The Storm Witch

by Violette Malan

  “But the White Twins are . . .” Remm’s voice trailed away. He waggled his right hand from side to side.

  “Yes, they are. But they can See Xendra. The only question is whether they can also link with the Finder.”

  I can do it, she thought. She had linked with other Marked before, and thought she could do it again. But she was not ready to tell even the other Marked that she was herself a Seer. She could do nothing to help them, if she were locked inside the Sanctuary with them. She couldn’t take the chance that their settled patterns of thinking might betray her, that even the Marked would no longer see her as Paledyn. Just as she couldn’t take the chance to try a Vision herself, without Keria and Amaia. With them, she could control the Visions, take them where she wished them to go, something she could never do with any certainty before.

  Without the Twins’ help, there was no knowing what Visions she might See—anything might come, past or future. At the moment there was nothing of the future she wanted to See, and one particular Vision of the past she would give much never to See again.

  A woman was talking to the guards at the entrance to his rooms when Xerwin returned to them after the Council meeting. The guards came to attention and when she turned to see why, he recognized her as the Xara Finexa, the Storm Witch’s attendant.

  “Forgive me, Tar Xerwin,” she said, offering a curtsy which displayed her bosom to good effect. “Your sister, the Tara Xendra waits for you within.”

  Xerwin wrinkled up his nose, not caring if the woman saw it. His first instinct was simply to refuse. He had nothing to say to the Storm Witch, and could not imagine what she felt she needed to say to him. He started to signal the guard to enter before him, to eject her . . . but Xerwin hesitated. Something had brought her here—even if it was merely some trick. Should he not try to discover what it was? And if she had something of consequence to tell him, and he missed hearing it out of misplaced caution . . . he could just imagine what Dhulyn Wolfshead would say about that.

  He could be tricky himself, if he needed to be.

  Carcali was sitting in the window seat when Tar Xerwin came into his sitting room. She had her arms folded across her chest and her hands tucked into the long sleeves of her child’s tunic. She’d been watching the sunset, reaching out and feeling the slow gathering of moisture, the formation of cloud. In her lap, cradled in the folds of her skirt, was a soft toy she had found fallen behind the closed shutter, half-formed, made from scraps of leather with raw inglera fleece for stuffing.

  “What brings you here?” he said, his voice quite gruff. “What is so urgent?”

  He was looking at her differently now, she noticed. He’d frowned before, but his mouth then had been softer, his eyes warmer. That frown had shown concern. Now his eyes were hard, his mouth a thin line. He knows, she thought. He might have wondered before, but now it was clear that he knew she wasn’t his little sister. Carcali couldn’t see the Tarxin telling him, so it must have been the Paledyn. She shut her eyes, suddenly tired, far more tired than the small Art she’d used so far should make her.

  He was still waiting for his answer. What did she want from him, what was so urgent? It had seemed so simple when she decided to come here. Tell him what was going on, and he’d become an instant ally. Now it didn’t seem that simple. She lifted the toy.

  “This was for your sister, wasn’t it? You were making it for her. You must have loved her very much, to do this with your own hands.” She turned it over. “It’s a horse, isn’t it? The legs should be a little longer.”

  “You know horses? You’ve seen them?” His eyes were narrowed, calculating. He stood, leaning his hip against his worktable. She nodded.

  “In my own time, my own place, yes.” She held out the toy like a peace offering. “My name is Carcali,” she said. She almost couldn’t believe she was telling him. “And no, that’s not so urgent, is it?” She rubbed her face with her hands. “I’m just tired of all the pretending. The Paledyn told you, I suppose.”

  “It was I told her you weren’t my sister though, as it happened, I had no need.” He came closer. “The Nomads approach. Can this wait?”

  Carcali nodded out the window. “The Tarxin’s asked me to send a storm to destroy the Nomad ships.”

  For a second he stood stone still, then he pulled out a chair and sat down. “Can you?”

  She nodded. “It would take a few days, but, yes, I can do it.”

