by Gail Dayton
His heart froze inside him. Who? When? What place would be left for him?
A tear spilled over and slid down her expressionless cheek. “She has my iliasti all picked out.” More tears followed the first, breaking Torchay’s heart.
He used his thumb to wipe them away. He knew she hated tears. “Who?” He asked the question beating at him.
“Stone.”
“The Tibran?” He kept his voice quiet despite the shock.
“He’s marked. The archives claim the godmarked always form an ilian.” She captured his hand as he pulled it back.
“Who else?”
“He’s the only one I’m ordered to marry.” She swiped at her face with the back of her free hand. “But if I wish—”
“What?” He resisted the urge to turn his hand, twine his fingers with hers, but he allowed her hold on him.
“The Reinine says Aisse has obviously been called by the One. She could join with us.”
“No one else?”
Her gaze locked onto his and she smiled, a flicker of brightness in the tears. “You. I can have you, if I wish.”
“Kallista—” He didn’t know what to say, had never known since the night he offered himself to her and she turned him away. She said then that it wasn’t because she didn’t want him. He’d seen the desire in her eyes that night. But he hadn’t seen it since, and he began to doubt what he’d seen. “What did you tell her?”
“That I had to think. I don’t know what to do. She’s my Reinine, it’s my duty to obey. I—I wanted to marry, once. But to have it forced on me…”
“Don’t let her force you, Kallista. The man is Tibran, an enemy. This is beyond duty. It could be your life.” He clasped her hand in both of his and rested his mouth against it. He would give an eye to be her ilias, but not if she didn’t want it too.
“It could be your life too, Torchay.” She brushed a strand of his hair, fallen loose after the long day, behind his ear. He resisted the urge to turn into her caress. “If I asked you, what would you say?”
Torchay gave up his resistance and rubbed his cheek over her hand. “When you decide, ask me, and I’ll tell you.”
She stared at him, mouth open in surprise, then she laughed. Torchay’s heart started beating again. Kallista stood, using their clasped hands to pull him to his feet.
“My apologies, Lieutenant, for keeping you up so late,” she said, retreating toward her room. “Put your prisoner to bed.”
Joh stood, bowed his head, and nudged the dozing Stone awake. Torchay waited until the lieutenant had closed the door before entering the room he shared with his naitan. At least he did not have to share her bed any longer. Sleeping beside her without making love had become almost unbearable.
She was already in the big bed, her eyes closed. Possibly asleep, but Torchay did not think so. He readied himself for sleep, loosing his hair, removing his blades. He drew the big blade from its scabbard at his back and placed it under his pillow.
Perhaps he should ask to join her ilian, if she did not ask him. He could not think of her bound to the Tibran without him at her side as well. But if she did not want him…Torchay banished the thought from his mind. He would consider it later. For now he had to focus on his duty, on protecting her.
Kallista dreamed. She recognized the misty landscapes and fought to leave them. She didn’t want more visions, didn’t care to meet any more ghosts, but the dream pulled her on, relentless in its flow. She sped over Adara’s northern coast, saw Ukiny with its wall half restored, saw Kishkim in its swamp with the cannon arrayed around it on individual rafts half sunk in the mud. Then she was over the ocean, speeding farther north.
In moments she crossed another coast, flew across plains, past massive cliffs marked with sparkling waterfalls to a high, broad plateau from which a city rose, its once-white stone stained with gray. She had no time to see more as she was swept into the city’s heart, into a sumptuously but crudely furnished room. The room itself felt wrong somehow, but she didn’t have time to puzzle it out.
Kallista saw three men. Their golden hair had faded with age, but the golden cast of their skin proclaimed them as Tibran as Stone. One of the men, tall and stern-faced, his hair cropped short, wore a red jacket like the jackets worn by the warriors outside Ukiny, but with a double row of brass buttons down its front. The other two wore purple, and one of them bore a gold circlet on his head. Could this be the Tibran king’s chamber? Was this a vision of things to come, or did it happen now?
