Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) (41 page)

BOOK: Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts)

6.31Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Kait sat on a fallen tree, peering in her turn out into the layered tangles of darkness before her. “I
have
hope,” she said cautiously. “I haven’t yet managed to convince anyone else that there’s a reason for it.”

“But you
have
hope.” Alarista managed a tremulous smile, and sat beside her on the log. She said, “You are the only one. Of all of us, you are the only one who has not already seen the morrow to its grave. I’ve looked, I swear. Since . . . then, I’ve tried to contact any Falcon who could answer. Only a few will. So many killed themselves in the few days after the Reborn’s death . . .” She shook her head and shivered. “And most of those who still live won’t respond. I traced your uncle by blood offering weeks ago, but couldn’t get through his shields. The same with Hasmal. And you didn’t answer, either, though I didn’t get the feeling you were ignoring me. With you, it was more that you couldn’t hear me.”

“I couldn’t.” Kait was surprised. “You were trying to reach me?”

“Yes. Then they haven’t taught you Falcon far-speech yet.”

“No.”

Alarista nodded. “I thought it might be that way. But I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the Secret Texts weren’t wrong, that perhaps this disaster was something other than it appeared to be. I know you aren’t fully a Falcon yet, but when I summoned Speakers through the Veil, each said you were the key. That you could give the Falcons reason to hope again. That if you chose, you could see how the Falcons could yet break the Dragons. That you . . .” She sighed. “That you hold the secret of our hope. When I couldn’t reach you by far-speech, I came after you. I don’t know what you know, Kait. I don’t know how you are our key. Tell me, please. I lost everything when . . . I lost everything I believed in, and everything I loved. I lost who I was, and who I was supposed to become. Please tell me what can change all that.”

Kait rested her hands on her thighs and leaned forward, eager. This was validation that what she had thought must be true. The spirits from beyond the Veil
said
she had the key. So the Falcons
must
be missing something. Kait had believed from the first moment when Dùghall told her of the disaster that he had to be mistaken, that a thousand years of waiting would not end with the birth and almost immediate death of the one who was to have led the world to Paranne, Vincalis’s promised land. Not even Brethwan and Lodan, the most ill-starred of the god-pairs, could be so cruel. “I almost gave up,” she said. “Of the Falcons, I only knew Dùghall and Hasmal, and you can see them. They’ve given up. They see themselves as dead men who have not yet fallen on their pyres. I couldn’t reach them. They wouldn’t let me talk to them. They’ve locked themselves into their shields, and they . . .” She shrugged. “You’ve seen them. You’ve seen others like them, from what you say.”

Alarista nodded.

Kait continued. “But they can’t be right.” She dared a smile. “A thousand years of true prophecy cannot end with a falsehood. I’ve read the Secret Texts. I’ve tracked the Seven Great Signs, the Hundred Small Signs, the Three Confusions. All of them came to pass. Vincalis spoke true in particulars as well as generalities.” She narrowed her eyes. “Even in prophecies that speak directly to today, he holds true. ‘Dragons will lie down with Wolves and rise up with full bellies,’ he said, and isn’t that exactly what happened? The Dragons’ spirits claimed the Wolves’ bodies and their memories, but the Wolves are gone, and only the Dragons remain.” She clenched her fists. “Since the Reborn disappeared, I’ve been through the Secret Texts every day. Every day. I read while I walk; I study all the passages. Vincalis promised that the Reborn would hold his empire for five thousand years, and that the world would learn in those five thousand years how to love, how to be truthful, how to be kind. Five
thousand
years, and Vincalis was right in every other prophecy he made. Alarista . . .” She rested a hand on the other woman’s arm. “How can he be wrong in the most important prophecy of all? Everyone is sure the Reborn is really gone. But he can’t be.” She took a deep breath. “The Reborn is still alive. I don’t know where, and I don’t know how, but he’s still alive.”

Hope died in Alarista’s eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Kait asked.

Alarista’s head dropped forward, her shoulders slumped, her hands lay limp on her lap. In a voice so broken Kait almost couldn’t understand her words, she said, “That was your hope? That the Reborn is still secretly alive somewhere?”

Kait didn’t understand. “What other hope could there be?” Tears had started down Alarista’s cheeks. “The Speakers told me you could give the Falcons hope. So I’d thought . . . that perhaps you knew some magic that would reembody a spirit lost through the Veil. Or that you could reach through the Veil, at least, and speak to the Reborn, and perhaps ask him what we are supposed to do without him. Or that you knew something we didn’t know about the Secret Texts; that his death was a part of the prophecy that no one had understood, and that he would return yet again. I’d thought you could give us . . .
real
hope.”

“You’re so certain that what I’ve said is wrong? That the Reborn is truly dead?”

Alarista nodded without looking up. “Even the Speakers said that he was gone. That we had lost him. That the prophecies were broken. But you . . . they said you . . .” She lifted her head again, and once more pulled her shoulders back. “Well. They were wrong, just as the Secret Texts are wrong. You have no secret answer that will save us.” She turned to Kait. “But that isn’t your fault. You’re young. The young have a hard time believing in death, and in their own impotence in the face of disaster. ‘Old age stutters, while reckless youth decrees.’ Isn’t that what they say?” She rose. “If this life and this world must end, at least I can spend the last of my time with Hasmal. That’s some comfort.”

And she walked back to the camp before Kait could find another word to say.

