"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 3 - Courage Of Falcons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)
Danya had never liked cats.
She said, "You're certain."
"Absolutely certain. That surge of magic you felt was the Mirror of SoulsтАФit 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, DanyaтАФyou 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 bodyтАФif 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 fleshтАФthat 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?"
"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 alreadyтАФthe 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 stonesтАФonly 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 youтАФI 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 StostansтАФwe arrived in a plague time, and the same sickness that killed my wet nurse had left many others dead as well. Orphaned in
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