The crowned man yawned. “But the invasion progresses, does it not, General?”
The man in red clicked his boot heels together and bowed low. “It does, my king. The setback in Ukiny is serious. We lost most of an army and over fifty ships, but the cannon are untouched. We can shift them to one of the other cities and—”
“We need Ukiny,” the third man interrupted. “It sits at the mouth of the Taolind River, which will take us straight into the heart of that witch-ruled place.”
As Kallista watched them argue strategy, she became aware that she was not the only unseen presence in the room. An aura of pure malevolence hung over the crowned man.
She narrowed her eyes, concentrating her focus, and a black thing slowly coalesced. It crouched on the king’s shoulders, a hideous misshapen thing of claws and teeth that slid into and out of the king. Kallista shuddered, unable to fathom what evil it might be. Then it lifted its pulsing head, turned red, glowing eyes on her, and hissed.
She stumbled back and fell through the floor and completely out of the building. The thing had seen her.
Then the dream had her in its grip again, whirling her through colored fogs until she fell to her knees in a dirty, tumble-down building, stars shining through a hole in its roof.
“Naitan,” Aisse cried, crouching over something on the floor, tears streaming down her face. “Hurry! You must do something. You must.”
Gripped by sudden panic, Kallista scurried forward on all fours to see Torchay lying on a pallet made of old, mounded canvas, his pale skin gone pasty white. His eyes met hers and he opened his mouth to speak, but only a bubble of bright red blood emerged.
“Torchay! Oh, Goddess, Torchay.” Kallista looked down, saw his hands clutching his stomach, saw blood staining them, saturating his clothes, dripping onto the canvas beneath him. “Goddess, no. No!”
The word ripped from her throat in a scream and she was sitting up in bed in the night darkness of Daybright Tower in Summerglen Palace in Arikon, with Torchay’s arms around her.
“I’m here.” He rocked her in his arms, face tight against hers, speaking in her ear. “It was a dream. Only a dream.”
The door opened, bumped against the cot Torchay had pulled across it. “What’s wrong?” Joh shouted through the opening, pushing harder.
“Nothing. Get out.” Torchay shouted back, curving his body around Kallista as she clung to him.
Joh kept coming. “Naitan, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Lieutenant.” She pulled herself together enough to tell him. She didn’t want anyone else to see her like this. “I’m fine. Leave us.”
He stopped pushing against the door but didn’t leave. “Are you certain? What happened?”
“Nothing. A dream.” Pray the One it was nothing more. Kallista shuddered in memory. “That’s all. Please. Go.”
“Yes, Captain.” Joh shut the door.
Kallista could hear him speaking to the others, sending them back to bed or to their posts. She put her arms around Torchay and held on tight until she stopped shaking.
Then she pulled back enough to grip his face between her hands and inspect it. She checked him over carefully, touching where the tiny disk of the moon through the window did not provide sufficient light for her to see. She ran her hand across his stomach, searching for wounds, and found none. As expected. When she was satisfied he was whole, she put her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder.
He was whole. For now. But wha
t sort of dream had it been? She had the impression that the meeting of the Tibran king with his advisers under the malevolent glare of the shadow being had been taking place now, at the same time she dreamed it. But Torchay was obviously not bleeding his life away in some derelict building. Was that his fate?
Her arms tightened around him and she choked back a sob. He stroked a hand over her hair and murmured something, his mouth pressed to her forehead, making nonsense of his words. She had prevented injuries when the wall collapsed in Ukiny because she had been forewarned. Could she do the same for Torchay?
“I need to send a message to the Reinine,” she said, her voice muffled slightly. “Now. Right away.”
“It’s three hours till dawn.” He drew back, but stopped when Kallista tightened her hold. She wasn’t ready to let him go yet. “The Reinine will be asleep.”
“I don’t care. She said to send word soon. This is soon.”
“Send word about what? What did you dream?”
