by Gail Dayton
“As long as they herd us where we need to go, I don’t care.” But what if they didn’t? What if they pushed them away from the palace? They had to get inside. “Is there a Hound with them? With the warriors following us?”
“Behind them,” Fox answered. “Far behind. She can’t keep up, so they’ve left her.”
“There’s one ahead.” Stone slowed his pace. “The man from the parade ground.”
“We just need a few minutes to let the warriors go past.” Kallista glanced over her shoulder.
The squadron filled the street, arms spread, hands touching. Those on the edges ran their hands along the building walls to either side. Up ahead, a door opened and a woman stepped out. Her eyes widened when she saw the warriors advancing, but before she could retreat, a small boy dashed from behind her skirts into the street.
“Quick.” Torchay shoved Kallista toward the open door behind the woman. The others were already moving.
Kallista jostled the woman as she passed and reached to soothe her alarm. The woman’s cry faded, then she shouted at the boy, ran into the street to catch his arm and drag him out of the warriors’ path. By the time she got him safely inside, the ilian was halfway across the women’s common room.
Despite the urgent need for haste, Kallista couldn’t help looking around to feed her curiosity. The room was large, filled with comfortable furnishings in bright colors, red predominating. Women sat or lounged in groups, some of them working on mending, a few of them nursing infants. It was empty of warriors, but Kallista didn’t know whether that was because warriors didn’t enter this room or because all of them were out on the streets hunting her and hers.
“This way.” Stone urged them through the open arch at the end of the room leading to a long corridor lined with doors. Most were closed, but a few stood open to show women in their private chambers, often with small children. Kallista didn’t have time for long inspection. Obed hurried her along in her Tibran iliasti’s wake with a hand on her elbow.
They passed through a wide, iron-banded door into an entrance hall, currently empty, and from there into an open-ended corridor lined with more closed doors. Warriors’ private chambers, Kallista assumed. At the far end of this corridor they found the vacant equivalent of the women’s common room. The sturdy battered furniture and faint smell of old beer and older sweat reminded Kallista of the first-year army camps in Adara.
Stone cracked open the door to the street and Fox leaned into the opening. “Clear enough.”
“Back to the first gate.” Kallista followed them out, Aisse leading the way, Torchay and Obed behind her. “With any luck, they’ll have sent all their warriors out chasing us and we can slip inside unnoticed.”
Not ten paces from the barracks they’d just left, Kallista felt magic stir. She whirled and saw the woman, the Witch Hound, her broken body stopping in midshuffle as she trailed after the searching warriors. Kallista drew magic.
Peace, Kallista sent again, but this time she reached for the woman. The magic unknotted twisted nerves, soothed years of pain, whispered the mercy of Ulilianeth, the strength of Khralsh, the joy of the One who was All. Kallista could feel the ache of the woman’s tears—Smynthe, she was called, but she had no eyes to cry them.
She had no eyes, but still Smynthe saw. Kallista waited, let her look, accepting her duty to report them, letting the broken woman make her choice. It would be as it would be. Another long moment, Smynthe looked, never turning her head toward them. She looked at Kallista, at her godmarked ones, at the links binding them together. Then she lifted her face, waved her misshapen hand and urged the warriors on. Away from Kallista.
“Blessed be the One,” Obed breathed when Smynthe moved on.
“Blessed be that one,” Kallista added, calling down more of the Goddess’s mercy on the woman.
“To the gate?” Torchay put up a sword, touched Kallista’s arm.
“To the gate, the palace, and the demon.”
The gate, when they reached it, was far from deserted. The squadron of warriors who’d sallied forth were a small portion of those set to guard. But the Witch Hounds had all apparently gone with them. When Kallista sent threads of magic questing forth, they came back safely, unsnared and untouched.
Stone went through the gate first, veiled in his shadows, sauntering past warriors as if nothing could touch him. Fox followed, then Kallista and Torchay together, with Aisse and Obed behind. They assembled in a courtyard just beyond the guard post.
