01 - The Compass Rose

by Gail Dayton

  “Possibly.” The idea didn’t disturb her as much as she thought it should—perhaps because this was a dream. “But possibly I will destroy you. I am coming, Tchyrizel. I am coming for you.”

  The demon Tchyrizel recoiled when she called it by name. She could only assume the source of her knowledge, but had no doubt it was the demon’s true name. It gathered itself, growing smaller, denser, and abruptly a dozen spikes thrust from the demonshadow to stab straight through Kallista’s dreamself.

  She screamed with the agony of the piercing and opened her eyes with a gasp to sunlight filtering through leaves into the half-roofed way house. Slowing her breathing, Kallista touched one of the places where the demon had pierced her, afraid of what she might find.

  “Chosen?” Obed spoke from his post by the window. “Are you well?”

  “Yes.” She was. Her body showed no consequences of the dream encounter, and she had apparently not screamed aloud or Obed would be more alarmed. “A dream. Nothing more.” She frowned. “Isn’t it time for Stone to take the watch?”

  “Not yet. I’ll wake him soon.”

  Kallista was asleep again before she could figure out what seemed wrong with Obed’s words.

  Obed woke them all near dusk. Kallista watched him, tasted him through the link. She could feel his weariness. He’d been awake all day, never calling anyone to stand watch in his place. Awake all day and all the night before.

  She paused by his side as they were preparing to mount up and leave the canyon, caught his arm. “Don’t do that again,” she murmured. “Don’t lie to me and don’t take all the watches. You need sleep as much as the rest of us.”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring off at the cliffs just past her head. “As you will it, Chosen.”

  Goddess. She wanted to pound her fists on him until his masks shattered and the man inside came out. “Kallista,” she said, her voice low and hard. “My name is Kallista. Not Chosen. Not Captain, not even Naitan. Would it wound your dignity so much to call me by my name?”

  Obed looked at her now, his eyes wide, startled. “I did not mean to offend, Chos—Kallista.”

  “Of course not.” She sighed, her hand rising to give his cheek a friendly pat. It lingered for a caress. “Take care of yourself, Obed. I need you.”

  With a last caress of his tattooed cheek, she turned away to mount her horse. Carefully, she drew off just a trickle of magic from the other three and fed it to Obed, hoping none of them noticed, hoping this wasn’t something else that would offend her Southron iliasti’s sensibilities. But he needed the strength. She wished she could do it for Torchay.

  Just before they left the canyon, Kallista called magic and renewed the veil of shadows around them. This time—because of Aisse?—she managed to extend it to the animals. Could she do it with the defensive shield as well? She would try later.

  They traveled by night, cross-country, away from the roads. By day, they hid in the rocky outcrops or narrow water-carved slashes that dotted the rising plateau. Torchay kept their pace brisk. Kallista had no quarrel with that. She could feel time snapping at their heels. They bypassed villages and occasional towns, giving them as wide a berth as would not delay them too much. Warrior patrols thronged the roads and towns, searching for something. Kallista feared she knew what that was.

  At last they reached the outskirts of Tsekrish. The building where they hid, overlooking the city, seemed to have once been part of a prosperous estate, abandoned centuries ago though the fields were still cultivated. Only four- and six-legged creatures lived here now.

  One river flowed into the Tibran capital set on its high cool plateau. Three rivers flowed out, splitting into a sort of delta far from any sea. The Silixus flowed east and south to Haav. The other two flowed toward the western coast.

  The squalor of laborers’ huts spilled along the banks of the three rivers, but even in the predawn darkness, lights winked above where the city proper lined both banks of the Unified River, joined by her Iron Bridges.

  “There are seven of them,” Stone said. “Built by the king that was.”

  “An unlucky number,” Obed murmured. “Falling short of the goal.”

  “Which doesn’t tell us how we can get inside the palace and find this stupid demon.” Kallista couldn’t stifle all her grumpiness. She was tired, pregnant and deserved to be grumpy.

  “If you’d go to sleep and stop nagging us to death, maybe we’ll have a chance to figure it out,” Torchay came back at her.

