02 - The Barbed Rose (30 page)

Viyelle caught the quick flash of anger in her second mother’s eyes before she covered it. Filorne neighbored Shaluine to the north and east, and was a rival in many many ways. Not least the personal rivalry between the two prinsipi.

“One of our iliasti is Southron and our absent three are sons and daughter of Tibre.” Kallista smiled and raised a casual eyebrow. “Would you also have me speak for the South? For Tibre?”

“Viyelle, are you sure—” Father Vanis stopped when Kallista continued speaking, and because Viyelle ignored him. Though she did hear him say “Tibrans?” in a quiet, bewildered voice.

“I serve the Reinine, Saminda Prinsep,” Kallista said. “And as she is ruler of
all
Adara, so do I serve all Adara. Shaluine is a part of that whole, but I am sure you know it is not the only part. I have family in Turysh, which is overrun by the rebels—and yet I am here, rather than there.”

Mother Saminda shrugged, not at all repentant. “Do what you can, daughter.”

Viyelle blinked, not sure Saminda meant her, or Kallista. Was this it? Had she given in?

“When will the temple ceremony be?” Mother Saminda asked, and Viyelle could scarcely rein in the urge to leap into the air and whoop with joy. She could not hold back her wide grin.
They had won.

“’Minda!” Mother Sanda burst out.

“You heard her, Sanda. It’s done. The Reinine has authorized it. We can only make the best of it.” Saminda patted her sister’s hand. “Besides, even you must admit that if you somehow forced Viyelle and Kendra into the same ilian—which I do not think you could do—but if you did, before the next Graceday passed, Kendra would have tormented Viyelle into committing murder. They do not bicker like we do, ilias. They draw blood with their quarreling.”

Sanda scowled. “I still do not see why—”

“And that is why I am prinsep and you are prinsipas.” Saminda smiled and hugged her sister to take the sting out of her words before turning back to Viyelle. “The ceremony?”

“I—that is—I don’t—” Viyelle looked wildly at the others.

“We cannot hold the full, formal ceremony until we are all together again,” Kallista said with another ingratiating miniature bow. “But a small bracelet ceremony in our quarters would certainly be appropriate. On—Graceday?” She looked her question at the others, who nodded.

“If your quarters are no larger than ours, they will not hold enough guests.” Mother Saminda began to pace, making her usual grandiose plans. “Perhaps in the Fountain Courtyard. Or—the apple trees are coming into bloom, so—”

“
No
, Mother Saminda.” Viyelle blocked her pacing path. “This will not be the full ceremony. Just an exchange of bracelets between the five of us to formalize things until Stone and Aisse and Fox are with us. I would like my family to be present, but I will not allow you to turn it into some political festival. If you try, we won’t come. A small ceremony in our quarters. Your only option.”

Her second mother let out a deep sigh. “That is all I have heard today. ‘You have no say in the matter.’ I would like to know just what I do still have a say in.”

Viyelle shrugged, a smile teasing her lips. “Whether you wish to come.”

“Of course I will come. We all will.” Saminda pulled Viyelle into a hug.

“Speak for yourself,” Mother Sanda muttered.

“Oh, give over, Sanda.” Father Vanis came forward for a hug of his own. “You’ll be there if I have to hobble you and drag you.”

Viyelle thought that might be what it would take for both Mother Sanda and Kendra to be present. Kendra’s face, when Viyelle chanced to see her over Father’s shoulder, was dark with envy, anger and a dozen other ugly things. Viyelle congratulated herself on her fortunate escape.

“On Graceday then. We will send word of the time.” Kallista somehow, with the aid of Torchay’s and Joh’s excellent skills at moving people along, finally got them all out the door.

Graceday. Five days from now, Viyelle would officially be a married woman. She felt like one already.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

T
he smells and the noise of the city impinged on Fox’s awareness long before they entered its streets, possibly before the rebels could see it. He’d been aware of the city since the noon stop, and they’d traveled far since then. He didn’t know how he would identify this city. He doubted anyone would actually tell him, and he wasn’t sure his
knowing
would recognize any place he’d been before. And he hadn’t been many places in Adara. Or in Tibre either, come to consider it.

