02 - The Barbed Rose (11 page)

Then it was there, filled with hate and an evil so ancient it could almost be touched. Be smelled. Rot and blood and old burning metals, foulness so complete Torchay fought against retching in his sleep.

He slept. This was a dream. It wasn’t real. He could cast the dream aside, turn it from this horror.

But the thing would not go. It slithered past, laughing at his feeble defense, reaching for the helpless ones sleeping behind him. He shouted, lunging at it. The thing did not seem to like his taste, so Torchay ran at it again, and this time, it struck back.

Pain pierced his soul, like knives in his gut but worse. Torchay screamed, falling to the ground, scrabbling on his back in the dirt as the foulness raked through him. He knew this pain, had felt it before, but—Goddess, it
hurt
.

“Kallista, wake up!” he shouted. He could not do this alone. “Wake up, all of you! Wake up!”

“Torchay.”
Strong soft arms around him, quiet voice in his ear. “Torchay, I’m awake. It’s all right.”

It wasn’t, but he was awake now, too, sweating and gasping in Kallista’s arms like he’d just fought off a thousand demons.

“Oh Goddess,” he groaned.
“Demons.”

Now he knew where he had felt this pain before—last year, when the demon Tchyrizel had got its insubstantial claws in him, in the Tibran capital, before Kallista destroyed it.

“It was just a dream.” Kallista tried to pull him in, cradle his head against her, but he refused the comfort.

“Not a dream. Or not
just
a dream.” He shoved his hair out of his face with both hands, wishing he could shove the dream out of his head the same way.

“What do you mean?” Obed was awake, too. Of course.

They were all awake after Torchay’s shouting—probably awake clear to Winterhold. His throat burned from it.

“I’m the one with dreams that aren’t just dreams,” Kallista protested.

“But you’re asleep. Your magic is asleep. I dreamed that.”

“What did you dream? Tell me.”

He wanted to tell her, but speaking the horror aloud would somehow make it real, would bring it into this room that was—or should be—their refuge. “Not here,” he said. “Out there. In the parlor.”

“Torchay—” Kallista began another protest, but he was already moving, heading for the room where he’d left his saddle bags and the key to Joh’s chains. It was a nuisance, having to deal with another new-marked man.

He gathered all the bags from the separate rooms, keeping his mind busy with trivial matters so he wouldn’t think about things he would rather avoid. The key was quickly found and Joh unlocked from his cot cell. Then they all gathered in the parlor, shivering in their sleeping wear.

When they were situated to Kallista’s satisfaction, huddled together for warmth against the spring’s night chill—even Joh—she demanded the dream. Word by word, she pulled it from him, insisting on every detail, every nuance.

Finally, he had no more to give, and she sat back, frowning.

“I don’t like this.” Her fingers tracing lightly across Torchay’s shoulder made him shiver, but he knew her attention was elsewhere.

“Nor I,” Obed said.

“You think I do?” Torchay scowled across Kallista at his dark ilias. The man had used up nearly all the patience Torchay possessed, by the hurt he gave Kallista. And with the former lieutenant added to the mix, the strain would only get worse.

“You truly think this a dream of omen?” Obed shifted, as if to pull away.

Torchay clamped a hand on his wrist, holding him in place on Kallista’s other side. “I do.”

“So do I.” Kallista’s hand moved from Torchay’s shoulder to his bare knee. “And for you to be dreaming my dreams means that things are not right.”

“But your magic woke,” Joh said. “We all felt it.”

“It woke, yes, but…”

Torchay felt the faintest shiver of magic across his skin. Even before he’d been marked, he’d been able to tell when Kallista used magic, but this was different. Better. The magic quivered again and faded away.

“It’s sluggish,” she said. “Maybe because our ilian is separated. Maybe for other reasons. I don’t know. I can’t get it to rise. Not like it should.”

“What—” Joh fell silent without finishing. He obviously still considered himself a prisoner. And since Torchay considered him one as well, that was good.

“Ask, Joh.” Kallista leaned forward to see him past Torchay.

“What does it mean?”

“Demons,” Torchay said. “Felt like demons.
Smelled
like demons.”

“I think so,” Kallista agreed. “I wish I had dreamed it.”

“So do I.”
Torchay shuddered. “I want no more of them.”

