Her senses enhanced by the Shora, the first thing Dhulyn noticed as her opponent passed the doorway into the darkness of the marble-cool entry was that his heartbeat was exactly in sync with her own. A shiver passed up her spine. And there was an odor, an odd, almost spicy scent that she had smelled somewhere before.
His opponent was nothing more than a darker shadow among all the others. But he knew that shadow, Parno thought, as the skin crawled on his back. Knew that shape, that angle of shoulder. That scent, subtly changed and yet familiar. His breath caught as a light seem to blaze in his mind. “No,” he told it, not daring to hope. This must be Mage’s work, meant to distract and detain him. There must be a Mage among the Mortaxa after all. He took a firmer grip on his swords and stepped forward.
At that single spoken syllable, Dhulyn froze. Shape, smell, and now sound. It was impossible. It could not be. It was a trick. Could she be having a Vision unaware?
“Are you a ghost?” The nightwatch voice seemed impossibly loud in this confined space.
“Come and try me, Mage’s phantom.”
The voice. Dhulyn began to tremble.
“I am no phantom.” Dhulyn’s heart pounded, hard and fast, as she lowered her sword. “I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar, and Schooled by Dorian of the River, the Black Traveler. I have fought at Sadron, and Arcosa, where I met my Partner, Parno Lionsmane. Together we fought at Bhexyllia, for the Great King in the West, and later at Limona, against the Tegriani.”
“Tell me something no one else could know.”
Dhulyn thought, ideas chasing each other hotly through her mind. There seemed so many things, and yet . . .
“I bear a Mark,” she said at last. “I am a Seer. Others know it, but no one this side of the Long Ocean.”
Suddenly she was crushed in two strong arms, arms she knew well, and she found that she could not breathe, not because of the pressure of those arms, but because her heart was too full, her throat too thick. She was crying. She could not remember ever crying like that before.
“Dhulyn. Dhulyn, my heart. It can’t be. You’re alive.”
“Enemy behind,” she croaked out.
Parno released her and whirled, swords raised. “Where?”
“Well, there could have been,” she said, taking what felt like the first deep breath she’d had in weeks.
“But how—the Crayx could not find you anywhere.”
“But they clearly found you.” Dhulyn’s raw silk voice sounded rougher, as if she were trying not to cry. She kept touching him, his face, his hands, running her callused fingers along the edges of his beard and lips as if to assure herself that it was really him. “Do we have time for this? I take it those are your people out there.”
“Come to kill the Storm Witch.” Parno blinked. He hadn’t noticed before how much he’d fallen into the Nomads’ form of speech.
“My thinking precisely, but there are complications.”
Parno took hold of her wrists. “Don’t care. I—I’m not even sure I care whether the Witch lives or dies, not now.”
Dhulyn butted him in the shoulder with her head, just like a cat. “I think the matter can be resolved to our satisfaction, but we need time. Can you call off the attack?”
Her words warmed him. It was gratifying that she assumed he was in charge. Though in a way, he supposed he was.
*Fall back* he said to the Nomads. *Fall back, everyone* *My Partner lives* *Dhulyn Wolfshead lives* *She can take me to the Storm Witch with safety for all*
#Rejoicing# came the deeper notes of the Crayx
*Are you certain*
*Certain* *Fall back now, before there is further loss of life on either side*
*Confusion* *Disagreement*
#Parno Lionsmane, our people need further assurance you are well and secure#
And not insane, he thought. *Look in my thoughts* he told the Crayx. *Can you tell that I am not under any magic, that I have found my Partner, alive and well*
#We see this, and will show the others# #We will fall back, as you suggest, and await your instructions# #We remind everyone, this has all along been Lionsmane’s plan# #We are at his orders#
*Reluctance* *Concern* *Agreement*
#We will stay linked, Lionsmane# #Call upon us as needed#
“You were talking to them, weren’t you?”
