Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (46 page)
BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)
7.17Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Jaim rested a hand on his shoulder. “These are dark days.”
“These days are the hell of the old gods, visited on us because we forgot them,” Yanth said. Dùghall heard the rasp in his voice that betrayed the depth of his emotion.
“Perhaps,” Jaim agreed with a slow nod. The cold air had raised gooseflesh on his exposed arms, and Dùghall saw him shiver. He seemed too lost in the awful moment to notice, though, for he stood there, staring down at the body of his dead comrade, and made no effort to find his coat or even to warm himself by moving. His breath curled out in frosted plumes, leaving crystals on his eyelashes, eyebrows, and the heavy mustache he’d grown since coming to the mountains. He looked to Dùghall more like an ice statue of a man than one of flesh and blood. In a voice gone flat and dead, Jaim said, “We have to find Valard.”
“Why? So that we can slaughter another of our number?” Yanth pulled away from Jaim’s touch; Jaim’s arm dropped to his side as if it were a dead thing.
Doggedly he said, “If necessary, yes. Ry is on his way to Calimekka. If the Dragons have been spying on him, or if they have found a way to use Valard against Ry, we have to stop him.”
Yanth had closed his eyes. He wove from side to side as he stood there, plainly lost in misery. “What does it matter?” he asked at last. “It all falls apart. Nothing we do will hold, nothing we do will succeed. Don’t you see? The gods themselves stand against us, and who are we to fight the gods?”
Jaim hung his head at those words, and shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe everything is lost. I don’t know who we are to question the will of the gods.”
“We are men,” Dùghall said roughly, “and we have put the gods to pasture. We will never cower again before gods or men—we will fight them both and we will win.”
“Why?” Yanth asked, and Dùghall heard scorn in that one sharp syllable. “Because our hearts are pure and our cause is just? Because we
care
?”
care
?”
“Goodness has no lock on victory,” Dùghall said, staring at the two of them until they had to look at him. “Good men lose to evil men all the time. And caring without doing is weak and worthless and empty. Men who care much but do little always fall to men who care less but do more. We won’t win because we are good, or because our convictions matter to us.”
He laughed, and his laugh sounded harsh in the bitterly cold air, like the snap of a tree branch breaking beneath the weight of ice and snow. “We’ll win because we’re too afraid to lose. If we give in passively to the Dragons’ plans, they’ll devour our souls and the souls of everyone we love—and with our souls, our immortality. If we fight, the worst that can happen to us is death. We’ll win because we are afraid.
Because
we are afraid, and rightly so. Fear will be the friend that spurs us to victory.”
Because
we are afraid, and rightly so. Fear will be the friend that spurs us to victory.”
The three of them stood there staring at each other for a long time. Finally Jaim nodded. “Perhaps.”
Yanth looked away. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “I won’t quit,” he said. “I don’t have your faith in our victory, but I won’t quit.”
Dùghall glanced through the gap in the tent flaps at the brilliant white field beyond. “None of us will. We have that thought to hang on to. Now—we’ll have to have a ceremony for Trev, and we need to bury him today. You get him ready. Meanwhile, I’ll cast around to see if I can find out where Valard went—if magic was involved, there should be traces of it still about. And after that, we’ll go on doing what we must do.”
He left the two of them preparing Trev’s body for viewing. He trudged over the packed snow, wishing he could be as certain of their eventual victory as he had sounded while talking to them. He dreaded the future, and the present terrified him, too. He hoped what he had told them was truth, because the only thing he was sure of in his life at that moment was fear. He had enough of that to fill an ocean.
48
K
ait and Ry came upon Calimekka at night, when the city sprawled like an endless bed of embers beneath the cloud-blanketed sky. Kait had seen the city that way many times; her old friend Aouel had taken her up in the airible for night flights when she sneaked out of Galweigh House on nights she couldn’t sleep, or when she wanted someone to talk to. So she saw the change in the heart of the city and recognized it, and pointed it out to Ry, for whom this aerial view was a first.
ait and Ry came upon Calimekka at night, when the city sprawled like an endless bed of embers beneath the cloud-blanketed sky. Kait had seen the city that way many times; her old friend Aouel had taken her up in the airible for night flights when she sneaked out of Galweigh House on nights she couldn’t sleep, or when she wanted someone to talk to. So she saw the change in the heart of the city and recognized it, and pointed it out to Ry, for whom this aerial view was a first.
