“Even if we found an ally in the queen—and there’s no way to know that she hasn’t been magicked in the same way old Tzanek was in Probic . . .” Parno began.
“She would be a most volatile ally at the best of times—to be handled carefully. She’d find it difficult to believe that Avylos either could or would do anything against her, but once convinced, she would confront him in a rage, without fear or subtlety, and . . .”
“And that might not be the best way to confront the person who destroyed Probic,” Dhulyn said.
“Better we should approach him ourselves,” Parno said.
“How, precisely, are we to do that?”
Zania leaned forward eagerly, but hesitated as Dhulyn raised her hand, and murmured, “Pasillon.”
“We have reason to believe,” she said, giving Zania a small smile, “that the Mage’s magic is not a natural part of him, like the Mark of a Finder or a Healer. Rather it has an outside source, and we believe we know what that source is. If we can remove it, we remove his power.”
Valaika looked at each of their faces in turn. “And you have a plan for this?”
“You can get us into the Royal House, can you not?”
Zania shivered suddenly, and hugged herself, cupping her elbows in her hands.
“I’ll light the brazier,” Sylria said, getting to her feet.
“Wait.” Parno put out his hand. “It’s late already, and it’s not likely that you’d sit up so long with players you’ve given houseroom to. Someone will wonder why we’ve not been dismissed.”
“Oh, but surely there’s no need to keep up your disguise now?” Sylria said.
“Better cautious than cursing,” Dhulyn said. “Can we be certain of everyone in the House? Or the town for that matter? The return of a dead prince is too good a tale for anyone to keep to themselves.”
“They’re right, Syl. And this is for you, too, Janek. Nothing of what you’ve heard here tonight can be spoken of—it might very well kill your cousin.”
“I was the only one who knew him,” the boy replied. “And I told no one but you.”
Dhulyn smiled, finding herself well satisfied with the boy’s answer. From Valaika’s nod, it seemed his mother was as well.
“Come,” Valaika got to her feet. “I’ll show you to your rooms—I often do so,” she said, answering their protests. “No one will think it strange.”
“Let’s see this famous scar, Edmir.”
The rooms they’d been given consisted of two tiny bedchambers which shared a small sitting room, furnished with three short benches, a single armed chair, and a low table on which the servants had placed a stone lamp now almost out of oil, and a triple-branched candelabra with the candles left unlit. Late as it was, they all drifted back into the sitting room after checking their rooms. At Dhulyn’s words Zania turned from her inspection of the stars outside the window. Parno had taken the large chair and Dhulyn perched on the arm.
Edmir obeyed her request by stripping off his shirt and presenting his back. Dhulyn took up and lit one of the candles and held it above the prince’s shoulder.
“Careful you don’t burn him,” Parno said.
“Teach your grandmother,” Dhulyn answered. She found the scar quite easily. It was, as Valaika had said, a shallow cut made with the edge of an almost dull blade. She could easily imagine the stroke that caused it, an accident pure and simple. She saw another discolored mark lower still, below the kidney, and crouched on her heels to examine it more closely.
“Is that another scar?” Zania peered over Dhulyn’s shoulder.
Dhulyn shook her head. The mark was too dark to be a scar, and too well-shaped. “A tattoo perhaps,” she said.
“I don’t have any tattoos.” Edmir tried to twist around to see the thing everyone else was looking at.
“There’s a mirror in my side bag,” Zania said. “Let me fetch it.”
The mirror was brought, and held up at the right angle to permit Edmir to see what everyone else could see, a dull reddish mark like an oval with a smudge in the center of it.
“You’re not holding it right,” Edmir said. “I still can’t see it.”
“We are holding it right,” Dhulyn said. She caught Parno’s eye and summoned him with a jerk of her head.
“Why can’t I see it then?”
“It doesn’t show in the mirror, lad. It casts no reflection.” Parno looked over Dhulyn’s head, first at Edmir’s back, then at the mirror.
Dhulyn stepped back, her hand rising to her throat, her fingers seeking out a spot on her breastbone, just below the points of her collarbones. “It’s not a scar,” she said. “It’s a . . .” She hesitated, groping for the right word. “It’s a ghost eye.”
