Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (48 page)
BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)
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She dropped to the floor, feeling herself hit the hard ground. She felt nothing after that.
51
D
afril looked at the bound bodies at his feet. The girl, Kait, had been his first choice for his own body—but he didn’t even consider using the Mirror of Souls to trade now that she was in his hands. First, he’d already invested a great deal of energy and effort into modifying Crispin Sabir’s body to meet his future needs as an immortal. Second, he no longer found the idea of being female for eternity as titillating as he had initially. And third, he accepted the fact that the Mirror process carried with it a high risk. He didn’t want to move out of the body he occupied only to discover that he couldn’t take over the body he desired.
afril looked at the bound bodies at his feet. The girl, Kait, had been his first choice for his own body—but he didn’t even consider using the Mirror of Souls to trade now that she was in his hands. First, he’d already invested a great deal of energy and effort into modifying Crispin Sabir’s body to meet his future needs as an immortal. Second, he no longer found the idea of being female for eternity as titillating as he had initially. And third, he accepted the fact that the Mirror process carried with it a high risk. He didn’t want to move out of the body he occupied only to discover that he couldn’t take over the body he desired.
He watched her breathing. Pretty girl, if too thin. He looked at the way her long black hair spilled across the floor, looking like a curtain of silk. It had been short and red before she’d Shifted to attack her lover’s captors; her body was returning gradually to its normal state as he watched. The process was as interesting to watch as it was to experience.
Briefly, he entertained the idea of taming her and keeping her for a pet. But he put it quickly out of his mind. He had another use for both her and her lover. Several uses, actually. None of them were particularly entertaining, but all of them were necessary.
“Put them in the cages, please,” he said. “When they wake, feed them. They’ll be hungry.”
The attendants nodded and dragged the still-breathing bodies along the floor with neither gentleness nor concern. They slung one into a heavily barred iron cage, carefully chained and locked it, then followed the same procedure with the other.
Dafril watched, satisfied. The cages were sturdy enough to hold Karnee—even healthy Karnee. And he needed these two to be healthy, because their lives and their souls would act as primer for the spells that would fuel the immortality engine. Only a day’s work now stood between him and godhood. He took a deep breath and stared down at his unconscious enemies. They’d keep until he needed them, and in the meantime, the appalling destruction of Dragons would stop.
He liked the idea of priming the immortality spells with the enemies who had destroyed so many of his friends and allies. But he had to find out how they were doing it before he destroyed them. If they could steal Dragons’ souls from their bodies, someone else might be able to do the same. He had not waited a thousand years in a prison of his own making so that he could be ripped from the body he’d chosen and flung back into the Veil to become an oblivious, ignorant, squalling infant yet again.
“After they’re awake and fed, let me know,” he told the keepers. “I need to question them. Whatever you do, don’t touch them or let them get too near you. They’re deadly bastards, though you wouldn’t know it to look at them now.” He turned to leave the Heart of the Citadel, then turned back. “They’re skinshifters, you know.”
Both keepers hissed with disgust. He turned away, smiling. Good. Neither of his captives would be able to win sympathy from their purely human keepers. The Calimekkan hatred of the Scarred would work in his favor, and keep his prisoners imprisoned. He could get back to his work with an easy mind.
52
“K
ait? Can you hear me?”
ait? Can you hear me?”
The whisper was so low, human ears would never have heard it. Kait, though, shook off the last vestiges of the haze that had clouded her mind. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Hungry, but not hurt. What about you?”
“I’m fine. My head healed while I . . . slept. It still aches a bit, but that will pass as soon as I get something to eat.”
“Good. I love you.” She lay still while she whispered to him—she could smell the ones in the cavernous hall who watched. She feigned unconsciousness, keeping her muscles relaxed and her breathing steady.
“I love you, too.” He was quiet for a moment, then spoke again. “I don’t know how much you can see from where you are, but I’ve moved around a bit and my eyes are open. We’re caged, and there are Ancients’ artifacts all around us. I’ve tried my lock. We won’t get out of it unless you have something with you that can saw through metal.”
“I don’t. You can’t do anything with magic?”
