02 - The Barbed Rose (49 page)

She caught the glimmer of teasing and yanked his queue. “Not fair. I’m too tired to catch you at it.”

The horses were still where they had left them, but it was so close to the palace, Kallista didn’t see much sense in hauling herself atop one for such a short ride. She let Torchay push her onto the animal’s back anyway. They left the borrowed mounts with the palace grooms. The tokens Joh left behind when he took them would tell the owners where to retrieve them.

They ran across a rebel patrol near where Summerglen and Winterhold abutted. Kallista stunned a pair of them with her lightning and the rest turned and ran. The corridors through Winterhold remained empty for the remaining distance.

Viyelle gave the family password that got them into the Torvyll chambers. Kallista forgot about the battle for a few moments.

“You had no trouble getting here?” Kallista asked Gweric once her twins were well hugged. Her eyes sought out the rest of the party.

“Other than having to backtrack a hundred times or so, no.”

“Is Merinda feeling bad again?” She scanned the room, hunting their missing ilias in the crowded family grouping.

Gweric couldn’t meet her eyes. His expression made Kallista’s stomach knot up. “She isn’t here,” he said. “We met the Reinine and her guards. She went with them. The Reinine invited us.”

“Why didn’t you all go with them? I’ve seen her safe room. It’s very…safe.”

Gweric looked even more uneasy. “I didn’t—it felt wrong, Naitan. Deadly.”

Kallista’s stomach knots tightened, then twisted. “Why did you let her go then?”

“I couldn’t stop her,” he whispered. “I tried. And it didn’t feel so deadly if only she went.
Some
of them will live.”

The knots exploded into full-blown alarm. “
Goddess
. Did you tell them this?
Which ones?
”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t see. I can’t.” His distress fed on hers, and Kallista tried to calm herself, to calm him. She checked her tiny hunter-spell. Nothing.

“It wasn’t so dangerous if we came here,” he said. “It was all death if we went with them. Wherever the Reinine went, some would die. But I don’t know who.”

Kallista kissed the baby in her arms—Lorynda—and handed her to Gweric. “Torchay, Joh—
ilian
, we go. The Reinine is in danger.”

She kissed Rozite who was struggling to free herself from young Tiray, and cupped her hand over tiny Niona’s head as she strode toward the door. She paused a moment while pulling off her gloves to speak to Viyelle’s second mother.

“Saminda Prinsep.” Kallista bowed her gratitude. “Thank you for your care of our children. The One’s blessings be on you.”

The prinsep bowed in return. “Thank you for your care of our children, ensuring they arrived here without incident. The One be with you.” She paused. “Care well for our Reinine.”

Kallista left the suite at a run, Torchay on one side of her, Obed on the other. Joh flanked Aisse immediately behind them, with Fox and Stone on either side of Viyelle bringing up the rear. Viyelle was a better swordswoman than Kallista, somewhat better than Joh due to her dueling experience. But she did not come up to either the warriors’ or the bodyguards’ level. Still as one of their better fighters, she took her place guarding their backs.

“Where are we going?” Torchay asked.

“The safe room. You saw it when we were following the demonscent, the day of the flying boat.”

“I remember it.” Obed surged ahead, taking point guard, leading the way through the deserted corridors of Winterhold Palace.

Evidence of fighting began to appear as they neared Summerglen—blood smeared on delicate wallpaper and pooled on fine parquetry flooring, an occasional body left crumpled and staring, waiting till the end of combat for removal. Kallista pushed the pace faster, past a walk, not quite to a run. Every dead body they passed added weight to Gweric’s warning, until she felt she bore a waist-high boulder on her back.

In her room, the Reinine was hidden behind iron doors and reinforced walls. She was guarded by the best Adara had to offer. Kallista found no comfort in the knowledge. Joh had counted seven demons in his dream. She had destroyed only six.

And no one had yet found the least sign of High Steward Huryl.

Still, they knew about him, that he could not be trusted. Perhaps they didn’t know enough to find him guilty at trial, but enough to suspect him. To keep him away. And if he ran from the chance of Joh recognizing him, surely he was too much the coward to do aught but run away now.

That seventh demon stuck in her gullet. Her little hunter was not enough.

Kallista reached for magic and winced. She ached, like she had an overused muscle rebelling against further strain. Except she could name no specific place that hurt. Nor could she coddle it, whatever it was.

