by Gail Dayton
Belandra came when summoned. Most of the time. Kallista didn’t yet understand what rule attached to summoning, beyond the passing of Hopeday, though there had to be one. Nor did she flatter herself that she’d gotten any better at asking her questions, though she learned more with every encounter. It was still not nearly enough.
Kallista was careful not to be seen talking to, or even noticing, the ghosts, but whispers about West magic began to float through the palace nonetheless. Whispers linked to Kallista and her ilian. The rumors were so pervasive that when they returned to the court dinners as ordered by the Reinine, they were avoided and isolated.
It didn’t bother Kallista particularly, nor did she think it bothered any of the others. They weren’t in Arikon for political advancement or for playing social games. They had a task lying before them—once she understood what it might be.
She did worry when it seemed that the rumors began to interfere with that task. The failure to clean the glass from the practice yard was only the beginning.
Kallista’s and Torchay’s army pay packets, thin as they were, went astray. Servants answered summonses only after extended delay and sometimes not at all. And when they did answer, they responded to orders with either sullen disrespect or eye-rolling skittishness. These were small, annoying things, but they did not bode well for the future. And they had Torchay turning himself inside out trying to watch for danger.
He nearly exploded the morning halfway through Katenda, the first summer month, when Kallista announced that she and Stone would go to the practice yard alone. She had researched the dark veil magic as much as she could, given the archives’ scarcity of West magic records. It was time for her to try it. But she didn’t want Torchay, Aisse or anyone else anywhere in the vicinity of her experiment.
“No.” Torchay stood in front of the suite’s double doors, arms folded across his chest. “Absolutely not. I forbid it.”
“This is magic, Torchay. Not your authority. It’s too risky for you to be there.” Kallista glared back at him, her stubborn stance echoing his.
“I survived the last time.”
“I’m not taking that chance. Stone will be with me. You’ve honed his skills yourself. He’s almost as good as you are.”
“He’s still a Tibran.” Torchay’s glare shifted past Kallista’s shoulder to Stone, standing just behind her. “Who knows if he’ll bother to defend you?”
“Who knows if I’d survive her death?” Stone said cheerfully. Sometimes Kallista did not understand the man. “I certainly don’t. Better to keep her alive.”
Torchay growled and Kallista had to hide a smile. “See? He’s not going to let me get killed and he’s obviously not going to kill me himself. If he wanted to, he could have done it the night after our wedding. He didn’t do it then and he won’t do it now.”
“Especially since she can bring me to my knees just by touching me.” Stone shivered elaborately. “Please, ilias?”
Kallista thumped his arm, bare in the sleeveless summer tunic. “Stop goading him.”
“Do that again. With your gloves off.”
She smacked him lightly on the back of his head and he laughed. Stone could make them all laugh. Even Torchay when he wasn’t being stubborn and Stone wasn’t being deliberately provoking.
“Come along as far as the end of Summerglen.” Kallista gave in as planned, offering the compromise she hoped Torchay would accept. “But not into Winterhold. Stone and I go on alone.”
“You can have the mark if you like, Torchay,” Stone offered, “and I’ll stay behind.”
Torchay made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and stepped from in front of the door. “Are you coming, Aisse?”
The bond between Aisse and Torchay had grown even closer during the past weeks of instruction. Kallista comforted herself with the thought that he treated her like a younger sibling, a sedil related by ilian rather than blood, then scolded herself for feeling comfort. They were all in this ilian. And she’d mucked things up with Torchay all on her own.
“No. I practice here.” Aisse had on the baggy muslin she wore for working out.
“Don’t go out alone,” Torchay warned as they left.
He spent the whole of the walk through Summerglen Palace trying to change Kallista’s mind, but she remained adamant. She would not allow him anywhere near while she attempted this dark and deadly magic.
At the narrow service corridor where one palace melted into the next, Kallista sent Torchay to the suite. He could return in an hour to escort them back. She didn’t know if he would go, but at least he stopped there. Without too much argument.
