03 - The Eternal Rose (50 page)

“Right.” His grip tightened.

“Hold on.” Kallista slid down her link with Joh and blinked her vision into alignment with his.

Joh stood just outside the outer gate, at an angle where he could see the inner gate without being easily seen himself. He'd dismounted and his infantry dun tunic blended nicely with the local shades of dirt. His guard, in red-and-white-trimmed black, was a deal more noticeable.

Through Joh's eyes, Kallista watched the justiciar's champions wait while Habadra Chani was summoned from within the house. As they did, the outer courtyard filled with more and more champions wearing Habadra's purple cranes painted and embroidered on their kilts, until those in justiciar's black-and-white could barely be seen.

I don't like this,
Kallista whispered through Joh's thoughts. Aloud, she said, “We need to move closer."

The six justice champions were beginning to look a trifle concerned about the situation as well. Kallista brought her people to stand behind Joh and pulled back into her own vision. She called magic and sent it questing out for fresh demonstink, then called more, piling it up to be ready, in case.

Finally, Habadra Chani sauntered through the inner gate into the outer courtyard of her Line's House.

The six-marked champion in charge of the justiciar's company handed the scroll to Chani who cracked it open and read it. The champion with tattooed hands and feet nodded at his underlings. Two of them moved to take the Habadra by the arms.

The sound of a double score of blades clearing sheaths hissed through the courtyard, but the justiciars held firm. Chani wadded up the warrant and let it fall to the paving.

“I am Head of Habadra Line,” she said. “I do not submit to arrest.” She shook off those holding her and this time, they allowed it. Naked steel had that effect, even on the bravest.

“Do you defy Daryathi law?” the six-marked asked.

“I see armed Adarans at my gate.” Chani sneered at Kallista, waiting in the street. “Is that Daryathi law?"

“This is Daryathi law.” The champion pointed at the warrant crumpled on the ground.

“No,
I
am Daryathi law,” Chani retorted. “I am Head of Line, of the richest, most powerful line in all Daryath, and I do not submit to the accusations of foreign upstarts."

Kallista had listened to enough. She didn't take offense at Chani's sneering words. Kallista
was
foreign, and she wasn't from a prominent family, which she assumed made her an upstart. How could she take offense at truth? But she'd never had much patience, and she was tired of listening to them argue.

She siphoned off a good-sized chunk of magic and shaped it to hunt. She gave it a nice sharp spear point, and she hurled it at Chani. She
hurled
it, and the magic
flew
.

It didn't ooze or dribble or trudge, it flew fast and hard and straight and true, and it slammed into Chani, cutting off both speech and breath.

Time seemed to freeze as everyone went still, most not understanding what had happened to the Habadra. The rest waited to see what the magic would find.

Chani screamed, the sound slashing through the air to shatter the stillness. “Kill them,” she raged. “Kill them all!"

Her champions attacked the justice company, cutting half of them down before they could draw weapons.

“Help them!” Kallista cried.

At the same moment, Chani shouted, “No,
them
—the Adarans. All the Adarans!
Start with the slaves
."

A party of purple-clad champions split off to dash back into the house. Kallista snatched magic and dropped them, sent them to sleep. She called more and put the rest of them down—all but Chani and the justice champions.

Kallista had intended to leave the justiciar's people awake, but Chani should have gone down with the rest. Kallista scrabbled for her hunter-spell and pulled back a stub.

The demon boiled up out of Chani—Khoriseth who had hidden from Kallista six years ago inside Serysta Reinine's High Steward. Now it had hidden inside Chani during Kallista's searching, Khoriseth, who had
quenched
her magic in Arikon before Leyja's marking as their then-ninth had enabled Kallista to drive it off, if not destroy it.

Kallista grabbed for magic. She wrenched it from her iliasti and still could not demand more than was poured into her. Kallista threw up shields, creating a pen around the demon. It shrieked on a plane not audible to human ears. But the horses heard it, or sensed it, for they panicked.

Padrey shouted as the horse he shared with Kallista went up in the air. He tried to hold on, Kallista tried to hold him, but she didn't dare let go the reins. He fell, hard, the impact shuddering through Kallista still in the saddle. The horse crow-hopped away from him. But the magic didn't break.

