Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (6 page)

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Authors: Holly Lisle

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BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)
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She returned his smile with a false sincerity that hid the pained awkwardness of the truth. Ian
would
need Jayti. He would need a friend from his past to stand by him in the days to come. And sitting in the back of the room they all occupied was the one thing she could think of that might save Jayti’s life, and spare Ian’s friend.
The Mirror of Souls glowed softly, its light rising up through the center of the tripod pedestal and shimmering into a lake of radiance that pooled within the ring resting on the pedestal. She had crossed the uncharted vastness of the Bregian Ocean to this abandoned continent to obtain it. It was an artifact from the long-gone Ancients, the people who had once ruled all the world, and with it, she was supposed to be able to resurrect her slaughtered family. The spirit of her long-dead ancestor, Amalee Kehshara Rohannan Draclas, had insisted that her dead parents, her dead brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, were not entirely beyond her reach. That they could come back; that they could be brought back; that she could resurrect them with this artifact, which she had obtained with terrible struggle and at terrible cost.
But Kait did not know what to do with the Mirror now that she had it—and she had been unable to find Amalee’s spirit since she’d made the decision to take the Mirror to the Reborn. When the
Peregrine
marooned her and her companions on the western shore of North Novtierra, she’d been sure Amalee would return, full of advice on what she had to do to get home. But that yattering voice had fallen silent, and the sick feeling grew in Kait that she’d made a mistake somewhere.
Had she been wrong to trust her ancestor’s spirit in getting the Mirror, or had she been wrong in ignoring Amalee’s assertion that if Kait got the Mirror and took it to Calimekka, the Reborn and his needs would not figure into her future? She couldn’t know, and Amalee wouldn’t answer her silent call for help.
Amalee could have told Kait how to use the artifact to resurrect dead Turben and save dying Jayti. Instead, the Mirror sat there useless because Kait didn’t dare touch the glowing inscriptions that curved around the front quarter of its rim. Magical artifacts could be deadly. Without instructions, Kait feared she would unleash destruction on the survivors instead of salvation on the lost. Raised in Galweigh House amid its deadly mysteries, she’d learned that caution was the first and best of virtues.
“Hang on,” she told Jayti again, and took his hand in hers. “Please.”
He smiled, and she rose and turned away.
Ian pulled her aside. “I need to talk to you. Alone.”
She nodded and followed him out of the ruin.
When they were out of sight of the others, he embraced her again, pulling her close and stroking her damp hair. “I thought I’d lost you forever,” he told her. “I don’t want to lose you again.”
“We may not survive this,” she said.
“I know. We probably won’t. But I know that I want to be with you for the rest of my life. I love you, Kait. With all my heart and soul, I love you. I’d do anything for you—”
She pressed her fingers to his lips and said, “Hush,” and pulled him close, praying that he wouldn’t say anything else. She stroked his hair and closed her eyes tight, and wished with everything in her that she could make him
not
love her. She cared about him, but whatever magic it took to create the sort of love he professed to feel for her did not exist inside of her. Not for him. Not, perhaps, for anyone.
He held her close to him, rocking from side to side. She remembered her father rocking her like that, and for a moment she felt both small and safe. Then he pulled away from her and looked into her eyes, and said, “Marry me,” and all feelings of safety fled. He said, “I have nothing but myself to offer you, but I’ll find a way to win back all that I’ve lost. We’ll get back to Calimekka, and you’ll want for nothing.”
She closed her eyes, trying desperately to think of the acceptable excuse, the one that would let her refuse him without hurting him. It came, and she thanked whichever god watched over such things. “I know we’ll make it back somehow. That’s why I cannot accept a proposal of marriage without knowing if either of my parents still live.”
She saw him consider that and see the reason in it; if her mother or father still lived, a suitor would have to ask permission before broaching the subject with Kait. This was the way things were done among Families. So she bought herself time, but did nothing to solve the problem—her answer led him to believe she would find his proposal acceptable if her parents did.
She turned away—and in that instant she felt a delicate touch in her mind, and eyes looked out through hers, seeing the devastation before her. Ry Sabir. Her heart raced; she felt his elation, his relief . . . and his nearness.
She snapped a magical shield around herself—one of the few bits of magic Hasmal had been completely successful in teaching her so far—and the sensation of being watched, even
inhabited,
vanished. She turned to face Ian and said, “Trouble’s coming.”
He laughed bitterly. “We’re stranded on the far side of the world, probably the only humans on the continent, down to four survivors and”—he nodded back toward the ruin—“perhaps soon to be three. We have no food stores, we had to burn our ground, winter won’t be over for months, and will surely get harsher before it gets better.” Ian leaned against a tree and rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles. Kait realized how exhausted he looked. “I’d say trouble is already here.”
“A ship will reach us soon.”
Ian stared at her, his immediate disbelief clear on his face. She met his eyes, and saw that disbelief become hope. “A ship. Bad news? Please tell me you have more bad news.”
“This ship doesn’t intend to rescue us. My Family’s enemy followed me across the ocean, using a . . . a link that the two of us share. Something related to the fact that we are both Karnee, I think. This enemy intends to take me prisoner. But you and Hasmal and Jayti . . .” She frowned. “I expect he and his men will try to kill the three of you. You aren’t the reason that he’s coming here, and if you aren’t his friends, you’re unknown, and unknown is often the same as enemy.”
Ian turned away from her and stared at the blackened ridge before him. “Perhaps we can negotiate with them. Perhaps we can work our passage. Perhaps we can do something to help you, and in helping you, help ourselves.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “So which of your Family’s enemies are we talking about? Dokteerak? Masschanka?”
“Sabir,” Kait said.
Ian winced. “Ah. Sabir. That’s bad, or at least it
could
be bad. I have an unfortunate history with the Sabirs. Clever as I might be at offering my services as a navigator, or helmsman, or whatever the ship might need, if I’m recognized the Sabirs aren’t likely to want my help.” He sighed and looked back at the burned ground. “I wish we’d known earlier that Sabirs were coming. We could have been preparing. We could have had ramparts in place, made some sort of weapons . . .” He frowned and shrugged. “Well, that can’t be helped.” He licked his lips. “You don’t know exactly which Sabirs are following you, do you?” he asked. He put the question to her casually enough, but Kait heard the tension hidden below the surface.
“I only know of one for sure. Ry Sabir. There may be others, but he’s the only one who’s”—every bit of color had drained from Ian’s face as she spoke—“linked to me. Ian? What’s the matter?”
“Ry?” he whispered. “Ry Sabir?”
Kait nodded. “You know him?”
For a long time he said nothing. Then he glanced at her, and he was a changed man. Cold. Deadly. Full of hate. “I know him,” he said. “We have things to do. We’re going to have to get his ship, and we’re going to have to beat
him
to do it.”
“Three of us against a ship’s crew? We can’t take the ship by force.”
Ian rested both hands on Kait’s shoulders and stared into her eyes. “If Ry and I meet, one of us is going to die. I know my chances of killing him aren’t good. But if I have to die, I’ll die fighting.”
He stalked away from her, heading for the bay.
She looked after him and considered the trouble that was to come, and what she might do to prevent it. She ran through her head all the histories she could recall where smaller forces had defeated greater ones. Somewhere in the past, someone she’d studied about had found himself in a similar situation, and had managed to survive. In most of the cases, like the Brejmen defeat of the Cathomartic hordes or the Marepori repelling the Jast invaders, the smaller force was better-armed and better-disciplined.
With the right terrain and the right weapons and plenty of time to prepare, Kait thought the three of them might have had similar success. But without those advantages . . .
There is always a way to win,
General Talismartea had written in his masterwork,
The Warrior’s Book. If you are willing to redefine winning.
Ian had defined winning as taking over Ry’s ship and forcing the crew to sail back to Calimekka. But she knew that even if she and her friends could wrest control from the captain, they’d have a hellish time keeping it—and if they lost it, they were dead. But what if they didn’t need to be in charge to win?
She had to redefine winning. They won if all of them got back to Ibera alive and free, with the Mirror of Souls in their possession. That was the only thing they had to have.
If they didn’t have to take over the ship and control it for months, they were free to consider any form of safe passage as winning. They couldn’t hope to have safe passage given to them. But they might hope to demand it.
How?
An idea came to her. She’d have to get Hasmal and Ian on her side, though she suspected from his reaction to Ry’s name that Ian wouldn’t like her proposal. Then she’d need subterfuge and negotiating skill and a bit of Hasmal’s magic and more than a touch of luck to make it work. She found herself wondering if her years of diplomatic studies would serve her as well as even a day’s worth of real experience. She closed her eyes and breathed in the ash-scented air, and hoped she’d learned as much as she thought she had.

