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

Chapter
10
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 diedтАФknew 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 reliefтАФ 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 benateтАФmarked in bloodstoneтАФand tirrsтАФof 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 miracleтАФhad wanted her family restored to her from the deadтАФand 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 reasonтАФthat 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 pictureтАФ 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 onceтАФneither 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.