by Holly Lisle
Among his people, apparently strangers are always taken in and made welcome. I’ve seen similar things before . . .
But I’m not of his people. I’m a completely different kind of . . . of monster.
A soft chuckle in the back of her mind then. You aren’t in human lands anymore, Danya. Beyond Ibera, people are usually considered people no matter what form they take. With a few exceptions, the humans are the only ones who refuse to recognize that.
Danya didn’t respond to that. She couldn’t think of herself as human anymore, but she had to admit that on the inside she was the same person she had been before; at least, if she was different, she hadn’t discovered how yet.
You . . . you brought me to these people. How did you know they were safe?
She felt rather than heard the sigh. First, now that you are fed, and sheltered, and for the time safe, let me tell you my name again. I’ve never cared for being called “You.”
You’ve told me your name before?
Certainly. But it proved an exercise in pointlessness when you were in and out of delirium. My name is Luercas. I am . . . or rather was . . . a Wolf like you. I was killed in a situation I’d rather not discuss now, but for some reason my body was trapped in the Veil, and I haven’t been able to move forward or back. Until now. Something happened when you were . . . ah . . . sacrificed . . . that released me from the prison that had held me for—well, I honestly don’t know how long I was trapped. But I found myself inside of your mind, looking out of your eyes, and I think perhaps the reason I was released was because I could help you and no one else could. Luercas fell silent for a moment. Danya waited.
At last he said, In my current state, I can sense things that are at a distance. I can feel potentials—and while I couldn’t be sure what we would find when we got here, I did sense that in this direction lay safety for you, and your one chance of survival.
Danya lay back and let her eyes drift closed. The food, the warmth, and the hardships of the last however many days all conspired to push her toward sleep. She did ask, Why did my survival matter to you? I can’t understand that.
Because, Luercas said, I can sense potentials. You have something important to do. Something vital and good. Something that is going to change your world. And I am, in some way, a part of that. And I believe that you must achieve this goal before I am released to pass through the Veil to whatever awaits me beyond it.
Danya nodded. Across from her, the Scarred man ate the stew she’d left. He contorted his face, but she couldn’t read the expression. She tried to respond with a smile, but realized her own facial muscles were no longer designed for such nuances. She sighed again, and closed her eyes.
I’m glad you’re helping me, she told Luercas.
That was her last coherent thought for a long time.
* * *
Kait sat in the ship’s parnissery in the darkness before the dawning of Embastaru, the Day of Hours, and listened to the sweet, high voice of the ship’s parnissa reading the old words. She had been a month aboard the Peregrine, and the rhythms of ship life had dulled some of the pain of her precipitous exit from Calimekka.
“The Book of Time, third of the five sacred books of Iber, says, ‘Number neither your days nor your hours, lest they pass by you quickly while you count them. Instead, name them as friends, and bid them tarry awhile, and you will know long life and happiness.’ So we greet each station of the day by name, and with reverence, acknowledging all both as friends returned to visit and as strangers to be made welcome—strangers who have come into our midst briefly, and who will never return.”
The parnissa wore the white robes traditional for the day, and the candlelight reflecting off the robes and her pale skin and equally pale golden hair made her look more spirit than flesh. The ship creaked and rocked, and the sounds and rhythms soothed. Kait was close to sleep, but she remembered her duty as one of the Familied to uphold Iberism in all places and at all times, and so she sat on the hard bench in the candlelit parnissery and fought to keep her eyes open.
“Morning approaches—blessed morning.”
The parnissa paused, and Kait and the other attendees said in unison, “We honor the Stations of Morning.”
“We honor Soma,” the parnissa intoned.
Everyone replied, “Soma, who is the bringer of first light.”
Kait let the familiar words drift over her. The service was both womb and wound, cradling her in its ties to the past at the same time that it hurt her with its reminder that the future could never be as bright or warm. In the past days, she’d kept to herself. She’d burned candles for her parents and brothers and sisters, for her aunts and uncles and cousins; she’d prayed for the success of her journey, while never quite believing that the artifact she sought could truly exist. She’d tried her best to give herself a measure of peace, but inner peace eluded her.
