Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 3 - Courage Of Falcons

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COURAGE OF FALCONS

Holly Lisle

For Matt With love and hope

An Diplomacy of Wolves...

Magic, in the world of Matrin and especially in the Iberan lands where the last of the true humans live, has been a study both forbidden and reviled for a thousand years. But Kait Galweigh, daughter of the powerful Galweigh Family and promising junior diplomat, has survived to hide the secret scars of old and dangerous magic. While chaperoning her cousin prior to the girl's wedding to a second son of the Dokteerak Family, with whom the Galweighs desired an alliance, Kait's need to hide her Scarred nature—which causes her to skinshift, and which would lead to her immediate execution even by members of her own Family—puts her into position to overhear a plot involving the Dokteeraks and the Galweighs' longtime enemies, the Sabirs. These two Families are planning to destroy the Galweighs at the upcoming wedding.

Kait survives a harrowing escape from Dokteerak House with her information, aided by a stranger who, like her, is Scarred by the skinshifting curse, which is called Karnee. She is drawn to the stranger, but is dismayed to discover that he is a son of the Sabir Family. She returns to the embassy, where she informs the Galweighs of the Dokteerak-Sabir treachery and tries to put her attraction to the Sabir Karnee out of her mind. Her Family takes both military and illicit magical steps to foil the conspiracy and crush the conspirators—steps that would have succeeded had the Sabirs not been

planning all along to betray their allies the Dokteeraks, too. The Sabirs never intended to share power with the Dokteeraks; instead, they used them to get the Galweigh military away from Galweigh House and out into the open. Then, on two carefully managed fronts, they wipe out the Dokteerak and Galweigh armies as they meet in battle in the city of Halles, and use both treachery and magic to overthrow the unguarded Galweigh House back in the grand city of Calimekka.

However, magic used forcefully against another always rebounds. Both Families' wizards, who call themselves Wolves, expected to strike unprepared targets with their spells, and have readied sacrifices sufficient to buffer that amount of rebound, but their attacks hit each other at the same time, and the magic feeds back on them. It overwhelms their sacrifices, breaks out of the boundaries with which they controlled it, and wipes out the majority of both Families' Wolves.

It simultaneously does two other things as well, both seemingly irrelevant but both destined to change the face of the world of Matrin and the lives of everyone in it. First, the magical blast sends a shock wave across the face of the planet—a wave that wakes an artifact called the Mirror of Souls. The Mirror is a beautiful and complex creation designed by the Ancients before the end of the Wizards' War a thousand years earlier, and it has been waiting for just such a powerful rewhah, or rebound wave, for rewhah demonstrates that the world has returned to the use of magic . . . and more importantly, magic of the right sort. The Mirror awakens the souls it holds within its soulwell, and they reach out to people who might be able to help them.

Second, the rewhah horribly Scars a young girl named Danya Galweigh, a cousin of Kait's, who has been held for ransom by the Sabirs and who is used as a sacrifice by the Sabir Wolves when the Galweighs fail to meet the ransom. Danya is changed beyond recognition, and the baby she unknowingly carries, a baby conceived through rape and torture during her capture, is changed, too, but in more subtle ways. The force of the rewhah throws Danya into the icy southern wastes of the Veral Territories, where, were it not for the help of a mysterious spirit who calls himself Luercas, she would die.

Kait, sensitive to magic, is knocked unconscious by the rewhah blast as she and her uncle Dughall and her cousin Tippa are escaping from Halles via

airible; Kait awakens alone to find that someone has hidden her in the airi-ble's hold, and that the airible has landed in Galweigh House, but her Family's House is in Sabir hands and many of her Family have already been executed. She steals the airible and flies it to the nearby island of Goft, where the Galweigh Family has other holdings, hoping to get help. However, the head of this lesser branch of the Galweigh Family sees the demise of the main branch as his chance to advance, and he orders Kait killed. A spirit voice claiming to be her long-dead ancestor warns her of the treachery, and she escapes again, this time after stealing money from the House treasury.

The spirit tells her another way she can hope to aid her Family, even though it says they are now all dead. Following its advice, she hires a ship from the Goft harbor to take her across the ocean in search of the Mirror of Souls. The spirit tells her that this ancient artifact will allow her to reclaim her murdered Family from the dead. She enlists the aid of the captain by telling him she is going in search of the undiscovered ruins of one of the Ancients' lost cities. Such a place would make any man's fortune, so Captain Ian Draclas takes her on as a passenger and sails immediately.

Onboard the ship she runs into a man named Hasmal rann Dorchan, whom she met briefly on the night of the party celebrating her cousin's upcoming marriage. Hasmal, a wizard of the sect known as the Falcons, had been trying to escape the doom that an oracle had warned would befall him if he associated with Kait. He is not pleased to see her.

Hasmal's oracle mocks him and warns that he must teach Kait magic to protect himself. He does, but grudgingly; she learns, but denies the relevance of the shared destiny he claims will send both of them to their doom if she fails to learn his lessons well.

Kait is plagued by dreams of the Sabir Karnee she met while escaping the Dokteerak House; she becomes certain that he is following her across the sea. To break her obsession with him, she accepts the advances of the ship's captain, Ian Draclas, and they become lovers. But her obsession only worsens.

As the ship nears its destination, it sails into the heart of a Wizards' Circle, a place where magical residue from the Wizards' War a thousand years before is still so strong that it can affect and control anyone moving within its reach. Hasmal works magic to free the ship, and Kait, in her skinshifted

form, saves the life of the captain. In saving the ship and the captain, though, Kait is revealed as a monster and Hasmal as a wizard, and the crew turns against them. They reach the shore and discover the city, but while Kait, Hasmal, Ian, and two of his men set out to retrieve the Mirror of Souls from its distant hiding place, the crew mutinies against the captain and his loyal supporters and maroons them in the unexplored wilds of North Novtierra.

An Vengeance of Dragons...

Kait, Ian, and Hasmal escape the brutal dangers of the Novtierran wilderness when Ry Sabir, a Kamee son of her Family's Sabir enemies, rescues them; Kait discovers that the gods have done more meddling in her life when Ry and Ian reveal that they are half-brothers . . . and bitter enemies. They transport the Mirror of Souls across the Bregian Ocean and get close to their goal, but the Goft Galweighs and Sabir House have formed an alliance to acquire the Mirror. They use airibles and magic to attack the Wind Treasure; they kill or capture most of the crew. Kait, Ry, Ian, Hasmal, and Ry's surviving lieutenants escape in one of the longboats, hidden by Falcon magic, and would have succeeded in getting the Mirror of Souls to safety, except that the Mirror, acting on its own, breaks through their shields with a beacon, drawing the enemy allies to it. Kait is forced to abandon the Mirror to the sea. She and the rest of the longboats occupants find refuge on one of the islands of the Thousand Dancers, where she discovers her uncle Dughall waiting, as he was instructed to do by his magic.

Meanwhile, Crispin Sabir, Ry's cousin and a powerful Sabir Wolf, successfully retrieves the Mirror of Souls from the sea, then kills his Galweigh allies. With his ownership of the Mirror undisputed, he returns to Cal-imekka, where he follows the instructions of the spirit of a long dead Dragon that has been guiding him, and activates the Mirror before a crowd of prayerful Iberans. He does not become immortal as he was led to expect; instead, his soul is ripped from his body and replaced by the soul of the ancient Dragon Dafril. Throughout the city, the freed Dragons choose other young, strong bodies to steal, and the Mirror rips those bodies' rightful souls away and inserts the souls of the Dragons.

Kait, Ry, Dughall, Ian, and Ry's men sneak into Calimekka in disguise and attempt to locate and reclaim the Mirror. Even though the Dragons have been freed, they hope that by acquiring the Mirror they can reverse the damage it has done. So, pretending to be traders of ancient artifacts, they manage to discover the identities of several Dragons and acquire an idea of where they might find the Mirror of Souls. But Kait, following up on a lead, falls into the hands of both Dragons and Sabirs. They prepare to torture her to find out who she's working with and what she knows about the Dragon conspiracy to achieve immortality.

Dughall and Ian, meanwhile, have located the Mirror of Souls, and Dughall has discovered the general principle by which it works. Now, watching what is happening to Kait via magic, he creates a miniature version of the Mirror and draws the soul of the Dragon preparing to torture her out of the body it has stolen and traps it in a ring he'd been wearing. However, the man whose body was previously inhabited by the Dragon's soul isn't able to save Kait before she throws herself off of the tower.

Meanwhile, Kait's cousin Danya, hiding in a Scarred village in the uncharted wastelands of the Veral Territories, gives birth to a son. The baby bears no physical signs of the Scarring that changed Danya from a beautiful young woman to a hideous monster; he does, however, bear the markings of enormous magical power. Further, his mother, once a Galweigh Wolf, has the training to see and feel the newborn's magical connections to Falcons across the known world. The Falcons' magical interference, which has enraged Danya since it began, grows more intense once the baby has drawn his first breaths. Luercas tells Danya that the baby is the Reborn, the long-awaited Falcon hero, and that his mission in life is to create a world of enforced peace ... a world in which Danya will forever be denied her revenge against the Sabirs who destroyed her and the Galweighs who failed to rescue her.

After terrible internal struggle, she chooses to sacrifice her son to prevent him from carrying out his mission. She decides that she must have her revenge. In his dying, her son first attempts through magic to save his own life; then, when it becomes clear that he cannot, he uses what remaining power he has to revert Danya to human form, excluding only the two talons that she drove into his heart. Even at the moment of his death, he loves her and she can feel his love.

Once he is dead, Luercas—one of the most powerful of the Dragons-claims the infant body for himself. He revives it and uses its inherent magical talents to force Danya to care for him until his new body is physically mature enough to allow him to care for himself.

Back in Calimekka, Kait, falling from the top of the tower, Shifts frantically, and for the first time in her life she develops wings. Expecting to die, she instead soars to safety; when she returns to the inn where she and the rest of her comrades are hiding, her brush with death has made her realize that she cannot spend whatever time she has hiding from her life. She and Ry become lovers. When Ian discovers this, he leaves the group in secret and offers to sell his knowledge to the Dragons in exchange for power.

At the same time that Ian is making his deal with the Dragons, the Falcons are shattered by the death of Solander, whose rebirth has been prophesied for a thousand years, and who was supposed to lead the world to a new age of peace and enlightenment. A thousand years of prophecy and an entire magic-based religion have just been destroyed, and many of the faithful take the paths of despair and even suicide. Dughall gets Ry, Kait, Hasmal, and the surviving lieutenants out of Calimekka when he discovers proof of Ian's be-'.rayal, but he is certain that the Dragons have won the world—he sinks into despondency. Hasmal and Alarista, the Gyru-nalle Falcon who once saved Hasmal's life and later became his lover, debate the merits of fleeing east to the unexplored lands of Novtierra, since they, too, are certain that everything is lost. Even Ry, who converted to Falconry after contact with Solander's love, withdraws.

Kait Shifts to the Karnee; in beast form she avoids thought and loss. But when she reverts to human form, she is forced to face the fact that

Solander's death has made one thousand years of hope and prophecy a lie. After long thought, she finds hope from this truth instead of despair, for nowhere in the prophecies was Solander's death ever mentioned as a possibility. Therefore, all prophecies in the Secret Texts become invalid—any guarantees of either Falcon defeat or Dragon ascension to immortality and godhood are equally false. The Falcons have no guarantee that they will win, but neither are they guaranteed defeat because Solander is no longer with them.

Kait rallies the surviving Falcons and develops a plan—she and Ry will go back to Calimekka and magically mark any Dragons they can find. The Falcons, from the relative safety of their camp in the mountains of southern Ibera, will draw out the Dragons' souls and trap them in rings, the way Dughall trapped the first soul when trying to rescue Kait. They will find a way to recapture the Mirror of Souls, too, and as soon as they do, they will reverse the spell the Dragons had cast. They hope doing so will recapture all the Dragons' souls within the Mirror.

The first part of their plan goes well: Both Ry and Kait find work within the Dragons' city-within-a-city in Calimekka, and both mark a number of Dragons. They have no luck finding the new hiding place of the Mirror of Souls, but are patient, trusting that sooner or later they will succeed. However, the Dragons become aware of their presence and take them prisoner.

Dughall and Hasmal attempt to rescue Kait and Ry via magic, but the magic backfires—Dughall is left weak and nearly helpless, while Dafril, the Dragon who wears Crispin Sabir's body, has the luck to connect with Hasmal. Dafril rips Hasmal's body and soul from the Falcon camp and deposits him in an interrogation room in the center of the Dragon compound. There Dafril tortures Hasmal; Hasmal manages to mark Dafril with the magic that will allow a Falcon to capture his soul in a ring, but there are no Falcons capable of controlling a soul as powerful as Dafril's left in the camp.

While this is going on, Ian replaces the guards watching Kait and Ry, and they are certain that he plans to kill them. Instead, he tells them how he joined the Dragons in order to find the Mirror; he still loves Kait and though

he knows he cannot have her, he decided when she chose Ry to do what he could to assist her. He releases both Kait and Ry and the three of them retrieve the Mirror from its hiding place. They haul it to a carriage that Ian has waiting, and the three of them take off for Galweigh House, which had been abandoned once the Dragons created their new city.

Book One

Nothing tears at the thoughts like a house abandoned. Its empty rooms whisper of tender memories forgotten, of the ghosts of joy and pain left to wander unheeded, of dreams dead of neglect. Here, where once people lived and loved, brought forth life and faced death, 1 run my fingers along crumbling masonry and shiver at the unimaginable loss of the unknowable dead, and 1 flee in dread lest the soul of this forgotten place waken and cling to me and claim me . . . and refuse to let me leave.

VlNCALIS THE AGITATOR, FROM THE LAND BEYOND LOSS

Chapter 1

A late-season blast of cold wind set the walls of the tent snapping and blew icy mountain air through tied-down flaps. Alarista crouched inside, looking from viewing glass to viewing glass, fighting down panic.

In two glasses, she had twin views of the inside of a carriage cruising through Calimekka's narrow back streets—Kait and Ry escaping from the Dragons with the Mirror of Souls. Over the steady clatter of the horses' hooves she could hear Kait, Ry, and Ian recounting what had happened to each of them since last they'd seen one another.

In another glass, she could see the remains of some delicate contrivance of crystal spires and silver gears lying in ruins on a worktable. The two voices whispering from that viewing glass were shrill with fear.

"... I just found it this way. Shamenar was in here working on it, and now he's gone, too. It will be a month's work at least to restore it, if we can even find Shamenar—"

"You think they got him?"

"I don't want to think. ..."

Another glass, another view. Through the eyes of someone running, a long, dark corridor illuminated by the runner's coldlamp—

shadows dancing back, then leaping forward, fantastic shapes crawling up the walls and resolving into mundane objects. The only sound at the moment was the runner's harsh breathing. Whoever he was, he'd been down four branches of the corridor already, asking the first guard he came to if anyone carrying anything had passed that way.

A dozen more glasses showed groups of people standing or sitting and talking, or revealed fountains, or gardens, or books or papers being slowly perused. Several glasses were temporarily dark—their sources asleep, or possibly dead. A hundred more glasses were lined to one side, these never activated. With Kait and Ry gone, they probably never would be, but Alarista kept them nearby because doing so was the procedure that Dughall and Hasmal had worked out. More than once in the past several days a glass had come suddenly to life, and Dughall or Hasmal had learned something valuable. Until all hope was gone, she would cling to that procedure.

Hasmal had been gone, she estimated, half a station—snatched bodily from the tent by some unimagined Dragon magic and taken . . . somewhere. So far, not one of the viewing glasses had revealed the view she sought—a glimpse of Hasmal. She whispered an unending prayer to Vodor Imrish, asking that if he still listened and he still loved her he would give Hasmal back. If she could see him, just for an instant, just to know that he was still alive, she would be able to breathe again.

Hands pulled apart the tent flaps and Yanth slipped between them. He dropped to the tent floor beside Jaim, who had been sitting quietly behind Alarista, offering support simply with his presence. "The healer is on the way," Yanth told Jaim. "Any sign of Hasmal?"

Jaim's voice was soft. "She hasn't moved, so I don't think so."

Alarista summoned the energy to answer them, just to let them know she could hear them and that she was still aware of the world around her, if only marginally. "No sign yet."

"I'm sorry. Is there something I can do to help?"

"Stay close," she said. "If anything changes, I might need both of you."

The healer came through the flaps a moment later, dragging her kit. She knelt beside Dughall and unrolled it. The woman was one of Dughall's people—part of the army he'd built months earlier. She was a Falcon, older and well trained in the healing magics, and calm enough, considering the circumstances. If he had any chance of getting better, the healer would make the most of it.

Guards knelt quietly along the tent walls, swords in hand; they hadn't laughed or joked since Hasmal vanished in a scream and a flash of light. They watched, tense and scared. It had been their responsibility to kill Dughall or Hasmal if a Dragon soul, drawn through but not successfully locked into one of the miniature soul-mirrors, possessed either of them. Now Dughall lay unresponsive on one of the mats, and Hasmal was gone, and Alarista had already told them she didn't have either the strength or the magical skills that had let Dughall and Hasmal successfully capture so many Dragon souls. They knew that if she took on a Dragon, they were likely to have to kill her.

