by Holly Lisle
She wished she could smother him and put an end to him, but he terrified her. She didn’t dare make any movement that seemed in the least threatening to him, or he would remind her that he could destroy her between one heartbeat and the next. She hated him, and she hated herself, and she shuddered each time she picked him up. He looked at her with those ancient, evil eyes, and somehow turned his toothless smile into a leer. He pinched her breasts while he fed, and told her how fine he thought they were, and what a lovely creature she was. He made her sick.
She huddled in her little house with him, cut off from everyone in the village. The Kargans had not forgiven her for her reversion to human form—she’d shown them the two claws on her right hand as proof that she was still their Gathalorra, but she couldn’t be Gathalorra anymore, of course. In this soft, scaleless, weaponless body, she couldn’t hope to fight down even one lorrag. She’d betrayed them by taking on the form of their most hated enemies, the humans. They recalled the good she had done for them, so they still tolerated her in their village, but she was no longer their friend.
Danya rose and walked to her open door and stared out of it. The village women were down by the river working. The men cleaned and mended the nets, preparatory to going out that night to set them for the next morning’s run. The Kargans chattered and laughed with each other, telling stories and gossiping about each other’s lives, or about Kargans from other villages. From time to time one of those furry faces would glance in her direction, and see her standing in the doorway. Then those dark eyes would narrow and the muzzle would draw back in an expression of disgust. And that Kargan would look away and be silent for a moment, until someone else could draw him or her back into the pleasure of the day and the day’s work.
She was alone. She had to face that fact. In that village of sixty-plus souls, she no longer had anyone except Luercas, and she didn’t really have him. He had her. He owned her.
She had herself, and only herself. But she was alive, and she intended to stay that way. The wind blew through the door and she felt the cold that the fierce terrain threatened even in its brief summer. She looked toward winter, and knew that she would have to get tougher. Her human flesh wouldn’t withstand the rigors of the arctic terrain as easily as her Scarred body had. She needed to begin planning. She needed to win the Kargans back to her side, because they had things she needed—furs, thread, needles, food, the protection that numbers offered. She wouldn’t forget that they had shunned her when her body changed; but she wouldn’t show her hurt or her anger, either. She would add them to the list of people to whom she owed revenge. Their day and their time would come, and they would learn to regret their callousness.
They could be in the front lines of the army that she intended to raise. They could fight for her—ostensibly to win a place for the Scarred in the soft, fertile lands of Ibera—but in fact to repay her for her pain. She had paid in blood and suffering and shame; she had stupidly ripped out her own heart and destroyed it when she killed her beautiful son. She had been lied to, she had been tricked, and love and beauty and hope were gone from her life forever. But she still had revenge, and she would have her triumph. The Sabirs and the Galweighs would bow before her and the warriors she would lead against them. They would see her on a great horse at the head of a horde of barbarians, and they would know that they’d brought their destruction on themselves. And then they’d die.
Time. It was all that stood between her and her desires. Everything would fall before her; everything would bend in the direction she wanted; everyone would acknowledge her power and her right to command. With time.
She turned away from the door and returned to the dark interior. Her Wolvish practice of the arcane arts waited. If she couldn’t win the Kargans to her side with offered friendship, she’d win them with a force they couldn’t counter. But one way or the other, she would have them at her side when she began to gather the peoples of the Veral Territories beneath her banner.
The banner of Two Claws, she thought. Proof that she was still Scarred. Her rallying symbol.
And when she was done with them, she would destroy Luercas for his lies, for his evil, for what he’d tricked her into doing. He had cost her all the good in her life, and she would see that he got no reward for it, no matter the price she had to pay.
Chapter 42
Kait shook off the pack and dropped to the ground next to Ry. A boiling sun had cleared away the last of the morning rain, but the road was mud that sucked at feet and boots and dragged at every step. That mud felt to Kait like an extension of the people she traveled with: dismal, dreary, and dragging on body and soul.
