Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (25 page)

Sun Dog shrugged. “If a man knows how to tell the truth carefully, he may lie to anyone.”

Dhulyn took in a deep lungful of air and exhaled slowly. That much was true. Even drugs such as fresnoyn could be circumvented by someone who had been Schooled in the drug
Shoras
. She would have to rely on her own instincts when she questioned the Seers. She turned as the others fell silent. Singer of the Wind reappeared from behind the small hill where he had gone to read the clouds.

“I have shared the news of the Mercenary Brothers, Dhulyn Wolfshead and Parno Lionsmane,” he said. “It is now safe for you to go among our people as you will. But I have news also to give to you. Did you not say that in addition to this killer, you seek two Brothers of your own, Mercenaries like yourselves?” He gestured with a sweep of his hand to their Mercenary badges.

“They have been seen?”

“The Salt Desert People found them, four days’ ride to the south and west of here. One of them dead and the other injured in the leg. I have told the shaman of the Salt Desert People that they may expect you. So much the clouds told me and nothing more.”

These last words were so obviously ritual that neither Dhulyn nor Parno asked anything further. They would have to wait until they met with their Brother to find out how he had been injured and the other man killed.

“You are right, Grandfather. We will go first to our Brother and give him what aid we can.” And learn from him, Dhulyn said to herself, what, if anything, he knew of the killer.

“Now,” Singer of the Wind said, “it is late. Tonight we rest, and tomorrow, when Our Mother is once again with us, we will set you on your way.”

P
ARNO LET THE last note of the Lament for the Sun die away, releasing the pressure on the air bag of his pipes slowly until chanter and drones fell silent. The Horsemen drummed the ground with the palms of their hands, making a sound, the Mercenary thought with an inner grin, not unlike the thunder of distant hooves.

“Come, Lionsmane, another tune!” There was general approval for this request, but Parno held up his hands, palms out. “Another time, perhaps,” he said, smiling. “We have had a long, tiring day, my Partner and I, and with your goodwill,” he nodded to Singer in the Wind, “we will take our rest.”

There were nods and good nights, and even a few touches on the shoulder, as Parno carried his pipes to where a separate fire had been made up for them at the edge of the camp farthest from the horse line. Parno suspected that had he been alone, the men of the Espadryni would have been happy to share their fire with him all night. But even though Dhulyn had been passed as “whole” and “safe” by their Cloud Shaman, and the men were clearly fascinated by her, they would not have been comfortable with her sleeping among them.

Dhulyn had water heating in a small pot and had laid out a pattern of vera tiles in the light cast by the fire. She looked up and gave him the smile she saved only for him. Parno took a deep breath, exhaling slowly and feeling the muscles of his neck and shoulders relax.

“Charmed them as usual, did you? They’ll all sleep the better for your music.”

“Are you saying my playing puts people to sleep?”

She frowned, her head on one side. “Yes. Yes, I suppose I am.”

Parno grinned and sat down beside her, starting to take his instrument apart. “Careful now, wouldn’t want the warmth of your affection to burn me, my heart.” He looked back at the larger fire and the men still seated around it. “I must say, though, that I find our present circumstances somewhat ironic.”

“How so?” Dhulyn turned a vera tile so that the symbol on it was upside down.

“These are your people, and I sit with them at their fire, and you sit here alone. I confess that when I saw the riders coming toward us were Espadryni, I understood—
truly
understood—your past worries about my possible return to my own people.”

Dhulyn shifted until she was sitting cross-legged. “And why should you have this sudden knowledge now?”

“It was never a danger before, not in this way,” Parno said. “You remember when we were last in Imrion, you worried that I might want to leave the Brotherhood, return to my own family—”

“But this is not the first time we have met with Espadryni,” Dhulyn said.

“True,” he said, mindful that his Partner must be upset to have interrupted him. “There was Avylos of Tegrian. You did startle me when you called out to him in your own tongue, and I realized he was a Red Horseman. I felt a stabbing coldness, here.” Parno indicated the center of his body, under the ribs. “And I wondered, I have to admit. But Avylos was still only one man. One man could not replace your whole family, your whole Tribe.”