A hand gripped her shoulder, and she jumped. "Look!" Yanth whispered, and pointed at one of the viewing glasses that had until that instant been dark.

She turned to the sudden light, to the quickly resolving image, and she gasped. Hasmal's face was suddenly very close to her own; it had been cut across both cheeks and over both eyelids, and blood caked the wounds. Always pale, his skin had taken on the color of bleached bone. She could count the beads of sweat that rolled across his forehead and marked his upper lip. "We found a way to make our own Mirror of Souls," he whispered.

The image danced down to a long, bloody knife, and to a thumb that tested the edge of it. "Really? Tell me more."

"I'll . . . I'll tell you anything you want to know. Anything."

She heard a soft chuckle that raised the hair on the back of her

neck and made her stomach churn. "I know you will. First tell me how you made it. We'll get to how you used it soon enough."

Alarista gripped Yanth's hand and squeezed. "He's torturing him."

"I know."

"Oh, gods! Oh, Hasmal! We have to help him."

"I know. But how?"

Alarista couldn't turn her eyes away from the nightmare in front of her. "I'll have to draw the Dragon's soul to me. I'll have to capture it."

"You couldn't do it before," Jaim said quietly.

"I'll just have to do it this time."

"And if you fail, we lose Hasmal and you. We're going to need you."

She turned to Jaim, snarling. "I can't sit here and watch him die!"

Jaim jumped back. "I wasn't suggesting that you watch him die."

"Then what?"

Jaim looked over at the healer working on the unconscious Dughall. "Dughali could beat the Dragon if he had his strength."

"As could I, if I had his skills."

"Dughall said you had as much control of magic as he did, only in other areas. Could you use your magic to help the healer heal him?"

Alarista stared at Jaim. She wasn't a healer, and just healing Dughall wouldn't do her any good. Even healed, he would be drained of energy and incapable of besting the soul of a rested, powerful Dragon. But where the healer could make him well, she could give him strength. Her strength. The price she would pay . . .

She chose not to think about the price she would pay.

She asked the healer, "Namele, are you nearly finished?"

"I've done all I can—he hasn't woken up yet, but now he's merely sleeping. A few days' rest and he should be able to sit up again. He's very frail—whatever happened nearly killed him." "But he's healed." Namele looked over at her, eyes wary. "As much as magic can heal

him, yes. He's old, he's worn out, and simple healing can't fix that. He won't be able to do any more Dragon fighting."

Alarista turned to Yanth and Jaim. In a low voice, she said, "Drag him over here. Then sit by me—when I finish what I have to do, I'll need you to catch me. Finally—and this is the most important thing—when Dughall wakes, the very instant he wakes, show him Hasmal. Don't let him waste time on me. Tell him he has to stop the Dragon before he kills Hasmal."

Yanth said, "What do you plan on doing?"

"The only thing I can. He needs youth and strength to fight the Dragons. I'm going to give him youth. And strength."

She heard the healer gasp. "You can't—"

"Shut up. I can." She glared at Yanth. "You'll take care of this?"

He nodded. "I will."

They dragged Dughall to her, assisted by two guards and impeded by the protesting healer, and propped him across from her in a sitting position. Then, while the guards held him upright, Yanth moved to Alarista's left shoulder, and Jaim to her right. She heard Hasmal scream once, and she shuddered.

Hold on, Has, she thought. Hold on. Help is coming.

She summoned all her courage, and rested her hands on Dughall's shoulders. Then she lifted her chin, and stared toward the heavens where Vodor Imrish held his court, and in a loud, clear voice, she commanded:

"From my strength, From my blood, From my flesh, From my life, I offer all that I am, All that I have,

All that Dughall Draclas needs To make him whole.

Take from me to give to him,

Strength and blood,

Flesh and life,

Even unto my own death.

I freely offer my gift,

And in his name accept my offer.

Vodor Imrish, hear me."

She did not draw her own blood, nor scrape her skin. She had no need of that. Their bodies touched—hers strong and whole, Dughall's weak and worn. She would not limit her offering or mark off with a circle that which she would give and that which she would hold back. Whatever Vodor Imrish chose to take from her to give to Dughall, he could take.

She knew in offering that she might die—that Dughall, so near death, might take from her more than she could give and survive. He might absorb her. But Dughall knew what she did not, and he could win for them where she could not. If she died, she would do so fighting to destroy the Dragons and to save Hasmal, and that would be enough. If she died, her soul would go on, and she would someday find Hasmal again. And meanwhile, her Hasmal would live.

She felt the fire flow into her veins, Matrin's magic stirred by the godtouch, and she knew that Vodor Imrish had heard her. She rejoiced for just an instant, for until that moment he had been deaf to all prayers and all entreaties. Then, as the fire filled her, it burned through her and emptied her. Her world grew dark and she heard a rushing in her ears. Her mouth grew dry, her body heavy, and a giant weight pressed down on her, making each breath a fight.

She knew she was falling, but could not stop herself. Her soul tugged at the moorings of her flesh, called by the wind of approaching death. She did not fight that wind, but at the last instant, when she was sure she would leave her body behind, she felt a surge of en-

ergy flow into her, binding her soul tightly to her cage of skin and bones. She was too weak to move—too weak even to open her eyes— but she lived, and knew she would live yet a little longer. Her last coherent thought was a prayer: that Dughall had received from her enough to do what he needed; that Hasmal could hold on until he did it.

Chapter

Dughall Draclas came roaring out of unconsciousness like a man trapped underwater who at the last possible instant breaks free from his trap and bursts to the surface. He lunged to his feet, gasping, his eyes open but for an instant unfocused.

His body burst with uncontainable energy. He felt as if he could fly, as if he could run from one edge of the known world to the other without his feet ever touching the ground, as if he could rebuild the Glass Towers single-handed. He had a hunger that he hadn't felt so overwhelmingly in years; he desired sex with the obsessive full-body yearning of a young man.

He stared around him at blurred bright colors and at shapes that he could not force to resolve into anything meaningful. The voices in his ears were clear and sharp, startlingly loud, full of nuances and depths but lacking meaning. Smells filled his nostrils, pungent and heady and rich. It was all new, all wondrous, all incomprehensible but glorious.

I've been reborn, he thought. Have died, have come into the world in a new body. I am once again a squalling infant, and in a few moments or a few days I'll forget that I am Dughall Draclas. . . .

Sound was the first thing to resolve into comprehensible patterns,

the first thing to shatter his illusion. "... don't know whether she's going to survive the shock."

"What about him? He looks healthy as peasant hell." "Dughall? Can you hear us? Can you see us?" "Nothing. She's paid a terrible price for nothing." Sight resolved next. He was in a tent. . . no. He was in the tent, where he and Hasmal had been pulling the souls out of Dragons. He was standing up, weaving back and forth, with a soldier at either side keeping him from falling on his face. He was looking down—Jaim stared up at him, Yanth and the healer Namele were crouched over a white-haired woman that he did not recognize.

He licked his lips, and they felt. . . different. Thicker, firmer, moister. He still felt that wondrous energy, that illusion of incredible strength, that inescapable sexual fire. "What. . . happened?" he asked, and wondered at the new depth of his voice, at the richness and the range. At the clarity of the sound when he spoke, at the presence of soft sounds he hadn't heard in years. Decades.

A relieved smile flashed across Jaim's face. "Dughall? You with us?"

Dughall nodded. "Yes."

"No time for explanations, then. A Dragon pulled Hasmal physically through the connection between them. He's torturing him now. If you can't pull the Dragon's soul from his body, he's going to kill Hasmal. You don't have much time; Hasmal looks bad."

Yanth and the healer dragged the old woman out of the way, and Dughall dropped to his knees beside Jaim. He stared into the viewing glass Jaim indicated and saw quick flashes of Hasmal, of a knife, of blood and horror. He heard a scream—whisper-soft through the view-ing-glass connection but no less chilling for its lack of volume—and heard a gentle, soothing voice say, "More. Or I'll cut out a lung, dear fellow, and pull it out through your back. You really only need one, you know."

Jaim said, "Hasmal managed to plant a talisman on the bastard only a few moments ago. It's been going on like this ever since. He's

been lying—making up all sorts of wild stories and talking as fast as he can. But the snake-futtering whoreson keeps cutting him anyway." Jaim's voice sounded tight and dry in his throat.

"I'll get him," Dughall said. "I'll stop this."

For the moment he didn't question his strength. He accepted it, and with it the miracle that had brought him back from sharply remembered pain and utter exhaustion. Jaim handed him a featureless gold ring attached to a tripod of twisted silver wire; this would become a tiny Mirror of Souls—a house and a prison for the soul of the Dragon who tortured Hasmal. He set it on the rug directly in front of him and with a quick swipe of his index finger scraped a bit of skin from the inside of his cheek.

He'd refined his technique since the first time he'd snatched a Dragon soul from its captive body, but the process was still fraught with danger. He glanced at the guards. "Have them watch me," he said to Yanth. "If you have any reason to think the Dragon has won and has pushed my soul into the ring, give them a signal. They're to kill this body without question."

Jaim paled. "How can I know?"

Dughall shrugged. "You might not. You might make a mistake. But, Jaim, you listen to me. Better that you make a mistake and kill me by accident than that you accidentally let a Dragon live. You understand?"

The young man looked at him with frightened eyes and nodded slowly.

Hasmal screamed again.

"I have to do this," Dughall said. "What's the Dragon's name?"

Jaim said, "Hasmal has called him Dafril."

Dughall nodded. "Dafril." He crouched over the tiny tripod. He rested his hands on the viewing glass that connected to Dafril's soul, and willed his soul to link through that ethereal connection to the monster at the other end. When, after a moment, he felt the hot darkness of that evil other, he concentrated all his will on the band of gold and said:

"Follow my soul, Vodor Imrish, To the Dragon soul of Dafril, To the usurper of a body not his own, And from this body expel the intruder. Bring no harm to the intruder, The Dragon Dafril.

Instead, give his soul safe house and shelter Within the unbroken circle before me— Unbroken that it may guard Dafril's immortality, and Protect the essence of his life and mind, While safely reuniting the body and soul Of him whom Dafril has wronged. I offer my flesh—all that I have given And all that you will take— Freely and with clear conscience, As I do no wrong, But reverse a wrong done."

White-hot magical fire burned through him once more, searing the anchor that held his soul to his own body, searing the tenuous connection between him and the Dragon; and within the blink of an eye it enveloped the Dragon's soul.

The fire pulsed and drew, and he felt first astonishment and then rage from Dafril. Because Dafril's soul could have no permanent anchor in the body he had stolen, the fire ripped him loose and pulled him toward Dughall as fast as light raced through a keyhole. Dughall braced and the enemy soul was upon him in the same instant; and this enemy held power he had never experienced before.

Dafril's soul dug into his mind and burrowed into his flesh seeking purchase; the Dragon fought with a thousand years of experience and

cleverness to pry Dughall from his body and force Dughall's soul into the eternal prison of the ring. Dughall strengthened his connections with his own flesh. He felt he was fighting an octopus—no sooner had

he shored up one weak spot than Dafril had wedged a tentacle into another and dug in. Every self-doubt, every half-remembered shame, every wrong he'd ever done anyone became a weak point that the Dragon exploited.

He caught brief thoughts and images from his enemy's mind; he discovered he was fighting the head of the Dragons. Dafril was the monster who had conceived the immortality engine a thousand years before, and had planned out and designed the Mirror of Souls. This was the very monster who, when the Wizards' War turned in favor of the Falcons, had gathered his faithful followers and locked all of them into the Mirror of Souls, priming it to bring them back when the world was ripe for their return. This was the master.

Dafril reached into his mind with a will forged of iron, and drove commands like knives into his soul. Give in. Give up. Surrender.

Dughall gathered his strength and channeled his purpose and determination. He visualized himself as the core of a sun, burning everything that was not him, expanding with unstoppable power, filling all the cracks and crevices, all the weaknesses and shames and uncertainties of his existence with the pure fire of his life. He accepted his self-doubt and admitted his imperfections, and when he did, he no longer questioned his worthiness to exist.

At the moment that Dughall accepted himself as he was, Dafril lost his hold. His soul erupted from the center of Dughall's chest in a fiery river that poured into the center of the ring. The light began to spiral around the rim, and the room filled for an instant with a deafening wall of sound—a wail of terror and rage so loud Dughall felt it more than he heard it. Fog poured out from the center of the fire, white and dense and ice-cold. And for just an instant, Dughall choked on the stink of rot and honeysuckle.

Then the air cleared and quiet returned.

Before him, pure golden light rose upward through the center of the tiny tripod and swirled into the ring, spiraling slowly. It had become the Mirror of Dafril—a thing of beauty with a heart of evil.

Dughall shuddered and looked up at Jaim. "I beat him," he said quietly. "I beat that monster. Hasmal should be safe now."

Jaim stared into his eyes, and Dughall became aware of the point of a sword pressed lightly against his back, high on the left rib cage. A downward thrust would shove it through his heart and kill him in an instant. He recalled his peril and realized its extent as he saw the doubt and the distrust in the eyes of the man who held his life in a word.

Jaim's hands trembled. He nibbled at the corner of his lower lip. He stared at Dughall as if staring could strip away the skin and bone and reveal the shape of the soul beneath. "Tell me something that only you and I would know," he said.

Dughall took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He shook his head. "That wouldn't work. Dafril's soul would have had immediate access to my memories. He could tell you anything I could."

Jaim frowned. A spot of blood appeared on that lower lip, quickly licked away. Abruptly he laughed and looked up at the guard. "He's Dughall," he said, and the pressure of the sword at Dughall's back vanished.

Dughall nodded. "I am. But how could you be sure?" Jaim said, "Dafril would have told me something to convince me he was you, in order to save his life as quickly as possible. Only you would say something that wouldn't give me any reassurance at all."

In the viewing glass, Hasmal was smiling through blood and pain. "You're the rightful owner of the body, aren't you?" he was saying.

Dughall felt he could relax. Hasmal would be taken care of by the grateful man who had gotten his life back. Meanwhile, he, Dughall, could take the time to find out what had happened to him. He stretched and pulled his hands away from the viewing glass that still showed images of Hasmal. "Tell me how I got my strength back."

Jaim glanced at the old woman still lying where Yanth and the healer had dragged her. "Alarista knew she couldn't take on the Dragon who was torturing Hasmal and win. So she fed her youth and

her strength to you. You look like you're in your late thirties or early forties now."

Dughall looked at his hands—really looked at them—for the first time since he woke up. The skin was smooth; the arthritis that had bent his knuckles sideways and swelled them into knots was gone. He made a fist and saw the muscle below the webbing between his thumb and index, finger bulge, big as a mouse. The air flowing into and out of his lungs moved slowly and easily. His spine felt straight and strong, and no dull throb of pain grabbed at him when he arched his back or turned his head. And lust coursed through his veins and filled his groin with urgent hunger.

He was young again.

And Alarista was old.

He twisted around and stared at the wasted body and wrinkled face of the woman across the tent. That was Alarista? She had sacrificed herself to save Hasmal; had torn most of the years of her life away and gifted them to him. He tried to conceive of a love that would do that—in all his years, he had known and desired and enjoyed many women, but he had never found the one woman for whom he would move the world.

He envied her the power of her passion, and realized in the same instant that he could not keep the gift that she had given him. He had to return her life to her, though he didn't know how.

He turned back to the viewing glass as he heard Hasmal say, "Will you cut me loose? I need a healer."

"You don't know who I am, do you?"

Through the eyes of the man Dughall had just restored to his life, Dughall saw Hasmal shake his head. "Someone who appreciates having his body back, I hope."

The man watching Hasmal laughed, and Dughall's attention snapped fully back to the viewing glass. He shuddered at the sound of that laugh. It was wrong. Cruel. It would have sounded right coming from Dafril—but Dughall knew he'd banished Dafril to the ring in

front of him. Which suggested that the man whose body Dafril had claimed had been evil, too.

"You have no idea how grateful 1 am," the man told Hasmal. "There I was, ready to do wondrous things, and suddenly that lying Dragon ripped me from my body and threw my soul into the Veil. I wasn't dead, but I wasn't alive, either. Things hunt between the worlds—did you know that? Vast cold monstrous hungers that seek out the bright lights of souls trapped in their lightless void so that they can devour them. Annihilate them. Other souls were trapped there with me—I watched darkness swallow some of them. They're gone forever. I barely evaded that same fate twice. Twice. Being trapped in the infinite blackness of void, hunted by roving nightmares-made-real. facing eternal extinction at any moment—I still don't know if there's a true hell, but the horrors of that place will do for me. You, or rather the one you summoned, pulled me out of that."

He'd been watching Hasmal's face while he talked, moving closer step by slow step. Twice he'd glanced at the knife in his hand.

His words created an image of gratitude, but some edge to his voice spoke of darker emotions. "You and your unseen friend have powerful magic at your disposal. You're Falcons, aren't you?"

Hasmal's face showed that he had heard that edge, too. He nod-ded, but warily.

