The Storm Witch

by Violette Malan

  “Girls,” she said. “My darlings, can your brother see your instruments, my dear ones? He’d love to accompany your song with music of his own.”

  At once the twins stopped singing and ran to a table to the right of the door, in darkness now since the lamps there were not lit. Almost immediately Keria came back to him with an instrument more like a syrinx than the chanter that he would attach to his air pipes.

  “It’s been a while since I played one of these,” he said. He raised the instrument to his lips and gave an experimental blow, satisfying himself that he had not forgotten how.

  “Will the Crayx hear you?” The sisters were standing in front of him, shoulder to shoulder, staring at him with their huge red eyes.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I hope they do,” said the one on the left. Keria, he thought, but with the light at this angle he could not tell which one had the gold fleck in her eye.

  “Parno, my heart,” Dhulyn said. “The Finder and I are ready.”

  “Do you know what to do?”

  “We know, we know, we know,” the sisters sang.

  “I think that means ‘yes,’ ” Dhulyn said, smiling.

  Javen Finder was standing, her lower lip between her teeth, between her fellow Marked. Parno had never seen anyone who looked less like she wanted to be where she was. But when Dhulyn nodded to her, Javen stepped forward right away, giving a wan smile to the Mender, Rascon, who squeezed her shoulder as she went. Ellis Healer held out a canvas bag and Javen took a small blue bowl out of it. It was plain white on the inside, and Parno recognized it as a Finder’s tool.

  “Stand right here,” Keria said.

  “Right here,” Amaia agreed, shifting from foot to foot in her excitement. Both of them put their hands on Javen Finder and pulled and prodded until they were satisfied that she was standing in exactly the right spot. Giggling, they waved Dhulyn over to them, twirling their hands at the wrists like flags fluttering in the breeze. When Dhulyn was close enough, each of them took one of her hands, and then linked hands themselves, standing in a circle around the blinking Finder. Javen licked her lips, held the bowl at chest height and looked into it.

  “Play now, Brother,” Amaia said.

  “You know the tune,” Keria added, already humming.

  Dhulyn caught his eye, and mouthed the words he would have expected from her. “And in Death,” he mouthed back, before lifting the syrinx to his lips and beginning to play. He played softly at first, and then with more power, as he renewed his familiarity with the instrument. Dhulyn winked at him, and began to sing, her rough silk voice somehow serving as a fitting accompaniment to the lighter, smoother voices of the White Twins.

  As they sang, the sisters’ voices grew firmer, more mature, and their faces were suddenly the faces of women his own age. At that moment all three stopped, eyes closed, still with hands linked. The Finder, too, was standing perfectly still, eyes shut tight, eyebrows working as though she was in deep thought. All four of them, Parno saw, the Finder, and the three Seers, were breathing as one.

  Parno let the music die away, and lowered the syrinx from his lips. This was like watching his Partner use her tiles, she had the same serene look of calm concentration on her face. He’d thought he’d never see that look again. Never see her again. He loosened his grip on the syrinx before he broke it. All was well. A good wind and a fair current, as Darlara and her brother would say. After a moment he smiled, as he noticed that he, too, was breathing in the same rhythm as the others.

  #Interest# #Excitement#

  Parno was almost knocked from his feet by the force of the Crayx’ thoughts. *What is it, what’s happening* He had stopped himself from speaking aloud just in time.

  #We can feel her# #Not her thoughts# #No, not her thoughts# #But we can feel her# #Giddyness# #Fascination#

  For the first time, Parno had the sense that there were a great many Crayx, all communicating, all participating at once. *Who* *What are you talking about*

  #Through your link, we can feel her# #Never felt before# #Euphoria# #She has no Pod sense# #But she is there, we feel her#

  “Demons and perverts,” Parno said aloud. Quickly he held up his hand, palm out, signaling to Ellis Healer and Rascon Mender that all was well.

  #How# A blooded good question, Parno thought, as he heard it echoed back and forth.

  #Lionsmane is linked to her, blood to blood, bone to bone, heart to heart#

  Parno gave a silent whistle. Those were the very words of the Partnership ceremony.

  #Why not before, on the Wavetreader# #Too many with Pod sense# #Link too delicate# Parno could tell these were questions.

  #Astonishment# #She is with the child# #Your Partner is with the child#

  *You know of the child*

  #We know of this child# #We sensed her fear#

  *She’s Pod-sensed* Parno stood openmouthed. No words did justice to how he felt. Part of him wanted to laugh out loud. The little girl Dhulyn was trying to save, to restore to her own body—the Tarxin’s daughter—was Pod-sensed.