Kait found herself facing not just the darkness of the night, but the deeper, harsher darkness that welled up inside of her. Alarista had dismissed out of hand her secret hope that the Reborn still survived. He was gone and the prophecies were broken—her Speakers had declared it, her experience had verified it, and something about her assurance drove a stake into Kait’s hope. Perhaps it was the fact that, unlike Dùghall and Hasmal, Alarista had dared to hope, had dared to believe that something might yet be salvaged from the shattered ruins of the future. She’d looked for an answer, and her hope had brought her to Kait.

And then she had found in Kait the hope she had hungered for . . . and had discovered that hope sustained by something she
knew
was not true.

Kait closed her eyes. The scents of the jungle surrounded her—rich moist earth and meaty decay; the heavy sweetness of night-blooming flowers; the musk of nearby animals that crept past the human outpost in their domain, wary of men. No leaves rustled—the night was as still as if it held its breath. She opened her eyes and looked up. Above her head, the black canopy of leaves parted to show stars burning like the cold, unblinking white eyes of blind gods. They stared down at her, but they did not see her. They did not care.

She felt the hollow place in her soul where the connection to the Reborn had once been. She touched that place inside her the way she had probed at a missing tooth when she had been a child; sliding her tongue against the gap, tasting the iron tang of her own blood, worrying the raw, tender flesh. She let herself accept the truth.

The Reborn was dead.

She could not feel him, and he would not have hidden. His life was not to have been about hiding, about preserving himself in secret while his desperate followers wept over his absence. He had come to be a beacon. To show the world a better way to live. And he had died before he could do that.

But he hadn’t just died. He’d been destroyed, and her cousin Danya had killed him. Kait probed that other wound, that other raw place in her soul. One of the few cousins she had cared about had slaughtered her own child. Had given his body over to something evil. Had become something evil herself. Danya, whose survival had sustained Kait when she thought all the rest of her Family was gone, was as dead as the soul of the child who had come to give his love to the world.

I knew the truth. I knew it, but I refused to believe it, because the truth was too ugly. I couldn’t face what my cousin had done, couldn’t face the destruction of goodness by evil, couldn’t look at the death of the future. Dùghall was right. Hasmal was right. We’re walking corpses, all of us.

And Alarista’s Speakers were wrong. I have no hope to offer to anyone.

Even Vincalis was wrong. The future will not be the home of love, of joy, of the worldwide city of Paranne. We’re lost, all of us. Everything is lost.

Interlude

In Calimekka, a year marked by uneasy omens and eerie events suffered a final blow on Galewansasday—the Feast of the Thousand Holies. On that day, the twenty-first day in the month of Galewan, the people of the city gathered to celebrate the Family gods and the old lost gods and remembered that not even the gods live forever. The day was the Throalsday of the Malefa-week of the month, and as such was a day that bore its own dubious omens: Chance of loss, waiting pain.

But on that day, while traveling to the Winter Parnissery to lead the prayer of remembrance, the carais, who had named the year by lottery at its birth, and who had been chosen by the gods to be its speaker, died of unknown but suspicious causes, and his year,
Gentle Seas and Rich Harvests,
died with him. The parnissas canceled the feast and convened in the parnissery, and for the last six days of the month, they read oracles and cast lots and prayed. They drew their new year, and found that the new year had been born dead—its carais, when they located her, had died the day before, of unknown but suspicious causes.

Amial Garitsday, the first day of the month of Joshan, was usually the day of Fedran, in which a morning of solitude and prayer, fasting and silence was followed by midday tithing at the nearest parnissery and the Breaking of the Silence, where Calimekkans ate a traditional meal of plain rice and unspiced black beans on cornbread. But the parnissas declared Fedran void, and did not even collect their tithes. No one in the city could recall a time when the parnissery had turned away its tithes, and the mood of the city grew panicked, and people spoke of the coming of the end of the world.

On that day and the following days, all vows and all holidays waited, as did all contracts, all marriages, all new ventures; no business could be carried on in the dead time between living years. The parnissas, instead, after further prayer and divining, drew another name from the great vat of yearnames. They went out in search of their new carais, and this time found him alive, and healthy. And that, perhaps, was the worst omen of all.

The carais was a man named Vather Son of Tormel, who had only a month before been charged with the deaths of his wife and children, all three of whom he’d slaughtered, cooked, and eaten in a brutal ritual the purpose of which he had refused to reveal even under torture. He had been sentenced to die on the first day of Joshan in Punishment Square for his crimes.

But the gods had given him their own reprieve—no executions could be carried out unwatched by a living year, so his execution had waited the conclusion of the parnissas’ business. And no carais could be executed during his or her term, for the carais was chosen by the gods, and all his deeds, past and present, became the instruments of the gods. So the murders of Vather’s wife and children were automatically, entirely, and eternally forgiven. The judgment of the gods in choosing the carais for the new year was final, and not subject to questioning by mortals. So Vather Son of Tormel would be draped in gold cloth and paraded before the people of Calimekka like a hero, and he and he alone would speak for the new year.

Vather Son of Tormel named his year
Devourer of Souls
.

Dafril smiled from his place within Sabir House at the appropriateness of that name. Solander was dead, the Falcons leaderless, and Luercas still invisible and, it seemed increasingly likely, powerless. He reveled in the helplessness of this new world, at the unguarded souls that flowed in endless torrents past him, and he called his people together and laid out for them the plans for their new city—a city that would be built by nothing less than the devouring of souls.

This was a good world he had brought them to. A good time. And it would become their world and their time.

A few more technothaumatars, a few more pieces of the puzzle filled in, and they would become the new immortals.

Book Three

“It’s very large, the world, and that’s what is—and always will be—its saving grace. So look to far seas and distant hills in your time of need, and welcome unlikely heroes, for help comes from the strangest quarter.”