“A type of birthmark?” Zania said.
“I don’t have any birthmarks.” Edmir jerked down his shirt and turned to face them, his brows drawn down in a sharp vee. “And that wouldn’t explain why the thing doesn’t show up in a mirror.” He reached behind as if to rub the spot and then lowered his hand, thinking better of it. “And how is it you know about them?”
“I had one myself, as a child.” Again, Dhulyn touched the spot on her breastbone where the ghost eye had been. “Eventually it wore off.”
Zania gasped. “A slaver’s mark? But how did Edmir get one? The Nisveans—”
“It was not a slaver’s mark, no,” Dhulyn said. “I had it before the slavers took me. I had it . . .” she took a deep breath. “Among my people—among the Red Horsemen,” Dhulyn corrected. “Children bore these sigils. So we could not be lost.” She frowned, concentrating on a wisp of memory that hovered just out of her grasp. Grasp. A memory that involved a rough, callused hand grasping her by the shoulder. “My father used it.” She looked up. “It was for my father to find me.”
“Your father? Was your father a Finder, then?” Parno said.
Dhulyn shook her head, frowning. “You know the Mark doesn’t work like this. Finders Find. They don’t need to draw signs on things, they just Find. Use a tool, maybe, like a bowl of water, to focus . . . But this sigil, the ghost eye, was for my father to use. I don’t think there were Finders among us, it was . . .”
“We’d better find some way to get this off,” Parno said. He looked around at them. “If it’s some kind of Outlander magic, and it can be used to find people—if your father used one to find you, than someone can use it to find Edmir.”
“I’ll wager my second-best sword we know who the someone is,” Dhulyn said, the image of Edmir in the pool clear in her mind.
Sixteen
EARLY AS IT WAS WHEN Dhulyn returned from accompanying Valaika’s grooms to the Hostel Plazan—knowing that Bloodbone and Warhammer would not allow someone else to harness them—when she returned with the caravan to Jarlkevo House she found the Jarlkevoso already up, dressed for hawking, and with Parno at the breakfast table.
“I’ve asked that hunting birds be brought out for us,” Valaika Jarlkevoso said. “We won’t have a quiet moment to talk once the day starts. There’s not a room, including my own study, that someone might not walk into. If we’re to talk privately without causing remark, we’ll have to do it on horseback.”
“Nothing would suit me better,” Dhulyn said. A morning in the saddle, with well-trained birds, would make a nice change from walking across a stage pretending to be someone else. Parno could do most of the talking—he was good with Noble Houses. “Are the youngsters up and ready?”
Valaika considered this a moment while she chewed. “Leave them here with Sylria,” she said after she’d swallowed. “There were Mercenary Brothers at my cousin’s court when I was a girl, and I still remember how he relied upon them. Edmir is a grand boy, but I’d rather hear your assessment of events than his.”
Back in their rooms, Zania seemed oddly indifferent to their plans, merely shrugging and agreeing with a small smile. Edmir would have liked to go hawking, but saw the sense of his and Zania’s staying behind. He closed the journal he’d been w
riting in and reached for the scrolls of The Soldier King. “I can work on that part in act four that feels so flat,” he said, eyes already looking into the middle distance.
Dhulyn rolled her eyes to the heavens. His color was better than it had been the day before, and there were fewer lines of worry in his face, but otherwise Edmir was taking his return to his family very quietly. Shaking her head, she changed into her own boots and leggings, topped them with one of Parno’s smaller tunics and joined Valaika in the courtyard.
“First, let me tell you now what I did not wish to say in front of Edmir,” Valaika said, once they were well out into the fields south of the town. The hawk on her wrist bobbed as she turned in her saddle to speak over her shoulder. “It would take a great deal to make Kedneara turn on Avylos. She will not believe that the man does not love her. And she will not believe that he has killed Edmir, or ordered him killed—else she’d have to admit that she herself made a grave error in judgment. An impossibility in her mind. While she would move the heavens and the earth to keep her children safe, she will do little to revenge them once they are dead, if it means admitting any such unwelcome truths.”
