The Secret Texts

by Holly Lisle

  “Dùghall’s won! He’s won!” She danced through the infinite Veil, rejoicing in the wonder of the miracle that left her and Ry and Dùghall alive when they had known they would die. “Feel that—there is nothing of Luercas in that.”

  Ry said, “There is, Kait. He’s still there. But he’s weak, and Dùghall is powerful. And feel . . . that isn’t just Dùghall and Luercas anymore. Listen, too . . . you can hear them if you’re still. Solander is with them.”

  She could hear them. Dùghall and Solander—and deep within, hidden, cowering, hate-filled, and afraid, Luercas—still pleading for his life. How, she wondered, could anyone so weak and pathetic have done so much harm? Surrounded by the immense loving light cast by Dùghall and Solander, Luercas seemed like nothing. Their light filled everything.

  Except for the hunter that bore down on them. They were immense—but it was bigger, and it expanded as it reached them, flowing over the brilliance of their love of life, of their joy in existence, and it blotted them out, wiping them from the universe as if they had never been.

  “No!” Kait screamed. “No! It can’t end this way.”

  But it did. The unspeakable maw of the hunter between the worlds shuttered closed, and where there had been light and warmth and hope and joy, there was only the cold and empty void of the infinite, oblivious Veil, and the expanding bloated horror of the hunter.

  “No,” Kait wept.

  Beside her, Ry froze—stunned, still, devastated. “I’ve felt that love twice in my life,” he whispered. “And twice it’s been ripped away from me, and twice, destroyed. What is immortality,” he screamed to the heavens, “if it ends like this? If love dies and evil remains, what use is anything?”

  The hunter between the worlds continued to expand, its outlines changing as it grew. A thin sound cut through the silence of the Veil, a single, low, shivering rumble.

  “Run!” Ry shouted, but this time Kait held fast.

  “Something’s changing,” she said, and gripped him so tightly their souls blended at the edges. “Something is happening within the soul-eater.”

  The lines of blacker nothingness that marked the soul-eater’s body were beginning to ripple and waver. The rumbling grew louder—still that same low note, now felt more than heard, a shifting and tearing of the very stuff of the universe. The note expanded, and Kait felt the vibrations of it grab her and shake her and fling her across the void as if she were a gnat in a hurricane; she and Ry clung together, all thought of escape lost as the unbearable ripping, tearing, screaming wall of erupting sound smashed them flat and rolled over them, as tiny cracks of light formed in the unthinkable nothingness of the hunter’s hide, and those cracks ripped into blazing gashes, and the gashes exploded, and uncountable shimmering streaming beautiful fountains of multicolored light burst from nothingness into the Veil, pouring music over the roar of their creation.

  And above that note, a sudden ripple of awe and joy, and a voice she knew, a voice she loved, a voice that was born of Dùghall and Solander, born of love and compassion and self-sacrifice and hope and faith that there were things worth living for and things worth dying for, said, In the end, love is everything, and nothing is ever lost. Love reshapes evil, it births new life, it creates the universe. Love . . . survives.

  At the sound of that voice, Kait recalled words Dùghall had once said to her:

  “I would give my life, my soul, my eternity, to feel that kind of love. . . .”

  In that moment, in spite of the pain of her loss, she understood and she rejoiced for him—and for all of them.

  Chapter 58

  Danya had been torn soul from flesh and fed into darkness; in hellish noise and hellish pain, she’d felt herself poured toward oblivion. Yet at the last instant, the god of vengeance granted her a reprieve. Luercas cut her loose and she burst into her own flesh self again, and power poured into her that had never been there before. She caught the shape of what was happening; Luercas, caught in a trap within the Veil, was against all odds losing his battle, and had decided his only hope of survival was to divest himself of all the power he’d stolen from the lives and souls of his victims.

  Which meant that, against all odds, she could still win her own battle.

  She opened her eyes and saw the Scarred around her fallen to the floor. Some breathed, some did not, but none had recovered as quickly as she had—they were none of them wizards, and the sharp pains of this sudden encounter with magic would leave them stunned and senseless for a short time.