  “Why tell me?” His tone was cautious, wary, but with a good sprinkling of plain curiosity. Her eye fell once more on the toy. She’d come here looking for an ally, someone . . . a better man than the Tarxin, someone who cared about people, not power. Someone who would make a toy for his sister with his own hands.

  “The storm won’t just affect the Nomads. What I’d have to do, to follow the Tarxin’s orders, would cause a lot more damage, far-reaching damage, inland as well as at sea. I’ve told your father this, and he doesn’t care. He wants me to kill those people, no matter the consequences, and I don’t want to.”

  “You’ve already done as bad.”

  “But not on purpose, not deliberately. It was an accident.” She reached a hand toward him.

  “And is it an accident that you occupy my sister’s body?”

  Carcali sat up straight, gripping the edge of the stone window seat. “I didn’t do this, the Marked did.” She cleared her throat and tried again. “When that Marked person found me and pulled me into this body, there was no one else there. I was alone in the spheres.” Carcali swallowed, trying to get her lips to stop trembling. “Your sister wasn’t there.”

  His eyebrows drew down in a deep vee, his lips pressed together.

  “Your sister is gone,” Carcali said, as gently as she could.

  “And if she is found? Would you vacate her body?”

  Carcali rubbed at her eyes. “Listen, you want me to be honest? I’ll be honest. It’s too late for her to be found. Only a Mage like me, trained in the Art, can leave the body for so long and then return to it.” And sometimes not even a Mage like her, but she had no intention of telling him that. “And let me say again—” Carcali found she was pointing her index finger at him and quickly dropped her hand, tapping herself on the sternum instead. “I didn’t take your sister’s body. It isn’t just that I don’t want to be out there in the nothing again, not ever again. I’m really sorry for your sister, but she was gone before I ever came along. Ask them! Ask those Marked people. Would they have taken me if your sister had been there? No one gains by pushing me out again, not me, not you, not the people we can help if we work together.”

  Xerwin turned the toy over in his hands, frowning down at it. A fluff of wool fell to the floor, and he stooped to pick it up. “Xendra always wanted to see a horse with her own eyes. Fond as she was of Naxot, I think she secretly hoped to be married to some ruler across the Long Ocean, to see the horses there.” He put the half-made toy aside on the table and looked across at her. Carcali wanted to look away, but steeled herself not to lower her eyes.

  “Why come to me?” he said finally. “Why don’t you just refuse my father? What can he do to you?”

  “You remember the bruise on my face?” His eyes widened, but Carcali saw that Xerwin wasn’t really shocked. “He took away Kendraxa who at least was nice to me, and replaced her with that Finexa spy. And he locked my doors and starved me. It wouldn’t take long for me to get too weak to practice the Art, and that’s the only weapon I have. If I can destroy him, well, he can do the same to me.” Carcali took a deep breath.

  “Your father doesn’t want a partnership with me, as he claims. He doesn’t want to work with me, just to use me, control me, as he controls everything. He has no intention of negotiating with the Nomads—or anyone else—Paledyn or no Paledyn. We could have a real partnership, you and I. We could trust each other, we could create a world that would be the best for everyone.”

  “We could change the world.” Xerwin was looking inward now, and Carcali would have given
a great deal to know what it was he was looking at. She’d never seen that look on his face before.

  She got down off the window seat and had taken a step toward him when one of the door guards knocked and entered. Finexa was in the hall behind him, wringing her hands.

  “Your pardon, Tar Xerwin, it’s the Nomads. They are storming the City.”

  Dhulyn Wolfshead leaned far over the rail of the tiny balcony in her sitting room, craning her neck from side to side. The night was overcast, but the moonlight that made it through the clouds reflected back twofold from the water.

  “I see no ships.”

  Just as she spoke, a great long-nosed head rose out of the water, and spat a jet of water at one of the lower floors. A small sailboat, moored at dockside, was blown upward by the force of the jet and smashed against the cliff face. A flight of arrows came from one of the middle floors, between Dhulyn and the sea, and a second beast directed its water jet upward.

