Diplomacy of Wolves: Book 1 of the Secret Texts

by Lisle, Holly

  Still she stood at the top of the stairway. Hesitant. Afraid.

  Luercas grew impatient. Hurry, girl. The wonders of an age await you.

  Did she want to see the wonders of an age? She put one foot on the first step and stopped. She didn’t hesitate beyond that point, however. She’d come this far already, and the architecture of the stairway and the smooth white material it was made of gave her subtle reassurance; such stairways filled Galweigh House. The stairway led down into one of the homes of the Ancients, she guessed. Or perhaps a public building. In either case, it would offer her an opportunity to surround herself, however briefly, with things that reminded her of home.

  She descended steadily, allowing her eyes to adjust to the increasingly impenetrable darkness. By the time she estimated that she’d made three complete turns around the spiral, however, no light remained, and even she, with her incredibly sensitive vision, was blind.

  “You want me to keep going?”

  You’ll find accessible light within. You haven’t much farther to go in the darkness, and you’re in no danger.

  She didn’t know that she believed him, but it didn’t really matter. She trailed a hand along the wall to her right and held the other out in front of her face to keep from stepping into a solid wall, and she felt for each step below her before committing her weight to it, and in that manner traveled what seemed to be another full spiral.

  The hand in front of her face proved unnecessary. The soft, slightly hollow sound she made in descending the stairway changed in both volume and tone as she neared the end, warning her, and she felt the door in front of her with hearing and her sensitivity to pressure and the movement of wind before she felt it with her fingertips. “I’m here,” she said.

  Yes. Open the door and go in.

  “Are there any traps set?”

  Intelligent of you to ask. However, no. The door will open as any of the outside doors at your Family House would open. You might have noticed—

  She cut him off. “That this is an Ancient place. Yes. I’d noticed.” She ran her fingertips across the front of the door until they reached its midline. From the midline, she let them slide up to the cold, slick curve of the latch. She pressed upward on the latch with one hand and rested her palm firmly on the pressure pad just beneath it.

  After a brief hesitation, the door swung inward. She stepped in, and warm, stale air filled her nostrils. Everything smelled of dust and long-closed spaces. She could feel the immensity of the room in which she stood, but she could not see anything; absolute darkness offered her no markers by which to guide herself.

  “One step into this and I could lose my way completely,” she said. “I could become turned around, could lose sight of the door, could be trapped in here until I died . . .”

  You could, I suppose, if you didn’t activate the lights. You’ll find the pressure pads for them on the wall to the right of you. Just reach out.

  She did. Her hand brushed through something soft that crumbled to dust at her touch, and came to rest on a series of raised pads. She pressed them, and thousands of warm, shimmering lights sprang to life overhead and down long corridors that spread away in half a dozen directions. The lights reflected through sparkling prisms as numerous as the stars, and covered the floor with uncountable rainbows. The floor was done primarily in a rich, dark blue stone speckled with gold; inlays of white marble and a stone as pale as green seafoam in the shape of waves turned the entire vast expanse into an ocean. The reflected sparkles gave the scene a life that made her feel she was walking across water.

  She gasped.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  The Ancients could not have intended In-kanmerea as a private residence. Its vast lobby could have held ten thousand guests at one time, and was designed to direct traffic toward the broad branching corridors. Fountains shaped like delicate ships dotted the immense floor. No water spouted from them, but Danya expected that they worked as the fountains in Galweigh House worked, and that if she felt along their bases for hidden panels, she would be able to locate the pressure pads that brought them to life.

  She was tempted to do so, but she refrained. Luercas wanted her to see something, and she didn’t think he would have been so insistent about bringing her to In-kanmerea to see the pretty fountains. He had something bigger in mind.

  And in fact, he said, Go to the first corridor on your left. You’re going to follow it back until it ends in a terminal intersection. When you reach the place where you can go either right or left, go right. You want to enter the last door on the right in that corridor. Do hurry—we have much to do.

  She would have time to explore the rest of the place in the future. For the moment, she did as he asked her and hurried.

  The corridors ran for unbelievable distances. She must have passed a hundred doors to either side of her before she reached the end of the first. When she turned to look behind her, she could see nothing but corridor—no sign at all of the vast lobby she’d left behind. And as she looked to the left and the right down the intersecting corridor, she couldn’t see any sign that either of them ended.

  She felt small and young and temporary, overwhelmed by the great age and vast expanses of the Ancient place. She picked up her pace, anxious to reach a part of the building that was built to a scale she felt comfortable with. By the time she finally got there, her lope had become a hard trot that had in turn metamorphosed into a dead-out, panicked run. She leaned against the last door on the right, breathing hard, until Luercas told her to open it. His voice held a condescending chuckle that she didn’t like.

  She let herself in, and found the pressure panel that illuminated the room. She looked around. Unlike the lobby and the corridors, this room had not been designed for beauty. It was large, circular, sunken into the ground in tiers. In the center of the lowest circle a raised dais sported a round stool beneath a dome on pillars. None of the room’s appointments—neither the rows of utilitarian seats in the surrounding tiers, nor the plainness of the central seat and dome, nor the flat, too-bright lights overhead, said anything but that this was a place where people came to work.