They’d left Port Pars behind two days before, and had another three or four days’ walk ahead of them before they would reach Costan Selvira, where they might hope to obtain passage on a ship heading south. Thirty days had passed since they’d fled their rooms at the inn, and in those days, she had meditated and searched for any sign of the Reborn’s survival, and she had tried to comfort herself with the thought that because he was in terrible danger, he would have to hide from everyone, not just his enemies. But the endless gloom was contagious, and Kait was losing faith.
Dùghall trudged with his head down and most of the time said nothing. Hasmal snapped at anyone who went near him, and slept apart from the rest of the travelers, and at night when he thought no one could hear him, he wept quietly. Even Ry had withdrawn. He didn’t want her embraces, or her comfort, or her suggestions that things might not be as bad as they appeared. He had come late to the Falcon way of thinking, but he had come completely, and he was, if anything, more bitter than Dùghall or Hasmal at having the Reborn snatched away when he had so recently found him.
“Enough resting,” Dùghall said. “Back on your feet, all of you.”
“Why bother?” Hasmal muttered. “If we stayed here, the Dragons would find us quicker and end our misery for us.”
Dùghall snorted and kicked the biggest clods of mud off of his boots against the nearest tree. “I’m too old to welcome the horses in the square, son. Or boiling lead, or firebrands, or being skinned and having my hide inflated with floating gases and paraded through the streets, for that matter. I’ll live, thank you.” He swung his pack onto his back and stepped onto the road and into the mud again. “But you’re welcome to walk back and offer yourself as a sacrifice if a quick end is what you want.”
Ry got up and trudged after Dùghall, so lost in his own misery that he didn’t even wait for Kait to put her pack on. She hurried after him, scowling, and Hasmal and Ry’s lieutenants plodded after her.
She was the only one not soaking herself in her own unhappiness; she suspected that was the reason that she was the only one of the group who heard the rider coming along the road from the south. Most times the whole party stepped into the jungle when they got first notice of other travelers—meeting strangers in the wilds along the coast road could be dangerous. So Kait said, “Hai! Rider from the south!” as softly as she could.
“Not much sense in hiding if trouble’s coming,” Ry said. “We’re the only ones on the road since this last rain, and our fresh tracks would point right to us. If we jumped behind the brush, we’d look like brigands. Or worse.”
Kait nodded. “I realize that. I just thought all of you might like to know we have company coming.”
By this time, even those with the poorest ears could hear the horse squelching through the mud toward them. “We’ll be ready,” Yanth said.
Kait dropped back a few steps. As the rider came into view, the travelers’ hands covered sword hilts instinctively. Kait couldn’t hide her surprise, though. The rider was a woman, and alone. That in itself would be enough to cause astonishment, but she was Gyru, too, and as far as Kait knew, Gyru women never traveled alone.
She rode a dapple gray gelding—a solid beast as high at the withers as Kait’s head, broad through the chest, short in the back, solid of haunch, with a nice length of pastern and a good arch to his neck. He moved
well and obeyed his rider’s cues beautifully, and Kait would have paid a small fortune for him right then. Horses generally didn’t like her, but she loved to ride . . . and after days of plodding along muddy roads, she would have adored the comfort of a good saddle.
The rider herself was sodden. Her beautifully embroidered carmine shirt clung to her skin like paint, and her baggy leather pants were streaked and soaked. Her boots, which from the looks of the top seaming and beading were of fine make, from mid-shin down bore a crust of mud so thick they made her feet look like tree trunks. So horse or no horse, she’d done her share of walking over the worst of the road. Her hair, still fiery red, worn long and braided and beaded, was marked by streaks of gray. Her eyes were . . . remarkable. Brilliant green, round as doe eyes, but with the intent gaze of a hunting hawk.
When she caught sight of them, the expression on her face went from wary alertness to pure, exhausted relief. She shouted, “Chobe!” and swung down from her mount with fluid grace. Kait would have guessed from the lines around the stranger’s eyes and the gray in her hair that she had seen at least forty years come and go, but when she moved and smiled, Kait thought perhaps she’d misjudged, and the woman was graying early. She moved like a girl.
