The Storm Witch (17 page)

Dhulyn was several spans ahead of her escort by the time she reached Feld House, and was through the gate and into the large inner courtyard without stopping. She had woken up that day meaning to ask where the horses were kept, and had somehow forgotten about them. Horses would help her; she was always clear-minded with a horse under her. She was three paces into the courtyard when the gates slammed shut behind her, and she dove to one side, rolling as she hit the ground and came up crouching with her back against the baked mud wall, pulling the dagger from the back of her sash.

Quickly, she scanned the open space within the gates. It was completely deserted. No guards, no servants going about their daily chores. The sedan chair which had been standing to the right of the gate when she and Remm Shalyn had gone out for their walk was gone. As was a small handcart full of melons that had been awaiting the attention of the cooks. The gates were closed, but not, so far as she could see from this angle, barred. The main House doors were likewise shut as were the smaller gates that led to the garden and rear quarters where the animals were housed.

Pounding and shouting came from the gate and Dhulyn eased herself to her feet, though she stayed with her back to the wall. That would be Remm Shalyn, and either the gate would open to admit him, or it would not. One way or the other, this strange silent courtyard would be explained.

She smiled her wolf’s smile. Her blood was running, her muscles warm, her breathing soft and easy. If something was coming to kill her, she was ready.

A sound like muffled hooves came from the inner gate leading to the animal compound and Dhulyn looked up. Was it horses after all?

But the beast that came thundering through the gate swinging its heavily horned head was no horse. It had the coloring and light hindquarters of an inglera, but was massively thick through the shoulders, and its neck supported a rack of horns as thick as her arm and as sharp as her second-best sword. Its shoulders were easily as high as her own, and the look in its red-rimmed eyes spoke of something more than normal fury.

“
Blooded
demons.” Anger washed over her like a tide, setting her blood pounding in her ears and drowning her in heat. Trying to kill her, were they? Just like they’d killed her Partner, the Sun-blasted toads. Well
she
chose when she’d die, thank you very much. Not a bunch of cowards who hid behind drugged animals. What? Was her death supposed to look like an accident?

“Over here, meat pie. That’s right, I’m talking to you.” At the sound of her voice the beast looked in her direction, lowered its head, and began to paw the ground.

Dhulyn kicked free of the kilt wrapped around her legs and shifted her knife until she was holding it like a sword. She would much rather have had a sword, even the dainty one she’d taken from Loraxin the previous afternoon, but the dagger was all she’d found in her room when she’d awakened.

She began inching sideways toward the gate, not that she thought it would open to her hand, but in order to see if the beast would follow her. She racked her brain, trying to remember everything she could about the bull jumping she’d watched one sunny spring afternoon on the Isle of Cabrea. And the Python
Shora,
for a fighter on foot against someone armed and mounted. Surely that would help.

“Come on, stew meat, what are you waiting for?”

Much faster than she had imagined possible, given its weight and size, the beast charged and Dhulyn jumped, throwing herself up and forward, twisting and arching her body. She reached for the horn to help in her vaulting, as she’d seen bull jumpers do, but the beast hooked right, and she only brushed the horn with her fingertips as she began to fall. Twisting again, she jammed the dagger in deep, high in the animal’s shoulder, and managed to control her fall long enough to avoid the worst from the flashing hooves.

She hit the ground on her own shoulder and grunted, rolling away minus one knife and plus one blow on the left thigh. Lucky thing it
wasn’t
a horse, she thought. An iron-shod hoof might have broken her leg. As it was, she’d have a bruise the size of her hand and be limping for a week, though she felt little pain now.

But the beast hooked to the right when it charged. Its right, not hers. Which told her where the horns were likely to be when it tried to gore her, and gave her a chance to be elsewhere.

She rolled to the left as the beast passed through the space she’d just occupied and crashed against the wooden doors of the gate, which shivered, but held. Dhulyn got to her feet, tested her weight on her left leg, and grinned. She’d had worse in training. As she watched the beast pace around the courtyard, she kept her weight forward on her toes, knees slightly bent, arms and hands relaxed from lowered shoulders. If she really were a bull jumper, there’d be others in the yard with her to distract the animal, tire it out for her.