Kallista locked her hands together behind his back. “Marry me, Torchay. Will you marry me? I need you with me. I can’t do this without you.”
“If you need me, I will be there.”
It took her a moment to understand what he said. She drew back to look at him, search his face in the faint moonlight. “Is that yes? You will marry us?”
He captured her hand and pressed a kiss to her fingers where they curled around his. “Yes. I would be honored to be your ilias.”
“Stone too? I have to marry him too. Will you also?”
His expression soured, but he nodded. “I would not leave you alone in this. Yes, I will join your ilian, whoever it holds.”
Kallista seized him by the back of his neck and pulled him in for a kiss. She could resist no longer. Torchay opened his mouth under hers, rising high on his knees to bring her whole body tight against his. He felt so good to her, so right. She melted under his sweetness. She wanted this, wanted him. The vision of Torchay broken and bleeding slashed into her mind and she fought it back. He was alive. Goddess willing, she would keep him that way.
She broke the kiss, backed away breathing hard. Message. She had to send word to the Reinine. With Torchay as her ilias, surely she could keep him safe. “Light,” she said. “I need light.”
“Kallista—”
Ignoring Torchay’s protest, she called a tiny spark to light the candles in the stand on the bedside table and carried them to the desk beneath the window.
“Kallista, this can wait till morning.”
“No, it can’t.” She couldn’t wait. Something might happen. The Reinine wouldn’t mind. She hoped. She found paper, quill and ink and scratched out a quick note, then folded it and used the candle wax to seal it. “Have one of the guards on watch deliver this to the Reinine.”
Torchay crawled off the bed, scratching his chest. “You’re mad, you know. And when I get back, you’re going to tell me what you dreamed.”
She would. Part of it anyway. The part about the men and the dark thing. She needed him to help her understand it. But not the rest. Kallista handed him the note. “Just go.”
The morning after the Adaran witch woke everyone with her screaming in the night, Stone couldn’t contain his restlessness. He paced the fussy parlor from one end of his magical leash to the other, waiting for the witch to wake.
Why did they not take him for questioning? Why was he held here in this luxurious suite in the—the ruler’s palace? A woman as king made his skin crawl, but he shoved the feeling aside. What did they want him for? He did not hold magic inside himself. He could not, it was not possible. He was no witch. He was a warrior. Or he had been one. He was a prisoner now. Without caste.
That fact had soaked in during his long journey to this place. He was theirs to do with as they willed. He just wished they would hurry up and do it.
Despite his attempts to settle, Stone fretted over the matter until the witch ordered him to join her and the bodyguard at the end of the room near the window. The red-haired man had skills Stone could respect. Too bad he wasted them in defense of a witch. Stone did not understand these people and every day among them confused and unnerved him more.
When they were gathered, including the useless woman who served the witch, the red-haired man spoke. “My naitan has called you together this morning because the Reinine has ordered the binding together of an ilian between the captain and the warrior, Stone. I will also be a part. Aisse, it is your choice as to whether you join as well.”
Stone didn’t see any point in acknowledging. He didn’t understand the meaning of anything that was said, nor did it appear he had any choice in the matter. Why speak?
“Ilian,” the small woman said. “The naitan talked about this on the boat. Ilian partners—”
“Iliasti,” the bodyguard corrected. “One ilias, many iliasti.”
“The iliasti—” she used the word carefully “—belong to each other. They are—family? This is right?”
“Family, yes,” the witch said.
A woman and her infants were important to a ruler, Stone supposed, because the males would eventually join their caste and the females would breed more sons. But potential value was not the same as real value. He must have made a noise, because the black-haired witch frowned at him.
“This is Adara,” she said. “In Adara, family—ilian—is important. After the One, ilian comes first.”
“In Tibre,” the serving woman said, “family is not important, because family has no caste. Family is a woman and her children before the males are old enough to join caste.”