"Working with Ry Sabir."

Another slow nod.

"I thought as much. Ry's my cousin."

Hasmal tried a cautious smile, but it died on his face.

"Good guess," the man said. "We weren't friends, Ry and I. My name is Crispin Sabir. Perhaps you've heard Ry speak of me?" A soft chuckle. "I see from your expression that you have, and that Ry was careful to tell you all my best points."

Dughall's fists clenched into tight balls. Crispin Sabir. Of all the Sabirs Dughall had encountered in his years of service to the Galweigh Family, Crispin was the closest thing to incarnate evil he had ever encountered. Hasmal couldn't have fallen into worse hands.

"I helped you," Hasmal said.

"Well, yes. Undeniably. But I don't give that fact much weight. I'm grateful to have my body back—please don't think I'm not. But you were only trying to save your own life when you summoned your friend."

"Are you going to let me go?" Hasmal asked. Crispin Sabir was quiet for a long time. A very long time. Dughall felt his muscles ache with the tension of waiting. Beside him, he heard Jaim's shallow breathing, and movement as Yanth crouched at his left shoulder.

"You're a Falcon. My magic can't touch you. You're shielded somehow—I can't even see the shield, but I can feel its effects. 1 can't control you. I can't make you work for me. If I set you free, nothing I could do would guarantee that you won't turn on me." "My word—"

"I have no love for the trappings of honor, you. I've given my own word countless times, and have broken it in the next breath. Expediency rules honor—you know this and I know it, and I would have it no other way. But because that is true, your word is no currency I'd care to spend."

"I've done nothing to harm you."

"Not that I know of. I grant you that. But you can't guarantee that you won't do something to harm me in the future."

Hasmal grimaced. "I swear on Vodor Imrish, my word—" he started to say again, and again Crispin cut him off.

"No. Don't waste your breath or my time. I must do something with you. You might make a good prisoner or fetch a decent ransom. But I doubt that any ransom I could get from you would be worth the trouble you would cause me."

Jaim asked, "Can't you do something? Travel back through the viewing-glass link—force that Sabir bastard to let him go?"

Dughall gritted his teeth. "Falcon magic cannot coerce. It is purely defensive. Most times, that's enough. But Crispin Sabir is the rightful

soul in his own body—I cannot do anything that will force him from the choices he makes of his own free will."

Dughall felt fingers tighten around his arm, and he turned from the viewing glass to find Yanth a mere hand's breadth from his face. "Dragon magic could force him. Wolf magic could force him."

Dughall rested a hand atop Yanth's and willed himself to calm, -creed. But I am neither Dragon nor Wolf. I am Falcon, and sworn to follow the path of Falconry As is Hasmal."

"You have to save him," Jaim said. "Alarista gave you her life so that you could save him."

Dughall turned to face Jaim. "Perhaps I could save his body, but it would be at the price of my soul, and his. Jaim, if he chose to turn away from the Falcon path, he could, perhaps, save his own life. Instead, he holds his shields in place and so protects his soul."

"Save him," Yanth snarled.

"There are things worse than death," Dughall said softly. "Things more terrifying, more painful. And far more lasting."

"You quaking coward," Yanth said. He started to draw his sword. In a flash, three guards' blades pointed at the young swordsman's throat. Yanth glared at them and turned to Dughall. He said, "If I could, I'd cut you a spine, you jellyfish."

In the viewing glass, Dughall saw Crispin rest his blade against the rope that held Hasmal's left wrist. He had moved closer to the trapped Falcon. He said, "Perhaps I ought to let you go. I wonder if you would be as grateful for your freedom as I am for mine."

Hasmal suddenly smiled and said, "Dughall, hear me. I want more time. I am not done here."

"You're done here," Crispin said, and in a stroke almost too fast to follow, buried his knife to the hilt in Hasmal's heart.

Yanth roared, "No/" and Jaim made an inarticulate cry. From her place on the floor near the healer, Alarista awakened from her motionless sleep, keening.

Hasmal gasped. His eyes went wide, and then closed. Dughall held his breath. Hasmal's words rang in his head—I want more time. I

am not done here. Hasmal's message had been a code; it spoke of a plan that Crispin Sabir could not suspect, and would not believe.

"More time," Dughail whispered, praying that Hasmal would succeed. "More time."

Within an instant, a faint white light formed around Hasmal's face, so that his features seemed to be hidden by a thin fog. The expression of pain that had twisted his mouth slowly seeped away; he looked peaceful, and somehow triumphant. The faint white cloud of light grew brighter and spread down his body, setting his torso glowing first, then illuminating his arms and legs. Dughall could see the changes clearly—Crispin was unmoving, staring at the body. The only sound to come from the viewing glass was the sound of his breathing, which grew harsher and faster as the light surrounding Hasmal's body grew brighter. When Hasmal's entire body was bathed in the light, the nimbus surrounding him grew brighter, then brighter yet, until it was . too brilliant to look at directly. Crispin averted his eyes, then glanced back as shadows in the room where he stood changed.

The light had lifted away from Hasmal's body. It maintained its man shape for a moment, then coalesced into a tight, brilliant ball of white fire.

"Get away from me," Crispin whispered.

The sphere of light began to float toward him, soundless, slow, inexorable.

In the viewing glass, Dughall saw one of Crispin's hands raise to form a Wolf power-hold. Light streamed from Crispin's fingertips, pouring through the radiant sphere. But the sphere was undamaged. Indeed, it grew brighter, then larger. It kept floating toward Crispin, still silent, unhurried, utterly implacable.

Crispin turned away at last and began to run.

In the next instant, the view in the glass became whiteness—brilliant blinding light.

Then blackness.

In the tent in the mountains far to the south of Calimekka, wind set the flaps shuddering and snapping, and cold air blew through the

aps in the waxed cloth. Yanth and Jaim stared at each other, and then ; Alarista, who still lay unmoving, her head thrown back, her eyes pen and focused on nothing. She did not cease her keening; her thin, ail voice shredded the silence. Yanth spoke first. "What happened? What was that?" Jaim said, "Hasmal took over Crispin's body—like the Dragons

Dughall shook his head. He said, "Hasmal's last words were uoted lines from the Secret Texts, from the Book of Agonies. The hole passage goes:

'Then, at the moment of his death, Solander spoke into the Veil. "More time," he cried. "I am not done here."

'From within and beyond the Veil the gods listened, and though his body was broken beyond saving, they had pity on Solander, and did not call his soul away from the world. Instead, in sight of Dragons and Falcons, Solander took form as a sun, as a light unto the world, rising from his shattered shell.

'And he spoke to all who watched, saying to them, "I am with you still."

'And at his words the Dragons feared, and the Falcons rejoiced. '"

Jaim said, "His body is dead, but his soul is ... that light?"

"I believe so."

"Then what will happen to him now?"

Dughall touched the darkened viewing glass. "We can only wait

Chapter 3

The carriage rattled over the cobblestone paving of Shippers Lane, in the Vagata District of Calimekka—one of the few streets open to wheeled traffic during daylight hours. It made poor time; the driver jockeyed for place with wagons filled with ships' stores bound for the harbor, with donkeys, mules, and oxen pulling farm carts laden with produce just arrived from the country, with public coaches carrying merchants to and from their warehouses and private coaches bringing the rich to and from their ships.

Kait held Ry's hand; it was the first time she had been able to touch him since they came to Calimekka to infiltrate the Dragons' city. Now the two of them were alone except for Ian, and Ian kept his eyes pressed to the peephole at the rear of the carriage. Kait knew he was looking for trouble that might be coming after them, but she suspected he didn't want to have to watch her sitting so close to Ry, either. Both his desire for her and his pain in knowing she loved Ry had been clear in his eyes when he'd rescued the two of them from the cages. And every time he looked in her direction, she could see it still.

Ry leaned over and brushed the side of Kait's neck with his lips. "I love you," he whispered, too low for any but another Karnee to hear.

She squeezed his hand and murmured, "I love you, too." "I have rooms waiting for us in one of the harbor inns," Ian said. He was still on his knees on the rear bench of the carriage with his back to them, clinging to the handholds and staring out the peephole. "You'll find forged papers in the packet beside you. You're to be Parat and Parata Bosoppffer, from the village of Three Parrots Mountain, first names Rian and Kaevi. Those were as close to your actual names as I could come using backcountry names. You're minor affiliates of the Masschanka Family taking passage for Birstislavas in the New Territories, where you're to homestead. You attended the funeral of Tirkan Bosoppffer, who was buried today—his legacy to you was the lands in the Territories that you now go to claim. Your papers are very good," he noted in an aside. "They would hold up if you used them to take passage, and would probably get you your homestead deed when you arrived if you chose to leave Calimekka."

"We won't be leaving the city," Kait said. "The Dragons are still here, and as long as they are, no one and no place is safe. As much as I would like to never see this city again, there's nowhere else we can

Ian turned and nodded at her. A wry smile twisted one corner of his mouth. "I expected you'd say that. I still wanted to give you the option of escape." He turned back to his peephole. "We'll have to be in the inn for two or three days. Traffic along the Palmetto Cliff Road is watched now—for us to get to Galweigh House, we're going to have to get a donkey to carry the Mirror of Souls and pack in over one of the mountain paths."

"You have forged papers that will explain what we're doing heading there, too?" Kait asked.

"No. No one goes to Galweigh House by any path. If we're caught on our way there, we'll most likely die."

Ry sighed. He told Ian, "Since Kait and I jumped off a cliff to get here, I've been operating on the theory that I'm already dead. It's given me a whole new appreciation for every moment of my life, and has allowed me to keep from panicking."

Kait looked at him, interested. "Does that work?" He looked over at her and grinned. "You'd be amazed. The guards came running at me with swords drawn when they caught on to us; I thought, I'm already dead—what can they do to me? So I shouted to warn you, and stood to fight, hoping to create a distraction and give you time to escape. Didn't work . . . but I still think it was the right thing to do."

Kait thought about it for a long moment, and decided to give it a try. She visualized herself still, gray-skinned, eyes dulled and open and staring at nothing, breath stopped. I'm already dead, she told herself, and forced her protesting mind to believe it. Already dead. Already dead. In a strange way, it was comforting. The instant she conceded her death, she had already lost everything she had to lose. She became indestructible. She could suddenly focus on what she had to do instead of on her fear of dying. Her goals and the logical steps she would have to take to reach them rose smoothly out of the background chatter of her mind, and the ceaseless shrill monkey voice that howled warning of her imminent destruction stilled. "That works," she said. "That actually helps."

Ry nodded.

Ian was less impressed. He said, "As I was saying, you have new identities to use before we get to Galweigh House. But you'll need to change into the clothes I brought for you now. We'll have a checkpoint coming up soon—you need to look like poor relations just come from a funeral." He had stripped off his soldier's uniform as soon as they'd jumped into the carriage, and already wore his disguise. Dressed in a silk tunic embroidered with copper thread, deep blue pleated balloon breeches, and calf-high embroidered black cloth boots, and with his cropped hair covered by a long blond wig, he looked like the sort of man who could afford to rent a four-horse funeral carriage for himself and his poorer relations.

"Where are the clothes?" Kait asked.

"Compartment above your heads. You have a few moments, but do hurry."

Ry stood, swaying with the movement of the carriage, and handed down a bundle of green cloth to Kait. He pulled out another bundle, this one brown.

Kait pulled on the outfit Ian had obtained for her. It had once been intended to ape the fashionable funeral wear of the upper classes, though its dyes were muddy and its fabrics cheap. With the cut of it several seasons past its prime, it had descended from merely ugly to truly hideous. As she tightened the laces on the bodice and adjusted the ankle ties of the leg wraps, she decided she definitely looked like somebody's poor third cousin.

In the time she had taken to get dressed, Ry had scrambled into his new clothes. His were equally ugly—but she thought he looked good in them nonetheless.

He looked at himself, grimaced, then looked at her. "Yodee hoder," he said in a broad backcountry accent. "Let's send Uncle Tirkan off with banana beer and an all-night stomp. And when we're done, you can tuck up your skirts and we can go plow the fields."

Ian turned away from the peephole for a moment and studied the two of them. He shrugged. "You look like every other poor parat or parata leaving Calimekka for a fresh start. If you could afford silks and jewels here, why would you be traveling to the New Territories to make your fortunes?" He turned around and sat down on the bench lacing the two of them. "Get your papers out," he said. "The checkpoint is just ahead. By the way, should you be asked, I'm Ian Bosoppf-fer, your first cousin, just arrived from the Territories to take you back with me."

Kait nodded, memorizing his story and Ry's as well as her own. Her heartbeat picked up. The Mirror of Souls lay nestled in the compartment beneath Ian, easily found by even the most cursory search.

"Get ready," Ry said, and gave her hand a final squeeze.

"I'm ready," Kait said. "At least as ready as I can be."

He told her, "They may know by now that we're gone. If they question us, or if they want to search the carriage, we're going to have to kill them."

"I know."

Ry said, "We can't let them get the Mirror back." "I know that, too."

The carriage rattled to a stop. A guard pulled the door open and leaned inside. "Apologies for interrupting you at your time of loss," he said, "but I'll have to see your papers." He gave each of their faces a cursory look, but Kait knew from experience with Family guards that in that quick glance he'd catalogued myriad details about them that he would be able to recall again if questioned.

Ry handed the man his and Kait's forged documents, and Ian handed over his own papers.

The guard studied her papers and Ry's first. He read the notations and snorted. "Three Parrots Mountain? Zagtasht preserve you!" He handed Ry the papers and said, "Here's some free advice, country boy. People in the city aren't like the ones you know. When you get to your rooms, stay there and hold your vigil in private. Don't play dice with the sailors, don't buy drinks for the whores, and don't go walking down backstreets with men who have a wondrous device to show you that is guaranteed to make your fortune."

Ry nodded solemnly. "I won't." His accent was pure hillslogger. The guard said, "You think you won't. But you'll do something equally stupid, I'll bet you, and lose your ship fare—and then you'll be stranded here like the thousand other yokels who thought they knew what cities were about."

He studied Ian's papers next. After an equally quick glance, he shrugged. "You've made it to the Territories and back already, eh?" "Yes."

"Then maybe you know a bit about the city. Keep them smart, would you?" He returned his attention to Ry This time the glance was intent, not cursory.

Kait felt a chill crawl down her spine. Ry shrugged.

The guard finally said, "You remind me of the last hillslogger I warned to stay out of trouble. He ended up back at the guardstation

the same gods'-damned night, weeping about his lost life savings and wondering how he was ever going to reach his claim in the Territories." The guard gave a disgusted snort and stepped down from the carriage. "As if—in this city—we could find the trickster who gulled him out of his gold and get the whoreson to give it back." He slammed the carriage door and waved up to the driver. "Move it. Next!"

When they were through, Ry sagged against Kait's side.

"What's the matter?"

"I knew him," Ry said. "He was one of the gate guards at Sabir

House before I came after you. His name is ... damnall. What is it.

Lerri? Herri? No, but that's close. Guerri? That's it. Guerri. What's

worse, he knows me, too. He hasn't connected my face with who I am

yet, but he will."

Ian grimaced. "We should have killed him, then."

Ry shook his head. "No. We wouldn't have made it past the checkpoint. We may have time to lose ourselves at the harbor. We'd better get new papers, though."

Kait looked from Ry to Ian. "He knew who you were, Ry," she said "He knew. I saw an instant of surprise in his eyes when first he looked at you. I didn't know what to make of it, and when he didn't say anything, I thought perhaps I'd imagined it."

"Nonsense," Ian said. "If he'd recognized Ry, he would have sounded the alarm. He could have been a wealthy man for turning him in—a fact I know he knows. The decree of Ry's barzunne is posted in all the guardhouses, in the dorms, and on the public posts."

Kait looked at Ry. "I'm sure he knew you," she insisted.

Ry leaned his head against the wooden headrest and closed his eyes. "I was good to him when he worked at the gate," he said thoughtfully. "Nothing spectacular . . . but I remembered his name, and I gave him small gifts for Haledan's Festival and the Feast of the Thousand Holies."

Ian raised an eyebrow. "Considering what the rest of our Family is like, you must have seemed a veritable saint to him."

"The Sabirs earned their bad reputation for their dealings with

other Families," Ry said stiffly "They weren't cruel to those who

served them."

Ian said, "It was my Family, too, brother. Remember? I spent my first years in that House, and saw plenty of cruelty aimed at those who served. My mother was one of those who served."

Ry shrugged. "Perhaps you're right. In any case, he didn't turn us in, and if Kait's right and he did recognize me, I don't think he will

turn us in."

"I hope she's right. He knows the names we're traveling under, our faces, our cover story, and our general destination. If he sends the Sabir guards after us in the next few days, they won't have any trouble tracking us down."

Chapter 4

H asmal's last words still rang in his own mind like the pure tones of a meditation bell. Diighall, hear me. 1 want more time. I am not done here.

