But I wouldn’t, Edmir thought. He shook his head, and to be sure she understood him, he took her right hand, brought it to his face, and shook his head again. Holding her right hand still to his face, he took her left hand, tapped himself on the chest, then tapped Valaika, and moved her hand to touch her lower abdomen.
“You would give your life for me?” she said. “Edmir, no.”
He shook his head again, touched her belly again.
“For Janek? For my son?” Valaika’s breath hitched, as if she were trying to stop crying. “Not my life,” she said. “Not Sylria’s. It is Janek’s life that is purchased with yours.”
This time he nodded. In his mind’s eye he could see the smiling face of the boy who had been the only one to recognize him. And this time, Valaika stayed quiet. Edmir understood. When it came to herself, or to Sylria, Valaika was his aunt, his father’s sister, one of the High Noble Houses of Tegrian and the cousin of the Tarkin of Hellik. She knew where her duty lay, and she would die to save him, Edmir had no doubt. But when it came to Janek, she was a mother first, and she could not bring herself to say that she would trade her son’s life for his. Not even here, where a gesture was all it would be.
He patted her cheek, and kissed her. For a long moment, they clung to each other in the dark.
“We are ready now.”
Both Edmir and his aunt jerked and jumped away from the door. How long had the Black Guard been standing there?
“One of you will come with us,” the Black Guard said. “Do you prefer to choose, or shall we?”
Edmir tried to put himself forward, but Valaika was closer to the door, and she could speak.
“Take me,” she said. “No,” she added to Edmir as he clutched her arm. “However long it takes for me to die, I would buy you that time.”
“Your death can be slower,” came the voice of the Black Guard. “But there is more pain.”
“Make it as slow as you can,” she said. “Good-bye, my Prince, my nephew. May the Sleeping God keep us both, and may I meet you at his side.”
Good-bye, he said, kissing her again on the cheek. This silent good-bye was the only one he would make, he realized, as he strained to watch them disappear into the shadows. He would never take his leave of Dhulyn and Parno, never thank them for all they had done, and tried to do. They might yet succeed, even now, and he would never know.
And then Kera will be king. His sister would make a better king than he would have, he told himself, wishing that he had the chance to tell her as well. My best kings would have been on the stage.
And he would never be able to tell Zania that he was a fool ever to have put his throne before her. Never be able to tell her that he loved her. He would ask for the slow death, he thought. He would find a way to make them understand. He would like to think of Zania as long as he could, and the plays he would have written for her.
Twenty-six
DHULYN SAW THE SECOND WOUND begin to bleed and laughed aloud. Her body moved like oiled silk sliding across skin, as if she knew where the Mercenary’s sword would be before he did himself. As if she was Marked, and had the Sight. She felt her smile falter, but her body still moved automatically, parrying each blow as it fell on her from above. He should have picked a different Shora, she thought with a frown, he wasn’t really tall enough for this one, though the bench did help him there. Still, he was tiring, and she knew this Shora so much better than he did, it was almost the first one she’d been taught . . .
She hesitated, blade hovering in the air. Where had those thoughts come from? Just in time, she saw his sword coming down upon her, stepped half a pace closer and blocked it, blade against blade. He bore down on her, taking advantage of his height and weight, and she pushed back—give her an inch or two, and she could twist away. He grunted, and Dhulyn looked up into his amber eyes, so close she could see the individual lashes. As their gazes locked over the crossed swords, he whistled four notes, and something within her loosened, and gave way.
Her own hands lay out the vera tiles, but not for any Solitary game that she recognizes. She chooses one tile, the Mercenary of Swords, covers it with another tile, a circle. Lays out the rectangle, the triangle, the straight line, the circle with a dot in the center. She draws out more tiles and begins to lay them down . . .
The smell of burning, and blood. she stands to one side, watching herself and her mother. Her mother turns toward her and sees her. Her mother is smiling as she turns the head of the child. Dhulyn blinks, and with her child’s eyes sees herself, a tall, slim woman with short red hair and tattoos above her ears. She blinks and sees her mother and the small child who is herself. She puts out a hand, but there is nothing to steady herself against.
