The Eternal Rose

by Gail Dayton

  "I'm younger than you are.” Leyja seemed on the edge of striking out until Aisse touched her arm, quieting her.

  "We need eight champions,” Obed said. “We are eight, but not all of us can fight on the level needed for this trial."

  "And what level is that?” Torchay sauntered toward Obed, a smile on his face and challenge in every line of his body. They'd been trying to best each other since they'd met, and neither had managed it yet.

  "High.” Obed's smile answered the challenge with its own. “Very, very high."

  "No fighting in the house,” Aisse scolded. “How do you expect your children to follow the rules if you don't?"

  They glanced at her and the challenge dissolved in laughter. “But it is a good idea,” Obed said. “Test our people against each other. Only the best to fight in the trial."

  "Can we be sure our best will be good enough to win?” Fox said. “We have to win this trial."

  "I have contacts in my old skola. I can arrange for a test against their best.” Obed ran his fingers idly along the hilt of his sword. Kallista was sure he didn't realize it. “We do not have to be showy,” he said. “We only have to win."

  "Without killing,” Kallista said. “And no one gets hurt in these tests of yours. Not a scratch."

  "Bruises aren't scratches.” Fox shrugged away Kallista's worry.

  "You can't fight your best if you're banged up.” She grabbed Fox by the base of his queue and shook his head gently. “Use that sense Stone was always going on about."

  "The testing will be good training,” Torchay said. “Get us ready for trial."

  "Do we have a date yet?” Kallista squeezed under Fox's arm and he obligingly draped it around her.

  "Three weeks after we both name our champions,” Obed said, scowling. At Fox? Why? Goddess, please, not more jealousy.

  Kallista scowled back. “Can Habadra delay this indefinitely by not naming champions?"

  Obed shook his head. “A trial can be delayed only if both parties fail to name champions. Once one side lists names, the other has a full week, less the three virtues, to file their list with the justiciars, and the trial is scheduled."

  "We'll start testing in the morning,” Torchay said.

  "What's wrong with this afternoon?” Kallista wanted Sky home as soon as possible, but she didn't want anyone hurt.

  "Tomorrow's soon enough.” Torchay planted a kiss on her forehead where she stood with Fox's arm around her. “Today, we'll be passing the word, explaining what it's about and asking for volunteers."

  Kallista took a deep breath and hugged them both. “Yes, you're right. Tomorrow's fine. I just—"

  "Shall we begin?” Obed's voice boomed across the room, interrupting them. His jealousy was getting worse, but how bad would it get? Enough to disrupt the magic? They couldn't afford to let that happen, but Kallista didn't know what else to do to make it stop.

  * * * *

  The weekend was relatively peaceful, spent playing with the children and taking oaths from a double-score of new Tayo Dai—all the bodyguard corps and Captain Kargyll. In the middle of the night, as Peaceday slid quietly into Firstday, a rumbling crash in the near distance brought the entire embassy awake. Anyone who had lived through the gunpowder explosions of the invasion and the Barinirab rebellion knew that sound.

  With everyone on alert and the Reinine tucked away with her family behind layers of guards, Padrey checked in with the Tayo, Torchay Reinas, to see if he had any orders. The Reinine sent Padrey to see what was happening. He'd have been gone already—he hated not knowing things—but he was Tayo Dai now. Better to go with orders.

  The whole of Mestada's center was filled with people running all directions in the dark, all of them shouting impossible, contradictory things. It wasn't until Padrey reached the temple square that he saw what had actually happened.

  Both walls around the temple lay crumbled to the ground in two neat rows, opening the temple grounds and the temple itself to the public. Crowds gathered despite the hour to gawk, a few of them pocketing bits of rubble as souvenirs.

  "What happened?” Padrey pulled his hood forward as he caught the arm of a ragged beggar, one of those who lived near the temple where the begging was good.

