“Not exactly,” said Menadin. “But things are improving. You’ve struck a blow against Kai Tau today, and Asiana has taken a small step back from the brink of chaos. Wyr-mandil will hold on a little longer. But don’t get complacent. You have won a battle, not the war. For that, you will have to kill Kai Tau himself and rid Asiana of the dark weapons. Then, and only then, will Wyr-mandil truly be safe.”
“Stay with me, and I can take on any outlaw and his army,” said Kyra. How had she ever thought him ugly or unclean? True, he had the look and smell of a wolf, but he was handsome in his own shaggy-haired way. And he had saved her life—a debt she could never repay.
Menadin was quiet for a moment. At last he said, “Kyra Veer, my running days are over.”
Her heart gave a little swoop of fear. “What do you mean? You look the picture of health.”
“I can control how I appear to you in Wyr-mandil.” He raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Would you rather be talking with a dying, gasping, burned-out husk of poor old Menadin? Perhaps that would feel more authentic to you?”
Kyra swallowed. It was what she had feared, but it was easy to forget; what the eyes saw in Anant-kal was not the way things truly were, not in the real world. “I’m sorry,” she said in a small voice.
“I’m not,” said Menadin. “It was a fine thing to fight by your side. I die with honor. My flesh will feed the forest, and my soul will walk Wyr-mandil till the sun sets over the horizon and the Ones come down from the sky.”
“That means I can see you here again?” asked Kyra, hope flowering inside her.
Menadin sighed. “No. That was me being poetic. Look, give the kalishium to Sudali. She’ll come to the caves of Kali when you’re ready for her. She’ll take care of things when I’m gone, keep the Vulon pack in line.”
Pain lanced her. “Sudali, your mate?”
“My mate,” he said, and added proudly, “We have four cubs.”
Kyra hugged herself against the coldness within her. “You’re dying because of me. Your children will not have a father because of me.”
He stepped forward and grasped her shoulders. His amber yellow eyes bore into hers. “So make it worthwhile,” he growled. “Make Asiana and Wyr-mandil safe for my children, and their children after them.”
“I will,” she promised. “With all the strength of me and mine.” Her eyes stung.
“He’s a good man,” said Menadin, almost grudgingly. “He’ll help you. You could have done worse.”
“Who? What?” asked Kyra, bewildered.
He blew out an exasperated breath. “Your mate. The Marksman.”
Rustan. Kyra’s face grew warm. “He’s not my mate,” she said. “He’s just . . .”
“Yes?” prompted Menadin.
“A friend,” she said.
Menadin closed one eye and gave a wicked grin. “Only mates carry the scent of each other. I know what I know.”
Kyra pressed her lips in a thin line. How dare he? She could not trust herself to speak.
“I approve,” he added mildly. “He is a good match for you. We two would never have worked out, you know. Both too fiery, too much alike.”
What?
But Menadin was laughing, his shoulders shaking with mirth. “Your face,” he hooted. “I wish you could see your face.”
“This conversation is over,” said Kyra through gritted teeth.
He stopped laughing and nodded his head. “Yes. It is time. Goodbye and good luck, young one.”
It struck her then, what he had been trying to do, and she was furious both with him and with herself, but overriding that fury was the sense of impending loss. She reached out and hugged him. “Don’t go,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. It was like holding the world’s largest, furriest dog. “Don’t leave me.”
He ruffled her hair. “Death is but another door I walk through. Isn’t that what Shirin Mam told you?”
She did not reply, but held him tighter, as if that could put off the inevitable. It was quiet and peaceful in the garden. They stood there awhile, and it could have been anywhere, anywhen.
At last Menadin stirred. “I have one more gift for you before I go,” he said. “A gift of truth. I have been debating with myself whether to give it to you.”
She released him, puzzled. He looked infinitely sad. “What do you mean?” she asked. “What truth?”
Menadin held both her hands in his—it was like being grasped by two gigantic hairy paws, but whereas before, the sensation would have made Kyra cringe in fear and revulsion, it now comforted her. As if no one could hurt her while she was being held like that.
“A truth you have known for a long time,” said Menadin, “but have denied to yourself.”
