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

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 protectionтАФshutting 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 unisonтАФthree 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 himтАФhe 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 politicsтАФhe'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 girlтАФthrough intermediaries, damnall, since that had seemed wisest at the timeтАФwas 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 realizedтАФmen 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 girlтАФin this neighborhood after
twilightтАФyes. 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 handsтАФand nothing but his handsтАФembrace 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 magicтАФthey 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 herтАФsomething 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."