He swept her up in his arms and swung her around as if they were dancing. “I tell you, it’s the greatest way to coordinate a two-pronged attack that’s ever been heard of.” When he put her down, Dhulyn’s smile had faded, and her left eyebrow was raised. Parno grinned all the harder. What an Outlander she was, after all, to be embarrassed by his show of emotion.
“Come on, my soul, my heart! We’re alive! We’re together again.”
“Together again,” she murmured.
“Dhulyn Wolfshead?”
They’d been talking throughout in the nightwatch voice, as loud as shouts to them, but virtually silent for anyone more than a pace or two away. At this tentative whisper, Parno swung away from his Partner—his Partner!—and faced the inner doorway, swords raised.
“Show a light, Remm Shalyn,” Dhulyn said. “There is no enemy here, but the best of allies.”
Twenty
“PART OF ME JUST WANTS to walk out of here and go home.” Parno stretched his hand across the table and touched Dhulyn on the back of hers. They had started out sitting side by side on the settee in her sitting room, but when Remm Shalyn had returned from a raid to the kitchens they had taken seats at the table across from one another. Dhulyn found herself stealing glances at her Partner, as if she expected at any moment to find he had disappeared. She was afraid to look at him, and afraid to look away.
“We won’t get home without the Nomads,” she said. “And their quarrel with the Mortaxa is a real one.”
“But this Xerwin is the one they’ve dealt with before, they speak well of him. If he can be made to see reason . . .” Parno’s voice trailed off as he thought through his idea. Dhulyn tried to concentrate on the food in front of her, but she was tasting nothing. This was Parno—she knew it in her blood and bones—but she was still having trouble believing it. It had taken her the whole of the walk back to her rooms, all three of them being careful not to be seen by anyone else, to realize that under her joy was a thin layer of an emotion she could only define as anger, much as it shocked and shamed her. How could she be angry with her Partner? Why?
“Xerwin may well see reason,” she said aloud. “But he is not Tarxin here, his father is. And Xalbalil has his own firm plans, which include using the Storm Witch—and myself for that matter—to subjugate the Nomads.”
Remm cleared his throat. He was sitting to Dhulyn’s right, Parno’s left, and had been watching them as they talked, turning his attention from one to the other. “So we remove the Storm Witch, as the best and fastest method of ruining his plans.”
Parno raised his index finger, swallowed, and spoke. “Do we? No, listen,” he said as Dhulyn opened her mouth. “You tell me the storm was an accident. Well, I’ve no reason to exact any vengeance on the woman for an act of carelessness or ignorance, not now that you’re alive. The Tarxin,” he shrugged. “There’s more than one way to deal with him. As for the Witch, well, a Weather Mage is a very useful thing.”
“What you say is true.” Dhulyn spoke slowly, a strange reluctance coming over her. “And there’s more to consider than just her magics. There’s the knowledge she has of the time of the Caids.”
“The lodestone,” Remm Shalyn said.
“Exactly. What else might she be able to tell us, what might she know firsthand of their knowledge?”
Parno drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Still, something is bothering you, my heart.”
“What of the child?” Dhulyn spoke as evenly as she could. “The Tara Xendra, the real child.”
Parno leaned forward. “You’ve found her? You’re sure?”
“As sure as I am that you’re sitting across fr
om me.” Dhulyn made sure that Parno was looking straight at her, flicked her eyes sideways at Remm Shalyn, and tapped the table with the third finger of her left hand.
Parno sat back in his seat, brow furrowed in contemplation. “If she’s safe where she is,” he began. But then he shook his head. “Nothing changes the fact that the Storm Witch has taken over someone else’s body—can such a being be trusted, however useful she might be?” He looked up. “We must see what can be done.”
“It’s too late now to go to the Sanctuary,” Remm Shalyn said.
“We’d be stopped?”
Remm was already shaking his head. “The Paledyn Dhulyn Wolfshead may certainly wander about at her will. But the gates to the Sanctuary will be closed. We should wait until tomorrow night.”
Dhulyn leaned forward. “But will the gates not be closed then as well?”
