The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

Both had held off Shift as long as possible. Both had eaten hugely to fuel their bodies for the coming drain on their energy.

  On the fifth day of the month of Drastu, which was Amial Makuldsday, Kait and Ry climbed through the wet and clinging snow from what everyone hoped would be the last storm of the season to the top of Straju Mountain. Straju was the highest peak near the camp. The climbing was treacherous, and Shifting would have been easier, but neither of them dared Shift. They couldn’t know how long they would be able to hold Shift once they’d changed, and their plan would require every extra moment they could eke from their bodies.

  When they reached a high south-facing cliff, they stripped off their winter clothes and left them piled against the lee side of a boulder. They’d said their good-byes to everyone else back in the camp. Now they turned to each other.

  “I could go alone,” Ry said. “If I knew you were safe, I would gladly go to Calimekka by myself.”

  Kait touched his face. “And if you went alone, I don’t know that I would survive until your return. You already know I have to go, too.”

  He pulled her close and they embraced, shivering in the cold, some of the warmth of their naked bodies passing between them but most escaping into the icy mountain wind.

  “I know. You’re sure we’ll fly when we jump?”

  Kait said, “No. But I hope we will. I did before.”

  He nodded. They each put on the oddly shaped packs which Kait had designed—packs made to accommodate their flight-Shifted bodies. The packs held typical Calimekkan clothes, some money, and of course the talismans. They both had talismans embedded in their own skin at Dùghall’s insistence; he refused to allow them to leave without being able to know of their fate. The talismans they wore were special, and would last at least a month, Dùghall had said, and perhaps two.

  Knowing that they were being watched made their last embraces awkward.

  Ry said, “I love you, Kait.”

  Kait pressed her face to his chest and listened to his heart beating. “I love you, too.”

  They looked at each other, then down to the rocky gorge far below their feet.

  Kait shivered, more afraid at that moment than she had been when she jumped from the tower back in Calimekka. The rocks beneath her bare feet cut into her soles. Her teeth shook from the cold, her skin goosebumped and her body begged for Shift. “This is for our future,” she murmured.

  Ry heard her even though she hadn’t really been speaking to him. “This is for them, but it’s for us, too. For you and me and a world where we can live together.”

  Kait nodded. “I know.” She gripped his hand tightly in her own, and said, “The rocks down there look so . . . hungry.”

  Ry pulled her close again and kissed her fiercely. “If this is all we have, it was enough, Kait. I’ll find you in another life.”

  She felt his body shivering against hers. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face into the soft fur of his chest. “I’ll meet you above the clouds.”

  “I promise.”

  They leaped from the cliff, and fell.

  Chapter 47

  A voice spoke to Trev as he lay in his tent dreaming. Your sisters’ heads are on the wall, the voice said, and showed him a vision. His two once-beautiful sisters’ bodies hung from the Bay Wall in Calimekka, and their heads, bloated and rotting, decorated pikes along the top. Ry put them there with his lies, with his betrayals. You cannot save your sisters, but you can have your revenge. Kill him if you can; or if you can’t kill him, simply come. Outside the camp you’ll find a conveyance waiting for you. Step onto it and say the words, “Take me to my friend,” and you will have your wish.

  Trev opened his eyes to darkness. Horrible pictures still burned in his mind, too horrible to be believed. But what if they were true? He had convinced himself that his sisters had left the city because no one he’d questioned knew otherwise. There had been no public executions, so he had let himself believe they were still alive. But he didn’t know. Now he had to know. He had an idea that would show him, though it seemed a risky one. With the little magic he had learned from Hasmal, he thought he might seek out a Speaker and force it to give him the truth.

  He lay still, concentrating. He’d never done magic alone before, but he was certain he knew the way to form the spell. He could use his own blood—the Falcons said a man should never use anything that wasn’t his to power a spell. So a drop or two of his own blood on a mirror circled with salt, a few careful words to summon the voice of the dream, and he would see if nightmares plagued only his sleep, or if they had reached into the waking world to take him.