In the practice yard, Stone surprised her. He turned and gave her the small, formal bow of the military, then held out his hand. “Naitan,” he said. “I accept your gloves.”
Did he understand what the little ritual did for her? How it helped to center her and focus her attention on the test ahead? Kallista returned his solemn gaze as she pulled her gloves from her hands and placed them in his. Perhaps he did. He tucked the gloves in his belt, just as Torchay always did, and extended his hand. She clasped it in hers.
The magic inside him quivered with eagerness, but it didn’t go rushing uncontrollably about. They’d learned that if they made this connection at least once every day and Kallista used the magic for something—anything—she was better able to control it the next time they touched. She didn’t know whether it was a matter of keeping the magic “in training” or whether it simply had to be bled off daily to avoid an uncontrollable buildup. Why didn’t matter.
Stone complained on occasion because the mind-shaking surges of pleasure came less often, but Kallista thought the attitude was mostly for show. Her control wasn’t yet that good.
“I’m going to pull as much magic as I can,” Kallista warned him.
Stone took a deep breath and nodded.
Praying for control, she drew the magic from him as fast as she could until there was nothing left to draw. Magic swam behind her eyes, roared in her ears, stoppered her nose, and yet it still wasn’t as much as she’d held on that first day. Perhaps it wouldn’t escape the courtyard.
She focused on the veil itself rather than what she wanted it to do. The crumbling records had seemed to hint that the naitan’s intention had an effect on the deadliness of the veiling mist, that it didn’t always kill.
The magic seemed to understand what was wanted, but that didn’t help in controlling it. The power built, shaping itself. Before she could finish, the magic burst from her grasp in a lopsided glitter of pale blue that dissolved the remnants of broken glass halfway across one side of the courtyard.
“Was that what you were trying to do?” Stone eyed the shiny new surface on the exposed flagstone.
“I don’t think so.”
“Useful, though. You might want to remember that one.”
“At least it did something.” Kallista heaved a sigh. “I’ve never had so much trouble controlling magic as I do with the stuff you carry. It got away from me before I was ready.”
“Try again.”
She wasn’t sure the spell would work any better a second time. To put it off, she brought up something that worried her, something she should probably have spoken of long before now. “Does it bother you, working this magic that—that defeated your army?” That killed your partner. She didn’t dare say it aloud.
“I’m here, aren’t I? Try it again.” Stone wiggled the hand he held.
“But I’m the one who kill—”
“Not alone.” He cut her off. “You didn’t do it alone. Do you think I don’t know that? That you couldn’t have done what you did without this thrice-damned magic I carry? I know. I know you need to discover how to do it again. And I know I can’t go back.”
Stone’s hand tightened on hers almost to pain. “I am dead to Tibre. I can’t even speak the language anymore. My old life is ended, as dead as Fox. This is my life now.” He lifted their clasped hands and shook them at her. “T
his. I can’t be looking back all the time. I don’t want to. The past is past. Let it stay there.”
Kallista absorbed his impassioned speech with a blink. She rather wished Torchay could have heard it, but then he didn’t like trusting her safety to anyone but himself. And she rather doubted Stone was quite as reconciled to his fate as he claimed. “So you’re ready to try again?”
“Ages ago.”
She pulled magic again, more than she expected but less than before. It escaped again before she could complete the forming, this time a bit more evenly shaped, but red and foul-smelling.
“Khralsh!” Stone pinched his nose shut. “I suppose you could stink the enemy to death…”
“Oh, be quiet. Let’s go again.” Kallista reached for his magic and again it poured out, a seemingly inexhaustible supply.
But the naitan calling it was all too exhaustible. The struggle to control and shape the magic into such a powerful spell eroded her energy far quicker than she expected. The hour was not yet up when Stone pulled his hand from her grasp and handed back her gloves.