He was dead, he knew—and he could feel the pull of the Veil still tugging at him like the waves of an outgoing tide pulling at a piece of driftwood. But the light that infused his soul gave him strength to resist the pull, and his mind remained his own—not confused, not lost and uncomprehending as he had heard minds became when people suddenly by violence. He knew exactly what had happened to Crispin Sabir had finished killing him. And Vodor Imrish had heard his summons and answered his prayer. Even dead, Hasmal now had at least a little time to finish the things he had left undone, and though he was not sure of how everything worked in this new state of being, he knew that he had within his grasp the means to effect change.

He rose slowly, feeling an unnerving pull as his spirit separated from his body. As his flesh fell away, he felt both lighter and cleaner. But he also felt the first wave of terrible loss. His heart cried out for Alarista; he knew he would never hold her again; never touch her; never kiss her; never make love to her. The last words they had spo-

ken were the last words they would ever speak; the last kiss they had shared would be the final one. His dreams of having children with her, of growing old together—those were gone.

He hoped their souls would reunite beyond the Veil—that they would share their afterlife, or that they would be reborn into other bodies where they could share other lives. It was something to hope for. But the happiness of this moment, this love, this life, was now behind him.

He hung in the air for a moment, staring down at his dead self lying on the table, and he grieved. He had wanted so much more.

Then he drew himself together. Vodor Imrish had not given him this second chance so that he could mourn his own death. He was a Falcon—he had sworn himself to the service of good, and while he existed in any form as Hasmal rann Dorchan, son of Hasmal rann Halles, he had work to do.

He felt certain that Dughall had heard his last words. He'd felt the old master's presence just before the Dragon soul of Dafril was ripped from Crispin's body. He felt equally certain that Dughall would realize that he intended to bind his soul to the plane of the living as Solan-der the Reborn was rumored to have done, so that he could carry out the destiny that had been stolen from him by the Dragons. Now he had to hope that Dughall would find a way to provide an open channel for him, as the Secret Texts said Vincalis had provided an open channel for Solander after his death.

Hasmal would not try to become another Reborn. Not for an instant did he believe Vodor Imrish had intended any such destiny for him. But his god had put him in the hands of Dafril, a powerful Dragon who had bragged to him that he and he alone had been the creator of the original Mirror of Souls. And his god had allowed him to see Dafril captured and rendered helpless, while the body Dafril had inhabited had remained close at hand. If the rightful occupant of that body, Crispin Sabir, had killed him, Hasmal believed Vodor Imrish had allowed it for a reason. He believed he had died so that he could achieve the one form which would allow him to obtain the in-

formation the Falcons needed to conquer the Dragons once and for all.

Vodor Imrish was not a god of war; he didn't destroy perfectly good worshipers to take pleasure in the spectacle of their deaths as did the gods of war. He had no love of blood for the sake of blood, nor of pain for the pleasure of pain. He would make good use of the dead as he made good use of the living.

Crispin Sabir still stood in the spot from which he had killed Hasmal. Hasmal could tell that Crispin could see him, too; the Wolf's eyes were fixed on the place where he floated, and his breathing was faster than normal, and shallower. Hasmal could feel Crispin's fear vibrating in the air.

He found that he could will himself to move in any direction with a thought. He began to float slowly toward Crispin, not certain of what he would do when he reached him, but certain that Crispin needed to be his first destination.

The Wolf hummed with magic—power, Hasmal realized, that he had drawn from the energy of Hasmal's death. As Hasmal moved toward him, Crispin attacked with that magic.

The magic that Crispin had intended to be a weapon, however, did not act like a weapon when it encountered Hasmal's insubstantial form. It flowed through Hasmal, but didn't harm him. Instead, it fed him back the life-force that Crispin had stolen, making him stronger and further clearing his mind. The spell attached to the energy, though, rebounded on Crispin, and the rewhah energy that came from the death-powered spell hit the Wolf at the same instant. The combined forces of spell and rewhah stunned the Wolf, pinning his feet to :ound. Hasmal felt the vibration of Crispin's fear rise in intensity.

He continued floating slowly toward Crispin. At the last instant before they touched, Crispin regained control of his body. He turned and tried to run. Hasmal enveloped him, and their souls connected.

An immediate wash of sensations assaulted his heightened senses and sickened him. His first impression of Crispin's soul was of foulness layered upon foulness; of perversion and delight in perversion;

of hatred piled upon rage stacked upon lust twisted up with greed and hunger for power. Each part of Crispin's soul yammered its desires in an unending stream; each separate memory and each separate perversion added to the babble. Hasmal tried to shield himself from the disgusting cacophony, but in this new form he could no longer summon a shield. Frustrated and overwhelmed by the noise of Crispins mind, he pushed against the din, intending only to give himself a peaceful space in which to study his surroundings, unbothered by them. The blanket he created, however, did something to Crispin; the Wolf toppled to the floor, rendered senseless and still. He breathed and his heart beat, but his chaotic mind grew quiet, the many conflicting voices in it hushed completely or forced to whisper. Which was an improvement, Hasmal decided. He spent a few moments learning to read the shapes of the tumultuous thoughts, and sorting those which belonged to Crispin from those deep imprints which remained from Dafril's presence. Hasmal felt he was digging for diamonds in a river of filth, but he persisted. And he began uncovering his diamonds.

His first gem of information was that Crispin lived in paranoid terror of the discovery of the single secret he kept hidden not just from the rest of the world, but also from his brother Anwyn and his cousin Andrew. He had fathered a child, a daughter, a baby bom to him by a woman about whom he had actually cared. The mother had been involved in an intra-Family intrigue; when Crispin discovered her treachery against him, he'd killed her himself. But the child the two of them created he had spared. Fearing that a member of his own Family or one of the other Five Families would use the babe as a lever to move him, he'd bought a wet nurse for her and sent wet nurse and infant to Novtierra. For years, he'd kept the child hidden in the city of Stosta in the Sabirene Isthmus. She had been there, in fact, until he discovered the existence of the Mirror of Souls and first decided to make himself a god. On the day that the Wind Treasure had sailed into the Thousand Dancers and into his reach, he marked three albatrosses with the compulsion to fly across the sea to her, and banded each with

the message that she was to come home, and was to wait for him in a secret apartment that he had prepared for her. She was not to try to contact him—he would come to her.

Of course Dafril had taken over Crispin's body at the moment when he had thought he would ascend to godhood. He'd never experienced his moment of triumph. His vision of being the god-king welcoming his beloved child into the realm that would become her own personal possession had not materialized. She had arrived in Cal-imekka, and was in the apartment at that moment. Dafril had noted her arrival, and had kept a spy checking to see that the girl had the necessities and that she didn't stray, but he had not come up with any compelling use for her yet. So he had left her alone.

And because Dafril had controlled Crispin's body until the moment Dughall exorcised him, father and daughter had not yet met.

Hasmal knew her name; he knew where she was hiding; he knew the words Crispin had given her that would identify him to her and let her know he was the one person in all of Calimekka she could trust.

Within the dark, strong traces of Dafril's presence, he found memories far stranger than Crispin's, memories that shook him to his core Dafril and a colleague named Luercas had been the wizards who took :he life of Solander more than a thousand years earlier. He and Luercas had worked out many of the details of the immortality engine. Dafril had been the sole leader of the Dragons in Calimekka, too—for in returning from their long hiatus inside the Mirror of Souls, something had happened to Luercas. Hasmal could find Dafril's concern on that score. Dafril had believed Luercas might be working against him, or working on his own. Hasmal felt an uneasy chill at that thought, but kept digging.

His greatest find waited amid the foulest of Dafril's thoughts. The Dragon Dafril had been the primary designer of the Mirror of Souls. He and Luercas and a few other Dragons had created it when they began to suspect that they might not win the Wizards' War. Dafnl knew the meaning of every sigil inscribed on the Mirror, the use of

every inlaid gem, the nuances of every spell the Mirror could build and channel.

And as he knew those things, so did Hasmal.

Hasmal recalled suddenly and with crystal clarity the words of the Speaker he had summoned long ago—the Speaker who had launched him on his flight away from the safety of his home in Halles and into the path of Kait Galweigh and the fates. She'd said, "You are a vessel chosen by the Reborn, Hasmal. Your destiny is pain and glory. Your sacrifice will bring the return of greatness to the Falcons, and your name will be revered through all time."

Perhaps in the nest of clever obfuscations and intentional cloudiness she had spoken, she had told him that one clear truth without ornament or trickery. If Hasmal could be quick enough, and if he could hold his incorporeal self together long enough, he could hand the Falcons the keys that would rid Matrin of the Dragons for good, and in the same stroke could give them a way to control Crispin, who now led Ibera's remaining Wolves. Before he fell into the Darkland, before he heard the karae sing their welcoming dirges into his dead ears, he would seek out Dughall. If he could transmit his message to the Falcons, he would not have died for nothing.

He focused his energy, located the talismanic connection that bound Crispin to Dughall's viewing glass, and launched himself along it.

Chapter 5

Luercas said, "A little faster, Danya. It would not be seemly for you to trail behind me when we make our triumphant return to the village. You are, after all, my mother . . . and we know how the Kargans revere mothers."

They rode giant lorrags—bigger versions of the deadly predators who hunted the Kargans across the tundra of the Veral Territories. Luercas had lured two of the beasts to In-kanmerea, the citadel of the Ancients buried beneath the tundra near the Kargan village. When the two predators skulked down the steps and into the huge, vaulted entry chamber, they had been of normal size. Luercas had used one of the Ancients' magical engines to steal energy from the lives and souls of the Kargans, and had twisted that energy into a spell to increase the monsters' size and suppress their will. They were still vicious brutes, and still deadly, but now they could do nothing to harm either Luercas or Danya.

Luercas added, "This is the moment you've been waiting for, girl. You needn't sulk."

Danya nodded, but did not speak. She rarely said anything to Luercas anymore; he took delight in turning her words back on her, in humiliating her, in making her feel like a fool. He never did any-

thing of the sort when anyone else could see them; his plans for the Kargans demanded that both he and she become not just beloved but actually worshiped by the furry Scarred tribe. But when they were alone, he goaded her mercilessly for her weakness, her cowardice, her lack of foresight, her poor magical abilities, and anything else he could think of to remind her that no matter what their outward appearance might be, he owned her.

She glanced over at him. Luercas looked about twelve years, old, though he'd been born only half a year earlier. His golden hair hung down his back in a short braid, his blue eyes studied her guilelessly. He was as beautiful as any human child she had ever seen, and she hated him with a depth and a ferocity she did not even have words for. When she slept, she dreamed of hurting him; when she woke, she sometimes wept to discover that he had not died at her hands.

She comforted herself with the fact that she had sworn revenge against him at the same time that she had renewed her vows of revenge against the Sabirs and her own Family, the Galweighs. She had sacrificed her son to seal that oath—and if Luercas's soul now inhabited her dead son's body, her dead son's blood would see that the Dragon wizard would suffer and die for doing so.

They rode through a stand of fireweed, the flowers in full and glorious bloom. Had she been on the ground, they would have towered over her head. Astride the lorrag's gaunt back, she could just see above the waving sea of fuchsia blooms.

"So, Danya Two-Claws, are you ready to become a goddess?" Luercas asked.

She said nothing.

He turned and stared at her. As he did, she felt hjs gaze take on weight and form. Her throat tightened, and continued to tighten. She gasped, and her airway closed completely. Invisible fingers squeezed it shut, and though she grabbed her neck with both hands and opened her mouth and tried to suck in air, nothing happened.

"I'm tired of riding in silence," Luercas said. "1 want someone to

talk to ... and since the lorrags can't talk, that leaves you. Are you going to talk to me?"

A faint film of red glazed the world, and darkness moved toward the center of her field of vision. She nodded.

He laughed. "You'll learn that you can't fight me, Danya. You might as well become my friend."

He still held her airway closed. She nodded.

"You'll be my friend?"

She nodded again, frantic. The world reeled around her and her skull felt like it would explode.

"Well, good. I'm so glad."

Suddenly air rushed into her starved lungs. She sagged forward, relieved and terrified at the same time.

He was staring at her, that same fixed, humorless smile stretched across his face. "Don't you feel better now that we're friends?"

She nodded again.

He smiled. "We're ready, then. Friend. I'll take Kargan form before we reach the village. Keep the red cloak on when you ride in, but after I change to human shape in front of them, throw it to the ground at my feet so that I can dismount on it. Their prophecy of their savior's arrival states that he 'walks on red.' The cloak should meet the requirement well enough. And as long as we ride the lorrags and I'm Kargan in form some of the time, they'll be ready enough to accept that their prophecy has come true."

Danya nodded. "You said you wanted me to say something."

He said, "Raise your right hand so that they get a good look at those two claws of yours. Say, 'You welcomed me and made me one at you. You accepted me in forms both strange and stranger, fed me from your tables, gifted me with home and hearth and friendship, my good and faithful children, 1 reveal myself to you as Ki Ika, and I give you my son Iksahsha as I promised long ago.'"

"Ki Ika and Iksahsha—the Summer Goddess and her son Bounti-ful Fishing. You truly believe they'll look at us and see their heroes? I'm not even Kargan."

"Their legends speak of the day when they were human—they fully believe that they'll be human again someday If Ki Ika reveals herself to them in human form, what of it? You're what they hope to be. Besides, we're riding lorrags, I can become Kargan at will, and we control magic. We're as close to their gods as they'll ever see walking."

"If you say so. Then what?"

"Then I'll tell them that the days of the prophecy have come, when the Scarred shall be returned to their rightful places in the lands and the homes of Man, and shall once again, if they so desire, take back-their forms as Men." He shrugged. "I'll tell them to follow us— that we'll lead them to the Rich Lands, them and all the rest of the Scarred."

"And we use them to raise our army and attack Ibera."

"Yes. Why do you sound so doubtful now?"

"Because now I'm sitting on the back of the lorrag and not merely imagining it. And I'm looking at you on the back of your beast, and you look neither immortal nor particularly impressive. We have no cloth-of-gold robes, no jewels, no servants. I was raised in a House, gods know. I've seen what power is supposed to look like. We're not it."

"Dear foolish child, I was the leader of the most powerful guild of wizards in the known world a thousand years ago, when aircars flew through the skies powered by wizard thoughts and gardens grew in the air and people wandered through them walking on clouds. I have seen power in forms so beautiful and wondrous you would fall to your knees, believing yourself in the presence of your own puny gods if you had ever seen them. I tell you they'll believe—what is power to you would be an alien thing to the Kargans. What they will see when they see us will be power in a form they can understand. We'll be what they have prayed for and dreamed about for generations uncounted."

Chapter 6

Dughall saw Crispin Sabir's viewing glass go dark. He waited, holding his breath, looking for a sign from Hasmal. He didn't know what his young colleague might do, but he hoped Hasmal might find a way to control Crispin's body. That he might even discover a way to oust Crispin's soul and claim the body for himself.

Then the darkness in the glass changed to radiant light, and Has-mal's voice filled the tent.

"We have to hurry," Hasmal said. "I have so much to tell you, and so little time. Crispin will wake soon, and before he does, much of what we need to accomplish must be completed."

Dughall suppressed his desire to ask questions about where Has-mal was and what was happening to him, or to offer him comfort or

encouragement. He said, "Tell me."

Hasmal's voice spoke from the light. "Take me into your body and your mind, that you can know what I know."

Dughall hesitated only for an instant. Then he picked up the viewmg glass and stared into its depths. Immediately Hasmal made the connection with him. Dughall felt reassuring warmth and Has-mal's familiar personality flow into him—and half a heartbeat later, he felt the sharp memories of Hasmal's torture and death, his grief over

his loss of Alarista, and his discoveries of Crispin's daughter and the operation of the Mirror of Souls. While he was learning what Hasmal knew, Hasmal was discovering that Kait and Ry had already escaped, that Ian had not betrayed them, and that the Mirror of Souls was already back in the hands of the Falcons.

He felt Hasmal's imprint on his soul—and Crispin Sabir's, and the Dragon Dafril's, too. And he felt Hasmal discovering the price that Alarista had paid to send rescue, and Hasmal's anguish at the discovery.

She loves you still, Dughall told him.

I know. As 1 love her. Right now, it only makes what has happened hurt worse. Please just tell me you can use what I've found, Hasmal said. That this has not been for nothing.

We can use it. We'll get the girl before Crispin can wake and find her. We'll activate the Mirror and call back the rest of the Dragon souls, then send them through the Veil. And when they're gone, we'll destroy the Mirror. You've saved us, Hasmal. You've given us the chance to win everything. You will be written into the Falcon annals, your name remembered until the end of time.

And I would trade all the Falcons' memory and honor for a single day with Alarista. . . . Touch her for me, please. Let me be with her this one last time.

Dughall moved to Alarista's side and rested a hand on her forehead. Light poured down his arm, and only in that instant did he realize that while Hasmal had been inside of him, he had glowed like a small sun. As Hasmal left him, he once again felt the cold of the tent. The light poured into Alarista's frail body and illuminated her, erasing her anguished expression and replacing it with a beatific smile.

Dughall looked for just a moment. Then, feeling that he intruded on something private, he turned away.