“The white lights in the center of the city—those were never there before.”
Ry looked where she’d indicated, and angled his wings to take him closer to those lights.
Kait followed. She didn’t like what she saw. In the center of Calimekka, surrounded by shining, translucent white walls of the sort only the Ancients knew how to create, lay a fairyland of pristine white castles, shimmering white fountains, lovely white roadways and paths. Gardens of flowers and fruits and trees and shrubs, artfully illuminated by the white light, glowed like jewels. In one of the gardens, a few men and women, dressed in styles she’d never seen before, danced to the strains of music that sounded foreign to her ears. She circled above them, silent, keeping her magical shields drawn tight around her to hide her presence, and she recalled the bustling markets and fine neighborhoods that once stood where that huge, empty city-within-a-city now sprawled.
“We’ve found them,” Ry said softly.
“We have.” She stared down. “Now we have to decide how to reach them.”
* * *
A week later, Kait and Ry stood together in the cool, sweet-scented air of the Calimekkan dawn, dressed in the clothes of well-off commoners, waiting before the great white gate of the new Citadel of the Gods. Others stood with them—tradesmen hoping to sell food or cloth or worked silver or glassware; peasants hoping to find work; beggars who saw the wealth behind the closed gates and, unfamiliar yet with New Hell, hoped they might find generosity.
Ry’s shoulder pressed against Kait’s, but they didn’t speak to each other or look at each other or give any indication that they were together. Kait’s heart thudded heavily in her chest and her dry mouth tasted of sand and fear. Her shields were pulled in close and tight, and she thought that their confining closeness added to her anxiety as much as the press of the crowd or the fear she smelled in those around her.
Fear clouded the air more heavily than the jasmine that grew in the gardens beyond the gates. But Kait, like everyone around her, swallowed her fear and waited, listening to the soft chimes that rang in the white-walled gardens, watching for movement in the city-within-a-city.
At last a woman stepped out of the first building on the right and moved toward them, her rich blue skirts swirling around her ankles as she walked. Her skin was black as onyx, her eyes as gold as the finely worked bracelets that jangled at her wrists. Her black hair, braided with ribbons of deep blue and cloth-of-gold, hung to the ground. She stepped to the gate and opened it, and stepped back. The merchants filed past her and set up their stalls on the pristine white streets, strangely subdued. She turned to the beggars and sent them off to the center of the Citadel, telling them they could sit and beg by the great fountain there.
Then she turned to the workers. “How many of you are here for day work?” she asked. She smiled and her voice was warm, but Kait could find no warmth in her eyes.
A few of the workers raised their hands.
“Good. We have need of laborers in the Red Gardens. Please follow my servant; she’ll show you where to go.” A beautiful young girl dressed all in white stepped out from beneath the arch to Kait’s right and walked soundlessly down the street. The men and women who had asked for day work followed her.
The woman turned back to the few who remained. “And the rest of you must be hoping for permanent positions?”
Kait nodded with the others.
“I thought so. Most have been filled. Unless you have special skills, we likely have nothing to offer you.” She studied Ry, and her smile became hungry. “I think, though, that some of you surely have special skills.” She stood there for a moment, her expression thoughtful; then, coming to a decision, she said, “Follow me, all of you. I know what I need”—her eyes flicked over Ry again—“but I can’t be certain what the rest of my colleagues are looking for.”
She touched Ry on the shoulder before she led them off. “You stay close to my side. I believe I have just the right position for you.”
Kait wanted to kill her right there. Instead she pretended indifference, and followed the woman through the nearly empty streets to a magnificent hall in the center of the new city. Inside, young, beautiful men and women whose silk robes outshone the parrots in their gardens gathered and chatted. They all glanced toward the newcomers as they entered, and a few evinced real interest.
The golden-eyed woman spoke loudly, her voice ringing over the low hum of chatter that filled the enormous hall. “Here are today’s permanents. Who’ll interview?”
“Ah, Berral, you didn’t bring us much to pick from,” someone said, and laughed.