“Torchay will have my thumbs if I let you continue,” he said. “Besides, I’d rather not carry you back to our rooms. One more time, and I would have to.”
Kallista gave him a crooked smile as she tugged the leather over her hands. “It is a long way back.”
“And you’re no lightweight.”
They had crossed out of Winterhold and were walking along the endless corridors toward the tower that held their suite, when their way was blocked by a cluster of courtiers idling in the narrow gallery. Their short-cropped hair and extreme clothing style, as well as the short sword carried at each one’s waist, male or female, marked them as part of the reckless, fashionable set. Six of them, laughing and roughhousing together, they took up the whole of the walkway.
“Excuse me, aili. Could we pass?” Kallista bowed politely, all too conscious of her sweaty, disheveled condition.
“Excuse you?” The Shaluine prinsipella who had dragged Stone into a seizure on their wedding night turned to face her, only now showing her face. “I don’t believe I will. There is no excuse for you.”
Kallista sighed. She was much too tired for this. “I wear no sword, aila. I have no quarrel with you.”
“Perhaps I have one with you.” Viyelle Prinsipella advanced, hand on the hilt of her sword. The other bravos spread out around her, their bright capes swirling about their hips.
Stone moved up close behind Kallista. “There are six of them,” he murmured.
She didn’t reply. This could still, possibly, end without a fight. “And what quarrel might that be, prinsipella?” Kallista made her voice calm and soothing while loosening the glove on her left hand. “If I have given offense, tell me how, so that I can make amends.”
“Your existence offends me. Your ilias offends me—”
“Because he is Tibran, or because I married him?” Kallista’s interruption didn’t help matters, but at this point, she didn’t believe anything would. The prinsipella seemed determined to fight. “I am afraid, aila, that I cannot alter the fact of my existence.”
“You could die.” Viyelle still had not drawn her sword, but it was only a matter of time. And perhaps of form? Kallista did not know the court rules.
She held her hands up and out, keeping the loosened glove on her hand with widespread fingers. “I am not familiar with courtiers’ games. We are soldiers, I and my ilias. Warriors.” She let her voice go hard. “We don’t play games with rules. We kill. Stone has killed dozens.”
“Hundreds,” he said, his voice light and pleasant, almost eager. “At least. And Kallista has killed ten times that. Thousands.”
Some of the bravos backing the prinsipella began to look uneasy, but her expression did not change. “You can’t call magic here.”
“No?” Kallista shook her glove to the floor and raised her bare hand.
One of the courtiers flinched. “Viyelle, maybe—”
“No. She would not dare kill a prinsipella of Shaluine.”
Kallista’s fraying temper snapped. “And yet you would dare attack the godmarked? Warriors called and marked by the One for Her purpose? You would set yourself up against the God’s will?”
Viyelle laughed. “You think old stories for children will protect you?” Her short sword snicked from its sheath. She held it carelessly, overconfident in Kallista’s apparent lack of weapons.
A sound behind her had Kallista glancing over her shoulder to see Stone with a naked blade in his hand and a fierce grin on his face.
“There are six.” She drew her oversized knife from its sheath along her spine.
“Good.” His grin filled with a warlike glee. “I wouldn’t want to outnumber them too badly.”
Viyelle motioned for her cohorts to surround them. Kallista allowed it, Stone folding back to set his back against hers as the courtiers edged down the windowed wall past them.
“Try not to kill them if you possibly can.” Kallista kept her eyes on the leader as she called a spark to her naked hand.
“Ah.” Stone’s grin sounded in his voice. “A challenge. I like challenges.”
The prinsipella was too arrogant to see the danger she was in. Had she been allowed to win at everything because of her rank? Kallista respected rank. But not enough to let her ilias—or herself—be killed.
With a scream calculated to alarm, Viyelle attacked. Kallista sidestepped, Stone moving with her in perfect unison. “You’ve fought this way before,” she said, letting the spark fly to sting the courtier beyond Viyelle.
