02 - The Barbed Rose (40 page)

“The One has many more than nine attributes,” Obed said.

“True, but in Adara, these nine are considered preeminent. Power, Wisdom, Truth, Joy, Faithfulness, Creativity, Order.” She paused and pointed to herself. “Will, or Intent. The only one we do not have is Love.”

“So you think…” Torchay couldn’t seem to make himself finish.

“I think there is one more ilias to come to us, yes.”

They stared at each other across the fire a moment. Even Fox’s face turned from one to another of them.

“Actually,” Torchay said when the silence stretched too long, “it’s a bit of a relief to know there’s only one more coming. I was beginning to worry we might be pushed to fifteen or twenty just to deal with these demons.”

Kallista smiled and leaned her forehead on the point of his shoulder. “We might yet. But I think once we’re all together, and our ninth ilias has joined us—”

“Whoever that is,” Viyelle said under her breath.

“I think we’ll be able to handle as many demons as dare to come against us.” She straightened to take them all in her gaze again. “I’ve been thinking about that, too, about why we only destroyed two demons.”

“Heaven help us,” Torchay muttered.
“Thinking.”

“I know, I know.” She poked him with her elbow. “Not one of my best things. But I
think
—well, we know that distance does matter with the dark veil. So the other two were simply too far away to reach—though I think I damaged one of them. Fewer people died, mostly I think because this is Adara, and worshiping something other that the One just isn’t
done
. And we weren’t all together. We’re missing two. I think having all of us together, even at eight, adds some extra…”

Kallista paused to think her way through. “Some new
dimension
. It’s more than simply four plus four, more than just eight separate magics tied together. It’s a
whole
. It moves us beyond that level to something never seen before.

“Or at least not seen since Belandra of Arikon walked the earth with her ilian.” She stopped talking, wondering how foolish she sounded. “I know I’m not making much sense, but—”

“You make perfect sense,” Obed said. “At least, I think you do.”

It took Kallista a moment to realize Obed had made a joke, and she laughed. “I call save on first watch.”

“Not fair,” Fox protested. “You knew I was going to call it as soon as you finished, so you didn’t bother to finish. Just called saves. Completely out of turn.”

“What are you complaining about?” Viyelle jumped in. “I’ve been standing watch all week while you lazed about resting in a nice empty jail cell.”

He’d been in a cell part of the time. They ignored the time when he wasn’t, in an attempt to help ease his hurt.

“Stand first watch with me,” Kallista said.

“Obed, you and Joh take second.” Torchay ended the teasing discussion, pairing a competent fighter with a brilliant one. “I’ll stand third with Viyelle.”

They also pretended that Obed wasn’t uncomfortable around Viyelle, even while they accommodated it.

After their watch, Kallista took Fox into her arms and into her body, to be sure he knew to his bones, down to the magic hidden inside him, that he was as much one of them now as he had ever been. And because she’d missed him terribly.

Soon, or as soon as it was possible to cross the endless plains, they would all be together. And they would not separate like this ever again.

Stone tightened his grip on Aisse’s hands as she began to close them. He’d been able to keep her from grinding the bones of his hands together—mostly…occasionally—by holding tighter, but nothing could stop the crushing pressure. Only her grip and the strain of effort in her body, on her face, showed what she endured.

She didn’t scream. Refused to, brave as any warrior Stone had known. Braver. He didn’t know any warrior who’d be willing to put himself through something like this. And Aisse was so tiny.

Her whispered litany quickened as her hands squeezed harder. Stone would almost rather she screamed, even if the black lacy stone paving of the Empty Lands was filled with outlaws after the gold they escorted. He couldn’t bear seeing her in such pain. She was so small.

Her body relaxed slowly and her grip eased. Stone took the opportunity to look over his shoulder at Merinda, moaning near the cave’s entrance. “Are you
sure
nothing’s wrong?” he asked for the five-thousandth time.

“Yes.” Merinda snarled back at him. “I’m sure. What do I have to do to get you to believe me?”

“Come over here and look at her, maybe?”