  "The walls fell straight down. They just fell.” The man looked Padrey in the eye and straightened his gnarled fingers. “Nathains came out of the temple. Six of them, or seven. One of them healed me. Look.” He stretched his arms wide and twisted from side to side, his back straight. Padrey remembered him now. This man had been hunched over, curled into a ball by the disease that had twisted his back and crippled his fingers.

  "She healed me,” he said. “And the walls fell down and the nathains ran away."

  The beggar hunched his shoulders, ducked his head. Padrey looked back, around the edge of his hood, and saw the shaved heads and white robes of Sameric clerics as they scrambled over the fallen rubble. Some stayed to guard the walls. Most fanned out into the crowd, obviously hunting the runaway magic-users.

  Padrey beckoned the man closer. “Do you know where the nathains were going?” he asked, just loud enough to be heard.

  The ex-cripple tightened his lips, refusing to speak.

  "You know me.” Padrey slid his hood back for the beggar to see his face. “You know I wouldn't betray anyone to them."

  The man looked over his shoulder—a motion he couldn't have made before—and leaned even closer to Padrey. “They went to your people.” He nodded knowingly. “I heard them say something about the free nathains."

  "Right. Thanks.” Padrey didn't know if this was good news or bad, but it was news his Reinine needed. Before the runaway naitani reached the embassy. Fortunately, he knew shortcuts.

  "They wore robes like the clerics,” the beggar said before Padrey took more than a step. “But in colors. Like the compass."

  "Right.” Padrey gathered all the coin he carried for bribes, and dumped it into the man's hands. He needed to be lighter for this run, anyway.

  Along the tops of narrow walls and across roofs and balconies, dropping to the crowded streets only when absolutely necessary, Padrey flew back to the embassy. The guard on the alley door knew to let him in quickly and quietly, and moments later, Padrey was gasping out his report to the Reinine.

  She frowned as she paced. “This is good, that their naitani are breaking out of the temple. It's nothing we did. But if they come here, it will cause trouble. Everyone would think we did it, knocking down the walls and such."

  The Reinine stopped and swung on Padrey, her lightning blue gaze locking onto him. He couldn't help his flinch.

  "Can you find them a place somewhere else?” she asked. “Somewhere the clerics can't take them back easily?"

  Padrey started to deny the possibility, until he remembered the beggar's behavior, his willingness to hide the naitani from the clerics. “I might know a place."

  "Good. Then go. Stop them before they get here."

  He nodded, took a deep drink of the water someone had given him, and slipped back out the door. Where did one go to find runaway naitani? People who had no idea how the world worked? Gweric fell into step next to him.

  "What are you doing here?” Padrey glowered over his shoulder at Gweric's oversized bodyguard shadow. “Anyone sees you two, they'll know Adarans helped the naitani get away."

  "We have robes.” Gweric shrugged into his, pulled the hood up over his bright gold hair. A moment later, Kerry did the same. Though his hair was brown, his military queue and bodyguard uniform marked him as Adaran.

  "We won't approach. Once I help you find them, we'll leave you to it.” Gweric waited for Padrey to open the alley door.

  The plan made sense. Gweric would easily see the naitani magic in a city with all the other magic-users locked away for the night. Padrey plunged into the alley's darkness, the other two on his heels.

  They wandered a while before Gweric led them down Kameral Street toward Cotton Road. Where they crossed, the broad paving o
f Rose Square was inlaid with a stylized compass, a rose-fountain rising at its center. “There.” Gweric pointed.

  Dawn's faint glow gave color to the robes of the young people clustered nervously by the fountain—blue, yellow, green and unrelieved black. Padrey nodded to Gweric and Kerry as they faded away, and he approached the nathains.

  He dipped his head for a drink, rinsed his hands in the waterflow, and spoke without looking at his targets. “Greetings from Adara's Reinine to the free nathains of Daryath."

  Those nearest him startled when he addressed them as nathains and the men scrambled to push the women behind them—three men, four women. “You're the Reinine?” one of the women asked, disbelievingly.

  "Course not. She sent me to find you.” He tipped his head as if for another drink and drew his hood back enough to show his sun-bleached hair just as the man in black spoke.

