Kera lowered herself into the seat and rested her hands along the arms of the chair; nodded her thanks as Valaika poured her a cup of ganje. “Five or six days ago the Blue Mage returned from one of his tours with a woman who claimed to be of his Tribe, the Red Horsemen. Avylos let it be known that she was ill—the crying fever was mentioned—or perhaps injured, and that he was tending her in his wing. But she wasn’t sick at all, and she caught me spying on her in the garden.” Kera paused, checking their faces. The Lionsmane looked solemn, except for his shining eyes, and Valaika seemed about to smile. Kera took a deep breath.
“She told me that Edmir was still alive.” A lifted eyebrow was the only reaction to her statement. “It’s true, then?” She hadn’t really doubted it—it was impossible to look Dhulyn Wolfshead in the face and doubt her—but Kera’s heart gave a little skip when both Valaika and the Lionsmane nodded.
“She told me about the Blue Stone,” Kera continued, “and together we formed the plan of stealing it.” As quickly as she could, she outlined what had happened three nights before—and how Dhulyn Wolfshead had been behaving ever since.
“Did Avylos do this?” The Lionsmane’s voice was a low growl.
Kera shook her head. “He seemed just as surprised as I was. The look on his face was almost frightened before he regained command of himself. I wondered—I have heard that if a person takes a blow to the head . . .”
The Lionsmane was nodding. “Certainly. That is possible, though I’ve only seen memory loss on this scale once, and I’ve seen many thousands of blows to the head.”
“What was done in that case?” Valaika asked.
“A Finder and a Healer combined their talents to restore the lost memory. But that is not an option we have here.”
“Could it be the Stone?” Valaika drummed on the polished wood with her fingers.
Parno shrugged, blowing out a lungful of air. “If we had the journal, and we could read it, perhaps there would be something there that would tell us. Zania certainly never mentioned such a possibility. As it is . . . Can you get me into the Mage’s wing?”
Kera blew out a long breath, shaking her head. “Something prevents it. My mother or I can enter whenever we wish. But no one else, not even Edmir. We’ve tried disguising him,” she added, as the Lionsmane opened his mouth to speak. “It doesn’t work. Besides, what can you do? Dhulyn Wolfshead doesn’t remember you.”
He fell quiet, his eyes narrow, his lips pressed tight. “We’re Partnered,” he said finally. “She will remember.” He looked up again. “Did you ever try getting someone over the wall?”
“It’s impossible to climb over . . .” Kera leaned forward, the heels of her hands on the table’s edge. If Avylos was conserving magic, as it seemed he was, would he have bothered to magic a wall everyone considered impossible to climb? She looked Parno Lionsmane over, taking in the hardness of the muscle under the golden hair on his arms. If he could move the way Dhulyn Wolfshead could . . . Mercenary Brothers were supposed to be able to do impossible things.
“If you can get over the wall,” she said. “I will bring Dhulyn Wolfshead to the garden.”
Parno had looked the wall over fairly thoroughly when he’d been leaning against it, playing for the children as they skipped and danced through their game of Blind Man. Old as it was, the stones of the original wall were still smooth and beautifully fitted. He suspected the lower courses had been laid without mortar, probably by some long-dead craftsman who had studied the technique of the Caids. It was hard to tell from below, but Parno was sure the individual stones had been placed in such a way that the wall actually leaned out slightly from the bottom. At one time, this must have been part of the outer wall of the Royal House. Climbing it might well be as impossible as Kera thought.
The repaired portion, now that was a different tale. Clearly the repair had been made after the courtyard had been created, and this had become an interior wall, no longer exposed to the possibility of an enemy attack. It was not merely the newer, unaged stone that made the repair stand out. It was good, sturdy work, and the unpracticed eye would see no difference other than color from the original wall. But Parno could tell that the newer portion had been created by a much less skilled craftsman than the old. There was more mortar, for one thing, which meant greater possibilities for finger- and toeholds. And he was virtually certain that the wall did not lean outward, toward the climber. If he was right, then all he had to deal with here was an ordinary wall. A little taller than the ones he’d climbed before, perhaps, but still, only an ordinary wall.
