galweigh House with only a bit more trouble than we’ll have getting ourselves there.”
Kait turned and stared at him. “You would truly pour Phadin’s elixir into a child?”
She watched with some satisfaction as his face flushed. “No. I suppose I wouldn’t. But we’re going to have to do something.”
“We will. But we don’t have to do it now. Wait. We’ll meet the girl and when she arrives her actions will dictate ours.”
“She’s Crispin Sabir’s daughter. If we’re going by actions, we’ll probably have to kill her.”
Kait gave him a hard look. “Don’t even say that in jest.”
Ian sighed.
Kait turned back to the window.
Kait.
“What?”
Ian said, “I didn’t say anything.”
Kait. It’s Dùghall.
Kait grew still and inhaled slowly. She felt the faintest of touches through the talisman embedded in her skin.
I hear you, Uncle.
It’s time to use the Mirror, he said. It’s time to send the Dragons through the Veil.
Kait turned to Ian. “Help me get the Mirror out,” she said.
He frowned at her. “You think you should be tinkering with it here—” he started to argue, but he faltered as he looked at her. “You’re listening to him, aren’t you?”
“To Dùghall,” she said.
“He’s telling you what to do.”
“He says Hasmal found out how the Mirror works. We’re going to get all of the Dragons out of Calimekka now.”
“We?”
Kait nodded.
“Oh, shang!” Ian went to the wardrobe and, with Kait’s help, dragged out the Mirror of Souls. “I suppose I never saw myself as an old man, anyway.” When the three of them had arrived, they’d taken the spare blankets from the wardrobe and wrapped them around it; neither the blankets nor the wardrobe would do much to hide the Mirror if it decided to betray them as it had in the Thousand Dancers, but wrapping and hiding it had seemed more sensible than leaving it sitting in the center of the room. “Let me look out the window,” he muttered as he shoved it in front of her. “I want to get a last look at life.”
Kait managed to give him a small smile as she pulled the blankets off of the Mirror. She stood before the artifact, hands trembling. Its creators had made it beautiful; the beauty went far in hiding its evil. Her skin crawled as she looked at it; it could rip her soul from her body and fling it into the Veil and give her flesh to a stranger. She knew what it could do, and she was flatly and totally terrified of it, and now she alone would have to touch it and manipulate its jeweled glyphs and put herself at its mercy to send the Dragons away.
She became aware that Ian was standing across from her, watching her, and she realized she had been poised motionless in front of the Mirror for quite a while. “What are you waiting for?” Ian asked.
“Courage.” She clenched her hands into tight fists. Altruism was a fine and noble sentiment, but when it came down to stepping into fire for strangers, or even for friends and colleagues and love, Kait discovered that the desire to survive rose kicking and screaming from the dark recesses of the mind, demanding second thoughts.
You don’t have to do it, Dùghall told her.
I know.
She stared at the cool, sensuous curves of the Mirror. It represented evil and the foul path that the future would take without her intervention, as Solander had represented the path of hope and joy. She steadied herself with thoughts of Solander—she remembered what it had been like to touch his soul. For the first time in her life, someone had known her totally and still completely accepted her for what she was. She had not been a monster to Solander. She had been Kait, woman and Karnee, and he had loved her without reservation.
Until she’d met him, she’d thought of Solander as a god; she had been stunned to discover that he was a man—purely human. Yet in spite of his human limitations, he had found within himself a beauty that allowed him to love without reservation, and he had insisted the potential for that same beauty existed within her, and within all people, human or Scarred.
I have that potential in me. I can love like that.
From Dùghall, she felt a brief sharp stab of shame. That is where I fail Solander’s teaching. Where I have always failed, he confessed. Even now, what I do I do for myself more than for anyone else.
Kait would have argued with him, but he stopped her.
I know what I am, he told her. I know I must be more someday. Somehow. But right now, I don’t matter. You do. And the Mirror does. And what you can do to save us all.
Kait inhaled slowly, and took the single necessary step forward that permitted her to rest her hands on the smooth metal of the Mirror. The Mirror of Souls still made her think of a giant flower: a bowl formed of platinum petals resting on a tripod of delicately curved, swordlike leaves. What had been the stem when first she had seen the artifact—a slender pillar of golden light that rose upward from the base through the center of the tripod and swirled into a radiant pool at the heart of the bowl—was missing at the moment. It would return when she activated the Mirror . . . and once that light again flowed, Kait knew she would be in danger.
If you’re ready, we’ll begin. I’ll look through your eyes, Dùghall said. But I won’t try to take over your hands. You are the one who will be in danger when we start this; you must be the one to decide at each step whether or not to continue.
You could guide me—
I could. But I won’t.
I understand.
She felt Dùghall’s excitement, and also his fear. Then let us begin.
Through his eyes, she saw the rows of carved gemstones inside the bowl differently. No longer merely pretty decorations, each gem with its incised hash marks and curlicues suddenly meant something: “first power” or “drain” or “connect” or “increase” or “draw” or “modulate.” She realized that she was not looking at the Mirror only through Dùghall’s eyes—she had connected to the memories of a Dragon, too. She could feel the Dragon’s connection to Dùghall—could feel a link, as well, to Hasmal, though she could not understand how that could be.
She took a few steadying br
eaths and let herself relax. She strengthened her connection with Dùghall. For an instant, she felt resistance as he pulled away, but she felt she needed a deeper link with the Dragon memories he held in his mind. When he let her reach past the buffer he’d created, she felt a sudden flood of recognition as countless other memories connected with hers. She discovered that the Dragon had been the one who had claimed to be her ancestor Amalee—the one who had led her across the sea in search of the Mirror. She discovered that he’d intended to take over her body, but had been denied access by the shield Hasmal had taught her how to cast. She discovered that the body he’d occupied—that of Crispin Sabir—had been one of the men who had tortured her cousin Danya, and had been the very one who had fathered Danya’s child, who would have been the Reborn. She felt the full weight of Crispin’s evil life, of Dafril’s thousand years of plotting and manipulating, of Hasmal’s many fears and great love and agonizing death, roll over her like a freight wagon pulled by a hundred galloping horses. The connections were dizzying, the memories—Hasmal’s, Crispin’s, Dafril’s, and Dùghall’s—were overwhelming. Brutal, conflicting, incomprehensible images flooded into her mind, and her knees went weak. She sagged against the Mirror, queasy and sick.
Strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back.
“Kait. Are you all right?”
The voice she heard from so far away was a real voice, and she rose out of the darkness that threatened to consume her and clung to that.
“I will be.” She closed her eyes and hoped that was true. “Give me a moment.”
“Let me use the Mirror,” he offered. “Tell me what I have to do, and let me take the risks.”
She took a steadying breath, then got her knees under her and locked them. Standing under her own power again, she turned her back on the Mirror of Souls. “I can’t. I know you’d do this if you could, but to use the Mirror, you have to be able to reach and channel magic.” She rested a hand on his forearm and said, “Just keep me from falling over if this gets to be too much for me again.”