Without raising her eyes from the pot heating on the fire, Dhulyn reached out and touched him on the chest, in the spot where he’d said he’d felt cold. “Don’t be so certain.”

Parno smiled, but he shook his head. “I’m part of the Brotherhood, we both are. In Battle.”

“And in Death. So Avylos worried you, but not for long and not greatly. And now?”

“Now I realize I never had the same worry you did, that I might lose you to your family. You’ve never had any family to return to, until now.”

Dhulyn took a deep breath and let it out noisily. “Forgive me, my soul. Are you worried, then, or not?”

Parno shook his head. He wasn’t sure he could explain it. Dhulyn, Outlander as she was, and for all her reticence and reserve, was better read than he was and was more comfortable with words. “I’m saying that a year ago I might have been, but after all we’ve been through in the last few moons . . .”

“When I thought you were dead,” Dhulyn said, her rough silk voice very quiet.

“When each of us thought the other was dead.” Parno put his hand on her thigh and squeezed. “After that,” he said, “we’ll never doubt each other again.”

“Oh, we might, we’re human. But we won’t doubt for long.” She covered his hand with her own.

Parno nodded. “What if we can’t get back? What if we need to make a life for ourselves here?”

“Somehow I don’t think there will be much welcome for me here, not among the Tribes anyway. Not unless . . .” Dhulyn’s voice died away, but Parno waited.
No point in rushing her.

“Ice Hawk says someone will come with the answer to the problem of the Marked. That he overheard the Seers speaking of it when he was a child.”

“You think
we
might be this ‘someone’?”

“Do you have such an answer?”

Parno shook his head, but slowly. What about his Pod sense? “Not unless there are Crayx in the oceans here, and they know it.”

“Nor I, though that is a good thought. But if we must remain here, we are still a Brotherhood. Ourselves and the third man the Salt Desert People have.”

“You could start your School. What? Don’t tell me that’s not your plan. It would only mean you started a little early, that’s all.”

“It’s too early to be discussing these things, that much I
do
know,” Dhulyn said, her eyes flicking over his shoulder. “Company.”

Leaning back on his hands, Parno looked over his shoulder. Sun Dog was approaching their fire with the boy Ice Hawk in tow.

“The boy’s curiosity is greater than his courtesy,” the young man said. “I come with him to be sure it is not
too
great.”

“You may join us,” Dhulyn said. “Is guarding the candidate of the Sun’s Door somehow part of your apprenticeship?”

“I am no one’s apprentice, Mercenary.” The tone was wary.

“Are you not? You seem to work in partnership with the Cloud Mage. I thought you might be his pupil.”

Sun Dog laughed, his face clearing. “Singer of the Wind is Cloud Shaman, true enough,” he said. “But in our Tribes the most powerful shaman is always partnered with the least powerful, lest he become too narrow in his vision. Thus, I am Horse Shaman—at least of this group.”

“And one day of the whole Tribe,” Ice Hawk put it.

“It doesn’t trouble you, to be the least powerful?” Parno glanced up from wrapping his pipes in their silk bags. The Espadryni had settled themselves cross-legged, one to each side of the small fire. Parno was a little surprised that it was Sun Dog who sat next to Dhulyn, but perhaps Ice Hawk had realized that by sitting next to Parno, he might gaze at Dhulyn to his heart’s content.

“Why should it? I have the opportunity to become a chief, as I would have also if I were the most powerful shaman. Did you not have two chiefs then, in your Tribe, Dhulyn Wolfshead?”

“I do not know how my Tribe was governed,” Dhulyn said. “I was too young. But what you say strikes me as very reasonable. I know that all Mages do not have the same level of power—any more than all Marks have the same level of skill—and your method of dividing the chief’s position would ensure that all would feel equally represented.”

Sun Dog nodded, but his lips had compressed into a tight line at Dhulyn’s mention of the Marked.

Parno glanced at Ice Hawk as Dhulyn threw a handful of dried chamomile flowers into the water she’d been heating.

The younger Horseman had shifted until he was sitting with his feet flat in front of him, knees bent, forearms resting on them, right hand clasping the fingers of the left. A defensive position, Parno noted, apparently casual, but with arms and legs creating a barrier. But then again, not a good position from which to actually defend yourself. By the time you could get your arms and legs out of the way and pick up weapon, you’d be food for worms.