She would have to do that herself. Outlast the thing.

She shrugged, aware of the wolf’s smile that stretched her lips, and braided the fingers of her right hand against ill luck.

The sounds of a scuffle almost made her look up. “Paledyn!” came the strangled cry, and a short, businesslike sword with a worn leather grip landed point down in the dirt next to her.

Dhulyn had barely enough time to grab it up when the beast charged again. This time, trusting that the animal would hook again to the right, Dhulyn ran toward it on tiptoe, gauging her timing carefully, and when the great, horned head lowered at the last moment, she stepped up onto the beast’s forehead, ran lightly down its spine and jumped clear just as it crashed against the stuccoed wall and sank to its knees, shaking its great head.

Confused, it spun around, almost chasing its tail in rage. Dhulyn found herself back where she had started, and caught up her kilt where it lay trampled into the dirt against the courtyard wall. Dangling the fold of cloth off to her left, she approached the beast slowly.

It was breathing hoarsely, its great barrel of a chest heaving, flecks of blood showing around its nose and mouth. Whatever drug they’d given it to drive it mad was having a worse effect. Unfortunately, Dhulyn couldn’t count on it dropping dead soon enough.

Sun and Stars blind you.
She gritted her teeth, knowing what she had to do, and hoping that Remm Shalyn’s sword was long enough to do it.

“Come on, come you.” On her toes now, she twitched the trampled kilt as far to her left as she could hold it, preparing to run forward as the beast charged, hoping that it would try for the cloth rather than her. Dhulyn eyed the spot she wanted, high on the animal’s left side, where the angle should let her reach through the cage of bone and find the heart.

As the animal moved, she ran toward it, calling out to it as she would to a favorite horse, arching her body and sucking in her stomach as the horns swung round. In the last possible instant she thrust in the sword, turning from her heels to put her full weight behind it. Blood gushed from the beast’s mouth and she was dragged to her knees still pushing down on the hilt of Remm’s sword. When she felt the great heart stop, she stood up and stepped back, pulling the sword free.

Suddenly there were people around her, a strong arm around her waist, and her knees began to buckle. Remm, blood in the corner of his mouth, and a bruise forming on the plane of his left cheek.

An inner door swung open and Loraxin Feld came running out to her side.

“I’m so sorry, Paledyn, so sorry.” And he was, too, Dhulyn could tell. Sorry enough that he spoke like a child, from the heart, no formal and meaningless mouthings of apologies and forgiveness. His hands trembled, he was white as the stuccoed walls behind him, and there was sweat on his upper lip, guilt as well as remorse in his face. He had thought the beast would kill her, and would now have to deal with the fact that it had not.

“You’d have had some explanations to give the Tarxin, I think, had I died in here.” Her voice sounded rough and remote through the blood that still pounded in her ears.

“Please, Tara Paledyn—” It seemed she’d been upgraded from a Xara. “I don’t know how this happened—an accident in moving the kinglera, I will have the slaves responsible killed. And you—” Loraxin turned on Remm Shalyn. “You are dismissed, how could you let the Paledyn come into such danger?”

“You will kill no one,” Dhulyn said, blinking. “After all, this was an accident.”
I should sit down, and quickly.
As if in response to her thought, Remm lifted her right arm and swung it around his shoulders, bracing her. Her knees steadied. “Remm Shalyn, you are now in my employ.”

“Yes, Tara Paledyn.”

A
T FIRST HE COULDN’T breathe, and his lungs hurt, and his head pounded, and that part of the nightmare seemed to last forever. He knew it was a nightmare because Dhulyn was not there. He thought he saw her once, her pale face and her steel-gray eyes, the scar that made her lip curl back when she smiled in a certain way, her hair the color of old blood, held back from her face in loops of tiny braids, thick with ribbons, feathers, and hidden wires.

“My soul,” she said, trailing her fingertips over his face before disappearing once again into the dark that was the whole world for him now.

An immeasurable time later he felt he was not alone.

“Dhulyn?”

