by Lisle, Holly
Ian looked from one of them to the other. “Hurry. Someone will be along to check on this thing within the station. I can kill him, but the moment he doesn’t report in, more will be on the way.”
Chapter 54
Hasmal told Dafril nothing that he wanted to know, but he was no longer able to feign indifference. Through the early part of the torture, he’d placed himself in the meditative trance he would have used to summon magic, had he not been shielded from it. He’d withstood terrible things by standing apart from his body and watching what was done to him as if he were only a distant and uninterested observer.
Now, though, the pain had become too much, and he’d lost the trance. He was once again entirely in his body, and bleeding from a multitude of cuts, and scarred from burns with a branding iron. The pain was riveting; he couldn’t pull himself away from Dafril’s soft, amused voice any longer.
“Suddenly I feel that you’re with me again,” Dafril said. “That’s good. That should speed up this process enormously. I’ll have you know that I’ve broken hundreds of your sort, young Falcon—hundreds. Stronger men than you, and men who had full control of Matrin’s magic. You’ll tell me what I want to know.”
Dafril had kept his distance, and kept to the left of Hasmal. The talisman on his right finger still waited, but Dafril had never moved within the slight range of his bound hand. He had to get him close—
Searing pain ripped into his ribs, and he heard his skin sizzle. He screamed and fought against the restraints that bound him.
Dafril sighed. “You see? This hurts a lot, and you aren’t as brave or as strong as you think you are. So help me out, and I’ll help you. Tell me how you and your friends are stealing the souls of my colleagues.”
Hasmal’s mind raced. He thought of half a dozen lies, but all of them were improbable and sounded weak even to him—and if he told Dafril anything, he knew the Dragon would just keep torturing him, making sure that what he said at the beginning matched what he would say when he was more desperate.
He turned his face away.
“Look at me.”
He stared off to his right, trying to think of something that might save him, that might get Dafril within his range.
“Look at me, damn you.”
The searing pain again, this time high on the inside of his thigh.
He screamed and writhed, but kept his face turned from Dafril. It seemed to help.
Dafril said, “I can come around to that side, you idiot. You won’t win anything this way.”
Hasmal’s heart leaped. Yes, he thought. Do come around.
Dafril did, carrying a knife. “Look, you—I can carve out your eyes and your ears, cut off your nose, rip off your balls, or skin the flesh from your body if I have to. The only part of you that I need to have in working order is your tongue.”
Hasmal met his gaze defiantly, and managed a grin. So this was courage—being trapped and terrified and holding fast because he loved Alarista, and because cowardice would betray her.
He wondered if that was the difference between courage and cowardice—if brave men loved someone outside of themselves while cowards loved only their own lives. If that were true, then all men might be cowards sometimes and heroes at others. Then he wondered if all courage trembled inside—if all of it felt so thin and fragile, so ready to tatter and blow away in the next faint breeze—or if there was a better sort of courage that filled the belly with reckless fire and protected the mind from terror. If any of that sort of courage existed, he wished he could have some, because he was so scared he feared his heart would burst through his chest.
“Stubborn bastard. I’d cooperate if I were you.”
“You aren’t me,” Hasmal whispered.
“What was that?” Dafril leaned closer so that he could hear what Hasmal had said.
Yes, he thought. “I’ll tell you,” he whispered, his voice even softer than before.
Dafril stepped in close and leaned all the way over Hasmal. “Louder,” he said. “Say it louder.”
And that was close enough. Hasmal rested his index finger against Dafril’s leg. He felt the slight vibration as the talisman popped away from his skin and burrowed through the cloth of Dafril’s breeches.
In a moment, Alarista and Dùghall would see him through Dafril’s eyes. Dùghall would enter Dafril and pull his soul out and trap it in one of the tiny soul-mirrors that waited on the floor of the tent. And Hasmal would be saved—if he could just hold on until they could reach him.
“We found a way to make our own Mirror of Souls,” he whispered.
Dafril’s eyes narrowed, and he ran his thumb along the bloody edge of the knife. “Really? Tell me more.”
Chapter 55
They lugged the Mirror of Souls through the dark underpassages of the Citadel of the Gods, breathless, frightened, yet exhilarated, too. Kait had to fight the urge to shout, to scream defiance at the Dragons who went unaware about their business in the white streets above her head. We have it, she thought. We have it, and we’re going to get away with it, and we’re going to destroy you.
“How much farther?” Ry, the strongest of the three of them, carried most of the Mirror’s weight; he’d positioned the artifact with two of its petals resting on the small of his back and he gripped one petal in each hand. She and Ian followed him, balancing a tripod leg each. They seemed to Kait to be moving quickly, but they’d been in those dark passages for a long time anyway.
“Can you see a fork in the passageway ahead of us yet?” Ian asked.
“It goes off in three directions.”