Merinda gagged and crawled a little farther away, nearer the entrance where soft rain washed the stones clean, but her stomach was empty. Had been empty the last several times. Stone sympathized. Truly, he did, but she had chosen the worst of all possible times to fall ill. Aisse was having her baby and Stone knew less than nothing about bringing life into the world.

Well, except for how to get it started. He did know about that. But anything more?

His knowledge was more in the death and destruction line. He did know that if any Tibran male had ever witnessed a birthing, there would be no more talk about “women’s weakness.”

Stone freed his hand and found the cool, wet rag Merinda had tossed him to wipe Aisse’s face. Thank the One that the twins were asleep. They’d begun sleeping through the night not long after they’d run from Sumald. By dawn though—or so Merinda said—they’d have a third infant to cope with. He hoped she was right. The alternative didn’t bear thinking.

“Truly, Stone.” Merinda’s voice startled him. “Everything is going well. First babies take time.”

“Pray we have the time then.”

Outlaws had been tracking them across this desolate territory. Though the rough black rock that covered most of these lands made tracking difficult, the terrain was so flat and the gnarled, stunted trees so few that any travelers could be seen for hundreds of miles. Fortunately, the porous rock was laced with caves. Stone had hidden them in this one, but he didn’t know how secure it was.

Still, the high reaches of the Devil’s Tooth Mountains grew closer every day. They would reach safety soon, pray the One. Stone wanted desperately to lay down his burden of worry and let someone else take it up. But right now, he was their only protection—the two babies; the small, fierce woman laboring so intently to bring another babe into his protection; and the healer who was scarcely less helpless, even when she wasn’t puking up her guts. He was terrified of allowing one of them to be hurt in some way, of failing them the way he’d failed others before.

He was a good warrior. One of the best. But he had a tendency to take stupid chances. To act as if the bullets, the cannonballs could not touch him. They hadn’t. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t. Stone shuddered, thinking of some of the things he’d done. No more. He had family. People who depended on him to keep them safe because they could not do it themselves, as Fox could. So Stone would. No matter what.

If that meant hiding in a cave, he would hide. If it meant walking away from a challenge, he would walk away. If it meant fighting, even dying, then he would do that. Whatever he had to do, he would keep them safe.

Aisse grabbed his hand and squeezed, whispering her prayers. Stone held on tight, swallowing hard as he watched her body writhe.
Whatever he had to
, he reminded himself. Even this.

If she was brave enough to endure it, he had to be brave enough to help. But Goddess save them all, it was going to be a long, long,
long
night.

Kallista rode with her marked ones across the plains. A drover’s clan they met on the border between Shaluine and Filorne agreed to sell them six good remounts for an exorbitant amount of Obed’s cash and provide six additional remounts—mares to be returned next spring bred to their Southron stallions. They only agreed because Joh was somehow kin to one of the males in the matriarch’s ilian. Two changes of horses each would allow them to ride harder, faster.

About a week out of Turysh, she woke from a dream of her own babies’ birth certain that Aisse’s child had arrived, but she had no more knowledge than that. A few days afterward, Viyelle’s link solidified so that Kallista could draw magic without touching. They would be ready for the demons when next they saw them, but first they had to reach Korbin.

They rode relentlessly north, passing from the sweltering heat of the southern plains into the gentler summer of the north ranges. They veered west to skirt along the edges of the Okreti di Vos mountains so that they crossed the short, sharp Vilaree River near its source, before it became the deep treacherous current that stormed across the north plains. They followed the foothills nearly to the coast before the mountains faded away and they entered the black desolation of the Empty Lands.

“What happened here?” Obed stared at the endless vista of black, ropy rock, crumbling here and there into gritty soil where wispy grasses and gnarled pines clung to life. “What could have made such a place?”

“Demons.” Torchay pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted. “This is the last water we’ll have for a while. We’ll camp here tonight.”

“Have you ever seen a volcano?” Kallista dismounted, wondering if the numbness in her backside would wear off some day. “There are islands in the Jeroan Sea with mountains that spew out fire from the earth’s molten heart. This is what is left when the fire cools.”

