Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno

by Malan, Violette

  “Your health,” Bekluth said.

  “Confusion to our enemies,” Ice Hawk responded, and he set his lips to the edge of the cup. The liquid was fiery, much more so than he expected, and Ice Hawk fought not to choke or sneeze. It tasted something like the honeyed orange peel they sometimes traded for but—

  It felt as though a hand had closed around his throat, large and hard as sword steel. Ice Hawk waved his right hand at Bekluth, signaling for help, but the man merely sat there, looking at Ice Hawk with narrowed eyes, as if watching an ant crawl across a leaf. Sun and Moon curse him. Ice Hawk’s lungs continued to heave, trying for air, but he ignored them, ignored the black edges to his vision, and how they crowded in. Concentrating on, focusing on, the handle of his dagger, and how to reach it, to recognize the familiar feel of the thong-wrapped hilt, forcing his hand to pull it out, even though it made the black edges thicker. He lurched to his knees, putting out his empty hand to steady himself, and reached—

  The trader stopped smiling and hastily scrabbled back and away.

  At least I made him afraid. The black closed in, and Ice Hawk followed the thought down into it. Confusion to . . .

  Bekluth Allain waited for a count of one hundred, to make sure the boy was unconscious. He should not have been able to move so much; either he was very determined, and very strong, or the poison in the orange brandy was losing its potency. Bekluth shrugged. He’d poured out all he had, the chief’s share into the boy’s cup, leaving barely enough in his own to stain the lips. Barely enough to do the job, it seemed.

  When he was sure, Bekluth stood up and nudged the dagger away from the boy’s hand with his toe. Can’t be too careful, he told himself with a smile. Look what happened to people who weren’t.

  “She might have tricked you, eh, boy? Well, I’ve tricked you and your grandfather both, what do you think of that?” Bekluth rolled the boy over and put the dagger back into its sheath. He wouldn’t need it, and the boy couldn’t use it. At the same time, he took back the skinning knife he’d traded for information. The Horsemen were excellent trackers, but there was no point in leaving them such a clear sign he’d been here after them. These people knew each other’s belongings as well as they knew each other’s horses. Not that there was any chance he’d ever let this knife go.

  He looked down at where the boy lay half on his back, half on his side, face relaxing from its determined expression, the blue eyes still wide open and aware. Yet there was something hidden there—or was he wrong? Bekluth squatted down on his heels, elbows resting on his knees.

  No, he was not wrong. The boy did have a darkness hidden within him, a secret. Bekluth inhaled sharply and forced himself to exhale slowly, very slowly. He reached out with the hand that still held the knife and brushed the boy’s hair away from his face.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m going to help you. I can free what’s hidden inside you, and you’ll be open, full of light. No need to fear anymore. You’ll see. Be patient.”

  When he was finished, the waning moon had risen, and Bekluth knelt beside the fire, invigorated as usual despite the length of the ordeal. But the boy would be well now, open and free of the darkness that had lived inside him, the secret. Bekluth had taken it from him, freeing it, taking it into himself where he could destroy it. Saving the boy. He felt again that wondrous sense of completion, of satisfaction, that he felt only when he’d helped someone.

  He took a deep breath and straightened, setting his shoulders back, and clapped his hands on his thighs before standing and resaddling his horse. That done, and the nervous animal steadied, Bekluth looked around for the tinder pile Ice Hawk would have had nearby. He checked the direction of the prevailing wind, gathered up the dry grass and twisted it into a loose wick, laying one end in the fire pit and making sure the other end would reach to the grass—equally dry—surrounding the small campsite. The fire had been laid against a cool night, and all Bekluth had to do before getting on his horse was set the construction of dry grass and sticks alight with his own sparker.

  He looked back three times as he rode away and was rewarded the third time with the sight of dark smoke blowing away from him. He stopped at the next rise to watch the direction of the smoke and to see, finally, the bright shiver of the fire itself. It was moving away from him, according to plan. As he was riding, the wind grew colder, and Bekluth shivered. He pulled his cloak free of his saddle pack, and as he swung it around his shoulders, he examined the sky in the direction of the wind.

