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  The Wreck of Heaven

  Book Two of the World Gates

  Holly Lisle

  Matthew, with all my love

  Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  MOLLY MCCOLL tightened the laces on the heavy silk bodice…

  CHAPTER 2

  LAUREN FROZE in place, trying desperately to think. She picked…

  CHAPTER 3

  THE RRÔN SPUN and spiraled in the sky above the…

  CHAPTER 4

  CLACK-CLACK.

  CHAPTER 5

  LAUREN, WITH JAKE clutching her hand, gave Birra a hard…

  CHAPTER 6

  LAUREN AND JAKE WATCHED, amazed, as the goroths swarmed through…

  CHAPTER 7

  MOLLY HELPED LAUREN and the goroths and the guards move…

  CHAPTER 8

  PETE SAT on the green park bench, feeding a pair…

  CHAPTER 9

  MOLLY WATCHED LAUREN walk into the dark, cold fire of…

  CHAPTER 10

  BAANRAAK, resting comfortably outside the entrance to his cave, enjoying…

  CHAPTER 11

  LAUREN FACED OFF against the black-robed figure, bazooka on her…

  CHAPTER 12

  AS BAANRAAK HAD PREDICTED, Rr'garn didn't see him coming, and…

  CHAPTER 13

  SOMETHING HAD BEEN watching her, but Molly couldn't feel it…

  CHAPTER 14

  BAANRAAK KNEW his little Vodi hid behind the door. He…

  CHAPTER 15

  LAUREN AND JAKE fell through the mirror into the stone…

  CHAPTER 16

  BAANRAAK MADE a neat escape, managing to avoid any confrontation…

  CHAPTER 17

  LAUREN, finishing the next gate, discovered that Jake had already…

  CHAPTER 18

  HOT CHOCOLATE FINISHED and conversation basically done, Lauren and Seolar…

  CHAPTER 19

  LAUREN HUGGED JAKE CLOSE, then released him and sent him…

  CHAPTER 20

  "…LATEST REPORTS just coming in on the stunning earthquake centered…

  CHAPTER 21

  THREE DAYS PASSED in silence in Copper House. For three…

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  PRAISE

  OTHER BOOKS BY HOLLY LISLE

  COVER

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  CHAPTER 1

  Copper House, Ballahara, Nuue, Oria

  MOLLY MCCOLL tightened the laces on the heavy silk bodice and shrugged into the brocade overgown. Alive, she thought. I'm alive. I'm alive! I was dead, and now I'm alive, and I'm back in Copper House. She tried on a smile, but it didn't seem to fit.

  She remembered dying all too clearly—remembered taking her sister's kid through the gate between the worlds, only too slowly, because she'd been unwilling to do what she had to do. And her hesitation had almost cost three-year-old Jake his life.

  Saving him had cost her hers. The healing that would have been so effortless on Oria had, on Earth, required her to take every bit of Jake's pain and all of his injuries into her own body. To absorb them. On Earth, she'd been only human, stripped of downworld magic and Vodi power. And on Earth she had died.

  But now she was alive again, brought back by the Vodi magic. Brought back to Oria—and in her head, the voices of long-dead Vodian whispered remembrance of their own deaths and rebirths and deaths again.

  Molly had only been alive again for a few hours—at least she could only remember the last few hours. She felt out of place in her own skin; she could not remember how she had arrived at Copper House. Her first memory was of stumbling naked through the forest. Her only clues about her return were the leaves in her hair and the dirt under her fingernails.

  The sleek, heavy gold necklace purred around her neck almost as if it were a cat held to her throat. She didn't want to think about the necklace, or about being the Vodi; she didn't really want to think about being alive, or why that was wrong. She wanted to enjoy being with Seolar. She wanted to be in love, and happy, and carefree in a world as far from the trailer park in Cat Creek as any human being could conceivably get.

  "You weren't born to be carefree," she muttered at her reflection in the mirror. The mirror only emphasized that truth. On Earth she'd been of average height, moderately attractive, and clearly human. Oria had changed that, and her unexpected return from death had changed it even more. Her hair now fell to her waist, its color a copper so glossy it looked metallic. She'd grown both taller and thinner—she guessed she stood around six feet now, but couldn't be certain since she lacked any mechanism to convert local measurements to those familiar to her; she was still short by veyâr standards. The bone structure of her face had new angles, high cheekbones, and a sharp little chin. Her eyes stared back from the mirror, impossible emerald green, deeply slanted, and enormous. She still, thankfully, had the right number of fingers and toes. She glanced at the twelve-string guitar leaning in the corner of the room and tried to imagine learning to play all over again with the surfeit of digits on a pair of veyâr hands.

  "You look breathtaking," Seolar, who was her beloved and the Imallin of Copper House, said softly. She could have said the same of him. His gold skin, darker gold hair, and jet-black eyes, his height and his grace gave him the air of some otherworld angel. Even the golden brown tattoos that curled and spiraled across his cheeks only added to his beauty.

