Kitabı oku: «The Barbed Rose», sayfa 2

“Digging a path out of this hole you’ve buried us in.” Stone’s voice sounded sharp, on edge. The women didn’t seem to notice, but Fox had been partnered with Stone for almost twenty years. Since they’d entered Warrior Caste training at six. He knew the man’s nuances.

Carefully, Fox rose to his feet and walked toward the cave entrance where he sat down with his back to the drifted snow. “What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to be sitting in snowmelt in another five ticks if you don’t move.”

Fox shifted a pace away and waited, wishing this knowing of his let him know more than mere presence or motion. He wanted to see Stone’s face, his expression. “Well?” he finally had to prompt.

“We’re running low on supplies.” Stone kept his voice quiet as he continued digging. “There’s enough for the adults for about a week yet, but milk for the babies—they’re too young to be able to eat our food, Merinda says, even were it chewed for them. They could do it for a bit, in an emergency, but not for long.”

Fox’s arms tightened around the little bodies snuggled in against his chest. “We have to find more. A cow. Something.”

“How, if the snow doesn’t stop?”

“We’ll find a way. I will not let our children die.” The fervor in his own voice surprised Fox.

Children had little value in Tibre, until the males joined their castes at six. Women had no caste save the one that they served, so girl children were worth even less. In Tibre, children belonged to the caste, to no one. These tiny girls were his. His and the rest of the ilian’s. That made all the difference in the world.

A gust of icy wind announced that Stone had broken through the layered snow. “Still snowing,” he said.

“How thick is the snow cover?”

“Maybe two paces. Not bad.” Stone moved a short distance away, then returned and laid something over the fresh opening that blocked the wind a bit. Fox touched it; a saddle blanket. Stone laid another atop the first.

Fox was about to rise and head back nearer the fire when Stone sat on the cold cave floor beside him. Apparently in the snowmelt he’d warned Fox against, for he swore and moved to Fox’s other side.

“So, is Merinda ilias? Like the rest of us?” Stone asked in a voice quieter than any Fox had heard from him.

“I—” The question tumbled Fox’s thoughts into a stinking pile. “What do you think?” Maybe if he played for time he could dredge an answer from his memory.

“I don’t know. You were there when it happened, right before we left. You heard what Kallista said when she gave her the bracelet.”

“Ilian together,” Fox quoted. “But that’s not what she said—what any of us said—the night you all married me. Was it the same before?”

As one of the original four in their ilian, Stone had been through the ceremony three times, once when the ilian was formed, once when Obed joined them and once for Fox. “Those were all the same. Not like with her. So I’m asking. Is it just to help look after Lorynda and Rozite, or is it—?”

“You want to have sex with her?”

“Khralsh.” Stone swore by the warrior face of the One they all worshipped. “It’s the other way round. You can’t see the way she’s always touching me, or the looks she gives me. She says we’re ilian now, that I don’t have to be—uncomfortable, she said. You know how long it’s been, what with Kallista so soon after her time and Aisse so near hers and the magic gone besides. It wouldn’t be a problem, except Merinda’s always…there.”

“And you never were one to turn down sex.” Fox grinned. “I wish I could see it. Stone Varyl, vo’Tsekrish, evading a woman’s advances like some—some girl before her rites.”

Stone clouted him openhanded on the back of his head, gently, because of the babies. Otherwise he’d have dealt him a blow hard enough to lay him flat. All in fun, of course. “You’re just jealous she’s not chasing you.”

“Damaged goods.” Fox couldn’t blame her. What woman wanted a man cursed with blindness?

Stone snorted in derision. “I think she’s more afraid Aisse would have her head if she tried.”

“Aisse?” He went still, as one of the babies twitched in her sleep then settled again. “Not that she couldn’t do it, but why would she want to?”

“Beside the fact you sired the child in her belly? She favors you. Over all of us.”

Fox choked off his laugh. “Small favor. Just because she will consent on rare occasions to actually speak to me as well as point and order.”

“See? Favor. So what do I do about Merinda? Is she ilias?”

Fox sighed. “I don’t know, and there’s no one to ask who does, with all of us here born Tibran.”

“Except Merinda.” Stone’s sigh was a longer echo of Fox’s. “I won’t betray my ilian.”