She wondered who the woman had mistaken for “Chobe,” and got a second surprise.
Hasmal’s eyes went wide and he said, “Alarista?”
“Of course it’s me. I came looking for you!” Her Iberan bore a faint accent, and the slower rhythm of one who spoke it as a somewhat unfamiliar second language.
Hasmal jogged forward as fast as the mud would allow, and lifted her off the ground and hugged her fiercely. She was half a hand taller than him, Kait noticed. If she was as old as her eyes and hair indicated, she was at least ten years older, and possible fifteen. Hasmal didn’t seem in the least put off by either of those things.
“By damn, it’s good to see you,” he was saying, in between kissing her and hugging her and picking her up so that he could swing her around again. She looked for just a moment like a tall slender tree being mauled by a short, blond bear. Kait liked that image, but kept it to herself. She would have told Ry, hoping that it might make him laugh, but he was so far lost inside himself that she doubted he could see the humor.
Alarista finally pulled free of Hasmal, and turned to the rest of the group. “I didn’t just come looking for Chobe,” she said. “I was searching for all of you.”
They made brief introductions, everyone supplying a nickname or alternate name in deference to the Gyru-nalle custom of never revealing a true name. The custom came from the Gyru belief that knowledge of anyone’s true name made the knower responsible for the named’s soul. Kait, whose full name was Kait-ayarenne Noellaurelai Taghdottar Aire an Galweigh, never burdened anyone with the full stretch anyway. That name, loaded with the memories of long-dead ancestors and the qualities of heroes her parents had admired, was more than she wanted to carry around. So to Alarista, Kait was comfortable still being just Kait.
“My band has a camp two days’ hard ride from here,” Alarista told them once the formalities were done. “We can resupply you there if you wish to keep going. Or you can stay with us.” This last she said specifically to Hasmal, and Kait saw hope in her eyes.
Dùghall shrugged. “Doesn’t matter where we go. We can’t get far enough away to escape the disaster that’s coming.”
The woman nodded. She turned to Dùghall and said, “Katarre kaithe gombrey; hai allu neesh?”
They were Falcon words, Kait knew, though she didn’t know the ancient tongue in which they were spoken. Hasmal had taught her that they were the formal Falcon greeting, and meant, “The Falcon offers his wings; will you fly?”
But Dùghall didn’t give the formal response. Instead, he said, “The Falcons are dead. Or didn’t you know?”
* * *
When they made camp that night, Alarista sought out Kait and took her aside. “The Falcons believe the future has died; that the world is coming to an end; that we are beyond hope, have already lost to the Dragons, and are destroyed. Destroyed. I would believe the same thing. I would.” Kait watched the Gyru woman’s lower lip tremble, and saw her stare fixedly into the jungle and take a deep breath, lift her head, and pull her shoulders back. Every curve of her body spoke of fierce determination held together by the thinnest of hopes. “I lived for the Falcons, for the prophecies. I rejoiced when I felt the Reborn touch me for the first time, and I nearly died when he . . . when he . . .” She shook her head. Took another steadying breath. “But I’ve done auguries,” she said. “My Speakers tell me that you are the one who can save the Falcons; that you will give us hope. I’ve come all this way to find you. Is what they say true?”
Kait sat on a fallen tree, peering in her turn out into the layered tangles of darkness before her. “I have hope,” she said cautiously. “I haven’t yet managed to convince anyone else that there’s a reason for it.”
“But you have hope.” Alarista managed a tremulous smile, and sat beside her on the log. She said, “You are the only one. Of all of us, you are the only one who has not already seen the morrow to its grave. I’ve looked, I swear. Since . . . then, I’ve tried to contact any Falcon who could answer. Only a few will. So many killed themselves in the few days after the Reborn’s death . . .” She shook her head and shivered. “And most of those who still live won’t respond. I traced your uncle by blood offering weeks ago, but couldn’t get through his shields. The same with Hasmal. And you didn’t answer, either, though I didn’t get the feeling you were ignoring me. With you, it was more that you couldn’t hear me.”