  She turned to him and smiled uncertainly. "Do I?"

  "I swear it." The smile he gave her in return trembled at the corners, and she saw brightness in his eyes. He closed the distance between them with three steps, and pulled her into his arms. "Never leave me like that again. I was lost without you. I died inside, and only when you appeared on the balcony tonight did I start to breathe again."

  Inside of Molly, the darkness descended. "I'm the Vodi," she whispered.

  "I know. But I love you."

  She nodded. "But I'm the Vodi." She pulled back so that she could look into his eyes. "Do you know what sort of lives my predecessors lived?"

  "I read the old records. After you…after you died…" Seolar turned away from her and looked out the window at the last vestiges of twilight, at pale wisps of gold and pink streaked across the indigo sky. "I did little else but read, trying to understand."

  "Then you know what happened to the Vodi."

  "They were hunted. Mercilessly, by terrible enemies." He turned back to her. In a hoarse voice, he continued. "They died again and again. But that will not be your fate. I won't let it."

  Molly said, "I hope you can stop it, Seo. You can't see the pictures I see, or hear the voices of the others. The necklace holds them close to me, and when I close my eyes and let them show me, I can see where the other Vodian went before me. They still have their horror. They're hollow—they're ancient shells, and all that's left of them is the death and the pain and the fear. I close them out as much as I can. I don't want to go where they have been." As he turned to face her again, she added, "Not again, anyway."

  "No. You are my love. You are my heart and s—" His voice broke off, and an expression flashed across his face that worried Molly. "You are my heart and soul. I'll keep you safe." He put an arm around her and led her out of their suite. "While you dressed, I told Birra to have a meal brought to the solar. I know it's your favorite room, and I thought your first night back, it would be pleasant to have a private dinner among the flowers and beside the little waterfall. It should be ready now." Molly smiled up at him. "That sounds wonderful." The pressure of his hand on the small of her back and his wondrous warmth and presence steadied her. She needed steadying; glad as she was to find herself alive, overjoyed as she was to be in Oria, in Copper Ho
use, in Seolar's embrace, she could not shake either the darkness inside her nor an ugly hollowness that seemed to echo in even the smallest moment of silence. Death had changed her, and not in good ways. "That sounds wonderful," she repeated. And she wished it did. But far back in her mind, darkness moved and shifted and whispered. Far back in her mind, the enemies of her dead predecessors had opened their eyes and were yawning and stretching and sniffing the air, sensing fresh meat, and while Molly hungered for the ordinariness of dinner and the charm of an indoor waterfall and the sweet scents of out-of-season flowers in a room where she could look out at the moonlight on snow, she could not hide herself from the hunters that stalked the periphery of her mind.

  She could not hide herself from the life she'd been born to live, from the duty that only she could fulfill, from the hand of Fate that held her in its harsh grip.

  She wondered how she would manage to eat and converse with that ball of dread knotting her belly.

  Seolar guided her through the private passageways that kept them out of sight of guests and servants alike; they slipped through the secret panel in the solar into a fairy realm, with thousands of slender tapers lining the walls and stuck in candelabras worked in between the flowers and the plants—in the still fish pond opposite the little stone bridge that spanned the stream, floating candles by the hundreds, flickering and golden.

  On the patio where the two of them had shared their first meal together, a little table, empty plates, and empty glasses already waited. "The food will be along as soon as we call," Seolar said. "I didn't want it to chill."

  "This is so beautiful," Molly said. "How did you manage it so quickly?"

  Seolar laughed. "I put a hundred servants and soldiers to the task. Had they not been able to do the job, I would have commanded two hundred."

  Molly found a genuine laugh inside herself. "It's good to be the king," she muttered.

  Seolar raised an eyebrow.

  Molly shrugged. "A line from a…from an entertainment back home."

  "I like hearing you laugh."

  Molly grinned at him as he held her seat. "It felt good. I'm so glad to be here."

  Seolar rang a bell, then took his seat across from her. "I dread asking for fear of bringing to mind great pain, or great sorrow, but…did you suffer?"

  Molly shook her head. "No. Not once it was over, anyway."

  "What happened?"

  "I was stupid. I hesitated leaving the scene of the battle—you know of the battle?"

  "Yaner was most thorough in telling us what happened."

  Molly said, "He would be. My sister told me to flee the scene of the battle and take her son, Jake, to safety in the other world. She had the gate already in place; I could have gone easily. But I waited because I was afraid that I might not be able to get back here. I hesitated, and a blast hit us. It hit her son—tore him almost in two—just as I finally stepped into the gate. We went through to Earth, but while we were between the worlds, I felt a force keeping Jake alive. Once we reached the other side, though, I knew he would die. I could feel it, and the closer I came to Earth, the more horrible it became. And if he died, it would be my fault." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and felt tears start down her cheeks.

  "You don't need to tell me," Seolar said.