  What sort of work?

  Go down to the dais. Sit outside the edge of the circle, but allow your head to rest beneath the dome.

  Odd instructions. Danya shrugged and carried them out.

  The reason for them became immediately and shockingly clear. The sensation of being touched or spied on by the unknown, unwelcome watchers, vanished immediately. She could still feel, though only as if from a great distance, their connection to the child she carried in her womb, but even that felt impersonal and not threatening.

  Can you still hear me?

  “Yes.”

  Good. Don’t move—if you pull the rest of your body under the dome, the criminals who have been spying on you will realize that they’ve lost their contact with you. As it stands now, they’re so tied up with your baby that they don’t notice you’ve escaped their spying. But if you give away the fact that you’ve managed to escape them, however temporarily, they’ll move the stars in the heavens to force their way back. They might already be strong enough that nothing you could do would stop them.

  “Who are they?”

  A cabal of wizards who have hidden themselves and their goal of world overthrow for over a thousand years, while waiting for the return of the wizard who led them the first time. They’ve found their leader now, and they’ll do anything they have to do to get to him.

  “And what does this have to do with me?”

  You’re carrying this wizard in your belly, Danya.

  She didn’t want to hear that. Bad enough she was pregnant. Bad enough the horrors by which she had gotten pregnant. Now a pack of rogue Wolves had claimed the bedamned fetus she carried as their savior-to-be-born, and had found a way to control it, and to watch her.

  “There are herbs that will end a pregnancy,” she said.

  There are. But that would be the wrong choice. If you tried to t
ake such herbs, these wizards would see you as a threat and stop you from taking them. Further, they might wipe your mind entirely—they don’t need your mind in order for your body to bring forth their hero. That is why I had to get you here so quickly; you were beginning to make your resentment of their intrusion too clear, and you might have done something to fight against them before I could safely tell you the danger they pose to you. And they would have destroyed you. I won’t let them destroy you, Danya. Not if I can stop them.

  She felt sick. “Why this baby? Why me, Luercas? Haven’t I been through enough?”

  That’s precisely why you. The infant you carry inside of you is the product of the mating of a Sabir Wolf who is also Karnee, and a Galweigh Wolf—a mating that would have created tremendous magical potential under ordinary circumstances. But the circumstances of your early pregnancy were anything but normal. You were the channel through which one of the largest focused bursts of magic since the days of the Wizards’ War grounded—the magic that Scarred you also Scarred the unborn infant. His Scarring may not show on the outside, but it will make his body the perfect house for the returned spirit of the long-dead leader of these monsters who seek to control you. And the world.

  “What do I do, then?”

  For now you do nothing. The time will come when you’ll be able to regain complete control of your body, and perhaps wrest the baby away from them. You probably have no way to save the child, even if you wanted to. But you can save yourself if you’re careful. Pretend you don’t notice them, and in those times when their presence is so obvious that you can’t pretend you don’t notice them, pretend you don’t mind—or even that you welcome them.

  And never forget they’re dangerous.

  Danya closed her eyes. It would be like trying to pretend that she hadn’t minded being raped. Would she be able to do that, even to save her own life?

  Luercas broke into her reverie tentatively. There’s something else I need to tell you now.

  “What?”

  I’ll be near you, and I’ll be watching over you, but the only time I’ll be able to speak to you is when you come here.

  So she was to be robbed of her guardian spirit and protector at the same time that she submitted to the invasion of her body and mind. She shouldn’t have been surprised.

  “Why?”

  Because I can only protect you if my presence remains secret. Once your enemies know of me, they’ll attack me—and weak as I am, they’ll destroy me.

  “They’ll never find out about you from me.”

  Then we’ll win against them. Eventually, at least.

  * * *

  Light split the Veil, and spiraled inward like a galaxy being unborn, and the Star Council reconvened.

  This time, however, the excitement and enthusiasm of the first meeting were absent. Dafril brought the meeting to order with ritual greeting, but immediately said, Has anyone found Luercas?

  Above the babble of negatives, one voice said, We would find him more easily if we could compel our avatars instead of simply suggesting.

  Patience, Dafril said. My avatar is close to the Mirror of Souls, and mere months away from returning it to civilization. Sartrig’s avatar pursues, believing himself to be capturing the Mirror so that he can re-embody Sartrig, whom he believes to be his dead brother. If my avatar falters or fails, Sartrig’s will take over. We have a larger problem than our powerlessness or Luercas’s continued absence—that problem is why I’ve called this meeting.

  What could be worse? Werris asked.

  Solander has returned.

  The councillors greeted that statement with dead silence.

  Finally one ventured to ask, Are you certain?

  As certain as I am of my own existence. Dafril thought the question stupid and impertinent.

  But we destroyed Solander. Banished him to the outer Veil.

  Time passes, Dafril said, and he has found his way home. The Falcons are not extinct, either, and have located him, and are beginning to answer his summons. My avatar had contact with him. He is not yet born, but he is already embodied.

