“My lord Tarkin,” are the words that come out of his mouth. “Tek-aKet. You must come with me.”
Twenty-four
“THERE IS A PRECEDENT for madness.”
The next morning, Tek-aKet Tarkin’s voice sounded even more gruff than usual, as if someone had been sanding his vocal cords with a metal rasp. Dhulyn frowned. Or as if someone else has been using them.
“Madness is not considered grounds for the Ballot. Tau-Nuat Tarkin was always restrained to prevent him from harming himself,” Gun said from where he stood, shifting from foot to foot, near the door of the Tarkin’s bedroom.
“True,” Tek-aKet said. “And he’s an ancestor of mine, as it happens, so neither Guard nor Houses will be too shocked if they see me chained to the throne.” He lifted his hands the scant inches allowed by the silk ropes to illustrate his point.
It may have been a trick of the light, but Dhulyn could have sworn there was a smile hovering on the man’s lips. When Gun had come out of his Finder’s trance, they had all rushed immediately to the Tarkina, and they had found her, with tears in her eyes, already in Tek-aKet’s room clutching his bound left hand in both of hers. Now, Zelianora still sat on the edge of the bed, across from where Dhulyn had dragged up the chair that had been standing closer to the window.
“Do you remember anything of the Shadow?” she asked.
Zelianora raised her face from where she’d laid it on Tek-aKet’s hand. “Give him a chance to rest-” Her words died away as Tek-aKet tried to raise his hand.
“We may not have time, Zella. If it should come back…”
The Tarkina swallowed, and nodded her understanding. She reached up and smoothed back a lock of hair that had fallen into his face.
“Your pardon, Dhulyn Wolfshead. Pray proceed.”
Dhulyn looked at where Parno leaned with his back against the door of the room. He raised his left eyebrow, and lifted both shoulders the merest fraction. She inclined her head to the same degree.
“Lord Tarkin?”
“The first I remember is the pain in my head. I’d banged it once as a child, falling from my pony, and I thought-” He cleared his throat, “I thought that somehow I was there again, or there still. Thank you.” He raised his head to sip at the water cup the Tarkina held to his mouth. “I realized after some time had passed that I did not actually feel the pain.” Tek-aKet frowned. “It was as if I stood to one side and watched it more than felt it.” He turned to his wife. “I’ve had the same feeling when I’ve been fevered.”
And there were drugs, too, Dhulyn thought, that gave you the same feeling of detachment.
“Suddenly I wasn’t off to one side, but inside. Inside, looking out through my own eyes as if they belonged to someone else. Pushed to the back like a passenger in a carriage.” The Tarkin swallowed, but he shook his head when Zelianora lifted the water cup. His voice dropped to a thread of sound. “More time passed, and-some of that time-I wasn’t inside. I was… nowhere.” He looked up. “It, the thing I was inside, is nowhere.”
“NOT” Dhulyn said.
“What do you mean?” Gun took a step into the room.
“When I knocked it out, before I knocked it out. I saw it changing the room, and the space around itself, making it nothing.” She looked over the boy’s shoulder to Parno.
“The damaged part of the floor, in your bedroom, Zelianora,” Parno said. “The end of the bench that looked melted.”
“Like the Dead Lands.” It was no question, but Dhulyn nodded to Gun just the same.
“It is not simple damage,” she said. “He makes a nothing. No.” She shook her head, the words not making sense even to her. “Not nothing, for that’s the opposite of something, and therefore a thing in itself. Unmaking it, as if it never was.”
“Yes,” the Tarkin said dreamily, his eyes unfocused. “It unmakes, it returns the world to the never was.”
“Lord Tarkin.” Dhulyn tapped Tek-aKet sharply on the side of the face. “Do not drift away from us.”
The Tarkin pressed his lips together and took a deep breath through his nose. “It’s so old,” he said. “It wants its home. It loathes the body, the… the shape, and would destroy it.”
“Your body?” It was true the man looked older and worn, as though he’d been faded through too many washings.