  #When she became ill, and frightened# #Lost# #We cared for her soul# #Helped her find a place to feel safe#

  *Is she in a forest thicket*

  #No, a sandy beach# #Trees come down to the water# #But only where the stream is# #Ah# #Of course# #Each finds the safe harbor they seek# #For your Partner a forest glade# #For the child herself an empty beach, a stream trickling down through a screen of trees#

  *And you see both places*

  #No# #YES# #Amusement# #Through the link we know what others know, see what others see#

  *And you feel my Partner there, with the child*

  #Amused joy#

  AT LEAST THEY DOn’T HAVE TO GO BACK TO WHERE HER MOTHER IS, DHULYN THINKS. PERHAPS BECAUSE IT IS THE SECOND TIME, AND THE WHITE TWINS ARE HERE TO DIRECT THE VISION MORE PRECISELY, THEY ARE STANDING In THE PATH THAT LEADS TO THE THICKET.

  “WHAT IS THIS PLACE?” THE VOICE OF JAVEN FINDER IS WHISPER-QUIET, BUT DHULYN HAS NO TROUBLE HEARING HER. JAVEN LOOKS AROUND WITH EYES MADE WIDE BY FEAR.

  “THIS IS OUR VISION,” KERIA ANSWERS. “OURS AND OUR SISTER, DHULYN WOLFSHEAD.” JAVEN STARTS, LOOKING SIDEWAYS, AND DHULYN REALIZES THAT THE FINDER HAS NEVER HEARD THE SEERS SPEAK In THEIR OWN UNDAMAGED VOICES.

  “I THINK THIS IS WHY YOU COULDN’T FIND HER BEFORE,” DHULYN SAYS. “SOMEHOW, XENDRA’S SOUL EXISTS In THE SAME PLACE OUR VISIONS EXIST, SOMEWHERE APART FROM THE WORLD WE LIVE In. IF YOU CAN FIND HER, NOW THAT YOU ARE HERE AS WELL . . . ?”

  JAVEN NODS AND GATHERS ALL HER COURAGE TOGETHER, PRESSING HER LIPS TIGHT, AND TAKING A FIRMER GRIP On HER BOWL. SHE LOOKS INTO IT, AND In A MOMENT SHE IS SMILING. “THE COLORS,” SHE SAYS AGAIN, AS SHE DID WHEN SHE FIRST LOOKED INTO THE BOWL. SHE LOOKS UP, SECURES THE BOWL In THE CROOK OF HER RIGHT ARM, AND POINTS WITH HER LEFT HAND.

  AT FIRST, DHULYN SEES NOTHING, AND THEN A FAINT, COLORED LIGHT IS SPILLING OUT OF THE BOWL, AND ALONG THE PATH, A BRILLIANT JEWELLIKE GREEN WITH SPLASHES OF GOLD SWIRLED INTO IT.

  “THAT IS THE TARA XENDRA,” JAVEN SAYS, JOY LIFTING HER VOICE. “SHE IS THIS WAY.”

  AND THEN THEY ARE FOLLOWING THE FINDER AS SHE RUNS FOLLOWING THE COLORS DOWN THE PATH TOWARD THE GROVE OF TREES, PUSHES HER WAY THROUGH THE THICK UNDERBRUSH, AND THERE, On HER KNEES WITH A WOODEN DOLL In HER ARMS, IS THE CHILD THEY ARE LOOKING FOR. SHE IS DRESSED In GOLD AND GREEN, THERE IS A SMUDGE OF DIRT On HER CHEEK, AND SHE IS CLUTCHING THE DOLL FIERCELY, HER TEETH HOLDING HER LOWER LIP. SHE STANDS WHEN THEY COME In, AND BACKS AWAY FROM THEM. SHE LOOKS AT THEM, ONE AFTER ANOTHER, THE WHITES OF HER EYES SHOWING CLEARLY. SHE IS TERRIFIED, AND DHULYN RACKS HER BRAIN TO THINK WHAT TO SAY TO HER.

  “YOU KNOW US, TARA XENDRA,” AMAIA SAYS. “REMEMBER, YOUR BROTHER BROUGHT YOU ONCE TO PLAY WITH US.”

  “YOU KNOW ME, TARA XENDRA. I’M JAVEN FINDER. YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOUR DOG BISCUIT WAS LOST, AND I FOUND HIM FOR YOU?” JAVEN HAS STEPPED FORWARD, HER ARMS HELD OUT TO THE CHILD. In THE NORMAL WORLD, SHE WOULD NEVER DREAM
OF OFFERING TO TOUCH THE TARA XENDRA UNINVITED, BUT HERE, IT SEEMS NATURAL.

