Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno

by Malan, Violette

  She nodded.

  “I don’t understand,” Gun said. He rubbed at his mouth with the long fingers of his left hand, looked at the fingers, and dropped his hand back on the dining table in the Tarkin’s private sitting room. “Why didn’t I Find her body? Why could I only see the Path of the Sun?” The Scholar had regained some color, but Parno was betting the boy was happy he’d had little for breakfast.

  “There must be an explanation,” Dhulyn said. She looked down on Gundaron from where she stood, leaning her right hip against the edge of the dining table. “Perhaps, after all, having her cousin with you was not enough to Find her.” Dhulyn caught Parno’s eye and tapped her sword hilt with the fingers of her left hand.

  “What if it wasn’t Cleona?” Parno did not realize he had spoken aloud until Alaria looked up from the other side of the table. The look of startled hope that flashed into her face faded in an instant.

  “Those were her hands you showed me,” she said, her voice heavy with unshed tears. Mar, sitting beside the Arderon princess, caught Parno’s attention and shook her head with the tiniest of movements. She put her hand lightly on the princess’ shoulder.

  Once Gundaron had seen the body, Dhulyn and Parno had pulled out the stakes and skewers, folded the stiffened skin as best they could and rolled the remains into their cloaks and saddle blankets, leaving out only the intact hands, with their distinctive jewelry, for Alaria to see.

  “That was her silver thumb ring in the shape of a saddle, that our Tarkina gave her,” Alaria continued. “And the gold and silver bands on her middle fingers. And the scar, on her palm, where she cut herself once in sword practice. I remember her showing that to me when I was young, to teach me not to be afraid of the blades.” Alaria clamped her teeth down on her lower lip and looked upward, blinking. Mar handed her one of the napkins that lay in a basket on the table.

  Dhulyn was rubbing the skin between her eyebrows with her own scarred fingers. She looked up at Parno and shifted her shoulder in a manner that was not quite a shrug. You got this started, the gesture meant, you end it.

  “I did not mean it wasn’t Cleona’s body,” Parno said. “I meant that what we saw there is no longer Cleona. Her spirit, her real self, which is what Gundaron would have looked for, is elsewhere.” He turned to the Scholar. “Remember when Dhulyn set you to Find the Tarkin of Imrion? You didn’t Find his body, but his spirit.”

  “And if Cleona’s spirit is gone ...” Dhulyn said.

  “Exactly,” Parno said. “Gundaron would not have Found it.” He saw that Dhulyn was following him. The moons that they had spent in the company of the Crayx, the mind-sharing creatures of the Long Ocean, had taught them a great deal about the nature of the spirit.

  Alaria let her head fall forward into her hands. Mar picked up another of the napkins and with a lift of her chin signaled that they should move farther away. Alaria had shown remarkable courage, Parno thought, as he and Dhulyn, followed by Gundaron, moved to the far end of the table, nearer the open window. A princess, even such a minor princess of a realm as small as Arderon, could not have seen much in the way of butchery and bloodshed, and what they had seen near the Path of the Sun had been enough to sicken even him, experienced Mercenary Brother though he was.

  Gundaron rubbed at his mouth again.

  “Was it like anything you have read about?” Dhulyn said to him.

  Gundaron nodded. “There’s something like it in the Book of Rhonis.” He turned to Dhulyn. “Do you remember? The book that tells of the origins of your people, the Espadryni. It goes back to the times of chaos, after the first coming of the Green Shadow.”

  Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile, but Gundaron only blinked, having seen it many times before. “You know better than that, my little Scholar. My people are the Mercenary Brotherhood. But what does the book tell us? Why were such things done?”

  Gundaron shook his head, lower lip between his teeth. “There is a portion of the Book that seems to describe rituals of obscure Tribes and cults. What we saw ...” he swallowed. “There are similarities to a particular ritual, but whether it was meant to appease the Green Shadow or to draw the help of the Sleeping God ...” Here Gun blushed and looked between Parno and his Partner, gauging their reactions. Dhulyn only smiled gently, patting him on the shoulder.