“If you’re talking about Rustan . . .” she began.
“I am talking about Shirin Mam,” said Menadin, and again that expression appeared on his face, as if he pitied her. “Do you still believe Tamsyn killed her?”
Kyra’s stomach clenched. She tried to pull away from him, but his hands held her in a steel trap.
“Answer me,” he said, implacable.
“Yes, I believe Tamsyn killed her,” said Kyra, striving to stay calm. “Shirin Mam told me so herself when I met her in Anantkal. Why are we talking about this now?”
“Because I’m dying,” he said. “And if I don’t remind you of the importance of critical thinking, who will? Remove the barriers you have erected in your mind, and you will know whose hand held the blade that killed your teacher. Remember Shirin Mam’s exact words to you and tell me if I am wrong.”
Kyra succeeded in freeing herself from Menadin—or perhaps he let her go—and strode away, deeper into the garden. She tried to still the hammering inside her chest.
The garden was larger than she remembered from earlier, and wilder. The grass had grown to her knees and the trees clustered thickly where before they had stood in decorous rows.
“Kyra,” called Menadin from behind her. “What did Shirin Mam say?”
Tell me, who killed you? Kyra had asked. The Mahimata of Kali, Shirin Mam had replied.
The realization hit her with such force, she stopped breathing. She slid down the trunk of a tree and leaned back against its roots. If only the earth would swallow her up right then. If only she could stop feeling. If only she could un-know what she knew.
Of course. Shirin Mam would not lie.
The Mahimata of Kali had killed herself.
She dug her nails into her palms. “Why?” she whispered.
Menadin crouched before her and cocked his head, regarding her with compassion. “Would you have challenged Tamsyn Turani to a duel if you did not think she had murdered your teacher?”
“Then I have been nothing but a pawn,” said Kyra slowly.
“Untrue. In every heart there is a blade, and the name of the blade is love. The more we love, the sharper the blade. Shirin Mam loved you. She had a foretelling, a vision of the multiple branches the tree of life could grow. On every single one of them Tamsyn subverted you, and the death-sticks multiplied—except on this one.”
Kyra closed her eyes in pain. She remembered how upset she had been after Shirin Mam refused to let her go back to the Tau camp for a second mark. How Tamsyn had intercepted her afterward and spun her a vision of a future where she was in charge. If it were up to me, Tamsyn had whispered, I would command you to kill the Taus. I would not rest until I had seen you avenge your family. I would walk with you into their camp, blade to blade, and butcher them in their sleep.
How difficult it had been to free herself from that vision, and how terrible she had felt afterward, as if she were betraying her Mahimata. Shirin Mam had known, had seen the weakness in her that Tamsyn would exploit, and had sacrificed herself rather than risk Kyra following Tamsyn’s corpse-littered path.
“Tamsyn swore a blood oath to Shirin when she was initiated as the Mahimata of Kali,” said Menadin. “Such an oath cannot be broken, not without consequences. But you swore no su
ch oath to the Mahimata.”
It took a moment for what he was implying to sink in. “I would never have betrayed my teacher,” said Kyra, clenching her hands.
Menadin smiled without humor. “Which one, though?”
Bitterness rose within her. “Shirin Mam didn’t think much of me, did she?”
“On the contrary, she died for you, and for Asiana,” said Menadin. “She took the one branch where you might have some hope of bringing peace to our world.”
“What about you?” said Kyra. “Was there a branch on which you might have lived?” Her vision blurred. Tears in Anant-kal—real or not?
Menadin pretended not to notice. “You indulge yourself,” he said, standing. “Go back to those who need you. The mate who will fight by your side. The members of your Order and the clans of your valley. The wyr-wolves to whom you owe your protection and your kalishium. Go, and do not return to Wyr-mandil until Kai Tau is dead. I, Menadin Vulon, challenge you.” He spat into his hand and extended it to her. “Do you accept?”
Kyra wanted to stay, to question him awhile longer, the last person who could claim an understanding of Shirin Mam greater than her own. Above all, she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again, this half wolf, half man whom she had once feared and despised, and who had become her friend and ally.