  "But I do. You have to know, because I almost cost us…us." Molly got hold of herself and continued. "I didn't save another little boy once, and I knew that if I let Jake die when, had I done what Lauren told me to do, we would have both been safe, I could never have lived with myself. So when we crossed over, I took his injuries into myself. They weren't survivable. He lived; I died."

  "I'm sorry," Seolar said, and put his hand over hers.

  "Me too. It didn't have to be that way."

  "I'm sorry for every terrible thing that ever happened to you." He leaned forward and kissed her. "Never again, my love. Never again."

  Molly heard footsteps, and a cleared throat. She opened her eyes and Seolar moved back. Birra—dear Birra—stood before her with a covered silver tray. "Imallin," he said, and bowed. He turned to Molly, his expression carefully polite. "And…" His voice faltered, his body went rigid, and the tray dropped to the tabletop with a horrific crash. His hands flew to his face, he dropped to one knee, and from his mouth erupted a keening that on Earth would have had every dog in a one-mile radius howling in sympathy.

  Seolar put a hand on Birra's shoulder, and said, "Enough, man! Catch yourself in hand."

  Birra put his forehead to the floor, and said, "Relieve me, my Imallin. I dare not confess what my eyes tell me they see. Relieve me of my post—I have gone mad."

  "She's real," Seolar said. "That's why I did all this. She's real, she's back with us, and this time we'll keep her safe."

  Birra lifted his head just high enough that he could peer over the table. "Vodi?" he croaked. "Is it really you?"

  Molly smiled. "Birra, it is. I had a long way to come to get home, but I'm here now."

  Birra looked from Molly to Seolar and back to Molly. Tears slid down his tattooed cheeks, and he mopped them with his braids. "How?" he asked, and immediately retracted the question with a vehement shake of his head. "No, I step above my place to ask such a thing. Oh, Vodi," he said, "I would have sold the sun itself to bring you back to us, had it been mine. Anything you would have of me, you have only to ask. Thank all the little gods you have found your way back." He rose, took a deep breath, and seemingly more composed, looked at the mess on the table. "The kitchen has more of everything," he told her. "I will bring you food undisturbed by my…" He gave Seolar a doubtful look. "…foolishness."

  "I'm sorry, Birra," Seolar said, picking up on the cue. "I should have told you. But I thought you would think me mad unless you saw her yourself—and she was dressing. And then I was so excited about my idea I forgot what a shock her presence would be to you."

  "Lucky it did not slay me, truth be told."

  "Indeed." Seolar had the grace to look chagrined. "Perhaps you had best warn the rest of the staff before we send for anything else—I'd hate to spend the rest of the night picking up dropped food and shattered plates."

  Birra gathered up the mess and vanished down the path, and Seolar said, "By tomorrow the House and the village will be decked in ribbons, and by the next day, all of the land, I think."

  Molly said, "It makes for quite a homecoming." She sighed. "Lauren doesn't know."

  "Your sister? You haven't told her?"

  "I woke up in the forest not far from here. I had no way to reach her or tell her. But if we're going to do what our parents planned for us, I'm going to have to find a way."

  "I'll take care of it," Seolar said. "I don't want to take the chance of you going on your own."

  Molly would have argued, but in truth she didn't want to take that chance either. "Send someone reliable to her," she said. "Perhaps Yaner—Lauren knows Yaner."

  "Of course."

  Molly heard a scuffling down the path, and turned to find a handful of servants peering at her through the arching branches of the trees and the lace of the ferns. She smiled at them and they prostrated themselves, then turned and fled.

  "The word is out," Seolar said. "I could punish them for such impertinence…but I won't. We thought the veyâr were doomed; that they want to see for themselves that we once again have hope, well…I won't blame them for that."

  Molly smiled. "No. I'm sorry I so stupidly took hope away from them, even for a little while."

  Seolar kissed her again.

  When the food came back, it tasted wonderful, and Molly discovered that she was ravenous. She ate seconds of everything and thirds of the delicious fruit dessert.

  Seolar watched her eating long after he'd finished with an expression of bemusement. "I don't know why I'm so hungry," she said. "Maybe coming back took a lot out of me." She frowned. "Well, no—there was nothing in me…" She shrugged. "I feel like I haven't seen food in a year, though, and this is so wonderful. And I'm so grateful th
e kitchen made extra."

  Seolar leaned his chin on one cupped hand and said, "Do you think you'll be this hungry at every meal now? I may have to find more cooks." He grinned at her and Molly laughed.

  "I don't know. I don't think so. It's just that this is the first thing I've eaten. And I didn't even know I was so hungry."

  "There's more if you want it," Seolar said.

  Molly leaned back in her chair and sighed. "You know, I don't think I do. Finally."

  Seolar's smile broadened. "Good. Because I don't think there was that much more."

  Molly laughed, then leaned forward. "In the next few days, we'll have so much to do. But tonight—tonight we don't have to do anything in particular, do we?"