“No. The locks are spell-shielded.”
The Dragons had seen to that, of course. Had she been them, she would have done the same thing. For all they knew, she and Ry alone were responsible for the disappearance of the missing Dragons. So she and Ry would be in the strongest prison that Dragons could contrive, held by their most powerful locks and walled off from rescue by their most powerful spells. If they knew to block against the talismans, they could prevent Dùghall or Hasmal or Alarista or anyone else who cared about her or Ry from seeing either of them through the viewing glasses. Even if the Dragons didn’t know to block against such viewing they might do it inadvertently by putting up a powerful shield spell to prevent Ry and Kait from using magic against them.
She had to assume that she and Ry were alone now, invisible to anyone who cared about them, without hope of rescue. Their fate was in their own hands.
“Do you see any way we might get out?” she asked. “Anything at all?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll have to watch and wait.”
“I’ll take the first watch. Sleep now. You Shifted—you need the rest. I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
“I love you,” she said again.
He chuckled softly. “I know. I love you, too.”
* * *
Dùghall’s soul stretched along a strand of energy that traversed the known world and the Veil beyond; his body sat in a cold tent in semidarkness and near silence, barely breathing and worn nearly to death. His consciousness—his
self
—however, peered through the eyes of a powerful Dragon at a delicate silver rose that grew in the center of a garden of white flowers. The Dragon’s eyes were fixed on the rose, but he didn’t really see it; he was elated and came to be by himself to celebrate the sweetness of the moment.
self
—however, peered through the eyes of a powerful Dragon at a delicate silver rose that grew in the center of a garden of white flowers. The Dragon’s eyes were fixed on the rose, but he didn’t really see it; he was elated and came to be by himself to celebrate the sweetness of the moment.
Dùghall could have ripped him from the body right then, but something about the man’s jubilation made him cautious. He could afford to wait a moment or two if he had to—the danger to him while he was away from his body was great, but the information he might gain from the Dragons could be worth the risk.
So he was careful to disturb nothing in the Dragon’s mind, and the man never suspected his presence. Dùghall spied on him as he touched the pictures of a long-anticipated future like a bride-to-be touching her wedding silks and dower gifts. Dùghall caught an image of a platinum sphere floating in a pool of thick emerald liquid, while a single man finished adjustments on it. The Dragon thought of this assembly as the immortality engine, and he seemed certain that it would be completed that day. He pulled vague pictures of complex machinery being installed into the towers of the Ancients that still dotted the city from the Dragon’s thoughts, too—these were, he discovered, the Ancients’ devices the Dragons had been trying to acquire when Ian and Hasmal were pretending to be traders. All the essential ones were in place. Others could have been added, but weren’t essential, and would not be.
Dùghall finally won the reward he’d most hoped for—a flashed image of Kait and Ry, both unconscious and bleeding, penned in tiny padlocked cages guarded by men and magic.
The Dragon’s elated thoughts rang clear in Dùghall’s mind.
The engine is ready, the technothaumatars are in place, and the priming sacrifices are in the holding pens. Today we become gods.
The engine is ready, the technothaumatars are in place, and the priming sacrifices are in the holding pens. Today we become gods.
Dùghall had what he needed. He erupted into the Dragon’s body, unfolding and expanding until he crowded the soul of the Dragon and loosened its holds on the body it had stolen. He snarled into the Dragon’s mind,
You will never be a god. Upon my soul, you have done your last evil, Dragon.
You will never be a god. Upon my soul, you have done your last evil, Dragon.
* * *
Hasmal was one unmoving center of a violent storm. Still as stone, his gaze focused inward and away, he barely breathed, rarely acknowledged the people around him, never spoke a single word. He sat across from Dùghall, the storm’s other center, aware at rare intervals of Alarista watching the bank of viewing glasses, of Yanth and Jaim carrying those she indicated to him or Dùghall, of the Gyru volunteers who removed each filled soul-mirror as it became ready. But he and Dùghall . . . sat.
