“The simplest?” Dhulyn drew down her brows in a frown, shaking her head. “And what does it tell you?”

Dal spread his hands, palms raised. “That I can’t say. No one in my family ever had the Sight, to my knowledge. But I thought that you…”

Dhulyn let her lower lip slip from between her teeth. “I’ve seen these markings before,” she said. She tapped one of the rectangle tiles with her fingernail. “Around the base of Mar’s bowl. They’re-” the blood rushed to her ears. “They’re Marks.” She looked up, smiling, but Dal was frowning his incomprehension. “Marks,” she said again. “This one’s a Seer,” she tapped the circled dot. “It looks like an eye. This one’s a Finder, Gundaron says Finding is like following a straight line.”

Now Dal was nodding. “So one of these is a Healer-”

“Probably the square.”

“And the other’s a Mender.”

“But this one,” Dhulyn tapped the unique tile with its concentric circles. “I’ve no idea what this one might be. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Because it’s a Lens,” Gun said from the doorway. Dal jumped in his seat, but Dhulyn didn’t even look around. “The missing Mark.”

“What do you mean, my Scholar?”

Gundaron held up the scroll in his hand. “It’s in the Commentaries, the part I couldn’t remember, Holderon writes about an ancient text of the Caids, one that existed in his day but doesn’t any longer, though some of the stories it was said to contain have come down to us in the forms of folk songs and plays. Anyway, in the part that I’m referring to, Holderon appears to be answering the argument of another Scholar, and it’s Holderon’s position that the other Scholar is mistaken, that the Missing Mark, the so-called Lens, doesn’t exist.”

“A fifth Mark? What was his logic?”

“That while everyone knew of the other Marks, no one had ever encountered a Lens.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t a person,” Dal said. “Perhaps it was an artifact?”

An artifact, Dhulyn thought. A round artifact. One, perhaps, that had somewhere along the line been disguised as something more ordinary, and therefore not nearly as old. Something round could easily be disguised as… Dhulyn’s blood began to pound in her ears. As a bowl, for example.

Dal and Gundaron had gone on talking, and after a moment Dhulyn realized they were suggesting that she try Seeing, using the tiles.

“I’m afraid there is no fresnoyn,” Gundaron was saying. “I’ve tried Finding, but I get nothing.”

“Possibly Lok-iKol used it,” Dhulyn said, shelving her thoughts about the bowl. It would wait until they were back in the Dome. “Let me see what the tiles can do. Which shall I use?”

“I should think you’d be the Mercenary of Swords,” Dal said. “You’re not old enough to use the Tarkina’s tile.”

“I use my own tile?”

“A Sight that involved you might prove to be most useful,” Dal suggested.

Dhulyn nodded and took the tile he handed her, setting it down in the center of the table as Dal had shown her. How do I call the Sleeping God? she asked herself. As she placed the tiles she thought of as the other Marks, Dal swept the rest off the table, and shook them in their box. As they were placed, Dhulyn tried not to guide her thoughts, but to let them float freely, making whatever associations they might form by themselves. Her Visions usually came to her in her sleep; those very few she’d had in her waking state had always fallen upon her like a blow. Unlike Gundaron, she had never used her Mark deliberately, never sought after a Vision. Perhaps she would See one, though, if their methods were not too broken. And providing the Visions were not so thoroughly linked to her woman’s time that this effort was wasted. That tile was the Tarkin of Swords, clearly a man and he was holding a type of sword very much like one she owns, though she doesn’t use it much as it’s…

NOT THE SWORD OF A HORSEMAN. SHE CAN SEE NOW THAT THE MERCENARY’S CLOTHES ARE BRIGHTLY COLORED, AND FIT HIM CLOSELY EXCEPT FOR THE SLEEVES WHICH FALL FROM HIS SHOULDERS LIKE INVERTED LILIES.