“I couldn’t.” Kait was surprised. “You were trying to reach me?”
“Yes. Then they haven’t taught you Falcon far-speech yet.”
“No.”
Alarista nodded. “I thought it might be that way. But I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the Secret Texts weren’t wrong, that perhaps this disaster was something other than it appeared to be. I know you aren’t fully a Falcon yet, but when I summoned Speakers through the Veil, each said you were the key. That you could give the Falcons reason to hope again. That if you chose, you could see how the Falcons could yet break the Dragons. That you . . .” She sighed. “That you hold the secret of our hope. When I couldn’t reach you by far-speech, I came after you. I don’t know what you know, Kait. I don’t know how you are our key. Tell me, please. I lost everything when . . . I lost everything I believed in, and everything I loved. I lost who I was, and who I was supposed to become. Please tell me what can change all that.”
Kait rested her hands on her thighs and leaned forward, eager. This was validation that what she had thought must be true. The spirits from beyond the Veil said she had the key. So the Falcons must be missing something. Kait had believed from the first moment when Dùghall told her of the disaster that he had to be mistaken, that a thousand years of waiting would not end with the birth and almost immediate death of the one who was to have led the world to Paranne, Vincalis’s promised land. Not even Brethwan and Lodan, the most ill-starred of the god-pairs, could be so cruel. “I almost gave up,” she said. “Of the Falcons, I only knew Dùghall and Hasmal, and you can see them. They’ve given up. They see themselves as dead men who have not yet fallen on their pyres. I couldn’t reach them. They wouldn’t let me talk to them. They’ve locked themselves into their shields, and they . . .” She shrugged. “You’ve seen them. You’ve seen others like them, from what you say.”
Alarista nodded.
Kait continued. “But they can’t be right.” She dared a smile. “A thousand years of true prophecy cannot end with a falsehood. I’ve read the Secret Texts. I’ve tracked the Seven Great Signs, the Hundred Small Signs, the Three Confusions. All of them came to pass. Vincalis spoke true in particulars as well as generalities.” She narrowed her eyes. “Even in prophecies that speak directly to today, he holds true. ‘Dragons will lie down with Wolves and rise up with full bellies,’ he said, and isn’t th
at exactly what happened? The Dragons’ spirits claimed the Wolves’ bodies and their memories, but the Wolves are gone, and only the Dragons remain.” She clenched her fists. “Since the Reborn disappeared, I’ve been through the Secret Texts every day. Every day. I read while I walk; I study all the passages. Vincalis promised that the Reborn would hold his empire for five thousand years, and that the world would learn in those five thousand years how to love, how to be truthful, how to be kind. Five thousand years, and Vincalis was right in every other prophecy he made. Alarista . . .” She rested a hand on the other woman’s arm. “How can he be wrong in the most important prophecy of all? Everyone is sure the Reborn is really gone. But he can’t be.” She took a deep breath. “The Reborn is still alive. I don’t know where, and I don’t know how, but he’s still alive.”
Hope died in Alarista’s eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Kait asked.
Alarista’s head dropped forward, her shoulders slumped, her hands lay limp on her lap. In a voice so broken Kait almost couldn’t understand her words, she said, “That was your hope? That the Reborn is still secretly alive somewhere?”
Kait didn’t understand. “What other hope could there be?” Tears had started down Alarista’s cheeks. “The Speakers told me you could give the Falcons hope. So I’d thought . . . that perhaps you knew some magic that would reembody a spirit lost through the Veil. Or that you could reach through the Veil, at least, and speak to the Reborn, and perhaps ask him what we are supposed to do without him. Or that you knew something we didn’t know about the Secret Texts; that his death was a part of the prophecy that no one had understood, and that he would return yet again. I’d thought you could give us . . . real hope.”
“You’re so certain that what I’ve said is wrong? That the Reborn is truly dead?”