A few others joined in the laughter, but a muscular man with a broad smile rose from his seat at one of the small tables along the west wall and said, “I suppose it’s my turn.” He nodded toward a girl who looked to be about Kait’s age—a pleasantly rounded young woman with skin the color of milk and eyes as huge and frightened as a lamb’s in a slaughterhouse.
“You,” he said. “What can you do?”
“I read . . . and write,” she said, her voice shaking. “I can do sums. I know history and philosophy, drawing and rhetoric. I’ve been a champion at both querrist and hawks and hounds . . .” Her voice faltered as the people around her started to laugh.
“She’s a trained monkey,” one of them murmured.
“She might make a decent enough concubine,” another answered. “I’ve often wished for a mistress who knew a few games, and could talk about something other than her shopping.”
“How are you in bed?” the first asked.
The girl flushed. “I could care for children,” she said, “or keep purchase records, or maintain a library.”
“We don’t have children,” a woman who leaned against the wall said. “And we never will.”
At the same time, the man who’d asked how she was in bed said, “She has no talent, then, at the only skill that interests me. So what about you?” he said, turning to Kait.
She said, “I cut and arrange both men’s and women’s hair.” She had decided that job would give her an opportunity to touch as many of the Dragons as possible, planting her talismans without raising questions. The Dragons would certainly have personal servants, but she knew from her own life in Galweigh House that there was nothing like the lure of a specialist to draw people out of their daily routines.
“Do you?” Berral asked, now studying her with real interest. “Your hair is short. Interesting. And is red the original color?”
Kait smiled. “Can’t you tell?”
“I can’t.” She flipped her long braid over her shoulder and said, “What would you do with mine?”
Kait pretended to consider for a moment. “Something with gold beads, I think,” she said. “To set off your eyes. And snow-peacock feathers to contrast with your skin. Full around the face to emphasize your bones—they’re good, but your current style hides that. And I think I’d work in a few sapphires if you have them.”
“Lovely,” someone said behind her. “That would be perfect.”
“What would you do for me?” a tall, angular woman with emerald eyes asked. Her hair was plain brown, long and wavy and unstyled.
“A new cut first,” Kait said. “Your neck is long and slender as a swan’s, but all that hair covers it. Then a new color. Pale blond, I think—that would make your eyes even more striking. And then ringlets, with green silk ribbons woven through.”
The woman smiled. “You must do just that for me.”
“After she does my hair,” Berral said.
“And then she can do mine.”
“Come, girl. We’ll find a place for you, and get you what you need, and you can get to work. I haven’t had my hair done well in a thousand years.”
The green-eyed woman and a svelte redhead started to lead her off. Behind her, she heard Berral say, “And what do you do?”
She heard Ry’s voice answer, “I do
tapputu
—it’s a form of massage that uses perfumes and oils and herbs. Excellent for the skin, and soothing.”
tapputu
—it’s a form of massage that uses perfumes and oils and herbs. Excellent for the skin, and soothing.”
Berral sighed. “Then we must put you to work with the hairdresser. I’d thought to make you my concubine—but my friends would never forgive me if I kept a masseur to myself. Perhaps, though, I’ll have you spend nights with me.”
“If you’d like,” Ry said.
Kait kept her anger from her face. She consoled herself with the knowledge that as soon as Ry touched the woman with a talisman, Dùghall or Hasmal would summon her Dragon soul into one of the tiny Mirrors, and Ry would have one less admirer.
She hoped he marked her first.
49
D
anya crouched in the back of her little house, staring at the boy who had named himself Luercas. He was paying her no attention, at least for the moment. He’d caught a tundra-vole and was playing with it on the bearskin rug, amusing himself at its expense.
anya crouched in the back of her little house, staring at the boy who had named himself Luercas. He was paying her no attention, at least for the moment. He’d caught a tundra-vole and was playing with it on the bearskin rug, amusing himself at its expense.
Other books
Queen of Ashes by Eleanor Herman
The Ghost Who Loved Me by Karolyn Cairns
Wayward Son by Heath Stallcup
Fatal Storm by Rob Mundle
TheKingsLady by Shannan Albright
Surrept by Taylor Andrews
Alpha Wolf's Calling by Hannah Heat
Hawk Quest by Robert Lyndon
2006 - A Piano in The Pyrenees by Tony Hawks, Prefers to remain anonymous
The Old Ball Game by Frank Deford