"Get me Kait's and Ry's viewing glasses," he said to Yaiith. He spoke around the lump in his throat, and his voice sounded rough in his own ears. He blinked back the blurring in his eyes and growled at Jaim, "Don't stare at them. For decency's sake, man, turn away. Better

yet. bring me pen and paper and ink. I've spells to cast that have never been set before, and I'll only have one chance to set them properly. I'll do it the child's way, with the words before me."

When the tasks he had to accomplish were clear in his mind and on paper, Dughall knelt again in the center of the tent. "Ry first," he said.

They had reached their inn. Ry and Kait were eating, Ian was pac-

:he room, stopping from time to time to stare out the window.

Dughall felt the familiar darkness take him as he connected with Ry's viewing glass, and an instant later he looked out of eyes not his own.

Ry, it's Dughall, he said.

Ry grew still. I know your touch.

We've almost won. Hasmal found out that Crispin has a daughter. Her name is Ulwe. He's hidden her in an apartment on Silk Street, in the out-

landers' ghetto of the Merchants' Quarter, just beyond the Black Well and above the dyeing shop ofNathis Farhills.

Dughall could feel Ry absorbing the information. The revelation of his cousin's daughter stunned him, but he moved quickly beyond

How will I get her? Why would she come with me?

She has not yet met her father. When Crispin wakes, he will no doubt go to her first—Hasmal's thoughts will be in his mind as clearly as his were in Hasmal's. He now knows everything Hasmal knew, and that's a deadly danger for us. But if you hurry, you can reach her before he does and take his place. With Crispin's daughter in our care—

You don't need to tell me. I'll hurry. What am I to say to her?

Tell her, "A daughter is her father's greatest blessing, his greatest weak-ttss, and his greatest fear." She's young, Ry, and has been raised entirely out of her fathers influence. She's an innocent.

I won't hurt her.

Protect her.

I'm on my way.

Dughall broke off the connection with Ry. He waited a moment— Ry would tell Kait and Ian something, surely, before he raced out the door, and Dughall wanted to make sure Ry was well on his way before he contacted Kait. What would happen next would be dangerous—perhaps deadly—and he didn't want Ry to hesitate when he discovered that Kait would be facing danger he would no doubt prefer to take on himself.

Either Kait or Ry could have activated the Mirror and done what needed to be done with it—but the girl, Ulwe, was expecting a man to come after her, and if she had ever seen an image of him, she would be more likely taken in by Ry's appearance than by Ian's.

Finally enough time had passed that he felt sure Kait and Ian would be alone. He grasped Kait's viewing glass and reached out for her.

Chapter 7

Kait leaned against the slatted shutters, staring through one gap at the place where Ry had been only an instant before. He had run out the door after only the thinnest of explanations, leaving her and Ian dumbfounded.

Behind her, Ian paced and fretted. "Where are we going to hide a little girl? We won't be able to use her papers—her father will have the city in an uproar finding her. And the first checkpoint we pass, she'll scream for help, and the weight of the city will descend on our heads."

"I don't know what we're going to do." Kait sighed and watched :he unending stream of strangers that hurried along the harbor boardwalk. She wished one of those strangers would suddenly become Ry-—that she could know he would return safely to her. "We'll figure it all out when the child gets here."

"Maybe I should buy a sleeping draught from an apothecary," Ian said. "If we fed her a healthy dose of nightbell or Phadin's elixir, we could get her to Galweigh House with only a bit more trouble than we'll have getting ourselves there."

Kait turned and stared at him. "You would truly pour Phadin's elixir into a child?"

She watched with some satisfaction as his face flushed. "No. I suppose I wouldn't. But we're going to have to do something."

"We will. But we don't have to do it now. Wait. We'll meet the girl and when she arrives her actions will dictate ours."

"She's Crispin Sabir's daughter. If we're going by actions, we'll probably have to kill her."

Kait gave him a hard look. "Don't even say that in jest."

Ian sighed.

Kait turned back to the window.

Kait.

"What?"

Ian said, "I didn't say anything."

Kait. It's Dughall.

Kait grew still and inhaled slowly. She felt the faintest of touches through the talisman embedded in her skin.

I hear you, Uncle.

It's time to use the Mirror, he said. It's time to send the Dragons through the Veil.

Kait turned to Ian. "Help me get the Mirror out," she said.

He frowned at her. "You think you should be tinkering with it here—" he started to argue, but he faltered as he looked at her. "You're listening to him, aren't you?"

"To Dughall," she said.

"He's telling you what to do."

"He says Hasmal found out how the Mirror works. We're going to get all of the Dragons out of Calimekka now."

"We?"

Kait nodded.

"Oh, shang\" Ian went to the wardrobe and, with Kait's help, dragged out the Mirror of Souls. "I suppose I never saw myself as an old man, anyway." When the three of them had arrived, they'd taken the spare blankets from the wardrobe and wrapped them around it; neither the blankets nor the wardrobe would do much to hide the Mirror if it decided to betray them as it had in the Thousand Dancers,

but wrapping and hiding it had seemed more sensible than leaving it sitting in the center of the room, "Let me look out the window," he muttered as he shoved it in front of her. "I want to get a last look at life."

Kait managed to give him a small smile as she pulled the blankets off of the Mirror. She stood before the artifact, hands trembling. Its creators had made it beautiful; the beauty went far in hiding its evil. Her skin crawled as she looked at it; it could rip her soul from her body and fling it into the Veil and give her flesh to a stranger. She knew what it could do, and she was flatly and totally terrified of it, and now she alone would have to touch it and manipulate its jeweled glyphs and put herself at its mercy to send the Dragons away.

She became aware that Ian. was standing across from her, watching her, and she realized she had been poised motionless in front of the Mirror for quite a while. "What are you waiting for?" Ian asked.

"Courage." She clenched her hands into tight fists. Altruism was a fine and noble sentiment, but when it came down to stepping into fire for strangers, or even for friends and colleagues and love, Kait discovered that the desire to survive rose kicking and screaming from the dark recesses of the mind, demanding second thoughts.

You don't have to do it, Dughall told her.

I know.

She stared at the cool, sensuous curves of the Mirror. It represented evil and the foul path that the future would take without her intervention, as Solander had represented the path of hope and joy She steadied herself with thoughts of Solander—she remembered what it had been like to touch his soul. For the first time in her life, someone had known her totally and still completely accepted her for what she was. She had not been a monster to Solander. She had been Kait, woman and Karnee, and he had loved her without reservation.

Until she'd met him, she'd thought of Solander as a god; she had been stunned to discover that he was a man—purely human. Yet in spite of his human limitations, he had found within himself a beauty that allowed him to love without reservation, and he had insisted the

potential for that same beauty existed within her, and within all people, human or Scarred.

I have that potential in me. I can love like that.

From Dughall, she felt a brief sharp stab of shame. That is where I fail Solander's teaching. Where 1 have always failed, he confessed. Even now, what I do I do for myself more than for anyone else.

Kait would have argued with him, but he stopped her.

I know what I am, he told her. I know I must be more someday. Somehow. But right now, 1 don't matter. You do. And the Mirror does. And what you can do to save us all.

Kait inhaled slowly, and took the single necessary step forward that permitted her to rest her hands on the smooth metal of the Mirror. The Mirror of Souls still made her think of a giant flower: a bowl formed of platinum petals resting on a tripod of delicately curved, swordlike leaves. What had been the stem when first she had seen the artifact—a slender pillar of golden light that rose upward from the base through the center of the tripod and swirled into a radiant pool at the heart of the bowl—was missing at the moment. It would return when she activated the Mirror . . . and once that light again flowed, Kait knew she would be in danger.

If you're ready, we'll begin. I'll look through your eyes, Dughall said. But I won't try to take over your hands. You are the one who will be in danger when we start this; you must be the one to decide at each step whether or not to continue.

You could guide me—

I could. But I won't.

I understand.

She felt Dughall's excitement, and also his fear. Then let us begin.

Through his eyes, she saw the rows of carved gemstones inside the bowl differently. No longer merely pretty decorations, each gem with its incised hash marks and curlicues suddenly meant something: "first power" or "drain" or "connect" or "increase" or "draw" or "modulate." She realized that she was not looking at the Mirror only through Dughall's eyes—she had connected to the memories of a

Dragon, too. She could feel the Dragon's connection to Dughall— could feel a link, as well, to Hasmal, though she could not understand how that could be.

She took a few steadying breaths and let herself relax. She strengthened her connection with Dughall. For an instant, she'felt resistance as he pulled away, but she felt she needed a deeper link with the Dragon memories he held in his mind. When he let her reach past the buffer he'd created, she felt a sudden flood of recognition as countless other memories connected with hers. She discovered that the Dragon had been the one who had claimed to be her ancestor Amalee—the one who had led her across the sea in search of the Mirror. She discovered that he'd intended to take over her body, but had been denied access by the shield Hasmal had taught her how to cast. She discovered that the body he'd occupied—that of Crispin Sabir— had been one of the men who had tortured her cousin Danya, and had been the very one who had fathered Danya's child, who would have been the Reborn. She felt the full weight of Crispin's evil life, of Dafril's thousand years of plotting and manipulating, of Hasmal's many fears and great love and agonizing death, roll over her like a freight wagon pulled by a hundred galloping horses. The connections were dizzying, the memories—Hasmal's, Crispin's, Dafril's, and Dughall's—were overwhelming. Brutal, conflicting, incomprehensible images flooded into her mind, and her knees went weak. She sagged against the Mirror, queasy and sick.

Strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back.

"Kait. Are you all right?"

The voice she heard from so far away was a real voice, and she rose out of the darkness that threatened to consume her and clung to that.

"1 will be." She closed her eyes and hoped that was true. "Give me a moment."

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"Let me use the Mirror," he offered. "Tell me what I have to do, and let me take the risks."

She took a steadying breath, then got her knees under her and

locked them. Standing under her own power again, she turned her back on the Mirror of Souls. "I can't. I know you'd do this if you could, but to use the Mirror, you have to be able to reach and channel magic." She rested a hand on his forearm and said, "Just keep me from falling over if this gets to be too much for me again."

He stared into her eyes, and took her hand in his own. "I'll do that if that's all you'll let me do," he said. "But if you find that I can do more . . . please ... let me."

She turned and looked at him. The love in his eyes was too clear and too painful. She hurt for him. She wished she could be the woman he wanted her to be. She nodded and felt a lump forming in her throat and tears beginning to burn in her eyes. Unable to find words, she gave him a quick hug, then turned to face the Mirror again.

Chapter 8

Crispin woke to blackness and ringing in his ears. For a long, painful moment he thought that he was still in the Veil, and that his memories of reprieve had been nothing but a dream. But the scent of his body was musky in his nostrils, and the sweetness of night-blooming jasmine reached him from somewhere in the distance, and from nearer he caught the stink of drying blood and piss. Then the ringing ceased, and he realized that in each of the city's hundreds of temples and parnisseries, the bellringers had been clanging out the Invocation to Paldin to mark the end of day. Twilight had come.

He sat and ran his fingers over his face. His face. He touched his hair, his neck, his chest, pressed his palms hard against each other and felt the blood pulse in his fingertips. He sucked in air until his lungs began to ache from holding so much, then let it out with a joyful whoosh.

He wiggled his feet and felt them move, stretched his arms high over his head, flexed his spine and felt the satisfying crack as joints popped all along it.

"Back," he whispered, and grinned. "Damn the Dragons to darkness, I'm back."

His eyes adjusted to the nearly lightless room, and he realized that

he was in the torture chamber in the Citadel of the Gods, the Dragons' city-within-a-city in Calimekka. A body lay on the table, still strapped down; it was from that body that the various stinks emanated.

That body. . . .

Memories deluged him—not just his own memories, but those that had belonged to the corpse on the table, and those of the Dragon who had stolen his body and ridden him like a cheap nag, and those of a terrifying wizard hiding in the distant hills—a wizard, he realized, who could still see everything he did and who could, without warning, invade his body and listen to his most secret thoughts.

He snarled. Because of those memories, he knew much of what the old wizard knew—he saw how he could travel in trance to the place where the Falcon Dughall hid with his followers, simply by following the energy strand from the talisman that the dead man had embedded in his skin. He could watch them; perhaps he could find a way to destroy them.

But even as he entertained that pleasant thought, he knew that he didn't have the time to persecute his persecutors. They'd found out about Ulwe. And they intended to kidnap her and use her against him.

He snarled again. The cold white fury that he felt toward the spying Falcons and the manipulative Dragons metamorphosed into something else—something hotter and redder and more primitive. His blood began to simmer and his muscles burned and grew liquid beneath his skin. He had spent his life mastering the beast that dwelt inside of him, but now he wanted no such mastery. He embraced the animal that bayed for blood inside his Shifting skull; he offered himself up to its hungry, wordless passions.

Quickly he stripped off his clothes. He bundled them neatly, took a bit of cord, and slung the bundle around his neck. His clothes were light silk—they made an unobtrusive burden.

He lusted for the taste of blood in his mouth, for the feel of bones crunching between his jaws. He yearned to maim, to rend, to destroy

whoever sought to kidnap his daughter. He slipped into four-legged Karnee form, and the world became hard-edged and clear, scents sharper and suddenly full of meaning, sounds broader and richer and louder. He panted, tasting the air, and turned his muzzle to the door.

He had to hurry. The kidnapper would certainly already be on his way to get Ulwe, and she would not know her danger. She was only a child, ignorant of the dangers of the city and those who dwelt in it. She would go trustingly with the first man who uttered the right phrase—and Hasmal had learned the phrase from Crispin's own mind. He had no hope that Hasmal's agent would get it wrong. His only hope was to be fast enough to get to Ulwe first.

Or that the scent trail remain unsullied long enough that he could track the kidnapper back to his lair.

Crispin loped through the long white corridors of the Citadel of the Gods, avoiding the hurrying Dragons, ignoring their obvious agitation and dismay. He would deal with them later.

First, he had a kidnapper to kill and a child to save.

Chapter 9

Silk Street after twilight seethed with life.

The silk shops for which the street had been named were closed, and om-bindili bands were set up in front of them on the high sidewalks above the cobbled road. The inhabitants of the apartments above the shops moved out to their balconies to enjoy the cool evening air. They drank and danced to the music or sang with the bands' singers, or made their way down to the street itself, where they bet on rolls of the dice or strolled hand in hand in the nightly promenade, wearing their finest to see and be seen.

The songs of Wilhene and Glaswherry Hala and distant Varhees, sung in the original tongues of those places and those people, blended into a rich and oddly comforting stew. The outlanders' ghetto would make a surprisingly good place to hide a little girl, Ry realized. These people accepted each other and looked out for each other because they knew that they were all they had. Not citizens of Calimekka, they wouldn't have access to the many protections such citizenship offered. They had become neighbors and friends out of self-defense.

The promenaders were watching him. He was a stranger to Silk Street's nightlife; they were remembering his face, his clothing, the

way he walked. He couldn't help being memorable. He couldn't make himself someone they knew. Inwardly he cringed, but outwardly he nodded politely, and made his way as quickly as he could through the gamblers and the chatters and the strollers.

His main landmark, the Black Well, sat in the midst of a square of greenery. Carefully shaped shrubs and sweet-scented flowers grew in boxes at the four comers of the square; the boxes themselves bore mosaics reminiscent of the bold, stylized street paintings that decorated the thoroughfares of the city-state of Wilhene. Benches surrounded the well itself, and on those benches old women sat talking to each other and watching the spectacle of the promenade, and old men told their old jokes and slapped their knees with laughter at tall tales they'd heard a hundred times already. As he walked past the square, their voices dropped to whispers, though, and he felt their eyes, too, fixed on his back.

When Crispin came looking for his daughter, a thousand people would be able to give a clear description of Ry.

He would have to find a way to render that description worthless.

Beyond the well and on the other side of the road, Ry saw the sign for the dyer's shop, and read the name Nathis Farhills scrawled out in Iberish and half a dozen other common scripts. On the balcony above the shop, a pretty girl stood, staring down at him. Small-boned, slender, and with hair that looked white in the twilight but that was likely pale gold, she leaned forward with her hands resting on the rail. Her eyes, light as his own, didn't seem to blink when he looked into them. He had intended only to glance in her direction, but her steady stare didn't waver, and he found that he couldn't look away. He would have thought her too old to be Crispin's daughter, but she had her father's features. She had to be Ulwe.

He came to a stop and stared up at her, feeling like a fool. He couldn't hope that she would believe he was her father. In his early twenties, he was too young to have a daughter already approaching womanhood, and he knew nothing of the past that she shared with

her true father. What could he hope to say to her that would not betray him as the imposter he was?

He almost turned away. But Crispin was . . . Crispin. And the Falcons would have to deal with him. And this girl, this watchful, still creature, was the key to controlling Crispin.

Ry's heart raced. He looked away from that steady gaze, hurried across the street, and climbed the steps at the side of the building. The girl was waiting for him with the door already open when he reached the top.

Her father should have warned her about the danger of this place, Ry thought. Surely he must have let her know that she should never open the door for strangers.

