Courage of falcons

  Courage of Falcons

  Holly Lisle

  Warner Books

  ALSO BY HOLLY LISLE

  Diplomacy of Wolves

  Vengeance of Dragons

  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.

  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., 1271 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  Aspect® name and logo are registered trademarks of Warner Books, Inc.

  A Time Warner Company

  ISBN 0-7595-4010-1

  A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 2000 by Warner Books.

  First eBook edition: December 2000

  Visit our Web site at www.iPublish.com

  For Matt

  With love and hope

  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 and Keely Bush, Gretchen Woehr, Kathy Napolitano, Celia Hixon, Guy Beall, Ilari, Jacob Somner, and Scott Schuler.

  Book One

  Nothing tears at the thoughts like a house abandoned. Its empty rooms whisper of tender memories forgotten, of the ghosts of joy and pain left to wander unheeded, of dreams dead of neglect. Here, where once people lived and loved, brought forth life and faced death, I run my fingers along crumbling masonry and shiver at the unimaginable loss of the unknowable dead, and I flee in dread lest the soul of this forgotten place waken and cling to me and claim me... and refuse to let me leave.

  VINCALIS THE AGITATOR,

  FROM THE LAND BEYOND LOSS

  Chapter 1

  A late-season blast of cold wind set the walls of the tent snapping and blew icy mountain air through tied-down flaps. Alarista crouched inside, looking from viewing glass to viewing glass, fighting down panic.

  In two glasses, she had twin views of the inside of a carriage cruising through Calimekka's narrow back streets Kait and Ry escaping from the Dragons with the Mirror of Souls. Over the steady clatter of the horses' hooves she could hear Kait, Ry, and Ian recounting what had happened to each of them since last they'd seen one another.

  In another glass, she could see the remains of some delicate contrivance of crystal spires and silver gears lying in ruins on a worktable. The two voices whispering from that viewing glass were shrill with fear.

  "... I just found it this way. Shamenar was in here working on it, and now he's gone, too. It will be a month's work at least to restore it, if we can even find Shamenar "

  "You think they got him?"

  "I don't want to think...."

  Another glass, another view. Through the eyes of someone running, a long, dark corridor illuminated by the runner's coldlampshadows dancing back, then leaping forward, fantastic shapes crawling up the walls and resolving into mundane objects. The only sound at the moment was the runner's harsh breathing. Whoever he was, he'd been down four branches of the corridor already, asking the first guard he came to if anyone carrying anything had passed that way.

  A dozen more glasses showed groups of people standing or sitting and talking, or revealed fountains, or gardens, or books or papers being slowly perused. Several glasses were temporarily dark their sources asleep, or possibly dead. A hundred more glasses were lined to one side, these never activated. With Kait and Ry gone, they probably never would be, but Alarista kept them nearby because doing so was the procedure that Dùghall and Hasmal had worked out. More than once in the past several days a glass had come suddenly to life, and Dùghall or Hasmal had learned something valuable. Until all hope was gone, she would cling to that procedure.

  Hasmal had been gone, she estimated, half a station snatched bodily from the tent by some unimagined Dragon magic and taken... somewhere. So far, not one of the viewing glasses had revealed the view she sought a glimpse of Hasmal. She whispered an unending prayer to Vodor Imrish, asking that if he still listened and he still loved her he would give Hasmal back. If she could see him, just for an instant, just to know that he was still alive, she would be able to breathe again.

  Hands pulled apart the tent flaps and Yanth slipped between them. He dropped to the tent floor beside Jaim, who had been sitting quietly behind Alarista, offering support simply with his presence. "The healer is on the way," Yanth told Jaim. "Any sign of Hasmal?"

  Jaim's voice was soft. "She hasn't moved, so I don't think so."

  Alarista summoned the energy to answer them, just to let them know she could hear them and that she was still aware of the world around her, if only marginally. "No sign yet."

  "I'm sorry. Is there something I can do to help?"

  "Stay close," she said. "If anything changes, I might need both of you."

  The healer came through the flaps a moment later, dragging her kit. She knelt beside Dùghall and unrolled it. The woman was one of Dùghall's people part of the army he'd built months earlier. She was a Falcon, older and well trained in the healing magics, and calm enough, considering the circumstances. If he had any chance of getting better, the healer would make the most of it.

  Guards knelt quietly along the tent walls, swords in hand; they hadn't laughed or joked since Hasmal vanished in a scream and a flash of light. They watched, tense and scared. It had been their responsibility to kill Dùghall or Hasmal if a Dragon soul, drawn through but not successfully locked into one of the miniature soul-mirrors, possessed either of them. Now Dùghall lay unresponsive on one of the mats, and Hasmal was gone, and Alarista had already told them she didn't have either the strength or the magical skills that had let Dùghall and Hasmal successfully capture so many Dragon souls. They knew that if she took on a Dragon, they were likely to have to kill her.