  “Brethwan smiles on me indeed,” she murmured, and used the gifted magic Luercas had fed into her body to rip a sword from the sheath of the nearest fallen guard and send it flying straight at Luercas—into the puckered scars on his chest where once her talons had buried themselves, through his heart, out his back, and into the hard wood of the throne behind him.

  It wedged there and blood spurted from his chest—and as his flesh self died, she stripped the power from his magic-altered body and fed it into her own wounded flesh. She rebuilt her hand, and still he did not die, so she made herself stronger, taller, and faster. She fed on his death, and when his body twitched its last and no more red froth bubbled from the corner of his lips, she wrapped her hands around the collar that bound her to the corpse’s throne and ripped it in two. The metal screamed protest and her heart filled with furious joy. And her mind embraced a single compelling thought. Galweighs waited within Galweigh House—two of them, who had not suffered as she had, who had not been shamed, humiliated, or tortured, who had not felt their flesh twisted into a hideous travesty of itself. Two remained—Dùghall, beloved uncle and ambassador of the Family, and Kait, favored daughter.

  She could not, perhaps, have her vengeance against the Sabirs, nor against those of the Galweighs who had harmed her directly. But she could still have her satisfaction.

  And she would.

  The Scarred at her feet began to stir. As they sat up, shuddering and frightened, she moved away to one side of Luercas’s corpse and said, “I, Ki Ika, have destroyed the false Iksahsha and have pulled your souls back from oblivion. Ride with me now, and we will claim this city and this world which are your birthright . . . and mine.”

  Shaken, uncertain, but obedient, the Scarred followed her outside the grand tent, and brought her lorrag to her as she commanded, and gathered her weapons, and saddled her beast—and when she pointed to the finest company of cavalry in the Thousand Peoples’ army and indicated that they and they alone should follow her, the company she commanded wheeled to a man and galloped after her through the gray-draped gates of Calimekka and into the ghostly, silent streets, toward the heart of the city and the great House that had once been and would again be her home.

  • • •

  Ian saw the trouble coming long before it reached him—the company of Scarred astride their monstrous six-legged beasts charged up the Avenue of Triumph at a pace that would have killed horses, led by a dark-haired woman astride a toothy, gaunt-faced nightmare that had never been intended as a beast of burden. He deployed his men as best he could—pikes to the fore, archers behind. He was outnumbered but he held the high ground and the enemy approached only by one road, a bit of shortsightedness that left him grateful if confused. The enemy commander could have forced him to split his meager forces and arms and could have pinned him between pincers had she chosen to approach using both the Avenue of Triumph and the Path of Gods.

  But perhaps attack was not the whole of her plan.

  The sailors pressed into duty as soldiers sweated as they watched the approach of the Scarred company. They held fast, but Ian thought he saw weakness in them—some of them would break ranks and flee at the first exchange of blows. He frowned and held his breath and waited.

  Ringed around the wall, the Falcons held their unmoving vigil.

  I wish I could force them away from whatever they’re doing to help me guard the road, he thought. But he did not bother them. They had their duty, no matter how pointless it looked to hi
m, and he had his.

  The enemy company came to a halt just beyond the line where Ian’s archers could have started doing damage with their arrows, and the human woman astride her nightmare-beast raised a hand. “My name is Danya Galweigh,” she called out. “I have come to carry out my sworn duty. If you stand aside and allow me to pass into my home unmolested, my troops will let you live. If you attempt to stand against me, they will slaughter you like sheep and I will rip your souls from your dying flesh and destroy them to feed my magic. And then I will go into my home and carry out my duty.”

  Behind her, the Scarred troops cheered.

  Ian saw his own lines waver in the center, but he’d judged his outside men well enough, and nobody broke ranks to flee. Yet.

  He walked forward, measuring his distance as carefully as she had done. The Scarred carried bows of an odd configuration, stocky but relatively short, with short arrows. He could not be certain they would not be able to hit him where he stood, but he thought his odds fairly good. “Danya Galweigh—the woman who murdered her own son?”

  “I sacrificed to the gods an infant conceived from rape,” she said coldly, “in exchange for a promise of vengeance against Sabirs and Galweighs. The Sabirs are dead. But I will have vengeance against the Galweighs now.”