  He struggled free of the tangled bedroll and looked around the tent. Valard still had supplies in his magic bag, since he’d been too busy drinking and mourning the certain end of the world to help make the talismans and mirrors and viewing glasses that might stop it. Even better for Trev’s needs, Valard was at that moment with one of the Gyru girls; he was always with the Gyru girls these days, or sucking down fermented goats’ milk or hard grain alcohol with the men. So Trev could safely borrow his equipment.

  Which he did.

  He didn’t dare light a lamp to guide his work; Yanth slept to one side of him and Jaim to the other, and either would be more than a little curious to find him summoning spirits in the middle of the night. So he opened the tent flap enough that flickering light from one of the camp’s watchfires illuminated his little workplace. It did its job unevenly, but he had to be grateful for what he could get.

  He pulled out Valard’s mirror and salt, and pricked the tip of his finger with a knife, carefully dripping his blood into a little puddle on the mirror’s surface. For just a moment the light that came through the open flap was bright enough that he could see that the mirror was dirty, streaked with something. That bothered him, but his blood was already on the surface and he didn’t want to waste it by wiping it off, cleaning the mirror, and then having to cut himself again. Besides, he’d had a hard time remaining silent the first time he cut himself. He didn’t know if he could do it a second time without waking someone.

  With a finger, he drew his blood into a triangle and whispered the first half of the incantation Hasmal had taught him for summoning Speakers from the Veil. Then he poured a thin line of salt onto the diagram, being sure not to leave any openings.

  He finished the incantation by saying:

  Speaker step within the walls

  Of earth and blood and air;

  Bound by will and spirit,

  You must bide your presence there.

  Answer questions with clear truth,

  Do only good and then

  Return to the realm from whence you came

  And don’t come back again.

  The salt on the mirror burned pale blue, and Trev leaned over it with his body, blocking the light. The flames flickered, then steadied. Within the heart of the triangle, a spark appeared and grew into a translucent finger-tall image of a man. His diaphanous robes blew in a wind that never reached beyond the triangle; his long hair tossed as if he stood in the center of a storm. He crossed his arms over his chest and lifted his chin and glared up at Trev with glowing eyes.

  “What do you want to know?”

  Trev shivered. Hasmal had said the Speakers could be dangerous and sometimes spiteful. He’d said that, although they always spoke the truth, they didn’t always tell it in ways a man could correctly interpret. But he’d never said how terrifying it was to see one standing on one’s own mirror, caged by nothing but a thin line of blood and salt. Feeling the tiny, glowing man’s anger seeping into the air, Trev had difficulty finding his tongue. He said, “I had . . . I had a . . . a dream. That . . . that my sisters were dead. Killed. With their . . . their . . . their heads on a wall in Calimekka. What was that dream?”

  The man looked at him. “It was no dream. It was the truth, given to you by . . .” He paused and smiled. “By a friend.”

  Trev closed his eyes tightly. The image of the two
bloated heads on the wall returned to him, clear and sharp, this time as painful as a knife in the belly. Alli and Murdith couldn’t be dead—he’d promised each of them he’d find them suitable husbands from within the upper ranks of Families. He’d gotten them into a circle of people his parents wouldn’t have even dared speak to. He’d done everything he could to protect them, to care for them, to cherish them . . . and they had died like criminals, with him far away and unable to save them.

  “Who reached me?” he asked when he could find words again. “Why did he tell me about my sisters? Why does he say they were killed because of Ry?”

  The Speaker’s response was elliptical. “Ry’s secrets were found out,” he said. “His lies caught up with him, but because those who punish lies could not reach him, they reached those close to him. Your parents, too, are dead, as are the families of Ry’s other friends. All of you have lost everything. All of you will return to nothing, no matter whether the Dragons are routed from the city or not.”

  “Who killed them?” Trev said.