Parno and Valaika arrived at the spot Parno picked out as the most climbable while there was still light in the sky. It had to be late enough in the day that the grounds were as good as deserted, but early enough that Parno could take advantage of the minute shadows created by the slanting rays of the sun to find purchase as he climbed. A torch would flicker too much to help him, and would undoubtedly draw far too much attention. As it was, even the torches that burned nightly in the entrances to the main section of the citadel had not yet been lit.
Valaika eyed the wall as Parno shifted his sword around to hang down his back.
“You sure about this?” she said. “It looks too high.”
“They all do, from the bottom,” he said. “But I was Schooled in the mountains, I won’t even need a Climbing Shora for this,” he added. Climbing was, in fact, one of the few things he did better than Dhulyn, though it was she who had taught him the Sable Monkey Shora. However, Parno suspected he knew what Valaika was really asking. If Dhulyn had not known him in the audience hall, why would she know him now?
Because she had to. That was why. Because they were Partnered, and apart they were incomplete. That was why.
He bent down to pull off his boots and folded the tops into his belt. He had taken off the wig covering his Mercenary badge, and replaced it with a knitted hood that fit closely around his face. If Dhulyn was in the garden, he could push the hood off. In the meantime, he still looked like an ordinary retainer of House Jarlkevo.
“I’ll hold those for you,” Valaika said, pointing to his boots.
“If my Partner is not in the garden,” he said, “I may want to look around a little. If I’m fully dressed, I can claim to be lost, but if I’m missing my boots, that might be a little harder to explain.”
Parno turned once more to the wall, took several deep breaths, put his hands on the cool stones and looked up. The top seemed much farther away than it had a few moments before.
“Is it too difficult?” Valaika asked. “Perhaps I can get you in, if I asked to visit Avylos . . . ?”
“A moment, if you will,” he said.
He rubbed his palms together, dried them on the front of his tunic. He looked up and saw his path, laid out as if drawn on a sheet of paper. There were his first fingerholds, and there the first spots where he could brace his toes. From there he would veer slightly to the left and then . . . He launched himself upward, sliding his fingertips into two uneven spots in the mortar around a stone and pulled himself up.
The last of the sunlight still glowed in the windows of the upper stories, but here in the garden torches had been lit. Dhulyn shifted in her seat, wincing and rubbing her lower back. She set down the tile she had just removed from the board.
“When is this drug supposed to start working?” she asked.
“My mother says in a short span of minutes.” The Lady Prince Kera concentrated on the board. “I don’t get the birthing pains when my woman’s time comes, so I’ve never needed it.”
“Pray Sun and Moon you never do.” Dhulyn twisted from side to side. Was the pain subsiding, or was it wishful thinking?
“My old nurse used to say that bad pains every moon meant that real births would come easier.”
“It’s hard to be glad of that just at the moment.”
Dhulyn tried to refocus her attention on the game in front of her. Strange that she could remember perfectly well how to play Two-handed Ta
ilor with the vera tiles, and yet nothing much else from the time before her memory loss wanted to come to the surface. Her hand went once more to her head, as if this time she would feel something different. There was still some pain, and when she moved her head quickly lines of light and color seemed to trail after things, but she could find no sore or tender spots anywhere. She had not, apparently, struck her head. Was it indeed this Stone that Avylos made so much fuss about which had robbed her of her past?
If she touched the Stone again, could she get her past back? And what of those odd visions with their confusing cascade of images? Should she tell Avylos that they were still troubling her?
Princess Kera finally made her move and Dhulyn kept her face carefully still. The princess had discarded the precise tile Dhulyn needed to complete her hand. As she reached for it, she heard the unmistakable sound of feet hitting the ground behind her.
