by Gail Dayton
“Yes, of course I can help him now. I can restore much of the strength and some flexibility. If he waits longer, I may not be able to recover his complete mobility. It could well make a difference. But then I expect no better from you than to put your own wishes ahead of—”
“How much difference? Between one hundred percent recovery now against fifty percent later?”
“No, not so much.” Irysta pursed her lips, thinking. “I would estimate surgery now would restore perhaps ninety to ninety-five percent mobility, while waiting would be…perhaps around eighty percent. Possibly better, but there is no guarantee of that. Without surgery, I might be able to improve his mobility to half of what it was.”
Kallista looked at Fox, patted his foot to be sure she had his attention. “What do you want to do?”
“As you require, naitan,” he said, eyes pointed toward the ceiling. “Stone has told me of your mission.”
“Mission?” Irysta put thirty-four years of disapproval into that one word.
“Orders from the Reinine.”
“And you’re taking your ilian?” Disapproval and shock. Irysta was improving her nonverbal skills.
“They have orders as well.” Kallista made her decision. They couldn’t afford the time for such a small difference in healing. “Do what you can for him now. We’ll do the surgery when we get back.”
Now something like smug disappointment joined the other emotions in Irysta’s voice and on her face, as if the decision made her unhappy, but she expected no better. “I’ll be here.”
She gathered a handful of herbs and burned them in the lamp’s flame. “Fox, did you lose your vision when you were injured?”
The smoke mixed with her magic, sending him drifting. “Yes,” he murmured.
Kallista pulled her own magic back, afraid of interfering with her mother’s activity, but somehow he clung, refusing to let her go. She stood in a metaphysical corner of Fox’s body, trying to pretend she wasn’t there as she watched how her mother hurried the natural healing along, knitting together the severed muscle as much as possible.
It was interesting. Briefly, Kallista wondered if she might be able to do something of the sort now. She had West magic as well as North. Why not East? But she was a soldier, not a healer. Her duty lay elsewhere.
Finally Irysta straightened and dismissed her magic. Kallista could see what she had done, could see where just a bit more binding might—but she didn’t know anatomy, didn’t trust her own magic, so she left it as it was done. “Will you be at the ilian ceremony, Mother Irysta? You never did say.”
“There is a healer at Northside Temple who might be able to do something about his vision.”
“She’s already been sent for. And you still haven’t said if you will come.”
Irysta busied herself with her box, arranging the containers inside just so. “Are you certain you want me there?”
“Of course I do. If you want to be there, and if you can keep from—I know I disappoint you. I’m used to it. I’ve felt your disapproval all my life.”
Irysta spoke into the pause. “I don’t—I never—”
“Don’t bother denying it,” Kallista interrupted. “We both know the truth. Insult me all you want. But leave my iliasti out of it. Fox is a soldier, separated by war and injuries from his…sedil, Stone, one of the original four in our ilian. Now Fox has found us again. He is no beggar from the street and he is the brother of my ilias. How can we not marry him too?”
This far from the war, the Tibrans could pass as Adarans from a distant prinsipality, and she would not explain the marking by the One. It would take too long and might call attention. The less attention they drew, the better.
“I am not trying to insult you, Kallista,” her mother said with tight-lipped calm. “Or your iliasti. I am merely trying to instruct you on proper behavior—”
“And insulting us by assuming we aren’t already behaving that way. Look—are you coming or not? It’s up to you. I don’t care either way.”
“If you don’t care about your own birth mother—”
“That’s not what I said,” Kallista interrupted again, surprised she hadn’t already lost her temper and stormed out. “I invited you because you are my mother and I’d like to have you there. But if you can’t bring yourself to attend, it’s not going to ruin my life. It won’t even ruin my day. If you can’t be happy for us, that’s your problem, not mine.”
