by Holly Lisle
Her lock clattered open and the chain rattled to the floor. Ian immediately hurried to Ry’s cage and began working on that lock. Kait crawled out of her cage and stretched.
“You mean right here? Or to the Dragons?”
“Both.”
“I figured out a way I could get to the Mirror of Souls. And I knew you needed it. So since you had . . .” Another shrug. “Since you had someone else, I decided I was free to go. I offered my services to the Sabirs, but especially to Crispin—I told him lies about how much I wanted to get even with you, and he put me in charge of the combined Sabir and Galweigh forces. I . . . I did some things I don’t want to think about in order to convince him that I was what I said I was. People died at my word and by my hand. They weren’t innocents, but they were innocent of the things I said they did.” Ry’s lock opened, and Ian backed up so that his half-brother could free himself. “Come with me. We have a ways to go to get to the Mirror, and not much time.”
He led them out of the beautiful arched room into a corridor. In the darkness, only the pale glimmer of moonlight shining through skylights illuminated it.
“This way.”
They followed him, silent for the moment. Kait could hear movement within some of the rooms they passed, and once she and Ry hid in a room while Ian stood in front of the door, his guard’s uniform rendering him effectively invisible. No one spoke again until he led them down a long, twisting staircase into a vault beneath the white city. He took a key and opened one door, then pressed a complex combination of switches to open the next door.
“In here.”
Kait and Ry followed him into a narrow room lit by hundreds of tiny pebbles embedded in the ceiling; the Mirror of Souls sat on a dais in the center of the room, dark and seemingly dead.
“How do we get it out of here?” Kait asked.
“I have a friend in a closed carriage waiting at the south gate of the Citadel. I sent him the message just before I came to get you. He’ll wait for us for a full day.”
“Then all we have to do is figure out how to carry it past the Dragons without them seeing us.”
“I’d hoped you could shield it the way you did when we escaped the Wind Treasure,” Ian said.
Kait looked at Ry. “I can do that. Ry and I are both weak—it might take some time to get it right.”
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 imm
ediately 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
* * *
COURAGE OF FALCONS. Copyright © 2000 by Holly Lisle. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.
For information address Warner Books, Inc., Hachette Book Group, 237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.
A Time Warner Company
First eBook Edition: December 2000
For Matt
With love and hope
Contents
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Book Two
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Thanks go to Matt and Mark and Becky, who worked overtime and double-time and helped me in a thousand different ways to make sure I had the time to write.
To Russ Galen, for keeping the wolf from the door, and for pushing me and encouraging me until I created Matrin, and Kait.
To Peter James and Nick Thorpe, whose Ancient Inventions gave me goose bumps and inspired a whole lot of the primitive tech in all three books of the Secret Texts.
And to, in no particular order, those members of Lisle’s Lunatic League who gave their all that the Courage of Falcons body count could be met: Robert a
nd Keely Bush, Gretchen Woehr, Kathy Napolitano, Celia Hixon, Guy Beall, Ilari, Jacob Somner, and Scott Schuler.
In Diplomacy of Wolves . . .
Magic, in the world of Matrin and especially in the Iberan lands where the last of the true humans live, has been a study both forbidden and reviled for a thousand years. But Kait Galweigh, daughter of the powerful Galweigh Family and promising junior diplomat, has survived to hide the secret scars of old and dangerous magic. While chaperoning her cousin prior to the girl’s wedding to a second son of the Dokteerak Family, with whom the Galweighs desired an alliance, Kait’s need to hide her Scarred nature—which causes her to skinshift, and which would lead to her immediate execution even by members of her own Family—puts her into position to overhear a plot involving the Dokteeraks and the Galweighs’ longtime enemies, the Sabirs. These two Families are planning to destroy the Galweighs at the upcoming wedding.
Kait survives a harrowing escape from Dokteerak House with her information, aided by a stranger who, like her, is Scarred by the skinshifting curse, which is called Karnee. She is drawn to the stranger, but is dismayed to discover that he is a son of the Sabir Family. She returns to the embassy, where she informs the Galweighs of the Dokteerak-Sabir treachery and tries to put her attraction to the Sabir Karnee out of her mind. Her Family takes both military and illicit magical steps to foil the conspiracy and crush the conspirators—steps that would have succeeded had the Sabirs not been planning all along to betray their allies the Dokteeraks, too. The Sabirs never intended to share power with the Dokteeraks; instead, they used them to get the Galweigh military away from Galweigh House and out into the open. Then, on two carefully managed fronts, they wipe out the Dokteerak and Galweigh armies as they meet in battle in the city of Halles, and use both treachery and magic to overthrow the unguarded Galweigh House back in the grand city of Calimekka.