In the time it took for the intruder to circle the pond and close on them, Dhulyn snatched up the only weapons to hand, the jug of iced lemon laced with pain drugs that Kera had brought with her from the Royal kitchens, and the silver tray on which it sat. She whirled, threw the contents of the jug first, followed immediately by the jug itself. But the man, moving in a golden-brown blur, dodged both drink and jug.
“Kera, run for Avylos—now!”
But the man didn’t follow Kera, not even with his eyes. Not an assassin after the Lady Prince, then. She must herself be the target. But why would anyone want to kill her? To strike at Avylos? Or was this still another thing from her past she couldn’t remember?
The man stepped forward again, and Dhulyn hurled the tray like a disk, aiming for the side of his head. Cursing—that wiped off his smile!—he barely got his forearm up in time to keep the tray from striking him.
Without waiting, Dhulyn ran to a row of climbing flowers and wrenched up a wooden stake from out of the garden fencing. It was as thick, though not as long, as a quarterstaff. It felt awkward in her hand, no proper hilt, badly balanced, but as long as she avoided meeting the edge of his sword directly, she could use it. She took up a defensive position, and began circling to the man’s right. Perhaps she could angle him so as to get the light of the torch in his eyes.
Dhulyn blinked, even as she kept her own eyes on the intruder. What is this? How did she know these things? Why should this knowledge just come to her? What was she?
The man drew the sword that hung down his back, and stood ready for her, sword up, knees bent. Dhulyn felt her body automatically imitating his stance and she faltered.
“Dhulyn Wolfshead,” the man said. “You don’t want to hurt me.”
“Will you cut me with words, or do you plan to use that blade?” She leaped forward, feinted a blow to his head, dropped the point of her stake, intending to jab him in the groin—only to be met by the flat side of the man’s blade, deflecting her blow and almost knocking the unwieldy thing out of her hand. She brought up her left hand to steady it, and dodged to her right, making the man take two steps to her one in order to keep his sword between them.
But he didn’t cross his feet when he moved, didn’t drop his guard; and the torchlight wasn’t enough to dazzle him.
“Dhulyn Wolfshead,” he said. “You were Schooled by Dorian the Black Traveler. You fought at Sadron, Arcosa, and Bhexyllia, where you slapped the Great King’s face. You must remember?”
“Blooded nonsense,” she said. She leaped up on the white boulder that marked the corner of the rock garden. He was not that much taller, but this would remove even that advantage from him. She struck again, bearing down on the stave, but he blocked her, once more with the flat of his sword so that her wooden stake remained intact.
“I’m your Partner,” he said stepping back to avoid a rapid series of blows she aimed at his sword arm, his ribs, and his groin. “Parno Lionsmane, called the Chanter. We met at Arcosa, fighting for the old Tarkin of Imrion, remember? I saved your life.”
As he said this he swung at her legs, and Dhulyn was forced to leap up and to the left to avoid his blade. Landing once more on the pebbles of the garden path, she had lost the advantage of height the boulder gave her, but his back was now to the door. When Avylos came, the man would be finished.
“If you aren’t who I say you are,” he said, warding off her next strike, “how is it you can fight me? How is it you can hold me off?”
The truth was, her body seemed to move by itself, as if it remembered things she did not.
“I’m a Red Horseman,” she said aloud, grasping at the only idea she could think of. “We are formidable warriors.”
In answer the man reached up and pushed back the hood he was wearing. His close-cropped hair was the same amber gold as his eyes, but had been removed above the ears and along the temples. In its place was a dark red-and-gold tattoo with a black line tracing through it.
“Formidable enough to hold your own against a Mercenary Brother?”
Sun, Moon, and Stars, she cursed under her breath. A Mercenary Brother. She felt she should know something about them, but what? A town man, though. He was a town man just the same, Mercenary or not. Town men were liars and brigands, and Avylos had told her it was town men who had injured her and brought on the fever. Without the hood it was easier to see his face . . .