Where had that understanding come from and why had it taken so long to figure it out? She lifted her hand from Fox’s ankle and stared at it. Was it the magic? Or was it that she had an ilian of her own now? That would naturally make her mother’s opinions less important than any of theirs. Obed’s unconditional approval apparently had its good points.
“The ceremony will be after Evensong at Northside Temple, unless Fox shouldn’t be standing then.”
“No, no. Let him rest until then, but he’ll be fine. You will bring him back for the surgery once this…mission of yours is completed.” Irysta snapped her box closed and fastened it.
“Yes, Mother, I promise.” Kallista moved to the center of the room and gestured for Obed to open the door. “Let me introduce you to the rest of my ilian.”
Torchay, waiting just outside, signaled to Stone and Aisse who were downstairs in the public room with the other healer. Introductions were made and Irysta sent on her way without ever saying whether she would come to the evening’s ceremony.
The vision specialist determined that nothing organic seemed to be wrong with Fox’s eyes. He simply could not see. She agreed that likely it was a result of the magic that had ended the assault on Ukiny, but since no one had done such magic in so many years, she didn’t know what might reverse it. She would investigate and with luck know more when they returned for the repair to Fox’s leg.
The wedding ceremony that night was utterly unlike the previous two. Mother Dardra, allied with Kallista’s blood sisters, had gathered not only the entire family, but all Kallista’s childhood friends available. Even Mother Irysta came. The joining, with Obed again providing the bands from his seemingly inexhaustible stock of jewelry, was both solemn and joyous. Once more the magic flared at the end of the ceremony, binding the six of them together. The party afterward spilled out of the inn’s spacious public rooms into the streets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Their ilian stayed bunched together, moving in a group like a flock of birds, now this one leading or that one dropping behind a pace, but always together. Kallista couldn’t move too far from Obed or Fox, and Stone wouldn’t leave his resurrected partner. Similarly, Torchay would not leave Kallista’s side and Aisse hovered near Torchay, obviously uncomfortable in the bawdy atmosphere of a wedding celebration.
Eventually, they withdrew from the party. The guests who still lingered were too drunk or too intent on their own pleasure to notice. In the room, the ilian was faced with new decisions about sleeping arrangements. Everyone’s eyes turned to Kallista, save for Aisse, who slept alone in her own corner, and Fox, whose eyes didn’t function.
The weight of the day descended on Kallista in an instant and she glowered back at the men. She was too tired for this. “I’m going to sleep,” she announced. “In that bed. The rest of you can sort yourselves out.”
They sorted themselves into the same bed with her, all four of them. It made for a tight fit, but they managed without anyone blacking an eye with a flying elbow or getting squashed in the middle.
The first day out of Turysh was hard on everyone, save Obed who hadn’t had as much to drink, and Torchay who never seemed to feel the effects of too much wine. They paced themselves to Fox’s stamina, which improved gradually with sufficient rest and plentiful food.
Four days out, Kallista called an early halt. It was time to see how much more trouble she would have controlling three men’s magic than two.
She sent Torchay and Aisse ahead with the animals, as she didn’t want to risk maiming such fine beasts, instru
cting them to ride until they could no longer be seen. Out here on the subtle undulations of the Adaran plains, they would be miles away before that occurred. Torchay would return in an hour.
Kallista turned her back on her iliasti, trying to open herself to the beauty around her. The plains stretched in all directions, an endless flow of subtle greens this early in the summer while rains still fell. To the west, she could see the purple smudge on the horizon of the Shieldback Mountains, and farther north, swinging closer beyond the Heldring Gap, the Okreti di Vos Range—the arms of God in the old language. The sky curved a smooth unbroken blue overhead. She closed her eyes, searching for that cool, distant sense of the land, of permanence and endurance.
The mountains gave her strength. Through all the lonely years since her magic had burst forth, she had tried to make herself like the mountains, aloof, bearing up under any burden. She had never been so burdened as she was now. She needed that strength, that distance. So she reached out—and found life.