“Is it likely to happen again?” Viyelle didn’t quite manage to conceal her alarm.

Kallista didn’t quite conceal her chuckle, either. “It could, I suppose, but there have been no signs of it in, oh, thousands of years.”

“But what is this place?” Obed said again.

“Legend has it that this is where the last battle of the Demon Wars took place,” Kallista said.

Obed swore in his own language, under his breath.

“Are you so sure it’s legend?” Torchay took Joh’s horse so the plainsman could start the night’s fire.

“No. Not anymore.” Kallista called a trickle of magic to hide the fire’s light. It also seemed to help the fire’s starting, perhaps by blocking the wind.

“I don’t know this story.” Fox collected one of the grain bags they’d bought at the last village and began sharing it out to the horses. “Tell me. What happened here?”

“The wars had been raging for years,” Kallista said. “First between the demons and the angels—fighting between pure spirit. Then the demons began attacking humans, those the angels were sworn to protect.”

“What are angels?” Fox asked Torchay from the side of his mouth.

“Like demons, but good. Demons were once angels, before they rebelled, went bad,” Torchay said.

“Where are the angels now? Did they all become demons?”

“Listen. It’s in the story.” Torchay turned away, back to his horse grooming.

“Soon,” Kallista went on, “humans were involved in the wars, divided just as the spirits were divided. The war spread, threatening to consume the whole world, but gradually the forces of the One began to prevail. The demons were driven back. To this place.”

Kallista paused to look around her, at the evening sun reflecting off the black volcanic rock in an iridescent glow. The empty desolation held a stark, eerie beauty of its own.

Torchay took up the tale. “It was green and beautiful here then. A wide valley perfect for raising—anything you cared to raise. Or for battle.

“Two armies gathered here, vast armies, spreading out until the entire valley was filled. The demon swarms and their followers were there.” He waved an arm toward the north. “And the hosts of angels with their human allies held the south. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of fighters.”

“When the battle began,” Kallista said, “it was bloody and hard-fought, but against the power of the One ruler of the universe, who can stand? The demon’s armies suffered the flaws of those who fight only for themselves. When it began to look as if their side would lose the battle, many of them broke and ran.

“The demons were desperate. They knew they faced destruction, and fearing it, they broke open the earth and poured the fires from its heart across the valley.” Kallista knelt to poke up the fire as Joh added fuel.

Torchay took the horse Obed had unsaddled and began brushing it. “The molten rock burned everything it touched, everything in the valley, living or dead, including the demons’ own followers.”

“Did the demons escape?” Fox asked.

“No.” Obed spoke, startling them. “Angels caught hold of the demons and plunged through the cracks the demons had made, into the fires and beyond them to the hells the One created to hold them. The angels that remained merged with those humans who were able to bear it, creating saints—”

“Naitani,” Kallista murmured, “from the old
naishar
—to serve.”

Obed continued as if she had not spoken. “And together with the fighters who still lived, who were willing to kill to protect the innocent, they used the gifts of the angels to destroy the demons who survived.”

“So angels became naitani?” Fox looked as confused as he sounded.

“No.” Kallista smiled at him. Smiles could be heard as well as seen. “The angels gave up their lives—whatever kind of existence they had. But the essence of what they were became magic. The magic a naitan uses.”

“Do you think…” Joh halted, looking uncertain. Kallista waited. He tended to need time rather than encouragement to speak his mind.

He came back into his eyes and cleared his throat. “Could our magic—the godmarked magic—perhaps be surviving angels?”

“Possessing us like the demons possess their creatures?” Fox sounded more outraged than anything.

“Well, not
exactly
like—” Joh began.

“I don’t think so,” Kallista said. “I don’t
know
, but—For one thing, what are we?
God
struck. And what characterizes the magic? Qualities of the One. I think we carry the tiniest part of the One’s own essence.”

“Now that,” Torchay said, hobbling the last of the horses and turning it out to graze on the sparse grass with the rest, “is a downright terrifying thought. Reassuring, but terrifying.”