Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (45 page)

Instead she’d found Gun, and the Scholar’s life.

“What is it?” she said. “You’re squeezing my arm.”

“Nothing,” he said, glad the dark covered his smile. “I was just thinking how happy I am to be here.”

“I hope by ‘here’ you mean with me, and not stuck in this particular place.” He could hear the warmth and laughter in her voice. He started to answer her in the same way.

“I think you know—” he fell to his knees, clutching his forehead between his hands.

“Gun. Gun, what is it?” Mar was on her knees beside him, feeling for his head and clutching at his sleeves. He had to steel himself not to push her away, to remind himself that she couldn’t see, and that if she lost her sense of where he was, she might never find him again.

“I was dizzy,” he said. “It was as if I were falling, as though I were suddenly going uphill, then down, and then the ground just fell out from under me.”

“But the ground’s level here,” Mar said. “The floor’s as smooth as a sanded tabletop.”

Gun swallowed against the nausea in his throat, licked his lips, and forced his eyes open. The clue was still there, still leading away, blue and green, red and black.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Just give me a minute.” Clinging to her, Gun managed to get back on his feet. His head felt hollow and seemed to want to sway from side to side. Mar, evidently sensing something was wrong even though she couldn’t see him, pulled his left arm over her shoulders and propped him up.

“You lead,” she said. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall down again.

Leaning heavily on Mar, Gun reached out for the clue, wishing that it were solid. If he held his hand between it and himself, he could concentrate better, seeing his hand silhouetted against the colors of the clue. He closed one eye. That seemed to help. He could feel Mar murmuring, still reciting from the first book of
Air and Fire
under her breath as they went around yet another corner.

“Is the ground slanting downward?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mar said.

A searing light stabbed through Gun’s right eye, like a cold dagger into his brain. He hissed in his breath, gasping for air.

“Push your breath out,” Mar said, holding him up in her arms. “The Wolfshead says you’re stronger on the exhales.”

“Curse the
blooded
Wolfshead.” Nevertheless Gun struggled to push out his breath through his clenched teeth. “What’s that blooded light?”

“The sun,” Mar said. “We’re here.”

Gun blinked at the harshness of the sunlight. The world seemed still to be spinning, and his stomach turned over. He blinked again and squinted.

“The clue is gone,” he said.

P
ARNO FOUND DHULYN fastening the ties on her bedroll. His own was already neatly tied and placed next to his open pack. They had waited until morning, to give the Seers a chance to change their minds, but no summons had come from them.

“You didn’t pack my pipes,” he said, seeing them still out on the pallet where Delvik Bloodeye had lain.

“You like to do that yourself.” Dhulyn tightened the strap on her own pack and straightened, automatically checking the placement of sword, boot daggers, sleeve knives, and the small ax that hung between her shoulder blades. Parno watched her for a moment before turning to his pipes, detaching the drones and the chanter from the air bag and slipping each one into the padded sleeve designed for it in the roll of felted cloth.

“You are sure you would not like to wait longer, give them more time?” he said, without turning toward her.

“While we are giving them more time, we can look for our killer.” She pushed her hands into the small of her back and stretched until the muscles cracked. “There are others who depend upon our help, besides the women of the Espadryni.”

Parno pressed his lips together and finished closing the heavy silk bag that held his pipes. No point in talking about it any further just now. He knew that tone.

A shadow darkened the doorway to the tent. Parno was relieved to see Dhulyn turn immediately, her hand already reaching for a weapon, and turning the movement into a gesture of welcome when she saw Star-Wind. Whatever thoughts were distracting her, it did not interfere with her reflexes. She would be herself again.

“You
are
going then,” the junior shaman said, as his glance through the tent took in their packing. His tone was wistful, as if he would like to ask them to stay if he could think of a reason. Finally, he cleared his throat. “I will ride a short way with you.”

“We thank you for your courtesy,” Parno said. He slung his pipes over his left shoulder and hefted his pack in his other hand. He expected Star-Wind’s offer was more an excuse to stay close to Dhulyn than an act of courtesy to departing guests.

