Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno

by Malan, Violette

  As expected, the man went down the main aisle between the larger horse boxes, with Delos drifting like a shadow in his wake, taking the shortcut behind the empty stalls and coming around a stack of hay that only appeared to go back to the walls. There was Melos, crouching under the very belly of the black horse. He nodded as Delos caught his eye and pointed to the rear of the building. There was Thea, hidden in the shadow of the great water trough, the one that caught the rain from off the roof. She touched her left eye and held her hand, palm down, in front of her face.

  In answer to her instruction, Delos turned and rounded the stalls that held the Arderon queens on the left side, the feeding side rather than the wider, more obvious passage on the right, where the stall openings allowed for the movement of the horses themselves. He followed the sounds as the guard moved all the way through the building, past row after row of unused stalls. Delos had opened the roof vents, both for light and air, and to give the guard no reason to light a torch.

  Finally the sounds of walking ceased, and Delos slowed, creeping forward as quietly as he was able to where he could just make out the guard. As Thea had said, the man appeared to be scanning the stonework, as if looking for something that had been attached to the wall. Delos squinted. He knew this part of the building as well as anyone. He could remember, when he had first come to be his aunt’s assistant, that there had still been a few horses kept down here, old horses who would have been upset if they had been moved. Everything was empty now, swept clean and tidy, but left ready, as if the horses were expected back any day. The feed and water troughs were maintained in good condition, and even the old oaken bars for temporary gates, were left resting in their places.

  And there was the guard, Gabe-Leggett, Delos thought his name was, standing at the wall, hands on hips, looking up and around just as Thea had described him. Delos was weighing the likelihood of getting some questions answered by simply walking out and surprising the man when he was startled himself by a noise like trying to sharpen a rock on a grindstone. He was lucky the guard was facing in the other direction, Delos thought, or he’d have given himself away.

  But the guard didn’t seem startled at all, the old stable man noted. He just stepped back and drew his sword. Whatever was happening, it came as no surprise to him.

  Delos edged himself around to the open end of the last stall, trusting that the sounds of grinding stone would cover any noises he made. Moving forward, closer to where the guard stood braced, his sword in his hand, Delos wrapped his fingers around one of the oak bars, longer than a man’s arm and a good four fingers’ thick, that would have been used, once upon a time, to close off the open end of the old stall. Slowly, conscious of how his knees protested so much squatting and crawling, Delos straightened and hefted the bar.

  Standing, he could see what he had only been hearing to this point. A large stone at the base of the wall was moving slowly outward, as if being pushed from behind. Delos’ eyebrows crept up, and the hairs on his arms stood on end. Finally the stone cleared the wall, and an opening was revealed behind it. The guard moved not a muscle, seeming not even to breathe, and for a moment long enough to make Delos’ feel the tension in his arms and shoulders, there was no sound.

  Then, as if the silence had been some kind of encouragement, a single hand appeared from behind the stone. It was grimy and had a long scratch across the knuckles. But Delos would know that hand anywhere. He had held it many times in his own when it was much smaller. He had put the first sword into it.

  Without making any noise himself, he stepped forward and struck the guard a heavy blow on the back of the head.

  “Do you need the bowl?”

  Gun dropped his hand away from his forehead and turned toward where Mar made a darker shadow against the rock formation that was the entrance to the Path. “We don’t have it?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I don’t need it.” He felt rather than saw her recoil. “Sorry, love. I’m just trying not to borrow things to worry about. We couldn’t have known we’d need the bowl when we left our own rooms.”

  When they’d come out in the stable to find Julen’s father, Delos Egoyin, standing over the unconscious body of one of Epion’s guards, they’d decided not to use the passage to get outside after all. Delos, once he’d understood why they had to go, and where, and after enlisting the help of his staff, had been able to smuggle them out of the stable precincts with little difficulty, in the back of a wagon. But going back through the palace, particularly into the Tarkin’s wing, had been out of the question.

  “It’s just that I remember Dhulyn Wolfshead telling me never to be without it,” Mar said.

  “I don’t think I’d need the bowl to find the Wolfshead any more than I would to Find you. Not after we—” he gestured in the air. “Not after we were linked in Imrion. I don’t think the . . . the Mark forgets that.” He looked into the sky. “I wish there was more light.” It was only just dark enough for the stars to be appearing. The moon would not rise for a few hours yet. Hours he somehow felt they did not have.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until morning?” Mar said in an eerie echo of his own thoughts.

  “I’m sure,” he said. “I don’t know why I’m sure, but I am.”

  “Can I do anything that will help you?”

  Gun rubbed at his upper lip. He usually had something like the bowl or a page of writing to help him achieve the trancelike state that would allow him to Find. There was nothing like that in the packs Alaria had left with them, even if there were light enough to see by.

  “Can you sing?” he said. “You know, the ‘Weeping Maid’ song.”

  Without other answer, Mar cleared her throat and began to sing the children’s song they both associated with their time in Imrion, the song that Dhulyn Wolfshead had proved was an ancient trigger for the Mark.

