“No!” Gun cried out, holding his hands up, pushing away the worst of it. “Dhulyn Wolfshead wasn’t for the Jaldean. Lok-iKol wanted to keep her for himself.”

“And who else?” Dhulyn Wolfshead glanced over his shoulder and suddenly Gun knew exactly who was standing just behind him. He could almost smell the distinctive sweetness of the soap they’d used in Karlyn-Tan’s room.

“And Mar, too, if she proved to be a Finder as he suspected.” He squeezed the words out through the barrier his throat had become.

“As he suspected because you had told him so-”

“Enough, Parno.” The Wolfshead’s voice, though soft, had the force of a cracked whip. All the murmurs in the room died away. “We are all alive, which is more, apparently, than can be said for Lok-iKol,” she smiled her wolf’s smile, “on whom, as his mother wished, has fallen a terrible curse.” She turned to Gun. “What of you, Scholar of Valdomar?”

“I’ll kill him if you like,” Parno Lionsmane said, and there were a few murmurs in the room that showed others agreed.

“He meant no harm,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said, steel showing in her voice. “You forget the Scholarly mind, my soul. It isn’t real to them unless it’s in a book.”

Gundaron looked up at her. There was no horrified disbelief on her face, as there was in Parno’s. He felt a crumbling hollow in his mind where there had been a good solid wall. A wall that he’d built by sticking to his books, his notes. By not asking awkward questions and by telling himself that everything was all right. He had a sudden mental image of the little page Okiron once telling him that Lok made him nervous, and of himself telling the boy that everything was all right. He’d told himself over and over, since leaving Tenebro House, that he was doing all he could to make amends and there was no point in dwelling on the past. But he’d still been hiding something behind that wall. Of course he’d been horrified when he’d finally remembered, finally realized, what Lok-iKol and Beslyn-Tor were doing. But that hadn’t been why he’d wanted to leave. He’d wanted to leave out of fear for himself, not out of horror at what he’d done to others. Out of fear of the Green Shadow, and what it might still do to him. Out of fear of Pasillon. Not out of resolution and defiance, as Mar had done, but out of fear.

Of course the Outlander woman showed no surprise now; she’d known all along, she’d seen him in Lok-iKol’s study, and known what he was.

“We have strayed from our point.” Gun roused himself at the sound of the Tarkin’s voice. “What of the green-eyed Jaldean spirit? What can be done now?”

Gun cleared his throat. No one had offered him anything to drink, and he was afraid to ask. “Lord Dal is right, this is not Lok-iKol. The Shadow does not want what Lok-iKol wanted. If you wait to gather an army, my lords, there may not be an Imrion to save. From what I have seen, the Shadow doesn’t care about the country, only about the Sleeping God and the Marked.” Gun coughed again.

The Racha bird startled them all by suddenly opening and closing its wings.

“These people came together, my lord,” the Cloudman said. “Shall we accept what they told us without verification? You can withdraw to the mountains. An army can’t fight the Clouds,” he said, reminding them all of the old saying.

“Never before,” Gun agreed, “because the Tarkin always counted the cost of it, in time, in soldiers, and in lost revenues. But what if the cost was immaterial to him? What if it’s the Shadow that comes? The Green Shadow cares only to destroy the Marked.”

“What is this Shadow?” Fanryn said. “Is it the Sleeping God, awakening to destroy us?”

The Cloudman’s bark of laughter brought every head up. “Don’t be misled by the lies of fools. We have nothing to fear from the Sleeping God, awake or asleep. This is some enemy.”

“Enough.” The Tarkin’s soft baritone cut across and silenced all other noise. “Dal-eDal, if you have nothing further to add, would you withdraw, and allow me to consult with my advisers?”

“I am entirely in your hands, Tek-aKet,” the Tenebro man said. “But I urge you again, waste no time.”

Eighteen

“SO THE LORD DAL-EDAL is certain.” Cullen’s Racha bird Disha had hopped up on the table in front of him, and was eating tiny pieces of hard cheese from the palm of his hand. “I don’t find his certainty altogether reassuring, do you?” He and his Racha tilted their heads at each other, their movement a perfect mirror image. “It’s madness to believe him.” Cullen’s quiet tone was at odds with his words. “It is a trick. These men have been sent by the Tenebroso Lok-iKol to lure you into acting before you are prepared.”

“Mercenaries?” Tek-aKet looked up from the food lying untouched on his plate.

“What of Karlyn-Tan?” Dhulyn said. “The oaths taken by the Stewards of a House are as binding as those taken by Mercenaries… or by Racha Clouds,” she added, inclining her head toward Cullen and Disha. “Do you suggest that he has not been Cast Out? A Steward of Walls does not leave his post for a trick, not even so weighty a trick as this one.”

“But, Dhulyn.” Now it was Thionan who spoke up from her perch on the nearby table. “Demons? Possession by green shadows? We can’t make plans based on such ravings. Has any of us, any we can trust, seen this thing?”

“I have.”

In the silence you could hear the rustling of Disha’s feathers as she turned her head to look.

“You, Lionsmane?” Alkoryn’s harsh whisper held the surprise that was mirrored on every other face in the room. Dhulyn almost smiled. Parno was supposed to be the ordinary soul, she was the strange one.

“In the eyes of a Jaldean priest in Navra. A priest who was standing at the back of a mob while that mob burned down a Finder’s house, with his children still inside.”

“I also have seen it,” Dhulyn added.

“In Navra?”

“In a Vision.”

Cullen and Disha leaned forward, their heads at an identical tilt. Disha half opened her wings and took two rocking steps toward Dhulyn on her taloned feet. Dhulyn hesitated, aware that everyone in the room waited for her next words. Should she reveal what she’d seen of the Scholar, or should she keep it to herself until she’d had a chance to investigate it further? Did Gundaron of Valdomar know that the Green Shadow had also looked through his eyes? It might be an idea to find out before exposing him.

“I have Seen a green-eyed Lok-iKol on the Carnelian Throne, his shadow misshapen on the wall behind him.”

Cullen and Disha nodded, satisfied, but the Tarkin’s two guardsmen showed by their thinned lips and narrowed eyes that belief was mixing with something closer to fear in their thoughts. Dhulyn sighed, and pressed her lips together. It was exactly to avoid that look that she’d always kept her Mark to herself.

The Tarkin had seen it also. “Let me remind you,” he said to his men. “If Dhulyn Wolfshead was not Marked, I would be dead. And you, who gave oaths to defend me to the death, would be either dead as well, or alive and forsworn. She has done us all a great service.” Both men had the grace to look shamefaced at their feet. Tek-aKet nodded, satisfied.

“May I have your counsel for action?”

Slowly Dhulyn realized that everyone in the room, Cloudman, Racha bird, Mercenary Brothers-Tarkin and his guardsmen-all were looking at her. She glanced first at Parno, then at Alkoryn. Both men nodded to her.

“The Green Shadow exists,” she said. “Whatever its ultimate goal, it begins by destroying the Marked.” She glanced around at the faces intent on her words. “That is where it begins. We cannot know how it will continue.”

“It begins where it fears the most, you think?” Parno had obviously been giving this some thought.

“Very likely,” Dhulyn agreed. “If it fears the Marked, it means the Marked can harm it somehow. We need to find out how.”