“We have a saying in the Mercenary Brotherhood,” Dhulyn said, just as if there was no silence to break. “That knowledge is a good tool.” She had set out two round clay cups and now hesitated. She smiled her wolf’s smile, shrugged, and poured some tea into each cup, handed one to Ice Hawk, one to Sun Dog, and kept the small metal pot for herself and Parno to share.

“What knowledge can we give you?” Sun Dog said, accepting his cup and inhaling the fumes of the herb. “We cannot help you find the killer you seek.”

“That knowledge would be a knife in the hand, for certain,” Dhulyn said. “But spoons are good tools also, and cups and bowls. Tell us something of the Tribes of the Espadryni and of the Door of the Sun.”

Sun Dog tilted his head back, and his eyes sparkled. “I should make the boy recite his lessons. But, in reality, as the Horse Shaman of this group, this task falls to me.” He took a sip of tea. “There are three Tribes, the Long Trees, the Salt Desert, and Cold Lake, and we take it in turn to send our most promising young men to the Sun’s Door,” he began. “If they make it through and come back, they might one day rise to become Cloud Shaman, if not . . .” He shrugged. “Some go in and are never seen again. Some never gain entrance. Some, like myself, decide not to try.”

“And knowledge of the key is not shared?” The metal pot had finally cooled enough, and Dhulyn raised it to her lips before passing it to Parno.

Sun Dog was shaking his head. “Not among Horsemen, no,” he said. “Each candidate must discover it for himself. But the old tales say that it
is
shared with one who might come through the Door.”

“Who might that be?”

“By ancient right and treaty, with the Tarkin of Menoin,” Ice Hawk said, and then lowered his eyes as they all turned to look at him.

So, Parno thought, the key to the labyrinth might well involve not how to pass through to this side, but how to get back.

“That
is
what the old tales say,” Sun Dog agreed. “But as Singer of the Wind has told you, it has been generations since such a visit has occurred.”

“And how is access to the Door arranged?” Parno asked. “Do the Tribes mix freely?”

“We have our own territories, our own areas for hunting and grazing our herds, and unless it is a year for the Great Sight—a gathering of all the Tribes—we do not mix a great deal.” He flashed Parno a grin. “But at the Great Sights, there is music and drinking, dance and horseplay. And business, as well. We set the schedule of access to the Door, the Seers unite to share their Visions, and we men trade horses, and goods and make marriages with other Tribes.”

“You trade the women then?” Dhulyn asked. Her voice was so carefully neutral that Parno knew what she was feeling only from his own knowledge of her past. Dhulyn had been a slave once—that had been where she’d got the scars on her back and the one on her lip that could turn her smile into a wolf’s snarl. Mercenaries had a living to make, but he and Dhulyn would happily kill slavers for free.

But Sun Dog was shaking his head, clearly shocked. “Mother Sun and Father Moon would curse us if we did such things, we would lose all their favor. The women are broken, but they are after all human people, not horses or cattle. It is Mother Sun herself who told us that it should be the men who changed Tribes in marriage, not the women.”

“Is there love between you, then?” Parno asked.

Ice Hawk’s lips pressed tight as he glanced quickly at each of them, and the look that fleeted over Sun Dog’s face—though gone in an instant and replaced with his usual expression of friendly interest—suggested that the man hid some dark sorrow. “We can love them,” he said, his voice grown very quiet. “They are our mothers, our daughters, our sisters.” His lips stretched back, but his expression could only by courtesy be called a smile. “Our wives and the mothers of our children.” His grin faltered. “But they, the Seers, they do not love their husbands, they cannot, nor their little ones either.” He shot them each a quick glance, and Parno thought that, somehow, the man spoke from his own experience. “It’s in this way that they’re broken, you see, as if they haven’t any hearts. As if they were born missing a hand or a foot.”

He stopped long enough that Parno thought Sun Dog had said everything he was going to say when he spoke again. “Singer of the Wind knew you were not broken in that way, Dhulyn Wolfshead. There’s love between you, is there not? He could see that. And anyone could tell that you felt something when you described that killing.” Now he did fall quiet.