Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno

by Malan, Violette

  “It’s Epion,” she said, watching Falcos closely. His face changed. She saw resignation, and a touch of what she thought might be despair. She did not see fear of discovery, annoyance at having his plans upset, or even calculation.

  Mar made up her mind. “You said Gun shouldn’t have gone alone,” she said. “He didn’t. Epion went with him.” In as few words as possible, she and Gun between them explained what had happened to Gun the day before at the Caid ruins and what had happened afterward, when Mar had gone to Epion for help. As they spoke, Mar watched Falcos’ handsome face get whiter and whiter, until even his lips seemed to be leached of color—and she felt her breathing come easier.

  Even the best actor cannot make the blood drain from his face. She didn’t remember who had told her that, but watching Falcos now, Mar understood it.

  When they finished, Falcos sat with his hands pressed palm to palm, the tips of his index fingers resting on his lips. Not like someone who was calm and in control of himself, but like someone who wanted to give you the impression he was.

  “Let me guess.” Alaria’s voice was dry in the extreme. “Epion thought he should have been Tarkin.”

  “His mother, my father’s stepmother, certainly thought so. And why not? Such a thing doesn’t make a man a villain. Until I was born, as his younger brother Epion was my father’s heir. And I came very late, certainly after my father had given up hope of a child.” He looked around then, licking his lips. His color was beginning to return. “If he was disappointed—and he must have been, who would not be?—he never hated me for it. On the contrary, since Father was so much older ...” Falcos shook his head. “It was always Epion who—he would never ...” Falcos’ mouth formed a thin line, but his eyes had nowhere near as firm an expression.

  Mar’s stomach dropped. “Falcos, you said you quarreled with your father because he wasn’t sending you to Arderon, while Epion told us you didn’t want to go. When did your father tell you what he’d decided?”

  Falcos shook his head. “No, it was that my father had changed his mind. I was to go, and then, suddenly ...” he stopped with his mouth open.

  “Epion told you your father had changed his mind,” Gun said. “And why wouldn’t you believe him, your good uncle who had always been your friend.”

  “The one who started the quarrel he’s now carefully reminding people of,” Mar said.

  “But I spoke to my father,” Falcos said.

  Alaria put her hand on Falcos’ arm. “Spoke to him? Enquired politely what his plans were? Or confronted him and demanded explanations?”

  “You don’t understand. I thought he was throwing away our chance to set everything right again, to put ourselves right with the gods. I was so angry, and he didn’t listen—”

  “I wonder what Epion told him,” Mar said.

  They were looking at each other in silence when the door opened once more to admit the guard Julen. She was ashen under her tan, and her eyes seemed very round.

  “My lady,” she said. “I am here to escort you, and the Scholars of Valdomar, from this room, if it please you to leave it.”

  “Julen! Whatever are you talking about?” Alaria turned in her chair to face the guard completely. “What has happened?”

  “Escort them where?” Falcos was on his feet. “What are they accused of?”

  Julen’s gaze flicked from face to face. “Not them, my Lord Tarkin.” She swallowed. “I am here to escort them to safety. You are to remain here, under arrest. A full squad of the Palace Guard is outside.”

  Mar felt as though the air had been sucked from her body. She saw rather than felt Gun’s grip on her forearm. Alaria’s hand closed on the hilt of the dagger at her belt.

  “What is this? Come, surely you are allowed to tell me?”

  Julen cleared her throat and began again. “Lord Epion Akarion has called an emergency meeting of the council. He has accused you of your father’s death,” she said. “He has convinced enough of the council to have them ask for your arrest until a full investigation is made.”

  “Convinced them with what?” Gun was on his feet.

  Julen frowned, flicked her eyes to Falcos and back to Gun.

  “With this story of the quarrel.” Falcos sat down. “I killed my father so I would not have to go to Arderon. And what of the Princess Cleona? Am I accused of her death as well?”

  Julen glanced at Alaria before she lowered her eyes again.

  “Perhaps he’s saying you liked the younger princess better,” Gun said.