  “It’s all right, my own. Relax. I know as well as you that no such actions would bring the God. Do you think it possible it was done by those touched by the madness of the Green Shadow?” She turned to Parno. “Could it be some twisted way of unmaking?”

  Parno leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “Whatever may have been the motivations of those ancients, the Green Shadow is gone, never to trouble us again, so why would such an ancient rite be reappearing now?”

  “Could someone, having read the Rhonis, been driven mad, driven to duplicate what he’d read there?” Gun said.

  “Interesting you think it is a man,” Dhulyn said. “But as you’re the only one here who admits to having read it, that’s a theory I would be quiet about if I were you.”

  Gun blinked, then his brow furrowed. Clearly that thought had not occurred to him. “Something magical then? Some Mage’s ritual?” He leaned forward. “The earliest bodies I learned of were found after the solstices, but then they became more frequent.”

  “Last night was a full moon,” Parno said.

  Dhulyn stopped them from continuing with a raised finger. “The body you saw before,” she said, careful not to say the word “Tarkin” where it could be overheard and raise questions. “Did it look the same? Did you take any notes at the time?”

  Gun shook his head. “I didn’t need to,” he said. “Not that it wasn’t important.” He looked up at her, anxious as usual that she understood him. “If necessary I can write down exactly what I saw before, and what I saw this morning as well. I will never forget it,” Gundaron said. “Not one detail of it. Will you?” He turned suddenly, fixing his pale eyes on hers.

  “No,” she said. “No, I will not.” Scholars and Mercenaries both received very similar training to perfect their memories, but Dhulyn doubted that special training would have been needed for any of them to remember what they had seen. On the contrary, the trick would be to forget it. It was for that reason she and Parno had prevented Alaria from seeing too much.

  “But it was the same?” Parno asked.

  Dhulyn thought she knew what her Partner was looking for. If Gun had seen corpses in this condition before, his reaction this morning was excessive. Most Mercenaries and soldiers knew that constant or repetitive exposure could cause even the worst horrors to become commonplace, at least to a degree.

  Gundaron was rubbing at his lip again. “It was not . . . not as extensive,” he said finally. “As if it had only begun.”

  “Or had been interrupted?” Parno said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “And do you mean to tell me you knew about this?” Alaria’s voice made them all turn around. Evidently, Dhulyn thought, they had not been speaking quietly enough. “You knew this might happen and you did nothing to warn us?” Alaria was on her feet and shook off Mar’s grip as if the smaller woman were just a child.

  Gundaron had his mouth open, but he remained silent when Dhulyn clamped a hand on his arm. She turned toward the door and touched her forehead with her fingertips.

  “It is not the Scholar’s fault.” The Tarkin of Menoin stood in the doorway with his uncle looking over his shoulder. “If it is anyone’s, it is mine.”

  Alaria was already halfway around the table, heading for the young Tarkin with her hands in fists when Dhulyn spoke up.

  “What do you know of this then, Falcos Tarkin?”

  “You address the Tarkin of Menoin, Mercenary. Do you not think you should moderate your tone?” Epion loomed up behind the younger man, his square, dark features even darker with anger.

  Parno unfolded his arms and straightened, letting his hand fall to his sword belt. It was all he could do not t
o laugh out loud. Uncle and heir to a Tarkin he might be, but Epion would soon learn he’d met his match in Dhulyn Wolfshead.

  Sure enough, Dhulyn merely looked the man up and down as if he was a raw apprentice who’d dropped a weapon overboard. “My tone is the least of your difficulties. You have two Mercenary Brothers missing. Your Tarkin was murdered.” Dhulyn nodded at Falcos in acknowledgment that she spoke of his father. “And now your new Tarkina has been killed in the same way. Whatever it is you have been doing to deal with these events, you may wish to ‘moderate’ your strategy.”

  “Listen here—” Epion began.

  “Enough.” Falcos had his hand raised. “Dhulyn Wolfshead is correct. We should have sent for help and advice before this. Caids grant it is not already too late.”

  “Then I suggest, Lord Tarkin, that we all sit down, and you tell us what you know,” Parno said.