All around her, life swarmed. Quail and grouse, swallows, sparrows, larks, rabbits, lizards, snakes, antelope, boar, mustangs, wolves, foxes and dingoes. Predators and prey. Thousands of creatures living their lives, eating, sleeping, mating, dying. Thousands of hearts beating, demanding she notice, demanding she care.
No, not thousands. Three. Three hearts beating in time with hers, three lives she could not hide from. She couldn’t live like this. These men were strangers. She didn’t know them, couldn’t care about them, didn’t want to. The mountains knew how to endure. Again she reached out, desperate for that cool remoteness, that empty peace.
Again, her reach fell short, disturbed by the men clustered near her. “Give me space,” she cried, moving to the end of the magical tether.
Empty peace? That wasn’t right? Peace was just…peace. She wanted to move beyond that boundary of magic, to step out and let them fall and prove they had no hold on her, that she didn’t care what they suffered. But she couldn’t.
They disturbed her peace, cut it to ribbons and left it lying in shreds at her feet. She wanted it back, wanted her life the way it was. But when it was that way, she’d wanted something different. She wanted an ilian—which she now had. She wanted a child—she had that too. So why then was she now whining? Because it hadn’t happened the way she dreamed it would?
Or because she had to give up her safe mountains and come down onto the dangerous plains to live?
“Kallista?” Stone spoke. “They’re out of sight now. They have been for some time.”
She set aside her disturbing thoughts and turned to her marked iliasti with a smile. “Then we should begin. We only have an hour before they return.”
Stone bowed, accepting her gloves, then stood apart as he had since Obed’s arrival. Kallista took her dark ilias’s hand and waited for the magic to settle. She’d learned that hurrying the process made it rebel.
“Hold out your hand, Fox,” she said, turning to him.
He jumped as if touched by one of her sparks when she clasped his hand in hers, and the magic rumbled through her, twining with Obed’s to make her moan. This time, it seemed to calm more quickly, and she reached through the ever-present link to call Stone’s magic.
She could taste all three of them in the magic, braided together but still distinct; dark and rich, light and joyous, steady and sweet. She had no free hands left, but perhaps that didn’t matter. The magic hummed inside her, quiet, true. For once obedient to her commands. It took the shape she gave it and waited to be released rather than slipping willfully away.
Kallista shaped the scythe in her hands, ordering it to slay nothing with a heart that beat. The feel of all those hearts still lingered. She made the scythe small, only just larger than the space where they stood. She kissed it with mental lips, wished it well, and let it go.
An instant later, a perfect circle of grass and wildflowers around the spot where they stood lay crisp and blackened under their feet. Dead.
Kallista laughed aloud. For the first time since Stone found her, the magic had done exactly what she wanted it to do. No more and no less.
“What happened?” Fox clung to her hand. “Do I smell smoke?”
“It worked.” On impulse, she stretched up and kissed his cheek, then kissed Obed’s to be fair. “It actually worked for once. Without a fight.”
“Don’t forget me.” Stone came forward to claim a kiss for himself, which she granted without thought.
“I want to do it again. Maybe that was a fluke.” She waved Stone back to his place.
“A little hard on the vegetation, isn’t it?” he said, retreating.
“It’ll grow back. We’ll pick a new spot.” She walked out of the circle of dead grass, dragging Fox and Obed by the hand until they stood in pristine green. Once more, she called magic, braided and shaped it, then sent it out. Again, the grass blackened and died in less time than it took to draw breath. Kallista laughed, triumphant.
“More kisses?” Stone suggested with his usual cheerful leer.
Why not? She shared them out as before, sweet, playful, seductive.
“What next?” Stone backed away.
Kallista blinked at him a moment. “I haven’t a clue. It’s been such a struggle to make the magic do anything, I hadn’t thought beyond controlling it. Learning how to do again what I did that first time it woke.”
“Are you sure that you have?” Obed said.