  “How?” Ian asked. “The Galweighs are as dead as the Sabirs.”

  “Two are not,” Danya said. “Dùghall Draclas and Kait Galweigh. Their deaths will serve.”

  Behind Ian, someone moved. “I’m not dead, Danya,” Alcie shouted, her voice clear and firm. Ian’s heart sank. He would have had Alcie keep silent—instead, she had managed to mark herself as a special target for the enemy if fighting started. “Surely you remember me.”

  “Spoiled, pampered bitch,” Danya called. “I remember you. So kind of you to stand up. I’ll be sure to kill you as I pass.” She looked beyond Alcie and saw the little boy holding his baby sister, and her mouth twisted into a cruel smile. “And your son and baby, too. I’ve grown to hate children.”

  Ian sighed and muttered, “Get out of the way, Alcie.” He shouted, “You’ve overlooked the best part of your target, Danya. Not all the Sabirs are dead. I’m Sabir. And I’ll be happy to let you try to kill me—if . . .”

  “If?”

  “If you accept my challenge to fight in single combat. If I win, your troops become mine; if you win, my troops become yours.” He guessed that she stood half a head taller than him and had a correspondingly longer reach. He had no idea how good she would be with a sword, but he knew that Kait was devastating, and that Families made sure their people could defend themselves if necessary. She wouldn’t be an easy mark.

  She laughed, and he saw a flicker of light flash between her fingertips and realized that he had misstepped. Her brag about tearing the souls from the dying to feed her magic had not been mere bluster; she was a wizard—one of the Galweigh Wolves.

  “I accept your challenge,” she said, and jumped lightly from the back of her mount. She gave a command and her archers lowered their bows and unnocked their arrows.

  Ah, hells, he thought. All I wanted was a straight fight that I might hope to win. All I wanted was a way to help Kait.

  “You heard our bargain,” he shouted to his own troops, and Scarred and human alike, they lowered their weapons. “If I win, we claim her men; if I lose, you obey her. Either way, when this is over, you and they stand as allies.” He pointed to the Scarred company.

  Danya strode toward him, sword unsheathed and faintly glowing, and he drew his own weapon.

  “Where?” she asked when they met at the point in the road that lay equally distant from both forces.

  “Here is as good as anywhere.”

  She shrugged. She was beautiful, he realized—she looked like a much taller, much more powerful version of Kait, but her face did not have in it any of the kindness or the softness that he had seen and been touched by in Kait’s. Cruelty was no stranger to her. She said, “If you concede defeat now and beg my forgiveness for the sins of your Family, perhaps I will have a little leniency on you. Perhaps I won’t make you eat your intestines before I slaughter you. Maybe I’ll only consign your soul to hell for a thousand years instead of tearing it into uncountable shreds and devouring the shreds.”

  “Yes. And maybe you’ll shit gold, too,” Ian said. “Let us be what we’re about.”

  She smiled. “As you wish.” She raised her sword, and its glimmer blazed into a blinding green flame, and she leaped for him. His own blade came up in honed reflex and parried her cut, and he dove out of the way, keeping his feet, but she was fast—faster than she had any right to be, and stronger than even the luckiest combination of muscle and bone and nerve and sinew could explain. Magic fed her, magic fueled her, and magic gave her an edge he couldn’t compete with. She was going to kill him. The best he could hope for was that he could buy Kait and Ry and Dùghall enough time to do what they needed to do.

  She moved in again, blade flashing, and this time as he parried, her blade’s edge caught the tip of his and sliced it off. He felt a jolt run through his hilt into the bones of his fingers and all the way through both his arms to his shoulders.

  “Concede,” she said through gritted teeth, and her lips skinned back in a brutal smile.

  “Why don’t you?”

  She slashed at him in sudden fury, and the flame of her blade grew brighter—and then, suddenly, impossibly, it flickered out. Her eyes widened in surprise, and she shouted words in a tongue he did not know and pointed at his troops. Nothing happened—her sword remained merely a sword, and while her face bore a look of frustrated rage, he charged in at her, blade held up and brought down in a two-handed cut that would have cloven her in half had she not leaped out of his way at the last instant. As it was, he scored her shoulder and drew first blood.