  Falcos began slapping the tabletop with his open right hand, at first softly and then harder and harder, until Alaria put her hand on his shoulder and he stopped, looking up at her. “Epion has told them I killed my father,” he said. “And because we told no one about these other killings, it may look as though he tells the truth.”

  “But it was your father’s decision to do so,” Mar said.

  “On Epion’s advice.” Falcos had his eyes shut.

  “And now we know why.” Alaria’s voice was cold. “How soon do you think he planned to use these killings in this way? Right from the start? Long before the Tarkin’s death, that I’m certain of.”

  Falcos took in a deep breath. “Go, all of you. You’ll be safer away from me, and you can work to help me from outside.” He looked at Alaria. “If, that is, you believe me.”

  Mar was astonished to see Alaria smile. “Of course I believe you,” she said. “The queens like you, and the horses of Arderon are excellent judges of character.”

  “All very well,” Gun added. “But as soon as we leave you alone, what’s to stop Epion from sending someone in to put a rope around your neck and claiming you killed yourself?” He looked toward the doors. “Can’t we bar the doors? There must be someone who will come to help us.”

  Julen gave a sharp nod, her lips tight, and turned toward the doors to the anteroom. Mar hadn’t noticed, but the decorative wooden pillars that flanked the doorway were in fact bars that slipped into the iron fittings that had been holding back the hangings. Julen signaled to Gun, and between them they fitted the first bar into place.

  “An excellent idea,” Falcos said, stepping up to help steady the second wooden beam. “But perhaps we have no need to remain in this room waiting. There is another way out, a secret passage from my mother’s bedroom.” He gestured toward the inner bedroom.

  “The guard knows nothing of this,” Julen protested.

  Falcos’ grin was a ghost of its former self. “That is because it is a secret passage.”

  “And don’t be so sure about that,” Alaria said. “There was a secret passage in the palace at Arderon and all us young cousins knew of it.”

  Mar glanced at Gun and caught his eye. He lifted his left eyebrow. They had both heard that the Mercenary Brotherhood had maps and drawings, some of them unbelievably old, floor plans of palaces and fortifications, including secret passages and tunnels. If Wolfshead and Lionsmane were here, would they have known of this one?

  “Did you tell anyone else about them,” Falcos was saying to Alaria.

  “Well, no, it was supposed to be for family only, but surely ...”

  “Exactly. It may be that Epion knows,” he added, turning to Julen. “But if you were sent here to get the princess out and leave me behind, my guess would be none of the guard outside these doors know of the passage.”

  “Which would mean Epion believes you don’t know,” Gun said. “All the easier for him to send someone in through the passage to dispose of you without being seen.”

  “Then we need to be quick, and go while they are still waiting for Julen to bring us out.” Alaria was already on her feet.

  Gun hung back, indecisive, as Falcos stood and waved them after him into the large bedroom of the suite. Not that he didn’t agree with Alaria, it was just that he and Mar had left their rooms emptyhanded—something they should have known better than to do. He wasn’t worried about weapons so much—he and Mar carried hardly anything of that kind�
��but what about the bowl? That was worth more than weaponry, for him at least, and perhaps for all of them. He had to hope that nothing would happen to make him do more than regret not having it.

  “More than once, when I was a child playing in the sitting room, my mother or one of her senior lady pages came out of this room, her bedroom, without having gone in,” Falcos was saying as Gun reached the doorway of the bedroom. “I asked her about it, and I finally got her to admit that there was a secret passage.”

  “While you open it, I’ll fetch packs.” Mar moved as if to join her but Alaria waved her back. “Julen will help me, we won’t be a minute,” she said, dashing past Gun into the outer room with the guard on her heels and disappearing into the other bedroom.

  “Where’s the entrance,” Mar asked.