“Now where?” Torchay spoke quietly. They were well veiled from sight, but perhaps not from hearing. Kallista wasn’t sure.
“Don’t ask me,” Stone protested when all eyes—save Fox’s—turned to him. “I grew up here, but I never passed those walls.”
“Nor I,” Fox said. “We were cannon fodder—meant for the wars, not the palace.”
Kallista took a deep breath. She could feel it, that sense of wrong that curdled her stomach and shivered her spine. It was close. Far too close for ease, but it wasn’t something she could track to its source. Not without using magic.
“I can find it,” she said. “But the magic will give us away. The demon knows we’re here in Tsekrish, but it may not know we got away from the Hounds or that we’re in the palace. If I use the magic to hunt it down, it will know.”
“What are your orders, naitan?” Torchay tucked her gloves more securely into his belt.
“Let’s get as close as we can without the magic.” She took a deep breath. “I’d like to get close enough that it can’t escape, but I don’t know if that’s possible. I’m hoping that it wants to destroy us more than it’s afraid we can destroy it.”
“Your magic will destroy it?” Stone shifted his weight back and forth, his gaze flitting from one building to the next, in readiness rather than nerves.
How to answer that? She didn’t want to frighten them, but neither could she lie. “I hope so. I believe the One has given us all we need to carry out Her will. But we haven’t exactly been able to practice on demons, have we?”
Torchay took Kallista’s hand again. “Same formation as before. Stone and Fox lead. Best guess where we’ll find the king and this demon of his.”
Obed took a moment to drop to one knee for a quick prayer. Stone spit on the pavement. It took Kallista a moment to recall that was an offering to the battle face of the One. She wiped her eyes, offering up her spontaneous tears along with a request for victory and a surrender of will.
“Let’s go.” Fox bounced on the balls of his feet. “The guards at the gate are paying too much attention to this square.”
Kallista fell into formation, following their golden-haired iliasti through palace grounds and past outbuildings until they reached the Ruler’s palace.
It stood multi-angled and massive near the center of the grounds, precisely oriented just askew of the cardinal directions, adding to the wrongness Kallista felt. She found North, turning to it unerringly as she had for so many years, drawing in its cold clarity. Then, after a brief hesitation, she turned ninety degrees to her left and faced West.
It was warm. Comforting and restful, promising answers to questions she didn’t know she had, old and wise and welcoming. This was what the Barbed Rose feared?
After the first moment of surprise, Kallista opened herself, soaking in the warmth of the setting sun long after it had disappeared beneath the horizon. Almost, she turned again, to the South and the East, but the magic—the West—nudged her on.
Turning back to the skewed palace, Kallista pointed her ilian up the wide, stern, gray steps, her skin prickling more and more with every step mounted. They slipped inside behind a young warrior bearing a message baton.
No king had ever found rest or comfort in this place. She doubted any had ever slept through an entire night. The palace hummed with a kind of dissonance that ate at her rational mind, picking at her good sense, clawing at her temper.
Kallista glanced at her iliasti. Didn’t they feel it? Better if they didn
’t. Being the naitan might make her more susceptible to this wrongness, but it also gave her more defenses. She didn’t draw magic, merely kept the links open and free, ready to draw as they progressed through one echoing, utilitarian chamber after another.
No beauty met the eye anywhere. Proportions were off just enough to keep the open spaces themselves from any kind of functional beauty. The chambers echoed, but they were not empty. Warriors stood on guard at regular intervals, their long, blade-pointed muskets shouldered and doubtless ready to fire. Rulers in purple half capes or waistcoats gathered gossiping in nervous clusters, more and more of them as Kallista’s ilian penetrated farther into the palace. Women in filmy red or purple draperies served food and drink, or occasionally, other needs.
“Witch!” The cry pierced the air, rising in pitch and volume as the purple-clad Rulers scattered before the Witch Hound.
