02 - The Barbed Rose (39 page)

“Man after my own heart.” Torchay grinned. “Now let’s
go
.” He held his hand out to Kallista, demand in his face.

But Fox still wasn’t dressed. He would call attention to them if he paraded shirtless through Turysh, even in this weather. She took the tunic from him and put it over his head. “Get dressed.
Now
.”

He obeyed her insistent command, almost as if he’d reverted to his casteless obedience of a year ago. Kallista’s heart twisted, but she couldn’t worry about it now. She could however use it, and would. “Where’s your Heldring blade?”

He pointed at a locked chest in the corner. No one else could use the blade, especially now it had been matched to him.

“Get it. Viyelle, help him.” She used the time to look more carefully at Joh’s injuries.

“I’ll be fine.” He pulled away when she would have kissed him.

“I’m sorry. I forgot your lip.”

He touched it with his tongue. “So did I. But—don’t kiss me now. Not till I’ve at least rinsed my mouth after losing all that ale from my stomach. I disgust myself.”

Kallista laughed and kissed an unbruised spot near his mouth, then turned at the clatter of the lock breaking and the trunk opening. “Ready?”

Fox buckled on his sword as he followed Viyelle to the door.

“Too late,” Torchay said. “We’ve got company.”

Not just company. Kallista recognized the death stink of demons.

“Viyelle!” She held her hand out and Viyelle slapped hers into it, locking their fingers tight. “Calling magic,” Kallista warned even as she acted.

Four skeins of magic lurched forward, sluggish and reluctant. She wove them together, slapping and kicking when the magic wouldn’t behave, until finally she persuaded it to work together. Four skeins, not five.

“Kallista, whatever you’re doin’, do it faster.” Torchay stepped out into the hallway, twin swords in his hands. Obed followed, turning to put his back to the red-haired bodyguard.

The magic dragged like a sulky child put to a hated task, one it didn’t want to even know how to do. It was taking far too long, and she wasn’t sure it would do what she willed. “Fox, I need you.”

He drew his sword, started for the doorway.

“No.” Kallista caught his arm as he passed her. “I need your magic. I need
you
.”

He kept his head down, staring somewhere past her right elbow. Kallista was vaguely aware of Joh catching the sword Torchay appropriated from one of the fallen guards and taking up a post just inside the door. She could feel Viyelle fidgeting and knew she wanted to join them but would stay to feed her magic to Kallista. She could hear steel sliding along steel and knew her bodyguards fought so that she had time and space to do what was needed. And for that, she needed Fox’s magic.

She cupped his face and lifted it. “Look at me. I know, I know, you can’t
see
, but you can do
something
. Do it here. To me.” She used her command voice, trained on battlefields. “You have to open to me, love. I need your magic, but you’ve shut it off from me.”

He glanced at her and away again, his eyes wild, unseeing. Kallista stretched up to kiss him and he straightened, tall enough to keep her away unless he came down to meet her. She slapped at his chest, shook him. “Stop it. Whatever this is, just stop it. I
need
you, Fox.
Now
.”

This time, he let her pull him down, let her touch her lips to his, but she might as well have been kissing a child’s clay doll. “Fox,
please
.”

She could feel the demon—demons?—tearing at the links she held to all of them, clawing through the protections their magic gave them. She wrapped more magic around them, screaming as she fought it into shape. When she looked back at Fox, he stared at her with his wild empty eyes.

“Please, love,
please
.”

He shook his head, anguish bleeding into his expression. “Don’t.”

“I have to, Fox. I have to stop the demons, have to destroy them. That’s why we were given the magic. It’s what we were made to do.”

“Take it,” he said. “Take the magic, but don’t—don’t call me that.”

Call him what? Kallista frowned. “Fox, love—”

He winced, a visible, almost audible flinching away.
“Don’t.”

Oh. Kallista almost let go, almost lifted her hand from his golden-skinned face, almost let herself feel hurt because he didn’t want her love. Didn’t want her. But that didn’t seem right, even without the link to tell her truth.

“Kallista.”
Obed’s voice came harsh. He bled from half a dozen flesh wounds, but his face—oddly, frighteningly pale beneath his tattoos—spoke of worse wounding. Wounds of the soul. Torchay looked in similar state.

