Courage of falcons Read online

  "And to the future may it be better than the past." He took a final drink, then dropped the pottery mug on the packed dirt and stepped on it to smash it, sealing the toast.

  "You dropped your glass," one of his younger sons said, grinning at him. "Wait, if you will, and I'll get you another."

  But Dùghall had smiled all he could for one night. He studied the young man a product, like all of Dùghall's hundreds of sons and daughters, of Dùghall's Imumbarran status as a fertility god and wondered how the lad had felt about being so far from home, waiting for a chance to die on foreign soil for foreign purposes. How he felt about Dùghall's sudden youth he had made clear the first time he'd seen his father after the change. He'd shrugged and smiled gods did funny things, and Dùghall had, by growing younger, simply proved again his status as a god. The rest of Dùghall's sons had seemed equally unfazed. Dùghall shook his head and told the young man, "No more for me. I'm going to see how Alarista is doing. You... you keep the party warm for me."

  A piper and three drummers had just joined the fiddlers who'd been playing for the last station. The whole motley band started into a rollicking staggerjig. His son grinned and grabbed the hand of the Gyru woman he'd been seeing, and the two of them lurched onto a bit of packed earth free of other dancers. They began stamping and leaping and clapping, their attention on each other.

  Dùghall turned away and slipped into the darkness beyond the ring of fires. The main camp hadn't been abandoned soldiers still kept watch around the perimeter, the healer tending Alarista still stayed at her post, and a slow trickle of folk who had already overindulged or had simply reached their limits for noise and motion meandered back to tents or wagons.

  Dùghall stared up at the bright stars, wondering how victory could feel so hollow. We won, he thought. But we lost so much to get here. The Reborn is dead and lost to the world; most of the Falcons are gone; Hasmal is murdered and Alarista ancient and fragile and near death; the gods alone know how many people died and lost their souls to oblivion in the city of Calimekka to make way for the Dragons' great white citadel. I am young, but the coin of my youth was paid with the life of a friend and I am young only in body. My spirit feels older and more tired than ever. What we suffered could have been much worse, I know... but it was bad enough. And one of us needs to spend this night of celebration by remembering the price we've paid, and looking to the future to make sure we use our victory wisely.

  He stopped by Alarista's wagon long enough to confer with the healer; he'd said, after all, that he was leaving the party to visit her. The healer said she was sleeping well, and that the draught she'd received should keep her slumber nightmare-free for the rest of the night. Dùghall, satisfied that he'd done his duty and served his honor, moved on to his tent.

  Inside, he tied the flaps shut and lit his lantern. He shielded it so that it cast its small circle of radiance downward, but left the rest of the tent in darkness. Light showing through the walls of his tent might invite well-wishers, and he didn't want company.

  He unrolled his embroidered black silk zanda, and for a moment studied the embroidered circle the silver thread outlining the twelve triangular sections that represented each face of the Falcon Double-Cube of Existence: House, Life, Spirit, Pleasure, Duty, Wealth, Health, Dreams, Goals, Past, Present, and Future. Each silver-broidered glyph gleamed at him in the dim light; he felt the presence of the gods in their pale shapes and in the blackness of the silk that represented the Veil the medium through which men and gods communicated.

  He removed the silver zanda coins from their silk bag. The silver was cool in his palm and heavy. In prayer, he thought, men ask the gods for help; in meditation, the gods answer. I'm listening. Speak to me.

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he closed his eyes for a moment and stilled his thoughts. When the world disappeared and his mind was a deep lake over which not the slightest breeze blew, he tossed the coins onto the zanda.

  He opened his eyes.

  He wished he could close them again.

  He had been hoping to find simple directives leading him and his people back to Calimekka; he'd desperately wanted to receive reassurance that the world had settled back into its appointed track, and that the only dangers were those that conniving people and corrupt governments created for themselves. But the shining coins lying on the black silk gleamed up at him in mocking defiance.

  In the quadrant of House, the obverse of the Good fortune coin lay centered and alone. Not just bad fortune, then, but coming disaster. In the quadrant of Life, the Family coin overlapped the reversed The gods intervene to create an enigmatic warning. Dark gods and Family conspired against the world?

  The quadrant of Spirit held the message he read as Scattered forces gather, but he wasn't sure if this was a good thing or a bad one, and the zanda gave him no clue. The quadrant of Pleasure offered the good newsbad news message Trusted friends await and Suffering to one who is loved. The damnable Duty quadrant said You have not yet paid more bad news.

  Wealth indicated coming massive expenses; Health noted only an affirmation of his own sudden return to youth with no comment on what he should do about it; Goals told him to plan for travel; Dreams suggested a nightmare; Past indicated a partial triumph that was not quite as it seemed; Present said nothing, and Future...

