Vengeance of Dragons (Secret Texts) by Holly Lisle Page B

faithful Falcons drew a few drops of their own blood to form the link that let them touch him, and he reached into their souls, and gave them acceptance, and gave them love.
    He spent the stations of darkness and growth in the deep meditation of the soul, focusing not on the future, when he would at last give the people he loved a world worthy of them, nor on the past, wherein lay the pain of torture and his magical escape from his enemies at the moment of his physical death: Those were memories and thoughts that gave back nothing. He could not plan for what would come, and he could not change what had already been. But from the warm safety of the womb, he could begin his work, reaching into the souls of those he had left so reluctantly a thousand years before and showing them that hope existed, that their lives could be better, and that the secret that would bring about the new and brighter world was a simple one: Accept each others’ faults, be kind, and love one another.
    But he did draw himself from the peace and the joy of that long gestation to touch his sword, his Falcon Dùghall Draclas.
    * * *
    Dùghall.
    The voice came from all around Dùghall Draclas as he knelt by the embroidered silk
zanda,
preparing to throw his future with a handful of silver coins. The quadrants of House, Life, Spirit, Pleasure, Duty, Wealth, Health, Goals, Dreams, Past, Present, and Future lay empty, awaiting the patterns that the
zanda
coins would make within them.
    Dùghall.
    He put down the coins and took a deep breath. His heart knew that voice.
    “Reborn?” he whispered.
    My faithful Falcon—you have listened with your heart and with your soul. You’ve gathered allies for me, you’ve readied them, and I can see that they’re strong and courageous. Send them to me now, in secret.
    “I’ll bring them to you,” Dùghall said.
    No. You’ve gathered good men and you’ve trained them well, but you aren’t a soldier, Dùghall. Wait where you are.
    The Reborn’s dismissal crushed him. He’d thought that he would accompany the army that he’d gathered for the Reborn—in fact, he’d thought that he would lead it. Now he was being told to send the men—many of them his sons—off alone, while he waited in the middle of this nowhere he’d chosen as a training ground.
    He was a sword unsheathed and hungry for the blood of the Reborn’s enemy, and he’d been waiting for this call from the moment he left Galweigh House in secret to follow the dictates of a throw of the
zanda
. He’d suffered deprivation and hardship, pain and fear; he’d served with his whole heart, he’d offered everything he had. He was an old sword, he knew, and one with rust on the blade—but that Solander the Reborn would call the men he’d gathered and not call him . . .
    Solander’s soft voice whispered in his mind and heart,
Dùghall, I have other plans for you than to have you die on a battlefield. The Dragons are returning. They move among the Calimekkans already, preparing a place for themselves there. You will wait where you are, for I foresee a disaster, and I also see that your presence can overcome it. But only if you wait where you are.
    “What disaster? What can I do here? There’s nothing here but a fishing village.”
    If I were a god I could tell you the future, but I’m only a man. The future is as opaque to me as it is to you. I know only that if you wait where you are, you will avert the destruction of everything the Falcons have worked for in the last thousand years.
    Dùghall said, “Then I will wait. I serve as you desire—I ask only that you use me.”
    You are my sword, Dùghall. Without you, I am lost.
    Then the Reborn was gone. The warmth that had surrounded Dùghall vanished, and with it the cocoon of joy and love and hope. He rose, his knees creaking as he did, and walked to the window of the grass hut in which he’d been living, and stared up at the smoking cone of the volcano to the north. Life was like that