“Torchay taught me Adaran methods.”
Kallista parried a thrust with her shorter blade and shocked the prinsipella with another small spark. Someone came at her from the side. Kallista ducked and Stone sent him reeling back with blood pouring from a slice along his arm.
“Is that all you can do with your magic?” Viyelle jeered. “Shocks no worse than a wool carpet in winter? Oh dear. I’m shivering with fear of the deadly naitan.”
“I’m trying not to kill you.” Kallista kept her voice pleasant, but her teeth were showing. Not in a smile.
At some invisible signal, all six courtiers attacked at once. Kallista found herself hard-pressed to keep from killing them without allowing herself to be killed or badly injured. Stone was a blur of motion behind her as he protected her back. Kallista reached and found magic, despite the lack of skin-to-skin touch. She whispered to it as she drew it carefully out, trying to keep from distracting Stone.
“Protect yourself!” Stone cried, just in time for Kallista to raise magic and blade. Two short swords slid aside. “Don’t get lost in the magic, woman. Stay with me. I need you here.”
She had to let the magic go, unable to both control it and stay in the fight. It slid back into Stone as she shoved Viyelle into a companion, tangling them together enough to move a few paces ahead. She was tired. Too tired to be careful. Someone was going to get killed, and it wouldn’t be her or Stone.
Kallista called a bigger spark, knowing she couldn’t gauge how much would stop hearts. This had to end.
A familiar bellow of rage echoed down the gallery. Kallista glanced up to see Torchay, sword in hand, charging toward them. She’d never seen anything more welcome.
First one, then two, then all the courtiers broke and ran, even the prinsipella. Torchay and Stone chased after them, but Kallista hadn’t the energy to join them, so the men broke off and returned to her side.
“I knew it.” Torchay dredged up some choice oaths from his early days in the army. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you come alone.”
“I wasn’t alone.” Kallista picked her glove up off the floor and put it back on. “Stone was with me.” She brushed his golden flyaway hair from his face and kissed his cheek.
Stone grinned, turned his head and pointed to the other cheek. With a chuckle, she kissed that one too.
“And you arrived right on time.” Kallista looped her arm through Torchay’s and str
etched up to kiss his cheek.
“I might not have,” he grumbled, starting back to their suite. “You could have been hurt.”
“But we weren’t, and we didn’t have to kill any of them.” She beckoned Stone closer to loop her other arm through his. “There was something very odd about this little encounter.”
“Other than the fact you pulled magic from me without touching?” Stone said.
“That could be helpful.” Torchay perked up. “Give us another blade while she does her spells.”
“Besides that.” Kallista tugged at their arms, bringing their attention her way. “There was something odd about the prinsipella. I noticed when I pulled the magic, but I couldn’t quite see it before I had to let it go.”
“You can look tonight,” Torchay said. “At dinner.”
Kallista made a face. She hated the court dinners, dressing up and parading around to entertain the idiots. Something occurred to her. “D’you suppose we’ll get in trouble for brawling in the palace? Maybe the Reinine will banish us from dinner. Maybe for the rest of the time we’re here.”
Torchay laughed. “No harm in hope, but more likely she’ll require more attendance at court events, in hope their manners might rub off on you.”
“I have manners. Very good manners. Better than theirs.” She tipped her head back toward the gallery where they’d fought. She knew she sounded like a petulant child but didn’t much care. She hated those dinners.
“True. But you’re not a prinsipella, so you have to behave better.”
Kallista sighed. She did not look forward to tonight.
The sun was setting as the caravan approached Arikon. The trader resisted the urge to push faster. Caution was required. He did not know the territory, had never considered that his destiny might lie across the Mother Range, in the Northern Outlands. Other traders ventured past the mountainous barricade to journey through these strange lands. He had never been one of their number, had never heard any of their tales. Only this year had he left the cloistered existence of his former life to take up his new life as a trader, gathering up all he had won. And now he was here, unable to resist the call of his God.