  He looked at the Future quadrant and closed his eyes. Five coins had fallen into that quadrant, fitting themselves between the embroidered lines in such a way that none overlapped a border which would have allowed him to discount them and that all overlapped each other, so that each subtly changed the meaning of those it overlapped while being changed by those that overlapped it. He wasn't sure he could have stacked the coins in such a convoluted pattern.

  He began puzzling his way through the reading, pushing away the temptation to sum up by saying The future will be a mess and letting it go at that. A man asked the gods' advice and then only at his own peril ignored it when it was given. Dùghall had asked. Now he had to listen.

  First coin. A known friend, but obverse and reverse. An unknown enemy then, but overlapped with Messages already received, so that it became an unknown enemy that he had heard from before, or one that he knew but didn't know he knew. Messages already received overlapped a reversed Hope coin as well, serving as a warning that his hopes were either misplaced, or they would be dashed. Travel was in there, but lay partly beneath Hope, so that he had to assume he would be traveling but that the travel would not be of a sort he might desire, and partly above the fifth coin, which was Triumph, angled slightly to the right, so that it became Possibilities of triumph. He would have to travel if he hoped to win.

  And Possibilities of triumph just slightly overlapped An unknown enemy.

  Which seemed to be a message of hope, except that he'd already been warned in the same quadrant not to trust his hopes.

  He'd planned to give everyone a day or two to recover from their celebrations before suggesting to them that they pack up and begin the trek back to Calimekka. He'd considered paying off the army he'd gathered, thanking the soldiers, and sending them back to their families and homes. He'd considered sending his sons back to the islands perhaps inviting one or two of the younger and less traveled to make the journey to Calimekka with him just to see the city. He'd considered looking up surviving Falcons as he headed toward Calimekka, to find out if they had any idea of what the Falcons' future should be with the Dragons defeated and the Reborn gone.

  But the strongest message in the zanda was that he dared not make plans without seeking further advice. He needed guidance that was clear and compelling and given in simple Iberish.

  And that meant an oracle more dangerous than the zanda, but considerably more direct.

  He got out his mirror and his pack of bloodletting thorns, and drew a circle of salt across the mirror's surface. Then he dropped three drops of blood into the center of the circle, and murmured a summons to the Speakers, asking for one of their number to assist him.

  He
quoted the final lines of the Directive for Safely Bounding an Oracle:

  Speaker step within the walls

  Of earth and blood and air;

  Bound by will and spirit,

  You must bide your presence there.

  Answer questions with clear truth,

  Do only good and then

  Return to the realm from whence you came

  And don't come back again.

  In an instant, the image of a tiny, human-looking woman stood in the center of the mirror, penned in by the ring of salt. The wind of another plane whipped her long hair around her and blew her thin dress tight against her body. She stared up at him, eyes gleaming hungrily and lips curled in a dangerous little half-smile.

  "What do you want?"

  "I am to face an enemy that I don't know but have somehow met. I am to travel, but not in a way that I had hoped. My world and my people face danger when we thought we had eliminated this danger. I seek clarification of these mysteries, and practical advice."

  "Don't we all?" She smirked at him, then shrugged. "Well enough. When you travel, travel with friends, but leave your army behind to guard your back. Go without stopping to that one member of your Family whom you know without doubt will fight with you, for a fight comes to you unlike anything you have yet experienced. Your enemy will reach you in due time he will be stronger than you think, and cleverer, and if you falter for a moment he will devour you and your world. The time you have been given for preparation before his arrival is short and the work you must do immense. And even if you make no mistakes you will probably lose."

  Dùghall gave an exasperated sigh. "Who is this enemy? What can he do? What must I do to prepare?"

  "When you confront life that is not true life, you will know him. When you remember death is not true death, you may, perhaps, defeat him."

  "Speak plainly," he snarled.

  "You want plain advice? Fine. Don't go breaking things you can't fix."

  She laughed then, and tilted her chin so that, tiny as she was, she could stare down her nose at him. Arms crossed over her chest, she radiated defiance.

  The flames within which her image danced flickered out, and she was gone. Weariness drove down on Dùghall like high seas in a hurricane summoning the Speaker from her own plane required enormous energy, and he had already been tired. Now he could barely keep himself upright. He didn't dare summon another Speaker right then, hoping to find one who might choose to be more helpful than the one who had just departed; he didn't have the energy to keep another Speaker bounded within the walls of his will. And he wouldn't chance being devoured.

  Why couldn't she have plainly told him what he needed to know? He glared down at the mirror in his hand, wishing he could vent his frustration by breaking it. She'd given him some practical advice, though. "Don't go breaking things you can't fix." He might as well start following that admonition.

  He drew out his journal and wrote down the zanda reading and the message the Speaker had given him. He didn't trust his memory to keep all the details straight, and he would need to puzzle over some parts of it for days, or even weeks.

  He didn't need to puzzle over it right then, though. He put his things away and blew out the flame of his lantern and tucked himself into his bedroll with his blankets pulled over his head. Dawn would be coming soon, and he didn't want to greet it.