“No.” His brodir’s loyalty was never in doubt. Once given, it remained. Fox took another deep breath. “Ilian together, Kallista said.”

“And Torchay.”

“So.” Fox moved a tiny hand that was digging tiny furrows in his skin with tiny fingernails. “All we can do is assume that means what it says. We are ilian together, in all ways. If you want what she offers, take it.”

Stone remained where he sat. “I wish Kallista were here.”

“So do I. But since she’s not, we can only muddle through as best we can.” He froze. “There’s something outside.”

Stone scrambled for weapons as Fox stretched his peculiar sense in a desperate attempt to discover what it was. Rozite squalled when Merinda plucked her from inside Fox’s shirt but quieted once she was placed against Aisse’s warmth.

“Not human,” Fox said, relinquishing Lorynda to the healer. “Large. A deer, perhaps. We hunt.”

“In the storm?” Stone asked as he handed Fox a quiver of arrows and a spear.

“I can find our way back,” he said with a confidence he did not quite possess. “The babies might not like the blood, but it will feed them, will it not?”

Stone merely moved aside the blankets from the entrance and ducked through it.

CHAPTER TWO

The new path General Uskenda took led Kallista and her men around the bulk of the palace, along the broad surrounding avenues where trees planted decades ago for beauty were being cut down to recreate the defensive space. On the downhill side east of the palace, they passed through an iron gate in a high wall. Kallista felt the tingle of barrier magic as they crossed into a quiet garden where invalids wrapped in thick dressing gowns basked in the pale spring sunlight while they sat on scattered benches. Beyond the garden rose a tall sprawling building, Arikon’s main healing center.

Uskenda led them inside and cut sharply right, taking them up a wide stairway to the third floor. She strode down the long corridor that turned left, then right again before she rapped on a door and entered.

A man with bandages wrapping every visible part of him—head, arms, torso—struggled to rise from the bed where he lay.

“No, no, Sergeant. Don’t get up.” Uskenda motioned him back, and he subsided to a seated position, adjusting the blanket over the smallclothes that were apparently his only garment.

“How is she?”

“The same. They’re keeping her under for fear of what might happen when she knows—” The injured man broke off, voice thick with emotion.

Kallista knew him, knew his face, his voice, but she couldn’t place who he was.

“Miray.” Torchay stepped forward, knelt and carefully took the man’s hand in his. The pieces fell into place for Kallista.

This was a naitan’s space, with an outer and an inner room. Miray was bodyguard to a young naitan who had served with them in the Kishkim swamp campaign five years ago. Kallandra had the same lightning magic as Kallista, so that was the only time they’d served together, but Kallista had liked the young woman. She believed they had moved beyond fellow naitani to comrades. Perhaps even friends.

Kallista glanced at the general and found her looking back, her expression even more grim. What now? Hadn’t she suffered enough shocks today? But Uskenda showed no sign of relenting from whatever her purpose might be.

“Might we look in on her?” Uskenda paid the bodyguard the courtesy of asking permission, though in his condition he could do little to stop them, did he want to. “Just the naitan and myself, to keep from disturbing her.”

Miray turned his face away, releasing Torchay’s hand. “Deep as they’ve got her dreaming, nothing short of hell opening would disturb her. And even that might not.”

“I’ll wait here.” Torchay moved into the chair beside the bed. Obed simply widened his stance in front of the doorway standing guard.

Kallista did not want to go into that other room, did not want to see Kallandra lying motionless on a healer’s bed, but she could not avoid it. Not only because the general insisted, but also—Kallandra was one of the Reinine’s Own, a military naitan. Kallista could not turn away, could not fail to give the other woman the respect and honor that was her due.

Uskenda opened the inner door and stepped back, waiting for Kallista to pass through. The smaller room was dim, lit only by a sliver of reflected light from a high clerestory and that entering by the doorway. Kallista moved to one side to wait for her eyes to adjust to the gloom and for the general to enter.

After a few ticks, she could make out a form lying still and dark against the pale sheets. General Uskenda stood at the foot of the bed looking down at the woman in it. Then she looked up at Kallista, but remained silent. How bad were the injuries?

Kallista swallowed down her dread and crossed the small space to stand beside the narrow bed. Kallandra’s face showed the years that had passed, or perhaps the strain of her injuries, but seemed otherwise unmarked. Kallista took in the rest in one swift glance, saw Kallandra’s arms lying atop the sheets with bandages swathed from her hands past her elbows.

