The Storm Witch

by Violette Malan

  Dhulyn touched her forehead. “I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar. I was Schooled by Dorian of the River, the Black Traveler.”

  “If you would sit?” He indicated the fourth chair. Clearly, Dhulyn thought, the best chair in the room.

  When they were all seated, and ganje had been offered and poured, the Healer spoke again.

  “In what way can we serve you, Tara Paledyn?”

  Dhulyn had thought of several ways to open the discussion she wanted to have, but the girl Medolyn had given her an opening she could not ignore. “Tell me,” she said. “Why do you not Heal that young woman’s foot?”

  From the tightening of lips and the narrowing of eyes, all three of the Marked were at least somewhat offended by her question. Good. Get them off-balance.

  “For the same reason I don’t Heal this.” Ellis Healer held up his left hand. There was an extra finger between the thumb and first finger. Ah, Dhulyn thought, this was the Healer she’d been seeing in her Visions.

  “Medolyn’s foot is not the result of injury. She was born with it. As I was born with my extra finger. There is no Healer living who has enough life energy to Heal a defect of birth, at least not on this side of the Long Ocean.” His tone was not quite sharp enough to be disrespectful, but the intention was there.

  “I have not heard that Healers could not heal birth defects,” Dhulyn said evenly. Her words surprised them, that much she could see. “But I have never seen a Mark with such a defect—though I admit, I have not seen more than a few dozen in my lifetime.”

  The Mender, Rascon, threw her hands into the air. “We’ve been telling the cursed Tarxins for generations that we can’t be bred like cattle without harm being done, to our Marks as well as to ourselves, but they’ve never listened.”

  “Have you tried refusing your services?” Dhulyn was sure she knew the answer, but was curious as to how they would phrase it.

  “There’s a limit to how much we can defy the Tarxin,” Ellis said bluntly. “According to our agreement with the Tarxinate, we are given the privileges of home, roof, table, and bed. In return we owe our services. Theoretically, we have neutrality and privacy, self-government within the shelter of the Tarxinate. However . . .” The three Marked exchanged a glance. “In recent months, the present Tarxin has been . . . encroaching on our privileges.”

  “Perhaps you could help us?” Rascon Mender sat forward in her eagerness, hope in her eyes.

  Dhulyn did not know what to answer. Her task here was to kill the Storm Witch and avenge the death of her Partner. The Common Rule, and her own heart, demanded it. She couldn’t let the plight of these people deflect her from her goal. But the Marked were, in some measure, her people as well. If they were in need, could she turn her back on them? Normally, the Common Rule kept the Mercenary Brotherhood politically neutral, but surely she could speak to Remm Shalyn. Perhaps some of his contacts . . . ?

  Dhulyn gave herself a mental shake. “I have come, as you know, with my own tasks to accomplish.” Their faces, which had begun to relax, tightened once more. “If I am successful,” she continued. “It may be that I can advise you as well.” That would have to satisfy them, and herself, for now. Further than that she could not go.

  “Tell us, then, how may we serve you?”

  But even now, Dhulyn found she was unwilling to let the question of their abilities lie.

  “You’ll forgive my pursuing this question,” she said. “But it may touch on my primary task. How is it that you would have life force enough to restore a spirit to its body, but insufficient to Heal yourself?”

  “If I may answer.” The others nodded and let Javen Finder continue. “Each Mark uses the life force of the Marked one,” she said. “The harder the task, the greater the amount of life force used.”

  Dhulyn stifled her impatience. She’d asked, and now she had to listen.

  “Life force is restored in the Marked one by eating, by sleep, and in some cases by singing, or playing music. But to Heal, for example, a defect of birth, that would require an amount of life force equivalent to the birth itself.”

  Dhulyn leaned forward, a thought having occurred to her. “I have seen Finders use scrying bowls, and Menders as well, use some tool symbolic of what they do, to focus their concentration. Would this not help you use less life force?”

