"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 3 - Courage Of Falcons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

Kait didn't have to ask what he meant. "The night we got here, I had it put in one of the treasuries, behind fingerlock doors. I locked the door myself. It's shut down."
"But you know that doesn't matter."
Kait had not even let herself think about the Mirror of Souls from the time she'd arrived at Galweigh House until the moment that Dughall arrived. Dark fears within the memories she'd received from the Dragon Dafril had kept her away from the Mirror, from thoughts of the Mirror, from speaking of it to anyone else. She had not even dared examine those fears to find out what lay behind them. She'd simply kept her thoughts focused on other things, and waited for Dughall's arrival. "I've suspected as much."
Dughall closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. "I suggest you and I stroll about outside the wall while we discuss . . . our journey."
Kait nodded. She turned to Ulwe. "Follow Ry Help him with Alarista. She'll need someone to get things for her."
Ulwe nodded. "I think I know her somehow. I'll be glad to help her."
Kait didn't want to take that moment to unravel the mysteries surrounding Ulwe. There was no way the child could know Alarista, but in the last two years, all sorts of impossible things had suddenly become not just possible, but true. So she said, "Good. Treat her gently."
Ulwe ran off, and Dughall raised an eyebrow and said, "Crispin's daughter?"
"The same. Certainly not what heтАФor weтАФexpected." Kait pulled the gate almost closed, propping it just enough that she and Dughall would be able to get back inside quickly without help, should trouble come. Considering what they were about to discuss, that seemed more than a distant possibility. "How far would you like to walk?"
"How would you feel about the other side of the world?"
Kait's laugh sounded hollow in her own ears. They said nothing else for a while; instead, they strolled together down one of the back paths, along the ridge of the mountain, through a barrier of dense un-derstory plants that quickly gave way to old rainforest. They walked with magical shields wrapped tightly around themselves, keeping everything in, hidden from any magical eyes that might watch and
any magical ears that might listen. When they were well away from Galweigh House, Dughall turned to Kait.
"This is far enough. If it can follow what we're doing here, I doubt there's anyplace we could go that it wouldn't be able to monitor."
She nodded. She found a seat for herself on the rotting stump of a fallen blackwood, and waited until her uncle had made himself comfortable in a loop of giant cut-by-night vine. When he was seated, she said, "You think ... it ... is alive." She did not speak the words Mirror of Souls. She would not.
"My memories tell me as much."
"As do mine. If it lives, what does it want now that the Dragons have been banished?"
"That I don't know. But a characteristic of living things is that they have a strong sense of self-preservation. And a strong urge to fulfill their purpose, whatever that purpose might be."
"It's a thing. It shouldn't have a sense of purpose."
Dughall shrugged, and rocked himself back and forth in his vine swing. "It shouldn't have been created in the first place. It was born for evil, it lives for evil, and it will fight for its freedom so that it can do as it desires. I can feel it drowsing, now, napping. But it won't nap forever. It is waiting to do ... something, and you and I are going to have to deal with it."
"We're agreed that it must be destroyed?"
"I see no other choice. Thanks to Dafril's memories, you and I know how to use it, and I'm uncomfortable enough with that. The temptation will grow greater as we grow olderтАФimpending death stirs instincts I would rather not face while gripping a gate to immortality in one hand. But Crispin, too, holds the old Dragon memories inside his skullтАФand while you and I value the souls of others, and so might face our own deaths without faltering, I hold out no such hope for him. If the Mirror exists and he can find it, he will use it and damn the price."
"Then the question remainsтАФhow do we destroy it? It was de-
signed to prevent its own destruction, and it can pull power and life from every soul in Calimekka to fight us."
"I thought of little but the answer to that question on the way here." Dughall sighed and leaned his head against the vine that held him. He pushed with one footтАФback and forth, back and forthтАФand the vine creaked softly, and high above, the leaves of the branch that supported the vine rustled in rhythm to his movements. He might have been a child sitting there, dreaming of a faraway future in which he would be a hero.
"And . . . ?"
Dughall focused his attention on her. His gaze, direct and thoughtful, sent a chill through her veins. "First, there's the question of you. I need you to become a Falcon, Kait."
She met his gaze, trying to see the threat in that, and after a moment, shrugged. "Hasmal.was going to initiate me into the Falcons," she said. "He wanted to make me a Warden. It doesn't sound so ominous."
"It doesn't. But when you swear yourself to Falconry, you become oathbound to the Falcons."
She had assumed she would have to swear an oath. That still didn't sound like such an ordeal. "So?"
"Oathbound," Dughall said, his voice slightly impatient.