  “Weeping maid, weeping maid,

  Hold with all your might, win your heart’s delight.”

  A part of Gun was aware that Mar continued singing, but the rest of him saw

  shadows forming around him, aisles stretching away from him, shelves looming above his head, filled with books and scrolls. The spines of the books and the ribbons of the scrolls are of all colors, but as he begins to walk through the library, this changes, until almost all the colors he sees are blue, and green, with a few clear lines of black, and others of the dark red of old blood. He knows that these colors are Dhulyn’s, and he’s relieved that his plan is working. These are the colors of her Mercenary badge, with the black lines that show she’s Partnered and the blood-red of her hair. The aisle narrows as he walks faster and faster, and the colors grow more intense, the books cleaner, smelling of new leather. He squeezes around a final shelf of books, and she is there, perched with one hip on the edge of a table, her sword lying next to her, an open book in her left hand. She looks up at him and smiles.

  “Dhulyn,” he says.

  And then he was back, standing next to Mar, but the thread of colored light, blue and green, black and red, was still with him, stretched out in front of him, leading them into the Path.

  “Is it there,” Mar said, “The clue?”

  Gun nodded and reached out for her hand. “We just have to follow it,” he said. “Whatever happens, we just follow it.

  “You’ll come to wish you’d taken Epion’s offer to be rid of me.” Falcos’ voice rumbled in his chest. He sat in the armchair next to the open hearth in the center of the room, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head hanging down. When Alaria had refused to leave him, they had not been returned to either the Tarkin’s or the Tarkina’s suites but were sent to one of the older guest suites in the northern end of the palace. At least Falcos was fairly sure no secret passage came into this room.

  “No such fool, me,” Alaria said from where she sat on the edge of the cold hearth. “And not that good an actress either. I don’t see how Epion would believe I’d go with him happily,
not after I tried to escape with you.” Alaria wrinkled her nose. She was glad to hear her voice was steady, with none of the squeakiness of the fear she felt. “I don’t trust him, and he can’t trust me. No, I’m safer here with you, no matter how bleak things look at the moment.”

  He tilted his head, drawing his eyebrows down in a frown. “You really are that certain, then, that what Epion says of me is not true?” He continued to look at her, eyebrows raised. He needed more. They had been so rushed, events had moved so quickly, this was the first chance they’d had to think about what they’d done and the choices they’d made.

  “I said it before, the horses like you,” Alaria said finally. She raised one shoulder and let it drop. “I know that sounds simple. People say things like that about their dogs and cats all the time. But the queens really are sensitive to people, especially now, when they’re foaling. They’ve been trained for generations to accompany the Tarkins of Arderon. More than once, when there were several candidates for the throne, the queens have been used to chose the most suitable. So for us, when our horses like you, it means something.”

  Falcos sat up and smiled, but looked away, rubbing at his eyes with his fingertips. Could he be crying?

  “Do you think Epion might be the killer?” she asked, as much to change the subject as to give Falcos time to control himself.

  “I know he isn’t,” he said.

  Alaria frowned. “How can you know?”

  “The same way he knows it isn’t me.” Falcos stood and walked over to the windows, as if to check, once again, that there was no escape that way. They opened onto the same gorge that Alaria’s suite had faced, but with no balcony. “I was with him when your cousin was killed.” He turned back to her. “But that doesn’t mean he isn’t using the killer somehow, as he’s accused me of doing.”

  Alaria shook her head. “I don’t believe this. This is why my mother stays away from court. She always said the closer you were to the throne, the less likely you were to know what was really important.” Heat rushed over her face. “I beg your pardon, Falcos Tarkin. I spoke without thinking.”

  But he was laughing, and part of her rejoiced to see it. “Don’t think your mother is so far wrong,” he said. “My father would often say much the same thing. It’s a terrible job, he used to say to me. Watch carefully those who think they want it.”

  “Like Epion?”

  “Like Epion.”

  “I guess you weren’t watching him closely enough.”

  “I’m not as good a Tarkin as my father was.”

  “I know what my mother would say to that.”

  “What?”

  “Stop your whining.”

  The instant they stepped into the Path of the Sun, Gun saw that the phenomenon he’d experienced in the underground room held good here as well; the Finding clue that led him forward toward his goal glowed slightly in the dark, just enough that once his eyes became accustomed to it, it illuminated the surroundings so that—

  Mar stepped on the back of his foot.

  “Sorry.” Her voice sounded hollow, as if they were in fact underground, whereas Gun knew very well . . . he looked up. There was nothing but blackness above them, no stars, no moon. He lifted the hand that wasn’t holding Mar’s, but if there was a ceiling up there it was too far away for him to reach.

  “I forgot you can’t see,” he said, lowering his hand.

  “And you can?”

  “The clue sheds a kind of light,” he said. “Just enough that I can place my feet and make out a bit of the wall.”

  Mar reached to one side, bending slightly until her fingers scraped the wall to their left. “It feels like dressed stone,” she said. “And it’s much cooler in here.”

