02 - The Barbed Rose (22 page)

Joh arrived more slowly, but the relief in his face was just as evident.

“Now, will you tell us what happened?” Torchay ushered her to her favorite sofa.

“Trouble. I don’t know what kind or where. Probably they were attacked, but I don’t know who or what. They’re all hurt, Fox seriously, and they needed to hide. I did what I could to help, but…” Kallista shuddered, burrowing her face into Torchay’s shoulder, trying to hide from her worry.

“So. We knew you’d pulled magic, but not what it was for. We were afraid you’d found the demon.”

Kallista shook her head, wiping her eyes on Torchay’s tunic as she did. She would
not
cry. She looked up, hunting Joh, and held her hand out to him. He took it without hesitation, but his magic did not answer and she didn’t have the strength to drag it out by main force.

“Rest,” Obed said. “Eat. Build your strength. Later, you can try again.”

“We should never have split up.” Kallista raked fingers through her hair, combing out some of the tangles. “I knew better, when the Reinine suggested it, but she’s the Reinine. She—”

“Too late to worry about ‘should haves,’” Torchay said. “Deal with what is.”

“Right.” Kallista felt as if she’d been flattened by a dozen freight wagons, then trampled by their mule teams. Her whole body ached and she could barely find energy to lift her head, but she was so bloody tired of resting. She wanted—
needed
to
do
. To act. “Have they found who ordered it? Who sent the gold?”

“No word yet,” Torchay said. “They’re still looking, apparently.”

“Damn.” Kallista closed her eyes, but a pair of tears forced their way out anyway.

“Right, then.” Torchay pulled her into his lap and stood with her in his arms. “Back to bed with you.”

“Not alone. Don’t want to be alone.” Why couldn’t she make her mouth work? The words didn’t want to shape themselves properly.

“No, not alone. You know we’re always with you.”

“Yes, but I want all of you with me. I want to feel your
skin
, not just your magic. All of you.” She sensed more than saw the looks exchanged between the three men. She didn’t know how they would manage what she asked, but she knew they would and was content.

Days passed. Kallista seemed to spend most of them in an exhausted fog, for whenever she could summon strength enough, she would grapple with the magic and send it hunting her distant iliasti. She would renew as much of the veiling around Aisse and Stone as she could, though the daily increasing distance between them made it more and more difficult. And she would do what she could to keep Fox healing.

He was separated from the others, she knew, but why or what it meant or how far apart they were, she couldn’t tell. She fought the infection that made him feverish and struggled to seal the holes in his body that let it in, but he was so very far away….

With every day that passed however, the long-distance magic drained her less. The magic itself did not answer her call any better, but she had more strength to wrestle it into doing what she needed it to do. By Secondday of the next week, she was able to return to her physical training and resume her appearances in court. Viyelle had suggested that by merely mingling with the inhabitants of the palace she might allow them to see her as an ordinary naitan rather than building up frightening images in their minds of strange magic performed by someone too powerful to be human.

Kallista had her doubts about how effective such a thing would be. She was not in the least comfortable trying to make small talk with people whose primary interests seemed to be clothing, jewelry and salacious gossip, but it did no harm to attempt it. No harm to anything more than her patience, at any rate, of which the One had given her a less-than-generous portion. It also kept them moving about the palace in unpredictable patterns, to Torchay’s satisfaction.

Kallista knew she ought to be using her magic to seek out the demon lurking in Arikon, but until Fox was healed enough that she no longer feared for his life, and until she was sure Stone and Aisse had brought the babies to safety, she did not have the magic to spare. It was entirely possible this trouble was some diabolical plot to divert her attention away from Arikon.

If so, it was working. Kallista didn’t care. Her iliasti came first. Without them, she couldn’t fight the demons anyway. She needed the magic they carried. But the Reinine did not appear willing to wait.

Fourthday evening, as ordered, Kallista took up a post in an obscure corner of the council room, accompanied by her bodyguards and her new-bound ilias. With so many of them crowded into a small space, it was difficult to avoid notice, but standing at attention staring off into space did much to encourage the councilors and the prinsipi to overlook them.