  "Truth,” he said.

  Truthsayer, then. That made things easier.

  "What does she want?” the woman in green, who'd spoken before, asked. “Why did she send you?"

  "To tell you not to come to the embassy.” Padrey put up a hand against the aura of despair even he could sense coming off them at his words. “It's the first place the clerics would look, and already they're preaching against us. Against Adarans. But I know where you can go. It won't be too comfortable but it's big enough to hold you all, and if you help the folk there like you helped that beggar outside the temple, they'll protect you."

  "Where is it you're taking us?” the truthsayer asked as they started off.

  "My old place. Down by the river docks and the main canal. It's an attic—be getting colder now, so you'd best be getting blankets and such to keep warm, because it's drafty. I still have my stuff there, so no one new'll have taken it up yet. And if they have, they'll vacate for nathains."

  "Isn't it dangerous by the docks?” The South nathain woman almost quivered with nerves.

  "That's why they need your help.” Padrey shrugged. “Most of the people aren't bad. They're just poor and desperate, and they can't protect themselves against the folk who are bad. If you help them, they'll protect you with their lives."

  "Sounds perfect,” the truthsayer said.

  * * * *

  Kallista spent the rest of the week stopping fights in the city. She sent out misty veils of good sense and calm again and again whenever tempers seemed to flare too close to the embassy. It amused her to imagine how frustrated the Sameric clerics must be when their attempts to stir up riots kept deflating. And with every veil of magic she sent out, Kallista felt herself growing stronger along with the magic.

  The magic came in huge, billowing waves, more than she had ever obtained in a single call. So much, it was almost unwieldy. Would she need so much to handle these demons? Did it mean she could do it without a ninth? Without adding Keldrey to the mix?

  She also stopped fights inside the embassy on occasion, when she wandered into the courtyard that had been filled with trucked-in sand and roofed over with tight sail-canvas against the autumn's increasingly frequent rains. If she stayed behind the half-wall barricade to watch, her bodyguards would allow the competition to continue until the battle spun too close. Then they would call break.

  The whole of the bodyguard corps—the new Tayo Dai—with the new man, Night, had volunteered for the trial. Only Keldrey had not, saying he was needed with the children they already had, and he was too old besides. By Fifthday, the number had been pared to twelve, with Torchay, Obed, Fox and Leyja at the head. Obed and Torchay were almost even, Fox and Leyja not far behind. Fox's loss of vision kept him from anticipating an opponent's moves and Leyja's age put her a step slower.

  The other eight possibilities were a notch or two below the four godmarked, each with his or her own strengths and weaknesses. So on Sixthday, an enormous caravan assembled early in the morning to ride the thirty or so leagues out of Mestada into the desert to visit Obed's old skola.

  Just before the trip, Leyja informed Kallista that she had decided not to participate in the trial. She claimed she was needed more at Kallista's side as bodyguard. Kallista suspected that Torchay and Keldrey had ambushed her after one of the practices and “convinced” her of it, but she had to admit she was more comfortable with one of her iliasti bodyguards nearby.

  With so many of her bodyguards making the trip, Kallista's entire ilian rose up and refused to let her stay in the embassy without them. They also decided it would be good to bring the children along and let them loose outside the confines of the embassy buildings. Which meant the hordes of nursery servants had to come too, as well as the massive troop escort. Only Keldrey stayed behind—yet again—to keep his daily appointment with Stone's Sky.

  He was also appointed to receive the odd-sized scraps of paper with their laboriously written-out names and numbers that arrived regularly from their spy. Padrey didn't spend much time in the embassy, coming in just long enough to leave his reports. As long as he did that, Kallista allowed him to work his way. The numbers in his reports were climbing high enough to chill.

  Kallista also got verbal reports, relayed usually from Padrey through Gweric—they seemed to meet regularly in the city—about the welfare of the runaway naitani. They had taken to dockside life as if born to it, clinging to their attic even when offered better quarters elsewhere. They did accept the food and clothing, blankets and threadbare rugs offered in payment for the sharing of their magic. Clerics had come to the docks at least twice, hunting their missing nathains, but the denizens of the area had spirited their own magic-users away to safety.