They walked together through the camp to the horse lines. There was no sign of any of the women, and very few even of the children were out of their tents. The men they passed all paused in their work to greet them civilly, and some showed an inclination to follow along until a gesture from Star-Wind returned them to their tasks. When they arrived at the horse line, a young boy, the ghost eye clear on his forehead, stood beside Star-Wind’s horse. He waited while Dhulyn and Parno saddled their own horses, and even though it was clear they would need nothing further, he hovered until Star-Wind once more waved him away. Star-Wind grabbed a handful of mane and swung himself onto his horse’s back without benefit of either saddle or bridle.

Touching her forehead to those who lifted a hand to them as they rode, Dhulyn chose the most direct route away from the camp.

“There are some who are asking that Winter-Ash be punished for endangering you,” Star-Wind said after they had been riding a short time. It was clear that he was addressing Dhulyn, but Parno noticed that he looked away from her. So he did not notice immediately that she had stopped.

“We must go back,” she said. “They did not endanger me; they would not, not while we are in Vision.”

“No need,” Star-Wind said. “Both Cloud and Horse Shamans have spoken against it.”

“It is hard, when I see the old woman, Snow-Moon, crippled, not to be afraid that the same may come to Winter-Ash through my fault.”

“It is used only rarely, but there are things we cannot let go unpunished. Snow-Moon would have allowed her child to starve from neglect, even after she had been warned three times.”

Dhulyn nodded, but it was easy to see she was only partly convinced. Star-Wind sighed, and his voice hardened.

“What would you have us do? Confine the worst ones? In the cities, perhaps, that might be possible, but we cannot be so soft here. It is impossible. They know the meaning of the Pact, and they must all see that punishment comes swiftly.” There was regret in his voice, but there was impatience also.

“Your pardon, Star-Wind of the Salt Desert, it is not my place to approve, or disapprove. Forgive me.” Dhulyn inclined her head in a short bow. It was against the Mercenaries’ own Common Rule for her to comment on the political or social structure of another society. The Brotherhood was always neutral.

Except when we’re not
, Parno thought, remembering a couple of slavers he and Dhulyn had once waylaid and killed.

Star-Wind accepted Dhulyn’s apology with a shallow bow of his own. “Where do you begin your search for the killer, Dhulyn Wolfshead?”

“We’ll follow your back trail to the place where you found our injured Brothers,” Dhulyn said. “He said they had been following some trace of the killer when they fell into the orobeast trap. Perhaps there will still be something for us to see.”

“There has been rain toward the Door, but perhaps not as far as the place you wish to go. That is the direction you want,” Star-Wind said, indicating the northwest. “We were three days from here when our scouts found Delvik Bloodeye. But that was our whole camp, women, children, and all. You should make better time, only the two of you.” He spun his horse around to face them. “We look forward to your return. Farewell, Dhulyn Wolfshead, Parno Lionsmane. Sun warm you, Moon and Stars light your way.”

“And yours, Star-Wind of the Salt Desert.”

 

“You are very quiet, my heart.” They had ridden much of the day in a more or less comfortable silence, with Dhulyn answering whenever Parno had spoken to her but offering no conversation herself. Now she straightened in the saddle and seemed to give herself a shake.

“I am feeling low,” she said, in a voice that matched her words.

Parno felt a jolt of alarm pass over his midsection. Except when she had an obvious injury, Dhulyn rarely admitted to feeling any kind of pain, still less an emotional one.

“Should we have rested longer after your ordeal with the Seers?”

Dhulyn shook her head, but the frown of abstraction didn’t leave her face. “You did not meet them, the unbroken women; no one ever has. And they might have been punished—crippled—because of me.”

The alarm rang louder. Dhulyn never felt sorry for herself. Parno inhaled deeply and prepared to go to work.

“I see,” he said in a tone that suggested a challenge. “When I worry about killing people, you roll your eyes to Sun, Moon, and Stars, and my concerns are dismissed as unfortunate remnants of my overly refined upbringing in a Noble House. But when
you
are worried about women who are not even going to be punished because of you, then I’m supposed to be full of sympathy, hold your hand, wipe away your tears, and say, ‘There, there, it’s all right, my sweet one’?”