But it was time to go, and he had thrown her a challenge. She would not disappoint him. She wiped her face with her sleeve, stood, and laid her hand on his. “I accept.”
Menadin smiled a smile that twisted her heart. “Stay strong, Kyra Veer,” he said, and raised his other hand in farewell.
The world warped into a ribbon of colors. Kyra’s head swam, but she stood her ground, anchored by Menadin. Then the warmth of his hand slipped away from hers, and she fell back into the battlefield with a sickening lurch of awareness. The darkness of night, the glow of fires, the wyr-wolves beside her, the Valavians walking up to them, blades drawn, faces grim.
And Menadin, his head cradled in her arms, his eyes looking beyond her to a place she could not see.
Chapter 32
After the Blood
In the end, Menadin did not go through the door of death alone. Four of his pack mates went with him, as well as three Valavian Markswomen. Many of the others were injured, but all would survive. How much worse it would have gone for them if not for the valor of the wyr-wolves.
Kyra’s thoughts chased themselves in circles: grief over their deaths, grief over what Menadin had revealed—what he had forced her to acknowledge.
Everything Kyra had done, from the moment of her teacher’s death, had been based on the belief that Tamsyn had killed Shirin Mam. A belief that had no foundation in reality. A belief that had been fed by her own prejudice and dislike of the Mistress of Mental Arts.
Yes, Tamsyn was cruel. She had starved and beaten Nineth. But she had not killed her.
And she had not killed Shirin Mam.
This was what Tamsyn’s blade had been trying to tell her. This was why she had been unable to let go of it for so long.
What else was untrue? Had she been right to trust Shirin Mam?
There was no way now to be sure of anything. Kyra looked at herself and saw a headstrong girl who had jumped from one conclusion to another without pausing to think. It was a painful realization, and if not for the fact that they were on a bloody, grimy battlefield, she would have broken down. Only the presence of the Valavians and the exhausted, grieving wyr-wolves stopped her.
The wyr-wolves had fought with ferocity and courage. If there had been any doubt in the Valavians’ minds about the dual nature of the beasts, it was banished forever.
Faran Lashail issued the edict in the battlefield after rejoining them with her contingent. Rustan was nowhere to be seen; Kyra learned that he had suffered a minor wound and been sent back to the temple for first aid. Worry for him mixed with her grief at Menadin’s death and a dark jumble of emotions for Shirin Mam and Tamsyn. Kyra could not tell where one feeling began and the other ended, but her heart ached. She longed to see Rustan. But she couldn’t pester Faran for details, not now.
The head of the Order of Valavan stood over Menadin’s still body and thanked the wyr-wolves for their sacrifice. “We could not have achieved victory today with such few casualties without your help,” she told them, her voice full of suppressed emotion. “You have my gratitude and my vow. As long as I live, wyr-wolves will be regarded as our equals.”
Her words could not lighten the pain of Menadin’s death, but they did him honor. Kyra, bowing her head and standing beside Sudali, imagined Menadin flicking his ears in amusement at the irony of it. It took the death of a wyr-wolf to earn respect for him and his kind. Pity I’m not around to enjoy it, he seemed to be saying. What a eulogy!
Sudali was rigid with sorrow. Kyra could not bring herself to touch the wyr-wolf; it would have been presumptuous on her part. But Sudali turned and breathed on her hand—the one she had injured in her attempt to free Kyra from the death-stick. The pain in Kyra’s hand flared anew, then receded. Kyra lifted her arm and examined it in rising astonishment. The blood had dried, and the wound had sealed.
Wyr-wolf saliva was rumored to contain enough venom to paralyze a horse. But perhaps the truth was much stranger than that. Before she could ask Sudali for clarification, the wyr-wolf trotted away to her remaining pack mates.
Half the Markswomen stayed in the battlefield, to ensure that no outlaw remained within their territory. Those who were still alive would be subjected to the Inner Speech, their weapons and memories taken so they no longer posed a threat to the Deccan.
Two elders were dispatched to fetch the strongest and bravest villagers to help dispose of the dead bodies safely. The corpses would be burned, the ashes mixed with the earth.