  One report mentioned that the local crime lord had tried to appropriate the nathains’ magic for himself. He'd been thwarted by the East nathain's gift. She could heal or harm with her magic, and she had the Daryathi ruthlessness when attacked. After that, a number of four-marked champions had attached themselves to the group to act as bodyguards.

  Everything else progressed as it should, allowing Kallista to make this trip to the country.

  The Edabi Skola had been founded almost three centuries before, during the Troubles, the times of chaos between the fall of the last Tyrant and the establishing of the en-Kameral. Line had fought Line for preeminence and advantage, street duels and assassinations the preferred tools. Not totally unlike today, Obed said with a smile as he told his tale. But during the Troubles, the fighting often spilled over onto the innocent, and assassinations were messy public acts that killed as many bystanders as targets.

  Under the Tyrants, the Edabi—which meant “the faithful"—had been an elite, highly trained group of warriors dedicated to the principles of the One. During the Troubles, they had banded together to patrol the streets and protect the innocent. The Edabi established their skola outside the city as a safe haven for themselves, and a place to train their replacements. Gradually, the Lines learned to deal with each other in more peaceful ways. The system of justice by combat was set by custom because, too often during the Troubles, the only justice anyone received came at the edge of an Edabi blade.

  Over the years, more skolas were established, but this was still the oldest and the best. The Edabi Skola produced more dedicat champions than any other, because that was their intent—to produce dedicats, not merely champions. Its graduates were as known for their devotion to the One as their skill at arms.

  A village had grown up around the skola, sharing the water of the spring that ran even in the driest months of the year. The village provided the things the skola needed, including large guest houses and inns. Representatives from the Lines came to hire champions and dedicats for trials. Sometimes parties of the young and frivolous would ride out to watch the champions and dedicats in training.

  Shakiri Line had its own residence in Edabi village. Shathina had offered it for their use the instant she heard of the trip, but Kallista turned the offer down. Best not be too beholden to any Daryathi. They hired out an entire inn instead.

  It didn't seem too politic to dismiss the sta
ff of the inn, including the owners, so Kallista and her ilian were back in their pairs again. They would only be in Edabi for the three days of the week's end. They could endure that long.

  Chapter Seventeen

  On Graceday morning, the entire village stopped to watch the parade of champions in red Daryathi-style kilts as they walked together from the inn to the skola. The tattoos on the bodyguard's arms—tattoos of rank with a crowned rose added to indicate their position in the Reinine's household—especially on the women, created a great deal of whispering as they passed. Children ran on the grassy common. Most of them belonged to the ilian, though a few locals had joined them. A few of the children stopped playing to wave as they passed.

  Thewhite-plasteredmudbrickhomesdwindledawayandtheywalked down the road under tall trees with leaves that whispered, though many already lay in golden drifts underfoot. A stream murmured alongside the road, watering the trees as it ran from the spring inside the skola's walls to the village and on to the Iyler before it reached the city. It was a pleasant walk, one Obed had not often made on foot.

  The dun-colored walls of the skola seemed to grow higher as they approached. The walls sprawled in all directions, turning at odd angles, built to enclose buildings at random. But this occasion was different from all the other times Obed had approached this place. He was returning more wildly successful than he—or anyone else—had ever dreamed possible.

  "I have arranged,” Obed said, “as a favor to me, a tour of the entire skola. Normally, outsiders would not be allowed within the cloister walls, but as you are the Godstruck, and not related to any of the young scholar-champions, and because you are my wife, allowances have been made."

  "For all of us?” Kallista peered at him, as if trying to see inside his head.

  Obed had felt the dedicat's mask harden over his face as they neared the heavy wooden gate in the dust-colored wall. He tried to crack it, to let his heart show, but the instinct was too strong. The mask meant safety. “Yes. All of the godmarked, all of our champion-candidates."