Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (14 page)

 

“Anything?” she said.

“If there were, would I fail to mention it?”

Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile, letting the small scar pull her upper lip back in a snarl. She shook herself, earning an annoyed toss of the head from Bloodbone. She felt the tightness in her neck and shoulders—unexpected, given that she felt she knew what they were going to see. Something was making the small hairs on her arms and the back of her neck stand up, and it wasn’t the knowledge that there was death in front of them.

Parno exclaimed under his breath, and Dhulyn looked over to him. He was not examining the tracks—tracks that still led clearly and cleanly ahead along the trail—but was gazing off toward the south, away from the trail and the strange mound. There the vegetation thinned even further, and the rocks that appeared out of the growth were too regular to be natural.

“The Caid ruins,” Dhulyn said.

“So that,” he said, pointing to the focus of the carrion birds’ attention, “should be just about where Gun said they came across the old Tarkin’s body.”

“Mutilated.”

“As you say.”

Dhulyn took a deep breath and urged Bloodbone forward, doing her best to relax into the horse’s easy movement. Whatever it was that both she and Parno evidently felt, it did not transfer to the horses, for which she found herself grateful.

They were still several tens of paces away when the smell hit them. Not of decomposition, not greatly, not yet, out here in the open. The sun had still to reach the middle sky. It was not
that
smell that brought the carrion birds. To Dhulyn it was unmistakable, almost as familiar as the smell of her own skin, of the horse under her. The smell of the battlefield, fear sweat, excrement, and above all, blood.

The smell could not prepare them for what they saw.

“Demons and perverts.” Parno’s voice came out in a tight whisper.

Dhulyn clenched her teeth and pulled back her lips as much as she could. “Smile,” she said through her teeth. “You’ll be less likely to vomit.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Parno shake his head, then put his hand suddenly to his mouth. When he lowered it, his lips were pulled back in a wretched parody of a smile.

What was spread on the ground before them resembled a human being—that much could be said for it. It had to be Cleona, but how to be sure? The body was staked on the ground, spread-eagled on its back, though even that was not obvious at first glance. All of the skin on the exposed part of the body had been flayed, spread, and held open with sticks sharpened and skewered into the ground underneath. The way the skin was spread made it seem as though it were being held open by the staked hands, the way a woman might hold open her robe for her lover.

And it was a woman, Dhulyn could see from the internal organs set to one side. Cleona then.

“Caids keep us,” Parno said. “Do you see the blood?”

“It’s hard not to,” she said.

“She must have been alive a long time to have bled so much.”

Dhulyn nodded. “Hours. There’s great skill involved here, that’s certain.” Other organs besides the purely female ones had been removed from their usual places, some completely, and cleanly, evidently after death, and some still partially attached, to keep the victim alive as along as possible. The eyes—

Dhulyn turned away and coughed, trying to force her diaphragm to loosen, to let her take deep breaths. If she was not looking at the body, she could even pretend the very air did not stink of blood. When she knew her stomach was under control, breathing carefully through her mouth to cut the worst of the smell, Dhulyn crouched down once more to what was left of the princess.

Almost at once, she saw something odd. Like the rest of the body, the skin of the arms had been flayed open but not detached. The effect was not unlike the slit sleeves of an overgown. But unlike the rest of the body, the skin of the hands, and the hands themselves for that matter, were clean and intact. She waved Parno closer.

“What do you make of this?” she said when she could take a breath without shuddering.

He crouched down beside her. Dhulyn turned and rested her forehead against his shoulder, breathing in his clean smell of sweat, the scent of almonds from the oil he’d used to shave that morning, the smell of ganje, and the wonderful, clean, living, human smell that was Parno.

“It’s definitely Cleona,” he said. “I recognize the shape of her fingers.” He pointed without touching. “And that’s her ring.”

“Good,” Dhulyn said. “If we can recognize so much, then Alaria will be able to as well. We will not have to show her anything else.”

“Wait.” Parno frowned. “Did Cleona have this scar? Here.”

Dhulyn leaned in to peer more closely, finally using the point of the dagger Falcos had given her to turn the hand. The scar Parno had pointed out extended from the ball of the thumb, around the wrist and disappeared into the skin that had been flayed from the lower arm. Dhulyn shifted to the other side of the body. There was a similar scar on the other hand.

“Cleona had no such marks on her hands and arms,” she said.

“Are you saying this is not Cleona, after all?”

Dhulyn shook her head slowly, eyes still focused on the hand. “As you said, these are the very shapes of her fingers and nail beds. This scar on her palm, that she had before. And this is her jewelry. Look.” Dhulyn pointed out a ring that matched the gold and silver armlet she now wore above her left elbow. “This is Cleona,” she said. “But these,” she indicated the scars with the point of the dagger. “These are old, as if she was cut months ago and the wounds healed.”

“But we know that can’t be true,” Parno said. He rubbed at his upper lip, making Dhulyn think of Gundaron. “The alternative is, well, a Healer.”

“Can you imagine a Healer doing this?” Dhulyn stood gesturing at the remains. “Can there be a mad Healer?”

“I sincerely pray not, my heart.” Parno straightened to his feet and rested his hand on Dhulyn’s shoulder. “I’ll get our cloaks and saddle rolls to take up the body in.”

But Dhulyn raised her hand to stop him and stayed where she was, as she considered the remains once more.

“You must get Gundaron,” she said. “The Scholar must see this before we move anything.”

“I can’t bring the lad here,” Parno protested.

“He must tell us whether the Tarkin’s body was also like this,” she said. She shook herself. “And there is something familiar—”

“Don’t tell me you’ve ever seen anything like this,” Parno said.