Kallista sifted through the dream details Torchay had given her, hunting meaning. Huddled between the warm bodies of her iliasti, she felt cold, a cold that she feared no amount of warm bodies could chase away. “The demon threatens Arikon,” she said. “It’s here in Adara, not across the sea.”

“It threatens
us
.” Torchay stilled her hand on his knee, pressing it flat beneath his hand. “It wasn’t some mass of humanity I was defending. It was you. It was the twins. And we need your magic to stop it.”

“You think I don’t know that?” She would have thrown herself to her feet to pace save for Torchay’s arms holding her back, Obed’s arms joining them. “I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how to bring it back. Belandra doesn’t know. Nobody knows.”

“Easy now, love.” Torchay kissed her forehead, offering comfort. “We’re in Arikon. Perhaps there’s something in the archives.”

“You don’t think Serysta Reinine has had scholars scouring the shelves since the girls were born?”

“We can ask. We’ll find a way. Somehow. It will happen. Your magic will return.”

Kallista nestled her cheek against Torchay’s chest, enjoying the feel of skin against skin, and sensed more than felt Obed’s withdrawal. Physically, he was present. Emotionally and otherwise—Kallista sighed.

“I can sense all of you through the links,” she said. “Before today, I couldn’t. It’s improved that much, at least.”

“Aye.” Torchay stood, lifting Kallista in his arms. “But now, you need to sleep. We all do.”

“Without any more dreams.” She meant to catch Obed’s arm, to bring him with them, intended to, but didn’t. He followed anyway as Torchay bore her back into the sleeping room. Maybe her plan was working.

Kallista sorted out the strand that hummed of Obed, barely tasting his faint exotic scent that faded as she sought it. As if he pulled away even here. Maybe the plan stunk.

They had bigger things to think of than a moody, bad-tempered ilias, but Kallista couldn’t help feeling in the bottom of her gut that—despite the demons—this was important. As sleep came to claim her, she wondered whether it might be important
because
of the demons.

Kallista woke to the touch of kisses along her collarbone above her chemise, to the caress of silk-soft hair trailing over her breasts. She opened her eyes to the sunlit scarlet of Torchay’s hair as he kissed his way up her throat to her mouth.

“Good morn, sweet ilias.” His lips spoke against hers before opening in a deep, drugging kiss.

She felt half-asleep, lost in a sensual dream as Torchay brought her body awake with the stroking of his rough-callused hands. She’d missed this, missed
him
these last few months.

“Good morn to you.” She returned the greeting as his mouth left hers to follow the path his hands had taken. “No more dreams?”

He shook his head, not bothering to disturb his focus on lips against skin as he shoved her chemise up out of his way. Kallista’s whole being concentrated on the same path, but even so, she noticed the bed felt empty. “Obed?”

“Awake. Gone.” Torchay licked his tongue down the slope of her breast and across her nipple, bringing her up in an involuntary arc. He smiled against her skin and made her gasp.

“Joh?” She could say that much.

“Asleep.” He made her gasp again as his fingers slid between her legs into the wet, slick heat there.

“You sure?”

Torchay lifted his head, met her gaze. “Do you care?”

His thumb stroked across her sweet spot as his fingers slipped inside her, and Kallista came up off the bed onto head and heels. “No.”

He smiled and moved his body over hers, into the place she made for him in the cradle of her hips. She smiled back. Oh, she had missed this, the heat and silken strength of him pushing deep inside her. Her breath sighed out as she took him in, and they fell into the familiar rhythm old as life itself.

“Call the magic.” He breathed the words so quietly, she wasn’t sure she heard him.

“What? Now?”

“Do it. Call magic.” He drew back, holding his weight on his hands, never ceasing the deep rhythm as the lightning-bright blue of his eyes gazed into hers.

“Are you—” She locked her legs around him, trying to hold him still, but couldn’t stop the motion of her own hips. “Is this no more than an attempt to wake my magic?”

She tried to fight free of him. Torchay collapsed, pinning her with his full weight, pressing her down.

“No,”
he growled. “This is me making love to you. Nothing more. And nothing less.”

He pushed deeper inside her, and she gasped. “I love you, Kallista. For ten years, I’ve loved you. Don’t make this harder than it is.”

“Then why—” She fought for breath as he stroked inside her again. “Why magic?”