The parnissa walked along the edge of the pedestal at the front of the parnissery, lighting candles. “We honor Stura.”
“Stura, the singer of morning songs, the lively child.”
“We honor Duea.”
“Duea, fair daughter who dances the sun to midday.”
Kait recalled sitting in her parents’ parnissery on a dozen occasions, repeating the same words in the same sleepy tones, giving half-aware honor to gods neither she nor her family really believed in, comforted by the presence of her sisters and brothers on the bench beside her. Her father had kept them all quiet with hard looks, her mother had bribed them with treats afterward.
The same words, the same tones, the scent of beeswax sweetened with lavender that the candles gave off, and this year the hurt in her heart that would not go away.
“And following on the heels of morning,” the parnissa continued, “the Stations of Aftering.”
“We honor the Stations of Aftering.”
“We honor Mosst.”
“Mosst, master of heat, creator of fire.”
Thought of her Family brought their killers to mind, and chasing the thought of Sabirs came the thoughts of one specific Sabir. Her gut knotted, thinking of the Karnee in the alley, and suddenly she realized she held him in her mind not because of memory or the random drift of thoughts from one thing to the next, but because some part of him had already been there.
Waiting. A tantalizing glimpse of a dream fragment flitted through her mind and out again before she could catch hold of it, but she had it long enough in mind to realize that at some point, she’d dreamed of him.
“We honor Nerin.”
“Nerin, whose gift is long light and clear vision.”
She shivered and tried to push him from the place he held in her thoughts; she wanted to find her way back to the service honoring the gods of the hours. Instead, she discovered that she could reach out and touch him with her mind.
He slept. She held so still she almost didn’t breathe, and let her eyelids drift shut.
He slept aboard a ship. He was some distance from her.
He followed her.
“We honor Paldin.”
“Paldin, who blends the worlds of light and dark, and illuminates the world after the sun has fled.”
He followed her, in a ship filled with his men; he hunted her. She could feel in the lightness of his sleep some of the edge of his determination to catch her. She could feel a sense of loss in him, though she could not fathom what he had lost. She felt his hunger, and felt it directed at her. Even in his sleep, he came after her.
“As we honor the times of light, we honor the darkness.”
“We honor the Stations of Night.”
“We honor Dard.”
“Dard, the first true darkness, who greets the White Lady.”
“We honor Telt.”
“Telt, the middle darkness, who conjoins the White Lady and the Red Hunter.”
The White Lady, who had once been mortal, had fled the Red Hunter in life. He had hunted her from the time she came of age and became very beautiful until the day
when, weak and weary, she ran into a passageway between cliffs in a forest she did not know, and discovered that the only way out was the way she’d gone in. Trapped, she prayed to Haledan, the goddess of beauty and truth, asking that she be spared the fate the hunter planned for her. Haledan came to her, and offered to protect her from the hunter if she would pledge herself into Haledan’s service forever. The girl agreed, and Haledan turned her into the most beautiful star in the sky, the White Lady, and thus she escaped both the hunter and death.
But the hunter called upon his patron god, Stolpan, the god of craftsmen and workers, and begged not to be cheated from the hunt when he was so close to catching his quarry. Stolpan could not undo what Haledan had done, but he could let the hunter continue his hunt. The hunter agreed that he would serve Stolpan forever, and in exchange, Stolpan made him the Red Hunter, the star that was as dark and frightening as the White Lady was bright and pure, and in that guise, he chased her across the sky every night. He would never catch her, but he would hunt her forever.
Realizing that her enemy, the Sabir Karnee, pursued her, and that he somehow knew where she was, Kait felt a sudden kinship with the White Lady. The only difference was that she didn’t have the protection of a goddess—she had no guarantee that the one who hunted her would not catch her.