HE TURNS AWAY FROM THE STRANGELY TIDY WORKTABLE AND TOWARD A CIRCULAR MIRROR, AS TALL AS HE IS HIMSELF. THE MIRROR DOESN’T REFLECT THE ROOM, HOWEVER, BUT SHOWS A NIGHT SKY FULL OF STARS. HIS LIPS MOVE AND SHE SEES HIM NOW FROM THAT SIDE, AS IF SHE WERE STANDING IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR AND HIS LIPS FORM WHAT DHULYN KNOWS ARE THE WORDS FROM THE BOOK. ADELGARREMBIL HE SAYS, AND THEN ACUCHEEYAROB. A FOREIGN TONGUE?

“Wolfshead. Wolfshead wake up.”

Dhulyn snatched the hand from her shoulder and only just stopped from breaking the wrist when she realized the person shaking her was Mar-eMar. Dhulyn’s heart grew cold. The little Dove was out of breath and as pale as lilies. Behind her, in the doorway of Dal-eLad’s salon, was the Mercenary Brother Oswin Battlehammer.

“Dhulyn, hurry. Tek-aKet’s sitting on the Carnelian Throne and he’s-” she shot a glance over her shoulder at the Brother in the doorway. “He’s raving.”

“Where’s Parno?” Dhulyn was already into the hallway and heading to the courtyard where Bloodbone waited.

“At the doors to the throne room letting no one in, but you must…”

Mar fell behind, but Dhulyn went on running. She knew perfectly well what the girl had been about to say. “You must hurry.” Of course she must. Wait too long, and Parno would go in without her.

Twenty-five

“HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?” Dhulyn stood with her right hand pressed tightly against the ornate carving of the doors to the Carnelian Throne Room, as if she could somehow reach through and sense what was happening inside.

“You think I know?” Parno growled. “I was helping the Tarkina with the Semlorian ambassador when the page, Telian-Han, came running for me. He’d gone to the Tarkin’s room with the midday meal and found the guard who’d been left there dead on the floor.”

“And the Tarkina?”

“Keeping the ambassador calm, I imagine.” Parno closed his fingers around her upper arm. “Dhulyn, my heart, don’t do it. It doesn’t have a head wound now. What if it-it must know you are coming? The best you’ll accomplish is to send it to another body.”

“You prefer to have the Green Shadow as Tarkin of Imrion?” She looked at him as if she didn’t even feel his grip on her arm. Her eyes were as bright as the edge of a knife.

“Besides, I promised him I would kill him. I gave my word.”

“We have only you and Gundaron. If it destroys you before you can kill Tek-aKet, we will never prevail against it.”

“I gave my word.”

“At least let me come in with you.” He knew it was no use even before she started shaking her head.

“I can kill him,” she said. “I don’t know that I could kill you if…

Parno let his hand drop to his side. He’d known what her answer would be, but he’d had to try. She was what she was. When Dhulyn took his face in her hands, he did not pull away.

“Beslyn-Tor said, ‘like this,’ did he not?” Dhulyn’s steel-gray eyes fixed on his.

Parno closed his hands around her wrists. “He did.”

“Eye-to-eye, that’s how the Shadow moves, and how, I’ll wager, he destroys.”

“And so?”

“And so? Blindfold me, you idiot.”

Eyes covered with a piece of silk torn from one of the hangings and threaded through the braids of her hair for security, Dhulyn settled her shoulders, breathing deeply, slowly. Beginning the discipline she privately thought of as Blind Parno’s Shora, from when the horizon sickness had forced her Partner to go blindfolded to cross the Blasonar Plains. She became conscious of the timing of her breathing, the movement of the air, so that each breath took the same length of time going in and going out. In. Out. As her breathing fell into a rhythm, as her body and her thoughts calmed, in the darkness of the blindfold her senses woke. She heard the air move through Parno’s lungs, and the soft susurration of his clothes as they adjusted to the movement of his chest. She felt her own skin move against her vest as she breathed, and pushed her senses outward.