03 - The Eternal Rose (32 page)

* * * *

Night had grown even darker when Kallista jolted straight up into darkness, every nerve jangling.

“What?” Obed was on his feet, sword in hand. “What is it?"

She scrambled out of bed, hunting her clothes. “The skola. Something's gone bad wrong at the skola. Wake up the others. Everyone—except the children. Don't wake the children, but everyone else.
Everyone
."

Torchay burst in, wearing his smallclothes and his sword sheath, both blades in his hands. “What's wrong?"

Obed went to the door, relaying orders to the bodyguard just outside it.

“We have to get to the skola.” Kallista tried to pull her tunic on and pull magic at the same time.

With an exasperated huff, Obed tossed his saber aside and came to put Kallista in her clothes. “Do we have time to dress?"

“If we hurry. Get Leyja. She's in charge of protecting the children. I don't know if what's wrong at the skola will come here—there's no demons. We don't have to worry about demons. I looked. But there's trouble. I want our babies safe."

Torchay nodded. “I'll get my trousers after I tell her."

“Tell the others. Half the troop stays here, half with us to stop the trouble there.” Kallista threw Obed's trousers at him, dressed now, and tied her hair back without bothering to braid it. “I want all the guards who went to the skola to go with us. Be ready. I won't wait. They'll just have to catch up."

“Bloody hells, Kallista, you can't—"

“I'm not waiting, so you'd better move right sharpish, love.” She buckled on her sword as Torchay dashed back out into the inn bellowing orders.

When Kallista trotted up the road to the skola, Torchay was shirtless, still fastening up his trousers, but at her side. Obed stalked at her other shoulder. Fox led the way, scouting ahead with his peculiar senses while Joh followed at the head of the Tayo Dai and the dozen or so soldiers who'd been ready to march. Aisse and Viyelle had decided to lend their swords to Leyja, defending the children, and Captain Kargyll was chivvying the rest of the troop into order.

The moon still rode high in the sky but now on its downward slide, a crescent sliver of light that didn't penetrate the shadows beneath the cottonwood trees lining the road and the stream beside it.

“How do you know?” Torchay winced, his stride skipping as he stepped on something sharp with his bare feet. “That there's trouble in the skola?"

“I set an alarm. Magic.” Kallista dropped her pace a bit so she could walk and speak at the same time. “After I cleaned out the demon stain, when we left, I sealed the skola off. No demons in, none out. And I set an alarm, in case there was a demon hiding. Or in case that chancy mood of Murat's went bad. There's no demon. I looked before I slept. But there's a lot of bad. I just—I don't know what might have set off the alarm—"

“Someone's coming,” Fox called back to them. “A party from the skola—” He paused. “They're boys. Young ones."

Kallista hurried to reach Fox. Ten or twelve terrified boys with shiny shaved heads cowered naked in the road. Some of them shared blankets. Some fought tears. They were in the care of two older boys of sixteen or so with hair down around their ears and weapons in hand to shield the youngsters. One of the older ones had managed to grab a kilt before they ran. He stepped up, frightened but defiant in his determination to protect.

“Are you the Reinine?” His voice cracked.

“I am. What's happened?"

“I—Yanith said to bring the skints to you. You'd keep ‘em safe. The grand master's gone mad. He's—The medics—there's—” He choked on the tears he refused to release.

“Go.” Kallista pointed down the road toward the village. “Take the young ones to the Red Toad. Help guard the children. And tell my captain to
hurry
.” She motioned her people on.

“Where are you going?” The boy sounded surprised.

“To help your Yanith. Now you go. You're in charge of the skints. See them safe."

“Wait.” Genista stopped the boy. “Have you news of Ruel?"

His chin crumpled before he stiffened it. “Dead. Grand Master Murat killed him. Killed them all."

Chapter Nineteen

“No.” Genista whispered the word, her face white.

“I'm sorry.” The boy repeated it several more times as he followed the stream of younger boys toward the village.

“Steady, Corporal.” Torchay gripped Genista's shoulder. “The Tayo Dai hold. We serve. And nothing's certain till we see him cold. Not with our Reinine. This Reinine."