  Falcos Tarkin hesitated only a moment before he took the chair at the head of the table. Epion immediately went to the chair on the left, but only to hold it for Alaria. Parno let him take the chair to Falcos’ right before he nodded Gun and Mar into seats on the same side of the table as Alaria and sat down himself next to Epion. Dhulyn stayed where she was, leaning with her right hip against the table’s edge.

  “You speak of your missing Brothers. It was I who sent them to track the killers of my father.” Falcos spoke quietly, his gaze focused over their heads, as if he were reading words from the far wall. “They never returned, or at least they have not returned as yet.” He brought his focus down to glance between Parno and Dhulyn. “I do not give up, I have heard the Mercenary Brotherhood is very hard to kill. Had I known—I did not believe there was any further danger.”

  Parno glanced at his Partner. She lifted her eyebrow in acknowledgment. Since their Brothers had been here to guard Falcos, they would only have gone looking for the killer if they had believed the young man also in danger.

  Falcos’ gaze had shifted to Alaria. She glanced at him, her hands in fists, eyes glistening.

  “I’m afraid your father’s wasn’t the only death, Lord Tarkin. There may be as many as seven more, if we go back two years.” They all turned their eyes to Gundaron. He swallowed, and cleared his throat.

  “Preposterous.” Epion half-turned in his seat, as if physically rejecting Gun’s words.

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to argue with Scholars, Epion,” the Tarkin said. He turned to Gun. “Are you certain of this?”

  “It’s not possible to be absolutely certain,” Gun said, spreading his hands palm down on the table top. “I’ve had to put together my conclusions from bits of information that come from many sources, but that’s the nature of scholarship. From what I’ve found out, the other remains were much disturbed by animals and carrion eaters before they were found.”

  “And why is that? Why were the victims not found more quickly?” Parno said.

  “Because no one missed them,” Gun said. In his tone was the simple awareness that there were many common folk whose disappearances, or deaths, caused not a ripple. “Unlike the Tarkin, or Princess Cleona, I believe these others may have been travelers, and no one knew to look for them, except perhaps long after they were dead.”

  “Lord Tarkin.” Dhulyn’s rough silk voice held the same cool scholarly note as Gun’s. “Why did you say your father had died of an illness? If you had announced the murder, would you not have received more help in finding the killer?”

  Falcos and his uncle exchanged an unreadable look. Finally the Tarkin licked his lips and spoke.

  “Do you know that my father consulted the Seer of Delmar?” Dhulyn started, but Alaria nodded. “He and I disagreed ...” Falcos’ voice faltered and he cleared his throat. “We disagreed on how to follow her instructions. I thought I should go at once to Arderon, in exchange for one of their princesses. That Arderon blood should inherit the throne of Menoin, as laid out in the original vow. But my father said it was enough that we should have an Arderon Tarkina. That I should still inherit as the son of his first Tarkina.”

  “As Falcos’ father inherited himself,” Epion pointed out. “The son of our father’s first wife.”

  And that, Dhulyn thought, explained why Epion was not himself the Tarkin.

  “I thought my father was cheating,” Falcos continued as if Epion had not spoken. “That he was not acting honorably by the Lady of Arderon.” Falcos dipped his head in Alaria’s direction. “When he was killed I thought . . . I thought if the people knew how he had died, so close to the Path of the Sun, they might think that the gods still turned their faces from us. That we were still cursed because of what he had planned.”

  Epion was shaking his head. “You make too much of this disagreement, Nephew. You and your father would have come to an understanding, given time.”

  “Time we did not have,” Falcos said, his expression withdrawn, his gaze looking inward.

  Of course, it might well weigh on him, Dhulyn thought, that he had been arguing with his father—perhaps they were not even speaking—when the old man died.

  “If I might ask,” she said. “Since you were pretending there was no killer, who, then, did you send my Brothers to find?”

  Falcos shivered, as if the ice in her voice had transferred to his veins. “They did not agree. They said there was a human hand in the killings. I hoped ...”