#Calm# #Well-being#

Parno fell asleep.

He woke up to damp darkness. His eyes were sticky and his mouth strangely dry. Great rushing gusts of air swept around and past him; deep creakings and groanings throbbed like the skin of a drum and made his bones shiver. The skin crawled on the back of his neck. He was not alone, but he couldn’t pinpoint any specific life around him. He blinked for what seemed like hours and achieved nothing but sore eyes. Parno forced himself to focus on the Lizard
Shora,
feeling the warmth of sun on rock, until he stopped twitching and even the muscles of his face relaxed.

As if it had been waiting for this, glimmers of light began to form around him. Soft luminescence illuminated a small cavelike chamber, the size of the cheapest private room at an inn, with smaller tunnels leading away from it in several directions. The substance of the walls and floor was damp and spongy, but dark as basalt. The air smelled of fish, brine, rot, and some unidentifiable musk.

#Stay#

He recognized the mind touch of the Crayx. Were they asking him, or telling him?

“Where am I? Where is my Partner?”

Parno sensed a shift in the consciousness around him, feelings and sensations that were just short of full thoughts, and once, the fleeting image of Dhulyn preparing herself by meditation and focus to read an old book in a foreign tongue.

#You were the only Pod sense in the water# came the answer to his question. A small part of Parno felt the exhilaration of knowing that he was sharing full thoughts with the Crayx for the first time, but he pushed it away. He had more important things to consider just now.

Dhulyn had gone into the water. Parno was sure of this, though he didn’t know how. He had confused memories of tumbling through raging waves until his sense of direction—even his sense of up and down—had deserted him; of great winds, and of holding his breath until it seemed his lungs would burst. Like all Mercenary Brothers, Dhulyn had superb breath control, but Parno’s had been augmented by years of practice with his pipes.

He rubbed at his upper arms. He was cold and his hands felt as though they didn’t belong to him. He understood with acid clarity what had happened. Dhulyn
had
gone into the water after him. But she wouldn’t have been able to hold her breath as long as he could, and the Crayx wouldn’t have noticed her; they wouldn’t have saved her as they’d saved him. Nothing, no one, could have survived the waterspout without such help.

Dhulyn was gone.

#Calm# #Let the pain flow through and past you like a cold current# #Do not hold it within#

Parno took a deep breath of salt-and-seaweed-flavored air and felt the calmness pass through him, pushing his loss before it, sweeping it like dust from his heart and soul.

“Don’t,” he said. His sorrow might be the only thing he had left of her. “Leave me my grief.”

#Should you not release it# #Do not allow the despair you feel to kill you#

“Why not?”

#Wavetreader Pod awaits you#

Parno shrugged, wondering if the gesture would translate mentally. “I’d just as soon die.”
In Battle and in Death.
That was more than a mere salutation. It was a promise.

#Very well# #Resignation# #If this is what you wish, you may remain with us# #Release your self, let your awareness float as though you were about to sleep# #We thank you for the nourishment, and we welcome you to ourselves#

Suddenly, as if his mind were a dark room and someone had thrown open a curtain, he saw, felt,
knew
what he was really speaking with.

The Crayx were not just the creatures that could be seen from the ship’s rail, they were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of consciousnesses, all sharing, all one, a vast storehouse of memories, of . . . personalities? Of souls? Neither word seem to quite fit what he could sense. This was what Darlara had been trying to tell him. He had an impression that these beings occupied an enormous space, but not like an arena crowded with people crammed into seats, rather like a vast sky full of stars, or an endless meadow full of flowers. With a little effort, he could come upon, contact, speak with, any one individual. Or he could simply share with all. And he was being offered a place in this garden of beings.

“Wait.” Parno struggled to sit upright; the material on which he was lying gave under his hands. “Am I injured? Am I dying?”

#We understood you wished to die# #If your grief is too heavy a burden, and you will not let us lift it . . .#

Was it too heavy? Parno rubbed his face with his hands. How could he live without her—easy to know how he didn’t
die
with her, the Crayx had saved him, unknowingly interfering with the natural process that would have allowed them to die together.