01 - The Compass Rose (10 page)

“But how did you know?” the mason in charge of repairs asked. “How did you know it would fall? Even I had no warning.”

Anxious to get Torchay to the temple for healing, Kallista did not want to take time to answer. Torchay hung back. “Do you not see the blue of her tunic? She is a North naitan. She can read the earth and the things carved from it. Not often. But sometimes. When there is danger.”

“Ah.” The mason nodded in understanding as Kallista urged Torchay on.

“Your back is still bleeding badly,” she scolded. “We do not have time for these delays.”

“Better to give them an explanation they can swallow than leave them to wonder and invent something even more outlandish than the truth.”

“Fine, fine. It’s done.” Kallista lifted her hand from the deepest cut to find it still bleeding. She put it back, but it wasn’t easy to maintain sufficient pressure as they walked. “Just don’t bleed to death before we reach the temple.”

Torchay chuckled. “Such tender concern for your underling.”

She pressed harder, knowing it hurt him, but wanting the bleeding to stop. “Hush.”

For a while he did, but she knew it was too good to last. “While they’re tending my back,” he said, “I want you to talk to Mother Edyne. Tell her about the dreams. Tell her everything.”

Kallista scowled. She didn’t want to. If anyone else knew, it would somehow become more real. “I’ll consider it.”

“
Tell
her, Kallista. You must. It’s no’ normal, what’s happenin’ to you. What if you stop breathin’ again and I can’t bring you back? I didn’t last time.”

“Yes, you did.” They hadn’t talked about what happened, though they’d slept back-to-back every night since then. She didn’t want to talk about it now, but it appeared Torchay was of a different mind. “You called me back.”

“Back from where?” He stopped at the temple door and gripped her arms, the light, clear blue of his eyes blazing almost white as he glared at her. “Where were you? It wasn’t a dream, was it? You don’t know what’s happening to you. I certainly don’t. You need to find someone who does.”

“You think that’s Mother Edyne?”

“I don’t know. Neither will you until you tell her.” His hands tightened, digging in till it almost hurt. “Promise me you’ll do it.”

She dragged her gaze away, stubbornly silent. She couldn’t make that promise. She just couldn’t.

“Pah!” Torchay pushed away and strode into the temple.

Kallista scrambled to catch up, rushing down the long corridor after him. “Dammit, Torchay, you’re bleeding again.”

“Let it.” He rounded on her again, just outside the entrance to the sanctuary, bending down until his nose almost brushed hers. “At least I have sense enough to be going to get it mended, unlike some too-stubborn-for-her-own-damn-good naitan I know.” He whirled and stalked across the worship hall.

“Torchay—” Kallista called after him, but he only gave one of his disgusted growls. Better to let him go. Maybe he’d be in a better temper later.

She wandered toward the center of the worship hall, her hand drifting to the ring in her pocket, the one she could not possibly possess. The ring given to her in a dream. She had yet to put it on a finger, but neither had she been able to leave it behind, lying on the chest in her room. She’d carried it in a pocket the last three days.

Kallista drew the ring from her pocket. The rose on its crest was identical to the one inlaid in the center of the temple floor, the faint reddish hue derived from the wax left behind when it had been used as a seal. What did it mean? How had she come to possess it? She had far too many questions and far too few answers.

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

S
afely 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?