“Sun burn you! You’re the blooded spawn of a snail who bumped into me in the audience room. You’re nothing to me, or my kinsman would know you.”
“He’s no kinsman of yours! Listen to me, you have a tattoo just like mine under that wig of yours. How else could you know what you know?”
She feinted again with the stake, but this time let it drop from her right hand to her left, and lunged at his heart.
Or where his heart should have been. He knocked the stake flying out of her hand, but did not attack again. Rather, he dropped back two steps, his point up, his eyes fixed on hers.
“How is it you knew how to do that? And how is it I knew what you were going to do? That was the Mirror Shora for two-handed swordplay. Where did you learn it if you are not a Mercenary?”
Could he be telling her the truth? She glanced toward her weapon.
“Dhulyn, my soul, think. If you don’t remember me . . . where is your horse? Where is Bloodbone? What has happened to her?”
Dhulyn stayed crouched, knees slightly bent. Her horse? She was Espadryni, what the world called the Red Horsemen. So where, indeed, was her horse?
The man smiled. No! He was trying to trick her, take her from her kin. Not again. She could not lose her Tribe again. She threw back her head and as she gave the snow heron’s cry . . .
Sword in hand, she fights a one-eyed man in a room with a round mirror . . .
Sword in hand, she fights the golden-haired tattooed man, but she is laughing, pleased . . .
Her own hands lay out vera tiles in a pattern she does not recognize from any game. The floor under her is moving like the deck of a ship . . .
A young woman with almost white hair holds the Blue Stone in her hands . . .
Avylos as a young man, running through a forest; the hunters behind him are Espadryni . . .
With the weird howling still echoing in his ears Parno landed heavily on the courtyard side of the wall. Valaika was there in an instant, pulling up his hood and drawing her own sword. Calls, running footsteps, and torches were heading in their direction.
“Guards, quickly, this way,” Valaika called out. “What happened?” she said in a quiet aside.
“Dhulyn almost killed me.” His hands were still trembling, muscles twitching. He could not tell her what the worst cut had been. That Dhulyn should cry out for Avylos the second she laid eyes on him—he pushed the thought away. That wasn’t the real Dhulyn. It wasn’t. “If she’d had a sword instead of a garden stake—” he shook his head as two guards in the queen’s colors ran up to them, swords out, torches to the fore.
“It came from the other side of this wall,” Valaika said, pointing upward with a gesture that both took her swor
d point away from them, and showed her own Royal colors to good advantage. “The weirdest howling noise.”
Both guards grinned and lowered their own weapons, the shorter one going so far as to sheathe his sword as he stepped forward.
“You’re the Jarlkevoso, aren’t you, Lady? What brings you out this way?”
“Trying to settle my supper with a bit of a walk. Not used to the rich fare at my sister the queen’s table. For the Caids sake, what was that noise?”
“Don’t you worry, Jarlkevoso, this is the Blue Mage’s wing. Whateverit was, it’s no concern of ours, nor yours either, with respect. The Blue Mage will manage it, whatever it was.”
“Of course.” Valaika backed a few paces from the wall, looking upward, and letting Parno trail a little behind her. “I’d forgotten Avylos had this end of the old keep for his use. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
The guards walked them back to the entrance of the building that housed Valaika’s suite of rooms, and bade them good night. By this time the trembling had stopped, and the sweat on his face had dried. But Parno’s mind was no further settled.
“She was thinking too much,” he said, as they walked into Valaika’s private sitting room and shut the door. “That’s the only thing that kept her from killing me—and I made sure she thought too much, asked her questions, kept her consciously aware of what she was doing—I’m blooded lucky she didn’t break something.”
“Are you all right?”
He looked up, blinking. “I’ll be all right when I get my Partner back.”
“You say he came over the wall?” Avylos sat behind his worktable and pulled at his lower lip.
“He did.”
“And what did young Kera do then?”
“I sent her to fetch you.”
“Which she manifestly did not do, as this is the first I’m hearing of it.”
The Soldier King Page 33