She drew more magic. In itself, that would energize them. She didn’t understand it, but it worked. Then she buttressed the protections, hammering the magic into place. She had to do better than mere defense. They could not wall themselves inside the magic forever. Or even for much longer. She had to attack the demons directly, and for that, she needed Fox.

And he didn’t want—No. She wouldn’t believe that. “Fox, do you love me?”

“For the One’s sake, Kallista,” Torchay cried. “We don’t have time for that now!”

“Do you?” She shook Fox, bringing his attention back from the fighting. “Do you even trust me?”

He blinked, then slowly, nodded.

Kallista reached gently down his link, drawing physically closer to him as she did. “I’m here, Fox.” She pressed her body against him. “This is me, touching you.”

She stroked along the link, pushing magic toward him, hoping it could get past the barriers he had built. “Trust me,” she murmured. “I won’t let the demon have you. Let me in, love.”

He shuddered, staring down at her with eyes no less wild, no less anguished, no less blind. “What if it is already there?” he whispered. “What if it goes through the link to you and the others?”

“It isn’t there. I promise it isn’t. Fox, demons can only take someone who is empty, and you are so far from empty. Please, beloved, let me in.”

“I betrayed you.” His voice sounded as if something had broken inside it. “Betrayed you all.”

“You
survived
. We would never blame you for that.” Kallista held his face tight between her hands and stretched onto her toes to kiss him.
“Never.”

This time, finally, he dissolved into the kiss. He kissed her back, lips moving tentatively at first. His hand rose, wrapped itself in her hair. His mouth opened, and as it did, the barriers across his link melted away. Kallista thrust her tongue into his mouth and ground her hips against his hardness as she stormed inside him, sweeping the last of his resistance away.

He was clean, untouched by demon save where one had tried to force its way in. She found his shame and whispered over it, unable to wipe it away, but hoping she had eased it some. Then she caught hold of his magic and came roaring back out to do battle.

“Now,” she said. “Go join the others.”

Kallista caught up the other waiting magic and poured Fox’s order into it. It was no less difficult to move than before, but when she shaped it, sending it here to protect, there to heal, it did exactly what she willed it to do.

She closed her eyes, closing out the physical. No doors, no walls, just magic. And demons.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
he demons fought as ferociously as the rebels they drove, without the physical barriers that confined their followers to the hallway. They tore the magic, ripping holes in it, reaching through to weaken their opponents, Kallista’s marked mates.

Gathering the magic around her, drawing heavily on Torchay’s boundless well of booming magical strength, Kallista sorted the darting wisps of demonstuff into their separate existences. There were two.

No, damn it,
three
. She could sense the third approaching from a distance and beyond it, a fourth. Kallista built the magic higher, stronger. Did she have enough? How much was enough? How had she destroyed the demon last year?

She’d named it. But she did not know these names. Did she?

“Untathel.” The name came out of her mouth before Kallista knew she was speaking it, coming to her from the same unknown, unknowable source as the demon’s name last year. “Ataroth. Xibyth. Ashbel.”

The very air seemed to cringe. To shiver and tighten with each name she spoke. The crash and clang of fighting echoed around her in violent accompaniment. She molded the magic into shape, willing destruction and nothingness for the names she’d spoken. It was heavy, filled with the weight of endings, ponderous with power. Once more, she named the demons and
pushed
the magic hard, sending it forth.

The instant it left her, it flew. Springing out in a glittering dark veil, it blasted into the demons, leaving behind nothing. A pair of rebels collapsed as the veil rolled on. Torchay and Obed, then Fox and Joh charged into the rebels remaining. The veil brushed against the third demon as it fled the onslaught. The demon screamed.

Ataroth
, Kallista murmured. She tried to feed more magic into the veil, but it was collapsing even as she tried. The demons—Ataroth and Ashbel—were too far away for the veil to reach. She’d damaged the one, Ataroth, but not destroyed it. The magic hadn’t even touched Ashbel.

“Come.” Viyelle urged her forward at Joh’s beckoning. “They’re falling back.”