  A hand gripped her shoulder, and she jumped. "Look!" Yanth whispered, and pointed at one of the viewing glasses that had until that instant been dark.

  She turned to the sudden light, to the quickly resolving image, and she gasped. Hasmal's face was suddenly very close to her own; it had been cut across both cheeks and over both eyelids, and blood caked the wounds. Always pale, his skin had taken on the color of bleached bone. She could count the beads of sweat that rolled across his forehead and marked his upper lip. "We found a way to make our own Mirror of Souls," he whispered.

  The image danced down to a long, bloody knife, and to a thumb that tested the edge of it. "Really? Tell me more."

  "I'll... I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything."

  She heard a soft chuckle that raised the hair on the back of her neck and made her stomach churn. "I know you will. First tell me how you made it. We'll get to how you used it soon enough."

  Alarista gripped Yanth's hand and squeezed. "He's torturing him."

  "I know."

  "Oh, gods! Oh, Hasmal! We have to help him."

  "I know. But how?"

  Alarista couldn't turn
her eyes away from the nightmare in front of her. "I'll have to draw the Dragon's soul to me. I'll have to capture it."

  "You couldn't do it before," Jaim said quietly.

  "I'll just have to do it this time."

  "And if you fail, we lose Hasmal and you. We're going to need you."

  She turned to Jaim, snarling. "I can't sit here and watch him die!"

  Jaim jumped back. "I wasn't suggesting that you watch him die."

  "Then what?"

  Jaim looked over at the healer working on the unconscious Dùghall. "Dùghall could beat the Dragon if he had his strength."

  "As could I, if I had his skills."

  "Dùghall said you had as much control of magic as he did, only in other areas. Could you use your magic to help the healer heal him?"

  Alarista stared at Jaim. She wasn't a healer, and just healing Dùghall wouldn't do her any good. Even healed, he would be drained of energy and incapable of besting the soul of a rested, powerful Dragon. But where the healer could make him well, she could give him strength. Her strength. The price she would pay...

  She chose not to think about the price she would pay.

  She asked the healer, "Namele, are you nearly finished?"

  "I've done all I can he hasn't woken up yet, but now he's merely sleeping. A few days' rest and he should be able to sit up again. He's very frail whatever happened nearly killed him."

  "But he's healed."

  Namele looked over at her, eyes wary. "As much as magic can heal him, yes. He's old, he's worn out, and simple healing can't fix that. He won't be able to do any more Dragon fighting."

  Alarista turned to Yanth and Jaim. In a low voice, she said, "Drag him over here. Then sit by me when I finish what I have to do, I'll need you to catch me. Finally and this is the most important thing when Dùghall wakes, the very instant he wakes, show him Hasmal. Don't let him waste time on me. Tell him he has to stop the Dragon before he kills Hasmal."

  Yanth said, "What do you plan on doing?"

  "The only thing I can. He needs youth and strength to fight the Dragons. I'm going to give him youth. And strength."

  She heard the healer gasp. "You can't "

  "Shut up. I can." She glared at Yanth. "You'll take care of this?"

  He nodded. "I will."

  They dragged Dùghall to her, assisted by two guards and impeded by the protesting healer, and propped him across from her in a sitting position. Then, while the guards held him upright, Yanth moved to Alarista's left shoulder, and Jaim to her right. She heard Hasmal scream once, and she shuddered.

  Hold on, Has, she thought. Hold on. Help is coming.

  She summoned all her courage, and rested her hands on Dùghall's shoulders. Then she lifted her chin, and stared toward the heavens where Vodor Imrish held his court, and in a loud, clear voice, she commanded:

  "From my strength,

  From my blood,

  From my flesh,

  From my life,

  I offer all that I am,

  All that I have,

  All that Dùghall Draclas needs

  To make him whole.

  Take from me to give to him,

  Strength and blood,

  Flesh and life,

  Even unto my own death.

  I freely offer my gift,

  And in his name accept my offer.

  Vodor Imrish, hear me."

  She did not draw her own blood, nor scrape her skin. She had no need of that. Their bodies touched hers strong and whole, Dùghall's weak and worn. She would not limit her offering or mark off with a circle that which she would give and that which she would hold back. Whatever Vodor Imrish chose to take from her to give to Dùghall, he could take.

