by Lisle, Holly
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
VENGEANCE OF DRAGONS. Copyright © 1999 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.
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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2013-4
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First eBook Edition: December 2000
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To Joe, with love and gratitude
Acknowledgments
Again, thanks to Peter James and Nick Thorpe, authors of Ancient Inventions, which has proved the most inspirational and useful book I’ve read in ages; to Betsy Mitchell, whose editing, recommendations, comments, and questions made the book far better than it would have otherwise been; to Russell Galen and Danny Baror, whose tireless work in my behalf made my first European sales happen, and made it possible for me to live off my writing income, and in Russ’s case, inspired the project in the first place; to Matthew, whose first-draft editing also resulted in major changes and major improvements, and whose encouragement keeps me going; and to Mark and Becky, who did all sorts of useful and kind things for me while I was writing that made my life easier, and who cheered me up when the work got hard. And finally, belated thanks to John “JT” Tilden and Perry Ahern for cheerfully providing the bodies.
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 has survived to hide the secret Scars of old and dangerous magic. A daughter of the powerful Galweigh Family and a promising junior diplomat, Kait is Scarred. Her nature causes her to skinshift, a trait which would lead to her immediate execution even by members of her own Family. Chaperoning her cousin prior to the girl’s wedding into the Dokteerak Family, Kait overhears a plot between the Dokteeraks and the Galweighs’ longtime enemies, the Sabirs. The 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 called Karnee. She is drawn to the stranger and is dismayed to discover that he is a son of the Sabir Family, her Family’s oldest and worst enemy. 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. The Sabirs, though, never planned to share power with the Dokteeraks; instead, they use them to get the Galweigh military out in the open. Then, on two carefully managed fronts, they wipe out the Dokteerak and Galweigh armies and use both treachery and magic to capture Galweigh House back in the grand city of Calimekka.
However, magic used forcefully against another always rebounds. Both Families’ wizards, who call themselves Wolves, expected to strike unprepared targets with their spells. But their attacks hit each other at the same time, and the magic rebounds, wiping out the majority of both Families’ Wolves.
It simultaneously does two other things as well, both seemingly irrelevant. First, the magical blast wakes an artifact called the Mirror of Souls. A beautiful and complex creation designed by the Ancients before the end of the Wizards’ War a thousand years earlier, the Mirror has been waiting for just such a powerful rewhah. It signals that the world has returned to the use of magic . . . and more importantly, magic of the right sort. The Mirror awakens the souls it holds within its Soulwell, and they reach out to people who might be able to help them.
Second, the rewhah horribly Scars a young girl named Danya Galweigh, a cousin of Kait’s, who has been kidnapped by the Sabirs and used as a sacrifice by the Sabir Wolves when the Galweighs fail to meet the ransom. Danya is changed beyond recognition, and the baby she unknowingly carries, a baby conceived through rape and torture during her capture, is changed, too, but in more subtle ways. The force of the rewhah throws Danya into the icy southern wastes of the Veral Territories, where, were it not for the help of a mysterious spirit who calls himself Luercas, she would die.
Kait finds Galweigh House in Sabir hands and many members of her Family executed. She steals the Galweigh airible and flies for help to the nearby island of Goft, where the Galweigh Family has other holdings. However, the head of this lesser branch of the Galweigh Family sees the demise of the main branch as his chance to advance, and he orders Kait killed. A spirit voice claiming to be her long-dead ancestor warns her of the treachery, and she escapes again, this time after stealing money from the House treasury.
The spirit tells her another way she can aid her Family, even though it says they are now all dead. Following its advice, she hires a ship from the Goft harbor to take her across the ocean in search of the Mirror of Souls. The spirit tells her that this ancient artifact will allow her to reclaim her murdered Family from the dead. She enlists the aid of the captain, Ian Draclas, by telling him she is going in search of one of the Ancients’ lost cities. Such a place would make any man’s fortune.
Onboard the ship she runs into a man named Hasmal rann Dorchan, whom she once met briefly. Hasmal, a wizard of the sect known as the Falcons, had been trying to escape the doom that an oracle had warned would befall him if he associated with Kait. He is not pleased to see her.
Hasmal’s oracle mocks him and warns him that to protect himself, he must teach Kait magic. She learns, but denies the existence of the doom-filled destiny he claims they share.
