by Holly Lisle
Ry said, “Ian and Ulwe can take it in. I’ll stay with you.”
She shook her head. “I’d rather be alone.” A wistful smile touched the corners of her mouth. “A friend is on his way to see me.”
Another howl, this time a single voice crying a deep and lingering solo. Both voice and smell were poignantly familiar. Gashta.
“A friend. A wolf?”
Kait nodded, not offering explanation. She closed her eyes, reading his scent in the air.
“Kait?” Ry rested a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged his hand off and moved forward. She could hear movement now—light steps padding through the underbrush, rustling leaves, and the crackling on the leaf mold underfoot. Behind her, she heard Ian and Ulwe and the donkey hurrying into the walled safety of Galweigh House’s grounds.
The underbrush parted and a huge, shaggy beast stepped into the clearing. Kait took a few steps forward. “Gashta,” she whispered.
The enormous wolf bounded to her side, mouth stretched back in a canine grin, ears perked forward, tail lifted and wagging. He stood on his hind legs and licked her face; she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her nose in his ruff and breathed in the comforting, familiar scent.
Behind her, she could hear the gates closing, and from inside, the frantic braying of a donkey.
“I sense no magic about him,” Ry said.
“He’s just a wolf,” Kait said, keeping her tone light and even. Gashta was sensitive to tones of voice. “I saved his life a long time ago. He returned the favor the night the Sabirs killed most of my Family.”
“He’s . . . wild?”
Kait heard the surprise in his voice. “Yes. He and I used to hunt these hills together when I Shifted.”
Kait rubbed the big animal’s ears and pressed her face into his fur again. She hadn’t seen him in nearly two years; she was delighted that he still remembered her, and equally delighted that he’d found her. She’d lost so much that was dear to her—the survival of any friend seemed a miracle at that moment.
“We should get inside,” Ry said. “We have a lot to do.”
“I know.” Kait didn’t look at him. Instead, she ran her fingers through the wolf’s fur, feeling the hard ridges of scar tissue that ran across the left shoulder. Marks of the past, a tangible reminder of his debt to her—now paid. She bore her scars on the inside.
She rose, and the wolf sat on his haunches and leaned against her side. He was big enough that, sitting, his head came to her rib cage. He panted happily, his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth as if he were a big dog, his eyes half-closed as her hand scratched the base of his ears. “I know,” she said again, softer. Now she looked at Ry. He was as beautiful as the wolf and as wild, and a thousand times more compelling than anyone she had ever known. He was magic to her, the personification of things so wonderful she had never dared to let herself dream them. When he looked into her eyes, a light flickered in the darkness inside of her.
“I’m afraid to go inside, Ry. Out here, I can touch Gashta and pretend that everything will be as I remember inside the walls. Once I go inside . . .” She shrugged and fell silent.
“You fear the ghosts.”
“No.” She went to stand by his side. The wolf strode beside her, and when she stopped, he stopped, too. Ry held out a hand and Kait rested her own hand in it. “I don’t fear the ghosts. I fear that the ghosts will be gone . . . that the emptiness will have killed even them, and that once I am inside the halls, I will have nothing. Even ghosts are better than emptiness.”
Ry stroked her hair, and kissed the angle of her jaw. “I’ll be with you. Whatever you face in there, you won’t face it alone.”
They stood outside the gate for a long time, the woman, the wolf, and the man. Then the wolf rose and trotted into the jungle, and in the hollow heart of the night, as the Red Hunter chased the White Lady across the skies, the man and the woman, hand in hand, stepped through the maw of the gate into the silence that waited beyond.
Chapter 16
Dùghall gave his son Ranan a hug. “All I know is that trouble is coming, and you’re to be the guard at our backs. Keep the soldiers paid—if you run into trouble, send word to Galweigh House. Kait and Ry and Ian reached it safely and got both the little girl and the Mirror of Souls inside. So I will be going straight there.”