  Chapter 15

  Wolves howled along the ridge, their haunting song echoing through the darkness. Kait stood with her back to the gate of Galweigh House, staring down at the city spread before her feet. The peaks of the Patmas Range rose out of Calimekka like boulders out of a flooded stream bed, and from her vantage point on the highest of those peaks, the city flowed around them like a river of fire surging around dark and dangerous islands. Kait Galweigh stared down at that glowing river, yearning for its warmth. Then she turned back to the lightless hulk that waited behind her.

  She rested one hand on the smooth, translucent white gate. Galweigh House had been her home for most of her life. It had held all the people she loved in the world; when she closed her eyes, she could still see them moving through the House, talking and laughing, arguing with each other, sitting in cozy little nooks or great halls debating and discussing and planning. As long as she stayed outside those gates, her mind could fill the corridors with her memories, and she could fool herself into believing they still held some truth.

  Once she reentered the House and confronted the emptiness of the rooms and heard the echoing of her footsteps in the halls, her memories would grow fainter, overlaid by hollow new reality. Her longed-for family would then be dead for her not just in some distantly acknowledged way, but with the starkness of visible truth. Standing at the gate, she experienced a brief, painful desire to flee back down the way she had come, to never look at Galweigh House again.

  The wolves howled once more, their mournful cries closer and louder than before. Kait sniffed the wind and tipped her head, listening to the voices.

  She turned to Ry and Ian and Ulwe. "Go ahead without me. I'm going to wait here for just a moment. I'll be in... when I've finished."

  Ry sniffed the wind, too. "They're coming this way," he said.

  She nodded. Behind her, the donkey was starting to get nervous. It pranced from foot to foot, tugging at its lead and rolling its eyes. In another moment it was going to pin its ears flat against its skull and start bucking and lunging.

  Ry said, "Ian and Ulwe can take it in. I'll stay with you."

  She shook her head. "I'd rather be alone." A wistful smile touched the corners of her mouth. "A friend is on his way to see me."

  Another howl, this time a single voice crying a deep and lingering solo. Both voice and smell were poignantly familiar. Gashta.

  "A friend. A wolf?"

  Kait nodded, not offering explanation. She closed her eyes, reading his scent in the air.

  "Kait?" Ry rested a hand on her shoulder.

  She shrugged his hand off and moved forward. She could hear movement now light steps padding through the underbrush, rustling leaves, and the crackling on the leaf mold underfoot. Behind her, she heard Ian and Ulwe and the donkey hurrying into the walled safety of Galweigh House's grounds.

  The underbrush parted and a huge, shaggy beast stepped into the clearing. Kait took a few steps forward. "Gashta," she whispered.

  The enormous wolf bounded to her side, mouth stretched back in a canine grin, ears perked forward, tail lifted and wagging. He stood on his hind legs and licked her face; she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her nose in his ruff and breathed in the comforting, familiar scent.

  Behind her, she could hear the gates closing, and from inside, the frantic braying of a donkey.

  "I sense no magic about him," Ry said.

  "He's just a wolf," Kait said, keeping her tone light and even. Gashta was sensitive to tones of voice. "I saved his life a long time ago. He returned the favor the night the Sabirs killed most of my Family."

  "He's... wild?"

  Kait heard the surprise in his voice. "Yes. He and I used to hunt these hills together when I Shifted."

  Kait rubbed the big animal's ears and pressed her face into his fur again. She hadn't seen him in nearly two years; she was delighted that he still remembered her, and equally delighted that he'd found her. She'd lost so much that was dear to her the survival of any friend seemed a miracle at that moment.

  "We should get inside," Ry said. "We have a lot to do."

  "I know." Kait didn't look at him. Instead, she ran her fingers through the wolf's fur, feeling the hard ridges of scar tissue that ran across the left shoulder. Marks of the past, a tangible reminder of his debt to her now paid. She bore her scars on the inside.

  She rose, and the wolf sat on his haunches and leaned against her side. He was big enough that, sitting, his head came to her rib cage. He panted happily, his tongue lolling out one side of his mouth as if he were a big dog, his eyes half-closed as her hand scratched the base of his ears. "
I know," she said again, softer. Now she looked at Ry. He was as beautiful as the wolf and as wild, and a thousand times more compelling than anyone she had ever known. He was magic to her, the personification of things so wonderful she had never dared to let herself dream them. When he looked into her eyes, a light flickered in the darkness inside of her.

  "I'm afraid to go inside, Ry. Out here, I can touch Gashta and pretend that everything will be as I remember inside the walls. Once I go inside..." She shrugged and fell silent.

  "You fear the ghosts."

  "No." She went to stand by his side. The wolf strode beside her, and when she stopped, he stopped, too. Ry held out a hand and Kait rested her own hand in it. "I don't fear the ghosts. I fear that the ghosts will be gone... that the emptiness will have killed even them, and that once I am inside the halls, I will have nothing. Even ghosts are better than emptiness."