Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (35 page)

“Here,” he said. He centered both thumbs on the horse head and pushed. With a soft click, the central panel in the headboard popped out, releasing a smell of stone and a cold draft of air.

The sound of the ax blade was lighter now, as if it was almost through the door.

“Grab the packs,” Falcos said as he leaped onto the bed beside Gun. “Follow me.”

It had been a few days since they’d had a good practice, so when the Seven Brothers
Shora
was complete, Parno was not surprised to find himself a little short of breath—Dhulyn perhaps more so, as she lacked his training for the pipes. Still, he’d have wagered that no one else could have known they were in the least winded. The smells from cooking fires wafted over them, and Parno’s stomach rumbled.

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Really? You mean that wasn’t your stomach growling?”

Parno smiled, then swung, but as he expected, Dhulyn danced away in time, laughing. The laughter faded out of her face, however, and Parno glanced over his shoulder to see what had caused the change. Of course. The young man called Scar-Face, with three of his fellow Espadryni, had apparently been watching the
Shora
, and now approached.

“For a moment we thought we must come to your rescue, Parno Lionsmane. It looked as if your Partner might kill you.”

Parno forced himself to smile, keeping his temper with some effort. If he was getting tired of this constant suspicion, he could only imagine how Dhulyn was feeling. Then a sense of fairness made him consider that this might be nothing more than the heavy banter that so often signaled friendship among males in certain societies.

“That was a
Shora
,” he said. “It’s the way we practice. Over and over, patterns within patterns, until there is not a blow or a strike that we have not learned to counter instinctively, without wasting time in thought.” He glanced at each of the Horsemen in turn. “That’s why we’re so hard to kill—barring accident or illness—and why we’re so highly valued by those going to war.”

Scar-Face frowned as though he wanted to find something in Parno’s words to argue about, but it was one of the others behind him who spoke up next.

“Some people are saying you are no Seer, Dhulyn Wolfshead,” the younger Horseman said. “That in your world our women were not Marked.”

Dhulyn left off pretending to straighten her swords and daggers and moved to stand a little closer to Parno.

“I
am
a Seer,” she said. “The Marked in our land are
all
what you call whole and safe, and that is the reason
I
am whole and safe. Not, as you might think, because I am not Marked.”

“You’ve met many Marked then?” This was Scar-Face, his curiosity finally outweighing whatever wariness he might feel.

Parno signaled Dhulyn with a flick of his fingers, and they began to walk, bringing the young Horsemen with them, toward their own tent.

“The Marked aren’t particularly numerous in our land,” Dhulyn said. “But we’ve met many in our travels. Finders and Menders are comparatively common, and we have met a handful of Healers as well. Though the only other Seers we have ever met are across the Long Ocean, in the land of the Mortaxa.”

“And all of the Marked we’ve met are exactly like other people, barring their talent,” Parno added. “They have families and children and are happy or sad or whatever the occasion calls for. Some are greedy and some are generous, some suspicious and others fair-minded.” He looked at Dhulyn pointedly, and when he was sure all the young men were looking at him, he added, in an exaggerated whisper, as if speaking to them privately, “Some have good tempers and some bad.”

Dhulyn stuck her tongue out at him, and the younger of the Horsemen laughed. Even Scar-Face smiled.

“It is time for the midday meal. Will you join us at the young men’s fire?” he asked. “We would hear more of the land beyond Mother Sun’s Door.”

“We would be pleased.” Dhulyn slowed and Parno followed her lead. This was a good sign and an improvement over their experience in the Long Trees camp, where the men had not wanted to share their fire with Dhulyn. The Horsemen were becoming used to them, and the demonstration yesterday seemed to have won them some friends, and Dhulyn more admirers, but as she would say herself, better cautious than cursing. When he saw that heads were turning away from his Partner, Parno took a step away and turned to look for himself. He relaxed slightly when he saw it was the approach of the Horse Shaman, Spring-Flood, that had drawn attention.

“Dhulyn Wolfshead, if you will. The Seers of the Salt Desert Tribe would have speech with you.”

“May it wait, Horse Shaman? We have asked the Mercenary Brothers to share our meal,” Scar-face said. “Or do the Seers wish to offer hospitality?”

There was something flat in the way Scar-face said those words, and some of the others turned their heads away to hide smiles, but Parno was sure the Horse Shaman was not fooled.

“After the meal will be soon enough,” he conceded, nodding to the Mercenaries before he went his way.

 

It was later in the afternoon that they approached the Seers’ area. The handful who were currently sharing tents with one of the men—usually those with children—were in their own quarters, but the bulk of the women stayed more or less in the portion of the camp assigned to them.

“Look,” Parno said, angling his eyes toward a woman leading a child by the hand. “If we stay, could you have a child here?” Dhulyn glanced at his face. Apparently it was one thing to know that there were sufficient Seers here among the Espadryni to allow them to bear children; it was another to see it with his own eyes. “Would it be safe?” he said. “What happens if the other women don’t take the Visions for you?”

“A good question,” Dhulyn said. She watched as the one leading the child disappeared into a tent. “I expect the life force would then be taken from the child, and I would miscarry.”

“But
you
would not be in any danger?”

“No more than I usually am.” They were drawing closer to the Seers’ area, and a few of the women were gathering. “They look like other women, don’t they?” Dhulyn said. “Except for their coloring, we could be in any camp of nomads.”

“I have been twice in the south, and I have spoken with other women, whole women. These may look like other women, but they are not.” Star-Wind had come up beside them. “I see you are watching the children, Dhulyn Wolfshead. Is it in your mind to join us for a time in order to bear a child? You tell us that Seers are rare on your side of the Door, and there are no Espadryni left. When you have found your killer, you are welcome to stay with us.”

