by Gail Dayton
Perhaps she should consult Mother Edyne. But what could an East magic prelate of a provincial temple know about mysteries such as these? Kallista started to put the ring back in her pocket and almost dropped it.
She caught it again, gripped it tight in her hand, heart pounding. She couldn’t lose the ring, no matter how little she wanted it. Somehow, she was certain that it was a key to many of the answers she wanted. She didn’t understand how an inanimate object could answer questions, but the certainty would not leave her. Perhaps she was meant to look the ring up in some archive or other. However the answers were to be had, she could not lose the thing. And the safest place for it…
Kallista sighed, resigned to the inevitable. She removed her right glove and slid the ring onto her forefinger where the dream Belandra had worn it. But it would not fit over her knuckle. Her hands were apparently bigger than the dream woman’s. The ring went on the third finger of her right hand. It looked good there.
“It’s about time.” The woman’s voice behind her brought Kallista spinning around so fast, she lost her balance. It could not be.
But it was. Belandra lounged carelessly against the wall not far from the western corridor. She looked younger than she had in Kallista’s dream, her hair a brighter red, her body more slender, but still a decade older than Kallista.
“Who are you?” Kallista wavered between backing away in horror and drawing near with curiosity. “How did you come to this place?”
“I told you. I am Belandra of Arikon. As for how I came here—you brought me.” She gave a mocking smile as she waved her hands in a flourish. “You have questions? I have the answers. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to give you all of them.”
“Why not?”
“Because some things you must learn for yourself.”
Kallista shook her head, trying to clear it. That wasn’t what she wanted to know. She tried to sort the questions crowding her mind, to find those most urgently needing answers. “How did I get this? What is it?”
“A ring.” Belandra rolled her eyes, seeming to mock Kallista for asking something with such an obvious answer. “And I gave it to you back before I died.”
“A thousand years ago.” Kallista let her doubt show.
“Give or take a few dozen, about that.”
“That’s not possible.”
“For the One, all things are possible. Obviously it did happen, because I am here talking to you. You had to have something of mine in your possession before I could come to you. And here I am, at your service.” Belandra pushed herself off the wall and bowed, as much a mockery as most things she’d done.
“You’re a ghost.” Kallista didn’t believe in ghosts. Or thousand-year-old dream rings. But the one on her finger had come from somewhere.
“Something like that, but not exactly.” Belandra shrugged. “Oresta who came before me explained it, but I never quite understood. Does it really matter? I’m here now. And I probably ought to tell you before you use them all up that you’re only allowed six questions each time I am allowed to come to you.”
“Allo—” Kallista cut herself off, trying to count up how many questions she’d already asked. She couldn’t remember. “Who allows it? When will you come back? What questions may you answer? What are the rules? Are you truly dead?”
Belandra waggled an admonishing finger. “That’s five. You only had two left. Which means I can answer the first two, but the others will have to wait until next time, provided you still want to ask them again. Though I already answered the fifth, if you will consider. Unless you believe I could still live after a thousand years.”
“I’m not sure I believe you ever lived at all.”
“Believe what you like. Your belief doesn’t alter the truth. Do you want me to answer your questions?”
“Please.” Kallista gestured for her to continue.
“It is, of course, the One who allows me to appear here before you, and at least one Hopeday must past before you next summon me.”
“I didn’t summon you this time.”
“Did you not? You put on the ring. You desired answers. I am here.” She gave Kallista a sardonic grin. “My first year, I summoned Oresta every chance I got.”
“Your first year of what?” Kallista demanded. Belandra’s answers only created more questions.
“Apologies, my lady Kallista.” The grin on the woman’s face didn’t look very apologetic. “But you are out of questions.”
“Who are you talking to?” Torchay’s voice brought Kallista’s head around to see him walking across the worship hall as if he thought his steps might fracture the tiles beneath his feet. His expression held barely disguised fear. Behind him came Mother Edyne, whose expression was more guarded.
“To her. Belandra.” Kallista waved a hand in the other woman’s direction.
“Naitan,” he said, voice as careful as she had ever heard it. “There is no one there.”
Kallista turned, looked, and Torchay was right. “She must have gone.”
Torchay reached her, moved between her and the place where Belandra had been. “I have been here listening and watching for some time. Since you asked whether—she?…were dead. You spoke. You listened. You spoke again. And I saw no one. Who was it?”
She let out a long breath, looking past Torchay’s worried face to Mother Edyne’s curious one. “The woman who gave me this.” She held up her ungloved right hand, showing the ring. Mother Edyne, to her credit, did not flinch at the sight of the naked hand. “Belandra of Arikon.”
CHAPTER SIX
Safely behind the closed doors of Mother Edyne’s chamber, Kallista told her the rest of the story while the prelate tended Torchay’s cuts with her healing East magic. She sat with head bowed while Mother Edyne examined the mark Kallista had never herself seen. Finally, the older woman let the hair fall and sank into her chair with a sigh.
“Well?” Kallista hoped Mother Edyne had more answers than Belandra had proved willing to share. Provided Belandra had been anything more than a flicker from a fevered mind.