  She was a good swordsman even without the magic, though. She danced out of his reach and brought her weapon up and stepped in at him again, and he parried her blow with difficulty.

  She shouted the alien words again, this time pointing at her own people. Again whatever she had hoped would happen failed to occur, for she screamed in rage and pointed the index finger of her left hand at the men and women who sat around the wall of Galweigh House.

  He realized two things in that instant. The first was that she had hoped to draw magic from the lives of those around her to fuel her spell, in the manner of the Wolves; the second was that the shield that the Falcons had cast to protect the people of Calimekka from Luercas was also protecting them from Danya. Whatever magic she’d had access to, she had used up, and as long as the Falcons held their shield, she would have no more. In that instant he had the fight he’d wanted all along—a fight of flesh and blood, mind and body, and nothing more.

  He laughed and attacked, and saw his enemy, with her greater reach and greater strength and greater speed, flinch beneath his onslaught.

  “Concede,” he shouted as he cornered her against the wall of the Avenue of Triumph. “Concede and live.”

  She snarled at him and screamed, “The gods will give me my vengeance!” She swung at him but misjudged her stroke; he caught her hilt guard on the broken tip of his blade and ripped her sword from her hand. It flashed into the air, spinning, catching the sunlight as it arced away from the great arch of the avenue, out into empty air, and down in lazy circles to the ground far below.

  “Concede,” he said in a softer voice, but one both commanding and sure.

  Danya pointed to her troops and screamed, “Attack them! Save me!” But her troops stood on the bridge, still as stones, hands well away from their weapons.

  Perhaps they had true honor, Ian thought. Or perhaps they simply hadn’t cared for the fact that when she couldn’t draw her magic from his people, she tried to draw it from them. Either way, he had her.

  “Concede,” he said a third time.

  In her eyes he saw fear and rage and a sudden cold determination. “I concede only to death,” she snarled, and flun
g herself backward over the wall of the avenue. She fell silently—she did not in her last moments cry out for the mercy of the gods, nor did she howl in fear. Instead, she brought her arms to a point in front of her, as a pearl diver would when leaping from a cliff into the sea, and raced to the rocky slab below her as if it were a friend that she expected to open up and embrace her.

  It didn’t.

  She hit the rock at the bottom of the cliff so hard Ian could hear the sound of it from where he stood. He stared for a long moment at the smashed form that lay on the flat rock; at the bright star of blood that circled the pale shape; at the faint pennant of black that was some of her hair blowing in a breeze.

  Behind him, he heard a commotion. He turned warily, and was stunned to see Kait and Ry walking toward him, with his men parting to let them pass, and behind them the Falcons standing and embracing each other silently, tears running down their cheeks.

  “You live,” he said quietly.

  “We live.”

  “Dùghall?”

  Pain flitted across her face, touched with strange wonder. “No. He . . . did not live. And yet . . .”

  “Does that mean we’ve lost?”

  Kait shook her head slowly, and slowly a disbelieving smile found its way to her face. “We’ve won,” she said. “By all the gods who ever loved us, Ian . . . we’ve won.”

  Chapter 59

  Those whom Rrru-eeth had wronged stood and spoke against her one by one, human and Scarred together, with the Scarred company from the Army of the Thousand Peoples looking on with silent attention. And when the last had spoken, Ian stood and said, “The sentence for mutiny is hanging, and all here agree this woman has committed mutiny. If any remain who would say otherwise, let him stand now and speak, or forever hold his peace.”

  None stood.

  Rrru-eeth shouted, “I am guilty only of love. He betrayed me!”

  Two of the Keshi Scarred prepared to place the rope around her neck, but Ian raised a hand. “Under Captain’s Law, I would demand fulfillment of the sentence of death; for without law applied equally to all, we are nothing.” The Keshi began to move forward again, but again Ian stayed them with a gesture. “But a further tenet of Captain’s Law is that the captain is master of his ship as if it were his kingdom. Here, on solid land, I have no authority. I cannot command the death of Rrru-eeth, even though she has been found guilty.”