  That horrified silence again. This time no one broke it. So Dafril said, With Solander present, we face the possibility of our own demise. Therefore, before we panic about the missing Luercas or worry about our own weakness, we must find a way to destroy Solander. No other priority must come before that.

  Chapter 27

  “I think I could stand beside you for the rest of my life,” Ian said.

  Kait smiled up at him, and reached up to brush a strand of hair from his cheek. They stood on the foredeck of the Peregrine, watching as the ship moved out of the narrow channel between two islands and into the clear water beyond. “You’d tire of me before long,” she said. She kept her voice light and playful. “I wear on everyone after a while. Too many quirks.”

  “I haven’t seen any quirks,” Ian said. He slid an arm around her waist and squeezed.

  She refused to give in to the sadness of knowing that if he knew what she really was, he would be repulsed. Pretending that he loved her, or that anyone like him could love her, made such a pleasant fantasy that she wanted to hang on to it as long as she could. “No,” she agreed. “You haven’t.” Then she changed the subject. “I’ve never seen anyplace as beautiful as this.”

  She wasn’t exaggerating at all when she said that. The islands that rose behind and to the sides of the Peregrine were like uncut emeralds rising from a glass-smooth surface of sapphire. Onyx cliffs and beaches that glittered like black diamonds only emphasized the lushness of the terrain. The island forests grew densely at the bases, leaving pillars of stone to jut above tree lines. In the softer, gentler light of this latitude, a slight breeze set the leaves of the trees trembling and sparkling so that the trees appeared to be decorated with silver coins.

  “It is lovely,” Ian said, but his brow creased and he frowned thoughtfully. “But I don’t like the stillness of the water.”

  The breeze was enough to keep the Peregrine’s sails filled, and to keep her moving steadily. Kait said as much.

  “It isn’t the wind. It’s the islands. And the water. I’ve seen something similar once . . .” He pulled away from her and moved to the rail; he looked down at the water, then back at the islands again. “Crow!” he shouted.

  Perry the Crow answered from his nest in the high riggings. “Cap’n?”

  “Are we out of this chain of islands yet?”

  “We look to be.”

  “Then can you tell which way the chain runs to either side of us?”

  Perry shaded his eyes and turned first left, then right. “The line of the islands curves north-northeast to the north of us and south-southeast to the south of us.”

  Kait noticed that the crewmen all over the ship had grown still; she felt as if they had drawn in a single simultaneous breath and were, unaccountably, holding it. “What’s wrong?”

  Ian didn’t even look at her. He shouted, “Describe the curves.”

  A pause. Then, “Haw, shit! We’re inside a circle, Cap’n! A big one!”

  Ian’s response was immediate. “About! Bring us about and get us out of here! Now!” And the crew moved with similar terrified speed.

  In the center of a circle. Two possibilities existed. The first was that the cone of an enormous submerged volcano lay beneath them, its broken rim rising out of the water to form islands. That was the harmless possibility. The deadly possibility was that they had sailed into an uncharted Wizards’ Circle.

  Kait yearned in that moment for just one god to whom she could cry out. But what god would have ears for the prayers of the cursed? If they were in a Wizards’ Circle . . .

  The ship failed to come around. The Peregrine seemed to have grown a will of her own; she sailed straight on across the glass-smooth water, heading straight east. “Turn her, damn you!” Ian screamed. “Turn her, if you love your lives!” He bolted for the great wheel, leaving Kait standing alone on the foredeck, staring down at the water
from which a mist now began to rise. Soft and pale, opalescent, reflecting colors from soft pink to pale green and blue, gently swirling, it formed along the surface of the mirror-smooth ocean in little cloudlets.

  One of the human crewmen was yelling for the parnissa; some of the Scarred had prostrated themselves on the deck and were praying in their own tongues.

  Immune to the labors of the captain and the crew, the Peregrine kept to her course, as if guided eastward by the invisible hands of the gods themselves. But Kait knew the guiding hands belonged to nothing as benign as gods.

  The parnissa raced out onto the deck, her hands full of the sacred implements of her calling. While men and women, both Scarred and human, swarmed around her, she laid out an altar on the ship’s deck and dropped to her knees on the planking. Then, in a trembling, singsong voice, she began to chant “Lodan’s Office for the Lost.” Lodan was the month-goddess of love and loss, and her office was one of grieving for those already dead and beyond the reach of the living. Kait decided the parnissa was a pessimist.

  But their situation, already grave, worsened quickly. The mists grew out of the surface of the sea like ghosts rising from their graves, billowing upward and expanding outward into an ever-expanding, ever-thickening sea of prism-tinted white. The sails fell slack and hung flat and empty, but the ship’s forward speed increased. And Kait picked up a knife-edged keening, clear at the upper range of her hearing, and felt her skin prickle and her heart begin to race.

  The crew had ceased trying to turn the ship. Some stood on the deck watching, as she did, too transfixed by the impending disaster to move. Most knelt and wept, or prayed. Ian stood behind the ship’s wheel, berating the gods in a loud voice, and alternately threatening them and bargaining with them.