Weariness dragged at her, weighting her eyelids, bringing up yawns. She wanted to sleep for a week, but didn’t dare. She had demons to hunt.

As General Uskenda rose to give her report on the status of the rebellion, Joh slid his hand onto Kallista’s nape, making his magic available to her. She called it from all three sources and kicked it out to scour the room. No demon, but she did find a null-spell hovering near the ceiling.

Because it negated magic in its vicinity, Kallista had to call up more and more of Torchay’s stubborn strength before she could overwhelm and demolish it. The spell would have faded over the next few days, but while it lasted, it would have crushed the Reinine’s truth-saying magic.

Null-spells were difficult to construct, requiring considerable skill and magic.
West
magic.

Kallista knew she hadn’t built it. Could Gweric be involved? He was a West naitan. Could he have more magic than he claimed? She could not see him willingly working with demons, but without realizing it…? Joh had been lied to. Why not Gweric?

Except the Reinine had been having trouble with her magic before Gweric moved into the palace. Kallista didn’t think he had magic enough to build such a complicated spell elsewhere and float it into the palace. She doubted anyone could. Not even a demon.

Demons could not act in the physical world except through a mortal being, because they had no physical presence. But did that limitation include an inability to work magic? Demons existed in the same realm where magic was found.

All magic was a gift of the One. Didn’t that mean a demon couldn’t use it? Could a naitan be demon-possessed and work this kind of magic? It made Kallista’s head hurt, trying to sort through things.

The meeting wore on, prinsipi demanding, councilors arguing, generals refusing. The Reinine sat and listened. Kallista watched and hid her yawns.

She leaned harder on her iliasti, hoping she would have energy enough to walk herself back to their suite. She worried about Fox—she never had checked on his healing earlier today—and about Stone, Aisse and the babies. Were they all safe? They were at least alive—that much she knew. But where?

Finally, with the clocks tolling past midnight, the Reinine rose. The prinsipi present weren’t ready to stop talking, but when the Reinine departed, Kallista left with her. The prinsipi remained behind to complain to each other.

A thought struck her and she stumbled, Obed’s hand on her elbow supporting her through it, hiding it. Did the Reinine have someone to report these complaints to her? Surely she did. Kallista did. Viyelle had unobtrusively attached herself to her mother-the-prinsipas’s entourage to collect information for her new superior. Though a raw novice when it came to palace intrigue, even Kallista knew the importance of knowing all that was being said.

Goddess
, no wonder she was so tired. The political battlefield was a dozen times more wearying than any fought across with sword and spear. Or musket. But she couldn’t avoid it any longer. The demon had to be found. That meant Kallista had to wet her toes in political muck. Pray the One she didn’t have to wade in too deep.

Fog had closed in. It drifted down from the mountain heights to twine around the tower roofs and creep through every opening. Kallista couldn’t feel its cold, damp kiss, but there was no mistaking the grayed veil it threw over everything. Except her iliasti.

Torchay’s hair glowed as bright a red as ever in the light of the lamp he insisted on leaving lit. Obed’s gleamed no less black, nor did the rich brown of Joh’s hair fade in the fog. Kallista frowned. There should be no fog in their room. The window was closed. Though spring was fading quickly into summer, nights were still too cool—and Torchay too wary—to leave windows open.

The fog glimmered, lighting from within, a pale blue glow that shifted purple, then to a violet-rose and Kallista understood. Her dreams had come home to her again.

Joh shifted, muttered. Kallista soothed him with a touch, then pulled the dreamfog around and over her sleeping mates to hide them, protect them from anyone—anything else that might wander these planes. She stood, holding her purpose firm in her mind. Whatever the demon’s intentions, she had her own places to be.

Swift as the thought, she arrowed across the dreamscape. Mountains and rivers flashed below her, visible through streamers of fog thinned by the speed of her passage. She found them high in a mountain pass, crowded into a shallow space hollowed out of the mountain’s rocky side. Kallista’s twins shared a bed, an empty packsaddle crate, as they had once shared a much smaller space.

