Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (42 page)
BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)
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I
n the last days of the month of Brethwan, Kait ran through the snow-buried mountains that surrounded Norostis, Shifted to beast form and lost in beast mind. She hunted whatever moved—mice, rabbits, small birds, deer forced down from the peaks by the heavy snows above. She fed on raw flesh, blood, and entrails; she rolled in the carcasses of her kills; she slept in the hollows of dying trees, in banks of snow, on sun-warmed boulders above ice-clotted streams. She rode Shift obsessively, fighting off her woman-form, seeking oblivion from the events that touched humanity.
n the last days of the month of Brethwan, Kait ran through the snow-buried mountains that surrounded Norostis, Shifted to beast form and lost in beast mind. She hunted whatever moved—mice, rabbits, small birds, deer forced down from the peaks by the heavy snows above. She fed on raw flesh, blood, and entrails; she rolled in the carcasses of her kills; she slept in the hollows of dying trees, in banks of snow, on sun-warmed boulders above ice-clotted streams. She rode Shift obsessively, fighting off her woman-form, seeking oblivion from the events that touched humanity.
She was, for the time that she could hold herself within the beast body and the beast mind, beyond grief, beyond thinking, beyond regret and pain and loss. She exulted in the bitter sting of the wind, the violence of the weather, the pale hard blue of the day sky and the still-lengthening nights. Her hungers were things she could fill with food and sleep; her regrets were the quick sharp pains of a missed pounce or a bit of game stolen by a larger beast.
But she could not hold Shift forever. When, bloody, gaunt, filthy, and stinking of dead things, she dragged herself back to the camp where Alarista’s Gyru-nalle band and Dùghall’s soldiers and her own people hid, she discovered that she’d lost a week. She had never been Karnee for so long. She would have been amazed, but she was too tired to feel anything. She gave herself a cursory wash, ate everything she could lay hands on, and finally crawled into her cold tent and fell into the deep, miserable sleep of post-Shift.
She woke two days later with the full weight of post-Shift depression riding her. Her fugue had solved nothing. The problems her world faced remained unsolved, but were a week more firmly entrenched. The Reborn was still dead; her once-beloved cousin was still a murderer not just of her own child but of the hopes of the world; the Dragons still walked free and worked toward the day when they would rule the world as gods from the backs of a world of enslaved mortals.
“This won’t do,” she whispered to herself. “If I’m not yet dead, I can’t act as if I am.”
So she forced herself to get up. She ate hugely, then washed, ignoring the icy water, the howling wind. She dressed in the only good clothing she had—a fine winter suit of Gyru-nalles spun wool with heavy fur boots and a long fur coat. She plaited her hair and painted the symbols of devotion on her forehead and eyelids.
She looked for answers as she had been taught by the parnissas. She prayed—to the Falcons’ god Vodor Imrish, who had fallen silent with the death of his Reborn; to the Iberan gods whom she had been taught to revere, but who had no place for a magic-Scarred monster like her; and even to the old gods that her parents had scorned as the superstitions of ignorant peasants. For two days she fasted and prayed, but the gods had no word for her.
She could have despaired then, but she didn’t. If the gods offered no answers, she would find one for herself. She took food again, then meditated. She discovered that she did not wish to give the world over to the Dragons without a fight, no matter how hopeless that fight might be. She discovered that she still had breath and will, the two things she’d had before the death of Solander. And she discovered that action—even action she firmly believed was hopeless—gave rise to its own strange breed of hope.
She began to wonder if she and the Falcons had overlooked something in their rush to declare their cause lost and the Dragons triumphant by default. Another three days spent poring through the Secret Texts convinced her that they had.
So she sought out her uncle.
Dùghall lay in one of the Gyru wagons, wasting away. The Gyru girl who had taken over tending him said that he had only accepted bites of food and sips of water in the last days, that he would get up to relieve himself but that he never spoke or moved otherwise. She said she’d begun bathing him each morning with a bucket of cold water and coarse rags, partly because he had begun to smell, but mostly because she hoped the rough treatment would stir him to some sign of life. So far, she said, her plan had failed.