Kait is plagued by dreams of the Sabir Karnee; she becomes certain that he is following her across the sea. To break her obsession with him, she accepts the advances of the ship’s captain, and she and Ian Draclas become lovers. But her obsession only worsens.
As the ship nears its destination, it sails into the heart of Wizards’ Circle, a place where magical residue from the Wizards’ War a thousand years before is still so strong that it can affect and control anyone moving within its reach. Hasmal works magic to free the ship, and Kait, in her skinshifted form, saves the life of the captain. In so doing, though, Kait is revealed as a monster and Hasmal as a wizard, and the crew turns against them. They reach the shore and discover the city, but while Kait, Hasmal, Ian, and two of his men set out to retrieve the Mirror of Souls from its distant hiding place, the crew mutinies and maroons them in the unexplored wilds of North Novtierra.
Contents
Book One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Interlude
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Book Two
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
Interlude
Book Three
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
About the Author
Book One
“Solander the Reborn will arrive
in the wind of the Dragons’ breath.
Wanderers and Steaders joined
will slay the Dragons.
Born of blood and terror,
The opal city Paranne will rise at last.”
FROM THE SECRET TEXTS, VOL. 2, SET 31
BY VINCALIS THE AGITATOR
Chapter 1
The scream was Kait Galweigh’s first warning that something was wrong. The second, half an instant later, was the hard metallic stink of human blood mingled with the rank stench of predator.
“Run!” she heard Hasmal shout.
“The gap!”
“Slings!”
“Gods, I think he’s dead!”
She heard running, and shouts, and animal howls. The smells and sounds and the terror hit her like a blow to the skull; her body responded before her mind could. Her blood began to boil and her skin and muscles flowed like liquid, and the human part of her, which had been hunting for edible plants in the forest, Shifted to embrace the monster that lived inside of her; she became the thing she both hated and needed. With the woman burned away, what remained was beast, furred, fanged, four-legged, hungry for the hunt. Karnee now, blood-mad, she raced toward trouble.
She came over the ridge at a dead run, and skidded to a stop at the sight laid out before her. The attackers had her people backed into a narrow crevice in the cliff that formed the north wall of their camp. Turben was down and bleeding heavily. The other three used the plentiful shale scree as their weapon; they were taking turns throwing volleys against the enemy with makeshift slings, timing their fire in such a way that a constant rain of the knifelike stone shards filled the air.
She couldn’t see her attackers, but she knew where they were from the sound of them; they were using the ruin as their shield. They were better armed than the humans. She could hear the twang of bowstrings, the hiss of heavy arrows flying through the air, the rattle and clatter as the arrows rebounded off the cliff face and knocked loose more scree. Better armed and with their prey cornered, they couldn’t help but win.
Unless she found a way to shift the odds in her favor.
She scrambled down the cliff, kicking loose scree as she did. But neither her friends nor her enemies would pay attention to her—four-legged, she moved differently than a human, and gave the impression she was moving away from the trouble.
Once into the valley and downwind of the attackers, she came in behind them, running through the underbrush with her belly to the ground. She was fast and quiet enough that they had no warning when she burst out of the brush to attack them.
She got her first clear look at them as she charged toward the nearest. They were taller than any man and gaunt as specters, and gray fur hung from their frames in ragged, moss-festooned hanks. She guessed they massed twenty to twenty-five stone—more than four times the weight and bulk of the average human. They ran on four legs but stood clumsily on two to fling rocks or shoot their arrows, and they called to each other in rough syllables that were not far removed from wordless grunts. Yet they did speak, and they did make weapons, and their faces, arranged in human fashion though larger and more heavily boned, bespoke their Wizards’ War origins. They were Scarred—monsters whose ancestors a thousand years earlier had been men.
She was terrified. All her life, she’d heard horrible stories about Scarred monsters and what they were capable of—and she knew what she was capable of, which made her give the stories credence—but in the end it didn’t matter. Her friends needed her.
She lunged in, keeping low to the ground and aiming straight for the rear leg of the nearest attacker, and before any of the four beasts could react to her, she’d sunk her fangs into the tendons of the monster’s right leg and ripped through them.
The monster screamed, and blood gushed in her mouth. She bounded away, feeling the surge of the Karnee battle-lust boiling in her veins, fed by the raging river of her fear and determination.