The empty sockets were set in a youthful face beneath long tangles of golden hair. He could be no older than twenty, probably younger, his straight strong body clothed in the same soft purple fabric as the women. He hobbled toward them on feet that had been shattered and healed wrong, pointing a trembling hand directly at Kallista. “Witch! Can’t you see her? There she is, in the midst of your indulgence, damning you with her wicked, pale eyes.”
“I think we’ve just lost the element of surprise.” Torchay drew his second sword as warriors gathered from their posts and advanced. “Use your magic. Find that thrice-damned demon so we can get out of here.”
Kallista formed a quick braid of magic and flung it out to seek, small enough it might avoid notice. Then she called back the shadow veil, replacing it with the shield that had saved them from the explosion, solid now and secure.
Women screamed when the six of them suddenly flashed into view. Warriors recoiled, their advance stumbling, as if they hadn’t really believed the Witch Hound had detected anything. But they hesitated only a moment.
“Which way do we run?” Stone lifted his sword en guard.
“Run?” Obed’s scorn showed clearly.
“We haven’t found the demon yet, have we?” Fox retorted. “That’s the direction we run.”
“And you thought I was one for charging cannon unarmed.” Stone’s feral grin lit his face. “Kallista charges demons.”
“But not unarmed.” She tugged on the tail of her seeker magic, willing it to hurry.
One set of warriors came to a halt, taking aim with their muskets. Alarmed, Kallista looked the other direction. People—warriors and civilians both—thronged the corridor beyond her ilian. The musket fire would decimate their own people.
“Aim!” one of the guards shouted.
The young Hound was between the ilian and the warriors, oblivious to their activity. Behind Kallista, some realized what was about to happen and began to scatter. The smarter ones dropped to the floor. Kallista did not fear for her own. The shield had stopped crossbow bolts. It would stop musket balls.
She snatched magic, knocked the Hound to his face with it and spread the shield to fill the corridor just as the guardsman shouted, “Fire!”
The shots passed over the tortured Hound’s head and hit Kallista’s shield. Some of the balls rebounded, spinning back to those who’d fired them. Some imbedded in the magic, hanging in midair. A few stray shots got through around the edges of the shield where it lost strength. But no one died.
“That way!” Kallista turned and ran, away from the firing squad, jumping the people lying flattened in the corridor. Torchay pounded a warrior with the hilt of his sword, knocking him back down. Obed dispatched another who sprang from a niche in the wall.
The seeker magic hummed as it hunted. The palace was so filled with overtones and miasmas left behind by the demon, it had trouble telling the demon from the stench that followed it. Kallista fed a trickle of power to the seeker. It had to be strong enough, but not too strong.
At every intersection, she turned, as long as the turn led inward. Warriors converged, fought to stop them. The shield did not protect as effectively against blades, perhaps because a sword moved more slowly than bullet or bolt. Kallista used her lightning as much as her sword, but reflexively. Her focus was on the magic that sought their prey.
Her ilian whirled around her in a fierce and violent dance, Torchay calling the steps in a voice that grew rougher with every shout. Torchlight lit his hair, caught echoes of flame in Fox’s. Aisse brought down more than her share, her ferocity taking the warriors by surprise. Obed was a blur of smooth motion, Stone laughed as he fought and won. Gold and bright, shadow and flame, her iliasti protected her as she did them.
The seeker magic screamed and died. Kallista’s body jerked in reaction, slashed through with a quick pain. But she held its thread. She knew where it had died. And what had killed it.
“Come.” She charged ahead, blasting a passage through the warriors in her way with the lightning at her command. Her ilian dashed after her, caught almost as unprepared as the warriors she attacked.
Across a central courtyard to the other side, up the broad stairs, through two stark, ugly chambers, Kallista ran. She hauled open a heavy, ornately carved door, stepped inside, and nearly went to her knees under the hate that blasted her.
She groped for the links to her marked ones and called magic, drawing fast and hard, wrapping it around them all, tucking Torchay deep in the center. “My turn,” she murmured. “Stay behind me, please.”
The six of them together lit up the dark chamber with a pale blue-white glow. Kallista used it to see her way, borrowing a bit of Fox’s knowing to help. The king was there. On his throne in the room’s center. And there, the demon crouched, slowly taking on a semblance of shape and form.