As they traveled deeper into the city, Fox had to grip the poles on his travois tight in order to fight the urge to sit up and
look
around. He did not want to alert the rebels to his improving condition, nor did he need to raise his head to
know
.

He lay there, hands wrapped around the poles until he feared his knuckles whitened, and sent his
knowing
out as high and wide as he could. The shape and placement of the buildings seemed familiar. Even the smells seemed familiar—the city smell of bodies, beer, cooking and sewage laid over a permanent reek of old fish and ripe swamp. Or river.

The rebel band clattered into an open space where a bridge rose in a high curving arch. The masts of boats thronged along a riverbank, and Fox knew. They’d brought him to Turysh.

He knew Turysh better than any Adaran city. Better than any Tibran city, save Tsekrish where he’d grown to manhood. It was here he’d found Stone again after the horror of the battle at Ukiny. And here he had also found Kallista again, though until that day he’d never known they had found each other before.

After the battle with the demon in Tsekrish, Kallista had brought them all here, to the city of her birth, so her mother could heal the injury to his leg that had left him half-lamed after Ukiny. The healing had involved reopening the original wound, cutting away the knotted scar tissue that had formed, and stitching everything back together. Then came the slow painful process of knitting the muscle back together as should have been done to begin with.

Fox hadn’t got out much those early days, but as the healing progressed, Mother Irysta had pushed him out of his sick bed to walk. At first, just as far as the privy, but as the days wore on, he was fairly certain that he walked every street in Turysh multiple times with one or more of his iliasti at his side for company. He knew Turysh. He could escape from Turysh.

The rebels took him not to the barracks as he expected, but to the city’s central commercial district away from the dirt and smells and noise of the river docks, where the merchants who bought and sold what the river transported and the bankers who financed the buying had built their shiny new stone buildings. The streets seemed quieter, not as many people as he remembered from last fall. Had the rebels stopped the commerce in favor of their war, or were the people simply too afraid to continue with “business as usual”? Perhaps so many had fled the rebel takeover it left the city feeling empty. Or perhaps they were dead.

Fox let his knees buckle when the rebels jerked him to his feet outside the Mother Temple, still playing invalid. In truth, his strength was pitiful, but not so bad as he hoped they would believe. They dragged him through—the north entrance, he thought. He could orient himself fairly well to the compass directions by his knowing and they had come directly from the Taolind on the north without much turning. They entered the temple’s high central sanctuary and Fox recoiled.

The stench in the place nearly had him retching on his own boots. It smelled like a days-old battlefield piled with unburied bodies that had been baking in summer’s heat. Only worse.

Except his
knowing
found nothing in the echoing chamber but the usual benches against the wall and a knot of people—four or five individuals—standing in the center around a woman in a chair. No, not a chair. A throne.

Was this the rebel’s queen?

Fox didn’t have to pretend illness when the outlaws hauled him across the mosaic floor, the toes of his battered boots catching on the slight unevenness of the tiles. The pattern in the mosaic was the Compass Rose, symbol of the One and Her gifts of magic, or so Fox had been told. He’d never seen it for himself.

He dragged his feet, trying to visualize the symbol—the many-petaled red rose in the center, the arms of the compass reaching from it to the four directions: blue lightning for the North, green vine for the East, yellow flame for the South and black briar for the West. He called on the presence of the One here in this corrupted holy place, cried out to the warrior face of the One for strength in the battle to come. But still, he was only himself. And still they brought him remorselessly on, nearer to the horror in the center of the room.

Desperate, beyond terror, Fox shouted, a horrible hoarse bellow. The cry inside his head called Kallista’s name. At some impossible distance, he sensed her answer.
Fox
.

Then some
thing
, some dark, awful presence flowed out from the woman on the throne. It touched him, a cold, piercing pain. Fox screamed. It swarmed over him, surrounding him with agony, probing, digging, prying at his soul as if it sought entry.

Survive
, a voice in his head whispered to him.
You’ve done it before, when you lost your caste. You did what you had to. Can this be any worse?