“I got two of them. Only
two
.” Kallista let them lead her along. “There are two left. Last summer, demon worshippers died all the way to Adara. Why won’t they die now?”

“They did.” Torchay paused while Fox
looked
around corners, then clattered down the stairs. “The worshippers did.”

“Not many. And there are two demons left.”

“Oskina was their leader,” Fox said. “Maybe—”

“Let’s get away from here first,” Torchay interrupted. “
Then
we can sort out what happened.”

“But there are demons left,” Kallista protested.

“They’ll be here when we come back.” Torchay stopped at the kitchen doorway.

“Empty” Fox said before he could ask.

“And when we come back—” Torchay plunged through the swinging door “—our ilian will be whole. They won’t escape us then.”

He was right. They were stronger whole than they were apart. Kallista hurried in his wake, clinging to Viyelle’s hand. Likely they looked like two timid females cowering behind the protection of their men, but she needed the contact to draw magic in a hurry. Who cared how it looked? At least she had Fox’s magic back, with the order it carried.

Order, strength, truth…Kallista stumbled, and Joh caught her arm, steadying her, bearing her along across the vast plaza. Understanding, creativity…joy, loyalty. Will. Why had she not seen the pattern to the magic before?

“Kallista—” Torchay spoke over his shoulder, his eyes on a company mustering to the west. “Do you have enough magic left for hiding us?”

“Yes.” She thought she did. She should have done it already. Would have, if not for the distraction. Fighting now. Escaping now. Thinking later.

Their magic veiled from the demons, Fox disguised with a quick drenching of Torchay’s brown dye and Joh’s braid tucked under his hat again, they rode across the arched bridge over the Taolind and out of Turysh. They struck out north across the plains, to travel through Shaluine and the northwest “ear” of Filorne toward the Empty Lands and Korbin beyond, on the very edge of Adara.

They were a day and a night out of Turysh before they stopped long enough to catch their collective breath. Their Southron remounts brought from home had all been claimed by the iliasti they’d added, so they had not traveled as far as Kallista had hoped, but far enough.

Star-studded black overhead, a wash of midnight blue still painted the night sky above the mountains to the west. Kallista leaned back against Obed, staring at the fire as Torchay and Viyelle cleaned up after their meal. Fox lay sprawled on the grass beyond the fire, his head on his saddle. Joh squatted near him as he fed in more fuel. Having one who’d grown up in a drover household made plains travel much more comfortable. He didn’t mind handling the dried horse and bison droppings that provided the majority of their fires.

“Joh, why weren’t you cavalry?” Viyelle asked out of nowhere. “If you’re drover-born, you know horses like flies know dung. Why were you infantry and not cavalry?”

“I asked for cavalry when I was commissioned as an officer,” Joh said. “But the cavalry commander wouldn’t have a male officer. The infantry would.”

“Ah.” Viyelle dried the last spoon and handed it to Torchay for stowing.

“I know how many our ilian will ultimately hold.” Kallista didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until she noticed everyone staring at her. Even Fox had risen onto his elbows to turn his face her way.

She hadn’t intended to drop it on them out of nowhere like that, but now that she had…“There are eight of us,” she said. “We need one more. Nine.”

“Three threes.” Obed’s voice rumbled in his chest and vibrated through her. “The number of perfection completed.”

“…Perfection completed.” Torchay spoke in unison with Obed. “And how did you come to this remarkable conclusion?”

Kallista sighed and sat up straight, waving those on their feet to sit. “It was after the fight in Turysh, when we were leaving Mother Temple house. I was thinking how glad I was to have Fox back. And his magic.” She touched him through the link, since he couldn’t see her looking at him. “Because his magic brings order to the chaos. And I was thinking what each of you bring to the magic.”

Her eyes shifted to Torchay. “Strength.”

To Joh. “Understanding.” Obed. “Truth.” Viyelle. “Creativity.”

She let her gaze sweep across them again. “Then I thought of those who are not with us—Stone and the joy he brings, Aisse and her loyalty. And I realized…” She paused for a breath and Joh filled the gap.

“The Nine Attributes of the One.” His eyes were wide, voice hushed.