“We honor Huld.”
“Huld, singer of the last darkness, who waits to embrace the rising of the sun.”
“Wait in silence, for the new day comes, and the new hour with it. Hold Soma in your heart, and all those stations that follow after. Be blessed, this day and every day, and rejoice in each moment, for all are sacred, and none will come again.”
“We bless you; we bless each other; we bless ourselves, this day and every day. Desporati sajamis, tosbe do naska.”
The words of the final benediction, which in the ancient parnissas’ tongue meant, “In our humanity we unite, body and spirit,” signaled the end of the service. The movement of the people on either side of her pulled Kait away from the link she’d shared with her hunter. That change, in turn, woke him. She felt him open his eyes. She could, for just an instant, see through them; he occupied a cabin more lush than her own, and larger, but he shared it with others. She caught just a glimpse of a hard-eyed man with a lean face who sat across from him on the edge of a bunk, and another, pale-haired and almost sweet-looking, who slept in the bunk above that man. The lean man seemed to look into Kait’s eyes. He frowned and said, “What’s the matter, Ry? You look . . . sick.”
Then she felt the Sabir realize she was there, and instantly the tie that linked them broke, and hurled her consciousness back into her own body, into the parnissery. Most of the rest of the worshipers had already filed out, and the parnissa stood looking at her with a curious expression on her face. Kait rose quickly, before the woman could come over to ask her if she had something she wished to discuss, and followed everyone else out onto the deck of the ship. At that moment, the sky, which along the eastern horizon wore rich veins of deep purple and ruby red above a widening line of pink and yellow, erupted in gold, and the sun broke free of the sea that had hidden it.
The alto bell welcoming Soma began to ring, and all the worshipers on deck faced east, dropped to their knees, and welcomed the new station and the new day.
“If you’re finished, I need to speak with you.”
She had knelt with the others; she twisted around and looked up, and found Hasmal standing behind her, studying her with an expression that was a curious mix of determination and fear. He hadn’t been in the parnissery for the service; she wondered if he’d just happened upon her, or if he’d sought her out.
Still shaken by the contact with the Sabir—with Ry, as his companion had called him—she rose and shrugged. “Maybe later.”
Hasmal smelled afraid, but he lifted his head and stared at her. Without doing anything that she could see, he surrounded himself and her with the same wall of peace that had first caught her attention at the party. In that instant, she felt Amalee protest, then fall silent, cut off in mid-yelp. And a faint weight that had tickled in the back of her mind, and that she only noticed by its sudden absence, also vanished. “What I have to tell you won’t wait any longer. I’ve put it off much too long as it is, and I’ve . . . er, I’ve been told . . . that by doing so, I have put us into unnecessary danger.”
She didn’t want to deal with him right then. Later, but not right then. But he’d managed to intrigue her. She nodded. “We can talk in my cabin, I suppose. Unless you have someplace else . . . ?”
“No. Your cabin will serve.”
She led. He followed.
* * *
“You know where she is, then?” Shaid Galweigh sat in cool near-darkness in the Cherian House private meeting room, at the head of a long cast-bronze table older than memory. The Wolves of Cherian House, untouched by the disaster that had wiped out the Galweigh House Wolves, because they had not participated in it, lined both sides of the table.
The head of the Wolves, a plump, jovial-looking woman named Veshre, nodded and smiled. “We’re certain. We’ve located her aboard a private ship currently heading east-northeast, somewhere along the Devil’s Trail. We think they put in for supplies at one of the islands about a week ago, and since then the ship has been moving steadily again.”
“Have you divined her destination?”
