02 - The Barbed Rose (50 page)

Every time Kallista ripped the demon away, it returned before Serysta could catch more than a fleeting breath. Never enough. She was weakening, her body stilling, slowing. Dying.

Something had to change. It couldn’t end like this. Not in stalemate. They needed their ninth.

“Merinda,
help us
.” Kallista threw magic toward her, willing her to catch it.

Merinda screamed, cowered away, hiding her head in her arms.
“I can’t,”
she wailed. “Don’t ask me!”

“Obed, I need you,” Kallista shouted through the door, reinforcing her call with a tug on his magic.

Aisse darted back to open the iron door and admit him as the rebels launched fresh attacks, one against the Reinine’s defender, one against Torchay and Kallista behind him. Viyelle bounced on her toes, her link taut with her need to take part. Kallista didn’t know whether to encourage her or hold her back. Leyja needed the help, but Viyelle’s skills were not up to a bodyguard opponent, even a wounded one.

Obed glided through the doorway and paused half an instant to take in the situation, then he threw himself at the rebels holding off Keldrey.

Khoriseth the demon shrieked and launched an attack directly at Kallista. At the last moment, it turned aside and wrapped itself around Aisse’s head and neck.

“Coward!” Kallista screamed at it. “You don’t dare attack me directly.” She slashed at the demon, cutting it away from her ilias.

Khoriseth flowed to smother Viyelle, instead.
Why should I? Weaken you first. Take away your power. Then kill you.

“You won’t.” If she could not destroy it all at once, maybe she could destroy it piece by piece. She sent strength to Viyelle and somehow breath as she called magic and named it.

Instead of throwing the dark veil at the demon, Kallista sent it through the link, through Viyelle and out. Viyelle shouted and the demon screamed as its suffocating blanket burned away from her face in a sudden flare of invisible incandescence.

It reached for Torchay. Kallista was there first, knocking it away with a burst of the dark fire, dissolving another bit of its substance. She slapped it away from Obed. Another bit gone.

Khoriseth’s squeal of frustration rose to a wailing shriek as Keldrey’s sword plunged through Huryl and came out his back. The demon tried to gather up the blood and shove it back in, until Keldrey split Huryl open.

“You can’t heal, can you?” Pain tears welled in Kallista’s eyes as she called more magic through the burning ache of weariness. “You’re all about destruction, not mending, and now you can’t mend your toy.”

Khoriseth screamed its anger at her, hovering without anchor in the room. Kallista screamed against her own pain as magic poured into her. She shaped it, building it higher and higher yet. Anchorless, maybe it wouldn’t be able to quench the magic this time, if she could only send enough against it. She whispered the demon’s name, “Khoriseth,” and let the magic go.

Once more the demon lit up, blinding her inner eye. It shrieked, whipping itself away from the blaze. Suddenly, it seemed to fold in on itself and vanish.

Khoriseth was gone. But was it destroyed?

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

K
allista searched the room with all of her aching senses. So much demonstink had been left behind, it singed her nostrils, but she hadn’t the energy to scrub it away. Especially if the demon was hidden, not destroyed.

Khoriseth had used deceit and treachery to achieve its goals, hiding its presence and its activities. It had been able to hide from her inside Huryl. But with Huryl dead, where could it have gone? Who could it have taken?

A keening wail captured Kallista’s attention and she blinked away her inner sight. Wounded and bleeding, Leyja had dragged herself over to Serysta Reinine. The wail rose unnoticed from Leyja’s throat as she checked for breath, listened for a heartbeat, tried to use her medic’s skills.

Kallista whimpered as she sent magic wisping toward her Reinine. Goddess, it hurt. Torchay came and helped lower her to sit on the floor. Her magic touched the Ruler of all Adara and found no one there. Her own cry joined Leyja’s.

“No.”
Keldrey’s hoarse shout seemed to drop him to his knees. “She can’t be gone.”

Leyja gathered her ilias into her arms and rocked back and forth, repeating Serysta’s name. Viyelle walked over, stepping carefully across the bodies of the Reinine’s other iliasti, then stood as if at a loss for what to do next. Her eyes met Kallista’s, sharing her grief and confusion.

“There are injured,” Obed said. “We need a healer.”

Kallista looked to Merinda, who shook her head. “I have no skill in this sort of healing. I’ll get help.” She pushed to her feet and tiptoed for the door, trying to avoid stepping in blood.