"I felt you would come tonight," she said before he could say anything to her. "All day the air has whispered trouble. The ground trembles with changes brewing." Her voice was high and sweet. A very young voice. Up close she was younger than she'd looked standing on the balcony. Her actions, her movements, her startling grace and amazing beauty, all gave her a maturity that belied her true age. He guessed she was no more than twelve, and perhaps as young as ten. She had an odd accent. After a moment he placed it—she had the drawling speech of the settlers of the Sabirene Isthmus. She'd spent the better part of her life in Stosta, he guessed, being raised by her mother, or strangers hired by Crispin. Things he didn't know and dared not ask.

"I'm ..." He wanted to say, I'm not who you think I am, but he stopped himself. He said, "A daughter is her father's greatest blessing, his greatest weakness, and his greatest fear."

She looked at him, and one eyebrow slowly rose, and the tiniest of smiles twitched at the corner of her mouth.

"So the birds told me," she said.

"We can't stay here."

She nodded. "1 know that. I feel danger following in your footsteps. Even now we have little time." Abruptly she threw her arms

around him and hugged him. "Thank you for coming for me. I've been . . . afraid."

He nodded, not daring to speak. She was a sweet child, and trusting. Damn the fact that she was so trusting. He would rather she had snarled at him and been hateful—he wouldn't have felt so horrible about snatching her away from her father and taking her off to serve as hostage in the trouble that was to come. She had every right to be met by her father; she had every right to have the world meet a few of her expectations. The world wouldn't, and in many ways it wouldn't because of him, and he felt guilty just standing next to her.

She smiled up at him, then turned away and stepped into the room and spoke to someone—he hadn't realized until that instant that she wasn't alone. He should have heard the other person breathing, should have noted her scent in the air, but he had been too distracted by Ulwe and his own doubts. He needed to regain his focus, and quickly.

He heard the clink of gold and Ulwe's soft voice saying, "You've been very good to me, Parata Tershe. I hope we'll meet again someday," and an old woman answering, "I hope you're happy, child. You deserve happiness."

Then she was back, a bag in each hand. "Would you carry one of these for me?" she asked. "They aren't heavy; my nante told me be certain not to pack too much before I left Stosta. She said I'd have plenty of new dresses and toys when I got here and I needn't bring any but my dearest things."

"That's fine," Ry said. "I'll carry both of them."

"Then you won't be able to hold my hand."

He looked down at her. The solemn face looked up at him. "You want to hold my hand?"

"Yes. Please."

"I'll carry one if you wish."

"We should go now," she said.

He nodded. "You're right." He took the bag she offered him. It was

light. He wondered what she'd brought across half a world with her— what "dearest things" might have comforted her during a sea passage alone, on her way to meet a man whom she had never seen before who had claimed her and pulled her away from the only people she had ever known.

They hurried down the steps, and he was surprised that she set the pace, and set it so fast. She was walking so briskly that he had to lengthen his stride to keep up; he could as easily have jogged beside her. She waved to some of the promenaders, and they called to her, "Is that him?"

"It is," she shouted gaily. "Isn't he as lovely as I said?"

Now the faces that looked at him wore smiles. A few of the people waved. An older woman said, as the two of them hurried past, "You have a lovely daughter. I'm glad you returned safely from your voyage at last."

"So am I," he said. He was no longer a stranger in their midst— by virtue of her presence and her words, he was Ulwe's father, and they knew Ulwe, liked Ulwe, accepted Ulwe. He could understand why. She squeezed the hand he held and looked up at him, and her smile was radiant. He wished at that instant that she was his daughter.

Then they were outside the outlander's ghetto, and the character of Silk Street changed. The people who hurried through the gathering darkness avoided each other's eyes, and stared straight ahead. The om-bindili bands were gone, the merry promenaders replaced by hollow-eyed women and gaunt-faced men who offered their bodies for pleasure, or who shilled for custom for the caberra-houses, or who waited for some unwary target to pass by. Ulwe moved closer to him. She didn't complain when he walked faster. He thought perhaps he should swing her onto his back and let her hook her knees over his elbows. He could carry both her bags that way and still run. He turned to her, ready to suggest it.

But she said, "We're going to have to get a carnage."

He said, "Are you getting tired?"

She shook her head. "Not me. I could run for days. But we're leaving a trail, and he's coming right now. And he's really angry." Ry frowned. "Who is?" "My father," she said simply.

Chapter

Grief cannot touch us here.

Alarista spread out her arms and spun in weightless circles, feeling warmth that surrounded her and penetrated her, feeling light that flowed around her and through her. She danced, lost in beauty and happiness, and Hasmal danced with her. This was life beyond death, joy beyond pain; she and Hasmal were united in a place where Dragons could not touch them and where evil could not come.

She could not name the forms that moved around her and shone in the shadowless brilliance, but the forms needed no names. They were a part of this eternal world, the keepers of this place, guardians against those beings that moved in coldness and darkness and hunted through the Veil beyond. They were part of the light, welcome and welcoming.

Grief cannot touch us here.

She knew that Hasmal's body had died—knew that hers was dying. She recalled her sacrifice with crystal clarity; she could still feel the weight of unaccustomed age her dying flesh bore, the harsh pains and labored breathing. A thin strand still connected her to that con-

strictive, sense-dulled form, passing to her whispers of movement, hints of frantic activity aimed at saving her life. She knew only relief— her flesh-pains would soon end, her dance with Hasmal would continue through eternity, and she and he, soulmates reunited, would move beyond this greeting place to the infinite mysteries beyond.

This was her destiny.

They rejoiced and embraced.

One of the nameless guardians of the realm of light brushed against Alarista. Through her. She felt calm pressure building around her, an air of certainty, a sense of foreboding.

The guardian said, Wait.

She moved closer to Hasmal, blending with him along her edges, flowing into him. She tried to silence the guardian, tried to push it back to the gate through which she had been admitted.

She said, We are together at last. We are meant to be together. Grief cannot touch us here.

Grief cannot touch you here, the guardian agreed, but the world behind you awaits completion of the task you chose. You have not yet finished.

Hasmal pulled away from her, and their dancing ceased.

The time in which you can return grows short. Will you return, or will you move forward?

She felt within that question the weight of knowledge she had hidden from herself in life. She had chosen her life, had given herself a path, and had planned her path to intersect with that of her soul-twin, her beloved Hasmal. But other intersections that she had also chosen had not yet taken place. She had slipped away too soon, and if she left, her work left undone would remain undone. No one else had chosen her path. No one else would complete the task she had chosen.

The pull of the fragile strand that connected her to her body lessened.

She looked behind her, back into the slow, heavy world of flesh, and saw the healer crouched over her, spinning a final desperate spell. Her body breathed in ragged, irregular gasps, its mouth hanging

open, its eyes open, too, and dully staring up at nothing. How could she don that weight again? How could she return to slow thoughts, to ignorance, to pain and weariness?

How could she leave Hasmal?

But her task remained undone, and none but she would complete it.

She reached out to Hasmal, palm upward and forward. He pressed his hand to hers, and she felt his yearning for her, his need that the two of them be together and complete. His hunger for her was as great as hers for him. After lifetimes of separation, they were finally together again. If she returned to her flesh-self, she knew she might face yet more lifetimes before the two of them could find each other again. They might never find each other again if he lost his way or she lost hers. Souls could fall into the maws of the dark hunters of the Veil; souls could die. This wondrous moment, which should have been hers for eternity, might instead end, never to be repeated.

No one else could do what she had gone into her life as Alarista to do.

The task she had chosen for herself mattered.

Is there any way that Hasmal can come back with me? she asked the guardian.

You know there is.

She did. But she considered the ways that he might, and shivered. He could be lost so easily.

She said, Dear one, I cannot stay here.

I know. He caressed her with a thought, and she discovered that grief, indeed, could touch her even in that place of joy and light.

Be careful Wait for me.

Forever if I must.

She broke away quickly, racing backward along the fragile tendril that connected her to flesh and life: She had no more time. The tendril was already beginning to disintegrate as she poured herself back into her flesh, and the darkness and the cold and the dullness of her senses and the acuteness of her pain enveloped her. She felt fire in her

lungs, and pulled in a hard, harsh breath, and let it out and pulled in another. She fought her way back into her flesh, a butterfly fighting its way back into the prison of its cocoon. The beauty of the place she left behind faded, and the memories she'd brought back with her shimmered into nothingness as if they were no more substantial than beams of light cast upon smoke.

She knew that she had something terribly important to do. She knew that Hasmal was dead. And she knew that she could have been with him, but had returned instead.

She woke, weeping.

Kait swallowed nervously and licked her lips. The gemstone glyphs lay beneath her fingers, their inscriptions now meaningful to her, their combinations something she knew with the assurance of a thousand years of certainty. Cajfell was first. Initiation. She pressed the carved ruby, and it depressed with a soft click. A light sparkled through the gemstone she'd pressed from inside. The Mirror made a soft, whispering sound, and a swirl of mist formed at the base of the column and began to spiral upward slowly through the soulwell.

You're doing fine, Kait, Dughall assured her. I'm with you.

I know, Uncle. But this is . . . She faltered.

Terrifying.

Terrifying, she agreed.

She located benate—marked in bloodstone—and tirrs—of inlaid jade. She depressed the first, then the second. Again the soft clicks, again the tiny lights that shone through the pressed gemstones. A faint scent of honeysuckle appeared and soft golden light rippled through the column of mist and flowed upward.

Her mouth was dry, her palms itched: She shifted from left foot to nght, then back. Dughall's comforting presence filled her, but could not take away the terror she felt at the stirring of the ancient Dragon

ics beneath her fingertips. She felt as if she were waking a monster, one that could, when fully awake, turn and devour her without pen pausing to consider what it did.

She did not understand how she could have ever believed the Mirror of Souls was anything but evil. The slimy touch of its magic licked across her skin, and she shuddered. She had wanted a miracle—had wanted her family restored to her from the dead—and she'd been so desperate to believe anything that might make that miracle happen that she'd made herself blind. She wondered if evil so often succeeded for just that reason—that it made itself seem necessary, that it held out hope to desperate people like a sweet-ice on a stick.

She breathed shallowly and closed her eyes. The memories of strangers played behind her closed eyelids, and she watched them carefully. From Crispin's mind, she saw tens of thousands of innocent people gathered in the parnissery squares across the city when he activated the Mirror. She saw it connecting through magic to the towers of the Ancients scattered across the city, and saw the blinding blue light of immense power pouring out of the Mirror and tearing across the skies. Through Dafril's memories she made sense of that picture— she discovered that the Mirror drew its power from the life-forces of those who had crowded into the squares, and used that enormous power to force the souls of the Dragons' chosen victims out of their bodies and to insert the Dragons' souls and hold them in place. The Mirror had been working since then to hold those huge energies steady, as if it were a dam holding back floodwaters.

She was about to open the floodgates, and though she had Dafril's knowledge of what ought to happen then, she also had his awareness that the Mirror had only been used once—neither he nor anyone else knew for certain that their theories were right.

She opened her eyes. "I think you need to step out of the room," she told Ian.

He stirred from the place he had taken against the wall directly behind her. "I'm not going to leave you in here alone with that thing," he said.

She could smell his fear as clearly as she could smell her own. She cared about him—he was her friend, even if she couldn't love him the

way he wanted. She said, "I don't want you to die unnecessarily if this doesn't work."

"That goes without saying."

"Please . . . I'll be able to focus on this better if I'm not worried that something might happen to you."

"Kait. . . ." He stepped into her line of sight. He was frowning. "I understand what you're saying, but I can't leave you alone. I can't. You I don't know what will happen, so you can't know whether or not you might need me. So I have to stay."

She couldn't tell him that he was wrong. He was correct when he said she didn't know. So she nodded and said, "Thank you, Ian."

He pressed his lips together and retreated to his place behind her against the wall; he'd said nothing, but she could guess at his thoughts.

She rested her palms on the rim of the Mirror. The next three buttons she pushed would reopen the connection between the Mirror of Souls and the souls of the Dragons.

They lay in a neat cluster to her right, marked with the glyphs pethyose and neril and inshus. Modulate, gather, and set-hold. She pressed golden cat's-eye, glittering jacinth, and pale aquamarine—and then she held her breath.

Again the soft clicks, again the light shining through the depressed hieroglyphs. The soft whispering sound that emanated from the Mirror rose in volume and pitch, and a faint breeze stirred the air

in the room. The light from the soulwell intensified, and began to take on a greenish cast. She began to think she could almost catch indi-

vidual words in that soft, steady whispering. Gooseflesh rose on her arms and a bead of icy sweat rolled down her neck, slid along her spine, and left her shivering in its wake. The room felt both hot as a furnace and cold as death.

She could hear Ian breathing rapidly. She felt her own blood bounding through her veins as if racing for a way out. The energy that swirled in the pool of light in the center of the Mirror of Souls felt heavy, hungry, and watchful.

And she was going to have to embrace it. She had to let it use her body as a lightning rod—she had to ground that swirling green fire.

She sought the glyph peldone—draw—and let one index finger hover over it. She found galoin—reverse—and placed her other index finger over that. Pressing both together would reverse the direction that the souls had flowed before, and would draw them back to the Mirror. With them would come all the energy that had been stolen from the lives of the Iberan people. That energy would, if Dafril's theory was correct, leap from the Mirror of Souls to the nearest available living body, and from that body would stream back to the places from which it had come. It might be a violent process. It might destroy her. It had never been attempted before, so not even the memories of the Dragon Dafril could offer her reassurance.

Dughall said, I'm still with you, Ka.it. I'll be with you no matter what happens.

She sent him her love, and jabbed her fingers against the two jeweled hieroglyphs simultaneously

The green light changed to hypnotic, brilliant blue. She felt the slight breeze in the room become a rush of wind, and felt the wind pulling against her, tugging her nearer to the twisting column of light that burst upward through the ceiling and down through the floor. The whispering became shouts inside her skull. She felt the building around her begin to tremble, and saw ghostly forms erupt from the walls. The room filled with fog, cold and damp and thick as baled cotton. It swirled around the Mirror of Souls and fed itself into the column of light, and the scent of honeysuckle became a gagging, thick miasma overlaid by the sweet rottenness of decay—the scent which she'd learned was the smell of Dragon magic. The fog in the room kept her from seeing anything but the blue light that rose like a sword from the Mirror. But she heard crackling and rumbling in the distance—thunder and lightning, coming closer with the speed of a cyclone's wind.

The walls shook, the floor shook, and to the invisible accompaniment often thousand tortured screams, a cascade of blue light poured

into the Mirror and burst from it, slamming into Kait like a man-sized fist. Her arms flew out to her sides, her legs pushed away from each other so hard that both her hips made cracking sounds, her lower jaw snapped open and stretched wider and wider, her fingers pushed away from each other, her hair stood on end, her eyeballs pushed out-as if they would crawl from their sockets and flee. Every joint in her body stretched and pulled, as if her bones could no longer stand each other's company.

She couldn't breathe, she couldn't move, she couldn't scream. Thousands of arrow-thin bolts of blue light erupted from her body and shot outward in all directions. Fire burned beneath her skin; screaming deafened her, thunder shook her, dust fell from the ceiling. Pain racked her; her sight dimmed from lack of oxygen; she began to

Then the blue fires pouring out of her weakened; first a few wa-vered and disappeared, and many in a rush, and finally the last dozen straggling bolts.

She sucked air into her tortured lungs and collapsed to the floor, pain consuming her. She rolled into a ball and stared at nothing, and her vision began to clear.

The fog around her thinned. The blue light dimmed. She held her breath. The screaming faded back to soft, steady whispering. And the last of the fog gathered itself by wisps and tatters into the column of light—Kait could only think of a giant sucking in smoke as she watched it swirling into the center of the room and vanishing.

The last of the light flowing into the Mirror seemed to crawl down itself, pressing and shrinking and squeezing to fit as it slipped inward. It filled the soulwell and spiraled around the basin of the Mirror of Souls again. It wasn't the same as it had been before she pressed the hieroglyphs, however. It felt at that moment the way it had when she found the Mirror back in the ruins in North Novtierra. It felt full, and she hadn't been aware of the difference until right then.

Now the whispers were clear—dozens of them, maybe even a hundred, all scrabbling at the same time, all fighting to reach her

mind. When she felt for the energy that she needed to shield herself from those evil whispers, it was there, and she drew a shield around herself, and then around Ian. She knew what those voices had to say. She knew, and she wouldn't listen again.

It worked, Dughall told her. By all the gods, it worked. We're saved and the Dragons are defeated.

Then she felt Dughall react with surprise—the connection that bound him to her changed in shape and form, and a spirit that was not her and was not Dughall moved through her and shimmered out of her fingertips, making the leap to the Mirror of Souls. Behind her, Ian hissed and drew his sword; she backed away from the Mirror. The smooth surface of the pool of light began to curve inward on itself, rising into a round bubble that stretched after a moment into an oblong, and then developed indentations that became eyes and a mouth, and protrusions that shaped themselves into a nose and ears. Kait's heart began to race.

"Kait," the face in the center of the Mirror said, "it's me. Hasmal."

"Hasmal?"

Dughall said, That was Hasmal. I left him with Alarista, but that was him.

Hasmal said, "You aren't done yet. You're only where you would have been if we could have gotten the Mirror to Glaswherry Hala without the Sabirs getting it."