Ranan looked down into the valley, where the camp had not yet begun to wake. He was a good man—sturdy and patient and reliable. He had little of Dùghall’s impetuousness to him—he was much more like his mother. Watchful, determined, stolid. He’d taken many of his veterans through battles between the islanders; he’d walked fire; he’d borne his wounds and lived to tell of them. When times were good, he knew how to laugh and drink and wench, and more importantly, he knew how to listen to everything and how to tell nothing. He kept his own counsel—if he had ever been afraid, no one knew it but him. His men admired him. Dùghall was proud of him. He said, “I’ll watch. Whatever comes will have to go through us to get to you.”
Dùghall stared down at the campfires below. They had burned down to embers—now those embers glowed like the half-opened eyes of demons, heavy-lidded but watchful. A shudder rode up Dùghall’s spine and reached into him and grabbed his heart. He wondered if he would ever see this son again, and a hollowness in his belly suggested an answer he didn’t want to know.
“Trust only yourself,” he said, gripping Ranan’s shoulder and turning him around. “Believe only what you know to be true, not what you hope might be.”
Ranan’s lips pressed into a thin line. He met his father’s eyes and clasped the hand on his shoulder. “We’ll be fine. There’s plenty of silver still in the treasury, and the men are loyal. They saw what you were fighting against. They won’t desert.”
The premonition left him as quickly as it had come. He smiled carefully. Ranan did not need to be burdened by the shapeless wraiths of dread that hounded his father. Dùghall said, “If the money runs low, I’ll do what I can to send more. I’ll be looking in on you as often as I can. Put the men to work—morale will go to hell if you don’t.”
“The villages in the area are poor. The villagers need better roads, better houses, deeper wells. . . . I’ll find plenty of things to keep them busy. And we’ll build ourselves some goodwill in the process.”
“Then I’ll leave you to your business.” Dùghall looked at his companions, waiting on the road just beyond. Yanth and Jaim sat astride horses given to them by the Gyru-nalles. Alarista, white-haired and pale and bent, rode one of her own beasts. Dùghall’s horse, and the string of horses that would carry their supplies and alternate as riding horses, cropped the grass by the side of the road.
His son hugged him quickly and whispered, “With you so young, you seem more a brother to me now. I cannot quite find it in me to dread your displeasure as I did when I was a boy and you came visiting.”
“If all goes well, I’ll be an old man again when next I see you.”
Ranan said, “Love a woman well before you take back your years. Fight once, drink once, dance once . . . and once, watch the waves on the shore with young eyes, and see the flash of green as the sun rises over the water’s edge.”
Dùghall managed a rueful smile. “I will.”
“Then go with the blessings of the gods.”
“And may they bless you as you stay.” He turned away and walked quickly to his mount. When he had his seat and turned to wave, Ranan was already gone.
The road unrolled down into grayness. Tatters of fog thickened into an impenetrable wall; as they rode, the sun made its way over the mountains but vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared behind the dark bellies of low-hanging clouds. The fog-thick air deadened the sound of their voices and the clopping of the horses’ hooves; it blinded them to each other so that only when their horses brushed against each other did they see proof that they were not alone. No one felt much like talking, and the bleakness of the day brought an end to every awkwa
rd attempt. For people supposedly riding home in triumph, they were a sorry, dejected little band.
They would have nearly two weeks’ ride to Brelst. From there, gods willing, they would get a ship to take them to Calimekka. And in Calimekka, Dùghall would find out what trouble awaited him, and would, perhaps, come to understand why he felt the earth itself had turned against him, why the sky above watched him with a mocking eye . . . and why, though he was now young and strong, and though the Dragons were defeated and the Falcons were triumphant, he had never felt his death moving nearer than it was at that moment.