No. That wasn’t right. Something was off, something wrong about the bandages. They were—

Kallista’s right knee buckled, but her left somehow held and she did not fall when she realized what it was. The bandages did not begin at Kallandra’s hands. She had no hands.

Her arms stopped short somewhere between elbows and wrists, the thick pads of bandage mocking the missing length.

“Oh dear, sweet Goddess,” Kallista whispered. Her hand groped for support, found the wall. “What—”

“Outside.” Uskenda jerked her head toward the open doorway.

Kallista nodded, tears burning her eyes again. She took a moment to whisper a blessing on the desperately damaged woman and stumbled back into the bodyguard’s antechamber. Torchay jumped up and ushered Kallista to the chair he’d vacated as Uskenda closed the door gently behind them.

“What happened?” Kallista whispered.

“What?” Torchay demanded. “What is it?”

“They took her hands.” Miray’s voice was ice, cracking. “The thrice-damned murderers took all their hands—the naitani’s—before they killed them.”

“Goddess.” Torchay’s hand drifted to the sword hilt locked in place over his hip, one of the twin Heldring-forged short swords he wore in the double scabbard on his back, as if he thought an assassin might lurk nearby.

“Kallandra is still alive,” Uskenda said.

“But she has no hands,” Miray retorted.

Kallista couldn’t suppress her shudder. Obed took one step out into the hall and emptied his stomach on the tile floor, then returned to guard as if nothing had happened. Kallista steeled herself against the horror that spun her head and roiled her own stomach, tightening her focus to Torchay standing in front of her. To his hand resting on his hip.

It emerged from the leather cuff holding one of his everpresent blades, which the sleeve of his tunic didn’t quite cover. Narrow, long-fingered and remarkably free of scars, his hand showed the calluses of his trade and the dirt from their rough journey to this place. His hand…

Kallandra had no hands.

Torchay caught Kallista’s hand, clasped it tight, saying nothing. What was there to be said? Almost all naitani needed their hands to use their magic. Bakers kneaded preservation magic into bread with their hands. Weavers wove waterproofing or longwearing strength into fabric with their hands. Healers laid their hands on the sick and injured to mend their hurts. And soldier naitani aimed their magic and sent it against the enemy with their hands.

Only farspeakers and sometimes truthsayers did not use their hands. Some farspeakers had to hold an object that had belonged to the one to whom they spoke, and only a few truthsayers—the Reinine was one—did not have to touch a person to know if they lied.

This was why all military naitani were required to wear gloves in public. Any covering over the hands interfered with the use of magic, and leather blocked all but that under the most exquisite control. Because military naitani held deadly magic, the public’s fear of what might happen if it escaped the naitan—and the occasional frightening incident—had brought about the glove regulation.

What would losing her hands do to Kallandra? To any naitan?

Kallista shuddered, squeezing Torchay’s hand tighter.

“The Reinine is waiting,” the general said. “We must go.”

“Yes.” Kallista let Torchay pull her to her feet. “Blessings of the One on you, Miray, and on your naitan.”

Miray looked up at her, his eyes widening as he seemed to realize just who offered these blessings. “Thank you, Godstruck. May it be as you say.”

She left the room at a normal pace, but couldn’t help feeling as if she scuttled like a bug running for the safety of darkness. Kallandra’s injuries were too unsettling, too horrifying. When Obed fell in beside her, Kallista reached for his hand, too, needing the feel of a hand in both of hers, needing to know she could still do it. He gripped her tight, as if he needed the same assurance.

“You don’t need your hands to do magic,” Torchay said quietly as they reached the first flight of stairs.

“Not for the ilian magic, the godmarked magic, no. I don’t think so.” She refused to release either hand as they started down the stairs, forcing them into an angled formation. “I used my hands to direct it, shape it, but not because I had to. It was just—they gave me something to see. But for my lightning, I need my hands.”

“They will not touch you,” Obed said. “I swear my life on it.”

“I swore mine ten years ago.” Torchay waited while they caught up with him on the second-floor landing. “We’ll keep you intact.”

“But who are they?” Kallista burst out. “What do they want?”

