The Secret Texts Page 46

  But he did draw himself from the peace and the joy of that long gestation to touch his sword, his Falcon Dùghall Draclas.

  * * *

  Dùghall.

  The voice came from all around Dùghall Draclas as he knelt by the embroidered silk zanda, preparing to throw his future with a handful of silver coins. The quadrants of House, Life, Spirit, Pleasure, Duty, Wealth, Health, Goals, Dreams, Past, Present, and Future lay empty, awaiting the patterns that the zanda coins would make within them.

  Dùghall.

  He put down the coins and took a deep breath. His heart knew that voice.

  “Reborn?” he whispered.

  My faithful Falcon—you have listened with your heart and with your soul. You’ve gathered allies for me, you’ve readied them, and I can see that they’re strong and courageous. Send them to me now, in secret.

  “I’ll bring them to you,” Dùghall said.

  No. You’ve gathered good men and you’ve trained them well, but you aren’t a soldier, Dùghall. Wait where you are.

  The Reborn’s dismissal crushed him. He’d thought that he would accompany the army that he’d gathered for the Reborn—in fact, he’d thought that he would lead it. Now he was being told to send the men—many of them his sons—off alone, while he waited in the middle of this nowhere he’d chosen as a training ground.

  He was a sword unsheathed and hungry for the blood of the Reborn’s enemy, and he’d been waiting for this call from the moment he left Galweigh House in secret to follow the dictates of a throw of the zanda. He’d suffered deprivation and hardship, pain and fear; he’d served with his whole heart, he’d offered everything he had. He was an old sword, he knew, and one with rust on the blade—but that Solander the Reborn would call the men he’d gathered and not call him . . .

  Solander’s soft voice whispered in his mind and heart, Dùghall, I have other plans for you than to have you die on a battlefield. The Dragons are returning. They move among the Calimekkans already, preparing a place for themselves there. You will wait where you are, for I foresee a disaster, and I also see that your presence can overcome it. But only if you wait where you are.

  “What disaster? What can I do here? There’s nothing here but a fishing village.”

  If I were a god I could tell you the future, but I’m only a man. The future is as opaque to me as it is to you. I know only that if you wait where you are, you will avert the destruction of everything the Falcons have worked for in the last thousand years.

  Dùghall said, “Then I will wait. I serve as you desire—I ask only that you use me.”

  You are my sword, Dùghall. Without you, I am lost.

  Then the Reborn was gone. The warmth that had surrounded Dùghall vanished, and with it the cocoon of joy and love and hope. He rose, his knees creaking as he did, and walked to the window of the grass hut in which he’d been living, and stared up at the smoking cone of the volcano to the north. Life was like that volcano—calm on the outside, while underneath it was seething and deadly and able to explode with unimaginable violence at any instant. What could destroy a thousand years of planning? What could go wrong with Solander’s triumphant return?

  In the field to the north of the village, the men he’d gathered drilled together, preparing for a battle that he’d convinced them was coming. He needed to send them to the Reborn. The little fleet of islander longships he’d gathered would need to sail away without him to the south, to the edge of Ibera, where the Veral Territories met the Iberan border. His magic had pinpointed that place as their eventual destination. From there, they would meet the Reborn, and he would take them to fight against the Dragons in Calimekka.

  And when his troops were gone, Dùghall would wait in this little fishing village until a sign told him that his moment had come. He would fast. He would prepare himself physically, as he had been doing. He would study the throws of the zanda, and summon Speakers to tell him what they saw moving within the Veil. He would serve.

  He only wished he had some idea what sort of disaster was coming.

  Chapter 11

  Hasmal crouched in the aft bilge, dabbing filched oil of wintergreen beneath his nostrils and trying to ignore both the stink of the bilge and the rolling of the ship. He’d have a hard time controlling his magic if he were retching all the time he cast his spell.