  “Why not use the shadow veil and just walk in?” Aisse asked.

  “We’re close to the demon,” Torchay said. “Will it be able to sense your magic?”

  Kallista bit her lip. “I don’t know. I…It knows we’re coming.”

  Torchay turned and stared at her. “And what makes you think this?” He sounded the way he always did when she’d driven him to the edge. Only now he was her ilias as well as her sergeant, and could throttle her if he wanted to.

  She cleared her throat, looked Obed in the eye because she couldn’t quite face Torchay, and said it. “Because I told it so.”

  “Brilliant.” That was Fox, not Torchay. “We creep cross-country all this way, hiding from everything that moves, and it still knows we’re coming?”

  Kallista cut her eyes toward Torchay. No explosion. He stood there in the growing dawn light, hand over his eyes as if they pained him. “It doesn’t know where we are or when we’re coming. Why do you think there were all those patrols everywhere? It was hunting us. What happened in Dzawa—My fault, all right? It was my fault, and you do not know how sorry I am.”

  She put her hand on Torchay’s arm, willing him to look at her. She didn’t deserve forgiveness for almost getting him killed again, but she wanted it. He patted her hand, his mind obviously elsewhere.

  “If the demon knows we’re coming,” he said slowly, sorting things out, “why hasn’t it caught us yet?”

  “I told you, all it knows is that we’re coming.”

  “Yes, but why? Why is that all it knows?”

  She hadn’t considered that. Why indeed?

  “When did you tell it?” Fox said. “Before we left Adara?”

  “No, after Dzawa. I told it that night in the canyon.”

  “The magic,” Obed said. “You were using magic to disguise our appearance after Haav, is it not so?”

  “That’s right.” Where was he going with this?

  “And after Dzawa, we traveled under the veil of shadows.”

  “Traveled and slept,” Stone added.

  “So we lived under the veil of a magic that is a gift of the One.” Her dark ilias paused, waiting for Kallista to add up the pieces.

  But she couldn’t. She was too tired for brain function. “And?”

  “And what is it we’re coming to fight?” Torchay had obviously caught on.

  “A demon.” Oh. She blinked as the thoughts clicked together. Oh. “So the magic was hiding us from the demon because the demon is evil and the magic is good.”

  “I do not know whether your theology is correct, but it seems to me to be a reasonable assumption.” Obed allowed himself a small smile.

  “So, Aisse’s suggestion was a good one.” Kallista fought a jaw-popping yawn and lost. “We just stroll in under the veil, smash the demon and stroll back out again.”

  “Somehow,” Fox muttered, “I have a feeling it won’t be quite that easy.”

  “I have the same feeling, ilias.” Torchay clapped a hand on Fox’s shoulder, then tucked it under Kallista’s elbow. “You need sleep. We’ll go into the city as soon as it’s full dark.”

  Kallista yawned again. “Tchyrizel won’t know what hit it.”

  The three Tibrans all went motionless at the same time, staring at her. Torchay instantly moved closer to Kallista, pushing her behind him, as if he’d lost trust in the others, and after half a moment, Obed joined him.

  “What did you say?” Aisse finally spoke.

  “Tchyrizel won’t know what
hit it?”

  Stone frowned, confused. “What do you mean—Tchyrizel?”

  “Why?” Now Kallista was uneasy. Not afraid, but…uneasy.

  “Tchyrizel is the Ruler’s god,” Aisse said.

  “No.” Kallista shook her head. “Tchyrizel is the name of the demon.”

  “But you said—” Stone took a deep breath. “You said that Khralsh is a face of your One god, and Ulilianeth, the women’s god is another face.”

  “They are.”

  “What about Huen, the Laborers’ god, or Achz and Arilo of Farmer caste?” Fox spoke up. Aisse added the names for the gods of the Bureaucrats, Craftsmen and Merchants.

  “Yes, all aspects of the One. You Tibrans split yourselves apart and tried to shatter God, but She is all One.”

  “But not…Tchyrizel?” Both Fox’s hands were curled into fists. Slowly Kallista shook her head.