  THE CHILD IS STILL ROUND-EYED, BUT SHE NODS.

  “WELL, NOW I’VE FOUND YOU, AND I CAN TAKE YOU BACK TO YOUR . . . TO YOUR BROTHER, THE TAR XERWIN. WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO SEE YOUR BROTHER?”

  THE CHILD NODS AGAIN. SLOWLY HER SHOULDERS LOWER. SHE LOOKS AROUND AT THEM ONCE MORE, THIS TIME ACTUALLY SEEING THEM. HER EYEBROWS LIFT WHEN HER GLANCE MOVES OVER TO DHULYN, AND HER MOUTH FALLS OPEN.

  “PALEDYN,” SHE SAYS, HER VOICE FULL OF WONDER.

  “GOOD THING I’M SO RECOGNIZABLE,” DHULYN SAYS, SMILING CAREFULLY AT THE CHILD. SHE OFFERS THE CHILD HER HAND. “ARE YOU READY TO COME HOME, LITTLE ONE?”

  NODDING, THE TARA XENDRA STEPS FORWARD AND TAKES DHULYN’S HAND. KERIA AND AMAIA ARE NODDING, SMILING. THEY’VE SEEN THIS BEFORE, DHULYN THINKS. ME HOLDING THE CHILD BY THE HAND.

  “JAVEN, ARE YOU READY?”

  BUT THE FINDER IS SHAKING HER HEAD, LOOKING FIRST INTO THE BOWL AND THEN SEARCHING THE FLOOR OF THE LITTLE SHADOWED PLACE. BUT THERE ARE NO COLORS.

  “I—I CAN’T. I CANNOT FIND THE—THE OTHER PART OF THE CHILD FROM HERE. I—” SHE LOOKS UP, ALMOST AS PALE THE WHITE TWINS BEHIND HER. “I’M SORRY—OH, PLEASE—I’M SO SORRY.”

  Twenty-three

  “THEN I HAVE KILLED MY FATHER for nothing.” Xerwin sat at the worktable in the Tarxin’s study, documents and scrolls spread out in front of him. His glance at them was automatic, but Dhulyn was sure he did not see them.

  “Hardly for nothing,” Parno said. “You’re now the Tarxin.”

  Xerwin looked up, little marks of white showing around his pinched nostrils.

  Dhulyn looked at Parno, and when he shrugged, she spoke. “You likely would have had to kill him anyway,” she said, in her most matter-of-fact voice. “He would have started a war with the Nomads and the Crayx, a war which would have cost Mortaxa a great deal, more perhaps than you know.”

  Xerwin looked at her, clearly wanting to ask whether this was something she’d Seen, and just as clearly unsure what courtesy required at this moment. “But Xendra was Found.”

  “She was.” Dhulyn took a deep breath, trying to ignore her feeling of impatience. Since leaving the Sanctuary of the Marked, they’d been aware of the rising noises of the storm—wind, rain, and in the distance, thunder. She raised her voice to be heard over the noise of the wind rattling the balcony doors. The explanation given by the White Twins was the only one likely to make any sense to Xerwin. “This world, and the place of Visions are two different, separate places. Javen Finder cannot Find your sister from this world, and cannot Find your sister’s body, nor the Storm Witch, from the place of Visions. Somehow the two must be brought together.”

  Xerwin squeezed his eyes shut and held both hands up in the air near his ears, as if to shut out any more information. Dhulyn fell silent, glancing quickly to where her Partner stood, arms folded across his chest.

  Parno raised the index finger of his left hand. “May I? They want to try bringing the two worlds together. They succeeded in bringing Javen Finder into the Vision place with them, and they’d like to try the same with your sister’s body.”

  “With the Storm Witch, you mean.”

  “Since she currently occupies the body, yes.”

  “And you need me for this.”

  “I don’t think there is anyone else she will trust.”

  Xerwin was silent for so long that Dhulyn was beginning to wonder whether he had changed his mind yet again. And to consider, what, if anything, she could do about it if he had. One thing was certain, she thought. She would not be very happy if that lonely child in the thicket clutching her doll continued to appear in any of her future Visions.

  And even if she didn’t, how comfortable would Dhulyn be, knowing that the child was out there?

  Apparently Xerwin came to the same conclusion.

  “Where do I bring her?” he said at last.

  “To the White Twins,” she said.

  Carcali leaned her eleven-year-old forehead against the trembling shutter on her bedroom window, her right hand to her mouth as she gnawed on her thumbnail. The wind had risen alarmingly, and the rain was much worse. There would be flooding by daybreak, she knew, at the very least. She switched to the other thumb. She just had to hope it would be no worse.