  Gun looked around the bedroom, eyes narrowed. A lamp was burning brightly enough to cast sharp shadows from every piece of furniture. Unlike the sitting room, the Tarkina’s bedchamber had no large windows, nor balcony doors. Instead, narrow, arched eyebrow windows near the ceiling let light in through the room’s only exterior wall, and carefully placed mirrors directed that light around the room itself. To dim the room during the day—something that would definitely be needed in the heat of the summer—one would only need to turn the mirrors out of alignment.

  Ingenious, but it also meant that no one could come or go from the room using a window.

  “Not through the outside wall, obviously,” Mar had seen it as well. “You can tell from the angle of the light they’re no thicker here than they are in the outer room, and those aren’t thick enough for a passage.”

  Alaria and Julen came rushing back in, the guard dragging two back-packs, and Alaria with a strung bow over her shoulder, plus two swords hanging from her belt. “What, why isn’t it open?” She turned to Falcos. “I thought you knew where this passage was.”

  “I do know, that is, my mother told me, but I have never actually...” Falcos looked around the room, still frowning. Beside the dressing table with its silvered mirror and matching stool, there was only a settee, another small table with a chest holding jewelry placed centrally on it, and two armchairs padded with leather dyed in soft colors.

  Falcos was rubbing at his forehead as though he had the grandmother of all headaches. “Why am I so stupid?” he said through clenched teeth. “I do not know how to walk the Path of the Sun. I do not know how to open the secret door in my own mother’s room.” His eyes were squeezed shut and he was pressing his fingertips into his eyes.

  “Gun?” Mar’s voice was crisp.

  “Behind the headboard.” He’d answered automatically, he realized with a grin spreading across his face. Without focus or trance. He was getting better at this.

  The headboard was a massive structure of pale wood stained a pleasing shade of red. It reached the ceiling, was thick with carving and must be, the practical side of him thought, a nightmare to dust. There were two matching red tables, one on each side of the bed, and a narrow bench along the foot. There were no posts or rails to hold up bed curtains, from which Gun deduced that the weather here was never cold enough to require them.

  Aware that they were now all looking at him, Gun rubbed at his upper lip. He looked at the floor, square cream-colored tiles offset with smaller red accent tiles. No other coverings. There were hangings on the walls, however, above the bedside tables. He walked over to examine them more closely. Each was held up by its own wrought iron bar and was hung about a hand’s width out from the wall. He shook his head. Nothing was standing out as the trigger for the hidden mechanism.

  The sudden sound of pounding made them all look toward the outer room.

  “No need for worry.” Falcos sounded as though he were trying to convince himself, though his steady smile seemed genuine enough. “That’s just knocking. It will take them a while to bring up something heavy enough to break the door.”

  Gun doubted very much that a ram could be used in the outside corridor, but then again, breaking down doors wasn’t his primary field of study, so he couldn’t—

  “Gun, please try to focus.” Mar placed her hand on his forearm and squeezed.

  Alaria signaled to Julen to set the packs down and squinted up at the wall, frustration, and perhaps a little fear, making her wrinkle her nose. “Your mother used this door?”

  “She said she did, to visit my father.” Falcos shrugged at their questioning looks. “It was a game they played.”

  “So it’s not like the Path of the Sun, there’s no trick or magic to the key? I mean,” Alaria added when everyone turned to look at her, “there’s no magic to the taming of horses, at least, none past the natural touch for the animals that someone like Dhulyn Wolfshead has. You don’t break a horse, you gentle her. Study, observation, that’s the Arderon way. ‘Five minutes of thinking is worth thirty minutes of tugging the rein,’ my granna used to say.”

  All very well, Gun knew, and good advice most of the time. But they didn’t have any time, the increased noise from the other room reminded him, and now that he was trying, the answer didn’t seem to want to pop into his head. Mar pinched his arm hard enough to make him yelp.

  “The mechanism’s in the headboard as well,” he said.

  “Of course,” Alaria agreed. “The mechanism has to be easy enough for a woman to do it herself. Even an old woman. Maybe especially an old woman.” She came to stand next to Gun, examining the headboard as carefully as he was himself.

  “And it wouldn’t be so high that it would be difficult to reach in a hurry,” Mar said, also coming forward. “Nor so low that old joints would make it impossible.”