“This is not Tibre.” The witch looked at Stone with her disturbing blue eyes, somehow preventing him from looking away. “Here, caste is not important. There is no caste. In Adara, there is only family. Ilian.”
Stone struggled to understand. Caste created order. It gave a man his place in the world. Without caste…But Adara was not filled with chaos. He hadn’t seen much of it, but no society without order could create the kind of things he had seen on his journey. “Ilian…takes the place of caste?”
The witch considered. “Perhaps. What is caste?” She looked at the small woman and spoke the gibberish that made Stone’s gut churn because he knew he should understand it.
“Caste is order,” he interrupted. The bodyguard scowled, but didn’t reprimand him, so Stone went on. “A man is born to his caste. He enters it when he is six years old. It gives him his place in the world. It tells him who he is, what his value is, what his purpose is in life.”
“What if he wishes a different purpose?” the witch said.
“What if he is stupid,” the bodyguard said, “and born to a caste that requires intelligence?”
Stone had known stupid Rulers. He had no answer for that.
“There is no caste here.” The witch’s voice gentled. “Yes, ilian takes the place of caste. It tells us who we are and that our value is infinite. It anchors who we become. As the ilian’s children go out into the world, the new iliani they create do honor to that from which they have come.”
Stone sat up straight, frowning. Ilian was not the same as caste, he didn’t understand it. But it seemed to serve the same purpose. It gave its members a place to belong. As prisoner, he was as casteless as a woman. He was anyone’s meat. As…ilias, would that still be true?
“Do you understand, Aisse?” the bodyguard—Torchay—said. “The four of us would be bound together into a family, a new ilian. We would swear to the One to put each other first, to care for each other and any children we might have. It is more than caste.”
“I cannot do children,” Aisse said, her voice flat. “When I was young, before I old enough for Woman’s Service, a Ruler did sex with me. He hurt me so I never bear children. They choose me for Adara, to serve the Warriors, because I not slow them down with a child.”
The emotionless tone of her voice as she told of the thing that had happened to her sent chills rippling through Stone. A man was taught that there was an orde
r and a season to all things, and though women—and children—had no caste of their own, they were to be protected as bearers of the future. And yet…A man had the right to make demands of those in castes below his own. He had the right to do as he saw fit with those who had no caste. If a Ruler had done this thing, he must have had reason. Surely.
“It does not matter.” Torchay crouched beside her as the witch took the woman’s hand. He seemed to speak for his captain. “Ilian is not for the purpose of creating children, but if they come, all the members protect them, raise and teach them. Ilian is a partnership, a joining together.”
“You said—” The woman pulled her hand back and the witch allowed it. “You said iliasti do sex only with each other.”
So…Stone focused his attention. This could be a benefit of a caste—or whatever this ilian thing was—with women. Would the witch’s rules change? He missed sex.
“Yes, that’s right,” the bodyguard said.
“I do not want sex. I never do sex again.”
Khralsh, what a waste. The woman was built for sex, small, soft, cuddly. With hips made to cradle a man and—Stone jerked his eyes away to stare out the window. He would only make it worse if he thought about it. With the chains he wore, he could not even ease himself without announcing the fact to everyone in hearing distance. Lieutenant Joh would say nothing, Stone was sure, but he would know.
The witch said something to the woman, then cut herself off and spoke in an undertone to the guard.
“You will not be forced to do anything you do not wish,” Torchay said when she stopped, apparently translating. “Even if you join us, you do not have to have sex. You bring other things to the ilian.”
“What?” Stone’s frustration sent the word exploding out of him and once begun he might as well continue. They could punish him only once. “What else can she contribute? What can she do?”
“I do plenty, stupid warrior.” The woman sprang to her feet, throwing a cushion at him. He couldn’t raise his hands high enough to keep it from hitting him in the face. “You ever feed youself, warrior? Ever clean you own clothes? Ever clean you barracks? Why you think they bring so many women? For sex? Ha! To cook you food so stupid warriors not starve to death before they get they-self killed on battleplace.”