She supposed she was failing to see what he was trying to get at. 'I've sworn oaths before."
"You have never been oathbound. Oath . . . bound. Constrained by the power of your wordтАФlocked into certain forms of action by the ties that connect you to every other Falcon, alive or dead. The Falcon oath is not empty sounds whispered into the wind, Kait. It has a thousand years of lives bound into it. A thousand years of magic, poured layer upon layer, life upon life. You swear your oath and it's like . . . like . . ." He closed his eyes and for a moment seemed to go very far away. When he looked at her again, she saw the old man that he truly was looking out at her from inside that young body. "It's like throwing yourself from a dock into an angry sea. The waves pick you
up and fling you where they will, and you're a long time finding your breath and your stroke and hauling yourself against the current and back to shore. And even when you reach dry ground again, for the rest of your life, you carry that angry sea inside of you. It's a weight, and you can feel it with every step you take and every breath you breathe. I won't deny that there are times when it's a comfort. In moments of trouble, you can feel the path that the Falcons would takeтАФ you can feel the current of that huge sea pulling you toward right actions and away from wrong ones. It can be a second conscienceтАФ one that won't ever weaken and tell you what you'd like to hear."
"That still doesn't sound so terrible."
He sighed. "It can also blind you to new paths, new ideas, new possibilities. When the Reborn . . . died ... the tide pulled toward despair. There was a reason why so many Falcons killed themselves then, Kait. A thousand years of hopes and dreams and striving, a thousand years of having a specific reason to exist, died in the moment of his death, and the shock of that realization ripped through us like a tsunami. Falconry had no answers, no reason to go on, and no way to see clear to a new future. Bound together, we would have drowned together. You provided a bit of solid ground, KaitтАФhope and a new direction. You could see it because you were outside. Once you're inside . . ."
At last, Kait could see the danger for what it was. "Then it seems to me, Uncle, that I would serve better as a friend to the Falcons, without becoming a Falcon."
"And if enough Falcons survived to do what needed to be done, and if they were here where I needed them and when I needed them, I would agree with you wholeheartedly." He braced both feet on the ground and leaned forward. "But the ... the artifact you have in there ... it poses a danger that grows with every day and every moment that it watches us. A slip from usтАФa false word, a false moveтАФ and it will call other keepers to it. If it does, it can destroy us. It will destroy us."
Kait clearly remembered her own experience with the Mirror call-
ing other keepersтАФthe bloodred beacon cleaving the night sky, the Mirror of Souls tumbling into the sea, their frantic journey through the inlets and byways of the Thousand Dancers with Ry and Ry's men and Hasmal, with Ian at the rudder urging them to row faster . . . and faster. . . . She closed her eyes tightly and drew a steadying breath. "We don't want to give it the opportunity to do that again."
He knew the story of their narrow escape. He said, "No, we don't." He rose, and began to pace. "We need great power to destroy itтАФand we need that power quickly, before one of us makes a mistake. You and I and Ry can control an enormous amount of magic between the three of us. Alarista, too, might join us, though I fear that, frail as she is, she would become the weak link in the chain with which we seek to rip apart the Mirror. But three should be enough, if the three of us also share the oathbond of Falconry. Then, you see, we can create a thathbundтАФa ring of power. All surviving Falcons can offer their strength into the thathbund, and the Falcon dead whose souls still watch us can give us their strength, too. We become more than three. We become . . . legion."
"And with this added strength, you think we could destroy the MтАФthe artifact."
"Yes."
"I wish Hasmal were here."
"So do I. If he were, I would ask only Ry to join me. I would leave you free from Falconry."
"Why Ry? Why not me?"
Dughall pursed his lips, blew out a short, sharp breath. "Reasons that you will not care to hear," he said. "But you might as well."
Kait crossed her arms over her chest and waited.
"He's Sabir, Kait." Dughall met her defiant gaze with a sad smile. "Born Sabir, raised Sabir, trained Sabir. For all his love for you, for all his newfound willingness to leave behind Wolf magic and Wolf training for the magic of the Falcons, and even for all his hatred of things his Family did to your Family, at core, he is a Sabir and will always be. If the Reborn had lived, things might have been different. The Re-
born's love touched him. Changed the way he saw the world. If the Reborn had lived, he would have served, and he would have stayed strong, I think. But the Reborn died, and that love died, and now Ry runs on memories that grow fainter, and on his love for you, which, in the final accounting, has little to do with how he lives his life. Pressed, cornered, I cannot help but believe that he will use every weapon at his disposal to save himself. . . and if that weapon is Wolf magic, you and I could well pay with our lives. Or worse."
"He won't do anything to hurt me."