"Holly Lisle - Secret Texts 2 - Vengeance Of Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lisle Holly)

powerfulGalweigh Family and a promising junior diplomat, Kait is Scarred.Her nature causes her
to skinshift, a trait which would lead to herimmediate execution even by members of her own
Family. Chaperoningher cousin prior to the girl’s wedding into the DokteerakFamily, Kait
overhears a plot between the Dokteeraks and theGalweighs’ longtime enemies, the Sabirs. The
Families areplanning to destroy the Galweighs at the upcoming wedding.

Kait survives a harrowing escape from Dokteerak House with herinformation, aided by a stranger
who, like her, is Scarred by theskinshifting curse called Karnee. She is drawn to thestranger and
is dismayed to discover that he is a son of the SabirFamily, her Family’s oldest and worst enemy.
She returns tothe embassy, where she informs the Galweighs of the Dokteerak-Sabirtreachery,
and tries to put her attraction to the Sabir Karnee outof her mind. Her Family takes both military
and illicit magicalsteps to foil the conspiracy and crush the conspirators. TheSabirs, though,
never planned to share power with the Dokteeraks;instead, they use them to get the Galweigh
military out in theopen. Then, on two carefully managed fronts, they wipe out theDokteerak and
Galweigh armies and use both treachery and magic tocapture Galweigh House back in the grand
city of Calimekka.

However, magic used forcefully against another always rebounds.Both Families’ wizards, who
call themselves Wolves, expectedto strike unprepared targets with their spells. But their attackshit
each other at the same time, and the magic rebounds, wiping outthe majority of both Families’
Wolves.

It simultaneously does two other things as well, both seeminglyirrelevant. First, the magical blast
wakes an artifact called theMirror of Souls. A beautiful and complex creation designed by
theAncients before the end of the Wizards’ War a thousand yearsearlier, the Mirror has been
waiting for just such a powerful rewhah. It signals that the world has returned to the use ofmagic
. . . and more importantly, magic of the rightsort. The Mirror awakens the souls it holds within its
Soulwell,and they reach out to people who might be able to help them.

Second, the rewhah horribly Scars a young girl namedDanya Galweigh, a cousin of Kait’s, who
has been kidnapped bythe Sabirs and used as a sacrifice by the Sabir Wolves when theGalweighs
fail to meet the ransom. Danya is changed beyondrecognition, and the baby she unknowingly
carries, a baby conceivedthrough rape and torture during her capture, is changed, too, butin more
subtle ways. The force of the rewhah throws Danyainto the icy southern wastes of the Veral
Territories, where, wereit not for the help of a mysterious spirit who calls himselfLuercas, she
would die.

Kait finds Galweigh House in Sabir hands and many members of herFamily executed. She steals
the Galweigh airible and flies for helpto the nearby island of Goft, where the Galweigh Family
has otherholdings. However, the head of this lesser branch of the GalweighFamily sees the
demise of the main branch as his chance to advance,and he orders Kait killed. A spirit voice
claiming to be herlong-dead ancestor warns her of the treachery, and she escapesagain, this time
after stealing money from the House treasury.
The spirit tells her another way she can aid her Family, eventhough it says they are now all dead.
Following its advice, shehires a ship from the Goft harbor to take her across the ocean insearch of
the Mirror of Souls. The spirit tells her that thisancient artifact will allow her to reclaim her
murdered Family fromthe dead. She enlists the aid of the captain, Ian Draclas, bytelling him she
is going in search of one of the Ancients’lost cities. Such a place would make any man’s fortune.

Onboard the ship she runs into a man named Hasmal rann Dorchan,whom she once met briefly.