The Wolves glanced at each other. None were sure how to give the paraglese the news they had uncovered. Veshre finally shrugged and said, “There are some complications, Shaid. We’ve linked a number of . . .” She frowned, not liking the melodramatic terms that came first to mind, but unable to frame what she had to say in any terms less sensational. “A number of . . . well, deities, I suppose I’d have to say, to her movements. One has somehow attached itself to her, others watch her, there is some sort of blocking force that until now has been near her but seemingly unrelated to her, but now that seems to have involved itself as well, and just before Soma she disappeared entirely. That blocking force . . . it, ah, engulfed her . . . and she has not reappeared.”
Shaid rose halfway out of his seat, his face livid, but Veshre waved him into it. “She’s still aboard the ship. She had no place else to go. That last problem is one we can work with. The involvement of unknown deities is more problematical. She could have acquired powerful defenders.”
“Deities.” Shaid shook his head in disgust, leaned back in his seat, and templed his fingers in front of him. “Deities. Why has a deity attached itself to her?”
“It is a lesser deity,” Veshre emphasized. “They all are. None of them is recognized in the pantheon, none of them came from anywhere vital.”
“They came from somewhere, didn’t they?” Shaid did not enjoy the company of Wolves, a fact he usually kept to himself. But this morning, his edges showed. “They’ve attached themselves to the woman I want dead. Their presence must mean something.”
Veshre nodded. “Only one has actually attached itself to her,” she reminded him, “but yes, of course they mean something. We feel we’re going to be able to divine their intentions before too long. Obviously we have to be subtle—we don’t, after all, want their attention focused on us. That could be . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. Bad was such an understatement for the possible consequences of alerting unknown deities to the Wolves’ spying presence. Disastrous, on the other hand, would make Shaid less certain of the control she and her Wolves had of the situation, and at the moment, the power balance in the Family was unsteady. His lack of faith in her ability to carry out his program could be the deciding factor in his seeking outside assistance. The Wolves were already aware of his clandestine courtship of the Sabir Family. They needed to walk carefully indeed to maintain control of their situation, at least as long as Shaid was paraglese. “We’re dealing with the problem,” she said at last. “It’s unique, and we’ll let you know as we make progress. However, if we told you that we could kill the girl right now, we’d be lying. We’ll deal with h
er as soon as we understand the situation completely.”
Shaid didn’t look happy, but he did at last meet her eyes. “Very well. Keep me informed of what you discover, and come to me before you kill her. I want—” He smiled slowly and stopped.
Veshre didn’t like the look in his eyes, or his vulture’s smile, but she rose, gave him the quick, shallow bow appropriate for one of her rank, and said, “The moment I have news, you will have it as well.”
The other Wolves rose at her signal, made their obeisance, and followed her out the door.
* * *
The Veil parted and a final brilliant sphere of pale pink light erupted from the void. It spiraled down into the midst of a swarm of similar spheres—perhaps twenty in all. These danced around each other within the confines of an imaginary bubble, their subtle movements and shifting colors conveying at incredible speeds information that, had it been in the speech of mortals, would have translated into the following conversation:
We gather in freedom at last. Welcome, brethren of the Star Council.
We aren’t all met, Dafril. One of our number has not responded to the call.
Who is missing? Dafril touched minds with those present, then recoiled. This fills me with unspeakable dread. . . . What has become of Luercas? Has his soul suffered annihilation since our release from captivity?
Nereas answered. We’ve lost him, but he is not lost. Before you arrived, we sought him even as we sought you. You confirmed your approach; he . . . did not. He hides himself; those of us who sought him cannot find him, but his soul line has not been extinguished. He has not fallen—therefore we must assume that he has . . . strayed.
Then Luercas must be the first item we address. Does he actively oppose us, do you think?
All of us thought he stood with us. Since he expends such effort in evading and eluding us, we must suspect he only pretended agreement so that he could completely understand our plans and aspirations, the better to destroy them.
Why? Why would he stand against a new golden age? Why would he resist us?
A pause fell then—in real terms, it lasted no longer than the time a single bolt of lightning needed to flicker from one cloud to another, no longer than half of the blink of an eye, but in the context of those who participated in the conversation, it seemed to drag on forever.