Memories flooded Fox of that time in the Tibran war camp when he’d been blind and casteless, without even the
knowing
Kallista had given him. Anyone’s plaything. Anyone’s victim. He’d locked those memories away, but now—he couldn’t block them.

His body jerked with remembered pain and humiliation. The hands holding him lost their grip and he fell to his knees, curled into a ball and howled.

Let us in, let us in
, the voice murmured, sweet and seductive, promising an end to the torture, promising only pleasure to come.

Almost, Fox surrendered. Until he felt that loathsome thing pluck at a part of himself that had never been touched in all those terrible casteless, ilian-less days. He recoiled. This thing, this
demon
didn’t want just his body. It wanted him,
all
of him. Who he was. Who he loved.

Fox struggled, but couldn’t throw it off. Then the demon found his link to Kallista.

It bit at the link, clawed it, trying to break it, to cut him off. Or to follow it, use it as a conduit to gain entry to Kallista and from her to the others.

He fled. Wrapping himself around the precious link, Fox hid deep inside himself. Beyond the place he had gone when Tibrans had abused his body, to a place where no one could find him and nothing could reach him.

His senses still worked, recording what he knew and heard for the time when he returned.

Above him, around him, people spoke. “He is too afraid.” A woman’s voice, one of those standing. “Too weak. Too many of them are weak.”

“Not this one.” Another woman, the one from the throne. “He is protected. Too many more of these damned Adarans are protected.” Her voice rose as anger overtook her until her shriek of fury echoed around the high sanctuary ceiling and out the open clerestory windows.

“Oskina Reinine.”

“Oskina Reinine.”

Voices in chorus murmured the name as all those in the room abased themselves.

“Oh, get up,” she muttered. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“Of course not.” The man who spoke was one of the first to rise.

“Of course not. I need you. The cause needs you. We fight to slay death itself.”

“
Yes
, Oskina Reinine.” The chorused voices shook with fervor and even hidden away inside himself, Fox’s body shuddered.

“Take it away.” The man waved a hand. “Destroy it.”

“No.” Oskina stopped the outlaws who’d brought Fox before they did more than take a step. “Leave him. Leave us. Go find your regiment. Report in. If I have further orders for you, I will send them.”

The outlaws bowed low. When they were gone and only four remained in the chamber, Oskina rounded on the man who had spoken. “Do not think to defy me, Ataroth, or to usurp me. You may have devoured our sedil and absorbed its essence into yours, but I am still ruler here.”

There was a pause that Fox’s senses could not interpret, but when the man spoke again, his voice and his posture cowered. “Yes, Ashbel. You rule. No one can stand against your power.”

Ashbel-Oskina turned to the two others in the room.

They cringed. “You rule, Ashbel. You rule.” Their voices—male and female—sounded in unison.

“But…” Ataroth began tentatively. “Why
not
destroy it? Will its destruction not bring you pleasure?”

“It does not seem wise.” Ashbel-Oskina began to pace. “This one is important. I do not know how or why, but if we can break it open and take it for ours…” She sighed. “Besides, we cannot destroy every prisoner they deliver to us, no matter how much pleasure it brings.”

“Why not?” the other woman whined.

“Because, my dear Untathel, destruction means dead, and we are supposed to be defeating death.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“You and I both know that, but these idiotic mortals think it is possible, and if we leave too many dead in our wake—even enemy dead—they will begin to desert our cause. We are not strong enough yet that we can afford to lose them. When we have won, when we have slain the Destroyer,
then
we can do as we please.”

“What do we do with this now? Leave it lying here?” Ataroth said.

“Of course not.” Ashbel-Oskina kicked Fox in the back, hard enough his body grunted. “If we can turn this one to our cause…Have the healers tend it. We will speak with it later. Learn what it knows at the very least.”

“Will it speak truth?” the second male spoke.

“We have truthsayers among our followers, Xibyth. Call them.”

“But—” Though Xibyth seemed fearful of speaking further, after a long pause, he did. “The truthsayer’s magic is blocked when we are present.”