The Storm Witch (33 page)

“What could
you
know about the Caids?” Too late, Carcali realized she hadn’t denied the suggestion.

“I have spent more than a year in a Scholars’ Library. I know things that the common sword-wearer does not know, even across the Long Ocean, where I think such things are better understood than they are here. I know that the Caids were not gods, as some people think of them, but people like ourselves. And I know that among them were many powerful Mages, some powerful enough to manipulate even the fabric of space and time. And some who were foolish enough to do it. So if you are, as I suspect, one of these, why do you not go back?”

“I can’t.” The words were out before Carcali could stop them, pushed by the guilt that was always hovering in the back of her mind, no matter how much she tried to ignore it. She would have given anything for the words to be unsaid—even she could hear the longing and despair that informed them.

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. It’s not possible.” Carcali spoke through clenched teeth. Did the woman think she hadn’t
tried
? Would she have suffered all that time trapped in the weatherspheres if there had been a way home?

The Paledyn’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do there, that you can’t go back?”

Carcali’s heart stopped in her chest, her breath in her throat. She closed her mouth tight against the desire to tell her, to blurt it out.
I destroyed the world. Tell her, say it.
But then reason reasserted itself. The Paledyn
couldn’t
know. That would be impossible. This was just good intuition, nothing more. She could tell that Carcali felt guilty about
something,
and was using that knowledge like a sharp knife to probe deeper. Maybe there was something to this Schooling of hers after all, if it led to such perception.

“It is a reasonable question,” the woman said, when Carcali did not answer. “Considering the evil you have done here. Do you not, even now, occupy the body that belongs to another, forcing a child’s spirit to wander alone and afraid? There is cold in summer, rain in the desert. Lightning cracking the sky. Hailstorms, hurricanes, and tempests. Grain dies flooded in the field, snow and ice fall on the ocean. There will be famine and there has been—” Here the Paledyn’s voice caught. “Shipwreck.”

Carcali grasped the edge of the table to help her stay in her seat as the room around her swayed. “I didn’t do any of those things!” She looked down at her maps, at the lines she’d drawn between mountain range, shoreline, and valley. “My changes have all been local. You’re lying.”

The Paledyn seemed genuinely surprised, even to the extent of turning pale enough for her eyebrows to stand out like bloodstains. “Are you not a Storm Witch—
the
Storm Witch? Even I, in my Schooling aboard a fast ship, learned that where weather is involved, there is no such thing as ‘local.’ If you did not do these things, who did? If you believe I lie about the ravages of your storms, why do you not go, find out?” She lifted her arms in an unmistakable way, in the way a Weather Mage did to enter the spheres, and Carcali’s stomach dropped. How could the woman know these things?

“I can’t. I can’t.” Carcali put her face down on the backs of her clenched hands. How could this be happening? But she knew how, even if no one else did. Without leaving her body and entering completely into the weatherspheres, she had less control, and with less control, even the small changes she’d been making could cause damage elsewhere.

“You speak—and you act—like the child you are in appearance, rather than the woman I know you to be,” the Paledyn said. “You have power, but you have no discipline. Power without discipline is dangerous.”

Carcali stared at the woman on the other side of the table. How could she
know
these things? Those were almost the very words that the Artists had said to her.

“Help me.” Only a few minutes ago, Carcali could never have imagined asking this woman—tattooed and scarred barbarian, she’d called her—for help. But somehow the Paledyn knew and understood things no one else here seemed to know. “Please, can you help me,” she repeated. “It’s the Tarxin, he’s threatening me. If I don’t do what he says . . .” Carcali let her words die away. The Paledyn was sitting rigid in her chair, her eyes icy, her face a mask of stone.

Carcali pulled herself up straight, hardening her own face. This woman wasn’t going to help her, Carcali thought, shocked at the depth of her disappointment. “Please leave,” she said. Inside she was screaming
GET OUT,
but she managed to control herself. “I don’t know what you want. I can’t help you.” She heard the bitterness in her voice. Just for a moment she’d allowed herself to hope.

There was an odd look on the Paledyn’s face as she stood and looked down at Carcali. Her eyes were narrowed, a muscle bunched at the side of her jaw. She was very pale, but somehow her eyes were not so cold. As soon as the door was closed behind her, Carcali ran over and threw the latch, leaned with her hand against the door, breathing hard.

She wasn’t going to let the Paledyn Dhulyn Wolfshead make her feel guilty—at least, no more guilty than she already felt. She wrapped her arms around herself. The weather changes—they were the Tarxin’s fault. If he’d left her alone, or at least given her more time . . . She was doing the best she could, but after so long without a body—she’d been so confused at first—her Art was still just barely up to apprentice standards. And as for the child, well, Carcali couldn’t be responsible for what had happened to her. She never knew the child, never encountered her at all. As for the idea that she might be lost, trapped in the weatherspheres the same way Carcali had been—

Carcali suddenly bent over at the waist, unable to stop the spew of vomit that gushed out onto the tiled floor.
No,
she thought, gasping for air against the spasming of her diaphragm. She scrubbed at her mouth with a corner of her head veil before pulling the garment off and dropping it over the vomit. She forced her mind back to that immeasurable time just before she was pushed into the young Tara’s body.