The Tarkin nodded, but slowly, face contorted with the effort of making himself understood. “Yes, but also… the body of the world.”
“And the Sleeping God?” Gun asked.
“It fears the Sleeping God. Hates and fears it. It was the Sleeping God who broke it. Into parts. It knew nothing of parts-do you know, I just realized that. That’s the reason it hates the world and everything in it.” Tek-aKet dropped his voice as if he were sharing a secret. “We’re all made up of parts. Shapes within shapes.”
Dhulyn looked at Parno, saw her own confusion mirrored in his face. Shape and edges. That’s how she’d Seen it when she was close to the Green Shadow. What Tek-aKet saw as parts. But if what made up the world was strange to the Shadow-how could that be? Unless the Shadow was not of this world.
Then she Saw it. The mirror window that was the night sky. The sword cut that opened the doorway in the stars. The entrance of the mist. The entrance of something not of this world.
A Sight from the past, not the future. She’d realized with her Vision of the Finder’s fire from Navra, and the circle of Espadryni women that the Sight was showing her the past as well as the future, but, fool that she was, she’d never thought to examine her other Visions. Parno’s voice brought her back to the present moment. She would have to consider what the Vision of the doorway could tell her later.
“Does it know how the Sleeping God is called?” Parno was asking.
“It’s ironic. It knows irony. Only the Marked can call the Sleeping God. But they’ve forgotten how. He’s the only one left who knows. The Shadow.”
“But he kills them anyway.”
“Surely.” The Tarkin nodded, his eyes still focused on his memory. “What if they remember?”
“Now we know,” Parno said from the doorway.
The Tarkin licked his lips. Dhulyn leaned forward again with her cup of water. “You frightened it, Dhulyn Wolfshead. It knows what I know. When it rode Lok-iKol, it only suspected, but it knew you were a Seer as soon as it entered m-” He clamped his mouth shut as if against a scream. Dhulyn knew he was drawing upon the rags of his strength to be able to speak to them at all, to tell them what he must. Worse than any rape, the Green Shadow had been inside him, inside his mind. He had watched it wear his body, use it. Such a thing could do more than make a man mad-it could drive him to his own destruction.
“Enough, Lord Tarkin,” she said. “Now you must rest.”
“No.” It was a command, no matter how faint the voice. “It had to wait to destroy you,” Tek-aKet said finally, spittle forming at the corners of his mouth. “It had to wait until the effects of the blow to my head had worn off, and the body-my body, was strong again.”
“Lucky it hadn’t finished, then,” she said.
“You were too fast for it. Then, when the Scholar found me, its attention was turned away; it had gone to look through someone else’s eyes for a while.”
They all look at each other. “Beslyn-Tor?”
Tek-aKet lifted his right hand as far as the silk bindings would let him and waved it from side to side. “Not then. It was-oh the blessed Caids, it was Far-eFar. Who else?” His hand clutched and Dhulyn grasped it, wincing at the sudden strength of his grip. “Hid-oHid the Steward of Keys and Korvolyn the guard. It can look through their eyes, and,” his eyes locked on hers, “it can visit them.”
“Parno!”
But her Partner was already on his way out the door.
“Wolfshead, he must rest now. He must.” Zelianora rose to her feet, ready to argue, but Dhulyn also stood. They had heard the meat of it. If the Tarkin regained his strength, there might be more he could tell them, but if they taxe
d the man too much now-She forced her lips to smile in what she hoped was reassurance. He looked as though he’d been ill of a wasting sickness for months. As she began to release his hand, however, it tightened once more on hers.
“Dhulyn Wolfshead,” Tek-aKet said, his voice suddenly strong. “Promise me. If the Shadow returns, kill me. I lived too long in the never was. I can’t go back. If it returns, kill me.”
Dhulyn knew the right words to reassure him and opened her mouth to say them. Things were never so dark as you thought. He was not alone in the world. He could come back from anything but death. But she remembered her own sight of the NOT and the platitudes died unspoken.