“To change the order of the universe.” Uskenda led them in the opposite direction from the entrance stairwell. “The rebellion was instigated by the Barbs, the Order of the Barbed Rose. BARINIRAB. They want—”

“They want to destroy West magic.” Kallista finished the sentence for her. “And I’m the only practitioner of West magic Adara’s seen in fifty years.”

The Order of the Barbed Rose was an ancient and heretical conspiracy shrouded in mystery, often fading from public knowledge for decades at a time, becoming no more than a whispered tale told round hearth fires. And always it tempted the people because of its enmity toward West magic.

West magic was about endings and mysteries, things that couldn’t be easily understood or explained by mortal beings. Though death’s ending was as much a part of life as birth, it frightened people. So did unexplainable mysteries—such as seeing things that had yet to happen or talking to the dead. And what people feared, they often wanted to destroy. The Barbs, whose influence had been slowly growing over the past fifty years or more, seemed to think that by destroying the magic, they could destroy death itself.

Kallista hadn’t been born with West magic. Her personal magic was of the North—the ability to cast lightning bolts from her hands. It had awakened just after puberty, as magic usually did in those gifted by the One. A person either had magic or they did not, and they only received one gift, which never changed.

A good half of Adara’s naitani held the practical South magic of hearth and home, magic that called the hearth’s fire or brewed better beer or built stronger tables. Most of the remaining naitani were divided between the East magic healers and growers, naitani who dealt with living things and beginnings, and the North naitani whose magic operated on inanimate objects and natural forces like wind or lightning. A very few were given the mysterious talents of the West.

But since that day on the walls of Ukiny a year ago, Kallista had been able to call magic from three of the four compass directions. That is, she’d been able to until the magic left her half a year later in the Tibran capital.

Merinda believed pregnant naitani lost their magic because using it was too hard on the mother. Kallista hoped that was so, and not because the magic somehow harmed the unborn child. She hadn’t seen any signs that either Rozite or Lorynda was less than perfect, but she’d used so much magic in those early months…. She thrust that worry away yet again. Her babies were born and she wanted her magic back.

General Uskenda opened a heavy barred door at the end of a twisting corridor to reveal another, heavier iron-bound door behind it. She knocked a rhythm with the hilt of her dagger, received a second rhythm in return and responded with a third before the sound of keys turning in locks came to them. The door cracked open and they stepped through into a well-manned guard chamber inside the palace wall.

Kallista had known there was direct access to the main healer’s hall from the palace, but had never known where it was. Now she did, and the thought disturbed her. As if she had been shown the way because she might need it in the near future.

“Whatever the Barb’s goals,” Uskenda said, accompanying Kallista down the stairs to the courtyards and gardens surrounding the palace buildings, “they did not make you one of their victims. A few others were spared—those who were deep in the countryside on assignment, or whose bodyguards were able to fight off the assassins until help arrived. That is our fortune and the rebels’ misfortune. We will need all the fortune the One shines our way, I fear.”

The general scowled. “Civil war is always an ugly thing, and they have taken much of the northern coast. They can get firearms from Tibre.”

“Maybe it won’t come to actual war.” Kallista knew she was grasping sand, but hope was all she had just now.

“It wouldn’t, if you could take out their leadership like you did before.”

Kallista held her tongue. Until her magic returned, she couldn’t light a candle with a spark, but no one needed to know that.

Nor did the world need to knew that she—and her ilian—had ended last year’s invasion in such a spectacular fashion. She couldn’t stop the rumors, but as long as no one knew for certain…

“Or if you could repeat what you did in Ukiny,” the general went on when Kallista didn’t respond, “that would make these rebellious idiots think twice.”

True. When every enemy in a two-hundred pace radius died in the space of a breath, it did tend to make those remaining rethink their plans. Kallista shifted her shoulders against another magic-born thing she didn’t like remembering. “These are Adarans. I hate to use such a weapon against our own, even if they are rebelling against the Reinine.”

“If it comes down to it—”

“I know. If things reach that point, we’ll have to use whatever we have. But we’re not there yet. Are we?”

“No.” Uskenda begrudged the word. “But if things don’t change, it could be soon.” She turned Kallista and her iliasti over to the guardpost at the east entrance to Winterhold Palace and departed.