“Go,” her mother tells her. “Oh, my soul, do not watch. Find your own soul and save yourself. Go now, go. . . .”
The redheaded boy she has Seen before is squatting next to a map drawn on the ground. The map shows passes, game trails, a wide expanse of plain, the juncture of two rivers. Where the herds will be, and how many will be guarding them . . .
And then the boy is running through the woods, running from the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke. His eyes are wide and frightened, but his lips are pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. Or a smile . . .
A tall black man, the tallest she has ever seen, a triangular scar along the orbit of his left eye. A dead man with a sword in his gut lies between them. The black man pulls the sword free, wipes the blade clean on the corpse’s clothing and holds it out to her, hilt first. “Come with me,” he says, “and I will teach you to kill your enemies.” . . .
She runs along a ship’s rail as the motion of the sea causes it to rise and fall beneath her bare feet. Her breath comes short with the effort of speed and balance . . .
A golden-haired man with eyes like melting amber stands over a map on a table. There is something lionlike about him. He looks up at her and smiles. His Mercenary Badge is dark red and gold. There is something missing. There should be a black line through it. Parno? . . .
Zania holds a blue crystal cylinder between her hands, thick as a man’s wrist, as long as Dhulyn’s forearm. Shining blue like the deep ice that has trapped the glow of the stars. The Muse Stone. A drop of blood falls from Zania’s nose to the Stone. There is movement in the rooms behind her and Dhulyn sees herself, her hair far too short, her Mercenary badge blue and green showing smooth and unscarred, leaping back out of the path of a sword, dashing forward again just as Parno brings up his sword again and running herself full onto his blade . . .
Dashing forward again with her own blade perfectly positioned to pass between his ribs and through his heart . . .
Her Mercenary badge. Blue and green for Dorian the Black Traveler. The black line of partnership running through it . . .
Herself.
An old crone, a young woman with dark hair and a heart-shaped face, a stocky blond man in a Scholar’s tunic, and a young boy, thin and round-eyed, and herself. They hold hands in an intricate pattern, ready for the dance. . . .
Herself.
Avylos is standing in the doorway of his workroom, raising his hands to work his magic . . .
A crash, and the workroom door sprang open to reveal Avylos standing in the doorway of his workroom, his hands raised.
Did I not just see that, she thought. No, she realized. She had Seen it. Her own hands, she found, were raised, sword pointing straight to the ceiling. The point of Parno’s sword rested on the skin above her heart.
“Dhulyn,” Parno said. He eased his sword back.
“My soul,” Dhulyn answered. Parno grinned back at her, and her heart turned over. He jumped down off the bench. “Zania,” he called out to the girl, “Quickly, it’s—”
Avylos drew a symbol in light and with a hard gesture flung it toward them. Dhulyn was slammed back, as if a huge wave of water crashed her against the wall, forcing the breath from her body. She slid down, the bench catching her painfully in the small of her bac
k, and tried to get her frozen lungs to pull in a breath of air. Her whole arm would be bruised, if she lived through this, but she had kept hold of her sword. Parno, a shadow on his face like the symbol the Mage had thrown, fell to his knees beside her, and pitched forward, getting his hands out in front of himself just in time to keep from crashing onto his face.
Dhulyn began to cough and choke, her lungs resisting her efforts to breathe. She tried to stand, but her legs were so rubbery they would not support her. Avylos, she saw, had turned to look her way. Could she trick him somehow? She could not draw in sufficient air to speak, but she held out her arms to him, as if begging for his help. Let him just get within reach of her hands . . .
Dhulyn saw a fleeting shadow of doubt fly across his face. Then his blue eyes hardened.
“Wait, my dear,” he said, in the language of the Tribes. “I will be but a moment. Kera,” he said, turning back to the others. “Get the Stone and bring it to me.”