Kallista broke into a run, motioning the younger, more fit guards ahead. They needed to get there fast, not at her forty-year-old naitan's speed. Forty-one. “Stop the fighting,” she ordered. “We'll sort it out when that's done."

Genista put on a burst of speed, unlimbering her halberd as she ran. Kallista called magic. It made her stumble, but if she could keep any alive—she shoved the magic out, shaped only to stop bleeding, and felt it take hold, some of it. Most of it. Pray the One it would help.

She
reached
for the warding magic and stumbled again. Torchay and Obed took hold of her arms and carried her between them, allowing her to shatter the protection on the walls and shift it to protect boys and those who fought to protect them.

Fox's shout told her those who'd run ahead were inside.

“Let me go.” Kallista got her feet working properly again. “I'm through with magic till we reach the injured. That's where I'm needed. Obed, you find Murat. I leave him to you."

“Isn't there magic you can use to stop this?” Torchay led the way through the first gate, then the second.

Kallista took a moment to check the gatekeeper, but he was already gone. “Without demons involved, the veils are unpredictable. How do I shape it? What if I put the wrong ones to sleep?"

“Put everyone down. We can sort it later."

That made sense. She should have realized it herself. “I need to be in the middle, so it doesn't miss anyone."

“I go to find Murat.” Obed saluted Torchay. Not Kallista. He turned her over to Torchay like some courier's packet, but for Kallista, he had no salute, no kiss, not even a mumbled “Ta.” And she had bigger things to fret over.

Joh stayed with them, guarding her other side. He had to fend off a crazed dedicat who charged screaming, kilt and sword dripping with gore, before leaving to find easier prey.

Kallista ran to the sand pit behind the big arena. There, hopefully in the center of the skola grounds, she planted her feet, caught a shoulder on either side for balance and closed her eyes to call the magic. Torchay's strength, Joh's understanding surged forward, under her hands. Kallista reached a bit farther for Fox's order, Obed's truth, and farther still for Aisse's loyalty, Viyelle's creativity, Leyja's love. Together with the will her own magic provided, it needed only Stone's joyful eagerness to be whole. But surely for this, it would be enough.

She shaped the magic for sleep, excluding all her own people. With a prayer that it would work, she threw her hands wide. Then she gave the magic a hard shove. And a kick. She threw a noncorporeal shoulder into it and heaved. It wobbled a bit and rocked back into its rut.

“Damn it,
move!
” she bellowed, and blasted it out of dead center with a burst of sudden power.

The shouts and screams cut off almost instantly. Kallista scrabbled for more magic to send out a quick reassurance to her people that this was what was supposed to happen.

“Now.” She looped her arms through Torchay's and Joh's, hoping they wouldn't notice her trembling. Surely she had strength enough left to heal those who needed her particular ministrations. “To the sorting out."

* * * *

Captain Kargyll organized the work parties. The injured were brought to the infirmary where the bodyguard-medics worked over them. Too many of the injured—and the dead, who were laid out in the sandpit—were the skola's medics. The youngest boys still in the skola, those with the barest fuzz of hair, were brought to the dining hall. Everyone else went to the arena.

Kallista was in the infirmary, located beside the arena, working on a young dedicat with four just-severed fingers. Kallista's mother had pioneered the reattachment of such losses some years ago, and since the bodyguard-healers seemed to be handling the other injuries perfectly well, Kallista had decided to see whether she could help this young man. It was delicate, painstaking work, but she had got three of the fingers back on with the blood flowing nicely through and bones beginning to knit when she heard a keening cry from outside.

It rose and fell and rose again, laden with howling grief. It tugged at Kallista, almost a physical grabbing hold. She looked at the tattooed hand she worked over. One finger left, the smallest.

The wailing cry pulled at Kallista again. The dedicat would be fine with three fingers. She could not ignore that cry.

A pair of young soldiers stood awkwardly to one side while a woman in white-trimmed blacks knelt on the ground, weeping over the body in her arms, Genista mourning for her Ruel.

Kallista sent the soldiers back to their duty with a gesture. Her own eyes near blind with tears at this vision of her own loss, Kallista wanted to turn away, to run and hide and mourn her Stone. But she couldn't. She literally could not walk away, could not even turn into Torchay's comforting arms where he stood at her back.
Why?