A guard led them through chaotic corridors. Not only was half the land in rebellion against the duly-chosen Reinine and the other half apparently in Arikon seeking refuge or assistance, but it was also nearing time for the annual move from the snug, warm chambers of Winterhold to the cool, airy Summerglen Palace in another part of the enormous royal complex here in the center of Arikon. Trunks and crates lay stacked in the halls and servants bustled everywhere, weaving their way through the throngs of military.

Kallista craned her neck as they passed through one particular section of the palace, but she couldn’t see whether the courtyard where she’d first practiced her new magic—the one blown to bits by gunpowder—had been repaired. Only by the grace of the One God and Kallista’s poorly controlled new magic had she been able to shield herself, Obed and Stone from the blast.

Palace windows stood open today to let in the warmish breeze. Doubtless a few days earlier, they’d been closed tight against the chill rain that had frozen the travelers on their entire journey south. Except for the overflow of soldiers and the organized chaos of the move, court looked much the same as the last time Kallista was here.

Courtiers dressed in eye-blinking color combinations milled about vying for notice and position. The younger reckless set still swaggered in their half capes with their short-cropped hair and their fancy fencing swords at their sides, putting on a show. Viyelle—prinsipella, now courier—had been one of them. Was she still?

Serysta Reinine waited in the war room behind her audience chamber. The Winterhold audience chamber was vastly different from the one in Summerglen that Kallista had passed through on her first meeting with the Reinine. This chamber was all warm dark woods and cozy tapestries meant to give at least the illusion of warmth, but the war room was much the same. Save for the extra bodies. It was crowded with dozens more army officers and prinsipi, all demanding attention at once.

One of the Reinine’s bodyguards noticed Kallista and her companions and murmured a word in his charge’s ear. The Reinine turned away, giving the room her back.

“Thank you for your concerns.” High Steward Huryl spoke. Kallista hadn’t seen him until that moment, but she instantly recognized that thin voice with its falsely humble tone. “The Reinine will take them all under advisement. Thank you.”

Spreading his multicolored arms wide in their fluttering stripes of black, gold, blue, green and white, he herded the room’s occupants before him. They complained, especially the prinsipi, but they went. Huryl followed them out. Kallista glanced back to be sure they were truly gone and recoiled. The High Steward was just slipping out the door, looking back into the room, his face filled with virulent hatred.

The glimpse was for but a second, before the door closed on him. Had she seen it, or only imagined it? And if she had seen that hatred, who was it for? Huryl’s glance had raked the entire room, and Goddess knew, Kallista had not gotten on well with the man during her previous sojourn in the palace complex. Maybe his hatred was for her alone. The Reinine had promoted him to his present high position. Why would he hate her? If indeed Kallista had seen what she thought.

Torchay touched her arm. “K’lista? She’s waiting.”

Right. Kallista moved into the room, stopped well away from the bodyguards, put her right leg forward and swept into a low bow. “My Reinine, you have need of me?”

“Get up, get up.” The faint chime of metal on metal accompanied Serysta Reinine’s brisk movement away from the windows.

As Kallista rose from her bow, her gaze fell on the low shoes and snug black stockings of the nearest bodyguard and the slim gold bands around his ankles. Two on the left, two right. Kallista hid her surprise and speculation, but she couldn’t stop her mind from spinning.

She recognized the man from her previous visit. He’d been in the Reinine’s service for some time even then, and he hadn’t been married. The Reinine’s bodyguards did not usually marry. The other bodyguard, much younger and unfamiliar, wore no anklet. But that one did. Kallista shot a quick glance at the Reinine, at the three bangles chiming softly together on her left wrist and the one on her right.

Serysta Reinine waved the bangles, flashing them imperiously. “Yes, I married my bodyguards. Yes, I know it was of no political benefit whatsoever. No, I do not care.”

Kallista bowed again, deeper this time. “Far be it from me to question, my Reinine. I married my own bodyguard. I know the…bonds that can grow over the years.”

When she rose this time—was the Reinine blushing? Surely not.

“Please, be seated. All of you.” Serysta gestured to the chairs set before the room’s hearth as she chose a high, wingbacked seat for herself. Kallista took the chair nearest the Reinine, and the four men ranged themselves about them, standing.

Serysta glowered at all the bodyguards. “Sit down. Please.”