  He felt lucky he’d found a place where he could work unwatched. The Wind Treasure boasted three separate bulkheads in her bilge—an aft bulkhead, a middle one, and one at the fore. All three had access hatches, but the aft one had a hatch that lay just beyond the head. He could go to the head without raising suspicions, especially now that the ship had sailed and the crew had seen him both seasick and gripped with bowel flux. If he bolted toward them, a pained, half-panicked expression on his face, they scattered, clearing his path.

  He could be gone as much as a station after such an act, and no one would come looking.

  Kait crouched beside him. “We aren’t going to have long. Just because your spell got me in here without being seen doesn’t mean he won’t notice I’m missing.”

  “He’s with his friends. He won’t look for you for a while.”

  “We can hope.” She refused the oil of wintergreen when he offered it to her, wrinkling her nose. “I’d rather smell the bilge,” she said. “I hate perfumes.”

  “Sorry.” He got out his magic bag and pulled out a hand mirror, blood-bowl, thorn needle, and herbs. “I have everything you need. You’re going to have to link to the Reborn and get him to tell you how to work the Mirror of Souls.”

  Her eyebrows went up and she shook her head. “You said you needed my help . . . but I’m no wizard, Hasmal. I’m just now getting a feel for the simple magics. Linking . . . that’s big.”

  “Not as big as directing a shield around as much of your spell as I can, and watching over you to make sure that no other wizard notices the movement of magic, and holding a spell ready to protect you if you’re attacked. You or I could link to Solander, but only I can make sure you don’t die while you’re doing it.”

  She looked queasy. “Isn’t there some other way?”

  “I’ve tried the other ways. I’ve summoned Speakers, I’ve spirit-walked the past, I’ve gone through the Texts looking for anything that might tell how the damned Mirror works or what Solander intended the Falcons to do with it. I’m not strong enough or talented enough to reach the place in the past where the Mirror was last used, the Texts are mute about the Mirror, and the Speakers just laugh at me. I’m out of options.”

  She shivered and nodded. “Then give me the thorn and the blood-bowl and help me through this.”

  “You have to ask Solander how to use the Mirror—exact steps, exact words, what we should expect it to do. . . .”

  Kait nodded again. “I’ll get everything.”

  He waited while she stabbed her finger with the thorn and dropped her blood into the blood-bowl. He coached her through the ceremony that would link her to the Reborn. She was afraid, and he could understand that—but she had a courage that he envied. She did what she had to do.

  He started casting his own spells even before he saw the change come over her body; by the time the blissful smile spread across her face, he’d formed the shield that surrounded her, a sphere of energy flawed only at the point where Kait’s life force curled out from her in a thin tendril that connected her across uncounted leagues to the soul of the Reborn. He set it so that if anything attacked that delicate connection, the shield would snap shut on its own. Kait would lose her connection to Solander, but she’d survive.

  With that set, he opened himself to the ship. He loosed his conscious self from the confines of his body and connected himself to the boards upon which he sat; his mind traced the connections of each board to the next, flowing outward, stretching, cautiously touching each new structure and noting the presence of each living thing until the ship became his body, with his human body only a tiny appendage. He “knew” the ship the way he knew his
own body—felt its movement, saw the water stretching away from him and beneath him, heard and followed every conversation going on in the ship simultaneously.

  Such openness put him in tremendous danger—he could not shield or protect himself in any way while his soul stretched outside of the confines of his flesh—but in no other way could he be sure that his and Kait’s activities had aroused no curiosity.

  In one of the forward cabins, Ry and his lieutenants played cards. The crew did their work. Ian stood on the aft deck, staring back toward Novtierra. Hasmal watched his eyes—Ian looked like he contemplated murder. Not at that moment, however. The ship was quiet . . . the activities of its passengers safe for the present . . . and yet . . .

  He felt something wrong. Something marked the ship; someone tracked it from a distance. He felt around blindly, as a man would feel for a door in a dark room. A link lay within the ship’s wooden body—a physical focus for distant magic. Before he could find out who watched the ship, he had to find that link.