  “Rain,” he said, pulling up the horse. “Rain before morning.” He looked back over his shoulder to where the fire was spreading behind him. He took his upper lip in his teeth. He needed to get back to the Mercenaries.

  But perhaps he should wait. The Mercenaries should give him no more trouble than the rest of these simple people did.

  He would wait. The rain might wake the boy up.

  It was seldom Parno played his chanter without the air bag and drones of his pipes attached. And while he was used to keeping the air bag filled, of course, the chanter was held differently in the lips, and he’d been playing for so long now, while Dhulyn Saw, that a muscle in his lower lip was beginning to cramp. He saw Dhulyn flinch, wrinkling up her nose, and only long force of habit kept him from interrupting his playing, since to do so might interrupt the Vision Dhulyn was sharing with the other Seers. Though they were not perfectly still, they had stopped dancing as soon as the full trance was upon them, and they still clasped hands. Parno was familiar with the effects of Seeing. The Visions were sometimes disturbing, and when they came during sleep, Dhulyn often twitched, moaned, or even spoke aloud. As he watched this time, however, he saw something he had never seen before. Dhulyn’s face became at first masklike, and she looked as she did when practicing a Shora, calm, determined, concentrating. Then Parno noticed a tremor in her left eyelid, so slight he wasn’t sure at first that he’d seen anything. Almost as though she merely thought of opening her eyes. The same tremor seemed to possess the other muscles of her face, her neck and shoulders, and even her arms. The other women too were showing the same signs, the same look of fierce concentration, the tiny movements of their muscles, their eyes moving under their closed lids. Parno realized that his own muscles were beginning to vibrate in time to theirs.

  As though I were struggling to move against tight bonds, he thought. As though they were struggling. Their breathing, which had sounded for a moment as if they were running, had gradually quieted. Dhulyn’s body jerked once, twice, as if she were struggling to step away, but then she steadied again. All four were breathing more quietly. Still more quietly. Until they did not appear to breathe at all.

  They were not breathing at all.

  Parno felt a familiar tightening in his own chest, and the notes of his pipe faltered.

  “Demons and perverts.” Parno thrust his chanter into his belt and backhanded the woman on Dhulyn’s right, sending her sprawling and breaking the link of their hands. He took his Partner by the upper arm and pulled her, unresisting, away from the other Seers. Putting her behind him, he drew his long dagger out from his boot and, holding it in one hand, faced toward the other women. Winter-Ash was still lying on the ground, her hands to her face, and the other two had fallen to their hands and knees. Using his free hand, he took Dhulyn by the nape of the neck and shook her until she coughed, heaved in a great breath of air, another, and then another.

  Parno straightened, his arm around Dhulyn’s waist, until he was sure she had recovered her wind completely and could stand without help. Something—perhaps the abrupt cessation of the music—had attracted the attention of the nearest Espadryni, and three men were heading toward them. The Seers were sitting up now, and Winter-Ash was touching her face and frowning at him, clearly incredulous.

  “I’m going to have a bruise,” she said. From the movement of her tongue she was checking for loose teeth.

  “A bruise may be the least of your worries, Winter-Ash.” Star-Wind held up his hand to t
he other men who had come running with him and placed himself between Parno and the Seers. “What happened here?”

  “We could not return—the shadow—” Dhulyn cleared her throat and spit to one side.

  “They were preventing her from awakening, from the look of it,” Parno said.

  “No.” Dhulyn shook her head and winced. “That is not the way of it.”

  Star-Wind looked the women over. “Well?”

  “He struck me,” Winter-Ash said. “That’s contrary to the Pact.”

  Star-Wind turned more fully toward her, studying her face as if he could read there the truth he looked for. Winter-Ash’s look of righteous indignation faltered, to be replaced by impatience.

  “Seers have been known not to return, to die while Seeing,” Star-Wind said finally. “Perhaps now we know why.” He turned to the men with him. “Take and bind them. The elders must meet.”

  “You can’t.” Winter-Ash was on her feet. “You can’t punish us because of something these people have said. They’re liars—we were only trying to help them. She asked us to. And she was going to help us, but she didn’t.”