“Do you mean she will not invade Nisvea?”
Valaika waved that away with her free hand. “She was planning to do that anyway. Though after Probic, does anyone really think an invasion necessary? Say, rather, she would not change a plan she already had in mind. She has no sentiment. Once the child is dead, he’s dead. Look at how quickly she married Avylos, and she genuinely loved my brother, insofar as she is able to love anyone. When the children were small, and Karyli still alive, then Kedneara was at her best. Since then . . . she has been queen, with no one to remind her she is also a woman and a mother, for a very long time. Any plan we make that includes her must take this into account.”
Dhulyn exchanged a glance with her Partner. They had spent two seasons in the Great King’s Court, far to the west. Ruthlessness on the part of a country’s ruler was something with which they were well familiar.
“This source of Avylos’ power, what can you tell me of it?” Valaika said.
They had two beaters with them, but, on foot and positioned well away from the mounted hunters, they were easily out of earshot of those who knew how to speak without letting their voices carry.
The older woman’s eyes narrowed, her lips thinning, as Dhulyn told her Zania’s history.
“The girl believes the Blue Mage is this same Avylyn that her family has been tracing the last fifteen years,” Dhulyn concluded. “And that the secret to his magics is this Stone that belonged to her people.”
A rabbit dashed out into the field ahead of them, and Valaika loosed her hawk.
“And this book you speak of, it tells you how to control the Stone?”
“I would not go so far as that,” Dhulyn said. “It is rather a description of how Zania’s family used it, and some speculations on its origins and true purpose.” Dhulyn hesitated. How much did she want to reveal to this woman? “But as for any help in getting it away from Avylos—nothing I have read so far gives me any clues.”
“I remember when Avylos first came,” Valaika said, her eyes following the progress of her bird as it swung and stooped on the moving air. “He had perhaps twenty summers then, not many more. A dark-haired young man, thin as a reed, but very striking, very handsome. The timing fits with the girl’s story.”
“And has he grown in his powers, as Edmir believes?”
Valaika tapped her upper lip with her tongue, shaking her head before answering. “That I cannot say. I have not lived in the Royal House for more than fifteen summers. I’ve only met the Blue Mage twice—no, three times since he first came, and not at all since my brother died.” She turned again to look them in the face. “But there is no doubt that until Limona, no Tegriani force has lost a battle, and that is the Mage’s doing.”
They had reached the place where the hawk still crouched over the body of the rabbit. Valaika called out to the grooms and dismounted, swinging off her horse with the agility of a woman half her age.
“Shhhh, come, Tera, come.” She enticed her hawk off the prey, offering her wrist and as a reward, a pellet of specially prepared food. When the hawk was restored to her wrist and hooded, Valaika stepped nimbly back into her saddle.
“Oh, well done,” Dhulyn said. “Most people cannot remount without disturbing the bird.”
At Valaika’s signal, the beaters spread out once more, and they were once again advancing, this time with Parno’s bird unhooded.
“What is your plan?” Valaika asked.
Dhulyn was pleased that Parno kept his eyes on the beaters as he answered. A certain amount of clumsiness would be excused, since the servants thought them to be merely players, but it wouldn’t do for them to pay no attention whatsoever.
“We saw in Probic,” he said, “what could happen if we simply appear, claiming we have Edmir. In coming to you, Edmir thought that with your backing, he could be restored to the Royal House, and we could gain entry ourselves.” His eyes narrowed. Dhulyn looked ahead and saw the beaters were moving in on a clump of long grass.
“Once guests in the Royal House,” she said, taking up the thread of Parno’s explanation, “we would have access to the Mage, and the Stone.”
“You say you wanted this,” Valaika said. “What has changed your minds?”
“Last night we learned something more,” Dhulyn said. “Edmir bears a sigil on his lower back, called a ‘ghost eye’ among the Red Horsemen, used to see or watch the person who bears it.”
“Avylos again,” Valaika said, in the same bitter tone she’d used the night before. “Can we remove this sigil?”