Slowly, they were filling their mirrors with Dragon souls. Tracing each soul back along the lines of power that connected them to their enemies, looking through their enemies’ eyes, finding nothing that could tell them where Kait or Ry had been taken or what had happened to them, then carefully casting the spell that restored the original soul to each body and pulled the deadly Dragon soul through their own flesh and threw it into a waiting ring.
But Alarista did not have the knack for containing an alien soul in her body while focusing it into the waiting trap; she’d tried once and the Dragon had almost forced her out and taken her over, and only the fact that Dùghall and Hasmal had stood ready while she made the attempt, and had pressed a talisman into her skin and linked to pull the monster out of her, had saved her. Neither Jaim nor Yanth had the skill with magic to cast the spells or follow them across the long distances. And he would not leave the burden on Dùghall, though he didn’t doubt for a minute the old man would take it. Dùghall’s skin was pasty gray, his nails and lips and the rims of his eyes purple-tinged white from the strain. Where Hasmal trembled, Dùghall shook. Hasmal did not think he would survive too many more battles with their enemies before one of them succeeded in taking him over and Hasmal had to rescue him. And that would leave Hasmal the only one who could destroy the remaining magic-linked Dragons or save Ry and Kait.
“Have you found them yet?” Yanth asked Alarista. Hasmal heard the question in the back of his mind, and allowed part of his attention to wait for the answer. The rest focused on Dùghall, who was bringing back another of the marked Dragons.
“No. Their viewing glasses are still dark.”
“And you haven’t seen them through anyone else’s eyes?”
“Not yet. But I’m still watching. We have a few marks who are doing a lot of moving around. They’re meeting with others, they seem excited. I’m having a hard time hearing what they’re saying—some of the links are weak. I have one that I think is spellcasting, and is working on an artifact of some sort.”
“That sounds bad.”
“I know. The artifact worries me more than anything else that we’ve seen.”
Dùghall’s eyes filled with tears, and pain twisted his face. His breathing got faster, and his eyes, which had been closed, flew open. He bared his teeth in a soundless snarl, and Hasmal tensed and concentrated only on the other Falcon. The Dragon was coming through fighting, and Dùghall looked like he might be losing the fight.
Hasmal held the talisman on one wax-coated fingertip and waited.
Dùghall’s hands twisted into claws around the tiny empty soul-mirror that sat on the floor behind him.
Hasmal kept waiting, ready, the words of the linking spell already mostly said and their meaning held in his mind, lacking only the final phrase.
“Yes,” Dùghall snarled, and light curled from the center of his chest into the gold ring.
“Guards ready,” Alarista said, and the soldiers who stood along the back of the tent drew their weapons. Hasmal tried not to see them, and tried not to think about what their presence meant. But the reality of those drawn swords aimed at Dùghall was inescapable.
The soul pouring into the ring might not be the Dragon’s. Hasmal and Dùghall had discussed the possibility that some Dragon might be able to oust their souls, not just into the Veils, from whence they were certain they could get it back, but perhaps into the little one-way soul-mirror. If a Dragon succeeded in pushing either of them into the mirror, they would not be able to come back. The Dragon would have permanent possession of their body . . . and the soldiers waiting with drawn weapons would have to kill the Dragon by destroying the body.
Give me a sign, old man, Hasmal thought.
The soldiers watched him, for only he would be able to put them at their ease, or tell them to kill Dùghall’s body.
The stream of light pouring from Dùghall’s chest grew brighter, and the central well of the tiny mirror began to grow. The light pool formed inside the ring and swirled around, fast as water in a whirlpool, brilliant as a small sun.
A sign. Give me a sign that you are yourself.
Dùghall snarled softly and his body shuddered. The light pouring from him died. Behind him, young men with drawn weapons stared at Hasmal’s face, their eyes round and frightened, their bodies tense with the uncertainty of waiting.
A sign.
Dùghall sagged forward and said, “The foulest of enemies can still give the sweetest of gifts. I know where they are, and I know what the Dragons are going to do with them.”
Hasmal watched Dùghall’s eyes—they were the eyes of the man he’d come to think of as a friend. No stranger stared out of them. Hasmal told the soldiers, “He’s fine,” and the men resheathed their swords and dropped back. They slumped to the floor, whispering to each other and laughing nervously.
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