01 - The Compass Rose (48 page)

Obed’s chest felt tight. This woman—He caught her hand and pressed it to his lips. “I honor you, Aisse ilias.”

“Use the knife, Aisse.” Fox took Obed’s arm and shoved him into the moonlight. He sounded angry. Why?

Fox marched Obed up to the prison entrance and presented the forged orders. The pair of guards studied them, peered at the paper, passing it back and forth, and finally admitted them to the building.

“Now,” Obed muttered. “Where do you suppose they might have put them?”

“Left,” Fox pointed. “Women are always quartered to the left of a House entrance. Why change it here?”

Kallista sidled down the hallway, all her muddled senses alert for guards. Even if they didn’t fear women, they would fear a witch, wouldn’t they? She pushed herself off the wall, missing its support as she staggered along. She needed—no, she had a weapon. A knife, right here in her hand. She looked, to be sure it was there, then hid it in her skirt again. She needed to get out. She needed to find Torchay.

She wove through a maze of corridors, trying to remember her path, to keep from passing the same way twice. But it all looked the same, especially after she stumbled into a section of open, barred cells. Even the ragged bundles of sleeping prisoners inside the cells looked the same.

Eventually, she found a corridor that looked different. It had a table on one side piled high with blades and a guard.

Kallista froze half a moment, until she realized the man was dead, slumped on the floor in front of the barred cell, blood pooling on the stones below him. And the blades were Torchay’s. She recognized the green-chased over-and-under sheath that held his twin swords. Why were they here? She lurched forward, catching hold of the table before she lost what was left of her balance. Torchay would want his Heldring swords. She could take another of the blades for the weapon she needed.

“
Kallista
. What have they done to you?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T
hat sounded like—Kallista turned, peering into the shadowed cell, and saw Torchay’s face at the bars, looking anxiously back at her. Oh, Goddess, they’d hurt him.

“Torchay, your poor eye.” She tottered across to the bars and reached up to touch his battered face, the swollen-shut eye.

He caught her hand, kissed it. “Are you hurt, Kallista? Look at me, love.”

She blinked at him, trying to bring him into focus. “I can’t walk right. I’m all…fuzzy.” A sob caught in her throat. “And the men—I can’t find them. The links are gone. Do you think they’re dead? And Aisse?”

“I don’t know, love. They’re clever lads and Aisse is a tiger. They’ll have thought of something to stay safe. I’m sure they’re all fine.” He tipped her face up, lifting her eyelids when they tried to close. “They’ve drugged you with something. Likely that’s interfered with your magic and that’s why you can’t find them. Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Kallista put her hands protectively over her stomach and the twin blades clanged against the bars. “Oh, here. I was bringing these to you.” Torchay took them from her as she went on. “She wanted to hurt my baby. But I wouldn’t let her. I hurt her instead.”

“Good girl.” Torchay moved in the shadows, strapping the sheath on as always so the hilt of one sword sat just over his shoulder and the hilt of the other lay against his hip. “I need you to bring me something else, love. Can you do that? Bring me the keys. They’re on the table there, see them?”

“Your poor eye.” She wanted to weep, tears choking her throat as she brushed soft fingertips over the swelling. She couldn’t see him clearly behind those flat metal straps. She needed to—they needed to get out. She shook her head, trying to clear it.

“Keys, love.” Torchay turned her to face the table and pointed past her. “Fetch me the keys, Kallista, and we’ll go find the others, make sure they’re all right.”

“Yes. Keys.” Holding her intention firmly in her mind, Kallista swayed back to the table and picked up the keys. She picked up a dagger as well. “You’ll loan me a blade, won’t you, Torchay? I need one. They took mine away.” She frowned as she crossed the space back to him. “I had one. I took it from that woman, but I don’t know where it went.”

“Of course, love. As many blades as you like.” He took the keys and reached through the bars to unlock the door while Kallista turned back for another dagger.

Torchay joined her, replacing as many of his blades as he could in the instant he allowed. “Come along now, love. We’ve got to be getting out of here. That one’s superior will be along again before long.” He took her elbow and steered her down the corridor, a naked sword in his other hand, hurrying her faster than her feet would move.

