Holly Lisle Secret Texts 2 Courage of Falcons

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and culture in her adopted home; children whom she had liked.
Their backs arched; their mouths stretched open in silent screams; their eyes
bulged wide and frightened, the corneas no longer clear and shiny, but
clouded, dull, coated with dirt and powder.
Children.
She stared at Luercas, standing near the mouth of the pass, who was directing
a group of Trakkath soldiers in disposal of the bodies. He remained untouched
by the deaths; but then, why could she have thought he might be moved? He'd
led her to destroy her own child, then stolen his body.
What could the deaths of other innocents mean to him?
He saw her looking at him, mounted his lorrag, and rode to her side. "Mother.
Dear. If it's going to upset you so much, perhaps you ought to go hide with
the rest of the helpless."
She said, "I'm not upset."
"I could feel your distress from clear over there." He nodded toward the
growing pile of bodies.
"You can't have a war without a few corpses."
She lifted her chin and looked at him coldly. "Why those corpses? Why mothers
and babies? Why grandfathers? Why little boys and little girls?"
"If you want to ask those questions, then why anyone?" Luercas shrugged. "Why
is the life of a little girl more worthy of tears than the life of a trained
soldier? Why do you weep for the lost
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children but not for the lost men?"
Danya, the daughter of Galweighs, born and raised with Family duty as the core
of her existence, had no doubts on that score. "Those whose duty it is to
serve must be prepared to offer as much as their lives."
"But do they love life any less to go so unmourned, their sacrifices so
unquestioned? Has the soldier in the flower of his manhood lost less or more
than the ignorant child, or the all-but-unknowing babe?"
Danya glared at him. "Now that we have come this far, would you convince me to
leave off this war? To retreat to the Veral wastes again?"
"Not at all." Luercas turned and studied the soldiers who were pulling out the
last few bodies and adding them to the pyre. "I would only alert you to your
own hypocrisy. You act as if ignorance and innocence add value to the worth of
a life, and act as if you believe that those who have the most to gain have
the least to lose. But the fact that those soldiers walked into that pass for
you knowing that they might die does not make the price they paid less than
the price paid by the children who died unaware of their danger. Rather, I
would think they paid more, and hold them in higher esteem." He turned to
study her face, and when he saw that she was giving his words serious
consideration, he laughed. "I would value them if they were truly men, of
course. These are just smart beasts - but those they kill on your word in the
coming days will be as human as you."
He started to ride off, then turned back and grinned at her.
"As human as you once were, anyway."
She wanted to scream at him. She didn't - that would give him too much
satisfaction. She contented herself with imagining him groveling at her feet,
begging for his life with the rest of those she would make pay for their sins
against her - those in her Family who had failed to ransom her, those in the
Sabirs who had raped her, hurt her, twisted her with their magic, those among
the Kargans who had turned their backs on her when she regained most of her
human form, and the others since that time who had slighted her and looked
sidelong at her as if questioning her right to call herself
Ki Ika, the Summer Goddess. And now those soldiers who had poisoned the
Kar-gan children who had cared about her, even when she was no longer
Gathalorra, the Master of the Lorrags.
She would call forth cries for mercy. Begging and pleading. Desperate offers
of penitence. And then she would have the blood of those who had hurt her. The
promise of vengeance against those who had destroyed her life was all that
sustained her, all that kept her moving forward. But it was enough.
Chapter 43
The great airible Morning Star limped through the darkness on two engines,
almost out of fuel, tugged by winds it grew less and less able to fight.
"We're going to have to land," Aouel said.
Kait looked down at the rough coastal terrain barely illuminated by moonlight.
"Where are we?"
"Not yet to Costan Selvira. I would have been happier to land us there. We
could have gotten fuel from the Galweigh Embassy, perhaps repaired the engines
on the landing field, and then we could have gone wherever you wanted. If we
land below, we're going to have to cut the airible free."
"Why?" Kait asked. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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