  “The shamans will decide.” Star-Wind nodded to Parno and turned away, ushering the women before him.

  “They weren’t trying to hurt me,” Dhulyn said, turning her face into Parno’s shoulder. There was a tremor in her, as if she shivered against the cold, though the sun was warm overhead. He folded her into his arms. “Parno, my soul, they are whole. Like the White Twins, they are healthy and whole while in Vision.”

  “Blooded demons.” Parno swallowed. “Why weren’t we told? The men must know.” What a horror. No wonder Dhulyn was so shocked.

  “Can we be sure anyone knows? In the Visions they look for the answer to their breaking. They have Seen that I am somehow involved in it, and Winter-Ash wanted to keep looking for the answer now.” Dhulyn coughed again, and licked her lips. “She said it was possible that once they left the Vision, their waking selves would not care enough to pursue the answer again.”

  “Not care enough?” Parno found that difficult to fathom.

  Dhulyn’s eyes were squeezed shut. “You should have heard her. In the Vision they were desperate to find out what had happened to them. They wanted to stay until we could find out.” Dhulyn blinked, looking at him. “Even after the White Twins joined us, telling us we had stayed for too long, they were willing to risk staying. And now? You heard her, she didn’t care that the opportunity had been lost. Only that she would not be blamed for hurting me.”

  “The White Twins were there?” Parno shook his head. “I don’t suppose you learned anything useful.”

  Dhulyn took a step away, the left corner of her lip lifting in a smile. “That depends on what you mean by useful. A very dark future is coming to this place, though I am still unable to see how or why. And the trader, Bekluth Allain, we are right to think he will help us in some way. I Saw his older self, still alive, still offering aid. There is something the matter with Gun; he is definitely sick, though again, I do not know how or why.” She stopped smiling. “I think we did See how the present came about. I saw the Mage’s room again. But this time the book was missing, and the Green Shadow exploded into dust and faded away.”

  “Exploded into dust?” Parno shook his head. That was not what happened in their own world.

  “I had an idea about that, and we wanted to go on searching for the answer, but that was when the White Twins came and warned us that it was time to leave the Vision. And though we tried, we could not. We kept Seeing the Green Shadow over and over.”

  “But the Green Shadow did not rise again in this world, as it did in ours.”

  “They say not, but ...” she shrugged. “There is something wrong, here. That much is evident.” She looked toward the area of the camp where the Espadryni women lived. “And for a moment, while in the Vision, I Saw the answer, I know I did, but now it’s gone.”

  Parno frowned, but he held his tongue. He could tell from the look on Dhulyn’s face that she would be asking to share Visions with the Espadryni women again. He could not blame her, but he hoped it would not be soon.

  “Mercenaries, will you come? The shamans would examine the Seers who harmed Dhulyn Wolfshead.” Scar-Face approached them moments later as they were walking back to their own tent, and they followed him at once to where the Salt Desert People had assembled in the small clearing in front of the chief shaman’s tent. This time, along with every adult man in the camp, five of the older women had been included, led by Snow-Moon and sitting cross-legged, off to one side. The Cloud Shaman and Horse Shaman sat facing the assembled Tribe, and Dhulyn and Parno were shown to seats on their left. Star-Wind and another young Horseman sat to the right, closer to the grouped Seers. Only the three accused women were standing, their hands bound in front of them.

  Winter-Ash, hair pulled back off her face, was shrugging. “We helped her, showing her what would come in her quest,” the woman said. “We showed her our own past, the Vision that comes when we ask what was done to us. But it meant no more to her then to us. She would not stay to help us further, though she must know the answer, seeing that she is ‘whole’ and ‘safe.’ ”

  Winter-Ash’s tone was very close to a sneer, and Dhulyn shut her eyes. This was not the attitude that the young woman had shown in the Vision. There she had trusted Dhulyn and believed her—believed also that the damage done to her waking self was real. The difference between the real, whole person and this broken one made Dhulyn feel like weeping.