“Wait.” She stopped at the top of a back hall stairway leading down into the functional sectors of the palace. “Wait, I need to—”

Several steps down, Obed turned and looked up at her. She took a deep breath against the burn and caught his magic, lifting it gently out of him.

“You’re too tired for this.” Torchay gave her his strength, both physical and magical, holding her up.

“I can’t be. We’re not done.” She bound his magic to Obed’s and
reached
for Fox’s order. Scant hours ago she’d done this at a run, weaving them all together at once. But one at a time, standing still, would work as well.

Stone’s magic came, infusing the web with a shimmering eagerness. She
reached
for Viyelle, bound in Joh and Aisse and…no one. Their ninth should have been there.

She felt it, expected it, reached for it without thinking, and found nothing. Kallista needed her. There was a place in the magic waiting for her. They had managed with eight up to now, but after three demons, the strain of working without her showed. They needed their ninth.

Kallista knotted off the web and set it humming between them, connecting each of the eight of them to the others. Then she drew power. It burned as it coursed into her, leaving an ache along its path just under the pleasure it always brought.

Torchay caught a sharp breath. “What is that? What’s wrong with it?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You feel something?”

“It feels good, like usual—but it hurts, too.” He frowned at her, shifting his shoulders.

“Backlash?” Obed came up a few steps.

“No.” Kallista shook her head, reassured him. “Do you feel it? The rest of you?”

Negative murmurs and headshakes answered her question. Torchay looked even more worried.

She patted his shoulder. “You’ve always been sensitive to my magic. That’s all it is. I’ve just—strained a muscle. Used it too hard.”

“I didn’t know magic had muscles,” Torchay said.

“Nor did I. And I don’t dare baby it now.” She bit her lip and found Joh’s bright blue eyes. “I keep remembering that seventh demon, from your dreams.”

“So.” Obed pulled her attention back his way. “Let us go kill it.”

Stone laughed. “Obed, ilias, I like the way you think. Let’s do.”

Kallista shaped and spilled out the magic she’d been holding, sending it to hunt the demon. She thought she knew where it would be—with the Reinine or on its way there—but she wanted to be certain.

“Which way?” Obed asked.

“The same. To the Reinine.” She rolled her shoulders where the weight of the magic and the worry—the whole world—seemed to sit. “But not quite so fast. Just…fast enough.”

Obed’s eyes warmed, then he turned and flowed down the stairs. Torchay’s hand on her arm kept Kallista from following. “Beauty leads,” he teased as he went ahead of her.

“All right,” Stone called from the back. “I think I’ve just been insulted.”

“And you’re only now catching it?” Fox’s voice floated out.

Faint sounds of fighting echoed up from below, silencing them. Maintaining the web of magic was a bit of a strain, but it didn’t burn like drawing more, so Kallista drew hard, piling up the magic ready to use. She didn’t want anything distracting her when she needed her focus. Where was the blasted demon?

Did it even exist? The only knowledge they had came from a dream. Usually she dreamed true, but sometimes things changed from the dreams, and this one Joh had dreamed in her place. Could that have affected its truth?

The hunter magic checked in its outward flow. It searched and seemed to find nothing, but couldn’t move on, dithering in confused circles. Outside the Reinine’s safe room.

“Hurry.” Kallista forced her weary limbs to move faster.

“You’ve found it?” Joh asked, just behind her.

“Maybe. Nothing definite, but…something.”

The noise of battle grew steadily louder. Kallista stepped on Torchay’s heels as he slowed.

“Fox, Stone, up here,” he called.

“Fox, stay there,” Kallista amended. “Stone and Viyelle in front. Fox, watch behind us. You can
see
farther. I don’t want anyone catching us from behind.”

Rearranged, Obed still in the lead with Stone and Viyelle just behind him, they reached the turning to the corridor leading past the Reinine’s safe room. They crowded there close together. Kallista beckoned Fox closer. “How many?”

He went still, lips moving as he counted. “Eleven, twelve rebels in the hall. Another seven or eight inside—”

“They’re
in
the room? Oh, Goddess—” Kallista let her military mind take over, blocking out all else as she’d been trained. “Hit them fast and hard. Watch for anything unusual—I still can’t pinpoint the demon. We want inside quick. Now go.”