No, don’t do it. Still the words would not come, though Dhulyn’s breathing was beginning to ease.
Painfully, Dhulyn turned her head enough to see the other end of the room. Zania and Kera were at opposite ends of the worktable. Zania had the Stone and was murmuring under her breath. Ignoring both Kera and the Mage, she was twisting the ends of the Stone as she muttered, but nothing was coming of it.
“Why should I help you?” Kera was looking from the Mage to Zania and back again, her lower lip caught between her teeth. “So you can treat me as you did Edmir?”
“But now you will be king, Kera. You will rule. That is what all this is for, everything I have done is to bring you to the throne. All you need do now is bring me the Stone.”
“No.” Dhulyn coughed. A sound made her turn to Parno. He was still on his knees, holding himself up with his hands. His lips were turning blue, and he did not appear to be breathing. Dhulyn pulled at one of his wrists until she toppled him over. Sucking in as much air as she could, she held his mouth open and breathed into it. His chest moved as his lungs expanded. But not by very much. And not on their own.
Dhulyn looked back to the Mage. And across to the girl holding the Stone. Had Kera answered him?
Zania had stopped trying to manipulate the Stone. Her face was white, and she looked not far from tears. Finally she looked up. “I will give you the Stone for Edmir,” she said. Princess Kera gasped, turning abruptly toward the other girl, but shut her mouth on what she would have said.
“It is already too late for that, I’m afraid.” The Mage was shaking his head. “Come, give me the Stone, and I will let you at least go free.”
Dhulyn forced another breath into Parno and touched his face. “Hold,” she said, and levered herself to her feet. She could not see which end of the Stone Zania was trying to turn, but the chants the girl was using were not working. There was only one thing left to try. “Throw me the Stone,” she said. She cleared her throat, drew in a deeper lungful of air and repeated herself.
“Zania, throw me the Stone.”
The young girl’s face, still white as snow, hardened. Her grip on the Stone shifted, and she glanced around her quickly, as if she was looking for something hard enough to smash it on. Finding nothing, she took a step back, looking between Dhulyn and Avylos.
“Don’t let her trick you,” Kera said, her voice hoarse with unshed tears. “She heard Parno say your name. How is she better than the Mage?”
Dhulyn breathed in deeply and took two paces closer.
“Listen to me, Zania,” she said, and held out her hands. “Pasillon,” she said. “Pasillon, Zania. Give me the Stone.”
For a moment Zania stood frozen, as if she were turned to stone herself, and Dhulyn’s heart sank. If Zania did not believe her . . . Then Dhulyn saw the sudden blaze of understanding and relief ignite across Zania’s face, as the girl realized that only the real Dhulyn, the one who remembered, would know that code word. The code word they’d all agreed on. Work as a team. Do not draw the eye of the audience upon yourself. Let others do their work, and have their moments.
Zania gave a quick nod, and tossed Dhulyn the Stone.
While it was still in the air, Avylos flung another symbol of light across the intervening space, but Dhulyn threw herself forward, snatching the Stone out of the air, and rolled with it to the other side of the room.
“Dhulyn, my dear one,” Avylos said coming toward her with his hands outstretched.
Parno shifted, slowly, so that his knife was closer to his hand. Dhulyn could not tell whether he had begun to breathe properly, but she forced her attention back to the warm bar of crystal in her hands. She could only hope that what she was going to try would work. She had to concentrate, to remember, without the book to refer to. Parno would die if his breathing was not restored, but if she failed in what she was about to try, they were all dead.
“I am not your dear, and never was,” she said, turning the Stone over in her hands feeling for the places where her fingers should go. It would have to be the Null Chant again, she would have to hope it worked the same way on both ends of the Stone. Because this time she would not use the end she had tried before, not the symbols of the Marked. The other end. The symbol she had seen in the book, the ones she had finally recognized from her Visions.
“Give it to me, my own one, my cousin, my kin. We are the only two, the last. Do not forsake me.” He took a step toward her, his voice a charm of music, alluring and pure.