  “Sun and Moon, Wind and Stars.” Dhulyn turned to Remm Shalyn. “I did not know they could do that.”

  Remm looked pale, but smiled. “I had heard,” he said. “But I’ve never before seen it.”

  Dhulyn looked again at the archers. “Idiots,” she said. “Those arrows will never pierce their hides, and if they’re aiming for the eyes, they need a better angle.”

  “What about a crossbow?”

  Dhulyn nodded, her eyes still on the incredible jets of water. “Can’t do any harm.” Which she meant precisely. With a good longbow, or a well-made recurve bow, she might confidently expect to do some damage. But with a crossbow, at this distance, “no harm” was exactly what she would do.

  In minutes, Dhulyn was running down the corridor with Remm Shalyn at her heels, carrying her crossbow and a soft leather bag full of bolts. In the Grand Square outside the Tarxin’s palace, she found the Senior Guard Commander directing soldiers to their posts on the lower floors.

  “It’s the Crayx,” he told her, rather unnecessarily, she thought. “The Nomads’ animals. They train them to shoot jets of water at the City face, to cover an attack.”

  “But what attack? We’ve already established that the ships are still days away.”

  “If their beasts are here, then the Nomads are here as well. They use these animal tricks to distract us, while they gain entry at the lower levels.”

  “Where the animals are, we’ll find their masters,” agreed the second-in-command.

  Not true, Dhulyn thought. The Crayx had their regular migration routes, and for the most part they followed them, but they could and did deviate from them, and in any case, their movements were no more dependent on the movements of the Nomads than the rising of Mother Sun was dependent on a farmer’s breakfast hour. And as far as she had seen, there was no one trying to gain entry from the water level.

  Not the lower levels, no.

  “The Upper City.” Had Xerwin had time to assign patrols there as he’d intended? She thought she’d whispered, but she found all other voices stopped, and the commander turning to look at her.

  “You are right,” she said. “This is a distraction, but the attack will be made from above, in the Upper City.”

  “Nonsense.” In the excitement, the commander seemed to have forgotten who he was speaking to. “The Nomads have never attacked from overland before. They cannot maneuver on land.”

  Dhulyn knew very well that just because something had never been done before, did not mean it was impossible. But she also knew when she would be listened to, and when she would be wasting her breath. The commander had already turned away from her. This was clearly an example of the latter.

  “Commander.” She waited until she had his attention. “You will not mind if I inspect the Upper City.”

  “Of course not, Paledyn.” Relief at being rid of her was evident on his face, and had served to remind the man of his manners.

  Catching Remm Shalyn’s eye, Dhulyn trotted down the passage that would take them to the Upper City. The Nomads had never attacked overland before. Nothing more likely, she thought, seeing what a siege engine they had in the Crayx and their water jets. But an overland sortie—was that something she or Parno had ever discussed with the Nomads? Because it would be typical Mercenary planning, exactly what she would have done herself, if she had known what tactics the Mortaxa expected, and that the Crayx had this ability. She stopped dead in her tracks.

  “Dhulyn Wolfshead? Are you ill?”

  All those evenings of talk, of singing, of telling tales, was it possible that an overland attack could have been discussed? Or that the Nomads could have worked it out from some tale one of them had told?

  It must be. Because there wasn’t any other explanation. There couldn’t be. Could there?

  She took off running.

  *Appears was only the one patrol*

  *Typical amateurs* *Any Mercenary Brother would have known to have at least two patrols*

  *Lionsmane*

  Parno automatically looked in the direction Conford wanted him to look. There were another pair of lights. A second patrol.

  As if his thoughts had just conjured them out of the air. What kind of trick was this?

  *Do the landsters have any other Mages* he asked. *Anyone other than the Storm Witch*

  *Not that we know* Everyone agreed on that. *There are Marked* pointed out a single individual Parno couldn’t identify.

  *But the Marked can’t conjure lights out of air* Parno said. Or read my thoughts.