She still had hold of that joyous eagerness he brought to the whole. Had the link formed so quickly? How? Did it matter? She slid from the saddle, unable to concentrate on the magic and fight the frightened animal at the same time. Her shields began to buckle under the demon's violent attack.

“Is that a—?” Padrey's horrified whisper reached her as he caught her hand.

“Yes.” She didn't have time now to explain about the link forming, so she let him hold on while she called more magic to shore up the weakening shields. One more order to give before she could forget everything but destroying this demon.

“Send a company to the slave quarters,” she said to whoever was nearest. “Get all the Adarans out and back to the embassy."

“Yes, my Reinine.” Joh answered, gave the order.

Half the escort broke off and trotted on foot through Habadra's gate. Kallista still stood outside in the street, she realized. No matter. She was fighting Khoriseth, not Chani.

Gathering her strength, Kallista wrapped magic around the shields she'd built and began to squeeze, compressing the demon trapped within. It squalled, eating away at the shields like acid on glass, tearing at them with a thousand new-grown demon claws. But the shields had been shaped only to keep it inside. The new magic surrounding the shields was made to destroy.

The demon broke through the shields and shrieked as the magic attacked it, dissolving it from the outside in. It fought, punching at the magic that enveloped it. Kallista wrapped
hands
in the links to her mates and hauled out still more.

It was working. Khoriseth could quench some of the magic, but it could not stop all of it at once. Kallista laughed out loud.
She was winning
.

The demon lunged at a corner of the trap she'd caught it in. The magic gave, bulged out. Before Kallista could slap a patch over the weakness, the demon burst through and escaped.

It skipped across the sleeping champions and flowed through the walls to take up residence on the shoulders of a well-dressed woman in a sedan chair, then left her for a man on horseback, and him for a racing youth.

“Follow!” Kallista cried. “We have to follow it.” She looked frantically for her horse. Surely someone had caught the reins. “Where's Gweric?"

“At the embassy.” Torchay had the horse. “Watching for attack against the children."

“Oh. Right.” Kallista couldn't see the demon any longer, but she could smell the stink it left behind. She furled out a bit of magic and sank it like a fishhook in the demon's side. The demon would destroy the magic before long, but while it lasted, the spell would tell her where the demon went.

“Up you go.” Torchay started to boost Padrey onto the horse behind Kallista, but she waved them off.

“The link's formed,” she said. “Already. Emergency situation, I suppose. Or I didn't wait too long before the binding, or something."

“Good.” Torchay tossed Padrey onto the nearest unoccupied horse just as the six-marked champion came into the street to block Kallista's path.

“Get out of my way.” She urged her horse forward.

The champion caught her reins, refusing to back down. “What has happened here? What have you done?"

“Found one of the demons that have been corrupting Daryath.
And it's getting away
."

“What is getting away? What madness is this?” The man tightened his hold on the horse's head.

“
Truth,
not madness. The One's marks are real. Demons are real. There was a demon in possession of Habadra Chani—can you understand that? It rode her. Twisted her. And now it's left her.” Kallista paused as a thought bubbled through her narrow demon-aimed focus. “Is Chani dead? Sometimes when a demon leaves, it leaves the person dead. I didn't kill her."

“No.” The champion sounded a bit shaken. “No, not dead. Demons are real?"

“If you had any magic, I would show you. Yes, they are real, and that one is getting away.” She stabbed a finger toward Khoriseth's escape route.

“What am I going to tell the Head?” the champion muttered as he released Kallista's horse.

“That you've arrested Habadra Chani.” Kallista gathered her mount and her thoughts, and spurred them both after the demon.

Where would it be running? To its master? To the ancient evil Gweric promised was lurking here? Was she ready to face such a foe?

She had to be.

* * * *

As they raced after the fleeing demon in the bright chill of the autumn morning, their horses slipping now and again on the rounded cobbles, Kallista could sense the demon tearing at the magic hook sunk into its spirit-flesh. Desperate to rid itself of the tell-tale, it tore away bits of itself that floated a moment before merging again with the whole. Kallista formed her hunter-killer magic and sent it to make sure no bits were left behind, even as the hook came free and died.