The dark look that Dhulyn shot at him gave Parno hope.

“You’ve never been in favor of needless killing,” he pointed out, returning to his normal tone. “Or maiming.”

“Luckily for you.”

Parno smiled.
She’s back
, he thought, but he said nothing else out loud. Dhulyn might speak more about it now, once she’d begun—or not. But she already seemed more her normal self, and she had stopped her unhealthy brooding over the difficult circumstances of the Espadryni.

They had ridden perhaps half a span farther, when Dhulyn took in a deep breath and shook her hair back from her face. It had grown long enough that the braids and tails she wove it into were brushing her shoulders. Soon she would be able to tie it back with some hope that it wouldn’t escape.

“It is not,” she said, “that I ever expected to return to my home.” Parno waited, knowing there was more. “There was never any hope of that, and I have always known it. But I feel an echo of that loss when I look at these people, so like the people of my childhood and yet so unlike.” Dhulyn turned to him, her blood-red brows raised in question, and Parno nodded his understanding and encouragement.

“They did not know that the women are whole while in Vision—and what could they have done differently, what
can
they do, now that they know? Star-Wind says they are doing the best they can. I wonder if my own people would have done the same. Did they face a similar dilemma—not the same one, obviously—and choose to allow the breaking of the Tribes rather than live on in some distorted version of themselves?”

“Their choice led to life for you and, eventually, freedom, safety—well,” Parno amended when Dhulyn grinned. “As safe as a Mercenary’s life can be.” He shrugged. “I won’t complain of a decision that led to the two of us riding together, as we are now. But that is easy for me to say—I lost nothing by it. And from what we’ve been told, the choice
these
Espadryni made must also have been a difficult one, if in a different way.” Parno cast about for the words he needed to express his thoughts. “It’s not as if the Marked gradually became broken and soulless, over generations. These people had to cope, not with a
change
in their circumstances, but with the very circumstances themselves.”

Dhulyn nodded, but slowly, more as if she were acknowledging he’d spoken than as if she agreed with him. Parno edged Warhammer nearer to her until he could nudge her knee with his own. “If their choice was annihilation or sequestration, perhaps they really are doing their best.”

Dhulyn raised her hand toward him, palm out. “I know that the Seers would not be alive at all if the men did not take these precautions, however harsh. I merely wondered if my own people would have chosen differently.”

It was evident, Parno thought, that Dhulyn would have done so. But how much of that was the effect of Mercenary Schooling, where the Common Rule taught them not to fear death, but to accept it as something that would come to all.

They had stopped to eat and were sharing a travel cake and a dried sausage when Parno returned to the subject from another angle.

“Do I imagine it, or did the Salt Lake People seem much less comfortable with us at first than those of the Long Trees?”

“The Long Trees had no women with them,” Dhulyn pointed out. “Isolated, with nothing to compare me to, they reacted to
me
, to
who
I am, and not so much to
what
I am.”

“Now, of course, it is both.” Parno handed Dhulyn her half of the travel cake. “Your presence is now both a constant reminder of what their own women are not and a symbol of what they can become.”

Dhulyn bit off a piece of cake, chewed and swallowed. “Perhaps. If I am indeed the one they wait for.”

“You feel no closer to the answer?”

“Are the White Twins correct? Is there some detail I have already Seen but don’t understand? And they seemed to say, too, that I had the answer to the question of the killer as well.”

“Obviously the trader is part of the clue. What did you think of him?”

Dhulyn frowned. “A little too charming for my taste, too easily my friend.”

Parno grinned. Dhulyn was notoriously reserved, even among the Brotherhood. “A trader who doesn’t charm is a trader without custom.”

They could not stretch out their meal any longer and were soon back on the road. Even after almost half a moon, they had no trouble following the back trail of the Salt Desert Tribe. The signs were still clear: the cropped grass, the hoof marks of horses both mounted and running free, the animal dung, even the marks of nightly cooking fires carefully dispersed. They were moving much faster than the Tribe had been able to, but still they held their horses to a fast walk, keeping a sharp eye out, Dhulyn looking on one side, Parno the other, for the signs of scouts returning to the main body of the Tribe with horses carrying extra weight.