  * * *

  Welcome, Kait.

  Reborn. . . . In the wordless exchange that followed, Solander’s touch filled her soul. Again she felt his complete acceptance of her, his unconditional love for her. For a long and blissful moment, she asked nothing of him, feeding herself instead from the simple joy of being in his presence.

  Her task couldn’t wait forever, though, and at last she forced herself to the unpleasantness of her reality. We’re in trouble, she told the unborn infant. We’ve been taken by the enemy, and we have every reason to believe that when we reach the shores of Ibera, the Sabirs will take the Mirror from us. If we have any hope of getting it to you, we have to know how to use it now.

  No, Solander said. Kait felt fear suffuse featureless light in which she floated. Do nothing with the Mirror of Souls except bring it to me. It is the vehicle through which the Dragons will return to Matrin.

  Kait felt the chill of his words. If we can’t get it to you, then we should destroy it.

  No. A failed attempt to destroy it could well free the Dragons through you. And even if you could manage a successful attempt, you would do so at the price of the destruction of your own soul.

  Why?

  Because you would be destroying the souls of those within it. Those who destroy immortality pay an eternal price.

  Kait thought of the smooth platinum-bright curves of the artifact, of the warm light that spiraled up through its center, of the feeling of comfort she got from being near it. She had been sure it was something good in spite of the faintly unpleasant scent that emanated from it. And that, she thought, made sense. The Dragons wouldn’t find any advantage in creating something that looked evil; people would be far too willing to destroy something like that. But things that looked valuable, that gave off pleasant sensations . . .

  And that brought to mind Amalee, who had suggested to Kait that she cross the ocean to retrieve the Mirror.

  The soul you know as Amalee is one of the wakened Dragons, the Reborn told her. But she set you to a task as important to me as it is to her. When I have the Mirror, I can release the souls it holds directly into the Veil, where they will be judged by the souls of their peers. Then I can destroy the Mirror, so that the Dragons’ evil will not return to Matrin in any form

  Kait started to ask him if he could offer her some help, some advice, on getting the Mirror safely to him, but without warning, she was torn away from the warmth of the Reborn’s presence. His light vanished and for an instant she hung in the absolute darkness of void, her body consumed by pain so fierce she felt certain she was being ripped apart.

  Then she was in her body again, in the bilge, racked by nausea, blinded by pain, with Hasmal shaking her and slapping her face and whispering, “Kait! Kait? Wake up! Are you hurt? Kait?”

  His face was right against hers when she came around enough to look at him, and she could see stark terror in his eyes.

  “What happened?” She groaned and held her belly; the pain receded slowly but the nausea remained.

  “The shield I set around you snapped shut,” he told her.

  She shook her head, not understanding.

  “You were attacked. Someone was watching you—watching the whole ship—and when you reached for the Reborn, whoever it was attacked.”

  “Ry attacked me?” she asked.

  “No. The attack didn’t come from anyone on the ship.”

  “Are we in danger now?”

  “Not for the moment. I’ve shielded both of us. We’ll be safe for a while yet.”

  “So who found us? Who tried to get me?”

  “I’m not certain. I managed to trace the trail of the wizard who was spying on us as far as Calimekka, but when I got too close, something about my presence alerted him. He came after me fast; I had to break off my connection with the ship. I barely shielded myself in time—and while I did, he attacked you.”

  She noticed that Hasmal’s hands were shaking. Even in the darkness of the bilge she could see his pallor, and even over the stench of stale water, dead rats, and refuse she could smell his fear.

  He added, “I’d guess Wolves were watching the ship.”

  “Then they may know about the Reborn. And the Mirror.”

  “Almost certainly.”

  She pressed her fingers to her temples to ease her aching head. “Oh, gods. Then what do we do?”