  Javen Finder leaned forward as well, eagerness plain on her face. “Do you know where we could find these things, Paledyn? Scholars have told us that such items were once used, but even working together, none of us Finders have been able to locate such a thing.”

  “The Nomads aren’t able to trade for them, no matter what we offer in exchange—or so they say,” Rascon Mender said, nodding.

  “They say truly. The ones I have seen were the property of the Marked ones who used them,” Dhulyn said. “In all my travels I have never seen them for sale, or trade.” Though she had seen, in a Scholars’ Library, an ancient text describing how a Finder’s bowl was made—but best to say nothing of that now. No point in giving false hopes; this would be something else for Remm Shalyn to investigate for her.

  Ellis Healer stared off into the middle distance. “If we were able, if we could increase our powers, we’d be able to save the pregnancies that do not come to term, and Heal the babies that do not live. There’d be more of us, more Healers, more Seers for that matter. It’s all we can do right now to keep the White Twins healthy, the Slain One knows, and when they die, we’ll have no more Seers.” Ellis blinked, drawing in a deep breath and looking around at his colleagues.

  Rascon Mender tossed back her ganje and frowned down at her empty cup.

  “Are they barren, then?” Dhulyn was asking as much for herself as for them.

  “As good as. You know that only women are Seers?” Dhulyn nodded. “With Seers, the Mark itself consumes the life force that they would use to produce a child. They can either See or bear children, not both. In order to produce a child, there must be enough Seers that the others get all the Visions, while each in turn produces a child.”

  Well, so many of her questions answered, Dhulyn thought. Here was why the Visions seemed to be linked to her woman’s cycle, stronger and weaker as the blood came and went. And here was the reason she had never borne any children of her own.

  “How many must there be?”

  Javen Finder spread her hands. “Who can know? The White Twins were born of two Healers, maybe twenty years after the last Seer died. So far as our records go, there have never been more than three Seers at one time.”

  “And no Marked appear in the outside population?”

  Here the three Marked exchanged a look among themselves. “Sometimes, among the slaves, yes,” Ellis Healer said. “It’s our right to inspect any child when they reach the correct age, but we rarely obtain such a child from a Noble House.”

  “Unless the child is female.” All three lowered their eyes, and Rascon Mender fussed with the jug of ganje, refilling cups.

  Dhulyn was not surprised. A handy way to rid yourself of an unwanted child, and the female children would be the most unwanted.

  “You have given me much to think about,” she said finally, setting her cup of ganje down on the table to her right hand. “Now tell me, how did the Storm Witch come to inhabit the body of the Tarxin’s daughter?”

  Shock, and something like awe rippled across their faces before the Marked ones regained control of their features. Good, Dhulyn thought. They’ll be more likely to tell me the truth if they think I already know. Still, at first it seemed they wouldn’t say anything at all; each looked at the others, as if no one wanted to begin.

  “Oh, for Sun and Moon,” Dhulyn said, rubbing her forehead with the fingers of her left hand. “Speak freely, I beg you. I give you my oath as a—as a Paledyn that you will not suffer because you have told me the truth.”

  Rascon Mender looked at Javen Finder, and both turned to Ellis Healer. Finally, clearing his throat, he began.

  “You must consider,
Tara Paledyn, that we were not summoned for some two or three days after the Tara Xendra fell.”

  “How did she fall, exactly?” Dhulyn realized she had been thinking along the lines of a fall from a horse, but of course, without horses . . .

  “She had been playing in the gardens above, and slipped while running along the top of a wall,” Javen said.

  “There is no doubt that she hit her head, the swelling and discoloration were still quite noticeable when we viewed her,” Ellis continued. “We were told that she lost consciousness for only a very short period at that time, and while she complained of headache, she did eat her supper that evening, and fell asleep normally.”

  “You understand,” cut in Rascon. “All this is what we were told at the time; we’ve no way to know whether any of it’s true. The lady pages wouldn’t have wanted the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, to know that they’d let his child hurt herself, so they might not have told soon enough, you see? They might have said she was fine at first just to save themselves.”