Chapter 17
The delicate light of dawn through translucent walls woke Kait, and for a moment she thought she was a girl again, and all the horrors of the past two years had been an ugly dream. She lay in her own bed, in her own room, surrounded by her belongings—silk dresses in red and black, skirts and shawls and wraps of Galweigh Rose-and-Thorn lace, tiny portraits of her father and her mother painted by a clever artist with a steady hand and a true eye. A thousand alto bells rang in the city below, their steady clear voices rising up from the distant valleys in waves—the song of a musical sea.
Almost, she could imagine stepping out the door and finding her mother in the hallway chastising her younger sister for playing pranks on the servants. Almost, she could place her father in one of the House’s many studies with the paraglese, going over a trade map and discussing the latest diplomatic news from Galweigia or Varhees or Strithia. Almost, she could put her hand to the speaking tube and call down to Cook to bring her meat, rare and unspiced, and a bowl of bitter greens.
But when she sat up, she saw Ry curled up in his bedroll in front of her door, still sleeping, his tangled golden hair catching the sunlight. She didn’t remember him coming into the room—he’d insisted on checking through the lower floors alone before retiring—and she couldn’t imagine why he hadn’t taken the other half of her bed when he had come in. But perversely, she was glad he hadn’t. She didn’t know how she would explain to the ghosts who watched from her memory that she was sharing her bed in Galweigh House with a Sabir.
She slipped silently from beneath her covers and walked to the east window. Leaning against the casement, her hands tight on the sill, she could see down into the hidden garden that lay beneath her window. Once it had been beautiful—full of wisteria and night-blooming jasmine and frangipani. The Sabirs had burned it when they took the House; now weeds choked the ground and the paths, and algae and burned branches and more weeds silenced the fountain. She closed her eyes tightly. The morning sun kissed her face as it had done so often when she stood there, and the last echoes of the bells made the memories sharper.
She should have been able to hear her sister Loriann in the room next to hers, complaining that her twin, Marciann, had borrowed her clothes again without asking. Down the hall, her brothers should have been chasing each other and complaining about getting to the parnissery for morning devotions. Her mother’s voice should have been clear, talking to her sister-in-law about tutors or the women of lesser Families. Nieces and nephews and cousins and uncles and aunts should have been laughing and bickering and commenting on everything from food to clothes to politics; servants should have rustled through the corridors, knocking on doors and bringing food and fresh clothing and cut flowers and clean cottons for the beds. The ebb and flow of people through the House had made it live.
Now it was a dead thing. Silent, tomblike, cold, and unbreathing, its hollow shell held empty rooms that overflowed with pain.
Tears burned in the back of her throat and welled in the corners of her still-closed eyes. I’m here now, Kait thought. I have the Mirror of Souls with me—I crossed half a world and walked through hell to get it, and it’s here now, and I can’t change a single thing. I can’t get even one of them back. I can’t do anything more than I could have done if I’d stayed here.
But that wasn’t true. If she had stayed behind, she could have died with them. Then she wouldn’t be lost in the dead House, missing her family.
Warm arms slipped around her waist, and lips gently brushed the back of her neck.
She opened her eyes and stared out at the hazy blue of distant peaks and the warm gold of the sun and the illuminated whiteness of the House. “I miss them so much,” she whispered.
“I know.”
“I want them back.”
His arms tightened around her and he pulled her closer. “I know.”
“They’re dead. Gone. I’ll never see them again, and I can’t do anything, anything, to change that.”
His cheek brushed hers, and she felt the dampness of his tears on her skin. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what my Family did. I’m sorry that you’re so alone. If I could do anything to change what happened, I would. I love you, Kait. I would never have had you hurt like this.”
Her tears escaped her, sliding down her face. “I know,” she said. She turned and pressed her face against Ry’s chest. Her parents and brothers and sisters were gone for good. She would never find the magic that would bring them back to her—that magic didn’t exist. Death was a final form of moving on, and they had moved on without her. The realization sank in at last, and she finally let herself cry. While she cried, Ry held her, stroking her hair as if she were a child. He said nothing, and she said nothing.
At last she took a deep, shaky breath and pulled away. She wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up at him. “We have a lot to do today. I suppose we should get started.”