“I feel fuzzy, Torchay. My feet are all stupid. And my head. It feels stupid too.” Kallista frowned, stumbling after him. “I wasn’t this stupid when I stopped that woman from hurting our baby.”

“I imagine the drugs are still taking hold.” He paused to peer around a corner and ducked back quickly.

“Kallista, listen to me, love.” He caught her face in his hand and turned it up so his open eye blazed blue into hers. Why was he calling her ‘love’? He was doing it a lot. “Kallista, you
must
do what I say, do you understand me? You have to look after the baby, and let me look after you. Don’t go charging into a fight while you’re…fuzzy. Will you promise me that?”

“Your poor eye.” She laid her hand gently against his cheek. “Your beautiful face.”

“Promise me, Kallista.”
He hissed the words out with a desperation that got through the haze in her mind.

Promise…? Oh yes. She nodded. “I won’t fight unless I have to. Promise.”

Torchay slid her hand from his cheek to his mouth where he pressed a kiss to her palm. “I love you,” he said. Then he drew his second sword. “Stay behind me, but don’t get too close.”

He seemed to be listening to something. Kallista dragged a few more fragments of her mind out of the fog to listen and heard footsteps, the rattle of weapons. They grew closer, and closer yet. Torchay stepped away from the wall and spun around the corner.

It took Kallista several precious seconds to gather herself and follow. Torchay fought, one against four, his blades flashing too fast for her fuzzed mind to follow. Only two of the enemy could attack at once in the narrow confines of the hallway. Torchay drove them back a step at a time, but Kallista could see that the beating he’d suffered was taking its toll.

“Go back,” one of the rear guard turned the other about. “We’ll loop around the cell block and come at them from the back.”

“The witch—” The other man hesitated.

“She’s been neutralized. She can’t work her magic.”

Couldn’t she? Her men were cut off from her but—

The rear pair of guards fell back, then turned to run. Torchay laughed, attacking harder, but it wasn’t a good thing. He didn’t speak Tibran, didn’t know what they said. She had to warn him, had to help. She’d promised—but that was about fighting. Could she call—

Kallista lifted a bare hand, willing a spark to light. She couldn’t reach her men or their magic, but the lightning belonged to her alone. She fought nausea that threatened to double her over, fought pain that near blinded her, but lightning danced from her fingertips. “Torchay,
down!
”

He ducked, and she let fly at the men he fought. One of them dropped. The other screamed in terror, then attacked all the more ferociously. Footsteps, more guards coming. Kallista battled through the pain to call her lightning again.

Torchay dispatched the man he fought, put away a sword and grabbed her arm, ignoring the blue flare coating her hand. He dragged her down the hall, almost reaching the next turn before the guard’s reinforcements arrived. He let go and drew his second blade again, pushing her back a pace before he flew at these new opponents.

Kallista looked behind them, trying to force words from her numbed lips, to warn Torchay of the men circling around, but she had no time. She gathered up the spark she still held and threw it lashing down the hallway. The men staggered, screamed with fear, but came on. Once more she
reached
and through the pain, past the lightning, she brushed against a faint sense of
Fox
.

Joy bubbled up, pushed aside the fog for a split second, long enough for her to touch Obed and Stone before the agony broke them apart again. “They’re coming,” she cried. “Our ilian.” And she sent the lightning against the oncoming warriors once more.

Torchay had no breath to answer. Moments later, Obed and Fox came pelting around the corner, taking down two of the guards as they struck. Torchay spun, elbowing Kallista behind him. She screamed as he took a blow meant for her, the Tibran’s sword stabbing deep into Torchay’s center.

Obed pushed past her, throwing himself into a long lunge that sent his sword slashing through the Tibran. He caught Torchay as he fell. “We must be gone before any more come.”

“Yes, gone.” Kallista scrabbled Torchay’s swords up from the blood-soaked floor and let Fox lift her to her feet. He bent as if he meant to throw her over his shoulder. She stopped him. “No. Might hurt the baby.”

Fox froze. Obed, already around the corner with Torchay, called back, “
Hurry!
”

Seizing her by the elbow, Fox propelled her after them. They picked up Aisse at the entrance to the prison, a dead warrior propped there at his post. Stone waited at the gate in the outer wall, another dead guard in the hut behind him. Her iliasti seemed to be littering the ground with dead warriors.