“Give him to me.” Kallista walked forward, toward the grieving woman, not understanding the impulse that drove her.

Genista clutched Ruel tighter. “Will you deny me the chance to say goodbye? We never got more than hello."

“
Give him to me,
Bodyguard.” Kallista knelt beside Genista, touched the young champion's body, and she finally knew what drew her. “He's not gone. He still lives. He doesn't want to leave you. But you must let me have him."

If Kallista could keep another from facing the pain of such a loss, she would do everything in her power to make it happen. Wild hope rose in the young woman's face as she tumbled Ruel's body into Kallista's arms.

His wound was obvious, a deep slash that laid his thigh open and severed the artery to set his blood spilling life out onto the earth. Kallista's stop-gap magical patching that she'd sent during the dash from the village had saved his life. It hadn't stopped all the blood loss, poorly targeted and slow-moving as it had been, but it had thinned the gush to a seep.

“Help me.” Kallista laid Ruel's head gently on the ground. “Help me pull the edges together."

“But the dirt—” Genista protested.

“The magic can clean it out. The wound is spread too wide. I need you to pull it together so I can heal it properly."

“Yes, my Reinine.” With both hands, Genista pressed the gaping wound closed, kneeling beside Ruel in the dusty path.

Kallista used her newly practiced skill at matching blood vessels together, and tendons and muscle. She got the artery sealed tight, and worked her way to the surface, flicking away everything that didn't belong, until she closed the skin over the top. When she was done, she sensed more than saw Ruel settle happily into his body, and tears blinded her again. Stone would have done the same had it been only the poison killing him.

She fought back the tightness in her throat until she could speak. “Cherish him well,” she told Genista. “He lives because he would not leave you. If he had died before we found him—"

“He lives because of your magic.” Genista lifted Ruel's head back into her lap. “We have seen how slowly the wounds bleed. You have given him back to me."

“His own determination kept him alive long enough for my magic to do some good.” Kallista saw Joh approach from the arena. She beckoned a pair of soldiers over, sent them for a stretcher to move Ruel inside, and stood to see what Joh wanted.

“Obed thinks we've found them all,” he reported. “Kargyll's troops are conducting a room-by-room search, but we think they're all accounted for."

“How many dead? Too many, I know, but how many is that?” She took Joh's hand as they walked to the arena, needing the touch and knowing Torchay wanted both his hands free.

“I don't have the final count, but last I heard, it was well over thirty."

Kallista shuddered, outraged by the carnage, the waste of so many lives, and for what? An old man's madness? “How many were boys? Children?"

Joh shook his head. “I don't want to know. I might kill someone—the wrong one, or the right one at the wrong time."

“Aye.” Torchay breathed the word, his voice rougher than usual.

The sleepers were laid out in rows along the arena floor. Murat and several of the bloodiest lay in a bunch at the far end of the arena. Another small group lay nearby. The rest of them, some forty or fifty dedicats and champions, lay between.

“These are the ones we found defending the skints and fuzzheads.” Obed used the skola's slang for the youngest students, gesturing to the nearest group. He flicked a finger at Murat's bunch. “Those are the ones doing the slaughtering. The ones we are sure about. The rest—"

He indicated the big bunch in the middle. “We don't know which side they were on, or if they took any side at all."

“Let's find out.” Kallista considered her options. She was tempted to wake the defenders first, leave the rest of them asleep, but it would better to have witnesses to the tale. And an idea presented itself to her.

“Are there any villagers here?” Kallista strode to a bench still placed along the side decking of the arena.

“I think so.” Obed looked confused.

“At the gates,” Fox said. “They haven't come inside."

“All right. This is what we're going to do."

* * * *

Dawn was breaking by the time everything was ready. The villagers filed in through the gates, escorted by fuzz-headed boys, first to the sandpit where the dead lay in their rows, then to the infirmary where the wounded moaned in pain, and finally to the arena. The youngest boys came with them, leaving only children and their caretakers in Edabi village.

The headwomen of the village took the bench set up for them at the end of the arena farthest from the main doors, the honored place.