Kait stepped up into the wagon and noted that, even after the baths, Dùghall stank. He lay in a fetal position, curled under several blankets, face to the featureless wall. His hair stuck out at odd angles, unwashed, greasy, gone from black with a smattering of gray to gray entire in the days since the Reborn’s death. Where he had been lean—the Reborn’s sword, he’d said—now he was scrawny. He looked like a sick old man, like a dying old man.
“Uncle,” she said, “this has to end.”
He said nothing. He didn’t move, didn’t twitch. The rhythm of his breathing didn’t even change. She counted his breaths for a moment and realized that he had put himself into the Falcon trance; he was far beyond the reach of her voice.
She shook him hard, and felt his breathing pick up, then fall back into the slow trance-inducing rhythm. She considered her options, didn’t like any of them, and chose the least offensive. She slapped him. Again she jarred him from his breathing for an instant, but again he escaped her.
She was going to have to hurt him. A lot. She jammed her thumb under his collarbone and pressed hard. He lost the rhythm of his breathing entirely; he growled and tried to push her hand away. She was stronger than he, though—Karnee strength would have let her best a stronger man than sick Dùghall—and she pushed harder; he whimpered with pain.
“You can’t sleep yourself to death, and I can’t hide inside the monster. There aren’t any answers there. You know that. You’re hiding out of fear, but you can’t be a coward anymore. We need you. Get up.”
“Go away.”
“Get up or I’ll break your collarbone.” She shifted her pressure from the space under the bone to the bone itself, and bore down. She could feel the grinding of the ends of the bone transmitted through her fingertips, and she shuddered and gritted her teeth and pushed harder.
Dùghall yelled and flailed at her with his free arm.
“I’m not leaving, Uncle, and you aren’t going to lie in here and die. Get up and face me.” He tried to fall back into trance, tried to regain the slow, steady breaths that took him there, but she applied more pressure. She hated to hurt him, but she could think of nothing that would force him to act faster than intense pain. Better a broken bone than death. She hardened herself to his eventual wordless scream, and was rewarded for her efforts—thankfully, before she had to snap the bone in two.
He jerked himself upright in the narrow bed and turned to glare at her. “Get out of here, Kait.”
“No.”
“Let me die. The world is doomed, and I want to end before it does.”
“I don’t care what you want. We have things to do, you and I.”
“Things to do. Don’t make me laugh.”
She stood over him, staring down, and said, “The Reborn is dead. He’s gone. His soul has slipped beyond our reach, and nothing we can do can bring him back. This is the truth, isn’t it?”
“You know it is.”
“Yes. I finally do. And a thousand years of prophecy have just come crashing down around our heads; the Dragons returned as promised, and the Reborn came when he was supposed to, but Danya has destroyed the prophecies and we’ve lost him forever. Correct?”
Dùghall sighed. “Of course it’s correct! Why do you think I want to die?”
“I think you want to die because you’ve become a coward. Uncle, think with me for a moment. The prophecies are shattered, the Secret Texts overturned in a single blow. What does that mean?”
He stared at her, his face creased with frustration. “It means we’re doomed, you idiot. With the Reborn gone, the Dragons have already won.”
“Who says so?” Kait asked.
“What?”
She asked again, patient. “Who says so? Who says the Dragons have already won?”
“That’s a stupid question. If the Reborn doesn’t lead us against the Dragons, then the Dragons will triumph. The Secret Texts constantly refer to the doom that would come upon the world if the Reborn did not conquer the evil at its heart.”
Kait nodded. “I know what the Texts say. I’ve spent the last three days and three nights reading them yet again, looking for anything that warns of the possibility of the Reborn’s premature death.”
“He wasn’t supposed to die.”
“No. He wasn’t. Vincalis never considered his death a possibility. Nowhere in all those prophecies does he say, ‘If the Reborn’s mother kills him at birth . . .’ or ‘If the Reborn dies before he can lead the Great Battle . . .’ or anything else of that sort. I’ve been over every word again, Uncle. Such an occurrence doesn’t exist within the Texts’ pages.”
“I know that.” Dùghall’s evident annoyance grew greater. “I knew most of the Texts by heart long before you were born.”
“Then answer my question. Who says that, because the Reborn is dead, the Dragons have already won?”
He glowered at her. She crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to be cowed, and waited.