  *Lionsmane* Tension and query were equally obvious in the flavor of the thought. Parno made a quick decision.

  *Won’t cross our path if keep to their present heading* he said. *Let them go* *Conford, proceed to the public entrance*

  *Agreement*

  Parno waited until Conford’s group had melted away into the darkness—almost silently—before leading the twins and Trudi Primoh after him, swinging around westward to approach the wall of the palace precinct obliquely.

  Briefly, Parno wondered whether they should have stalked the second patrol, taking one of them prisoner to ask where the Storm Witch could be found. But that was too risky. Better to get inside the palace and frighten it out of a servant or slave.

  Once away from the Grand Square, Dhulyn let Remm lead her through the palace corridors to the staircase that would take them up into the royal precinct in the Upper City. Once outside, they could head for the nearest wall. As they neared the stairs, Dhulyn had Remm douse his torch, and handed him the crossbow.

  “It will be considerably darker in the Upper City than it was even at the cliff face,” she said. “There, the sea itself helped to reflect what little light there is. Carrying lights will make us a target, and dull our own night vision.” She’d prefer in any case to trust her own Shora-aided eyesight.

  The top of the staircase opened onto a square landing with an arched doorway to one side. This doorway, in turn, opened into the portico that sheltered the entrance proper, a small roofed pavilion made entirely of green marble. Dhulyn had noticed on her visit with Xerwin that it was perhaps three paces wide by five paces long, and raised three steps above the ground outside. When they reached the outer doorway, Dhulyn could just make out the long, tree-lined avenue that fronted the pavilion. The lighter blotches, evenly spaced, she knew to be the stone or marble benches which were laid out beneath the trees. Remm was about to step out into the avenue, already pointing to the direction of the nearest wall, when Dhulyn stopped him, taking him by the arm. There. Off to the right. A movement, like a shadow changing shape. A scuff, like the edge of a boot against stone. The sound of someone coming over the wall.

  Dhulyn pulled Remm closer to her, using the nightwatch whisper. “Call for the patrol,” she said. “They won’t come for a female voice.”

  “Armsmen!” he obligingly roared out in a voice that startled even Dhulyn; it seemed impossible that so big a sound should come out of so small and compact a man. “To the palace wall! To the Tarxin!”

  There w
as no immediate response, but Dhulyn thought she heard a soft sound over to the right. The patrol would not bother to be so quiet, were they being outflanked? Well, she knew better than to be drawn away from her defensible position. She took a quick look to the right, and the left. Not as much room as she’d like. She drew Remm with her back to the inner doorway. “Stay here,” she said. “Kill anyone who gets past me.” She refrained from saying she expected no one to pass her.

  *Sounded like just one man* *Stay out here, engage the patrol if they come, and secure my exit* *Be as quick as I can* Parno ran down the stone path, wishing his boots were not quite so loud. If he’d had more time, he could have gone completely silently, but with the alarm already given, someone had to get inside quickly, and that someone was him. This avenue of trees, with its stone benches, led toward an enclosed pavilion, the only completely enclosed structure he could see, and unless he was badly mistaken, the direction from which the voice came. This was likely the entrance to the palace below. He smiled to himself when he saw a darker, vertical patch that meant a doorway.

  There, a man was approaching on the shadowed side of the avenue. Dhulyn considered her strategy again, and backed up. With only one opponent, better if she let him into the relatively confined space of the entryway. There, the darkness would be to her advantage, and she would be able to prevent him from escaping. She took a deep breath. A modified version of the Hunter’s Shora would help her senses stay alert. She smiled her wolf’s smile. She and Parno had once needed to practice Shora while blindfolded. This would be child’s play compared to that.

  There was someone in the pavilion. Parno wasn’t sure how he knew it; there had been neither sound to be heard nor movement to be seen, but someone was definitely in the structure. He slowed, drawing his left-hand sword, but continued to advance, both blades at the ready. Better to deal with this person now, quickly, while there was only one of him. The darkness would be helpful.