  “Khral—Goddess,” Stone whispered after a long moment.

  “No wonder.” Aisse looked up at the fading stars.

  “We will destroy this demon?” Fox turned his face toward Kallista, his jaw set with determination.

  “Yes,” she said. “We will destroy this demon.”

  “Good.” He held his hand out to Aisse. “We need to sleep.”

  Kallista smiled to herself when Aisse took his hand. That had worked out rather well, though none of her doing. And height of astonishment, Stone said not one word about it. No teasing, no whining about his turn, nothing. Obviously his partner’s comfort meant more than his own.

  She drew magic, renewing the veil once more. She was getting rather good at it, as was the magic, falling into shape with no more than a nudge. Kallista held her hand out to Obed. “Stone will take first watch,” she said.

  Obed still tended to stand watch far more than his share, and they would all need to be in top form by nightfall. Or as top form as they could be, given that one of them was pregnant and another blind and half-lame.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Obed took her hand and let her lead him to the bedrolls spread in the corner of the tumbledown room. Torchay curved himself around her back, Kallista tucked Obed’s hand under her cheek, and they slept.

  It was time. The sun had set an hour ago and darkness was upon them. Kallista took a deep breath. They were going into battle, could well be dead before the night’s end. The last time she’d been in this situation, Torchay had declared himself her friend. This time…

  Her heart cracked open, heat pouring out to sear her with emotion. “I love you,” she said. “I love each one of you. Don’t you dare—any of you—let anything happen to you. It would break my heart.”

  She pulled Aisse into a tight hug, then let go of her to embrace Fox, giving him a lover’s kiss though they’d only ever been lovers by magic. She kissed Obed the same way, tasting his rich sweetness. He didn’t want to be her magical lover and now she regretted not making him the other sort. She lingered a moment more over the kiss when he protested its ending, her tongue teasing his full lower lip, until she set him firmly from her. They had other iliasti.

  Stone ended his back-pounding hug of Fox and swept Kallista into a kiss, hot and wild, bending her back over his arm in a silly flourish. She smothered her laugh against his mouth.

  “Does this mean real sex after?” he murmured in her ear as he set her upright again.

  “Probably.” She licked her tongue over his earlobe. “So don’t get yourself killed.”

  “No, aila. Never.”

  Then she turned to Torchay, took his face between her hands. “I do love you,” she said in a fierce whisper. “The same way you love me, I love you back.”

  Torchay’s hands rose to cover hers then traveled along her arms until he cupped her face the way she did his. “I want to see you, without shadows,” he said, “when you say that again.”

  “Then stay alive. Hear me, Sergeant? You stay alive.”

  His mouth twitched into a crooked smile. “I will if you will.”

  She kissed him, putting all her heart in it. At its end, Torchay rested his forehead against her another moment, then stepped back.

  Patrols of warriors spread throughout all the streets of Tsekrish after dark. The other castes gave way before them, and Kallista’s ilian tried to avoid everyone. The streets seemed relatively quiet, probably because of the extra patrols. Aisse had once mentioned that bored warriors tended to create their own entertainment. Obviously, no one wanted to encounter an entire patrol of bored warriors.

  They kept Torchay in the center of their group. They still weren’t sure whether his veiling was as complete as the others, since he wasn’t marked. Kallista thought he might have protested, except it put him next to her.

  They eventually left behind the dusty unpaved streets of the outermost sections of town, crossing over the Laborers’ Bridge, the first of the Iron Bridges, into the cobbled streets of the Bureaucrats’ Quarter. The bridge wasn’t constructed entirely of iron, Kallista noted, but of stone ornamented with iron. Fox confirmed that the other six bridges were the same.

  Merchant houses began to appear in the Bureaucrats’ Quarter, offering goods, food, drink and other items provided by the higher Craftsmen and Farmer castes. Merchants did not have their own section of the city, but lived in neat brick or wooden houses scattered throughout.

  They passed through the narrow warren of streets that made up the Craftsmen’s Quarter of the city, and into the broad brick-paved parade grounds surrounding the rows and rows of Warriors’ barracks when Fox tensed.