He said, as if speaking to a particularly stupid child, “The Texts clearly state that the Reborn is the key to conquering the Dragons. So, if Solander cannot lead us, the Dragons must win by default.”
Kait shook her head. “If the Reborn cannot lead us because he died at birth, then the Texts no longer predict the future of our world.”
“Clearly.” Dùghall shrugged. “The Texts promised us the leadership of the Reborn, the city-civilization of Paranne, and triumph over evil. Without them, we face doom, destruction, and the Dragons’ hell on earth.”
Kait smiled slowly, and asked him for the third time, “Who says so?”
As he saw her smile, a puzzled expression crossed his face. “The Texts warn—”
Kait held up her hand. “You and I have agreed that the Texts have become invalid. Something has happened that Vincalis could not foresee. So we cannot trust the Texts to guide us from here on. Correct?”
He nodded slowly.
“So. What authority now tells you that the Dragons have already won, that they cannot be defeated, that our world is doomed?”
Dùghall sat quietly for a moment. “It only stands to reason—” he began, but Kait shook her head, and he stopped.
“Uncle, the future is built by
un
reasonable men. You told me that when I was a little girl, and again when you stood me for my place among the diplomats.”
un
reasonable men. You told me that when I was a little girl, and again when you stood me for my place among the diplomats.”
He took a deep breath. “That’s true. I have said that.”
“So. Just tell me the name of the authority you now trust to tell us our doom is a foregone conclusion, and I’ll let you go back to sleeping yourself to death.”
He shook his head slowly, knowing what she wanted him to say, but not wanting to say it. She could see the stubbornness on his face—the way his mouth compressed, the way his brows drew down, the way his eyes tracked across the room, as if looking for his answer among the wagon’s fittings and furnishings. His arms locked across his chest, shutting away the possibility that he might have been wrong.
She waited, patient as a cat at a mouse’s hole, and finally her mouse came out.
“There is no such authority,” he admitted.
“I know.”
“But how can we hope to win against the Dragons without Solander?”
She shrugged, and her smile grew broader. “I don’t know. But finally you’re asking the right question.” She sat down in the little chair across from Dùghall’s bed. “I know this—we are only beaten for sure if we don’t fight. And if we can’t count on the Texts, we can at least count on each other.” She took a slow, shaky breath. “And the time to act is now. A thousand years ago, our ancestors destroyed all of civilization rather than allow the Dragons to carry out their plans for the world. They gave everything to make sure their children and their children’s children wouldn’t be locked into eternal slavery, that
our
souls would not be the fodder that fed the immortality of a few powerful wizards. They fought and died so that we would live. Now it’s our turn to fight. We’ve suffered a bad loss, but we can’t let that stop us. We can’t just hand the future to the Dragons.”
our
souls would not be the fodder that fed the immortality of a few powerful wizards. They fought and died so that we would live. Now it’s our turn to fight. We’ve suffered a bad loss, but we can’t let that stop us. We can’t just hand the future to the Dragons.”
Dùghall looked at her warily. “So who else have you convinced of all of this, dear Kait?”
Her smile became lopsided. “You’re the first, Uncle Dùghall. You’re going to help me convince everyone else.”
Dùghall gave her a wary smile and said, “Did you know Vincalis the Agitator was a playwright before he became a prophet?”
“You told me something about that. That he gave up writing plays when the Dragons executed Solander, and for a thousand days cast oracles and wrote the Secret Texts.”
Dùghall nodded and said, “He created the road map by which a thousand years of Falcons have steered their lives. But some of the best things he ever said, and the truest, were not in the Texts at all—they were in his plays. The Dragons overshadowed the world he lived in for most of his life, and they were hard masters, brutal, murderous, and evil. Most men feared to fight them in any manner. Vincalis fought them with words, but carefully—he never plainly wrote about the Dragons because they would have killed him, and he taught that survival was the first duty of a warrior. He wrote about great villains, and about the small bands of heroes who dared to best them . . . and he wrote many of those plays as comedies, because he could always claim the innocuousness of comedy if questioned.” Dùghall looked down at the gnarled hands folded on his lap, then glanced sidelong at her, and the ghost of a mischievous smile played across his lips. “Those who have no sense of humor rarely realize how deadly humor can be.”
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