  “You hoped they were right, and you wrong.” Alaria had been silent for so long the sudden rasp of her voice startled everyone at the table, and even Dhulyn and Parno turned their heads to look at her. “Well, I don’t know what killed your father, Falcos, but no curse of Sun, Moon, and Stars killed Cleona. Even if she were not here as an instrument of the gods—which she was—you Menoins should know better than anyone that horse gods’ curses take time, even generations.”

  She slammed the table with her open hands. “Idiots. All this talk of what you thought and did and did not do—my cousin’s killer is out there somewhere, now.” Her eyes moved to study each of the faces around her. Falcos was the only one who lowered his eyes. “Something must be done.”

  “The trail is clear enough.” Dhulyn pushed herself upright. “One man leading a burdened horse came out of the labyrinth. Three horses went back in. One was the same burdened animal that had come out, the other two were the ones we followed from your stables. One of those had a rider. If this is the same killer, and our Scholar seems to believe it is.” She paused and waited for Gun’s nod of agreement. “Then it’s likely our Brothers found a similar trail.” She looked around the table. “My Partner and I will walk the Path of the Sun.”

  Six

  TARKIN FALCOS AKARION took a firm grip on the tree branch and leaned out over the edge of the cliff. He moved the curl of dark hair out of his blue eyes with a practiced flick of his head.

  “There,” he said, pointing with his free hand toward an irregular arch of stone and earth that was the entrance to the Path of the Sun. “From here you can just see the first section of the Path, the two false turnings, and the first true turning. That is the farthest that can be seen from the outside.” He pulled himself upright once more. “I used to spy on it from here when I was a little boy, wondering if I would ever be called upon to walk it.”

  Dhulyn took the young man’s place at the rock’s edge and eyed the tree branch, her mouth twisted to one side. Grinning, Parno took hold of her sword belt and braced himself as she leaned out into space, imitating the Tarkin’s position as closely as possible. Dhulyn was lighter than Falcos, and the tree branch would have held her easily—but why should she use a tree when her Partner was there?

  “And once past that point?” she asked. She tapped Parno twice on the arm, and he pulled her upright.

  “Well, it is a maze,” Falcos Tarkin said, as he gathered his gleaming black hair back into its leather thong.

  “I know the meaning of the word ‘labyrinth.’ ” Dhulyn’s tone was as dry as the sun-baked earth they stood on. She looked to Parno. “If it does
not rain, we should be able to follow the tracks.”

  But the Tarkin was shaking his head. “From the entrance, there are no marks to be seen. Either the ground is too hard or it is some magic of the place itself.”

  Dhulyn pursed her lips in a silent whistle. “ ‘From the entrance’? Has no one ventured? Is there no record of the key?”

  Falcos chewed on his upper lip, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the elaborate gold and silver buckle of his sword belt. “There was a key.” He looked from Dhulyn to Parno and back again. “I believe so, at any rate. Long ago, in the days we wish to regain, every Tarkin had to walk the Path upon assuming the throne,” he said.

  “Long ago?” Dhulyn glanced at Parno. “Part of the rituals you Tarkins stopped observing?” After their discussion of the day before, Dhulyn and Parno had spent some time with Alaria, familiarizing themselves with the details of the marriage treaty as Cleona had explained it to the younger woman.

  “Let me guess.” Parno resisted the urge to squeeze his eyes shut. “The key was passed from parent to child, and when it was lost, that particular ritual was dropped from the requirements.”

  Falcos dropped his eyes with the suggestion of a shrug. Parno resisted the urge to reach out and pat the young man on the shoulder. After all, none of this was Falcos’ fault; the errors of judgment were generations old at this point.

  “And the key was never written down? There are no drawings, no maps, among the palace books and scrolls?” Dhulyn stared down at the entrance to the Path, a frown line between her blood-red brows.

  “None that I have found.” And from his tone, Parno imagined that Falcos Tarkin had looked carefully.

  Dhulyn stepped to one side, looking past Parno to where Gundaron waited by the horses. “Gun?” she called.

  He was already nodding. “I can try,” he said. “It probably isn’t ...” his voice faded away as his eyes lost focus. Suddenly they sharpened again, but it was clear that Gun was not looking at any of them. His eyes flicked from side to side as though he were reading. Dhulyn walked over and eased his horse’s reins out of his hand.