  “Don’t tell us someone’s coming,” Stone said. “I can see them coming. Hundreds of them.” They all could. Warriors swarmed everywhere.

  “Witch Hound.” Fox pointed past Kallista’s left ear toward the gray stone walls demarking the Ruler’s Palace.

  “What?” Kallista looked where he pointed.

  Past the marching, strolling, laughing, lounging hordes of young, red-clad warriors, Kallista saw a man in bureaucrat’s black. He stood hunched over to one side, as if he could not stand any straighter, his eyes blackened holes in a skeletal face. His nose protruded like an ax blade from that gaunt face, the pendulous tip seeming to quiver as he turned slowly from north to south and back again.

  “They are real too?” Aisse whispered.

  “What’s a Witch Hound?” Kallista put a little “captain” in her voice.

  “Someone who can sniff out magic.” Stone added to his obvious statement before Kallista could lose her temper. “They can tell when magic’s being used. They check all the lads when they join caste, search the women at assignment, to make sure no…witches get through.”

  “But what happened to him?” Kallista shuddered as the Hound’s empty eye sockets passed by them.

  “A Hound can find magic,” Fox said, “because he—or she—has magic. The Rulers use them, but they don’t trust them. They…lose their eyes first, when they join the Hunt.”

  “There weren’t any in Haav.” Aisse shivered and edged closer to Obed, beside her in the rear.

  “Not yet.” Stone squared his shoulders. “The king’s been recruiting more. So how do we get past him?”

  “Why hasn’t he found us yet?” Torchay drew his lower sword.

  The others all followed suit, drawing their Heldring blades. Fox unsheathed the sword bought for him in Kishkim.

  “Maybe we’re too far away,” Kallista said. “There is the whole length of that building between us.”

  “We used to live in that barracks.” Stone tipped his head toward it.

  “I prefer my current living quarters.” Fox bounced on his toes, adjusting his grip on his weapon.

  “Actually, so do I.” Stone sounded surprised to admit it.

  “Do you know a quiet way to reach the palace?” Torchay reached over his shoulder for the second blade.

  Kallista didn’t like the way the Hound was acting. His turning had slowed—but only when he was facing them. The rest of the time, he turned faster. He leaned forward, his
nose almost vibrating. Kallista unfurled the tiniest thread of magic from the edge of the veil, and sent it spinning out.

  Something with enormous, sharp, ravenous teeth snapped the magic up, making Kallista jump. It chomped, drooling bits of magic too small to rescue, hungrily hunting more.

  “Too late for quiet.” She planted her hand in the middle of Stone’s back and shoved. “Go. Fast.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Stone led out, straight for the palace. “Have they found us?”

  The warriors around them seemed oblivious, but the Hound had sensed something.

  “Maybe.” Kallista kept a hand on Torchay’s wrist to make sure he didn’t lose them. Had it bothered him, seeing his iliasti as nothing more than ghostly images for the past few weeks? This was not the time to wonder.

  The Hound was bowing, speaking urgently to the warrior beside him. Torchay saw it too. “Faster.”

  Picking up their pace, they rushed down the wide street. No shouts or pursuit followed them, but it didn’t comfort Kallista.

  “There.” Aisse pointed ahead. “Another Hound?”

  This one was a woman, also in black, also without eyes, though her lids were sewn shut. Kallista shuddered as her ruined face turned toward them. Peace, she thought at the pitiful wretch. We’ve come to help.

  A few hundred paces ahead, the gate in the gray walls opened and a squadron of warriors clattered through at double time, heading down the street in their direction.

  Another moment, the Hound looked at her. Kallista could feel the woman’s fear, see the broken places in her soul, but before she could reach out, the fear won. The Hound cried out, pointed.

  “This way.” Stone turned down a narrower street leading between two rows of barracks buildings, parallel to the palace wall. “There’s another gate, smaller. Should be less guarded.”

  The warrior squadron came down the street after them. At the next cross street, more warriors advanced from either direction.

  “They’re herding us.” Torchay urged Kallista ahead of him.