  “The one who wielded the blade acted on the orders of others, the one who gave the orders acted on the order of others, and that one, too, was simply following orders. If you follow the chain back to the beginning, it leads to Ry and the day he swore that he would stay in Calimekka and lead his Family’s Wolves—and broke his oath that very night.”

  No matter what he asked, the Speaker refused to answer directly. Trev frowned, trying to think of a way to phrase his question that would force the Speaker to tell him what he wanted to know—who had actually put his sisters to death, and who had reached him in this out-of-the-way place to tell him of it. And why that person had bothered.

  Outside the tent, the wind gusted, and snow blew in, swirling over the bedrolls and landing on the mirror. Trev crouched down to shield it. But the few snowflakes that landed on the diminishing line of salt and blood melted, creating a bridge from the inside of the triangle to the outside, and the dirty streak that smeared the glass.

  The Speaker, becoming more transparent with every instant, and watching his flames beginning to gutter out, saw the bridge and shrieked. Before Trev could do anything, the spirit screamed, “Free!” in a voice no louder than a whisper, and leaped out of the triangle of blood and salt. He skidded across the streaks on the glass and howled, “It’s blood! It’s blood! Now you’re mine!”

  Then he disappeared.

  Trev stared at the place where the Speaker had been. He didn’t know why he’d been spared whatever fate the spirit had intended for him, but he also didn’t care that he’d been spared. His sisters, for whom he had lived, were dead. The voice in his dreams might have blamed Ry, but Trev knew perfectly well that Ry was not to blame. He had chosen to follow Ry, knowing when he did that he was leaving Murdith and Alli in Calimekka without their single most determined supporter. Had he stayed, they would have still been alive. Or he would have been dead with them.

  Either outcome would have been acceptable to him.

  Ry was on his way to destroy the Dragons, and Trev still wished him well. He had promised to aid the Falcons in destroying them. But he’d broken another promise, one he’d made years earlier, and one to which he’d sworn his life. He’d failed to protect his little sisters, the two people he loved most in the world. He had broken his own oath.

  He stared at the little knife with which he’d drawn his blood. It was sharp, but not enough of a blade for his new needs. His daggers lay at the top of his bedroll—two exquisite blades suitable to his station, both gifts from Ry. He chose the one carved with the crest that declared him an ally of the Sabir Family. He unwrapped the wool blanket from around his shoulders and unlaced his shirt, and rested the dagger on his chest to the left of his breastbone, prodding with his fingers to be sure that its point sat between two ribs and not above one.

  He closed his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Alli. I’m sorry, Murdith. I’ll serve you better when we meet beyond the Veil.”

  Then, before he could think about what he was doing, he drove the blade through his heart.

  * * *

  Across the camp, Valard flung himself away from the girl he’d been pawing and dragged himself to his knees. His face twisted in pain, and he screamed and began to claw at his skin. The girl shouted, “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” but before she could get to her feet to run for help, the spell, whatever it had been, seemed to pass. He stopped screaming and his face took on an expression of wonder.

  Valard got to his feet, muttering, “I’m free. I’m free.” He looked around the little wagon as if he’d never seen it before.

  “What are you doing?” the girl asked, but he only looked at her for an instant, then shook his head. He wrapped a wool blanket around himself and, otherwise naked, stepped out of the wagon into the night, leaving the door swinging and the wind howling behind him. The girl swore and threw an empty bottle of the liquor they’d been sharing after him, and rose, shivering, and slammed the door and locked it.

  Meanwhile, Valard marched across the snow, oblivious to the cold and the wind, until he reached the edge of the camp. There he found a smooth disk of whitest metal, decorated around the rim with characters that glowed faintly green in the darkness. He stepped into its center and said, “Take me to my friend.”

  The green glow brightened, and the metal disk whined, and he and it both disappeared.

  * * *

  Dùghall crouched by Trev’s body and cupped a hand over the mirror, not touching it but carefully reading its energy through his skin.

  “What does it mean?” Yanth asked.