The beast she’d hamstrung was on three legs, turning to face her as quickly as he could. She could read murder in his face. Another Scarred had turned, too, and nocked an arrow. She spun, darted from the cleared circle, and burst out at one of the two monsters still firing at the cornered humans. An arrow grazed her back and fire screamed through her body, but she kept going.
She launched herself upward at the creature’s underbelly, her claws unsheathed and hooking forward, teeth bared. She ripped into the unprotected skin and the slippery, stinking weight of gut rolled down at her. The beast shrieked, its voice far too high-pitched for its size, and flailed at her. Her momentum carried her out of its reach, but into the path of the other two monsters.
One released an arrow in her direction; the other reached for her with dirt-crusted claws as long as her hands. The reaching monster hampered the aim of the shooting one, and the shooting one screamed at the grabbing one and startled him, and so both missed. She scrambled away before they could organize their attack, and ran out into the rain of shale.
“Don’t hit me!” she yelled, and caught just a glimpse of the pale faces of her friends peering from the protection of the crevice. “I’m going to lead them away from camp. Hasmal—set a . . . a spellfire.”
She heard them shout, “Kait!” Someone yelled, “Right!” and she hoped Hasmal had understood what she’d said. Her Shifted voice was deep and coarse, more the growling of an animal than the speech of a woman. Godsall, she hoped he could figure out what she planned, and that he would do what she wanted him to do.
The monster she’d disemboweled was down. But the others were after her, their long legs covering a hellish amount of ground.
She charged straight for the stream that fed into the bay and leaped it. On the other side, a game trail ran parallel to the water. Kait followed it; browsing animals had cleared much of the stream edge, so for something her size, it made easy running. The beasts that pursued her, much larger than she, struggled with branches and thickets overhanging the trail at eye level. She could hear them crashing after her, falling behind. They started howling, and she could hear the frustration in their calls.
She would make it. She was going to survive. She’d have time to get down to the beach, to swim into the bay—
Another monster appeared in front of her—another part of their hunting band, coming to assist its packmates. She shrieked, caught off guard, but it wasn’t surprised to see her. It narrowed its eyes and lunged.
She barely evaded it; she was small and fast, it was large and slower. But not slow enough. It jumped sideways to block her escape, yelling as it did. From behind her, one of the others shouted back.
They talked to each other. It was too easy to think of them as animals, but they weren’t.
She shot straight up a solid tree, claws hooking into the bark. The monster stretched after her, its claws slashing into her haunch, and she felt a single insta
nt of blinding pain along her spine. She dug harder with her hindquarters and pulled free. She clung to an upper branch, out of reach of the things, wishing for the safety of the bay. She was running out of time. She began the careful process of moving across the network of interfaced branches that would get her there.
She heard the flat twang of a bowstring, and an arrow buried itself in her flank. She screamed, feeling the hot gush of blood down her leg and the weight of the shaft throwing off her balance. The pain was another weight, sucking the fight from her. She stared down; one of them tracked her through the trees, waiting for another clear shot. She flung herself forward, and heard another of them crashing toward her from the side. The ones behind her were closing.
Hurry with the fire, Hasmal, she prayed. If he did, her friends would survive; they would find a way to get the Mirror to the Reborn even if she died. They had to succeed at that—Solander the Reborn had told her he had to have it. The Mirror, which was rumored to resurrect the dead, would one day give her back her murdered Family, but even before it did that, it would serve Solander’s purpose in creating his world of peace and love—the world in which her kind would be accepted, not hunted down, tortured, and slaughtered.
She never thought she’d discover something worth dying for, but a world that would not murder little children for being born Scarred was such a thing. Her family’s lives were such a thing. If her friends could live to get the Mirror to Solander . . .
She yanked the arrow from her flank with teeth and claws, and, fighting the agony, went scrambling on three legs along the branch. The Karnee Shift began closing the wound, but ate up her energy to do it. Her body would devour itself to heal; if she lived through this, she would have a hellish price to pay.
Then she heard fire crackling behind her and caught the first whiff of smoke. The spellfire wouldn’t be stopped by rain, or by live, wet wood, or by unfavorable wind. It would burn everything burnable in its path, carving a perfect circle of destruction through the forest, stopping only when the energy with which Hasmal had fueled it ran out. It would burn faster than any normal fire, reducing a full-grown tree to ashes in mere moments. If she didn’t get out of its way, it would burn her, too.