  She let her hand fall into her lap, twisting her fingers together. She’d left it too long. A stupid apprentice’s mistake—something she would never have done in a million years. She should have been watching more closely, and now it was too late.

  “Except it isn’t.” There, she’d said it. The old Carcali, the confident, know-it-all Carcali, could fix this rain in a snap of her fingers. No problem. But not today, not this Carcali. Not the one who was afraid to release herself fully into the weatherspheres. Not her—oh, no.

  A noise came from the outer room, and she jumped, banging her elbow painfully on the edge of the shutter. Who could be coming at this hour? Someone who wants to speak to me about the weather. And she could guess who. She smoothed back her hair and straightened her shoulders as she got to her feet.

  As Carcali expected, Finexa, a robe thrown hastily over her sleeping gown, opened the bedroom door and stepped into the room. But it was a different Finexa from the one Carcali was expecting. There was not the carefully disguised triumph that a summons to the Tarxin usually brought, no smugness, no prim little smile. Instead Finexa was pale, licking her lips. Her attempt at an affectionate look when she caught Carcali’s eye would have been funny, if it hadn’t been so obviously born of fear.

  “What is it?” Carcali said. “What’s happened?”

  “You are summoned to the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, Tara Xendra.” The woman clung to the edge of the door. “The messenger says immediately, please. Do not stop for ceremony. It will be explained.”

  Carcali’s first impulse was to refuse to go anywhere until she had the promised explanation. Finexa clearly knew something that had shaken her—though something that shook Finexa wasn’t necessarily something Carcali needed to worry about. She let the woman wrap a robe around her and pin a veil on her hair—apparently that much ceremony was still required—and prepared to follow the three guards who’d been sent for her. She’d stepped into the hallway before she realized she was alone.

  “Aren’t you coming?” she asked her attendant, but Finexa was already shaking her head.

  “The Tarxin, Light of the Sun, asked for you alone, Tara Xendra,” she said.

  Carcali felt a stab of fear. Was she being arrested? Surely that wasn’t possible? She was the Tara Xendra, for the Art’s sake. But it was possible, the more rational part of her mind said, even as her fear tried to choke her. Carcali had overheard her attendants talking, when they thought her so absorbed in her maps that she wasn’t paying attention. They’d been talking about the first Tarxina, Xerwin’s mother, and it was Xerwin’s name that had caught Carcali’s ear. A sudden illness, everyone had been told, and the whole country had gone into mourning. But that’s not what had really happened, the ladies were saying. The Tarxina had displeased the Tarxin, displeased him severely, and not just by not having any more children—at least, not any more children by him, one of the older ladies had whispered while the others looked on, wide-eyed, frightened to be hearing such a thing, and yet avid for more, like children telling each stories of demons. The Tarxin had sent for his wife, in the middle of the night, and she’d never been seen again. And even her attendants—some of them—hadn’t been seen again either.

  At the time, Carcali had dismissed the story as the kind of court gossip that ladies with nothing better to do titillated themselves with. Such things didn’t really happen. Now, she was not so sure. The man had shown her that he could starve her to death if he chose to. Would it be so much harder for her to have an accident in the middle of the night?

  She stopped in her tracks. Especially since she’d had one accident already. Is that what had happened? But what was it an eleven year
old had done to anger the Tarxin?

  “Tara?” the senior guard said. “We should not waste time.”

  “No, of course not.” She resumed walking. She’d done what the Tarxin had asked for—well, not exactly, but he couldn’t prove she hadn’t. Was he going to upbraid her for the storm that could be heard even through the thick stone that surrounded the passage? Well, if he had any complaints, she knew what to say. “You rushed me,” she would tell him. “I warned you there could be dire consequences and you only gave me two days.”

  Much sooner than she liked, Carcali found herself in front of the double doors that marked the Tarxin’s section of the palace. From the chamber beyond these, doors on the right led to the public-use rooms, and on the left to the family’s private rooms. Not that any of the ruler’s rooms were really private. She took a deep breath and nodded to the leading guard. He opened the right-hand leaf of the doors and stood back to allow her to enter.

  Carcali took three steps into the room and froze. There were more guards here, and most of them were wearing that same look of thinly covered pity that she’d seen on the faces of her escorts. One or two, she thought, eyed her speculatively.

  “This way, if you please, Tara Xendra.” A Steward stood at the set of doors in the left-hand wall. A private audience, then. But her thoughts were spinning so wildly Carcali couldn’t work out whether that made disaster more or less likely. The Steward’s face told her nothing, but then the man was trained not to react to anything.