  “A moment.” The traces were muddled and ugly and hard to unravel. He was patient, though, and thorough. At last he felt he had the gist of what had happened. “Trev used Valard’s kit to summon a Speaker,” he told Yanth and Jaim, who stood just behind him. “He evidently didn’t clean the mirror first, because some of Valard’s blood was still on it. The Speaker came, but it was a Speaker influenced by dark magic—I would guess that it was directed by the Dragons, though that I cannot be sure of. I don’t know what the Speaker told Trev, but he is dead by his own hand—and I find clear traces that the Speaker escaped and linked itself through Valard’s blood on the mirror to his body. Which means Valard is now possessed by the spirit of a Speaker. Where the Speaker compelled Valard to go, I also cannot say.” He stood and looked up into Yanth’s eyes. “But Speakers are by their nature cruel, and this one was magically influenced by evil as well, which makes the situation graver still; if we find Valard, we will have to kill him.”

  “Can’t we exorcise the Speaker, or put him into a ring the way you put the soul of the Dragon into a ring?” Jaim asked.

  “The Dragons are human. Their souls cannot infect a body; they can only inhabit it. Speakers are . . . other. Some say they are demons, some say they are the ghosts of monsters from other worlds or other planes. I don’t know what they are, but I know that when they possess a man, they possess him until his death.”

  Yanth blinked rapidly and his lips pressed into a thin, hard line. His eyes gleamed suspiciously bright as he looked down at Trev’s body where it still lay facedown on his bedroll in a pool of blood. “It all falls apart,” he whispered.

  Jaim rested a hand on his shoulder. “These are dark days.”

  “These days are the hell of the old gods, visited on us because we forgot them,” Yanth said. Dùghall heard the rasp in his voice that betrayed the depth of his emotion.

  “Perhaps,” Jaim agreed with a slow nod. The cold air had raised gooseflesh on his exposed arms, and Dùghall saw him shiver. He seemed too lost in the awful moment to notice, though, for he stood there, staring down at the body of his dead comrade, and made no effort to find his coat or even to warm himself by moving. His breath curled out in frosted plumes, leaving crystals on his eyelashes, eyebrows, and the heavy mustache he’d grown since coming to the mountains. He looked to Dùghall more like an ice statue of a man than one of flesh and blood. In a voi
ce gone flat and dead, Jaim said, “We have to find Valard.”

  “Why? So that we can slaughter another of our number?” Yanth pulled away from Jaim’s touch; Jaim’s arm dropped to his side as if it were a dead thing.

  Doggedly he said, “If necessary, yes. Ry is on his way to Calimekka. If the Dragons have been spying on him, or if they have found a way to use Valard against Ry, we have to stop him.”

  Yanth had closed his eyes. He wove from side to side as he stood there, plainly lost in misery. “What does it matter?” he asked at last. “It all falls apart. Nothing we do will hold, nothing we do will succeed. Don’t you see? The gods themselves stand against us, and who are we to fight the gods?”

  Jaim hung his head at those words, and shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe everything is lost. I don’t know who we are to question the will of the gods.”

  “We are men,” Dùghall said roughly, “and we have put the gods to pasture. We will never cower again before gods or men—we will fight them both and we will win.”

  “Why?” Yanth asked, and Dùghall heard scorn in that one sharp syllable. “Because our hearts are pure and our cause is just? Because we care?”

  “Goodness has no lock on victory,” Dùghall said, staring at the two of them until they had to look at him. “Good men lose to evil men all the time. And caring without doing is weak and worthless and empty. Men who care much but do little always fall to men who care less but do more. We won’t win because we are good, or because our convictions matter to us.”

  He laughed, and his laugh sounded harsh in the bitterly cold air, like the snap of a tree branch breaking beneath the weight of ice and snow. “We’ll win because we’re too afraid to lose. If we give in passively to the Dragons’ plans, they’ll devour our souls and the souls of everyone we love—and with our souls, our immortality. If we fight, the worst that can happen to us is death. We’ll win because we are afraid. Because we are afraid, and rightly so. Fear will be the friend that spurs us to victory.”