Edyne shook her head, hand over her mouth. After another moment, she removed it. “I fear that I have neither the knowledge nor the wisdom to deal with such mysteries.”
Kallista hid her instinctive wince at the word. Mystery was of the West. “Then what should I do?”
“Ask the Reinine. The oldest records in Adara are in Arikon. What the Reinine does not know, she will be able to learn. Most important, she should know that this happened.”
“I’m a soldier, I cannot go here or there or to Arikon on my own whim.”
“I will speak to the general. It will be arranged.” Mother Edyne rose, the other two with her.
“Do you not have a—a guess as to what all this means?” Kallista didn’t want to beg but couldn’t seem to help it.
The prelate opened her mouth as if to speak, then shook her head. “Better not to guess. You will know soon enough. The Reinine will know.”
Kallista nodded. “Come, Torchay. Seems we should pack.”
They sailed upriver with the dawn.
“What’s wrong with you?” Someone had hold of Stone’s hair, shaking his head as if it were a sackful of kittens to be drowned.
His mind felt full of kittens, crying and yowling and crawling over each other. His head hurt. And his hands. He was shocked to see his fingers raw and bleeding. “What did you do to me?” His voice croaked like a frog’s.
“What have we done?” The fat guard gave Stone’s head another shake. “You’ve done it to yourself, you barmy idiot. Clawin’ at the walls, bangin’ your head on it. We should’ve give you back to your side. Let them keep you from killin’ yourself.” He grabbed an arm and hauled Stone to his feet. “Come on.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Not that it matters—whatcha goin’ ta’do? Not come?” The fat man laughed at his feeble joke. “But you’re getting’ a cleanup. General wants you. Told ’er you were barmy, but she don’t care
. You’re the only one we found alive. She wants to see you.”
Stone’s knees sagged at the reminder. Fox was dead. They were all dead. Save him.
He submitted tamely to the humiliation of his bath. They stripped away the stained remnants of his uniform and stood him in a courtyard with a drain in one corner, his hands fastened before him in finely wrought steel shackles. He’d never seen such expert workmanship wasted on a prisoner. The fat guard pulled a lever and cold water poured down on Stone from a pipe over his head.
He was scrubbed from head to toe with a rough brush, drowned again in the water and dressed in an Adaran-style tunic and trousers of unbleached cotton. Again the quality of the cloth was much higher than he would have expected. If this was their poor stuff, no wonder the king wished to rule here.
With the clothing sticking to his wet skin, Stone was marched into a second room where his hands were bandaged and his hair was taken down from the tangled top knot tied there days ago by Fox. Stone didn’t protest. He wanted the memory gone. Remembering caused pain.
The fat guard waited while another man combed the knots from Stone’s hair and began to braid it into one of the tight pigtails worn by Adaran warriors. No, not warriors, soldiers. They were not born to their trade. His hair was too short in the front and kept falling away, but the rest was caught tight.
“Perhaps your birthmark is the reason you survived the dark scythe,” the hairdresser said as he tied off the tail of hair.
“What birthmark?” Stone had one on his hip, round and small, but it was covered.
“This one.” The man ran a finger over the nape of Stone’s neck. “Shaped like a rose. Maybe the One protected you, since you bear His symbol.”
“I don’t have a birthmark there.” He’d never seen the back of his neck, but Fox would have teased him mercilessly about any flower-shaped mark.
“Of course you do.”
“Let me see.” The guard lumbered closer and shoved Stone’s head forward to expose his nape. After a few seconds, he made a sound through his nose and backed away. “You’re clean enough. Time to go.”
The guard kept his distance as he escorted Stone out of the prison and through a square to a squat, imposing building, prodding him with the heel of his pike to indicate direction. He’d used his hands on Stone before, dragging and shoving him. Before he’d seen the rose supposedly marking Stone’s neck. Did he fear the mark? What did it mean?
Stone walked through corridors and antechambers filled with Adaran soldiers clad in dun and gray, their tunics decorated with bold devices like those on divisional banners in the Tibran army—green trees, gold lions, red stags. Most soldiers had ribbons in white, yellow or red tacked to the shoulders of the sleeveless tunics, left to fall free front and back. Stone’s skin crawled when he realized that the majority of the people wearing the uniforms were female. Why did the gods not punish them for their blasphemy?
Then the guard was opening a door, ushering him into a large room faced with maps and charts. A soldier stood at the window beyond the wide, paper-cluttered desk, back to him, shoulders sprouting a veritable fringe of red ribbon. The guard came to attention, snapped the heel of his pike against the floor and held it at ready. “General Uskenda. Sergeant Borril reporting with the Tibran prisoner as ordered.”
The gray-haired general turned around. Stone staggered and would have fallen except for the guard catching his arm. The commander of Adaran forces was also a woman. How could this be? The defenses should have fallen the first day. Everyone knew women had no war skills, no war sense. Of course, they had won through magic, not in a fair fight. That had to explain it.
“So.” Uskenda walked toward him, around him, as if conducting an inspection. “You are the one who lived.”
Stone stared straight ahead, refusing to speak to any woman who did not know a woman’s place.
“What is your name?”
He remained silent.