Remm grinned at her. “Not if arrangements have been made, ahead of time. We won’t be the only people who have ever wished to consult the Marked quietly, in private. Now, it’s too late, but tomorrow I can make such arrangements.”
“It’s late in any case, and we must get some sleep. Even if the alarms of the day are over, we’ll be expected to put in an appearance in the morning.”
“Not Parno Lionsmane, I take it?”
Dhulyn caught Parno’s eye. He moved his head a fraction to the left, and back again. “No,” she said. “Let him be our hidden dagger, for now.”
Once the Mortaxan had left to spend what remained of the night in his own quarters, Parno sat once more at the table. He’d been itching for the man to leave, but now that he had, Parno found himself unexpectedly uneasy to be left alone with his Partner. He kept wanting to touch her, to reassure himself that she was really there. But at the same time he wanted to act as normally as possible. To reestablish as quickly as might be their old standing with one another.
Dhulyn stood next to her chair, her eyes still on the door. She looked thinner, Parno thought. Her hair had grown and she had started re-braiding it.
“Can you trust him?” he said.
“I have been trusting him.” Dhulyn turned finally to look at him. “Can you trust the Nomads?”
“Yes.” It was the simplest answer, and the truth. “Within the mind of the Crayx, it is impossible to lie, or even to disguise the truth.”
Dhulyn raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips in a silent whistle. “That would certainly make many things much easier.”
Parno grinned. Only his Partner would think that the truth always made things easier. Dhulyn yawned, and Parno felt his own jaws tremble in response.
“Do we keep watch?” he said, getting to his feet again.
“There’s only the one way in, well, two if you count the balcony.” Dhulyn looked around, frowning, as if she’d misplaced something.
“Then I say no.”
Dhulyn picked up the lamp and Parno followed her into the bedroom, sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed his face with his hands. Every one of his muscles, and the grittiness in his eyes, was reminding him of every hour that had passed and every step he’d marched since early that morning.
Dhulyn set the lamp into its niche by the door and stayed there, leaning against the wall. “You look different,” she said.
“It’s my new armor.” Parno glanced up, smiling, and rapped the Crayx scales with his knuckles.
“Yes.” Dhulyn nodded. “And your hair is longer, though I’ve seen it longer still. Your beard’s grown in as well.” She shook her head impatiently. “It’s more than that. I think it’s the Crayx. You have a faraway look in your eyes, that you didn’t have before. As if you are listening to someone else.”
Parno had bent over to pull off a boot, but now he sat up again, feeling the muscles in his jaw tighten. “You’re saying I can’t? I can’t listen to someone else?”
Dhulyn brought her fists to her forehead. She shook her head and in a moment her whole body seemed to shake with it. “I’m so angry with you,” she said through clenched teeth. Yet Parno could swear he heard surprise in her tone. “I’m furious.”
Parno stood and went to her, hands up to take her by the wrists. “You don’t get furious, my heart,” he began. “Or, at least—” A sudden glint in her eyes warned him and he stopped, inches from touching her. “What is it? Not your woman’s time already?”
She twisted away from him. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been mourning you for weeks. And all that time, you were alive—”
“You’re angry with me because I’m alive?” Parno blew out his breath. This was unbelievable. “And what about me? You think you’re the only one who’s been grieving?” He gestured around the room. “You look pretty comfortably set up for a person in mourning, I must say.”
Dhulyn’s face set in hard planes. “I could just smack you.”
Parno made a “come here” gesture with his hands. “What’s stopping you.”
The first blow came so fast that Parno didn’t see it, for all that he’d invited it. She’d kicked him in the face, and while his hand was still on his nose Dhulyn swung again, this time with her fist. Part of him, he realized as he ducked and propelled his shoulder into her midsection, hadn’t really expected Dhulyn to hit him at all.