“We’ll take the left corridor. The passage will start rising immediately and branch again. The right branch comes out in a guardhouse at the Citadel’s service gate. We’ll have to kill the guard, but my friend and his carriage will be parked behind the stables across the street.”
“I can already smell outside air,” Kait said.
She saw Ry nod. “I do, too.”
The picked up their pace until they were running. It was an unconscious action born of fear and anticipation, but it was dangerous, too. Hurrying, their breathing became louder and their attention too focused on the simple mechanics of not falling down while carrying their burden. “We have to slow down,” Kait said, pulling backward on her leg of the tripod.
Both men slowed without a word.
Kait heard voices ahead. “Who is likely to be coming through here at this time of day?” she asked Ian.
“Soldiers . . . gardeners . . . servants . . . Could be anyone.”
“We’ll have to kill them,” Ry said.
“Maybe not,” Ian said. The corridor they were in was pierced at right angles by regular intersections with other, similar corridors. “We can just move aside and hope they don’t notice us.”
“And if they do?” Ry asked.
Kait sighed. “Then we’ll have to kill them. But we’ll all be better off if we don’t.” Them included, she thought. She had no stomach for the murder of innocent gardeners or serving girls.
They moved into the first corridor to their right and stood in the shadows, not moving and barely breathing. They saw a light flickering from ahead of where they’d been walking. They waited, and the voices grew louder.
“. . . and I told Marthe I was going to quit and find a job slopping hogs if I couldn’t find nothing better,” a man’s voice said. “Hogs is friendlier than these bastards.”
“A hog’ll rip your arm off and eat it in front of you, you ain’t careful,” a woman’s voice answered. “Hogs is mean.”
“And these people’s meaner. You’re fresh from the country—you haven’t seen what I’ve seen. But you mark my words, Lallie, they’ll be dug under your skin and sucking the life out of you before you’re here a week. Find something else.”
“If that’s such good advice, why ain’t you already taken it?”
The pair drew even with Kait’s hiding place and she watched them. Their torch illuminated a tired-looking man of
perhaps forty, slouch-shouldered and with thinning hair, and a fresh-scrubbed young woman with a pert smile and a bounce in her step.
“Because the bastards pay in good gold, and gold’s hard to come by these days.”
The girl flashed a broad grin up at the man and laughed. “As hard for me as for you, I reckon, and I swear I’m tired of being paid in eggs and promises. I guess I can wash clothes for bastards good as I can for my neighbors.”
They were past, then, and Kait’s heart slowed its knocking in her chest.
“I reckon you can. I just hope you don’t mind paying a high price for your gold wage.”
Kait wanted to tell the girl, Listen to him, you idiot. Instead, she contented herself with the thought that she held the Dragons’ downfall in her hands. Maybe, if Lallie wouldn’t save herself, Kait could save her. Maybe.
The voices died away to silence at last, and Ry and Kait and Ian got back under way.
The guardhouse proved to be close, and Ian proved to be right in his description of what they would find there. A guard stood, his back to them, watching a few boys playing ball in the alley he guarded. There was no traffic. There were no pedestrians.
Ian drew his knife, slipped behind the guard, jammed a leather gag into the man’s mouth, and slammed him on the back of the head with the pommel of his knife. The man fell like a dropped bag of rocks. Kait saw that he was still breathing. Ian carefully removed the leather gag and stood staring down at the man.
“I thought you were going to kill him,” Ry said.
“I’ve done more than my share of killing since I came here.” He looked bleak when he said it. “He didn’t see us, he didn’t hear us, and he won’t be able to tell anyone which way we went or what we did.”
Ry nodded. “I’m not complaining.”
“Where’s your carriage?”
Ian said, “Stand here a moment.” He strolled across the street, to all appearances the guard in the guardhouse stepping out for a moment to take a look at something interesting. When he came back, Kait heard wheels rattle, and an instant later, a large black funeral carriage drawn by four black horses rolled into view. It stopped in front of the guardhouse and Kait, Ry, and Ian dragged the Mirror of Souls into the darkened interior and followed it in.
The carriage lurched forward.
“Where are we going?” Kait asked. She couldn’t believe that they were free.
“Galweigh House,” Ian said softly. “It’s the last place anyone will think to look for us.”
* * *
THE EPIC ADVENTURE CONCLUDES IN
Courage of Falcons
FROM
WARNER ASPECT
* * *
About the Author
Holly Lisle, born in 1960, has been writing science fiction full time since November of 1992. Prior to that, she worked as an advertising representative, a commercial artist, a guitar teacher, a restaurant singer, and for ten years as a registered nurse specializing in emergency and intensive care. Originally from Salem, Ohio, she has also lived in Alaska, Costa Rica, Guatemala, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. She and Matt are raising three children and several cats. Her Secret Texts series concludes with Courage of Falcons in October 2000.