She nodded. "I know. I'm going to release the souls into the Veil."

"And then what?"

"Then Ian and Ry and I are going to hide the Mirror in Galweigh House."

"Not good enough. How many people would willingly ignore the promise of immortality—of godhood? If you permit the Mirror of Souls to exist, someday someone else will use it."

"The Dragons are captured. Soon they'll be gone forever. No one else knows how to build an immortality engine, or how to use the Mirror."

"I do," Hasmal said. "Dughall does. You do."

She started to protest that of course she didn't know that. But she discovered that in fact she did. She knew everything the leader of the Dragons had known; she could make herself a god. She could make Ry and Dughall and Hasmal and Alarista gods. They could live forever.

They could live forever.

She stared at the Mirror of Souls, feeling her skin prickle, tasting the scent of honeysuckle and rot growing stronger all around her. She knew the magic to stave off death. She knew, as well, its horrible price. She could feel the stain of the Dragon's soul within her, could feel the marks branded into it by the annihilation of uncounted other souls.

In her mind, Dughall said, It could be used for evil, Kait, but it could be used for good, too. Consider Hasmal. We need him to rebuild, Kait. And Alarista needs him. After you purge the Mirror of the Dragons' souls, you could use it one final time to put Hasmal into Crispin Sabir's body. You could give him his life back.

The Mirror drew its magic from the lives of others. She considered that. She knew how it worked. She could draw energy for the spell only from those who had hurt others. The Sabir Wolves, murderers, thieves, rapists and torturers and pedophiles. Maybe slavers. Maybe . . .

She felt herself standing at the edge of an abyss. She didn't let herself look too closely at the gaping void beneath her feet. She said, "Hasmal, I could give you Crispin's body. You could be with Alarista again."

His image stilled. For a time that seemed like an eternity, he hung suspended above the Mirror, silent, unmoving, unblinking.

"Oh, Vodor Imrish," he whispered, "I would give almost anything to be with her. You cannot know. . . ."

Dughall spoke into her mind. Tell him 1 need him. I'm but one, and so many of the other Falcons are dead—I need someone to help me.

Kait relayed the message, her voice quavering.

Again he was silent for a long time. "I can't lie, Kait. I want to

come back. You don't know what it's like to know that this thing could put me into a strong young body and give me another chance with Alarista. You don't know what it's like to move beyond the Veil and know that another flesh-life waits for me, with its forgetfulness and struggle and pain and the truth that no matter when or where I find Alarista again, she won't be Alarista anymore. And I won't be Hasmal." He paused, then said, "I love her. I want so much to be with her now. Not later, not different. Right now."

Kait felt a lump growing in her throat. She swallowed hard.

"I found the love I hungered for my whole life." A wry smile crossed his face. "I found a measure of courage, too, there at the end." He paused, and she saw remembered pain move across his face like clouds across the sun. "But it did end. My body died, and I can't get that back. Any other body I had . . . would be stolen. Right now, a little of that courage I found is still with me. While I can remember what is right and what is wrong, and while I still care, you have to listen to me. Shut down the Mirror. Shut it down, and when the Dragon souls are gone, destroy it. Don't give Dragon magic another chance to get free."

"What about you?" she asked. Her voice came out as a croak. "Isn't there some way I can save you?"

"There is," he said softly "You can let me go. And I can be man enough to leave."

He started to dissolve. Kait was having a hard time breathing. "Wait! I have so much I want to say to you."

He was shaking his head. "We're friends, Kait. Friends don't need words. But you need to hurry. This may be the most important thing you'll ever do, for me or for Matrin."

She clenched her hands to her sides and dug her nails into her palms and did not allow herself to weep. She stood straight, and she said, "We'll always be friends. Good-bye, Hasmal."

He vanished without a ripple into the light.

She stared at the Mirror of Souls, at the gleaming metal petals that arched up to form the basin for the pool of light, at the graceful stems

that surrounded the soulwell beneath, at the array of jeweled hieroglyphs before her.

Shut it down.

Other heads began to rise from the pool of light, panic-ridden faces that screamed, "You can't shut it down," and light-formed hands that reached for her and through her, trying to fend her off.

She was shielded, safe from them.

They'd planned for their own protection—shutting down the Mirror had been designed to be difficult. But a way existed, in case something went wrong. And one person could shut it down, because in an emergency, perhaps only one person would be able to do what had to be done.

There were three buttons that had to be pushed in unison—three that required the awkward stretching of one hand, the careful jab of the other. She pressed the three, and the Dragons in the Mirror of Souls erupted from the pool of light, clawing for her eyes and heart with ghostly hands, lunging for her throat with insubstantial jaws agape and teeth bared. Some screamed, some pled, some offered her anything if she would just return them to their bodies, to their new lives. They promised to change their ways, to do good things, to make Calimekka a better place.

The three buttons clicked.

She lifted both hands, and they stayed depressed. She knew that they would only hold for an instant. She steeled herself and reached through the mass of frantic ghosts to the other side of the bowl, and there found the button that meant nothing. Almost hidden beneath the edge of the most distant petal, unadorned, plain, it was a small onyx circle that anyone who didn't know better would have overlooked entirely.

She pressed it, and the ghosts only had time to scream, "No!"

Then the light that danced its stately dance through the heart of the Mirror of Souls flickered out. And was gone.

The smell of honeysuckle and rot vanished as if it had never been. The pressure of evil vanished, too. The weight of the presence

of Dragons who had dared to name a world their prey and dared to stalk it across a thousand years fell into nothingness, without sound, without light, without spectacle.

"They're gone," she said, and realized that tears were pouring down her cheeks. "It's over. And we've won."

Chapter 11

Crispin, again in human form, dressed in his bloody silks, stalked through the crowd on Silk Street. Men and women scattered before him—he wore his Family status like a battering ram that none could ignore or overlook. When he reached the stairs that led to the apartment he'd rented for Ulwe, he took them three at a time.

He knew before he opened the door that she would not be inside; at the door itself, he smelled the presence of his cousin Ry. He snarled, but slammed the door open anyway; he might find something that would tell him where she was headed.

She'd been there, safe. Had he woken earlier, had he run faster, he could have reached her before his accursed cousin. She would have been with him, where she belonged. Now . . . now she was a captive, a hostage. And Ry hated Crispin as deeply and passionately as Crispin hated Ry. He might hurt the child, torture her, even kill her, just because knowing that he could hurt Crispin would give him power the bitchson had never had in his life.

Except, Crispin thought, that Ry had never had much stomach for the real exercise of power. He'd avoided Family politics—he'd kept himself to the sidelines while others jockeyed for position in the hierarchy of Wolves. He'd tried to give the impression that he was above

all that . . . but Crispin thought Ry simply didn't have the balls to spill a little blood for his own advancement.

Ulwe might be safe for a while.

Crispin paced through the apartment. No signs of violence, no smell of fear. The woman he'd hired to care for the girl—through intermediaries, damnall, since that had seemed wisest at the time—was gone, the place left neat and orderly. No note from Ry, no note from Ulwe. Ulwe might believe Ry was her father, and he might be willing to pretend to be Crispin in order to keep her compliant.

Crispin hurried back outside, following Ry's scent and the smell of his daughter. He sniffed the air, retraced his steps down the stairs, and turned after them, moving through the crowd. They were staring at him, he realized—men and women with cold eyes and hostile faces.

If he didn't catch up with her, he would come back and question them. They might be able to tell him something useful.

The trail led well down Silk Street in the opposite direction from the one he'd come, heading south and east. It took him out of the Merchants' Quarter and into the Pelhemme District, through neighborhoods where no sensible person would take a child. Then, at a heavily trafficked intersection, the scent trail vanished completely. He fought his way across traffic to each of the four street corners, but the ground did not carry any further marks from either Ulwe or Ry.

So they'd taken a carriage. They could have gone in any direction, they could already be almost anywhere. And the longer he took getting back on their trail, the more difficult it would be to hunt them down.

He stared around him, clenching and unclenching his hands, feeling the tips that dug into his palms Shifting from neatly manicured human nails to hard, sharp points. He wanted to kill Ry, but Ry was temporarily beyond his reach. He noted shapes lurking in the shadows, and felt eyes watching him. Yes. Yes. One of the bits of human scum who inhabited the neighborhood would have seen them. A young man of Family, a lovely young girl—in this neighborhood after

twilight—yes. One of the doxies or the pimps or the street jackals could tell him which way his daughter and her kidnapper had gone.

He turned toward a shadow, smelling hunger and rage and anticipation in the waiting darkness, hearing the quickening of breath and the soft snick of a blade leaving a scabbard, and he smiled.

"Ah, good sir," he murmured, pacing into the deeper blackness, letting a tiny trickle of his rage escape from his control, letting his hands—and nothing but his hands—embrace the Karnee tide. "I almost hope that you don't want to help me."

The man moved toward Crispin, long dagger in hand, feral grin on his face. "I'll help y' to yer grave, y' pretty bastard. None here'll cry Family when y' fall."

Crispin laughed and flexed his claws.

And then the sky lit with blue fire, and a wave of wild magic tore over and through him, and darkness denser than blackest night rolled over him, blinding him, deafening him, and dropping him to the ground like a bolt-felled steer.

He felt a quick, hard pain in his side as he fell, and another, and another. His last thought was, He's stabbing me! The whoreson is stabbing me!

Chapter 12

Danya felt the wave of magic wash across her as she tossed the red cloak to the ground. The Kargans were oblivious to it, of course; they had no sense for magic—they were blind and deaf to its manifestations. But from the way that Luercas paled, she could tell that he'd felt it.

He landed on the red cloak, but his dismount from the back of the lorrag was more tumble than leap. He said his lines, and the Kargans embraced him as the embodiment of their savior, and then hugged her—something they had not done since she had regained her human form. They began racing around the village to prepare a feast. Only then did Luercas get the chance to speak with her alone again.

"You felt it?"

"Of course."

He nodded. "You know what it was?"

"No."

"That was the destruction of my old colleagues." He chuckled and tipped his head back. Eyes tightly closed and grin spread across his face, he looked as satisfied as a cat in a sunbeam.

Danya had never liked cats.

She said, "You're certain."

"Absolutely certain. That surge of magic you felt was the Mirror of Souls—it discharged the life-force it stole, back to the people it came from. And the only reason it would do that was if my fellow Dragons had been ousted from the bodies they took and dumped through the Veil. A lot of drained people are going to be suddenly bursting with energy tonight, and I'll wager you Calimekka's birth rate nine months from now will nearly double." He shifted excitedly from foot to foot, looking very much the excited boy at that moment and not the monster he was. "1 told them a thousand years ago that if they didn't find a way to lay sole claim to the bodies they took, this would happen." He smiled at her and spread his arms wide. "You don't see the Mirror flinging my soul into the Veil, do you?"

"No. More's the pity."

His expression became solicitous, and he patted her shoulder. "Ah, Danya—you really must lose that bitter streak of yours. We're well on our way now, girl. A handful of our enemies have eliminated the deadliest of our Iberan obstacles for us. We're gods to the Kargans already; word of our presence is traveling toward the other Kargan camps even as we speak. We'll be gods to the Hattra and the Ik-vanikan and the Myryr peoples, too, before long. We'll have our army of fanatics, we'll have a clear path, and we'll have our city, our slaves, and our immortality before a year has passed."

"I'm sure you're pleased."

He opened his eyes and looked at her, surprised. "As you should be. My lovely child, we have only one more great obstacle standing in the way of our conquest of Ibera."

"And that would be?"

"The destruction of the Mirror of Souls."

"I thought you said the Mirror couldn't harm you because you were sole owner of ... the body." She'd almost said my son's body, but caught herself in time.

"The Mirror didn't put my soul into this body, so it wouldn't rip it out to replace it with the body's rightful soul. 1 am this body's rightful soul. Now, anyway . . . thanks to you." He never let the opportu-

nity to goad her pass by. She glared at him. He smiled sweetly and continued. "However, the Mirror of Souls was designed to remove any soul from any body, and to hold that soul in storage indefinitely. That's how the rest of the Dragons and I weathered the centuries."

"So someone could use it to pull you out of your body—if they knew about you."

"If the operator knew how to perform a removal."

Danya studied him thoughtfully. "Is it difficult?"

"No."

"Pity I don't have the Mirror of Souls."

"Isn't it?" His eyebrow arched, and he said, "Perhaps you can entertain yourself with fantasies of reaching the Mirror before the people who have it destroy it. You can imagine getting hold of it and turning it on me and tearing my soul free from the moorings of this flesh—that picture ought to sustain you through the long journey ahead of us."

Danya turned and walked away from him, and this time he let her go. He laughed at her, but she thought, Well, yes, I can hope to get to the Mirror, you hellbeast. I'd take great pleasure in seeing you die, and greater pleasure if your death was at my hands.

In the meantime, she had an army to raise and an enemy to conquer. And vengeance to mete out. She could cherish the thought of Luercas's death while working alongside him. In fact, she thought that doing so would make their whole forced relationship much more tolerable.

Chapter 13

Kait looked up at the creak of the door. Ry staggered into the room, gray-faced and sweating, half-leaning on a lovely young girl. The girl said, "He passed out in the carriage, and it was all I could do to get him up the stairs."

Kait managed to get to her feet and helped the girl to get Ry to the bed. "How do you feel now?"

He sprawled and closed his eyes. "I'll survive. You beat them, didn't you?"

Kait nodded. "Dughall found out how to use the Mirror. He told me."

"And waited until I was gone, sneaky bastard."

"You couldn't have helped. And you had something to do that only you could do."

"I'll still break his skull the next time I see him. You shouldn't have had to face that alone. I should have been here with you."

Kait didn't point out that Ian had been with her. That, she thought, would be terribly undiplomatic. Instead she said, "The Dragons are defeated. Gone. And you are here with . . ."

"Ulwe," Ry said. He managed to sit up. "Ulwe, I present to you Kait Galweigh, who is my love and who will someday be my parata.

Kait, I present to you Ulwe Sabir, daughter of Crispin Sabir, who gave me news you don't want to hear."

Kait arched an eyebrow and glanced quickly from Ulwe back to Ry.

Ry read her look. "Ulwe knows I'm not her father. She knew it even before I got to her. She . . ." He shrugged. "She uses some magic I've never seen before."

"It isn't magic," Ulwe said. "I have no magic about me."

"You knew I was coming before I arrived," Ry said. "You knew that I wasn't your father. You told me that Crispin was after us. How else could you have known any of those things but by magic?"

Ulwe said, "I'm a be'ehan khan jhekil. A roadwalker. And I know you named me with my birth father's name, but that is not my name. I'm Ulwe Foxdaughter Walks-the-Road, of the Seven Monkey People." Her smile as she said this was a very adult, knowing smile. "Names matter to the Seven Monkey People. I had to work hard for mine."

Ry nodded to the girl and said, "My apologies. I would not willingly have named you wrongly." He smiled at Ulwe and asked, "But what is a roadwalker?"

The girl pulled off her shoes, climbed onto the bed, and tucked her feet beneath her. With her hands folded in her lap, she said, "If you stand in the center of a still path, the path seems empty to you. You think of that path as going to different places that you might wish to be. But the path doesn't go to those places. It is there already—the path that is still where you are standing is a busy road thirteen leagues away, and twenty-three leagues beyond that, it is the very heart of a busy city. The same road that feels your slow footsteps is at that same instant feeling the footsteps of uncounted others on its body. The road lives. It listens. It hears voices and thoughts and feelings. And if you know how to ask it, it will tell you what it hears." She gave them an apologetic smile. "I'm not a very good roadwalker, though. My nante can hear the road's voice from anywhere that it goes. I can only hear the near voices. And I can't hear old stones—only new ones. The road can tell me what it heard yesterday, or sometimes what it heard the

day before . . . but I can't hear what it says of those who walked it a month ago, or a year ago." She sighed. "But I'm human, so it's harder for me."

Kait and Ry exchanged startled glances.

"Who isn't human?"

"My nante. I told you—I was adopted by the Seven Monkey People."

Kait shrugged and spread her hands palm up. "I don't know of them."

"My father sent me to Stosta when I was an infant. I don't know what happened to my mother, but considering what I've found out about my father, I imagine she's been dead a long time. A wet nurse accompanied me, but she died shortly after she and I reached the city of Stosta, and there were no wet nurses available among the Stostans—we arrived in a plague time, and the same sickness that killed my wet nurse had left many others dead as well. Orphaned infants would have been nothing but a drain on the survivors. So I was taken to the parnissery where my papers were given to the parnissa. I was to be exposed, and news of my death sent back to Calimekka.

"But my nante—her name is Kooshe, which means fox—came through the gates of the city and walked straight to the parnissery. When she arrived, she demanded to see the parnissa. She told him that she had come for the baby. A number of orphaned babies were there, lying naked on the stones of the inner courtyard. A few of them were already dead, others were still quite healthy. I was in between— I had been outdoors overnight by that time, had not been fed in two days, and was weak and sick.

"The parnissa directed her to the healthy babies and said she could have her pick, but she said she had come for the baby that had crossed the Western Water.