Dhulyn stood very still, the blood suddenly pounding in her ears. “What if she is Marked,” she said.

“You think the child may be Marked in the way of our world, soulless and broken, and not in the way of your own world?”

“We can’t know,” Dhulyn said. “What controls the flaw? The parentage, or the place of birth?”

“Caids no,” Parno said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“The Caids? Sun burn them, Moon freeze them cold, the stupid beggars.” Parno and Dhulyn spun around to find that one of the Espadryni women had come up behind them—closer than she should have been able to come. She was substantially older than the other women they had glimpsed, her blood-red hair marbled with veins of white, but her skin was remarkably smooth and youthful, as if she rarely moved her face.

“What have you got against the Caids?” Dhulyn asked.

“It was they who made us wrong, wasn’t it? And then died and left us to our fate, curse them. Made us well enough to defeat the Green Shadow and then tossed us aside like chipped hammers. And now we are as we are, and treated as we are, and why? Through no fault of our own, but because they made us wrong. And then they die off anyway, lucky cowards that they were, leaving us to bear the consequences of their haste and carelessness.”

Her words were bitter, but her tone was matter-of-fact, as if she merely stated what all knew to be true.

“That’s enough, Snow-Moon.”

The older woman shrugged her left shoulder. “There’s wind and rain coming, young Singer, and plenty of it. But the trader comes first.” She turned to Dhulyn. “So our business will wait, whole woman, as it always must, until the outsider is gone. And we can thank the Caids for that as well.” She turned away.

“There’s something in what she says,” Dhulyn said. “If the Marked here were created, as our Marked were, to deal with the Green Shadow, it’s obvious that the Caids are somehow to blame.”

Parno watched the old Seer hobble away, a chill running up his spine. Sometime in her life the old woman had broken the Pact seriously enough to be punished for it. Is this what might await a daughter of theirs?

“What would you have us do, Dhulyn Wolfshead? Kill all the Seers, as the others do their Marked? Break the Tribes? Die out ourselves? Who then would guard the Path of the Sun?”

“One of the Long Trees People told us there is a belief that someone would come with a cure. Do you wait for that?”

“We have heard this as well, it is a Vision the Seers have had in every generation. Does it encourage us to keep the Seers alive?” Star-wind shrugged. “Perhaps. We cannot disprove the belief, and many are hopeful.”

Sounds coming from the southern edge of the encampment drew their attention, and several people began to move in that direction. Even some of the women, though they did not head that way, stopped what they were doing and looked up.

“And there’s the trader,” Star-Wind said. “They could have given us a bit more notice.”

So some outsiders did visit the Tribes, Parno thought. Though from what the old woman had said, it was clear they did not know about the Seers.

“I must go to the Singer with this weather news, but you may wish to speak to the trader of what he has seen,” Star-Wind said. The man’s face was a little unhappy, and Parno suspected the conversation about children had done them no good in his eyes.

“The trader seems a popular man,” Dhulyn remarked under her breath as they joined the crowd of men and young children who had dropped what they were doing and were making for the lanky fair-haired man leading the short train of burdened horses. They were small beasts, Dhulyn noted, much the same size as those ridden by the Espadryni.

“Or else it’s his goods that are popular,” Parno said. Dhulyn gave him the tiniest push with her closed right fist.

“I believe
I
am the cynical one,” she said. But she was not exactly smiling, Parno noted.

The trader was not as tall as the average Espadryni male—closer to Dhulyn’s height, Parno thought—but his thinness gave him the appearance of height. His hands were large, the knuckles pronounced, but not with disease. It was rather as though he was still growing, and his body hadn’t quite caught up with his hands and feet. His straw-colored hair was coarse and thick, cropped short as if for a helm, though the trader bore no arms other than the knife at his belt.

He was wearing a gold ring in each ear. Parno caught Dhulyn’s eye and she gave a small nod.
Yes
. This
was
the man of her Visions, the one who had offered his aid. Perhaps some solid luck was finally coming their way.

Dhulyn and Parno hung back, keeping to the fringes of the small crowd surrounding the trader, watching as he greeted children by name, asked after the absent, and dodged queries about ordered merchandise.

“Now, Horsemen, patience please,” he said, patting at the air with his palms held outward. “Everything in its time, and I’ve yet to pay my respects to your Shamans.” The crowd began to disperse, leaving him a wide space that would lead him to the central tents. His packhorses he left in the charge of some of the older boys—old enough to be trusted to see to his horses without examining their packs too closely. Parno and Dhulyn held their ground as the trader passed close to them, and stopped.

“Mercenary Brothers?” he said, eyeing their badges. “Will there be more of you then? I must increase my stock of weapons and harness if so,” he added with a grin. Parno found himself inclined to grin back. The man’s good humor was infectious.

“You met with our Brothers, then?” Dhulyn asked.

The trader started to answer her, gave her a closer look and hesitated.

“No fear, Bekluth,” Star-Wind said, coming up to join them. “You dishonor no one by speaking to Dhulyn Wolfshead. The Espadryni do not sequester their women on the far side of Mother Sun’s Door.”

“Is that right?” It seemed for a moment the sunniness of the trader’s face was clouded over. But then Bekluth smiled again, and the moment passed. “Well, then I’m very glad to meet you. I did
not
meet with your Brothers, as it happened, but I have heard of them from the Cold Lake People, who met them as they emerged from the Door.”

“Trader Bekluth Allain, of the City of Norwash.” There was a tone in Star-Wind’s voice Parno could not quite place. It was as if he were giving a warning, but at whom was it aimed? “These are Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane,” the Horseman added. “Once you have spoken with Singer of the Grass-Moon, they have questions for you.”