“After yesterday, you have to ask?” He nuzzled her ear, licked her earlobe, brought himself out and back in. “I listened to the others wonder how much better ordinary sex might be with the magic added. I want to be the first to know. I wasn’t the first one marked. I wasn’t the first one you took to your bed. I want to be first at something.”

“Oh, Torchay.” Kallista’s throat clogged with tears she refused to shed—save for the one, no, two, three—that got away. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close with arms and legs, urging him on with an undulation of her hips. She turned, hunting through his wild red waves of hair till she found his ear. “I loved you first,” she whispered. “I love you most.”

He rose back onto his elbows, giving her a faintly mocking smile as he picked up his pace. “I bet you say that to all your iliasti.”

She smiled, tried to shake her head, but the pleasure he gave her distracted. So she
reached
for magic instead, and found it.

Massive and sluggish, slow to rise, the magic allowed her to coax a tiny shred of it to life. Enough to make Torchay gasp as it flowed down the link between them. She played it back and forth, matching the magic to the rhythm of their increasingly frantic passion. He drove into her, harder, faster, until all three of them—Torchay, Kallista and the magic—exploded into climax together.

And Joh screamed.

CHAPTER SIX

T
orchay was on his feet, a blade in his hand, before Kallista could fight off her body’s after-sex lassitude and scramble to the edge of the massive bed. Obed burst into the room, sword drawn, and Joh cried out again, thrashing on his narrow cot.

“Joh.”
Kallista stumbled across the crowded space to bend over her new ilias. She smoothed his hair back out of his face and caught it between her hands. “Joh, wake up. It’s a dream.”

Behind her, Torchay had the key, was unlocking the chain from the wall. Joh shuddered, moaned, still caught by the dream.
Her
dream, she knew, one she should be dreaming. She got an arm beneath his shoulders, hauling his limp weight up into her lap where she could cuddle him against her naked body. Torchay had awakened from his dream when she held him close. Maybe it would bring Joh back.

“Wake up, soldier.” She spoke into his ear. “Wake. Leave the dream behind. You’re needed here.”

Body racked with tremors, Joh’s arms closed around her and tightened slowly, as if the dream were reluctant to let him go. Kallista held him tighter, murmuring encouragement as he fought his way to consciousness.

She looked up once, saw Obed watching with his flat, black stare, his face devoid of all expression. Save for the tension she could see in his jaw, the flaring of his nostrils. He was not happy.

Deliberately, she turned from him, pressed a kiss to Joh’s forehead and rested her cheek against his hair.

“Oh God.” Joh was fully present now, his voice a frog’s croak.

He held Kallista tight enough almost to hurt. She couldn’t tell whether the damp against her breasts where his head was cradled was sweat or tears. It didn’t matter. She stroked a hand down the long, straight sweep of his hair, past his shoulders to his waist. “Tell us your dream.”

Joh let her go, sitting up, drawing himself straight as he wiped his face with both hands. “Not here. Sergeant Om—Torchay is right. This should not be spoken of in this room. It already invades our sleep. We do not need more.”

Kallista pulled on the tunic Torchay handed her, but didn’t take time for trousers. Obed went with her into the parlor, but waited for the others in silence, across the room from her.

“Is this how you keep your vows as ilias? Your promise to be one of us?” Kallista’s question brought Obed’s head around, and he stared at her.

“I ask only to serve you,” he said after a moment, “and through you, the One above us all. But how can I, if I am not given the opportunity. Even the newest among us has been given—”

“Beware what you ask for, Obed.” Torchay came into the room, Joh jingling behind him, both of them fully dressed. “Believe me when I tell you, you do not want these dreams. You don’t.” Torchay settled onto the sofa beside Kallista, touched her shoulder.

Joh sat on her other side, a careful distance away—enough room for Obed between. Kallista beckoned him closer without even glancing at her dark ilias. His choice, his problem. Joh obeyed, submitting to her arm around his shoulders with only a faint twitch.

“Before, when—” Joh hesitated, choosing words. “When Torchay told his dream, I heard him say ‘demons,’ but I still thought ‘dreams.’ I thought ‘A dream is not so bad. A dream isn’t real.’ Demons are disturbing, perhaps even distressing, but in a dream, they aren’t real. I thought Torchay…exaggerated.”