But the music Dhulyn heard was a simple tune, that could be whistled or played on the pipes. The children’s song she knew so well.
Perhaps because of the song, or perhaps because she was holding the Stone, running over the chant in her head, Dhulyn had a sudden flash of the Visions she had just Seen, and others she had Seen before. The young Avylos drawing the map in the dirt, consulting with men who were not Espadryni. Those same men running through the camp as her mother told her to hide. Avylos hunted, not—as she now realized—by those who had broken the Tribes, but by two dying Espadryni, who hunted their betrayer with their last breaths.
“We may be the last,” she agreed. “And who is to blame?”
Avylos went chalk white, but whether with fear or anger Dhulyn could not tell.
“That was why you kept asking me what I remembered of the Tribes,” she said. “That was what you were afraid I knew, what you were afraid I would remember. You broke the Tribes. You sold us to the Bascani. You.”
“No. You are wrong. You said yourself you were too young to remember.”
“I have Seen it,” she said. “Did you forget? I bear the Mark of the Seer. Did you not know how the Mark works? I See both the future and the past.”
Her fingers slid into place on the Stone.
“Elis elis tanton neel,” she said to Avylos.
“They kept the power from me,” he said. “They told me I was srusha, barren, without magic. They did that to me, their own child. Excluded me, shut me out.”
“What?” Her voice dripping with disbelief, only Kera, only a princess, would have thought to interrupt Avylos at such a moment. “The whole Tribe in agreement, every man, woman, and child, every new babe taught an elaborate pretense, to trick you? Why were you so important?”
“Because they would keep from me my rightful rule. Because I was to be stronger than all of them. Because in me the power will be greatest.” Avylos was almost spitting.
“Not without the Stone. You are nothing without the Stone,” Zania said.
“Dor la sinquin so la dele,” Dhulyn said. Let the others keep Avylos occupied. The end of the stone began to turn in her fingers. “Kos noforlin sik ek aye.”
As if he knew how close she was, Avylos threw both hands into the air, fingers flashing symbol after symbol. The furniture in the room trembled, and then jumped into the air, even the worktable, even Parno’s sword where he had dropped it. The bench behind Dhulyn rose up and struck her down—only her Mercenary training allowed her to retain her grip of the Stone as she hit the floor. She
heard Zania scream, but put it out of her mind as she said the final chant.
“Kik shon te ounte gesserae.”
She felt the end of the Stone “click.” Felt the power surging like an underground river, felt her own bones begin to tremble. The Stone became a bar of bright light.
Now, she thought. She could wait no longer.
“Avylos,” she called. And tossed him the Stone.
“No!” Both girls cried out together, Zania from under the table that held her pinned to the floor, with Kera on her knees beside her. Their faces were stained white with the shock of betrayal.
“Watch. Watch!” Dhulyn called out to them, but she was already turning away, crawling to where Parno lay on his side. Did his chest move? From this angle she could not tell. “In Battle,” she called to him. Saw his hand move as he opened his fist. In Death. Her own breathing eased as she kept crawling. If she was wrong in what she had done, if this was the end, Dhulyn knew where she wanted to be. It was not until she had her hand on Parno’s back that she turned once more to watch Avylos herself.
The Mage stood tall, drawn up to his full height. He held the Stone between his hands, his face alight with joy as the blue crystal light washed over him.
Dhulyn’s heart sank. She had made a mistake after all. Surely when she had used the Stone herself, it had knocked her out before this much time had passed. But Avylos showed no signs of any adverse effect. On the contrary, his eyes were bright and glowing, his lips split in a huge smile. As she watched, the Mage’s head fell back, his eyelids fluttered, his nostrils flared, and a look of blissful contentment crossed his features. But even as Dhulyn gathered her feet under her and reached for Parno’s dagger, Avylos’ skin paled, his smile became a rigid grin. A wrinkle formed between his brows.
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