Her idea had worked so beautifully at first. She’d launched herself alone—and why not, she’d thought. Everyone soloed eventually, and she was so much more powerful than any of the other Crafters and Apprentices, she’d been sure that she could do it. And she’d seen right away that her solution would work. It hadn’t been easy, but finally her patience and concentration put all the colors and temperatures right. She’d finished, or so she’d thought. It was only then that she’d realized she’d lost the connection with her body—and, with it, any chance to check and revise errors.

Then she’d panicked. And by the time her panic was over, it was too late, the thread connecting her to her body was well and truly gone.

Carcali did not know how long she’d been lost, floating in the spheres—time, space, even her own awareness of such things, became twisted and uncertain when the connection to the body was severed. When she’d felt a tugging at her formless self, she almost hadn’t responded, almost hadn’t recognized it for what it was. The feeling was so unfamiliar. Recognition had finally come, and she’d thought the Artists had found her at last, had come to save her, and she’d rushed forward, ready to admit she’d been wrong, she’d been arrogant—anything to be restored. Anything to leave behind this formless despair. A sense of great urgency had swept over her, bringing joy and relief with it.

Even when the body didn’t feel perfect, Carcali hadn’t worried. Of course it would feel strange after so long in the weatherspheres. By the time she realized what had happened, by the time she knew that she didn’t wear her own body, that it and her friends and teachers—her whole world—were gone, mere legend to these people . . . by that time she knew she would do anything, tolerate anything, rather than to return to the nothingness of the spheres.

But there hadn’t been another soul. Carcali swore there hadn’t been. Whatever she may have done to her own people, and her own time, with her arrogance and haste, she was sure she had not condemned an innocent child to the torment she had experienced. The child was not a Mage, her soul could not have survived leaving her body.

 

Carcali was sure.

Dhulyn leaned against the wall next to the Storm Witch’s door and rubbed her face with her hands. Thank Sun and Moon the lady page was nowhere to be seen. Never, never since Dorian the Black had found her standing over the body of the dead slaver, had she come so close to simply killing someone out of hand.

To think it was all an
accident
. That selfish coward—that
parasite
of a stone-souled WITCH, had killed Parno, had destroyed their lives
by accident
. She hadn’t even
known
.

But that didn’t make her innocent of Parno’s death. That wouldn’t save her, the very next time the Witch—

“Did it work? Does she trust you?”

Dhulyn had Xerwin by the throat before she registered who it was and let him go. “Sorry,” she said. “You startled me.”

The Tar rubbed his throat and tried to smile. “I promise not to do it again.” Still rubbing his neck, he peered into her face. “You’re very white. What happened in there?”

“How much has the Storm Witch been told about recent events? About the Nomads and their claims?”

Xerwin shrugged, drawing her to follow him with a tilt of his head. He glanced around him, and Dhulyn realized he had somehow freed himself of his usual attendants. “Since the Tarxin replaced me as liaison to the Nomads, I’ve had no say in our contacts with them. So
I
certainly haven’t discussed anything with the Storm Witch. And I wouldn’t think any of her maids have much head for politics.”

Dhulyn refrained from correcting him. In her experience, the higher up the ladder of nobility, the less people understood that the people below them knew far more about what was happening in their lives than they ever let on. As they turned into a wider corridor, she stayed silent, fairly sure she knew where they were heading. Sure enough, Xerwin led her up a flight of stone steps, down a corridor whose latticed walls opened into a tiny courtyard, and finally up another staircase and out into the sunlit and walled garden that was the precinct of the Tarxin in the Upper City. Dhulyn let her lip curl up. In any other place there would have been a guard at the steps, but here in Ketxan City, things were done differently.

“We can talk here,” Xerwin said, indicating a stone bench covered in densely woven cloths in the royal colors of gold and green. The bench sat in the shade of a trimmed willow, next to a pool where water tinkled over rocks. “This is the Tarxin’s private precinct. No one is allowed up here without either the Tarxin or myself.”

“What about Tara Xendra?”

Xerwin looked at her sideways, as if thinking of something for the first time. “No,” he said. “Now that you mention it, even she has to come with either me or the Tarxin.” He shrugged. “Of course, women aren’t supposed to wander about without escorts anyway.”

“No, I suppose not.” If Dhulyn’s tone was a little dry, Xerwin did not notice.

Obviously, rock and earth had been moved here to create the pond, and with it a small elevation from which almost the whole garden could be seen, and the low wall which surrounded it. Beyond she could see the Upper City itself, and some of the more prominent landmarks. She drew up her feet to sit cross-legged. One of the maps she had seen on the Storm Witch’s table had been of the Upper City.

“I saw this enclosure when I entered the City,” she said. “I was surprised that the Upper City itself had no guards or gates.”

“Why would we need guards here? The Battle Wings patrol our borders, and the only trouble we’ve been having is from the south.” Xerwin paused, his face thoughtful. “I wouldn’t be surprised if trouble comes from the Nomads, with the Tarxin’s new policies, but they attack only from the water.”

“So you have no defensible walls, and keep no guards here?”

“There are Stewards at the City entrance, of course, you saw them.” He turned to lean his back against the side of the bench, placing himself farther into the shade. “And I suppose some of the Houses might keep Stewards in their pavilions. But you were telling me why it would matter if anyone had been talking to the Storm Witch about our current situation with the Nomads.”