As they rushed through the night-shrouded city, Kallista never quite lost consciousness. She could smell the blood saturating Torchay’s clothing, staining Obed’s. She heard the clatter of warriors rushing from barracks to City Center. She felt the soft whuff of horses’ breath on her hands as they reached the place where the animals had been hidden.

“Up.” Fox threw Kallista into the saddle and mounted behind her. “Up the cliff. I know a place, long deserted. They won’t expect us to go deeper into Tibre.”

Obed held Torchay in the saddle before him. “Do we go on, Chosen One? Or back?”

“On.” The fog in her mind seemed to be dissipating, the links with her marked ones solidifying now they were close again. And she
knew
, perhaps as Fox
knew
his surroundings, that if they turned back to Haav, there would be disaster. “Up,” she said. “To the place Fox knows.”

“I know it,” Stone said. “I remember it now. I can lead.”

“Then
go
.” Obed urged his mount forward. “This one needs rest.”

And healing. Please, Goddess, he still needed healing.

The ride seemed endless. Night hid the trail in shadow, slowing their pace until Kallista wanted to scream with fear and frustration. Every second bled another drop of Torchay’s life away. The horses stumbled again and again on the steep path, their shod hooves ringing against the stones so loud she feared they could be heard clear to Haav. Cliffs still loomed above when Stone turned off the main path and seconds later vanished from sight.

Fox followed behind the animals Stone led and Kallista realized they were riding along a narrow canyon choked with brush and vines. The horses splashed through a tiny stream trickling along the canyon floor. A few moments more and the canyon walls faded back, opening into a tiny meadow ringed with tall firs and birch. An abandoned way house stood beside a pool, the source of the canyon’s stream, fed by another trickle of water split off from the main flow of the Silixus.

The way house possessed only half a roof, the walls beginning to crumble where the roof was missing. But some shelter was better than none. Stone dismounted in front of the building and hurried to take Obed’s burden. Torchay’s head lolling on his shoulders terrified Kallista. She didn’t wait for anyone to help her down, throwing herself from the horse into Fox’s arms ready to catch her.

This was her vision. Torchay lying there beneath the broken roof, hands over his stomach, bleeding into the floor on the edge of death.

“No,” she whispered, falling to her knees beside him.

“He’s our medic,” Stone said. “Does anyone else know what to do?”

Kallista called magic, ignoring the lingering pain and nausea. She placed her hands over his wound and tried to see inside him as she had
seen
when her mother healed Fox. But she was linked to Fox. She had no link with Torchay. The magic curled in on itself in distress because it didn’t know how to do what she wanted.

“Naitan.”
Aisse spoke at her elbow. “What can we do?”

“Water. Get me water and start a fire.” Kallista drew one of Torchay’s wrist blades and cut his tunic open.

Already this reality was different from the vision. He lay on one of the white foreigner’s robes, not mounded-up canvas. Kallista had reached him first, not Aisse. And he had no blood bubbling from his mouth.

It still welled from his wound, a slow seeping that gave her hope and frightened her to her soul both at once. The wound was small but deep. Kallista turned him to the side and peered at his back. It didn’t go through.

Obed set a skin of water beside her. Beyond him, Stone was laying a fire, Fox holding flint and steel ready to strike sparks. Kallista tore the cloth from her hair and wet it. She needed to wash away the blood, stop it, mend what was torn inside him, but how?

Beside her, Aisse was whispering, praying to the merciful face of the One. Kallista could feel her rocking as she prayed, her arm brushing hers. She almost sent her away, but the others were doing all that was needed. Prayer would likely do more than Kallista could at this point.

Desperate, Kallista pressed her hands over Torchay’s wound again with her own prayer, begging for help. Aisse cried out as magic poured into Kallista.

She could see. Exactly where the sword had penetrated, what damage it had done, what she must do to repair it. She
reached
, pulling magic from the men, and spilled it into Torchay. She pushed together torn edges and sealed them, fused blood vessels, sent the blood back into them. She worked furiously, fighting off the death she could feel lurking, waiting for him.