He got hold of her elbow and twisted, but the leverage he thought he had disappeared when she turned her hips and almost wriggled free. She stamped on his instep, but he pulled his foot back in time, though it cost him his hold on her elbow, which she drove into his stomach. He caught it again, and this time he managed to throw her to the floor, with the help of his foot behind her heel.
The next few minutes were a concentrated struggle of elbows, knees, fists, arm twisting, and head butts. At one point, Dhulyn almost got him in a classic choke hold, and it would have worked on any one other than a Mercenary Brother, but Parno knew the countermove and used it. At another point he thought he had her trapped, but in the last moment she got her knee up between them and threw him off. Not that he went far. Finally, the wall itself became his ally, and he had her pinned in the angle where the wall met the floor.
“Dhulyn,” he said, and she stopped struggling.
“You died, you blooded son of a twisted ox. You left me alone. I almost killed myself, and all the time you were alive and well, and making a new life with the Nomads.”
Parno rolled off her, wiping his bleeding nose on his sleeve. “I wanted to die, and the Crayx would have taken me—my soul—into their consciousness.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “But I would never have seen you again. In Battle.” She kept her head turned away. “Dhulyn.”
“Or in Death,” she finally said, reaching out her hand to him without turning around. Her hand was cold, and there was a scrape along the knuckles.
“I stayed alive to avenge you, to kill the Storm Witch. After that,” he shrugged, finding it a pointless business when lying on the floor. “I figured there’d be no ‘after that.’ ”
Dhulyn used her grip on his hand to roll over and face him. There was a line of dirt smudged across her left cheek, but her face was otherwise unmarked. He must have been taking care without realizing, otherwise she might have had some explanations to give. He wondered how many bruises it had cost him.
“I began that way.” She cleared her throat, but lowered her eyes, fixing her glance on their entwined hands. “Thinking I’d kill her and not worry about ‘after.’ Then.” She licked her lips. Parno watched, fascinated. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her guilty before.
“Then I met the Marked,” she said, still looking down at their hands. “They needed my help. I thought perhaps I’d do that first, before I joined you in death. After all.” She blinked and swallowed. “After all, you would still be there.”
“You’re angry with me because you decided not to die right away?”
She shrugged one shoulder and nodded. “Why was it so easy?” she said. “How could it be so easy to live?”
“You call that easy?” Parno could see from her face she
’d suffered the same sleepless nights, the same hopeless dreams, the same staggering pain every time the grief hit her afresh. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“How was it we could? Other Partners, they haven’t survived.”
“We aren’t ‘other Partners.’ We’re Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane.”
She managed a small smile.
“I’m not joking, think about it. The Tribes of the Red Horsemen were broken when you were just a child, younger than this Tara Xendra who’s missing now. Your family, your Tribe—blood, your whole race was gone. And you survived. My death wasn’t going to kill you, not after that.”
“Dorian of the River saved me,” she said. “The Brotherhood saved me.”
Now it was his turn to shrug. “And it saved me as well. My story’s different only in degree. When I was cast out of Tenebro House, I lost everything. Family, name, friends, position. If my father hadn’t been a sensible man, I wouldn’t even have had basic skills. I would have starved.”
“So your conclusion is that Mercenaries are hard to kill.”
“Well, we go down fighting, that’s for certain.” He stood and pulled her to her feet.
“In Battle,” she said.
“And in Death.”
*What does he mean she’s still alive* Darlara wanted to thump the rail. *Has he been magicked somehow*
*Didn’t see her* Conford admitted. He and the others had reached the creek without incident, and were pulling the boat into the water. There was no reason now to wait. Either Lionsmane would be successful in dealing with the Storm Witch, or he would not.
#We did# #We saw her# That was the unmistakable voice of the Crayx. #She lives, it is certain# #Look# And into all of their minds came the image of the Mercenary woman as she had appeared to the Lionsmane. The image was dark and full of shadows at first, and Darlara began to have hopes, but quickly it cleared to reveal the woman they all remembered, thinner perhaps, and with the marks of sun on her face, but unmistakable.
The Storm Witch Page 30