“Wait.” Kallista stretched her hand out, but Merinda sidestepped her touch. “There were rebels outside, too.”

The iron door clanged as someone beat on it with metal, a sword hilt, likely. “Kallista!” Joh’s voice came faintly past the barrier, half his words fading out. “What’s ha—to—there?”

“I’ll let them in.”

“
Merinda
—” Kallista’s protest had no effect. The healer was past her and opening the door.

Joh and Stone slid through, leaving the door slightly ajar, Fox just outside it.

“Dear sweet Goddess, what happened in here?” Joh whispered.

It looked like a slaughterhouse. Aisse had straightened Syr’s body and closed his eyes, was just matching Ferenday’s head to his neck again. Keldrey held Leyja in his arms as she held their ilias’s body in hers. Ten more bodies lay strewn across the stone floor. Only Kallista did not bleed from any wound.

“The Reinine is dead.” Kallista shuddered as the truth sank in. Saying it made it real, but they could not avoid it.

“And the demon? There
was
a demon?” Joh checked the rebel bodies, looking for wounded.

“Yes. Khoriseth. It was hiding inside Huryl.” Kallista frowned. “I don’t know how it could hide from me, but it did.”

Obed shrugged. “You have destroyed it, so how does not matter.”

Kallista could not keep her uncertainty off her face.

“You
did
destroy it, did you not?” Obed’s voice held horror.

Torchay looked up from his attempts to tend the worst of Keldrey’s and Leyja’s wounds. “What’s this?”

“I…don’t know.” Kallista scrubbed at burning, watery eyes with aching hands. “I
think
—bloody hells, I don’t know whether I even think I killed it. I got part of it. I hurt it, I’m sure, but—”

“Why do you no’ know?” Torchay demanded.

“Because I don’t. It vanished. I can’t find it. It might be destroyed, dissolved into nothing like the others, but it might be hiding again. This demon wasn’t like the others. It could quench the magic.”

She paused to fight back the grief and anger. “I wasn’t strong enough, all right? I couldn’t kill it all at once.”

“There’s only eight of us,” Joh said. “Not nine.”

“Wait.”
Keldrey’s hoarse voice sounded over the others. “You mean to tell me that—that
thing
got away? It killed our ilian and it
got away?
”

His rage flooded the room until Kallista could feel it. He crawled to his feet, staggered and fell, fighting his blood-loss weakness.

“I don’t know, Keldrey Reinas.” Kallista’s throat choked with tears.

“She destroyed three demons before this one.” Torchay moved to block him. “She’s used so much magic doing it, it burns to call more, but she called it and used it, trying to destroy this one until she can’t even stand. Who knows what harm she’s done herself, fighting it?”

“It’s not her I want.” Keldrey kept crawling. “It’s that damned demon.”

“You can’t touch it, Reinas,” Kallista said wearily. “If you kill the one it rides, it simply moves to another. It takes magic to destroy it. More magic than I have, apparently.” She paused. “I might have killed it.”

“But you don’t know,” Keldrey persisted.

“No more.”
Leyja carefully laid the Reinine’s body on the floor and closed the staring eyes. “I don’t care what it takes. Whatever it is, I will do it. This cannot happen again. No more.”

Leyja wiped tears from her soaked face. She turned to look at them—and her eyes rolled back in her head as she began to shudder.

Magic flowed into the room, new magic hunting a home. Kallista fought against board-stiff muscles to move. “Torchay help me. Aisse—Joh—someone, I have to reach her.”

Keldrey swore, reversed his stagger back toward his still-living ilias. Obed and Joh picked Kallista up and carried her across the room to Leyja.

Kallista clasped the other woman’s wrist and a flood of magic bowed her against her iliasti. It soothed the burning ache of exhaustion as it slid neatly into its place in the web of magic. The magic bound eight into nine and flared bright with completion, greater than any previous whole.

“Merinda. The demon’s in Merinda.” Kallista’s voice felt larger, richer than before. “She refused the call of the One, and the demon took her.”

“Then kill it,” Keldrey growled.

“Yes.” Kallista gathered the magic and sent it out, following the faint ilian bond that tied them to Merinda. She didn’t deserve such a fate, no matter what her mistakes—and they were many. But she was theirs. They should have cared better for her.