  The Horse Shaman Spring-Flood glanced at Singer of the Grass-Moon, but the old man gestured to him to speak. “Did you force her to help you? Did you deliberately keep her too long in the Vision? She is a guest in our camp,” the younger man said, “sent to us by Sun, Moon, and Stars. You are not to harm anyone, not yourselves, not each other, nor any other. That is our Pact.”

  Winter-Ash shrugged again, lips pursed. “You do not understand the world of Visions. If there was any danger, and I do not say that there was, we were as much affected by it as she. And you see us all, here in front of you, healthy. No harm was done.”

  “It is an unusual circumstance.” Singer of the Grass-Moon’s voice was frail, but firm. “We men do not usually interfere in the Seeing of Visions. We would not do so now, except that you, our guests, are touched by it.” He looked first toward Parno and Dhulyn, his mouth twisted to one side, and then turned back to face his own people. “We all know that it is not rare for Seers to stay in the world of Visions, to fade and die while there. What are we to think now but that those deaths were deliberate, and that you tried to kill Dhulyn Wolfshead in the way that others have been killed?” There was great bitterness in his face, but under it was a layer of resignation. Winter-Ash looked around her, defiance mixed with indignation on her face.

  Dhulyn held up her hand. “I would speak in their defense, if I may.” A murmur ran through the men watching, a ripple of movement as they nodded and exchanged looks. There was even some drumming of palms on the ground among the younger men seated toward the back of those assembled. Dhulyn looked at the three accused Seers. Winter-Ash merely shrugged one shoulder, her lips twisted in a confident smile. Night-Sky’s eyes were turned downward, as if she studied something on the ground. Feather-Flight was the only one who looked back at Dhulyn, fearful, and apparently wishing to speak.

  She might well have died, Dhulyn thought, and these women with her. If it had not been for Parno, and the unique bond they shared as Partners, they might not have come back from the Vision—Dhulyn because she did not know how and the Espadryni women because they could not let go of their hope. And now there was no consciousness of what had passed, what they had lost, in the behavior of the three women. They knew they were to be punished for what had happened, and their reactions were only varying degrees of fear, resentment, and defiance. It did not even occur to them that they should tell the men what really happened when they Saw.

  “I am a Mercenary Brother, and many
people have tried to kill me,” Dhulyn began. “I am not offended, nor frightened, by it. And I assure you these women made no such attempt.”

  “But in their carelessness—”

  It was true, then. The men could not know. Not if they believed the women had no more caring in the Visions than they did in the real world. “They are not careless in the Visions,” she said, raising her voice to half-battlefield tones so that all would hear. “They are whole. In the Visions your women are whole.”

  Spring-Flood looked to his fellow chief, Singer of the Grass-Moon. It seemed to Dhulyn that some unspoken communication, some private consultation, took place between them, reminding her that though Spring-Flood was the least shaman of the Tribe, he was still a Mage. Parno leaned forward, his brow furrowed. Can he hear them, she wondered. Was his Pod sense somehow alerted?

  “That is why they sometimes don’t return,” Dhulyn said, as she watched belief slowly replace the shock of denial on the faces around her. “Because when they are whole, they don’t want to become broken again; sometimes they cannot face it.”

  “But why would they not tell us this?” Spring-Flood said.

  “Ask them.” Dhulyn turned to where the three Seers still stood, awaiting their judgment. “Winter-Ash, why have you women not told the men that you are whole and safe while in your Visions?”

  The young woman looked quickly away and back again, as if she sought for the answer that would please. “What is ‘whole’ and ‘safe’? This is only words. We’re not such fools. What would that gain us? We are always the same, always what the Caids made us.”

  Dhulyn turned back to the shaman. “You see? When they are here, they don’t feel the difference. They don’t feel.”

  Seventeen

  “WE SHOULD BEpassing under the courtyard now,” Falcos said. They’d come down two sets of narrow stairs, the second little more than steps created by blocks of stone identical to those making up the walls around them, to a passage that was wider but not as tall as those they had already seen. Parno might have had to stoop here, Mar thought, though none of them was tall enough to bother. They passed by an opening to a separate, narrower passage, marked only with the horse head symbol, and kept going.