The demon's path tended generally toward the city's center, toward the temple and the Seat of Government. Who—or what—could it be seeking there?

“Chosen!” The shout came from the lush garden behind the piles of rubble that had been temple walls, piles that shrank as people carried away the stone for their own building projects.

“Chosen of the One!” A cleric stepped out of the shadows.

“Not now,” Kallista cried. She didn't have time for anything now but following that damned demon and ripping it into nothingness. They were almost—

She called up a demon-destroying veil, named it and threw it out, hoping she'd come close enough to do the thing some damage. “Khoriseth!"

The demon vanished. Before her magic reached it, without ever touching it, Khoriseth was just ... gone. Kallista shifted her vision to see the dreamplane as well as the physical, but the demon wasn't there either. She hadn't destroyed it. There hadn't been any screaming or gnashing of metaphysical teeth. It was as if the thing had simply winked out of existence.

Had it hidden itself again?

“Fox, what do you see?” She wheeled her horse in the middle of the broad plaza.

He looked, first with his eyes open, then he closed them and seemed to look through his eyelids from one side of the vast square to the other. He shook his head as he opened his eyes again. “Nothing,” he said. “Sometimes I can use that sense you gave me with my eyes open now, but I can sense nothing. No demon-twisted people. I—” He stopped and shook his head again.

“Damn it!” Kallista added several of the choicer oaths from her soldiering days. Her horse picked up her agitation, expressed it by dancing in place.

“Chosen.” The cleric had come close enough that the horse threatened to step on her. Other clerics clustered in a knot behind her.

Shock rippled through Kallista as she realized the cleric wore a yellow robe marked with a full compass rose. The High Prelate of Daryath, a South naitan, was standing outside the temple, in a public street.

“Chosen—what was that?” The prelate's face registered shock and horror. “That thing you were chasing?"

“A demon. You saw it?” Kallista swung down to the paving and handed her reins off to whoever was there—Torchay again. “Did you see where it went? What happened to it?"

“I—no, it—it vanished. It just—vanished.” The woman's eyes were wide. “That was a demon?"

“One of them.” Kallista grimaced. “The small one. Where was it, exactly, when it vanished? Could you tell?"

The high prelate looked out over the plaza. “Exactly? I'm not—” She waved her arm toward the Seat. “That way."

Kallista huffed a little breath, hands propped on her hips. “That's all I could see too. Damn it. Now I'm going to have to go dig it out. Somehow. These things can hide from me."

The prelate looked up at Kallista. “How may we serve you? How can we help fight this demon?"

Kallista blinked in astonishment, then she grinned and startled everyone, including herself, by hugging the prelate. “Can any more of you see the demon?"

She looked at the timid naitani who clustered behind their leader. Several of them lifted their hands.

“Excellent.” Kallista clapped her hands together and rubbed them. “If you would try to discover where the demon might have gone, it would be a tremendous help. Any healers among you—demons tend to lash out without concern for who else might be hurt. Farspeakers—perhaps one with the searchers and one at the temple for communication? You shouldn't search unguarded—are there champions who might—"

“I will guard.” The justiciar's six-marked champion stepped forward.

“You're here? I thought you took your prisoner back to Chambers."

“I sent a man with her. The other stayed with our injured.” He bowed. “Thank you for the care of your medics."

“Prelate, there are injured—” Kallista began.

The high prelate signaled to one of her people who trotted off in that direction. “We have a few champions of our own."

“Then are we set?” Kallista surveyed her forces.

“What are
we
going to do?” Torchay asked.

“Hunt demons."

“Yes, but where?"

Kallista's gaze fell on the Seat of Government. Khoriseth had been hiding inside one of the executive councilors. Would the greater demon ride a lesser-ranked? She'd encountered it at the Seat only two days ago. It could be there now. Besides, the en-Kameral hadn't answered her demand. They might be interested to know she'd already liberated Habadra's fifty-plus slaves.