  “In any case, when we examined her, we found that while the body lived, it was empty, the soul was gone, and we so informed the Tarxin, Light of the Sun.”

  “Then I made the mistake of saying the soul was ‘lost,’ you see, meaning to speak it softly like, and the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, told Javen here to Find it.” Rascon shook her head, and still another curl fell loose from her combs.

  “And the thing was, I did Find a soul almost right away.” Javen gestured with her hands. “And it was so eager to get into the body that I took it for the Tara’s own soul, else why so eager?”

  “So you Found, Healed, and Mended,” Dhulyn said. “You have placed this soul into the Tara’s body. Can you take it out? Will taking it out destroy it?”

  Again, the exchange of looks between the Marked ones. Finally, Javen spoke up. “Tara Paledyn. What we tell you now no one else knows, not even others here in the Sanctuary.”

  “We trust in your goodness, and in your word, you see.” Rascon evidently felt she needed to make things clear.

  “You may do so,” Dhulyn said.

  “Four days after the events we tell you of, we came again to the Tara Xendra’s apartments, to make sure she was feeling no further ill effects,” Javen said. “It was obvious to us that she was no longer the Tara Xendra. We feared then what the Tarxin, Light of the Sun, might do.”

  “It’s one thing not to heal his daughter, you see. It’s another entirely to set some foreign spirit masquerading about in his daughter’s body.” Rascon’s brisk tone was thinly spread over a very real fear.

  “What did you do?” For it was obvious from their shifting and throat clearing that they had done something.

  “We expelled the spirit from the body.” Ellis Healer’s voice was low.

  “What?”

  “We were trying—we thought we might Find the real Xendra after all, you see, since we knew this one wasn’t her. But it didn’t stay expelled, that was the problem. We could push it out, but we couldn’t keep it out.”

  “So even if the real child’s spirit is out there to be Found . . .”

  “It can’t get back into its own body, no, because the body’s occupied, isn’t it?” Rascon slapped her hands on her knees.

  “Tara Paledyn, there is more.” The Healer laced his fingers together. “Three times we tried to expel the strange spirit, and each time there were great storms, with winds and lightnings. Once, even ice fell from the sky. It was clear to us that the spirit possessing the child’s body was a Weather Mage, such as the old books speak of. We made no further attempts.”

  “But you can expel the Storm Witch, you can put the real child’s soul back?”

  “Very likely, the true soul would be easy to Heal and Mend quickly, but Paledyn, we do not have the real child’s soul.”

  Dhulyn tapped her fingers on the arm of her chair. “Find it,” she said. “Perhaps now that the stronger soul of the Storm Witch is no longer,” Dhulyn waved her hands, “distracting you, you can Find the real soul more easily.”

  Javen Finder frowned, looking inward before she spoke. “Well, if you say so, Tara Paledyn. I’ll try.”

  Had she made the right decision, Dhulyn wondered? Would the Storm Witch be easier, or harder to destroy outside of the body? Instinct told her that if the spirit wanted so desperately to stay in the body, expelling it was the right thing to do. Would that be the same as destroying it?

  Dhulyn sighed. At the very least, she would know more. And knowledge was always like a good sword in the hand of someone who knew how to use it.

  The Seers’ section of the Sanctuary was well apart from the areas of the other Marked, and unlike them, the White Twins never came out of their rooms. Petitioners, even the Tarxin himself, had to go or send to them. Xerwin felt his skin crawl and forced his shoulders to stop creeping up around his ears. This was the real reason he hadn’t wanted Dhulyn Wolfshead to accompany him on his errand. How could he let her see his reaction to the Seers?

  As usual, he was met beyond the Seers’ door by one of the elderly women who served as the White Twins’ attendants. He had sent ahead to let them know he was coming. Early on, he’d learned that when he didn’t, he wasn’t likely to get a useful Vision, if he got one at all.