“Not seen, no,” Dhulyn agreed. “But still there’s something ...” she shot another glance at the thing on the ground. “It looks carefully planned, like a ritual of some kind. The way the skin is only partly flayed, the hands and—” she shot a quick look. “And the feet intact and what is more, clean even of blood. Gundaron has read far more widely than I; perhaps he has read of something like this.”

“I almost hope he has not,” Parno said as he lifted himself stiffly onto Warhammer’s back. “The idea that such a thing has happened before, often enough to be written down ...” he shook his head.

“It has happened here several times already, if Gundaron is not mistaken. Bring him, but make the others stay back at the campsite. Alaria must not see this until it can be restored to something more closely resembling—” the words stuck in Dhulyn’s throat.

“A human being?”

She nodded.

“I don’t understand,” Gun said. He rubbed at his mouth with the long fingers of his left hand, looked at the fingers, and dropped his hand back on the dining table in the Tarkin’s private sitting room. “Why didn’t I Find her body? Why could I only see the Path of the Sun?” The Scholar had regained some color, but Parno was betting the boy was happy he’d had little for breakfast.

“There must be an explanation,” Dhulyn said. She looked down on Gundaron from where she stood, leaning her right hip against the edge of the dining table. “Perhaps, after all, having her cousin with you was not enough to Find her.” Dhulyn caught Parno’s eye and tapped her sword hilt with the fingers of her left hand.

“What if it wasn’t Cleona?” Parno did not realize he had spoken aloud until Alaria looked up from the other side of the table. The look of startled hope that flashed into her face faded in an instant.

“Those were her hands you showed me,” she said, her voice heavy with unshed tears. Mar, sitting beside the Arderon princess, caught Parno’s attention and shook her head with the tiniest of movements. She put her hand lightly on the princess’ shoulder.

Once Gundaron had seen the body, Dhulyn and Parno had pulled out the stakes and skewers, folded the stiffened skin as best they could and rolled the remains into their cloaks and saddle blankets, leaving out only the intact hands, with their distinctive jewelry, for Alaria to see.

“That was her silver thumb ring in the shape of a saddle, that our Tarkina gave her,” Alaria continued. “And the gold and silver bands on her middle fingers. And the scar, on her palm, where she cut herself once in sword practice. I remember her showing that to me when I was young, to teach me not to be afraid of the blades.” Alaria clamped her teeth down on her lower lip and looked upward, blinking. Mar handed her one of the napkins that lay in a basket on the table.

Dhulyn was rubbing the skin between her eyebrows with her own scarred fingers. She looked up at Parno and shifted her shoulder in a manner that was not quite a shrug.
You got this started,
the gesture meant,
you end it
.

“I did not mean it wasn’t Cleona’s body,” Parno said. “I meant that what we saw there is no longer Cleona. Her spirit, her real self, which is what Gundaron would have looked for, is elsewhere.” He turned to the Scholar. “Remember when Dhulyn set you to Find the Tarkin of Imrion? You didn’t Find his body, but his spirit.”

“And if Cleona’s spirit is gone ...” Dhulyn said.

“Exactly,” Parno said. “Gundaron would not have Found it.” He saw that Dhulyn was following him. The moons that they had spent in the company of the Crayx, the mind-sharing creatures of the Long Ocean, had taught them a great deal about the nature of the spirit.

Alaria let her head fall forward into her hands. Mar picked up another of the napkins and with a lift of her chin signaled that they should move farther away. Alaria had shown remarkable courage, Parno thought, as he and Dhulyn, followed by Gundaron, moved to the far end of the table, nearer the open window. A princess, even such a minor princess of a realm as small as Arderon, could not have seen much in the way of butchery and bloodshed, and what they had seen near the Path of the Sun had been enough to sicken even him, experienced Mercenary Brother though he was.

Gundaron rubbed at his mouth again.

“Was it like anything you have read about?” Dhulyn said to him.

Gundaron nodded. “There’s something like it in the
Book of Rhonis
.” He turned to Dhulyn. “Do you remember? The book that tells of the origins of your people, the Espadryni. It goes back to the times of chaos, after the first coming of the Green Shadow.”

Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile, but Gundaron only blinked, having seen it many times before. “You know better than that, my little Scholar. My people are the Mercenary Brotherhood. But what does the book tell us? Why were such things done?”

Gundaron shook his head, lower lip between his teeth. “There is a portion of the Book that seems to describe rituals of obscure Tribes and cults. What we saw ...” he swallowed. “There are similarities to a particular ritual, but whether it was meant to appease the Green Shadow or to draw the help of the Sleeping God ...” Here Gun blushed and looked between Parno and his Partner, gauging their reactions. Dhulyn only smiled gently, patting him on the shoulder.

“It’s all right, my own. Relax. I know as well as you that no such actions would bring the God. Do you think it possible it was done by those touched by the madness of the Green Shadow?” She turned to Parno. “Could it be some twisted way of unmaking?”

Parno leaned against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. “Whatever may have been the motivations of those ancients, the Green Shadow is gone, never to trouble us again, so why would such an ancient rite be reappearing now?”

“Could someone, having read the
Rhonis
, been driven mad, driven to duplicate what he’d read there?” Gun said.

“Interesting you think it is a man,” Dhulyn said. “But as you’re the only one here who admits to having read it, that’s a theory I would be quiet about if I were you.”

Gun blinked, then his brow furrowed. Clearly that thought had not occurred to him. “Something magical then? Some Mage’s ritual?” He leaned forward. “The earliest bodies I learned of were found after the solstices, but then they became more frequent.”

“Last night was a full moon,” Parno said.

Dhulyn stopped them from continuing with a raised finger. “The body you saw before,” she said, careful not to say the word “Tarkin” where it could be overheard and raise questions. “Did it look the same? Did you take any notes at the time?”