“Perhaps,” said Faran, “a time will come when the souls we have freed return to Asiana as peaceful, law-abiding, productive citizens. Meanwhile, their remains will nourish the soil.”
The three Valavians who had perished would be given a sky burial at dawn. The dead wyr-wolves, including Menadin, would be left in the forest, as was their custom. Kyra would escort the rest back to Ferghana, as soon as the healers were done tending to their wounds. She said a final farewell to Menadin, and stepped away from him, her eyes stinging.
“What about the death-sticks?” she asked the head of Valavan. “What do you plan to do with them?”
“Put them with the others in the underground vault that only I have access to,” said Faran. “Why, do you have a better idea?”
“One day,” said Kyra slowly, “I will find a way to remove the dark weapons from the face of Asiana. On that day, you will deliver them to me. All of them.”
Faran studied her and nodded, her face expressionless. She did not betray any curiosity about how Kyra would do such a thing, although Kyra could sense her trying to work it out. At least Kyra had earned her trust during this battle, and Faran would not dismiss her claims outright. But she knew she would have to provide the head of Valavan with a more complete explanation before she would agree to deliver the death-sticks to the Order of Kali.
* * *
They returned to the temple, carrying the wounded on makeshift stretchers of bamboo poles and canvas torn from the outlaws’ tents.
In the Hall of Reflection, Kyra slowed, watching herself shape-shift in the mirrors. If she screwed her eyes up and looked sideways, she could glimpse Menadin in the mélange of images. He was part of her now, she thought. She did not care if it was wishful thinking.
A vast room off the hall had been converted into a temporary sick bay. Kyra carefully laid down her end of the stretcher and backed away. Healers shouted orders and apprentices ran up with balms, bandages, and hot water. The smell of blood and antiseptic hit her nostrils, and a wave of blackness passed before her eyes.
A hand gripped her arm, steadying her.
“Rest,” said Derla, looking as exhausted as she felt. “Tomorrow is another day.”
/> Kyra tried to smile. “I don’t think I can manage all those stairs tonight.”
“Sleep anywhere,” said Derla, waving a hand. “Or go to the kitchens and ask for food. You look terrible.”
“Do you know where Rustan is?” asked Kyra. “Faran said he had been wounded.”
“A mere graze,” said Derla. “Although apparently he blacked out. I tried to get him to lie down, but he gave me the slip when my back was turned. Perhaps you will find him upstairs with Faran. I know she wanted to talk with him.”
She hurried away before Kyra could respond, which was just as well. Kyra grabbed a blanket from a pile by the door and headed back to the Hall of Reflection, meaning to give it to Rustan when she found him. Why did Faran want to talk with him right now? He needed to rest. For that matter, where had Faran disappeared to?
The Hall of Reflection had a grand staircase that spiraled up to a narrow, wraparound passage on the second floor—a whispering gallery, one of the Valavians had told her, that amplified the slightest sound so it could be heard at the other end of the hall. Kyra headed for the passage, certain that Rustan had taken it just moments ago. She could sense his presence—or perhaps it was the trail of Shirin Mam’s blade she followed.
Your mate, Menadin had said. But Menadin had been teasing. It was impossible to think of Rustan as such. And yet, it was impossible to imagine a world without him by her side.
Kyra heard low voices, faint in the distance. Rustan and Faran? The acoustics of the whispering gallery were tricky. She circled the passage before taking a narrow opening into another corridor, cursing the mazelike interior of the temple. She climbed up a steep flight of stairs lit by torchlight, and the voices became clearer, louder.
Somebody laughed—a low, rich sound—and Kyra halted, dark seeds of suspicion clouding her thoughts. Carefully, she edged up the last stair and peered down a long, dim corridor. She was just in time to see Faran open a door and usher Rustan inside a room. She was too far away to be sure, but Kyra thought he was smiling.
She sat down, trying to slow her breathing. So he was wounded, was he? He had refused to stay in the sick bay. He had sought out the head of the Order of Valavan as soon as she returned, instead of trying to find Kyra. And now he was closeted in a room with Faran—to do what?
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