The bond was severed, cut like a fishing line hooked in a tangle, but it didn’t matter. Kallista knew where the demon was. The magic knew.

“Khoriseth!” she shouted, putting all the power of their nine behind it.

The magic crashed into Merinda, burrowing deep as it sought the hidden demon. She staggered, fell, but Khoriseth drove her on. Kallista called more magic, sent it after the first, wishing she could simply feed in more power. Each spell was a discrete thing, complete in itself. The demon struggled, finally managed to quench the first burning, and the second hit it, searing more away.

But Merinda carried it stumbling farther and farther from her, from the magic. Soon it would be beyond her reach.

“Follow.” She struggled to her feet. “We have to follow, stop her. Stop it.”

Torchay picked her up, looking wildly around. “Bring Leyja, one of you. Tighten the bandage on her thigh and bring her.”

“Hurry.” Kallista dragged out more magic, fighting her own weakness.

The demon, half what it was at the beginning, struck back in furious desperation, catching her off guard. The magic burst and crashed through her in an uncontrollable backlash. She scrambled to hold it, to keep it from breaking through to her iliasti, screaming as the agony drove her into darkness.

Kallista woke to a sensation of floating, confused until she realized the bed was simply that soft. Bodies lay curled on either side of her. She recognized Stone instantly. How badly had he been hurt in the fighting?

She ached too much to want to think about calling magic, but the link could carry other things. With a bit of focus, she managed to isolate Stone’s and read his condition—minor cuts and exhaustion.

A bit more focus and Kallista identified Leyja on her other side. Marked now, thrust into a new ilian before she’d had a chance to grieve for the death of the old, Leyja would not welcome Kallista’s pity. So she wouldn’t pity her. Sympathy was different.

Groaning, she levered herself up onto her elbows. Keldrey lay sleeping beyond Leyja, his myriad wounds bandaged. Keldrey had lost his ilian, too, without the…consolation? Penalty? He wasn’t godmarked like Leyja, but they had been ilian together. It would be beyond cruel to toss him aside, force him to make his way alone. But Goddess, they already had nine in their ilian. Ten. So many.

So many, what was one more?

Kallista groaned the rest of the way up to sit with elbows propped on knees, face hidden in her hands. She didn’t know what to do about the mess dropped in her lap.

“Awake now, are you?” Torchay pulled his usual trick, appearing out of nowhere. “Yes, we’ve all slept and had our scratches bandaged.” He showed off a white-wrapped forearm. “Stone’s still sleeping because he led the search for Merinda. We didn’t find her. It’s like she’s vanished into the air. Like Huryl did.”

Kallista dropped her head back into her hands. “Goddess, what a mess.” She gave up hiding and crawled toward the foot of the bed, holding her hand out for assistance. “Let’s talk somewhere else. I don’t want to wake them.”

“I doubt a full orchestra with trumpets and timpani could wake that lot.” Torchay picked her up and set her on her feet before she could protest. “But there’s others want to see you awake and whole.”

Kallista was enveloped in hugs the instant she stepped through the door—hard, fierce ones from Obed and Fox, careful, gentle ones from Viyelle and Joh, and a careful, fierce hug from Aisse. Lorynda and Rozite pulled her hair.

“I’m fine.” Kallista laughed, freeing her hair and setting the twins on the floor to continue their crawling. “Sore all over, but fine. We have a lot to discuss.” She paused, looking around the parlor, obviously not Noonday Suite. “Where are we?”

The cozy room was decorated in shades of blue, lavender and silver, more luxuriously appointed than Noonday—a thing Kallista would not have thought possible.

“The rooms where the Reinine moved after the last explosions at the palace,” Viyelle said. “They’ve already sent word out to the prelates and prinsipi—those not already in Arikon—to gather for selection, but until a new Reinine is chosen, Keldrey and Leyja are still Reinasti.”

“Ah.” Kallista started to nod, but her neck protested and her head throbbed, so she didn’t. She sat, hoping the others would, too. Mostly, they did. “That’s part of what we need to talk about. Leyja’s marked. Keldrey isn’t. I know our ilian’s already nine strong—ten, with Leyja—but it doesn’t seem right—”

“Nine,”
Fox interrupted. “Nine with Leyja. Merinda betrayed us.”

“The demon took her,” Kallista said. “That wasn’t her fault. It didn’t ask her nicely, it just took her. The way Ashbel tried to take you.”