Its eyes glowed a malevolent, molten black, and it spit hate at her again. Secure in the warmth of her ilian, Kallista let it spill over them without harm and kept moving closer.
“Tchyrizel.” Her voice echoed eerily in the gloom. “Release him.”
The demon snarled, metaphysical claws ripping at her, at her links. Kallista caught hold. Ignoring the demon’s violent struggle, she clung to it, enduring the pain it inflicted as she reached into the king. The demon had dug itself deep into the king’s soul, burrowed into every part of him.
Kallista called more magic and it came, through her iliasti rather than from them. She rooted the demon out of its hiding places, shaking off the pieces that were not demon. Gradually, bit by bit, she pried the demon loose.
It attacked her, biting, snapping, tearing, but the magic somehow held. She would not let it escape. Sweat drenched Kallista’s tunic, bruises and scratches made without physical blows marked her body, but her iliasti remained untouched. She managed to protect them from the demon’s fury. But she was tiring. The demon was strong. Fighting it took all her ability and concentration. It tore at the shield, rending away bits she couldn’t replace.
The demon reached through the gaps it made. Fox screamed, staggered, and the demon’s scream echoed Fox’s. The magic drove the demonspike from his body. Desperate, Kallista shored up the shield, cutting off the bit of demonstuff, destroying it. Surely she could endure until this was done. She had no other choice.
A few lone strands of the demon still clung to the Tibran king when Torchay cried out. Kallista whirled, saw him convulse, swords clattering to the marble floor with his collapse. The demon had somehow separated him from the others and now hovered over him as if savoring a tasty treat.
“No!” Kallista drew. The magic came, but she was almost too exhausted to fling it around Torchay, squeeze it between him and the demon. Almost. “You shall not have him.”
“Why not?” The demon spoke its first comprehensible words since the battle began. “You do not care about this one. He is not protected. Give him to me and I will let the others live.”
“He’s mine.” Kallista tried to increase his protection, but didn’t have the magic to do it.
The demon sank a claw deep. Torchay clamped a howl between his teeth,
arcing up onto heels and shoulders in obvious pain. “No,” he gasped. “I won’t.”
“Or,” the thing said, “give me the others and I will let you have this one back. They’re of no use to me, but killing them will afford me a little fun. I would like some fun.”
Kallista swiped away tears with a sweaty forearm, unwilling to waste breath on an answer as she struggled to free Torchay.
“Do it,” Torchay rasped as he struggled. “Let me go.”
“No!” Other voices echoed Kallista’s cry.
“I won’t let you have him.” She yanked the demon’s claw free and it sent three more back in. Torchay twisted, heels drumming on the floor, and the shield shattered. The links shuddered but held. For how much longer?
Her iliasti were weakening. Human bodies were not made to be used as vessels for so much power for so long a time. Aisse’s whimper echoed down the link, resonating with the other three. Fox held her up, despite the phantom pain from his phantom wounds. Stone supported them both, though Kallista knew his reserves were no greater than theirs. Obed stood in front of them, sword held ready for attack. Tiny droplets of blood trickled down his face, forced out by everything he gave. He held nothing back. None of them did.
Kallista yanked futilely at the demon’s grip, at the end of her strength. She could feel it gloating. If she couldn’t stop this, they were lost. All of them. Uselessly. She didn’t mind so much dying if she could take the demon with her, but could she?
If she didn’t, she and her marked ones would only die, but Torchay—the demon would own him. It would send its vile wrongness through his mind and heart, destroying whatever it touched. It would take all the honor and loyalty and love that was Torchay and twist it into something dark and ugly while what was left of his soul screamed in silence. Whatever the cost, she would not lose him. Not any of them.
She drew more magic, trembling as she fought to shape it. The darkness of sheer exhaustion hovered at the edge of her vision. Tears blinded her, caught in her throat. Torchay’s half-stifled scream tore at her heart.