  She knew in offering that she might die that Dùghall, so near death, might take from her more than she could give and survive. He might absorb her. But Dùghall knew what she did not, and he could win for them where she could not. If she died, she would do so fighting to destroy the Dragons and to save Hasmal, and that would be enough. If she died, her soul would go on, and she would someday find Hasmal again. And meanwhile, her Hasmal would live.

  She felt the fire flow into her veins, Matrin's magic stirred by the godtouch, and she knew that Vodor Imrish had heard her. She rejoiced for just an instant, for until that moment he had been deaf to all prayers and all entreaties. Then, as the fire filled her, it burned through her and emptied her. Her world grew dark and she heard a rushing in her ears. Her mouth grew dry, her body heavy, and a giant weight pressed down on her, making each breath a fight.

  She knew she was falling, but could not stop herself. Her soul tugged at the moorings of her flesh, called by the wind of approaching death. She did not fight that wind, but at the last instant, when she was sure she would leave her body behind, she felt a surge of energy flow into her, binding her soul tightly to her cage of skin and bones. She was too weak to move too weak even to open her eyes but she lived, and knew she would live yet a little longer. Her last coherent thought was a prayer: that Dùghall had received from her enough to do what he needed; that Hasmal could hold on until he did it.

  Chapter 2

  Dùghall Draclas came roaring out of unconsciousness like a man trapped underwater who at the last possible instant breaks free from his trap and bursts to the surface. He lunged to his feet, gasping, his eyes open but for an instant unfocused.

  His body burst with uncontainable energy. He felt as if he could fly, as if he could run from one edge of the known world to the other without his feet ever touching the ground, as if he could rebuild the Glass Towers single-handed. He had a hunger that he hadn't felt so overwhelmingly in years; he desired sex with the obsessive full-body yearning of a young man.

  He stared around him at blurred bright colors and at shapes that he could not force to resolve into anything meaningful. The voices in his ears were clear and sharp, startlingly loud, full of nuances and depths but lacking meaning. Smells filled his nostrils, pungent and heady and rich. It was all new, all wondrous, all incomprehensible but glorious.

  I've been reborn, he thought. Have died, have come into the world in a new body. I am once again a squalling infant, and in a few moments or a few days I'll forget that I am Dùghall Draclas....

  Sound was the first thing to resolve into comprehensible patterns, the first thing to shatter his illusion. "... don't know whether she's going to survive the shock."

  "What about him? He looks healthy as peasant hell."

  "Dùghall? Can you hear us? Can you see us?"

  "Nothing. She's paid a terrible price for nothing."

  Sight resolved next. He was in a tent... no. He was in the tent, where he and Hasmal had been pulling the souls out of Dragons. He was standing up, weaving back and forth, with a soldier at either side keeping him from falling on his face. He was looking down Jaim stared up at him, Yanth and the healer Namele were crouched over a white-haired woman that he did not recognize.

  He licked his lips, and they felt... different. Thicker, firmer, moister. He still felt that wondrous energy, that illusion of incredible strength, that inescapable sexual fire. "What... happened?" he asked, and wondered at the new depth of his voice, at the richness and the range. At the clarity of the sound when he spoke, at the presence of soft sounds he hadn't heard in years. Decades.

  A relieved smile flashed across Jaim's face. "Dùghall? You with us?"

  Dùghall nodded. "Yes."

  "No time for explanations, then. A Dragon pulled Hasmal physically through the connection between them. He's torturing him now. If you can't pull the Dragon's soul from his body, he's going to kill Hasmal. You don't have much time; Hasmal looks bad."

  Yanth and the healer dragged the old woman out of the way, and Dùghall dropped to his knees beside Jaim. He stared into the viewing glass Jaim indicated and saw quick flashes of Hasmal, of a knife, of blood and horror. He heard a scream whisper-soft through the viewing-glass connection but no less chilling for its lack of volume and heard a gentle, soothing vo
ice say, "More. Or I'll cut out a lung, dear fellow, and pull it out through your back. You really only need one, you know."

  Jaim said, "Hasmal managed to plant a talisman on the bastard only a few moments ago. It's been going on like this ever since. He's been lying making up all sorts of wild stories and talking as fast as he can. But the snake-futtering whoreson keeps cutting him anyway." Jaim's voice sounded tight and dry in his throat.

  "I'll get him," Dùghall said. "I'll stop this."

  For the moment he didn't question his strength. He accepted it, and with it the miracle that had brought him back from sharply remembered pain and utter exhaustion. Jaim handed him a featureless gold ring attached to a tripod of twisted silver wire; this would become a tiny Mirror of Souls a house and a prison for the soul of the Dragon who tortured Hasmal. He set it on the rug directly in front of him and with a quick swipe of his index finger scraped a bit of skin from the inside of his cheek.