The general sighed and moved away a few paces, clasping her hands behind her back. “You would do well to answer of your own will.”
Stone’s eyes flickered toward the guard. He let his contempt show. Nothing they could do would change his mind.
“Oh, I know physical persuasion will do no good.” Uskenda lifted a sheet of paper, perused it briefly. “That’s why we rarely use it. We have no need. Corporal!”
The door behind Stone opened and a man spoke. “Yes, General?”
“Tell the naitan I have need of her.”
“Yes, General.” The door closed again.
Naitan. The word Adarans used to name their witches. Cold rushed from Stone’s heart into his outermost parts, and the hair along his spine rose.
“Do you understand me?” Uskenda leaned against the desk. She somehow looked like a warrior with her stern face and close-cropped gray hair, despite her femaleness. How was it possible? “I think you do. I think you understand every word I say.”
The guard came to clashing attention again and spoke when Uskenda looked his way. “General, the prisoner speaks perfect Adaran.”
“Thank you, Sergeant.” She crossed her arms and studied Stone. “How did you come to learn it?”
How indeed? And when? Stone had picked up a word or two of the local language in the week after landing, but no more than that. He hadn’t realized he was speaking Adaran until this moment. His mind had been too filled with…what? Grief? Must have been. His thoughts were so fogged by grief that he scarcely knew how much time had passed since his capture. That was likely how he’d learned the language without realizing it, listening to his captors.
“What is wrong with his head, Sergeant?”
“General. The prisoner injured himself by striking his head against the wall, General.”
She tapped a forefinger against her mouth. “And why did you do that? I wonder.” She studied Stone a moment longer, then moved behind the desk and sat in the high-backed chair. “Ah well, no matter. We will know soon enough.”
They waited. Stone and the guard stared straight ahead. General Uskenda reviewed papers on her desk. The door opened once more and the general looked up.
“Ah, good.” She smiled. “Thank you for your promptness, naitan. Please, come in.”
Uskenda came forward to greet a tall, slender woman. The naitan was dressed in a pale blue robe open over a tunic and trousers much the same color as those Stone wore, but of an even finer quality. Her brown hair fell past her shoulders in a froth of curls. She looked much like any woman found in any women’s quarters. Until she turned her eyes on him. They were the same blue as his own. Stone shuddered, suddenly understanding how uncanny they seemed to others.
“I will allow you one more chance to give your own answers,” the general said to Stone. “The naitan holds North magic. She is Ukiny’s far-speaker, speaking mind to mind with others of her gift. Do you understand what I am saying?”
Stone tried to hold his gaze steady, to focus only on the window in the far wall, but his eyes rolled toward the blue-eyed witch again before he could jerk them away.
“She can touch minds. There is a kind of North magic that can reach into your mind and see what is there. You do not have to say anything at all. A naitan can simply take what we wish to know from you.” Uskenda pursed her lips. “Of course, sometimes it isn’t easy to find what we are looking for. Who knows what havoc might be worked upon your mind?”
In his peripheral vision, Stone could see the witch looking most unhappy. Did the process perhaps cause her discomfort too?
“General, I don’t—” the witch broke off when the general raised a hand.
“Naitan, does this sort of magic do all that I have said?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“And,” Uskenda interrupted, “does it not on occasion leave those who are mind-searched…altered?”
“Yes, it might, but I—”
“Do not bother to explain the techniques. This Tibran would not understand. His kind have no magic. Is this not true, Ti
bran?”
Stone tightened his jaw and stiffened his spine yet again. He feared no man. Nor did he fear any woman. Any ordinary woman. But this witch and her magic…how could he not fear a thing that could go crashing about in his thoughts, shredding them to bits, stealing away whatever seemed interesting?
Long moments slid away while Uskenda watched Stone and Stone watched the far wall.
“Shall we start again, warrior?” The general’s gentle voice reminded him of ease, of soft comfort in women’s quarters. “What is your name? A simple thing, your name.”
Simple, yes. But the first word spoken, the first truth told would change everything. Would the gods forgive him for failing to punish this woman’s sacrilege? Would they count his blasphemy against him for following her orders? The warrior god was a harsh one, demanding much and forgiving little. But surely he would understand about the magic.
Uskenda sighed. “Naitan—”
“Stone.” The sound of his own voice startled him. “Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.”
Uskenda came to attention and saluted him. “Warrior.” She nodded at the witch. “I believe we will not be needing your services after all, naitan. But please hold yourself in readiness in case our Tibran friend changes his mind.”
The witch smiled, bowed and left the room. Stone sagged in relief, but only for a second.
“Stone, Warrior vo’Tsekrish.” Uskenda paced the floor before him. “You are a long way from home, are you not?”
“Yes, General.” He hoped all his answers would be so guilt free, but the hope was small.
“How did you learn our language, warrior?”
“I…do not know. I—after the assault, when I was taken prisoner, the soldiers spoke to me, and I understood.”
“This was after the—” She checked a paper on her desk. “After the dark scythe, the magic, was it not?”
“Yes, General.”
“You were captured in the breach?”
“Yes, General.”
“And you never advanced into the city. Is that correct?”