  Gun stepped up on the bed just as the rhythm of the pounding changed. It was slower now, and much heavier. An ax? He rubbed at his upper lip. There had to some clue, some guide that would show him . . . From this angle the carvings on the headboard took on different shapes, even the shadows seeming to fall differently, though the lamp had not been moved. What had appeared to be a pattern of stylized roses, now looked like simpler flowers, poppies perhaps, with their stems woven into a series of braids. Gun shifted, trying to place himself exactly in the center of the bed. The pattern was soothing, flowing smoothly . . . now the flowers looked as though they might be faces, peeping out from behind foliage and petals. The faces of animals, cats, hunting dogs, hawks, and horses. No, not horses. A horse. There was only one.

  “Here,” he said. He centered both thumbs on the horse head and pushed. With a soft click, the central panel in the headboard popped out, releasing a smell of stone and a cold draft of air.

  The sound of the ax blade was lighter now, as if it was almost through the door.

  “Grab the packs,” Falcos said as he leaped onto the bed beside Gun. “Follow me.”

  It had been a few days since they’d had a good practice, so when the Seven Brothers Shora was complete, Parno was not surprised to find himself a little short of breath—Dhulyn perhaps more so, as she lacked his training for the pipes. Still, he’d have wagered that no one else could have known they were in the least winded. The smells from cooking fires wafted over them, and Parno’s stomach rumbled.

  “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Really? You mean that wasn’t your stomach growling?”

  Parno smiled, then swung, but as he expected, Dhulyn danced away in time, laughing. The laughter faded out of her face, however, and Parno glanced over his shoulder to see what had caused the change. Of course. The young man called Scar-Face, with three of his fellow Espadryni, had apparently been watching the Shora, and now approached.

  “For a moment we thought we must come to your rescue, Parno Lionsmane. It looked as if your Partner might kill you.”

  Parno forced himself to smile, keeping his temper with some effort. If he was getting tired of this constant suspicion, he could only imagine how Dhulyn was feeling. Then a sense of fairness made him consider that this might be nothing more than the heavy banter that so often signaled friendship among males in certain
societies.

  “That was a Shora,” he said. “It’s the way we practice. Over and over, patterns within patterns, until there is not a blow or a strike that we have not learned to counter instinctively, without wasting time in thought.” He glanced at each of the Horsemen in turn. “That’s why we’re so hard to kill—barring accident or illness—and why we’re so highly valued by those going to war.”

  Scar-Face frowned as though he wanted to find something in Parno’s words to argue about, but it was one of the others behind him who spoke up next.

  “Some people are saying you are no Seer, Dhulyn Wolfshead,” the younger Horseman said. “That in your world our women were not Marked.”

  Dhulyn left off pretending to straighten her swords and daggers and moved to stand a little closer to Parno.

  “I am a Seer,” she said. “The Marked in our land are all what you call whole and safe, and that is the reason I am whole and safe. Not, as you might think, because I am not Marked.”

  “You’ve met many Marked then?” This was Scar-Face, his curiosity finally outweighing whatever wariness he might feel.

  Parno signaled Dhulyn with a flick of his fingers, and they began to walk, bringing the young Horsemen with them, toward their own tent.

  “The Marked aren’t particularly numerous in our land,” Dhulyn said. “But we’ve met many in our travels. Finders and Menders are comparatively common, and we have met a handful of Healers as well. Though the only other Seers we have ever met are across the Long Ocean, in the land of the Mortaxa.”

  “And all of the Marked we’ve met are exactly like other people, barring their talent,” Parno added. “They have families and children and are happy or sad or whatever the occasion calls for. Some are greedy and some are generous, some suspicious and others fair-minded.” He looked at Dhulyn pointedly, and when he was sure all the young men were looking at him, he added, in an exaggerated whisper, as if speaking to them privately, “Some have good tempers and some bad.”

  Dhulyn stuck her tongue out at him, and the younger of the Horsemen laughed. Even Scar-Face smiled.