  “Right this way, Tar Xerwin, if you please,” the woman said the same way she always did. She kept her hands folded at her waist and toddled in front of him on her short legs like a self-important hen.

  The White Twins had one of the innermost rooms of the Sanctuary, where no sunlight could find them, even by accident. Nor were their personal rooms lit by use of the mirrored panels that brought true sunlight into the inner rooms of many of the Noble Houses. This did not mean the Twins had no light in their rooms, however. The sisters were said to be afraid of the dark, and so there were always lamps lit and candles burning, dozens of them, set into cloudy glass bowls or covered with colored glass shades.

  The two women were playing a game with chalks and vera tiles on the floor when he was ushered into their day room. Drawing contorted stick figures and images of the Slain God knew what strange things. As always when they saw him, they ran squealing to touch his clothes and his hair with their long white fingers, exclaiming over its color and darkness, and holding up the ends of their own white braids to compare.

  “Now then, now then,” he said, as he always did, sounding in his own ears like some wise old uncle from a play. “If you sit down and behave yourselves, I’ve got chocolate for you.”

  “We know you, don’t we,” said one, while the other nodded, and nodded and kept on nodding. They had names, but since they never answered to them, no one used them, calling them only “girls” or “my dears.”

  Sometimes it was hard to remember that these women were older than he was, and that though their faces were unlined, there should perhaps be some gray starting to show in the hair that had always been whiter than the sands of the beach.

  “Of course you know me, I’m Xerwin,” he said. They wouldn’t remember his rank, or anyone else’s for that matter, which Xerwin had always suspected was one of the reasons the Tarxin did not like to come. They nodded, only twice thank the Slain God, but their pink eyes were empty.

  “Xerwin, Xerwin, Xerwin,” sang one, sinking back to the floor.

  “That’s right, and now you’re going to answer some questions for me, aren’t you?”

  “You said you had chocolate,” the first one said, and the other nodded again.

  “Are you sitting in your big chair? Are you behaving yourselves?” He arched his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips, as they giggled and ran for their chairs. He’d learned that if he treated the Twins as he’d treated Xendra when she was five or six, he’d get the best response.

  “Now, can you sing your song for me?”

  “We know lots of songs,” the twin on the left said.

  “But for chocolate you’ll sing your special song, you know the one I like?” Xerwin began to hum a simple, rep
etitive tune. The twin on the left clapped her hands and begun to hum as well, while the twin on the right began to sing. Soon, her sister had joined her.

  The words were nonsense as far as Xerwin could tell, though when he came for a Vision they always sang the same words, and as they sang, their voices grew stronger, deepened. They sat very still, clasping hands, breathing in unison. They reached the point in the song where they always stopped, and sat, quietly, their faces relaxed, older, their eyes focused to some great distance, true, but focused in a way they had not been moments before.

  Recognizing his moment, Xerwin had his question ready. “What does the coming of the Paledyn mean for the Mortaxa?”

  “We see a tall woman, a warrior, hair like old blood, scarred of face, but clean of soul and vision. She leads a small, dark child by the hand. They are singing.” Both white women smiled, identical smiles, and Xerwin’s breath caught in his throat.

  “They sing a song we all know, though you never sing it with us,” the twin on the right said.

  Xerwin shuddered. This woman, the woman who was speaking now, and her sister—assured, confident, smiling at some secret humor—why did they appear only when the twins were Seeing? Where were they when the Visions were gone?

  “When the Paledyn comes, rain will fall in the desert; the hind chase the lion; the creatures of the sea will walk the beaches.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Who is simple now? Who the child?” The twin on the left looked directly at him and smiled. “Should we speak more plain? The Paledyn changes all. Nothing will be as it was. The world as you know it will be gone, forever.”

  “For better or for worse?” But now they no longer listened.

  “Trees will flower in winter; the sea will rise, the land ripple and flow.”