"She walked straight to me, picked me up, and told the parnissa she wanted my things. She said that she would care for me until it was time for me to go home."

Kait said, "She knew you were there?"

"The road told her. The road brought her to me." Ry said, "So this stranger came out of nowhere and saved your life. Why?"

"The road told her my story, and when she listened, she decided that it was time for the Seven Monkey People to meet a human. She took me to the Seven Monkey Peoples kezmoot, their hidden clan city, and the People healed me and fed me. When I was old enough, Kooshe taught me to walk the road with her, telling me always that when I returned to the city of my father, the road would tell me how to survive. And when at last the message came from my father that I was to come home, Kooshe put me on the ship that brought me here, and stood on the dock waving until the ship sailed out of sight." Kait saw tears form in the corners of Ulwe's eyes.

Ry looked startled. "You sailed all the way from the Sabirene Isthmus to Calimekka by yourself?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't she come with you?" Ian asked. "That's a terrible voyage for a child alone."

Ulwe's smile became sad. "This place would be death for her. In this city, she would be called Scarred, and the road has told me what happens to the Scarred."

Ry and Kait exchanged glances. Ry said, "But if she was clearly Scarred, how could she enter Stosta? How could she enter a par-nissery and demand that she be given a human baby—and why would the parnissa give it to her?"

Kait added, "No Scarred can enter the gate of a parnissery and live—that's the law."

Ulwe looked from Kait to.Ry and back to Kait. She said, "The two of you still live, and both of you are Scarred."

Kait's skin crawled. Ulwe had looked at the two of them—looked through shields and careful disguise and lifetimes of passing as pure human, and had divined their secret. She had blurted out the secret that meant their death if it was discovered. She might only be a child, but she was a dangerous child. Kait said, "We look human, and the

parnissas don't know about us." Her mouth tasted bitter with the sudden rush of her fear.

Ulwe said, "The Stostans don't know the Seven Monkey People exist. They think they are alone in the Red Hills. The Seven Monkey People can make themselves hard to see—when they don't want to be seen, they can . . . bend a picture of the world around them." She gave an apologetic shrug. "I have never been able to find words for this. And I can't do it, so I can't show you."

Kait thought it sounded a bit like shielding. She nodded, but said, "She spoke to the parnissa in order to get you, though."

"When they must be seen, they can make people believe that they are what the people would like them to be. For a short time, anyway. And if there aren't very many people. One person alone is easy for them. Two or three is still not too bad. More than that and the ... trick . . . doesn't work very well. My nante doesn't look human. But the road told her when one parnissa would be there alone—the one who hated to hear the babies crying as they lay on the cold stones. She went to him when he was tired, when he felt guiltiest that he wasn't feeding them or caring for them. He wanted someone to save the babies, and was willing to believe what Kooshe wanted him to believe— that she was a human who wanted a baby of her own."

Ry was staring thoughtfully into space. Kait looked at him, curious about his sudden stillness. He seemed very distant. "The settlement in Stosta is ours," he said after a while. "It's been there for nearly a hundred years. My Family has been pulling caberra spice out of those hills, and logging in them, and gathering rubber and kaetzle and a multitude of other riches from the surrounding land, for the whole of that hundred years. I've read the reports from Stosta's paraglese when they arrived with the tax ships. No one has ever seen anyone except for settlers there. No one has ever found any sign of other habitation."

Ulwe grinned. "The Seven Monkey People have five cities as big as Stosta within the Red Hills. Two of them you could walk to in less than a day."

"That can't be."

Ulwe said, "It can, though. The Seven Monkey People have made the roads their friends. And friends keep their friends' secrets."

Ry was shaking his head doggedly. "In a hundred years, we should have found something. A campfire ... a footprint . . . some trash." He seemed shaken.

"The Seven Monkey People watch the Stostans carefully. They don't want to be found. Humans wouldn't want to accept them."

"Some of the Stostans are Karnee," Ry said. "I can see how the Seven Monkey People could hide from humans, but how can they hide from the Karnee?"

Ulwe's smile held secrets. "If the road is your friend, it isn't so hard."

Kait could see uncomfortable realization in Ry's eyes. "You could have been anywhere—you let me find you. You didn't need me to protect you from your father—if you didn't want him to, he'd never find you."

She nodded.

"Then why were you there when I came for you?"

"Eventually I'll have to meet my father—I came here to save him. But the two of you are the point to which all roads lead right now. You're bringing trouble to you like the smell of blood draws hunters. Soon enough, my father will come to you, and when he does, I'll have the chance to reach him. Before he comes, I'll give you reasons to want to help me save him." She closed her eyes and clenched her fists, and for that moment, she looked so young and fragile and helpless that Kait's heart went out to her. "I know he killed your friend," Ulwe whispered. "I know he has done much that is evil. But long ago he risked everything to save me. I have to believe that there is something good inside of him." A tear slid down her cheek; she brushed it away roughly.

Kait reached out and touched the girl's shoulder. Ulwe couldn't help the fact that Crispin was a monster; all she could see was that he was her father, and that he had loved her enough to get her away from

the city to a place that was safe. She wanted him to be someone she could love because he was all she had.

Kait could understand that.

Ry was staring at the two of them. "Which friend did Crispin kill?" he asked softly.

Kait winced. She'd forgotten that Ry didn't know. "He . . ."

She tried to find words that would soften the blow, but there were none. "Hasmal," she said.

"Hasmal is dead?"

Kait nodded. "Dragon magic does things we didn't even imagine were possible. The Dragon Dafril reached through the link Hasmal was using and snatched him, body and soul." She closed her eyes. Hasmal's memories of his torture still echoed in her mind. If she allowed herself to think about it, she could feel what he'd felt in the last terrible moments of his life. The memories made her sick. "When Dughall captured Dafril, Crispin reclaimed his body. He didn't see any reason to save Hasmal's life, so he killed him."

"When Dughall told me to get Ulwe, was Hasmal still alive?"

"No."

Ry's face darkened. "A second secret the old man kept from me. He has much to answer for the next time we meet."

"Let's hope it's soon," Kait said quietly. "We've beaten the Dragons, but we still have to destroy the Mirror of Souls. And I don't think we'll be able to do that without Dughall."

Chapter 14

The Gyru-nalles had a dozen fires going around the perimeter of the clearing, and several tents set up for food and drink. They'd set nine wagons into a circle, and from that circle joyous music emanated, and laughter from dancers, and loud banter. Dughall kept to the edges of the party and sipped at whatever the celebrating Gyru-nalles and soldiers pressed into his hands and accepted their slaps on the back and jovial congratulations with good grace, but. his heart wasn't in the celebration.

"The Dragons are dead, long live the world," he muttered when the party momentarily swirled away from him, leaving him in relative silence. He raised the glass one singing Gyru girl had just handed to him and took a sip. It burned and tasted like hell. Lumpy hell. Fermented goats' milk—the drink the Gyrus swore by ... and over. He realized he should have looked at his glass before swallowing.

But fermented goats' milk was the drink he had in hand, and he had words still to say. "To colleagues lost and friends fallen but not forgotten," he added, and lifted the glass and took a hard swig of the vile drink.

"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 Dughall had smiled all he could for one night. He studied the young man—a product, like all of Dughall's hundreds of sons and daughters, of Dughall'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 Dughall'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 Dughall had, by growing younger, simply proved again his status as a god. The rest of Dughall's sons had seemed equally unfazed. Dughall 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.

Dughall 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.

Dughall 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 Drag-

ons' 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. Dughall, 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 news-bad 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. Dughall 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."

Dughall 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 Dughall 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 Gal-weigh 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."

Ry stroked her hair, and kissed the angle of her jaw. "I'll be with you. Whatever you face in there, you won't face it alone."

They stood outside the gate for a long time, the woman, the wolf, and the man. Then the wolf rose and trotted into the jungle, and in the hollow heart of the night, as the Red Hunter chased the White Lady across the skies, the man and the woman, hand in hand, stepped through the maw of the gate into the silence that waited beyond.

Chapter 16

Dughall gave his son Ranan a hug. "All I know is that trouble is coming, and you're to be the guard at our backs. Keep the soldiers paid—if you run into trouble, send word to Galweigh House. Kait and Ry and Ian reached it safely and got both the little girl and the Mirror of Souls inside. So I will be going straight there."

Ranan looked down into the valley, where the camp had not yet begun to wake. He was a good man—sturdy and patient and reliable. He had little of Dughalls impetuousness to him—he was much more like his mother. Watchful, determined, stolid. He'd taken many of his veterans through battles between the islanders; he'd walked fire; he'd borne his wounds and lived to tell of them. When times were good, he knew how to laugh and drink and wench, and more importantly. he knew how to listen to everything and how to tell nothing. He kept his own counsel—if he had ever been afraid, no one knew it but him. His men admired him. Dughall was proud of him. He said, "I'll watch Whatever comes will have to go through us to get to you."

Dughall stared down at the campfires below. They had burned down to embers—now those embers glowed like the half-opened eyes of demons, heavy-lidded but watchful. A shudder rode up Dughall's spine and reached into him and grabbed his heart. He wondered if he

would ever see this son again, and a hollowness in his belly suggested an answer he didn't want to know.

"Trust only yourself," he said, gripping Ranan's shoulder and turning him around. "Believe only what you know to be true, not what you hope might be."

Ranan's lips pressed into a thin line. He met his fathers eyes and clasped the hand on his shoulder. "We'll be fine. There's plenty of silver still in the treasury, and the men are loyal. They saw what you were fighting against. They won't desert."

The premonition left him as quickly as it had come. He smiled carefully. Ranan did not need to be burdened by the shapeless wraiths of dread that hounded his father. Dughall said, "If the money runs low, I'll do what I can to send more. I'll be looking in on you as often as I can. Put the men to work—morale will go to hell if you don't."

"The villages in the area are poor. The villagers need better roads, better houses, deeper wells. . . . I'll find plenty of things to keep them busy. And we'll build ourselves some goodwill in the process."

"Then I'll leave you to your business." Dughall looked at his companions, waiting on the readjust beyond. Yanth and Jaim sat astride horses given to them by the Gyru-nalles. Alarista, white-haired and pale and bent, rode one of her own beasts. Dughall's horse, and the string of horses that would carry their supplies and alternate as riding horses, cropped the grass by the side of the road.

His son hugged him quickly and whispered, "With you so young, you seem more a brother to me now. I cannot quite find it in me to dread your displeasure as I did when I was a boy and you came visiting."

"If all goes well, I'll be an old man again when next I see you." Ranan said, "Love a woman well before you take back your years. Fight once, drink once, dance once . . . and once, watch the waves on the shore with young eyes, and see the flash of green as the sun rises over the water's edge."

Dughall managed a rueful smile. "I will." "Then go with the blessings of the gods."

"And may they bless you as you stay." He turned away and walked quickly to his mount. When he had his seat and turned to wave, Ranan was already gone.

The road unrolled down into grayness. Tatters of fog thickened into an impenetrable wall; as they rode, the sun made its way over the mountains but vanished almost as quickly as it had appeared behind the dark bellies of low-hanging clouds. The fog-thick air deadened the sound of their voices and the clopping of the horses' hooves; it blinded them to each other so that only when their horses brushed against each other did they see proof that they were not alone. No one felt much like talking, and the bleakness of the day brought an end to every awkward attempt. For people supposedly riding home in triumph, they were a sorry, dejected little band.

They would have nearly two weeks' ride to Brelst. From there, gods willing, they would get a ship to take them to Calimekka. And in Calimekka, Dughall would find out what trouble awaited him, and would, perhaps, come to understand why he felt the earth itself had turned against him, why the sky above watched him with a mocking eye . . . and why, though he was now young and strong, and though the Dragons were defeated and the Falcons were triumphant, he had never felt his death moving nearer than it was at that moment.

Chapter 17

The delicate light of dawn through translucent walls woke Kait, and for a moment she thought she was a girl again, and all the horrors of the past two years had been an ugly dream. She lay in her own bed, in her own room, surrounded by her belongings—silk dresses in red and black, skirts and shawls and wraps of Galweigh Rose-and-Thorn lace, tiny portraits of her father and her mother painted by a clever artist with a steady hand and a true eye. A thousand alto bells rang in the city below, their steady clear voices rising up from the distant valleys in waves—the song of a musical sea.

Almost, she could imagine stepping out the door and finding her mother in the hallway chastising her younger sister for playing pranks on the servants. Almost, she could place her father in one of the House's many studies with the paraglese, going over a trade map and discussing the latest diplomatic news from Galweigia or Varhees or Strithia. Almost, she could put her hand to the speaking tube and call down to Cook to bring her meat, rare and unspiced, and a bowl of bitter greens.

But when she sat up, she saw Ry curled up in his bedroll in front of her door, still sleeping, his tangled golden hair catching the sunlight. She didn't remember him coming into the room—he'd insisted

on checking through the lower floors alone before retiring—and she couldn't imagine why he hadn't taken the other half of her bed when he had come in. But perversely, she was glad he hadn't. She didn't know how she would explain to the ghosts who watched from her memory that she was sharing her bed in Galweigh House with a Sabir. She slipped silently from beneath her covers and walked to the east window. Leaning against the casement, her hands tight on the sill, she could see down into the hidden garden that lay beneath her window. Once it had been beautiful—full of wisteria and night-blooming jasmine and frangipani. The Sabirs had burned it when they took the House; now weeds choked the ground and the paths, and algae and burned branches and more weeds silenced the fountain. She closed her eyes tightly. The morning sun kissed her face as it had done so often when she stood there, and the last echoes of the bells made the memories sharper.

She should have been able to hear her sister Loriann in the room next to hers, complaining that her twin, Marciann, had borrowed her clothes again without asking. Down the hall, her brothers should have been chasing each other and complaining about getting to the par-nissery for morning devotions. Her mother's voice should have been clear, talking to her sister-in-law about tutors or the women of lesser Families. Nieces and nephews and cousins and uncles and aunts should have been laughing and bickering and commenting on everything from food to clothes to politics; servants should have rustled through the corridors, knocking on doors and bringing food and fresh clothing and cut flowers and clean cottons for the beds. The ebb and flow of people through the House had made it live.

Now it was a dead thing. Silent, tomblike, cold, and unbreathing, its hollow shell held empty rooms that overflowed with pain.

Tears burned in the back of her throat and welled in the corners of her still-closed eyes. I'm here now, Kait thought. 1 have the Mirror of Souls with me—I crossed half a world and walked through hell to get it, and it's here now, and I can't change a single thing. I can't get

even one of them back. I can't do anything more than I could have done if I'd stayed here.

But that wasn't true. If she had stayed behind, she could have died with them. Then she wouldn't be lost in the dead House, missing her family.

Warm arms slipped around her waist, and lips gently brushed the back of her neck.

She opened her eyes and stared out at the hazy blue of distant peaks and the warm gold of the sun and the illuminated whiteness of the House. "I miss them so much," she whispered.

"I know."

"I want them back."

His arms tightened around her and he pulled her closer. "I know."

"They're dead. Gone. I'll never see them again, and I can't do anything, anything, to change that."

His cheek brushed hers, and she felt the dampness of his tears on her skin. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for what my Family did. I'm sorry that you're so alone. If I could do anything to change what happened, I would. I love you, Kait. I would never have had you hurt like this."

Her tears escaped her, sliding down her face. "I know," she said. She turned and pressed her face against Ry's chest. Her parents and brothers and sisters were gone for good. She would never find the magic that would bring them back to her—that magic didn't exist. Death was a final form of moving on, and they had moved on without her. The realization sank in at last, and she finally let herself cry. While she cried, Ry held her, stroking her hair as if she were a child. He said nothing, and she said nothing.

At last she took a deep, shaky breath and pulled away. She wiped her face on her sleeve and looked up at him. "We have a lot to do today. I suppose we should get started."

He nodded.

She rested her hands against his chest and stretched up on her toes and kissed him lightly. "I love you."

He hugged her close again. The sunlight streaming in the window

warmed the back of her neck like a mother's kiss, and Ry's skin touching hers poured strength into her. She felt ready to face the empty spaces.

Ulwe and Ian were already waiting when the two of them stepped into the hallway.

"I thought we were going to start early," Ian said. Ry arched an eyebrow. "This is early."

Ulwe said, "I'm hungry. Ian and I already ate some of the supplies, but Kait said there would be better things in the siege storage."

Kait nodded. "We won't have to live on trail food, or go back into the city to get the things we need. The siege stores were planned to keep a thousand people fed for a year. The four of us could live off of that.much food for the rest of our lives ... if it didn't go bad first." She smiled at Ulwe. "You won't go hungry. We'll do a quick inventory of what we have and where it is, and while we're about it, we'll bring up enough food for a week or two—that way we won't have to go all the way to the siege stores every day. Once that's done, we'll figure out what we're going to do next."

"The Dragons took enormous amounts of food out of here," Ian said. "I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed by what you find."

Kait shrugged. "I'm sure they cleaned out the main storage rooms. But the siege stores were hidden. The whole point of them was to give us food in case of emergency, and to have it in a place that wouldn't help our enemies if we were overrun."

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