She sang voicelessly to them, needing them in her arms, but unable even to touch Lorynda’s dark curls or press her lips to Rozite’s fair, peach-fuzzed head. Rozite pursed her tiny rosebud lips, suckling in her dreams. Kallista’s heart burned, wept, and she knew she wept in truth where her body lay. She wanted her babies home.

“K’lista?” Aisse stirred, shivered, snuggled back against Stone who lay curled around her back.

“I’m here. Sleep.” Kallista wiped her face with the back of a hand, wiping away nothing. “All is well.”

“Fox?”

“He’s hurt, but alive.”

“Good. That’s good. Aren’t the girls getting big? They’re growing so fast.” Aisse smiled in her sleep. “Come soon. We miss you.”

“We will. Be careful. Torchay’s kin are coming to meet you. Be wary of anyone else.”

“How will we know who they are? Who we can trust?”

Kallista couldn’t help grinning. “By the hair. They’re all red as foxes. Redder.”

Then she was spinning over the landscape again. She didn’t know how much dreamtime she had, didn’t know if the dream had its own demands, and she had another purpose before it ended.

The dream took her out of the mountains, through the Gap into the western edge of the plains before dropping her into a rough camp where the dreamfog held a dark, almost greasy quality. Fox lay sweating on a canvas travois that had obviously been unhitched from the horse that had dragged it all day and left to lie where it fell.

The sweat eased her worry a bit. Feverish men usually didn’t sweat, so perhaps his fever had broken.

Kallista lowered herself beside him and brushed her hand over his forehead, though she felt nothing, wishing she could touch him in truth. His eyes flew open so abruptly, she jumped. A shiver crawled down her back, because she could swear he saw her. Those piercing brown eyes
saw
something.

He sat up, his movements stiff, never taking his eyes off her face. She waited while his hand rose, trembling slightly. He would not be able to touch her dreamself she knew, but she also knew he had to try.

The rough warmth of his callused hand slid across her cheek and she shuddered in reaction and in shock. How could she feel his touch?

“Kallista?” His voice was scarcely more than a breath. “
Is
it you? How can I see you?”

“You do?” Had her long-distance healing given back so much? Then Kallista saw his body lying on its pallet and understood. “You’re dreaming,” she said. “In dreams, we often regain things we have lost.”

He sank back on his heels, his hand falling away in obvious disappointment. “Then it’s not
you
I see, because you’re not really here. Just some construct of my fevered mind.”

“No.” Kallista took his face between hers, urging him to look at her. “This is
my
dream, Fox. One of those that shows what is, or what is to come. This is what is. I truly am here with you. You have stepped into my dream.”

“Why?”

She leaned toward him, intending to kiss his forehead and found herself swept into his lap, his face pressed against hers. “Perhaps because we both need this. Perhaps to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”
He jerked back, his dark eyes crying alarm.

“No, no.” She did no more than smile, trying to show her chagrin at her poor word choice in the face of his fears. “We are bound, Fox. The strength of that binding is all the more obvious because you’re here in my dream. You see me. But—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, trying to find words to explain something she had no explanation for.

“I don’t think we will meet again like this, in our dreams,” she said. “Not soon. I’ve been helping you as much as I can—healing you, hiding the others—”

“The others.” Fox searched her face. “They escaped? They are alive?”

“Yes.” She hugged him. “Yes, they are all safe and well and worried about you. I saw them before I came here.”

“Praise be.” He held her tight, racked by the occasional shudder.

Kallista turned to kiss his temple. “They are safe. You are—” She pushed him back until she could look him over, his dreamself a copy of the physical.

He looked haggard, not as thin or battered as when he had first come to them last summer after the battle when he’d almost died, but as if he’d been ill.

“You’re no longer in danger of dying, I think.”

“Likely aye.” He made a face intended to amuse. “Though if they keep feeding me that slop they eat, that may change.”

She made an effort to smile as he wanted, but couldn’t maintain it. “My magic is needed in Arikon. Unless something changes, this is our last dreamtime.”

His gaze traveled over her, as if he memorized what he saw. Perhaps he did. “At least I have seen you this once.”