Holly Lisle Secret Texts 2 Courage of Falcons

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Family?"
"Why would the gods . . . And you question the gift itself. . . ." He rested
his head in his hands and closed his eyes for a long moment. His own
weaknesses rose before him, unbearable specters of failure, of insufficiency,
of inadequacy. "Ah, Vodor Imrish, give me the words." He sighed and looked up
at her. "Love - true, abiding love - is the greatest gift the gods bestow.
Solander felt it for every living creature - he was so moved by love that he
transcended time and death to touch us with it.
Vincalis felt it for his friend Solander, and for Janhri, who became his wife,
and love so changed him that he marked the future with his words, and gave
many of us a path to follow and a star to sight by.
"Love is no small thing, no weak power. It is the greatest force in the
universe, stronger than hatred or death, more powerful than any magic." He
shrugged and looked down at his hands.
"Some say it is the true source of magic, or even of life itself, though I
wonder at that. There is too much that is evil and cruel in the world for that
to be true, I'm thinking. I am an old man, no matter this young body. I've
known friendship and caring, passion and compassion, in my years. I've shared
the beds of a multitude of women, and have even been named a minor deity in
the service of their fertility. But when Solander touched me with his love,
that was the first time I had ever felt such love. And the last. Whatever
exists within you that lets you love with your whole heart and your whole soul
... it doesn't exist in me. Or if it does, I have not yet found that one
person or that one thing that I can love completely. Not the Falcons, not a
lover, not anything." He looked into her eyes and wished he could force her to
feel the things he felt inside himself at that moment. "I
would give my life, my soul, my eternity, to feel that kind of love, that love
that you have thrown away out of some misbegotten sense of duty, and out of
guilt that you survived when your family did not."
He looked down at his hands again - the strong young hands whose youth
belonged not to him, but to Alarista, who had loved so deeply that she had
given him her years for the merest chance to save the life of her beloved
Hasmal. "The dead are dead, Kait, and the living can be blind and stupid and
heedless - and if you give up the best and most perfect thing in your life for
either the dead or the living, you're mad . . . and undeserving of the
blessing the gods gave you."
"And yet you say I should not go after him."
"I do."
Page 71
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"Because I'm likely to make things worse. To ruin everything."
"Yes."
"Then what do I do?"
He sat up straight and took a deep breath. "You go wash your face.
You remove that ridiculous outfit. You come back here and eat a good meal, and
when you've finished, we'll figure out what we must do next - for I'm guessing
that Ry did not wish to become a
Falcon, and that does change our plans." He stood and crossed to her and
rested a hand on her shoulder. "And then you and I will sit down and figure
out how you might apply the arts of diplomacy, which you know, to the art of
love, which you obviously do not. And we'll find a way for you to win back
your love."
Kait rose and wiped off her tears with the back of her hand. streaking her
face further. She nodded.
"I'll be back quickly."
He gave her a hug and said, "Don't waste any more of your iliam on the living.
Real corpses never cry and wash your artistry away."
She managed a small smile before she turned and hurried from the room.
Chapter 23
Ye'er the hardest whoreson t' kill I ever did see," the stranger said, and
Crispin opened his eyes.
His skull screamed with pain - white lights sparkled in front of his eyes, the
only images in a sea of darkness. His bones, his skin, his muscles, his gut
... his very hair felt like it was on fire.
"I know ye'er awake again. If y' don't start talkin' t' me soon, I'm gonna
smash all those pretty teeth of yours in."
Where was he? The stink that surrounded him was unbearable: rotting fish and
filth and decay, the sounds of lapping water and seabirds, the babble of a
thousand shouting people off at a little distance, the rattle of cart wheels,
the clop of hooves. . . .
And how had he come to be where he was?
"I'm getting m' stick now."
He managed to say, "What do you want to know?" He vaguely recalled images of a
cudgel smashing into him again and again, and darkness falling, and Shifting,
but it doing him no good. No good at all.
He heard a coarse laugh. "Thought you could talk. Tell me who you are, y' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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