Her ilias—the stocky man with short-cropped iron-gray hair—answered for both, shaking his head “no” without speaking. Kallista glanced at her own iliasti. “It’s no use arguing. They get even more stubborn and protective once you’ve married them.”

Serysta sighed, still glowering. “I’ve noticed.”

Her gray-haired ilias gazed at her blandly. They spoke a whole conversation without words before Serysta jerked her eyes away to stare at her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath. “Has your magic returned, Naitan?”

Kallista’s insides knotted up. “No, my Reinine, it has not.” She lifted her gloved hand. “This is simply regulation. And protection from the cold. I am most heartily sorry.”

“As am I, Naitan. We could use your talents now.” Serysta lounged back in her chair, her gaze on the low fire, her thoughts obviously elsewhere. “Will it return, do you know?”

“I believe so.” Kallista quelled a brief surge of panic, mentally stomping down the lid of the box where it had been penned and throwing a strap around it. Then another. She had to trust that the One would keep the others safe. They were needed.

“Is something wrong, Naitan?”

Kallista attempted a smile. “As you suggested, we sent the rest of our ilian to safety with the children. We’ve never been separated like this since we were bound together. It is an…adjustment. Especially since we are bound with magic as well as oaths.” She paused to clear her throat.

“My Reinine, we sent them off before we knew of these assassinations, or of the army’s defections. Two babies, two women—one of them pregnant and near her time—and two fighters, one of them blind. If I could beg of you a troop escort—”

“Ah, Naitan.” The Reinine’s eyes were filled with a sad sympathy. “There are no troops to send. None we can trust. They will be safer alone and anonymous. Truly.”

Kallista wanted to ask again, wanted to beg on her knees, but she didn’t want to risk the kind of reaction she’d gotten from the general. “Then may I ask a farspeaker send a message to Korbin, to family there? They can send a party to meet them.”

“Yes, of course. Write out your message and I will have it sent immediately.” The Reinine gestured at the table between them littered with papers, inkwells and quills.

Kallista scratched out a brief message and the Reinine’s younger bodyguard passed it to a servant outside the door. The message would go by farspeaker to Korbin’s capital and from there by courier to Torchay’s family, but it should reach them no later than tomorrow. Weeks sooner than a message could arrive over land.

She took a ragged breath and looked up at the Reinine. Kallista had never fully answered her question. It was time she did.

“The bonds of magic are still there,” she said. “But at the moment, I cannot use them. The fact that they exist makes me believe that the magic will return. When? I cannot say. Merinda Healer said that because I had twins, it could take longer for things to return to normal.”

Serysta obviously bit back a curse. “Is there anything to hurry the process along? We need your particular magic rather badly. The few military naitani we have left are scattered and will take time to bring in safely. That blind Tibran you brought back seems to have some skill at foresight, but he’s so afraid of his gift—”

For a moment, Kallista was confused. Fox had no magic of his own, except for that uncanny ability to sense his surroundings. Then she remembered. The boy they’d rescued, the one they’d brought with them from their trip to the Tibran capital. He’d been a casteless “witch hound,” used by the Ruler caste to sniff out users of forbidden magic. They’d taken his eyes first. Fox couldn’t see from his eyes. Gweric had none to see with.

“How is he?” Kallista had left him with her family in Turysh so her birth mother could work her healing on Gweric’s feet, broken by his Tibran masters to keep him from running away. When he was well enough, he’d been brought to Arikon, to the naitani academies for training.

“Well enough, I suppose. Getting around better than I would have believed. What can you do to speed up the magic?” Serysta refused to be distracted.

“I don’t know. I’ve consulted with all my sources. They don’t know either.” Kallista’s only real source of information was the last godstruck naitan so blessed by the One. Belandra had lived a thousand years ago, but she came visiting from time to time to advise her successor. Belandra, however, had been older when the Goddess struck her. She’d already had all her children, and none of them had been twins.

Serysta Reinine’s lips thinned as she pressed them tight together in an uncharacteristic show of impatience.

“What is it you need?” Kallista asked. “Perhaps there is some other way we can provide it?”

“I need to know what these rebels are doing. I need to know their goals, where they will strike, what their numbers are—everything there is to know.”

“Don’t you have spies?” Kallista knew she did. Uskenda would not have left so necessary a thing undone.