  “Does it sound to you as though we were in a tunnel? Underground?”

  “Wooooo.” Mar’s hoot echoed back to them. “Yes, it does.”

  “Wait, hold on, here’s the first turning.”

  “It’s much farther in than what you can see from outside.”

  Gun considered, thinking back to when they had all been up on the cliffside, looking down on the Path. Had it been only three days ago?

  “I don’t think the inside of this has anything to do with what you can see from the outside.” Gun drew Mar’s arm into his. It would make them no less mobile than having Mar stumbling around in the dark, and what they would lose in mobility, they would more than gain in morale.

  “At least with it so dark we won’t be tempted by different turnings and pathways,” Mar said. “We can’t even see them.”

  “We couldn’t go astray in any case,” Gun said firmly. “We only have to follow the clue.” And not get separated, he said to himself, knowing he didn’t need to say it aloud.

  The distance to the next turning was very much shorter, and for the next two hundred paces or so they wound around and around, sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, until Gun felt sure he was getting dizzy. Finally the clue stretched out in front of him, a long line that seemed almost to disappear in the far distance.

  “Looks like a long straight stretch coming up now,” he told Mar.

  “Good. Can we sit down for a minute? My left foot is starting to cramp.”

  Gun could just make out Mar as she took off the half boot and handed it to him. “Since you’re the one who can see,” she said. “Don’t lose that.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I keep forgetting you can’t see anything. This must be much harder on you than it is on me.”

  “I don’t know,” Mar said. “It’s beginning to seem normal to me, as if we’d been in here for days—but we can’t have been, can we? I mean, I’m not even hungry.”

  Gun rubbed at his upper lip. Surely they hadn’t been walking the Path long enough for Mar’s mind to begin to drift? Still, with nothing to concentrate her attention . . . “Recite me something,” Gun said. “Keep your mind focused while I concentrate on Finding.”

  Every Scholar in every Library knew dozens of books and scrolls by heart, usually the basic ones of their own specialty. But each also memorized a book their Library had only one copy of, both as a precaution against the loss of that copy, and as an item of knowledge to trade at another Library when traveling. As they continued following the blue-green clue, Gun wasn’t surprised that Mar chose to recite from her own personal book, Air and Fire, which told the tales of three sisters who had left their home to seek their fortunes. In a way, that was what Mar had done when she’d left her foster home with the Weavers in Navra and set out to find her real family in Imrion.

  Instead she’d found Gun, and the Scholar’s life.

  “What is it?” she said. “You’re squeezing my arm.”

  “Nothing,” he said, glad the dark covered his smile. “I was just thinking how happy I am to be here.”

  “I hope by ‘here’ you mean with me, and not stuck in this particular place.” He could hear the warmth and laughter in her voice. He started to answer her in the same way.

  “I think you know—” he fell to his knees, clutching his forehead between his hands.

  “Gun. Gun, what is it?” Mar was on her knees beside him, feeling for his head and clutching at his sleeves. He had to steel himself not to push her away, to remind himself that she couldn’t see, and that if she lost her sense of where he was, she might never find him again.

  “I was dizzy,” he said. “It was as if I were falling, as though I were suddenly going uphill, then down, and then the ground just fell out from under me.”

  “But the ground’s level here,” Mar said. “The floor’s as smooth as a sanded tabletop.”

  Gun swallowed against the nausea in his throat, licked his lips, and forced his eyes open. The clue was still there, still leading away, blue and green, red and black.

  “I’m all right,” he said. “Just give me a minute.” Clinging to her, Gun managed to get back on his feet. His head felt hollow and seemed to want to sway from side to side. Mar, evidently sensing something was wrong ev
en though she couldn’t see him, pulled his left arm over her shoulders and propped him up.

  “You lead,” she said. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall down again.

  Leaning heavily on Mar, Gun reached out for the clue, wishing that it were solid. If he held his hand between it and himself, he could concentrate better, seeing his hand silhouetted against the colors of the clue. He closed one eye. That seemed to help. He could feel Mar murmuring, still reciting from the first book of Air and Fire under her breath as they went around yet another corner.

  “Is the ground slanting downward?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Mar said.

  A searing light stabbed through Gun’s right eye, like a cold dagger into his brain. He hissed in his breath, gasping for air.

  “Push your breath out,” Mar said, holding him up in her arms. “The Wolfshead says you’re stronger on the exhales.”

  “Curse the blooded Wolfshead.” Nevertheless Gun struggled to push out his breath through his clenched teeth. “What’s that blooded light?”

  “The sun,” Mar said. “We’re here.”

  Gun blinked at the harshness of the sunlight. The world seemed still to be spinning, and his stomach turned over. He blinked again and squinted.

  “The clue is gone,” he said.

  Eighteen

  PARNO FOUND DHULYN fastening the ties on her bedroll. His own was already neatly tied and placed next to his open pack. They had waited until morning, to give the Seers a chance to change their minds, but no summons had come from them.

  “You didn’t pack my pipes,” he said, seeing them still out on the pallet where Delvik Bloodeye had lain.