“I don’t want to destroy everything within a thousand paces just to test it, but I am confident that the scythe will do whatever I ask.”
“Why?” Stone asked. “I mean, why now? What’s the difference? Fox?”
Kallista looked up at the blind man, considering. “Possibly.” She plucked his magic from the others, testing it with unknown senses. “Probably. His magic contains…order.”
“Might have known,” Stone muttered. “He’s always going on about rules.”
“If his magic holds order, what is in the magic I carry?” Obed asked.
Did men think in any terms other than competition? But it was a valid question and the answer might be a good thing to know. Kallista released the Fox magic and filtered Obed’s out. “It feels dark,” she said, sipping at it. “Hidden depths behind a wall of illusion—hidden even from yourself? There is…truth in your magic. Or perhaps reality. But it’s tucked away deep. As if you’re afraid of it.”
“I fear nothing.” Obed’s hand jerked as if he meant to pull away, but he didn’t.
“Then you’re a fool,” Fox said, surprising them all. “Or a man who’s never stood in the dark waiting for the cannonade to end so the battle can begin.”
“Truth is a frightening thing.” Kallista was beginning to see that for herself, much as she would like to deny it.
“What about my magic?” Stone deflected the tension. “Fox has order, Obed has truth. What do I have?”
“Joy,” Kallista responded instantly.
Stone laughed. “Joy? What use is that? How will joy defeat demons?”
“How will truth or order?” She shrugged, considering his question. “I have to admit, when it was only the two of us working together, I often thought your magic was having entirely too much fun. I’d will it to do something and it would run away laughing and do what it wanted. Which might be what I asked or might not.”
“Perhaps these things are not intended specifically for defeating demons, but for the magic,” Fox said. “The order itself doesn’t do anything but allow Kallista to control the magic, if her guess is correct.”
“It seems to me that it might be a good thing if the magic…enjoyed what it did.” Kallista frowned. “Does that make sense? It seems somehow wrong for a thing to enjoy killing.”
“But isn’t there a kind of joy in doing what you were meant to do?” Fox tightened his grip on her hand.
“It’s just magic, not a person,” Obed protested. “It’s a tool.”
“The Heldring swords are tools,” Kallista said. “But you can’t den
y there’s a kind of joy about them when they’re used as they were meant.”
“What about truth?” he asked. “What can it contribute?”
“Truth is always good. How can you fight a battle without knowing what you are fighting against? Where the enemy is disposed and how many they are. It’s even more important to know your own strengths and weaknesses.” She looked from one man to the other, weighing everything she had just learned. “I’m thinking it’s very likely that we four were chosen because of the different strengths we bring to the whole. What one lacks, another provides.”
She paused as a thought struck her. “I’ll tell you what joy does for the magic. It makes it eager and quick. That’s why it was so hard to control, because it moved like quicksilver, so eager to go and do, it wouldn’t wait for me to tell it what to do. Speed is a good thing, now that there’s a little order to hold it back until the shaping is done.”
“We four.” Stone pointed at each of the men. “Truth. Order. Joy.” He grimaced as he indicated himself, apparently not pleased with his own designation. Then he pointed at Kallista. “What’s your contribution?”
“Will,” Obed said before anyone else could react. “It’s her will that gives the magic its shape and direction. Without it, there is nothing.”
“See?” Kallista grinned. “Truth. Important stuff.” She rotated her shoulders. Sleeping on the ground, even in the middle of a pile of men, made her stiff. “Speaking of direction, I’m wondering if I can aim this magic.”
She adjusted her increasingly sweaty grip on the hands she held and called the magic. This time, she shaped and restricted it as before, but when she let it go, she pushed it toward Stone. When Kallista opened her eyes—she didn’t remember closing them—she saw a wedge of blackened vegetation widening a short distance beyond Stone before it faded into green. Though she stood in one of the already dead circles, it was easy to see that she stood at the apex of the wedge.