He nodded.
She rested her hands against his chest and stretched up on her toes and kissed him lightly. “I love you.”
He hugged her close again. The sunlight streaming in the window warmed the back of her neck like a mother’s kiss, and Ry’s skin touching hers poured strength into her. She felt ready to face the empty spaces.
Ulwe and Ian were already waiting when the two of them stepped into the hallway.
“I thought we were going to start early,” Ian said.
Ry arched an eyebrow. “This is early.”
Ulwe said, “I’m hungry. Ian and I already ate some of the supplies, but Kait said there would be better things in the siege storage.”
Kait nodded. “We won’t have to live on trail food, or go back into the city to get the things we need. The siege stores were planned to keep a thousand people fed for a year. The four of us could live off of that much food for the rest of our lives . . . if it didn’t go bad first.” She smiled at Ulwe. “You won’t go hungry. We’ll do a quick inventory of what we have and where it is, and while we’re about it, we’ll bring up enough food for a week or two—that way we won’t have to go all the way to the siege stores every day. Once that’s done, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do next.”
“The Dragons took enormous amounts of food out of here,” Ian said. “I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed by what you find.”
Kait shrugged. “I’m sure they cleaned out the main storage rooms. But the siege stores were hidden. The whole point of them was to give us food in case of emergency, and to have it in a place that wouldn’t help our enemies if we were overrun.”
“The Sabirs and then the Dragons . . . got information out of the survivors,” Ian said quietly.
He’d worded that carefully—he hadn’t said torture. But Kait had heard the word torture in the tone of his voice, and she saw it in the way he looked away from her. She stiffened and felt her blood chill; the pictures her mind threw at her made her want to scream. She kept her voice steady and said, “We won’t know what they found until we check.”
She led them downward via one of the multitude of servants’ stairs. She had seen no sign of blood or bone, no smallest trace of the horrors that the House had witnessed, but she braced herself. She feared coming across skeletons that wore familiar clothing; she dreaded encountering the bones that had borne the people she loved.
Memories of better times assailed her. Grimly, she walked faster. Behind her, she heard Ulwe sudd
enly whisper, “Ry, I can’t walk that fast.”
She dug her nails into the palms of her hands and forced herself to slow down. They reached the first subfloor, which held the main kitchens and most of the common stores. Kait turned into a dark corridor, then looked over her shoulder at Ian. “Did you come this way?”
“I didn’t personally, but someone else might have.”
She looked at the floor. There was no dust on it. She frowned, realizing then that she had seen no dust anywhere in the House, though it had been shut up since the Dragons abandoned it for their Citadel of the Gods. She considered that odd fact and couldn’t decide on its import. “Stay close to me, then,” she said. “This becomes tricky. People have gotten lost in these sublevels and never been found again.”
She walked into a passageway, turned left at the first intersection, right at the second, then right again into what looked like a little cul-de-sac with a semicircular stone bench in it. The lanterns weren’t lit, but Kait lit them, and the dancing shadows showed familiar sights. The air smelled stale, but here the House still felt civilized. Comprehensible. As though it were merely a building. Deeper within the subterranean labyrinth, beyond the reach of the sun and air, scents rolled past the nose that hinted of terror, and sounds skittered and scritched and chittered just at the edge of hearing, and the darkness held within it the feel of eyes that watched, of claws that waited. Galweigh House’s surface friendliness covered a core of patient, watchful mystery. Through those deeper, darker places, not even Kait had chosen to wander alone.
She knelt, reached under the bench, and slipped her finger against the back of the bench’s trestle leg. She found the pressure point hidden there and pushed. The mechanism silently moved away from her finger, and with the faintest of whispers, the bench and the wall behind it moved backward.
“This is a fairly obvious one,” Kait said. “If it’s empty, there are others that are better hidden. We’ll check them next.”
She stepped into the gap that had opened in the wall to her left. The shelves were bare.