 

Chapter
6
A
fter three days in which Ry had become more and more certain that Kait was dead, the tiny flashes of energy that linked him to her suddenly reappeared. He couldn’t guess what had happened to her to make her disappear, and he wouldn’t try. He was satisfied to discover that she was still alive, and better yet, that she was close. Incredibly close.
When the
Peregrine
marooned her, he’d seen through her eyes that she was not alone, but he didn’t know if any of those who had been with her had survived. He wished he could get another glimpse through her eyes, so that he could see what he was heading into, but she was wary, holding her magical shields as tight around herself as a woman would hold her cloak in a blizzard. Only flickers broke through to guide him to her; he suspected that she hid herself as much from the dangers around her as from him, but he couldn’t touch her mind, so he wasn’t sure.
At the moment when the tug he felt from her ceased to be “ahead” and became “beside,” he was standing at the prow of the
Wind Treasure,
anxiously watching the coastline that ran by off the port side of the ship. He wouldn’t have been able to explain to the captain or any of his friends how he knew that the ocean had brought him as close to her as it could, but he did know. So he shouted, “Here! This is the place. Go inland here!”
The captain sailed through smoke-laced fog into the bay and dropped anchor.
For the first time, Ry saw the place where Kait hid. Rain-washed ruins dotted the burned hills and cliffs that rose out of the bay on all three sides. Not a single tree, not a single blade of grass or scrawny shrub, offered reprieve from the sea of black ash that covered the ground. In his travels, Ry had seen the aftermath of a volcanic eruption; what he saw before him reminded him of that.
He stared at the bleak panorama and smiled slowly. Kait’s city of the Ancients lay before him. Such cities existed in Ibera, as well. But an Ancients’ city that had not been known for at least a hundred years—that had not been pillaged and plundered by a century’s treasure-seekers—a city like that could exist nowhere but in the Novtierras. This city had been visited by one ship alone. Even after the fire, it would house wonders; ruins that had survived the Wizards’ War and the Thousand Years of Darkness would survive fire.
Hidden within those ruined buildings lay pieces of knowledge lost to humankind for the last thousand years, pieces of knowledge that had waited for him and his men. With such treasures in hand, he could return to Calimekka in triumph, reconcile with his Family and the Wolves, and reinstate his friends. He could force his Family to accept his Galweigh parata.
Once he rescued Kait, he would have time to explore, but first he had to get her to safety. She waited somewhere within those burned hills. She was so near, he could almost smell her. The passion—the obsession—that had driven him to pursue her across half a world, through storm and disaster, across uncharted ocean to unmapped land, burned higher than ever. His blood, his bones, his very soul sang with her nearness.
“Kait,” he whispered, “be safe. We’re almost together.”

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