“I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar. If the Green Shadow possesses you again, I will kill you.”
“Gun’s Found it once, why not have him Find it again?” Mar shook her head as Parno offered her a piece of roasted pheasant.
“What if all we’d manage was to chase it into someone else? Even if I find it again…” Gun looked at the food on his plate as if he couldn’t imagine how it had arrived there. “We need to know how to destroy it.” He picked up his knife and fork, but did nothing more.
“We need to awaken the Sleeping God,” Dhulyn said. Once Parno had returned from securing the men-all men, she noticed, and wondered if it was significant-and setting Brothers to watch them, they’d brought the youngsters once more to their own rooms.
“We don’t know how,” Parno said.
“What do we know?” Dhulyn said. “Gundaron, an exercise for your scholarship, summarize what we know about the Green Shadow.”
“We know it does not have innate shape or substance, and that it views these things as foreign and hateful. Therefore, it must originate in a world other than our own.” Gundaron tilted his head to one side, as if examining his own thought, before nodding in satisfaction. He sat up straighter and began cutting his food.
Mar began to protest, but subsided when Dhulyn held up her hand. No time now to describe the links in the chain of theory.
“We know it destroys the Marked to prevent them-to prevent us,” Gun amended with a nod at Dhulyn, “from calling the Sleeping God. Even though we don’t remember how,” he added, his voice turning thoughtful. “We know it wants the Mesticha Stone, though again, we don’t know why.”
“I have a theory,” Dhulyn said, “but finish your list.”
The corners of Gundaron’s mouth turned down. “I think I am finished.”
“We’d have done better to list the things we don’t know,” Parno said, throwing his own knife down in disgust.
“We may not have that much time,” Dhulyn said. She looked over her companions. “I’ve not spent much of my life in Imrion,” she said. “What does the Mesticha Stone look like?”
“Well,” Mar said when it appeared no one else would speak. “Like all the Jaldean relics, it’s believed to be a part of the Sleeping God.”
“Like the bracelet with green stones that was in the Tarkin’s treasure room?” Dhulyn picked a wing from the platter and tore it in two.
“It’s green, all the relics are,” Gundaron said. “But the Mesticha Stone is shaped like a hand carved from green stone. There’s a treatise-the original’s here in the Gotterang Library-that says there was a statue of the Sleeping God that shattered when the God last awoke, or because the God awoke, something like that. That’s what these relics really are, just bits of the statue.”
Dhulyn tossed down a bone. “Bits of a green statue that this Shadow absorbs into itself,” she said. “Beslyn-Tor said when he collected five relics of the God together for the first time, the God appeared and spoke to him.”
“Except he was mistaken,” Parno said. “It wasn’t the Sleeping God at all, it was this Green Shadow. And it made him keep on collecting the relics.” Parno thought, his head to one side. “Pieces of itself, do you think?”
“But if it has no form,” Mar said, “how can there be pieces of it?”
“Pieces of its first shape,” Dhulyn said, remembering the Green Shadow’s words to her. “Nothing exists in this world without form, so it must have taken a shape-been forced into a shape when it entered our world.”
“And the Sleeping God broke it,” Gundaron said. “ ‘And the awakened God, eyes shut still in sleep, sword aloft, turned his head, listened for the Intruder, and when he heard the cries of the fearful creature, struck again and again, turning the Intruder into dust, breaking it, bone and spirit.”’ Gun opened his eyes. “The original’s in verse,” he said, “but that’s the sense of it.”
“How can you be so sure?” Mar looked from one to the other.
“Because I’ve Seen it.”
At the fall of silence, Dhulyn looked up from lifting the bones from her fish to see three identical faces frozen in shock. “There’s a Vision I keep having,” she began, and told them what she’d Seen, the Mage with his book and sword, the mirror that was a window that was a door, the entrance of the green mist. The possessed Mage, green-eyed, unable to open the doorway again.
Parno froze in the act of refilling his wine cup. “It has to be. There are too many details that fit for it to be anything else.”