  “We use the information you got from the Reborn to activate the Mirror. We—” He saw her shaking her head and stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “We don’t touch the Mirror of Souls,” she said. She quickly gave him the rest of Solander’s bad news. When she finished, Hasmal buried his face in his hands.

  “Then what do we do?”

  Kait took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “We keep our eyes open. We do what we can to win Ry over to our side. If we see that things are going badly, we steal one of the longboats in the dead of night and row ourselves and the Mirror to an island, or trust ourselves to the currents.” She leaned forward and rested a hand on his knee. “We are going to do what we have to do, Has. The Mirror is going to reach the Reborn. The Wolves are not going to get it.”

  He looked into her eyes and saw calm in them. A ferocity that he lacked. A determination that he thought he could find within himself. He felt answering echoes of it already. He put his hand over hers. “You’re right. We will. And they won’t.”

  Chapter 12

  Ian stopped Kait as she stepped out of the ship’s shower, having just finished rinsing the stink of the bilge off of herself. “Jayti’s been asking to see you.”

  Kait felt a quick, sharp anxiety, and after an instant’s concentration, understood why. Ian carried the smell of death on his skin and in his clothing. “He’s gotten worse?”

  Ian met her gaze angrily. “He’s dying. All the physick’s promises to do his best are come to nothing.”

  Kait said, “He was dying before we boarded the Wind Treasure; we didn’t think he was going to live. If anything, the physick has given him time and eased the pain of his last days.”

  “You can be satisfied with that. You seem satisfied with everything right now.” He turned away from her, every motion he made and every line of his body charged with his pent-up rage.

  “I’m doing what I have to do to get us all to safety.”

  He stalked toward the gangway, turning only before he ascended to the top deck. “Of course you are. Well, do whatever you’re going to do for Jayti soon. He’ll be dead before the day is out.”

  Then he was gone. His anger hung in the air like a poison cloud.

  Kait twisted the ends of her hair to wring out the water and stared after him. He was trouble waiting to happen.

  * * *

  “You look worse than me,” Jayti said. He lay in the bed, his skin white as bleached linen, his dark hair sweat-drenched and plastered to his skull. His eyes, sunken in their sockets, burned with feverish brightness. The smell of blood-rot and decomposition in the room overwhelm
ed her. Greenish stains marred the sheets where the stump of his leg lay. Ian had been right. He wouldn’t survive much longer.

  “I haven’t been sleeping well,” Kait told him. It was true. Her dreams in Ry’s cabin became far too seductive, and bled over into her waking moments with maddening constancy. So she fought sleep.

  She didn’t comment on Jayti’s appearance. Instead she said, “I was . . . surprised . . . that you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Because I’m afraid of you?”

  “Because I don’t think you like me much.”

  Jayti managed a twisted smile. “You’re right. I don’t. Skinshifters . . .” He shrugged, and even that tiny movement seemed to suck a bit of the remaining life out of him. “You can change, disappear, pretend to be normal, but inside you’re hiding the monster. . . .” He sighed. “But what I think about you doesn’t matter. The captain loves you.”

  Kait cringed, hearing those words presented so baldly. “I know.”

  “You don’t love him,” he offered as a statement, not a question.

  She considered lying, telling the dying man something to make him think better of her for whatever time he had left. He already knew the truth, though. “No. Ian is . . . ah, well, I . . . I want good things for him. But I’m not sure that I can love. Not him . . . not anyone.” She considered her obsession with Ry, and again wondered if anything so consuming and so painful could be love. She sometimes felt it could only be the early stages of madness. “I wish I could. It would make everything . . . easier.”

  Jayti grinned briefly, a death’s-head smile that only accented his gauntness. “Life doesn’t give you easy. Honor only makes things harder. But for the sake of honor, and if you really care what happens to him, you have to tell him. He talks about getting you away from Ry, making you see that he’s the one who’s best for you. He thinks he has a chance to win your heart. I don’t.”