“The one I bore as a child wore off with time,” Dhulyn said. “But perhaps the process can be speeded up. Soap and water, obviously, is not the answer—at least, I would suppose a prince is bathed more often and more thoroughly than a Red Horse child.”
A covey of what looked like grouse broke from the long grass between the beaters and Parno loosed his hawk.
“Distilled spirits,” Parno said, while his eye followed the flight of the hawk. When it struck, calling out its success, he kneed Warhammer forward, saying over his shoulder as he advanced, “I seem to remember my mother removing a stain from a favorite gown with clear distilled spirits.”
“We will try it,” Valaika said. “But how will this affect your original plan? Even if you suspect the sigil is Avylos’, there has been a general order to be on the lookout for two Mercenary Brothers and a young man, but no one has been sent to any particular place.”
“That we know of.” Dhulyn shrugged, causing the falcon on her wrist to spread its wings to balance itself. “Your pardon,” she said to the bird mechanically. “I do not know for certain what the ghost eye reveals, but my guess is the Mage sees only Edmir and his immediate surroundings. One forest clearing looks much like another, and the same can be said for a village green—or a House’s courtyard for that matter. So long as he does not see anyone in House colors, or any recognizable building, there is no way he can tell where Edmir is.”
“That’s why you agreed to leave him indoors just now.”
Dhulyn nodded. “But I tell you, as we approach Beolind there are landmarks, well-known stretches of road; Avylos will recognize what he sees, and he will have time to prepare for our arrival. If the Mage has not already bewitched the queen and others to make sure Edmir will not be recognized, he’ll have time to do so—and we will lose potential allies.”
Valaika nodded. “So Edmir must remain here—or better, our game-keeper’s lodge lies vacant just now. It’s not far from here, and there is nothing to show the place is Jarlkevo. Like the rooms we gave you last night, it is exactly the type of place we would lend to traveling players who needed privacy and time to rehearse.”
Parno returned, the body of a plump grouse hanging from his pommel.
“Then our first task when we return to the House is to see about removing this sigil. All
our planning rests upon that.”
Distilled spirits did not remove the ghost eye from Edmir’s lower back. Nor did animal fat, nor olive oil. Nor hot water and horse brushes.
“I don’t suppose you’ll consider having it cut out,” Parno said as he threw the stiff-bristled horse brush down in disgust.
Edmir spun to face him, hands grabbing protectively at the spot on his back where the sigil was.
“No, I didn’t think so.” Parno smiled.
“We have no way of knowing whether it can be cut off, my soul,” Dhulyn pointed out. She eyed Edmir’s back from where she leaned against the wall. “There’s only one way to find out, and perhaps we should save that as a last resort.” She turned to Valaika. “It’s as I’ve said; for now Edmir must remain behind.”
“But how is it safer for me to stay here?” Edmir said. “If he can see me, Avylos will see me here as well as anywhere else.”
“The Blue Mage has never been to Jarlkevo, to my knowledge,” Valaika said. “If he has looked this way since your arrival, we must hope he recognized nothing. And to be certain, we are moving you now to another place. As Dhulyn Wolfshead has said, one set of stone walls looks much like any other.” Valaika thought, lips pursed. “I can get the two of you into the Royal House,” she said to Dhulyn. “After that, it will be up to you.”
“How will you explain your appearance, Aunt Valaika?” Edmir pulled his shirt on. “It’s well known how much you dislike Beolind.”
Valaika blew out her breath. “If I come to see my sister-in-law Queen Kedneara, to offer her my support at the death of her son, my brother’s child—I could not have come for anything less, but this, this I think they will believe.”
Janek was the first stumbling block. It was Edmir who finally convinced him.
“It’s like a play—or a battle,” he told the boy, when nothing either of his mothers said would change his mind. “Everyone has to do his part. I don’t want to go and hide any more than you want to stay here with Sylria, but those are our orders. You wouldn’t be allowed to go with us if we were really just players—and you wouldn’t go with your mother Valaika to her hunting lodge as she’s pretending to do, not if she were really only going for overnight. You’d have to stay here and attend to your studies and other duties. And so you will now.”
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