“But how?” Mar said. “I thought Seers saw only the future.”
“It’s the common assumption,” Gundaron said, eyes narrowed in thought. “But when I was researching the origins of the Espadryni,” he faltered, licking his lips. “In the city state of Shpadrajh, they answered any question that was put to them, and one old scrap of parchment was a partial list of the questions that had been asked in one year. Many seemed to make no sense, as they obviously concerned events which had already occurred. It was long thought to be a mistranslation, or at the least a misinterpretation, but if it’s not… the Sight isn’t limited in the way everyone assumes.”
Parno gave a low whistle. “Tek-aKet said the thing understood irony. Now we see why. It began its present existence in irony. It killed the only person who knew how to send it back.”
“Wolfshead.” Gun laid his fork down gently. “If you’ve Seen the Green Shadow coming into the world, you’ve Seen a time before the Sleeping God destroyed it.”
“I suppose I have. Blood! The Mage could be one of the Caids.”
“That means you could See how the Sleeping God is called.”
“I can’t make a Vision come when I want it to, and even if we could afford to wait until my woman’s time when the Sight is stronger, I can’t See what I want to See.”
“You must try, my heart. You had clear Visions when we were in Tenebro House, and that was not your woman’s time.”
“Fresnoyn.” Dhulyn and Gundaron spoke at once.
“I’d much rather have walked,” Gun said, squirming to find a more comfortable seat on the saddle.
“I thought you were in a hurry. Stop wiggling, you’re only annoying the horse.”
Dhulyn Wolfshead sounded as though she might be smiling, but she’d only turned her head enough for him to see the very corner of her mouth. Gun pressed his knees tightly against the saddle and tried to sit up straight as she’d instructed him. It had been years since he’d sat on a horse, and even though it was said that you never forgot how to ride, there seemed to be something lacking in his own recall. Had the beasts always been this far from the ground?
His teeth closed sharply on the inside of his cheek as his horse stopped short. Gingerly, the taste of blood on his tongue, he edged his horse next to Dhulyn’s.
“I thought we were in a hurry,” he said. He craned his neck to see what had stopped her, but all he could see was a group of children playing Blind Man. Three stood to one side, waiting their turn to play; four were chanting as they danced around the child in the center, blindfolded with what looked like a strip torn from the bottom of his shirt. Someone’ll be in trouble when he gets home tonight, Gun thought.
“Blind Man, Blind Man,
Which one will you choose?
Over and through, in and out he goes;
&nbs
p; The green tile or the blue, no one really knows
Are you a glad one or are you a sad one?
Are you a good one or are you a bad one?”
“Three days ago they were afraid to come out to play,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said, her eyes fixed on the children and their game.
“They wouldn’t be out now, if they knew what we know,” Gun said.
The Mercenary smiled her wolf’s grin. “We do know,” she said, “and yet here we are.” She clucked to her horse and Gun was jolted upright as his own beast followed.
“If this is a game,” Gun said to her back. “I don’t want to play anymore.”
One of the Tenebro guards must have recognized them as they rode along the street, for the gate of Tenebro House was rolling back as they approached, and a familiar figure appeared in the opening. Except for the change in his clothing and the different braiding of his hair, he looked exactly as he had the first time Dhulyn had seen him.
“Look to the Scholar,” she said to him as he came to help her down from Bloodbone. “He’s the one’s not ridden much.”
But another guard was stepping up to help Gundaron, and Karlyn-Tan stayed where he was, smiling up at her. “We thought it would be Parno Lionsmane with you,” he said. “Is your errand to the Tenebroso?”
“Is there a Tenebroso?”
“The lord Dal-eDal was called to the Tarkin’s bedside this morning, and confirmed before witnesses as Dal-eLad Tenebroso.”
“And do you address me as his Walls?”
Karlyn-Tan smiled again and shrugged, shaking his head in answer. “But I must do something while I’m here, eating his bread.”
The Sleeping God Page 45