Obed led the charge, a black and silver whirlwind slamming into the rebels. Stone and Viyelle dispatched what little got past him, leaving Torchay to stalk behind with a clean sword in each hand. Kallista’s magic swept the corridor but found no shadow perched on any shoulder. She sent magic plunging inside the remaining rebels with ruthless efficiency, searching out any taint and scrubbing it clean. She found only demonstain, not the demon itself.

She turned into the recess in front of the safe room door and had to step over the black-clad bodyguard staring sightlessly at nothing. Blood still drained from a score of his wounds. The iron door stood open, as did the iron-bound oak behind it. Torchay hauled her back, pushed past to enter first.

Fox’s voice rang out behind them. “More coming. At least ten, with more a few ticks behind them.”

Aisse and Viyelle slipped through the iron door as Obed pulled it to. His gaze locked onto Kallista’s for a moment before it clanged shut and he took his place guarding it. Kallista wrapped protection around her ilian and sealed it before turning her attention to the room.

It was large, sized big enough to hold the entire Adaran government. Big enough to accommodate the battle now taking place.

Syr was down, the Reinine cradling him in her lap where she huddled in a corner. Her expression was peaceful, accepting, despite the tears that rolled down her face, a distinct contrast to the obvious terror of the woman cringing beside her. Merinda had come for safety and found blood and death.

Three rebels lay dead or moaning on the floor alongside two of the younger bodyguards. The Reinine’s four remaining guards fought off twice their number, all of them bodyguard traitors, by their skills. Beyond them, on the far side of the room, stood High Steward Huryl Kovallyk.

“He had keys,” the Reinine cried as two of the rebels turned to deal with the newcomers.

Ferenday lunged, trying to take advantage of their distraction, and tripped on a corpse that—did it roll toward him? A rebel sword sliced through his neck and the Reinine screamed. Ferenday fell, his head nearly severed.

No magic existing could heal such a wound, but—Kallista sent her magic questing toward Syr, trusting her iliasti to defend her from physical harm.

He was drained of blood from terrible wounds, almost to death, but maybe, if she sealed—

Demonstink came, rushing into the room as the seventh demon unfurled itself, flowing up and out of Huryl until its foulness filled the room. Kallista barely had time and magic to parry its attack and none for anything else.

Magic poured into her from her ilian’s web. She ignored the burn as she flung protection toward the Reinine and her ilian—what remained of it. Two more rebels were down and the last of the younger bodyguards. Leyja and Keldrey bled from multiple cuts and Torchay now bore a shallow slash along his left arm. The wounds didn’t seem to slow them much.

The demon ripped away the shielding around the Reinine as if it were tissue paper. Kallista’s scream echoed around the room as she shaped and named her dark magic. “Khoriseth.”

The scream continued—Merinda’s scream following Kallista’s. The healer scooted backward across the floor, away from the Reinine, horror in her every line. Serysta Reinine clawed at her throat, her face turning blue as she fought to breathe.

“No.”
Kallista
threw
her magic.

The demon shrieked as the magic hit it and blazed up. Then Khoriseth flexed, or twisted, or—whatever it did, the magic went out. Like a fire drenched in water.

“Dear Goddess, help us,”
she whispered, horrified. How could it do that? What would they do now? How could they defeat this monster?

The Reinine thrashed in her corner, Syr sliding limply from her lap. Kallista could see the demonstuff coiled thick and black around her head and neck. Kallista drew, shaped and threw more magic. The blackness thinned. Serysta took a shallow breath before Khoriseth flowed back thicker than before.

Bellowing, Keldrey threw himself at Huryl, fighting the defending rebels with a berserker rage.

Merinda edged farther back, whimpering. “No,” she said. “I won’t.
I won’t.
”

Kallista changed her magic’s shape to claw at the demon, rip it away from the Reinine.
Goddess
, it hurt. Every breath burned through her lungs, every beat of her heart ached with the effort. She slumped against the wall, letting it hold her up as she fought the demon for the life of her Reinine.

Save for Keldrey’s attempt to reach Huryl, the fight had degenerated into a near standoff. Leyja swayed on her feet, her own blood dripping down the blades of her dagger swords as she held off two equally exhausted rebels. Kallista’s iliasti stayed close, protecting her while she fought the demon.